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Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he “broke out laughing” when he found out Ottawa and Toronto had said the signs his government sent were too large to be mounted on the poles in their school zones.
Almost two weeks after banning automated speed enforcement cameras in municipalities, the Ford government sent enormous school zone signs to municipalities.
Ford has repeatedly said he believes giant signs, speed bumps and flashing lights are more effective to slow down speeding drivers than fines and cameras.
When the signs arrived, they were too large for the poles in Ottawa and Toronto, requiring new posts to be installed to get them up. That’s a cost the province said it would cover.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said on Wednesday that cities had been briefed on the dimensions of the signs and should have told Queen’s Park earlier that they needed larger poles.
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Ford dismissed the concern about the size of the signs on Thursday, claiming it was incompetence on the part of the local governments.
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“When they told me this, I broke out laughing,” he said. “All the other municipalities, it’s no problem, but it’s Toronto and Ottawa, they can’t put up a big sign. Like, do I have to go there and show them how to put up a big sign?”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow’s office said that, while the signs were too big, the province had offered to pay for the cost of installing them, and they considered the matter closed.
Opposition critics, however, have argued that the government rushed its ban on speed cameras and didn’t think through its plans to replace them.
“The signs that were sent are ridiculously large,” Ontario Liberal MPP John Fraser said. “It’s ridiculous — they’re in a hurry, and that’s really what the problem is.”
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The legislation banning speed cameras was tabled on the first day of the fall sitting in October, bypassing committee and passing into law exactly two weeks later.
The cameras were officially banned on Nov. 14.
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