Dalton McGuinty's road to another broken promise

If you travel to Columbus you'll see many of these signs. If there was more room on the sign
it would have said, "Keep your promise Dalton and don't end Hwy. 407 at Simcoe Street"

I loathe Hwy. 407 but I have to admit I've driven on it many times.

The thought that my tax dollars paid for the highway and now I have to pay some Spanish-owned company highly inflated rates to drive on it is just wrong.

Fortunately the majority of my travels along Hwy. 407 were work related when I was employed in Toronto. Since 2005 I've been fortunate enough to work in the very city in which I live, Oshawa. The transponder has been returned and now I rarely think of the roadway.

While Hwy. 407 is not on the top of my mind these days the same cannot be said of the poor residents who live in Columbus, a tiny hamlet within the City of Oshawa situated in the city's north-west end. They've recently learned that Dalton McGuinty's Liberals will no longer be extending Hwy. 407 through to Hwy. 35/115 but rather stopping it at Simcoe Street. Translation, Columbus residents' quiet little piece of the globe will soon become a noisy, congested on/off ramp for the highway.

No warnings were ever issued by the government that this would happen, no public meetings were ever held beforehand, just an announcement a few weeks ago making it official. Sorry about your luck people but the government's broke, highway's going to end in your backyard.

This wasn't how it was supposed to turn out. A March 2007 agreement between the federal and provincial governments stated that Ontario agreed to complete the Hwy. 407 extension from Brock Road in Pickering to Hwy. 35/115 with construction slated to begin in 2009 and wrap up by 2013.

Yes, I realize it's completely out of character for the McGuinty government to renege on a promise. I was as stunned as everyone else when it happened. Not.

The fallout from this will not be good for the City of Oshawa. There will have to be some major upgrades to road infrastructure that were not forecast in the municipal budget. Given the new council's vow to spend our tax dollars more responsibly, tough decisions will have to be made. So Oshawa residents will have to do more with less thanks to a broken provincial promise.

The highway was promised to Durham Region because it's needed to ease congestion along Hwy. 401. Economically it just makes sense.

Would McGuinty have stopped the highway in Oshawa if we had a Liberal MPP here? Probably not. But we're Tory blue from Whitby through to Clarington so there's no worry of any incumbent MPPs getting turfed over the issue.  

It seems that every time we turn around the McGuinty government continues breaking promises under the guise of 'good government' (HST, Eco tax, Hwy. 407 etc.) and taxpayers keep getting inconvenienced.

For once it would be nice to see a promise made and a promise kept. Is that too much to ask?