From Bill 5 to ‘build, baby, build’: what’s going on with Highway 413?

Early work has begun on Highway 413 — a megaproject that would cut through endangered species habitat, including the protected Greenbelt — in the northwestern parts of the Greater Toronto Area.

Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pushed through legislation to fast-track projects like these, and the new prime minister has promised to “build, baby, build.” The changing political climate leaves a lot of questions about how the project will proceed, especially as shovels are already in the ground in some areas.

Michael DiMuccio, a director of grassroots organization Stop the 413 Now, who lives close to the proposed path of Highway 413 in Vaughan, Ont., said he’s noticed a lot more action in the area. “All of a sudden, we have construction people moving into the neighbourhood,” DiMuccio said.

Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria shared a video update showing crews on the ground back in December.

In its 2025 budget, released in mid-May, the Ontario government said it had identified 500 properties the province will need to acquire to build Highway 413. Expropriation notices have already gone out to some residents along the route.

Ford and his Progressive Conservatives have been trying to build the highway — a 52-kilometre route through York, Peel and Halton regions — since they were first elected in 2018. The project, which critics noted would run through Ontario’s protected Greenbelt and swaths of endangered species habitat, was a major tenet of Ford’s 2022 and 2025 re-election campaigns. 

For the last seven years, the Highway 413 project has seen its share of controversy. The National Observer found developers with real estate near the proposed route had ties to the Ford government. Then opposition parties promised to cancel the project if elected in 2022. And the federal government designated the project for an impact assessment in 2021, only to drop that review in April 2024 and refuse another request later that year from environmental groups. 

Instead, a federal-provincial working group was established last year with the goal of guiding Highway 413’s development, especially as it relates to federal environmental legislation like the Fisheries Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act and the Species At Risk Act. Documents recently released to The Narwhal through access to information legislation show how provincial and federal members of the working group viewed their role and mandate differently.

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Most recently, Bill 5, also known as the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, which passed on June 5, weakens the rules that protect land, water and wildlife. It will give the province the power to create “special economic zones” where regulations can be circumvented, and rewrites the Endangered Species Act.

Late last year, the province introduced Bill 212, or the Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, allowing the Ford government to exempt projects like Highway 413 from undergoing a provincial environmental assessment (as well as being the bill behind the much-publicized removal of bike lanes in Toronto). 

With so much change afoot, here’s what we know about Highway 413’s path forward, and where Ontario and Canada stand on seeing it through.

What do Ontario’s Bill 212 and Bill 5 mean for Highway 413?

Passed in late 2024, Bill 212 gives the Ford government the ability to exempt projects from typical provincial environmental assessments. Environmental assessments for the 413 have been ongoing since 2007, with several stops and starts. 

Bill 212’s passing in late 2024 meant Highway 413 can now go through an “accelerated” assessment with a more limited review of the highway’s environmental impacts. Crucially, this would allow the province to start on early work like bridges before the assessments are completed. Bill 212 would also allow the province to not publish the studies done as part of those assessments. 

While Bill 212 would essentially undo the province’s Environmental Assessment Act, Bill 5 would repeal its Endangered Species Act, Tim Gray, the executive director of advocacy organization Environmental Defence. This would mean “all the onus and responsibility ensuring that [endangered] species are not impacted now falls on the federal government,” he said in an interview, adding that despite the working group and Ford’s recent cozying up to Prime Minister Mark Carney, the provincial government “has put themselves into a direct line of conflict with the federal government because the highway goes through some of the best remaining high-quality habitats for federally listed endangered species.” 

And this could do more to slow down than speed up construction, Gray said. Since the province still has to comply with federal laws like the Species At Risk Act and the Fisheries Act, Highway 413 won’t necessarily be expedited.

Across Canada, courts have required governments to demonstrate proper due diligence and consultations, including with Indigenous groups, which these bills also circumvent. Projects without that due diligence have “been held up and delayed with those consultations being forced to take place,” Gray said. 

“We see this repeated pattern of the provincial government in Ontario thinking that the path to doing whatever they want is to bulldoze over other responsibilities. But in fact, it’s delaying projects, not accelerating them.” 

And it’s not just Highway 413 that these two bills impact: going forward, the provincial government has the power to designate any number of projects as being within special economic zones. On top of having major impacts for the environment by skirting important assessments and protections, the bills may also result in conflict with Indigenous groups, who say Bill 5 infringes on their Treaty Rights. 

Is the Highway 413 working group really working? 

The federal-provincial working group for Highway 413 was established in 2024, and it includes the province’s Ministry of Transportation and the federal Impact Assessment Agency. It sets aside the previously started (but never finished) federal impact assessment and, instead, asks the two agencies to work in tandem to find ways to avoid and mitigate environmental damage from the project. Other federal ministries like Fisheries and Oceans and Environment and Climate Change are also pulled in for input and comment. 

Documents acquired by The Narwhal through the Access to Information Act illustrate the push and pull over the terms of reference for the working group. Combined comments from the federal Fisheries and Environment ministries and the Impact Assessment Agency suggest federal members of the group were pushing back on the idea they were there to steward Highway 413 through to completion.

In a document prepared for a meeting last July, the discrepancies were on display. Under a subsection called mandate and responsibility, federal members crossed out several references to project delivery and supporting construction, replacing them with wording around better informing decision-making on the project. In a comment in the document attached to these changes, they note: “The scope of the technical working groups as per the [memorandum of understanding] is to support assessment of effects, support efficacy of mitigation measures identified by the proponent to lessen or avoid effects on fish, fish habitat, [species at risk], etc. in areas of federal jurisdiction. Our role is not a project delivery role.”

In a document for another meeting last August, the federal members again crossed out similar statements, including a new point under responsibilities that read, “Share information and assist with delivery of the Highway 413 project.”

As of November 2024, Gray said, Ontario was about a year away from having to apply for permits under the Species At Risk Act and the Fisheries Act. And construction couldn’t start until those permits came through. While Bill 5 creates the possibility of “special economic zones” where local and provincial laws no longer apply, as well as reforming endangered species protections, projects are still at the mercy of federal permits and their timelines. “The provincial government is looking to wipe away all provincial and municipal laws, but they’re going to have no impact on the application of federal law,” Gray said. 

In the documents laying out terms for the working group, the province initially suggested the working group would help “establish timelines for federal permitting that take into account the operational and construction timelines of the project.” The federal government corrected that and clarified “the operational and construction timelines of the project will be considered alongside the regulatory requirements, to the extent possible, to support a timely decision-making process.”

In the published terms of reference, they strike a balance: “The working group will establish a work plan and timelines for federal permitting that take into account the operational and construction timelines of the project, requirements set out in relevant regulations and the need for adequate provision of information and consultations before final decisions can be made.”

In the documents, working group members from the Impact Assessment Agency shared a number of expectations in October 2024 related to federally protected species, including asking for a list of all the species not regulated by the province — like redside dace, bank swallows and western chorus frogs — and an outline of how Highway 413 impacts them. The federal representatives also proposed that the province publish these results. 

The Impact Assessment Agency told the Narwhal, “authorizations and permits are assessed and issued under the Fisheries Act and Species At Risk Act, which are also subject to consultation with impacted Indigenous communities.” The department also stated, “All parties of the working group worked together to finalize the terms of reference which remains current.”

When asked about Ontario’s Bill 5, the federal agency redirected The Narwhal to the province’s Ministry of Transportation, which did not respond.

Where does the federal government stand on Highway 413 now?

It’s clear the Ford government wants to push Highway 413 forward: in a May 5 letter addressed to Prime Minister Carney, Ford identified Highway 413 as a key project he’d like the federal government to co-operate on. “I urge you to limit your government’s intervention into any other critical infrastructure projects where there is no federal jurisdiction to do so,” Ford wrote. 

The province published the letter alongside one sent from then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland in November 2024 that suggested the federal government was very much in line with the province’s plans for Highway 413. Freeland proposed another working group that would, among other things, “identify ways to advance additional early works and streamline the processes for Highway 413 and Highway 69 to get these projects built faster,” she said, referring also to a project to widen the highway that runs from just north of Parry Sound to Sudbury. She continued that it is “in the best interest of Canadians and Ontarians to continue our great work together.” 

That was under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, and prior to Bill 5’s introduction. But, Carney has also signalled interest in speeding up approvals and limiting redundancy between federal and provincial approvals. In the case of Highway 413, certain federal protections are the only rules left standing.

Gray, of Environmental Defence, said Bill 5 and 212 actually make the federal government a bigger barrier to Highway 413 because the province is eschewing environmental assessments, pushing responsibility onto the federal government and making it more likely to intervene.  

“I think you’ll see people within agencies like Fisheries and Oceans and Environment and Climate Change Canada identifying major conflicts between their legislative requirements for protecting species at risk, fish and the planned design of the highway,” Gray said. “The Ford government will respond negatively to that … but the federal government has the responsibility of issuing these permits, and issuing them in a way that willfully ignores opportunity to mitigate impact is illegal under their own legislation.”  

From Gray’s perspective, it would be “very strange” to see the federal government support the Highway 413 project. “There’s so many other important priorities across the country in terms of building public transportation and the rationale for this highway is very, very weak,” he said. 

Nonetheless, expropriation notices are going out and early work is humming along in different locations.

In Halton Hills, Ont., Jeannine d’Entremont, a leader with grassroots organization Halton Hills Climate Action, said she and other locals have seen crews out drilling for soil samples this spring. Her group, along with others, pushed for a federal impact assessment of Highway 413 but were denied at the same time as Environmental Defence.

But, d’Entremont said, “We’re not throwing in the towel.”

Updated on June 17, 2025, at 1:45 p.m. ET: This story was corrected to state that Jeannine d’Entremont lives in Halton Hills, Ont., not Caledon, Ont.