Doug Ford decides to reward political violence

Destroy enough public property, and you too can change the law!

An automated speed camera at work in Durham Region, enforcing the speed limit 24/7 on a far more effective basis than any human cop ever could, without the safety risks of police confronting members of the public. | Copyright © Durham Region, licensed under fair dealing.

It was first in 2019 that Premier Doug Ford’s Tory government, reluctantly following up on work by his Liberal predecessor Premier Kathleen Wynne, passed the laws enabling Toronto and other cities to install automated speed cameras.

These cameras, very simply, check the speed of every single passing vehicle, and if they cross over the speed limit, they are charged a fine. The difference is that instead of the speed limit only being enforced when a human cop is present to witness, now the automated camera can work at all times, sending the ticket to the owner of the vehicle based on the license plate.

And those who have used the tolled 407 highway in Ontario know that automated cameras to identify your license plate and mail you fines or fees are already well-established technology, with very little skepticism over accuracy. This reasonable policy was a simple way to enforce speed limits more broadly, and thus more effectively.

But some Ontarians appeared to disagree. Between September 7^th and September 14^th earlier this month, twenty speed cameras in the City of Toronto were vandalized and damaged in such a manner as to prevent them from enforcing the speed limits.

Let me be blunt: There is zero fucking chance that the Toronto Police Service are unable to identify the culprits of this vandalism. Chief Myron Demkiw expects me to believe that this could happen repeatedly, in the same physical locations, and that his police service with their massive set of resources can’t do basic detective work?

Bullshit. Bullshit! While every other city department has austerity imposed on them, the Toronto Police have the unique ability to outright demand an exact number from Toronto City Council regardless of the feasibility, and every other city department, including firefighters and EMS, must reduce their budget to compensate for the increase to police.

Chief Demkiw has been given every single penny that he asked for, so I would like him to explain to me why he isn’t capable of enforcing law and order. We have provided him everything he said was needed to accomplish that goal. So I can only assume that the police are either incompetent, or they are willingly choosing not to solve this crime.

And now Doug Ford has made clear: He sides with the criminals, and is changing the law to get rid of speed cameras entirely. These thugs have repeatedly destroyed road safety infrastructure, basic tools designed to prevent speeding and protect pedestrians as we walk across intersections.

It is very clear how their actions put innocent lives at risk. It is very clear how caving in and getting rid of these speed cameras will harm people. Mayor Steven Del Duca of Vaughan caved in as Doug Ford did and removed speed cameras in his city, despite the fact that they lowered the number of speeding vehicles on a daily basis by 56%, and lowered the average speed on the road altogether by 23%.

Rather than listen to the nearly three-quarters of Ontarians who support automated speed cameras, who want to live in safe communities where we can walk across a street without getting splattered into red paste, fools like Doug Ford and Steven Del Duca are claiming these cameras are a “cash grab”.

But here’s the thing, fellas: You only get fined if you go over the speed limit. It’s not a “cash grab” to fine people for dangerous driving, and going at a high enough speed is dangerous. Someone hit by a car going 30km/h has a 90% chance of survival, but at 40km/h that person now only has a 60% chance of survival, dropping to 20% at a speed of 50km/h.

And that’s considering the mass of a normal car; since kinetic energy relies on both speed and mass, a heavier car like an SUV or a truck will be more lethal than a car at the same speed. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a school zone or a central intersection. When you speed, you put pedestrians at risk of dying. If you don’t appreciate that, you are not responsible enough to own a motor vehicle.

Even the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police is telling Doug Ford not to do this, and normally they’re lockstep behind any Tory policy no matter how stupid. Naturally, they understand it’s not a productive police officers’ time to go sit on the side of the road and hold a radar gun when an automated camera can do it for them and free them up to respond to higher-priority crimes.

And as someone who is quite skeptical of police officers, I don’t mind the overall reduction in encounters between police and the public. Nobody needs to physically confront anybody to issue a ticket, and physical confrontations are something which both police and their critics want to avoid. Someone can easily get pulled over for speeding and have it escalate into something much more severe; it is wholly unnecessary, and speed cameras remove this risk.

But the worst part of what Doug Ford has done here goes far beyond road safety. A group of criminals, angry that the law was finally being enforced on them, took it upon themselves to engage in political violence and destroy public infrastructure to facilitate their crimes.

And now, by giving in to that political violence and rewarding their anarchistic behaviour, he has sent a message to the people of Ontario. If there’s any law that you don’t like, then you can use the threat of violence to force the government to do what you want!

Well, I’m sure nothing could go wrong with that.