The number was $6 billion when the Ford government revived Highway 413 in 2021. By late 2025, internal estimates had climbed past $10 billion. Nobody at Queen’s Park has publicly confirmed the latest figure, but construction industry sources and leaked procurement documents suggest the real cost, once land acquisition and interchange work are factored in, could push toward $12 billion. For a highway that, by the province’s own modelling, saves the average commuter 30 to 60 seconds per trip.
Thirty seconds. That is the number the critics keep coming back to, and the government keeps trying to bury.
The Route Nobody Asked For (Twice)
Highway 413 is technically the GTA West Transportation Corridor, a 59-kilometre highway connecting the 400 at Vaughan to the 401/407 interchange near Milton. The idea is not new. The previous Liberal government commissioned a study, ran a years-long environmental assessment, and in 2018 concluded that the highway was not worth building. The advisory panel’s recommendation was blunt: invest in transit instead.
Context: The GTA West Environmental Assessment ran from 2007 to 2018 under the Liberals. An independent advisory panel recommended shelving the highway, calling it poor value for money and environmentally damaging. The Ford government cancelled that panel’s mandate in 2018 and restarted the EA process.
Doug Ford’s PCs disagreed. Within months of taking office in 2018, they restarted the environmental assessment. By 2021, the highway was a centrepiece of the government’s infrastructure pitch. The new EA process, run under updated federal-provincial rules, is ongoing, but major contracts for early works have already gone out. The signal is clear: this highway is getting built regardless of what the assessment finds.
That approach (decide first, study second) has become a pattern with this government.
The Farmland Problem
The proposed route cuts through some of the most productive agricultural land in southern Ontario. Over 2,000 acres of Class 1 farmland sits directly in the path, land that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has called irreplaceable.
Irreplaceable is not hyperbole here. Class 1 soil is the highest quality designation in Canada’s land inventory system, and southern Ontario holds a disproportionate share of it. Once you pave it, it does not come back. Not in a generation, not ever.
The province’s own food security reports have flagged the loss of farmland in the GTA as a long-term risk. 319 acres per day of Ontario farmland were being converted to other uses as of the most recent census of agriculture. Highway 413 would accelerate that in one of the few remaining agricultural belts within commuting distance of Toronto.
The farming communities along the route, in Caledon, Brampton, and Halton Hills, have organized against the highway since the EA restarted. Their argument is straightforward: the province says it values local food production (see the Buy Ontario Act), then proposes to bulldoze the farms that produce it.
Nobody at Queen’s Park has reconciled those two positions.
Follow the Sprawl
Environmental groups frame Highway 413 as a sprawl engine disguised as a commuter highway. The logic is not complicated. New highways attract development. Development along new highways tends to be low-density, car-dependent suburban expansion: exactly the pattern Ontario’s own housing policy (Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act) was supposed to move away from.
Highway Cost Comparison (Estimated)
Environmental Defence, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, and a coalition of local conservation groups have identified 85 waterways that would be crossed or disrupted by the highway corridor. Several of these feed into the Credit River and Humber River watersheds, both of which supply drinking water to GTA municipalities.
The Greenbelt connection is impossible to ignore. The original Highway 413 route passed through Greenbelt-protected land. After the 2023 Greenbelt scandal (when the Ford government reversed its decision to remove 7,400 acres from Greenbelt protection after the Auditor General’s damning report), the government adjusted the route to avoid the most politically toxic parcels. But conservation groups argue the corridor still fragments habitat that depends on Greenbelt connectivity to function.
The Traffic Argument
The government’s case rests on congestion relief. The GTA is growing, Highways 401 and 407 are at or near capacity, and commuters in York and Peel regions face some of the worst drive times in the country. All true.
What is less clear is whether Highway 413 solves that problem.
The province’s own traffic modelling, released during the restarted EA, projected time savings of 30 to 60 seconds per trip compared to existing routes. The opposition seized on that number immediately. Marit Stiles called it “a $10 billion highway to save you a minute,” a line that has proven difficult for the government to counter because the underlying data is theirs.
Context: The 407 ETR, a privately operated toll highway running roughly parallel to the proposed 413 corridor, regularly operates below capacity because commuters avoid its tolls. Critics argue that reducing 407 tolls or buying back the highway lease would provide faster congestion relief at lower cost than building a new corridor.
The government counters that the modelling underestimates future demand and that the real benefit is network redundancy: having an alternate route when the 401 or 400 jams up. That is a reasonable engineering argument. Whether it is a $10 billion argument is the question nobody in cabinet seems eager to answer directly.
Who Wants This Built?
The development industry. That is the short answer, and it is not even particularly controversial to say so. The Ontario Home Builders’ Association and the Building Industry and Land Development Association have been vocal supporters. New highway interchanges create developable land, and developable land in the GTA is where the money is.
There is a legitimate housing argument buried in there. Ontario needs more homes, the GTA is where demand is highest, and serviced land is a bottleneck. But urban planners have pointed out, repeatedly, that the kind of housing Highway 413 enables (single-detached subdivisions on former farmland) is the most expensive to service, the least efficient use of land, and the least helpful for the affordability crisis that the government says it wants to fix.
The political geography matters too. The 413 corridor runs through some of the province’s most competitive suburban ridings: Caledon, Brampton, and parts of Vaughan and Milton. These are seats the PCs need to hold. A highway with local construction jobs and a promise of shorter commutes plays well on doorsteps, whatever the cost-benefit analysis says.
The Federal Wild Card
The federal impact assessment has been a source of friction since 2021. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada launched a review, citing effects on federally protected species and waterways. The Ford government called it overreach and challenged it in court.
The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on the Impact Assessment Act (which found parts of the federal law unconstitutional) gave Ontario ammunition, and the federal process stalled. As of early 2026, Ottawa has not formally withdrawn its review but is not blocking provincial EA work either.
That ambiguity suits everyone. Ottawa avoids a fight in an election cycle. Ontario proceeds with early works. The environmental groups keep their legal cases alive.
Nobody is actually resolving anything. Same deal as most federal-provincial standoffs.
The Math That Does Not Add Up
Here is the core problem. The province is simultaneously:
- Pledging $200 billion in infrastructure spending over a decade (Bill 24)
- Running a deficit projected at $4.6 billion for 2025-26
- Building the Ontario Line at $19 billion and climbing
- Promising the Scarborough subway extension, the Yonge North extension, and GO expansion
- And now pushing a $10 billion-plus highway that saves commuters under a minute
Something has to give. Capital budgets are not infinite, and every dollar spent on Highway 413 is a dollar not spent on transit, hospitals, schools, or the housing infrastructure the province says is its top priority.
The government has not released a full lifecycle cost-benefit analysis. Not a summary, not a redacted version. Nothing. Repeated requests from the NDP and environmental groups have been deflected.
That absence is telling. Governments do not hide cost-benefit analyses that support their position.
What Happens Next
Early works contracts are moving forward. Land acquisition is underway, expropriation proceedings already filed. The full EA wraps in 2026, but the construction timeline (shovels by 2027, completion early 2030s) suggests the outcome is already decided.
Environmental Defence and conservation groups have cases before the Ontario Superior Court challenging the EA process. Those could delay construction but probably will not stop it. Provincial governments have broad authority over highway construction, and courts rarely override infrastructure decisions on policy grounds.
The farmland will not be there when this is over. The waterways will be culverted or rerouted. The sprawl will follow the interchanges, as it always does.
The 407, half-empty and running parallel, will still be there too.
Sources and verification: Cost estimates for Highway 413 are drawn from provincial budget documents and reporting by the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail; the $6 billion initial figure appeared in 2021 MTO documents, with the $10 billion-plus range reported in 2025. The 30-60 second time saving figure comes from the province’s own GTA West transportation modelling released during the environmental assessment process. Farmland acreage figures are from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Canadian census of agriculture. The 85 waterway crossings figure is from Environmental Defence’s corridor analysis. Bill numbers (Bill 23, Bill 24) and the Greenbelt reversal timeline are confirmed against Ontario Legislative Assembly records. The 407 ETR capacity utilization claim should be verified against current 407 ETR traffic reports.
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