The Trans-Canada Highway through Northern Ontario remains largely unchanged — a two-lane stretch that local leaders say has become too dangerous to ignore.Mark Richardson
Every day, nearly 9,000 trucks pass through Mayor Dave Plourde’s community of Kapuskasing, Ont., crossing the network of highways – including Highway 11 and 17 – that make up the Trans-Canada Highway, the nation’s east-west corridor.
On the days traffic flows smoothly, the two-lane route weaving through the rocky spine of the Canadian shield moves more than 87,000 tonnes of cargo, representing more than $200-million in goods, according to provincial estimates. But when the highway shuts down – sometimes for two hours or two days – the backlog can stretch for kilometres, drivers stacked bumper-to-bumper, all trying to make up for lost time.
Then the passing starts, says Mr. Plourde. Trucks start to drift onto the shoulder of the crowded route and overcorrect.
“That’s when a lot of the accidents tend to happen,” he says.
Between January 27 and February 13, six people were killed in collisions along the Highway 11 and 17 routes. Last summer, four young people died in an accident between an ATV and a transport truck in nearby Moonbeam, Ont. Just before Christmas, a man lost his wife and two kids in a head-on collision, 60 kilometres from Kapuskasing.
Data compiled by the Northern Policy Institute indicates that Northern Ontario records about nine motor-vehicle deaths per 100,000 people, more than twice the provincial average.
“We’re having a really terrible year on the highways,” says Charles Cirtwill, chief executive officer of the Northern Policy Institute. “We’re losing a lot of people.”
Mr. Plourde, whose life is spent travelling on that stretch to the Trans-Canada, says these collisions are both devastating and preventable.
“If there had been a centre median, [the crashes] never would’ve happened.”
As president of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM), an organization representing 110 communities, Mr. Plourde is bringing the fight to modernize the Trans-Canada to the Federal level. FONOM is framing it as both a safety imperative and a nation-building exercise as traffic volumes surge, critical minerals projects advance and Ottawa looks to strengthen east-west interprovincial trade.
“They’re looking for zero-fatality highways, and the only way to get it is to redesign this thing from North Bay all the way to the Manitoba border,” Mr. Cirtwill says.
Mr. Plourde and FONOM are calling for a mix of full twinning – widening two-lane highways into four – and so-called 2+1 corridors, which use a centre median and alternating passing lanes to reduce head-on collisions.
Governments have taken some steps toward modernizing the Trans-Canada corridor through Northern Ontario, but it’s a challenge. The region’s remote, rugged terrain and vast stretches of road make development both logistically challenging and costly.
In an emailed statement, Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation says it is investing about $600-million in 2026 to build and repair northern roads, bridges and highways, including the Highway 11/17 corridor.
Since 2024, the province has awarded more than 40 construction contracts worth more than $350-million along Highways 11, 17 and 11/17, and is conducting design and environmental assessment work for a 2+1 pilot north of North Bay, with tree clearing underway at one southern site.
The ministry says it continues to widen the 107-kilometre Highway 11/17 stretch between Thunder Bay and Nipigon, with 80 kilometres now open to four lanes, including two sections completed in late 2025. Additional segments in Northwestern Ontario are moving through design, assessment and consultation.
However, beyond those pockets of improvement, much of Highway 11 and 17 remains unchanged.
Dave Plourde, mayor of Kapuskasing, Ont., is pushing federal and provincial governments to modernize the Trans-Canada Highway, calling it a safety imperative and a nation-building opportunity.Supplied
To Mr. Plourde, the stalled timelines reflect a familiar problem for large infrastructure projects that fall between governments. Highways are a provincial responsibility but the Trans-Canada is also designated as national infrastructure, putting it within Ottawa’s funding mandate. The result, he says, is a project that advances in fragments without a clear owner.
Political realities also shape those decisions, says Mr. Cirtwill. There are 800,000 people in Northern Ontario, a small fraction of the province’s 14 million population.
“From the political calculus of where you spend your transportation money, it’s pretty hard when you’re sitting in Queen’s Park,” he says.
In January, Mr. Plourde wrote a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney calling out what he describes as a lack of clarity between provincial and federal commitments. He says Ontario has indicated it will not proceed with large-scale modernization without a clear, public commitment from the federal government.
“Your government’s Building Canada Act and nation-building criteria speak directly to this moment,” says Mr. Plourde in the letter. “Upgrading Highways 11 and 17 meets every test: safety, economic growth, national security, Indigenous participation, climate resilience and shovel-ready execution.”
He says his ambition is simple: he wants the Trans-Canada twinning and improvements at the top of the pile. “Not just an afterthought … It has to be right at the forefront.”
Mr. Cirtwill is less certain that the project has reached true national priority.
“If this was going to happen, it would’ve been on the national priorities projects list Ontario sent the Feds,” he says. “And it’s not.”
Part of the problem, Mr. Plourde believes, is distance – not just geographic, but experiential.
“When politicians come to Kapuskasing or other Northern Ontario communities, they fly,” he says. Until decision-makers experience the highway in winter, the white-knuckle stretches, the sudden closures, the absence of alternatives, the urgency can be hard to grasp. “To really understand, you’d have to drive it,” he says.
Still, Mr. Plourde says this moment feels different. Canada’s growing reliance on northern resources, from critical minerals to energy infrastructure, has pushed the region back into focus. What worries him is that infrastructure may once again lag behind ambition.
He points to the Ring of Fire, a vast deposit of critical minerals discovered in Northern Ontario in 2007. “We can keep talking about what’s in the ground,” he says. “But how are you going to get it to where it needs to go?”
The risk of inaction is no longer abstract. Growth is coming, he says, whether the road is ready or not.
“I’m making it my mission to have a plan in place … and we have to stick to it,” he says. “We can’t afford to wait. This has to happen today.”