Kendrew Pape will never forget the day his older sister was killed by a speeding car in a crosswalk shortly after her 51st birthday in 2018.
“When the police knock on your door and you have to go to the hospital to identify your loved one’s mangled remains, it’s devastating beyond any words,” Pape told reporters at Toronto city hall on Friday.
Pape was joined by city councillors and families with kids prior to council’s infrastructure and environment committee meeting on Friday that dealt with a motion by Mayor Olivia Chow to push through changes to Toronto’s speed cameras as part of a last-minute effort to get Premier Doug Ford to reconsider his government’s legislation to ban them.
“There are days that become weeks that become months of sleepless nights and painful suffering and the horrible injustice of it all,” Pape, 55, said of the death of his sister on Mulock Drive in Newmarket. “When a driver kills someone that you love, everything becomes a nightmare immediately — a nightmare of anguish and grief.”
Councillors on the committee voted in favour of Chow’s motion, which recommended such changes as the city installing larger signs by the end of October and giving a grace period to drivers who speed for the first time so they cannot be fined again for seven days. The grace period would give the driver time to receive their first fine in the mail and become aware of the camera’s location.
The measures still need full council approval, which is expected to meet starting Oct. 8.
If the Ford government’s bill becomes law after the Ontario Legislature returns in mid- to late-October, it would take effect immediately.
“Will he change his mind? I don’t know,” Chow told reporters when asked about the premier’s ban at an unrelated press conference across the city. “But I want to address some of his concerns.”
Ford has called the cameras a “cash grab,” partly because a driver may be ticketed multiple times by the same camera if they are unaware it exists.
The grace period was previously criticized by city staff in a scathing July report. On Friday at city hall, however, Barbara Gray, general manager of transportation services, struck a different tone about the idea now that the cameras are on the chopping block.
“I think the program is very effective the way that it is,” Gray told reporters. “We’re always looking … to make reasonable changes we think people will support.”
News of the province’s move to get rid of the cameras, as first reported by the Star, angered Toronto city council members, most of whom cited repeated studies showing that automated speed cameras — authorized by Ford’s government in 2019 — significantly reduce aggressive driving and speeding.
Another reason Ford wants to ban the devices is because he said he has heard drivers going only a few kilometres an hour over the posted speed limit are getting ticketed. Toronto city staff have previously withheld whether there even is a threshold — even to councillors — saying to reveal what it is would undermine the purpose of automated speed enforcement.
But at committee on Friday, city staff for the first time publicly spoke about Ford’s claim.
“We are developing our approach to enforcement to be reasonable and consistent with police practice. Police don’t necessarily say exactly at what point they will issue a ticket, but we wanted to ensure it is consistently done across the province,” city staff told the committee.
“And I would say that reports (of) tickets for just a couple of kilometres over the limit — we have no evidence of that.”
Gray echoed that statement later to reporters: “We just have no evidence of that,” she said adding, ”(but) if we are transparent on the threshold, then we are concerned more people will unintentionally or intentionally travel the threshold and not the posted speed (limit).”
Since Ford’s announcement, Chow said she’s been approached by families and vulnerable road users asking her to protect them.
Danielle Gibson was standing alongside her husband Thomas DeVito and three-year-old daughter Goldie holding a “Safe Streets 4 Kids” sign on Friday at city hall, along with Pape. She said Ford’s move is lighting up parent group chats fearing for their kids’ lives.
“I will do anything to protect my child and her friends,” Gibson said. “We see and hear about carnage every day. Every parent feels it viscerally.”
Cara McCutcheon, and her seven-year-old son Everett, disputed Ford’s repeated claim that the speed cameras are being abused for revenue generation.
“These cameras aren’t about cash grabs,” McCutcheon said. “They’re often placed near schools for a reason. And parks where children play.”
For Pape, this is all a full circle moment. When he and his sister Kim were kids, he said, they joked that motor company Ford was an acronym for “found on road dead,” referencing what he described as low-quality car products.
Fast forward a few decades later, “and Ford (still) stands for ‘found on road dead.’”
With files from Alyshah Hasham.
