The province says it will increase the number of transportation enforcement officers working along Northern Ontario main routes, and deploy two “mobile inspection support units” this spring to improve safety along the region’s notorious Highway 11-17 corridor.
The measures, along with other pledges, including “improved” signage on the occasionally hair-raising Trans-Canada Highway route, were announced on Friday as everyday motorists and provincial police continue to encounter incidents involving unsafe transport trucks on Northern routes.
“Our government is keenly aware how important safe roads, bridges and highways are to the residents, visitors and businesses in the North who rely on them daily,” Northern Economic Development and Growth Minister George Pirie, a former Timmins mayor, said in a news release.
According to the Ministry of Transportation, the department has hired nearly 100 enforcement officers since January of 2025, with half of those assigned to Northern posts.
It wasn’t immediately clear on Friday how many more may be hired in 2026.
In the last two years, the province has come under fire from truck-safety advocates as well as opposition MPPs, including the NDP’s Lise Vaugeois (Thunder Bay-Superior North), for not increasing the operating hours of a new Highway 11-17 truck inspection station just east of Thunder Bay.
On Friday, the province said it plans to step up “enforcement blitzes along the Highway 11-17 corridor between truck inspection stations to ensure trucks are safe and drivers follow the rules of the road.”
It also said it would refurbish a truck inspection station in Hearst.
Earlier this month, provincial police on patrol on Highway 11 near the community of Temagami/Temiskaming north of North Bay had been told that “large debris” had spilled onto the roadway from a transport truck.
“An inspection (of the truck) revealed several serious safety concerns, including a suspended driver’s licence, brake defects beyond the allowable limit, a trailer licence plate that did not match the vehicle, and a trailer with no functioning brakes,” an OPP news release said at the time.
Later the same day, police said, the same transport truck that officers had ordered out of service was spotted back on the highway.
This time, police said, it bore a licence plate that had been handwritten.
A “further inspection confirmed that none of the previously identified safety defects had been repaired, and the trailer still had no functioning brakes,” the news release said,
Over 2025 and 2026, the province says it’s spending nearly $583 million on Northern Ontario highways, including $481 million for rehabilitation projects and almost $102 million for expansion projects, a provincial backgrounder said.
