The president of Ontario’s Treasury Board, Caroline Mulroney, is responsible for making sure all of the province’s agencies, boards and commissions are well run. Effective immediately, Mulroney has decreed: All 143 government agencies are subject to a hiring freeze.

In 2018, Premier Doug Ford’s newly elected government mandated a hiring freeze for the public service — a freeze that remains in place to this day. Mulroney’s decision means these measures apply, as well, to provincial agencies, boards and commissions.

“We instituted the hiring freeze across the Ontario public service in 2018,” Mulroney affirms in an interview, “and around the same time, the provincial government began a comprehensive review of our agencies.”

“There was some consolidation that occurred subsequent to that,” Mulroney elaborates. “Some new agencies were created; there was a pandemic; but we’ve continued to review the governance and the structure of the relationship between government and the agencies.” Over the Ford PC’s tenure in government, the number of provincial agencies was reduced from 191 to 143.

Today’s announcement by Mulroney extends the reach of Ontario government’s 2018 hiring freeze beyond bureaucrats within government ministries, to include personnel within public agencies who perform specific regulatory, advisory, adjudicative, or service-delivery functions, sometimes at arms-length from government departments.

In Ontario, that list of agencies, boards, and commissions includes Ontario Health, Metrolinx, the Ontario Energy Board, the province’s Lottery and Gaming commission, the Human Rights Commission, and Legal Aid Ontario.

“Over the last few years,” Mulroney reports, “we’ve been looking more closely at them and realized that the hiring freeze that we imposed on the OPS (Ontario public service) — it would be prudent as a next step to impose it now on our agencies.”

“The freeze will involve a cap,” she explains, “and for business-critical services, agencies will still have the ability to fill those spots. We don’t want to affect any business-critical decisions and business-critical services.” The minister’s press release also reinforces the government’s aim of “putting more resources into frontline service delivery and back into the pocket of taxpayers.”

“We expect in the future for agencies to bring forward HR plans to be approved by ministries,” Mulroney explains. She hastens to add: “I recognize our agencies deliver a big part of our mandate and so they’re delivering critical public services. We just believe that the approach that we’ve used in the Ontario public service can also be followed within these agencies.”

“Staffing in government agencies has risen by more than five times the rate of the OPS since 2023 (4.7 percent in agencies vs. 0.87 percent in the OPS),” the minister’s press materials state, “which has led to financial pressure that could jeopardize frontline service delivery.”

The hiring freeze on the public service since 2018 “kept growth relatively flat the entire time, while ensuring high quality public services for Ontarians,” Mulroney asserts. The province’s population in that window of time grew from 14 to 16 million.

This show of discipline by Ontario’s Treasury Board will no doubt be welcomed by many in the province. And I can’t resist asking Mulroney if her government has encouraged the feds to do something similar. Under the leadership of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, the federal civil service exploded, reportedly growing at a rate twice as fast as Canada’s population.

Mulroney colours within the lines — she’s circumspect. “Since Mark Carney was elected,” she responds, “I think there has been some talk” of reducing size within the federal public service. “But,” she reiterates, “this is about Ontario and what we’re doing, and how we can manage growth and still provide those services that we were elected to provide in the most cost effective way.”

Then, she adds: “I’ll be happy to talk about it with members of other governments, if they decide to consider this kind of an approach.”

Mulroney expects the public sector unions will understand the reasons for placing a hiring freeze on agencies, boards and commissions. And she takes care to reiterate — “this is a cap” — it’s about managing growth. “I think business owners,” she adds, “will say that this is something that they have to do every single day, so I don’t think that it’s an unreasonable thing to expect from our agencies.”

“Austerity” is a buzzword creeping into the vernacular of ordinary Canadians. But Mulroney isn’t embracing the term: “This isn’t about austerity,” she says evenly. “This is about good fiscal management. And we’re making the investments that we need to make to continue to build our province, and have measures in place to sustain people as we’re going through this difficult time because of the tariffs. But we’re doing so in a targeted and responsible way.”

Mulroney is also scheduled to today release the province’s public accounts for 2024-2025, together with Ontario’s finance minister,  Peter Bethlenfalvy. Of course, she’s not going to pre-empt that announcement, but she assures me “we’ll have some good news that will show that our fiscal management has been viewed as transparent and well run … I think we’ve got good news for taxpayers, and on our debt sustainability measures, I think those measures will also show that they’re trending in the right direction.”

As U.S. President Donald Trump wreaks havoc on the province’s economy — and Ontario’s debt grows weighty — this 51-year-old minister logically and calmly explains the rationale for imposing a hiring freeze on government agencies. Mulroney’s unrelenting focus on good governance and fiscal discipline is a breath of fresh air in a chaotic world. Steady, she goes.

• The moment Mark Carney won over Danielle Smith (for now)
• Big federal housing plan has a roadblock: the Canadian government itself

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two characters with rival ambitions who have not always seen eye to eye are suddenly compelled to work together to take on a common antagonist …

It could be the theme of a superhero flick, but it’s the reality of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war that has Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reaching for their capes. They hope their newfound cooperation can serve up a plot twist in the upcoming renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

Last week, the two North American leaders met in Mexico City to expand both their economic and security ties, deepening their trade pact ahead of talks about the renewal of the free trade agreement. Both worry that the White House’s demands may prove disruptive in negotiations, so they’re seeking strength in numbers.

“I have full confidence, and so does the president (Sheinbaum), that we can find the adjustments needed to reinforce competition and competitiveness in our region,” Carney said in Mexico, noting that they would share intelligence on cross-border criminal organizations and work to improve border security. Fentanyl coming in from the border has been a particular concern for Trump

“We will move forward together,” Carney said, dispelling any notion of Canada sidelining Mexico in talks with the U.S.

The two countries have strong reasons to work together, but will their new pact make things easier or harder in negotiations with Trump?

Tariff-ic incentives

This year, the White House has imposed a 35 per cent tariff on non-CUSMA-compliant Canadian exports and a 25 per cent tariff on most Mexican non-CUSMA-compliant exports. But the U.S. president has also used Section 232 tariffs, citing national security threats, to impose sanctions — and notably overriding CUSMA — on steel and aluminium trade, with tariffs as high as 50 per cent.

The general tariffs, levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, have been questioned in U.S. courts, and the Supreme Court is set to review the case in November.

But even if those tariffs dry up legally, the U.S. administration is preparing to ramp up its use of the Section 232 tariffs in several areas, including semiconductors, copper, pharmaceuticals, lumber, commercial aircraft and jet engines, and a few other areas, with investigative reports for these due before the end of the year. Trade experts expect these investigations to lead to more tariffs on these products — and their derivatives — that override CUMSA, much like we’ve seen with steel and aluminum.

With so many tariffs potentially further weakening CUSMA, it is even more important that Canada and Mexico manage to keep as much of the agreement intact as possible.

Strategy as key

Carney and Sheinbaum hope their cooperative overtures can bolster their positions in CUSMA renegotiation talks, which are set to get underway next summer.

Wendy Cutler, senior VP at Asia Society Policy Institute and a former trade negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, sees it as a positive step and doubts that the White House will mind that Carney and Sheinbaum are coordinating.

“The U.S., under the Trump administration, I’m sure has concluded it has the most leverage of anyone. And it’s not going to be nervous about Canada and Mexico uniting on certain issues.”

“It could give (Canada and Mexico) more leverage vis-a-vis the U.S.,” Cutler said, but only if the countries remain united.

“If they’re not united,” she warned, “I think, like any good negotiator, the U.S. will play one off against the other,” noting that’s what they kind of did during the initial CUSMA negotiation.

Other experts say all-out unity isn’t necessary, so much as a better understanding of each other’s priorities.

The Canada-Mexico pact is “designed to have cooperation and collaboration in important areas,” said Jeff Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

To continue enjoying the benefits of North American integration, Schott noted, Canada and Mexico know they need to work effectively with the U.S. and with one another, in both economic and security terms.

They don’t have to have a commonality in every area, Schott said, but they should “have a coordinated approach that promotes the best result for all three countries in North America.”

But any level of cooperation could still backfire.

“I do think (the pact) probably bothers the U.S.,” said Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. “But ultimately, this wouldn’t have happened if the U.S. had just abided by the terms and spirit of cooperation under (CUSMA).”

Mexico and Canada both know they won’t have as much leverage as the U.S., and the negotiations will require a balancing act, Packard explained, because they will be starting from a “position of lower trust” in Washington.

He recommended that Carney and Sheinbaum push hard for tools that can help ensure CUSMA cannot be further abused by the fact that all three countries can impose national security-type trade measures that otherwise override CUSMA, essentially creating exceptions to the deal.

“Given the Trump administration’s proclivity to abuse national security as a pretext for rank protectionism,” Packard said, “I would ask for something like a requirement that Congress vote on the national security declaration” to offer an extra layer of assurance.

Likely flashpoints

All three countries have launched public consultations domestically ahead of the CUSMA review, and we will learn more about those in November, but experts already anticipate heated debate in a few areas.

Most trade experts expect the U.S. to push for stricter rules of origin, particularly for automobile manufacturing, and provisions for restricting or more intensely screening Chinese investment in the three countries. But Washington will likely also push for improving the rapid response mechanism when it comes to labor and updating the digital provisions.

Cutler said she’s concerned that if Washington presses Ottawa and Mexico City for preferences over one another in terms of where investments should go and on rules of origin, “I think that’s going to be very difficult for Canada and Mexico to accept.”

A bright red line, meanwhile, could be what the U.S. asks for in terms of external tariffs towards China, she added.

Tightening automotive rules of origin — CUSMA currently requires 75 per cent of the value of passenger vehicles, light trucks, and core auto parts to originate in North America — means costing producers even more, Schott warned.

“The more you tighten the rules of origin, the more you impose cost pressures that producers may not be able to recoup in the marketplace,” he said.

Packard agrees that auto rules or origin will be a contentious issue, but he is also keeping his eye on lumber, agriculture, and dairy, in particular.

Dairy is a tough issue for Carney to budge on, owing to domestic politics and the lobbying power of Ontario and Quebec’s farmers, but Andreas Schotter, an international business professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School, said Carney should hold the contentious Canadian dairy quota as a “trump card” in the CUSMA negotiations. He suggests giving it up for leverage and then following up later with dairy subsidies to offer farmers continued support.

Schotter is impressed by the fact that Sheinbaum agreed to meet with Carney, but he said one meeting is not enough. He urged Carney to “keep on pedalling” to move forward with the pact.

Whatever becomes the most-heated CUSMA-related topic in the months ahead, there will be one key difference within the U.S. that could benefit Canada and Mexico. Next November’s midterms mean members of Congress will be looking to shore up support in their constituencies. That will lead to more voicing of concerns about the costs of tariffs and interrupted trade policies that are hurting their voters. With the IEEPA tariffs, few American Republicans have dared to say anything for fear of a backlash from Trump — or even being primaried — but messing with CUSMA will likely invite public pushback.

“Congress is going to be a very active partner in this negotiation, unlike their role in other tariff negotiations in recent months,” said Cutler, noting how CUSMA needs congressional approval and North American businesses will want to be heard about how Trump’s tariffs are hurting them.

Long road ahead

There has been little progress on the U.S.-Canada trade negotiations in recent weeks, and all of the experts expect those talks to fold into the CUSMA review next year.

Because Trump has “essentially ripped up a binding framework that has damaged our commercial relationship,” Packard said, Canada and Mexico have strong arguments heading into the negotiations. But that doesn’t mean they will go well — or quickly.

“I anticipate these negotiations are going to be pretty fraught and lengthy,” Packard said.

Schott agrees, but he thinks some of the timing will come down to internal U.S. politics. In fact, he’s not sure the negotiations will start on time next July, given that it’s in the middle of the midterm election campaign.

“I can see nothing really major changing or being advanced or agreed to until after the results of the midterm elections,” he said.

Some fear it will take even longer.

“My sense is that it won’t be completed in 2026 — that it will continue unless Trump feels he’s gotten everything he can,” said Cutler.

“And I think that won’t be the case.”

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.

A civic group is advocating for Toronto to adopt congestion pricing, following the route taken by cities such as New York, London, Stockholm and Singapore.

It’s a tactic aimed at

reducing traffic

in downtowns, with the collected congestion fees meant to go toward improving public transit and urban infrastructure.

The new organization called

Build Toronto

, launched by national non-profit organization

Build Canada

,

is suggesting a congestion charge of $15 per vehicle to drive in the downtown core.

The congestion pricing suggestion was put forward in a memo,

“Keep Toronto Moving With Congestion Pricing”

posted to the Build Toronto website and written by

Jamie McDonald

, CEO of A2X, a firm that provides accounting for sellers on popular online platforms such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay and Etsy.

McDonald contends congestion pricing “works where everything else has failed. Widening highways and removing tolls only make congestion worse … Expanding highways has failed — the 401 is one of the widest in the world and still jams daily.”

The goal, he says, is to reduce downtown commute times by 15–20 per cent within two years, while funding major transit improvements.

Congestion pricing in London has removed tens of thousands of cars a day from its core, he argues. And he notes that in New York,

it has taken 43,000 cars a day off Manhattan’s streets

(based on preliminary data from its first week of operation).

McDonald proposes the following actions:

• Toronto should introduce a downtown pilot zone.
• On 400-series highways and expressways within and surrounding the city should adopt Singapore’s model of adjusting tolls in real time to maintain average speeds of around 60 km/h.
• Exemptions for emergency vehicles and wheelchair-accessible vehicles should be standard. Targeted discounts for low-income drivers and residents living inside the zone can follow London’s model.
• Revenues should expand GO train frequency, improve Toronto Transit Commission reliability, and build park-and-ride facilities at transit hubs.

This is not the first discussion of congestion pricing for Toronto. In late 2024, the Toronto Region Board of Trade announced a new

Congestion Task Force

to dig into the problem and come up with “actionable solutions.”

In its

December 2024 statement

it recognized that establishing congestion pricing is not an easy sell, stating that it’s not a “silver bullet” or “one-size fits all” solution.

For example, it noted New York debated congestion pricing for decades. A plan for Manhattan’s central business district was approved in 2019 but then delayed. Governor Kathy Hochul paused the program in 2024, citing concerns over post-COVID economic recovery. Still, it

launched in January

.

In

Vancouver

the city council pushed back against it 2022. The concept had been intensely criticized by businesses worried urban road tolls would discourage patrons. And many citizens worried about the extra cost for drivers who rely on their cars.

Sometimes the debate is nuanced. For example, in London the number of vehicles driving into the city centre dropped by 

18 per cent during weekdays

 as a result of congestion pricing. But earlier this year, a transport analytics company declared London 

the most congested city in Europe

, with drivers spending increasing amounts of time sitting in traffic.

Transport for London’s response

was that the increased congestion was caused by some car lanes being “repurposed for other uses” such as bike lanes — the subject of

recent heated debate

in Toronto.

Toronto has had its own tugs of war over congestion pricing. In 2016, a

$2 toll on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway

was proposed by the city, with an anticipated $200 million boost for transit and infrastructure funding. But the province nixed it, citing affordability concerns. More recently, the Ford government has banned any future tolls on provincial highways and removed them from the 407.

However, the Board of Trade is hopeful that improving public transit, including projects like the Ontario (subway) Line could make congestion pricing more palatable in time.

“As we’ve seen in other global cities, congestion pricing can play a helpful role in alleviating traffic…. (I)t can take years to build consensus and implement and relies on important factors like viable transit alternatives to be successful. Beginning the conversation now can prepare the region for if and when a model could work here in the future.”

• Toronto ranked third worst in the world for time stuck in traffic
• Toronto drivers spend more than 8 days a year in traffic, study finds

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

There are hundreds of speed cameras throughout Ontario, and though police and many others say the devices are causing drivers to slow down, the province could soon require cities and towns to shut them down.

Premier Doug Ford, whose government finalized automated speed enforcement (ASE) legislation in 2019, did a 180 on the traffic calming measure in September, saying they are ineffective at slowing drivers down and calling municipal programs “nothing more than a tax grab.”

Thursday, the premier, joined by a trio of mayors aligned with his cause, reiterated his feelings about the technology and announced forthcoming fall legislation to bring an end to Ontario’s ASE era, “to protect taxpayers and drivers and stop them from being gouged.”

“As municipalities have seen how easy it is to make a quick buck by installing new speed cameras, more and more cameras have been set up across Ontario,” he said during

a press conference at a municipal facility in Vaughan

, a city whose council just passed a motion to bring its program to an end.

Ford argued that the only people slowing down for the cameras are local residents already aware of them. The thousands of others passing through daily, most of whom he said are “going just a few kilometres over the speed limit,” are not aware, and they’re the ones getting penalized the most. He pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians who have received fines as evidence that the program is not working.

“When you’re issuing 65,000 tickets in three months, that’s not slowing people down,” he said, referring to a single camera in Toronto he claimed has resulted in nearly $7 million in fines.

If municipalities are serious about getting drivers to slow down, Ford said they should employ other proven “proactive traffic calming measures,” and he announced a new provincial fund to help pay for them.

It includes the installation of large speed warning signs and flashing lights in school zones where cameras have been turned off.

“It also includes speed bumps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks, curb extensions, and other types of enforcement that will keep communities safe without squeezing more money out of the taxpayers,” Ford said.

Here’s everything you need to know about speed cameras in Ontario.

When did Ontario introduce legislation on speed cameras?

The government of former premier Kathleen Wynne first introduced and passed legislation to allow them in

May 2017

, but the Liberals lost the election to Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives before implementing the regulations.

Ford’s government finalized the regulations in

December 2019

, allowing ASE cameras to be used on local roads in school and community safety zones where the speed limit is 80 km/h or less.

How do they work?

Inside every ASE is a camera and a radar device to determine the speed of a vehicle. When a vehicle moving above the posted speed limit passes by, the ASE takes a photo of the license plate, which is reviewed by a provincial offences officer to verify the speeding. The photo, which shows the date and time of the offence, and a speeding ticket are then mailed out to the registered owner of the vehicle.

According to

ASE Ontario

, how much a driver is fined will depend on how many kilometres over they were travelling — $3 per kilometre for less than 20 km/h over; $4.50 for 20 to 29, $7 for 30 to 50, and $9.75 for 50 km/h or more.

That means someone caught going 35 km/h over will receive a fine of $245

The fines don’t affect a driver’s record or result in demerit points on their license.

How many speed cameras are there and where are they?

According to Ford, the devices are used in 37 of the province’s 444 municipalities. While it’s difficult to determine precisely how many are currently active throughout the province, the number has been climbing annually and several cities and towns have promised more this year.

Toronto added

75 new ASE devices this year

, bringing its total to 150, the precise locations of which can be found on the

city’s website.

With 185 cameras, Brampton claims to be the

“largest municipal ASE program in the country.”

Ottawa counts 60, but is in the process of

installing 24 new ones

, and Mississauga has 22 existing with

plans to install a further 60 by 2029.

A sign advising of new automated speed enforcement cameras coming in Ottawa.ASE use isn’t limited to large cities. Smaller places like

Innisfil

and

New Tecumseth

have also invested in ASE technology, though on a significantly smaller scale.

Some municipalities with existing cameras are following Vaughan’s lead to end their programs before the legislation is tabled, including Kitchener and Barrie, whose respective mayors, Berry Vrbanovic and Alex Nuttall, joined Ford on Thursday.

Ford also indicated that Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Iain Lovatt plans to eliminate them in his town.

How much revenue are speed cameras generating for municipalities?

With thousands of tickets being mailed out each month, Ford isn’t wrong when he says towns and cities are pulling down millions of dollars through ASE programs.

It’s important to note that municipalities don’t own the cameras; rather, they have contracts with manufacturers in Canada and the U.S. who are paid a portion of the revenue for operating the service.

A spokesperson for the City of Toronto said roughly $40 million in fines were meted out in 2024 and this year’s total has already surpassed $45 million as of early September, according to

the Canadian Press

. National Post has contacted the city for more information.

ASE cameras in Ottawa, meanwhile,

brought in $29 million in 2024.

The Waterloo Region is anticipating $9.8 million this year, almost half of which ($4.8 million) is needed to cover operating costs, with the remainder set aside for future road safety initiatives, as reported by

Global News

.

Guidelines set out by the

Ontario Traffic Council

require that net ASE revenues be reinvested into road safety programs.

Returns have been more modest for municipalities with smaller programs, such as Sudbury, which pulled in about

$750,000 in 2024.

In others, like Guelph, the program is considered revenue-neutral, according to

Guelph Today.

Thursday, Ford alleged municipalities were putting the money “into the general coffers.”

“This is all about money,” he said. “This is all about a cash grab off taxpayers.”

Why are speed cameras making the news now?

Ford’s initial comments about doing away with ASE devices first arose in early September, following reports of cameras in Toronto being repeatedly vandalized.

On Sept. 9, the

Toronto Police Service

reported that 16 cameras were damaged overnight, one day after the pole-mounted camera on Parkside Drive was cut down. It was the seventh time since last November that particular camera had been vandalized, according to

City News.

Three more were vandalized three days later, as reported by

CBC

.

“As of Sep 9, 2025, there were 841 incidents of vandalism reported to the City of Toronto,” a spokesperson told National Post via email. “These includes incidents of minor damage such as graffiti that do not require the systems to be taken offline.”

Ottawa has also dealt with its share of vandalism, as reported by

CTV

, as have other communities, though not to the extent Toronto has experienced.

The cost of repairs is not borne by the municipality or taxpayers, but by the company that owns the device.

Are speed cameras actually getting drivers to slow down?

While Ford is adamant that ASE devices don’t work, plenty of others disagree and attest to their effectiveness as a traffic calming tool.

The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) said the technology is a proven, evidence-based way of tackling speeding and countered the assertion that it’s used

“as a revenue tool.”

“Its purpose is deterrence and prevention — helping to change driver behaviour and reduce collisions,” the OACP wrote in a statement. “By complementing traditional police enforcement, ASE also frees up police resources to focus on other pressing public safety priorities.”

A

study

by researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto Metropolitan University, published this summer, found that speed cameras reduced the number of speeding vehicles in urban school zones by 45 per cent and “the maximum speed travelled by 85 per cent of vehicles, fell by an unexpected 10.7 km/h.”

“We know speed cameras work, according to all the research, especially from SickKids,” Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said Wednesday, per

CTV

.

Brampton is proud of its ASE program, which it said has resulted in an

average speed reduction of nine km/h

across all its 185 sites, and an average 38 per cent increase in speed limit compliance.

Mayors James Leduc of Bradford and Innisfil’s Lynn Dollin both told

Bradford Today

that ASE devices are working.

“Speed cameras are not a cash cow,” Leduc said. “They’re part of our strategic plan for community safety overall.”

A survey of 1,500 Ontario drivers conducted by

CAA South Central Ontario

in March, meanwhile, found that 73 per cent reduce their speed when approaching a known ASE camera and 52 per cent said they’re unlikely to speed up after they pass the zone. Roughly half the respondents (46 per cent) said they avoid using roads governed by ASE.

• Anthony Furey: Doug Ford is right, every cash-grabbing speed camera must go
• Randall Denley: Championing speeders is an awkward look for law-and-order Doug Ford

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.