The speed cameras are gone. Bring them back?

For six years this region had automated speed enforcement, and for six years the argument was about which of its two effects was the point. It slowed traffic where a camera sat, measurably. It also raised money, in some places a great deal of it (one Toronto camera alone issued more than 65,000 tickets and nearly $7 million in fines), and it raised the most where compliance was worst.

Last autumn the province settled the argument by removing the cameras. The Building a More Competitive Economy Act received Royal Assent on November 3, 2025, and municipalities had until November 14 to take down more than 700 of them. The Premier called them a cash grab. In their place is a $210-million fund for physical traffic calming: speed bumps, raised crossings, curb extensions, roundabouts.

Then the data came in. Three months after ticketing stopped, Toronto reported that speeding had more than doubled at former camera sites. The city put the cost of the calming measures needed to replace what the cameras did at $52 million, and the time to install them at more than a decade.

There is a third fact worth putting in front of anyone answering: before the ban, cameras in this region were repeatedly cut down and vandalised, which is a strange thing to do about a tax and a stranger thing to do about a school zone.

The question is no longer whether to keep them. It is whether the province should hand the decision back.

Sources: CTV, the bill banning municipal speed cameras passes · National Observer, speeding doubled after the ban · National Observer, Toronto’s $52-million rebuild