page_title: Red Hill Valley Parkway
section_title: Controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Red Hill Valley Parkway / History / Controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: A photo of the Red Hill Creek expressway construction in May, 2005. I took this photo myself in may, 2005, and hereby release it to the wilds of the internet.&#160;:) --guru 19:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
context_page_description: The Red Hill Valley Parkway is a municipal expressway in the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario. The route connects the Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway, Hamilton's second municipal expressway, to the Queen Elizabeth Way near Hamilton Harbour. It is named after Red Hill Valley, through which it descends the Niagara Escarpment. It is a 7-kilometre four-lane freeway with a speed limit varying between 80 kilometres per hour to 90 kilometres per hour.
  The C$245 million freeway was built through the Red Hill Valley by the City of Hamilton after a decades-long battle with opponents. The freeway was first proposed as the Red Creek Expressway in the 1950s and was cancelled and resurrected several times. Last-ditch efforts by opponents, including occupying the valley, lawsuits and blocking construction access, failed and the expressway was finally constructed in the 2000s, opening to traffic in 2007. The cost to the city included $100 million in construction costs, plus legal costs fighting to get the expressway constructed. The city fought the provincial government once and the federal government twice to build the project.
context_section_description: A plan for the expressway was approved by regional council in 1979. The project required approvals from various boards: the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), Ontario Environmental Assessment Board (OEAB), Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) and the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority (HRCA). The provincial government decided to submit approval for the project to one, larger hearing process, called the 'Consolidated Joint Board' which had two OMB officials and one OEAB official. 99 days of hearing were held in 1984. The OEAB, NEC and HRCA all opposed the project. Against the wishes of those agencies, and a group called "Save the Valley", the board approved the project 2-1, with the OEAB representative dissenting, in October 1985.
  The Save the Valley organization and the HRCA appealed to the provincial government, hoping for a cancellation like the Spadina Expressway in Toronto, but the appeal was rejected in 1987. Construction began in 1990, but was stopped by the election of the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) government of Bob Rae. NDP MPPs had won all six ridings in the Hamilton area and had opposed the project as a matter of party policy. The Rae government withdrew funding for the project. Construction on both the King Street East and Queenston Road replacement bridges had already been completed.
  Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Council started a legal action in 1991 to get the funding reinstated, but was unsuccessful. Former Toronto mayor David Crombie was appointed by the Rae government to mediate the dispute. Crombie produced a plan without an expressway, instead proposing the construction and expansion of arterial roads on either side of the valley. The compromise was rejected by regional council in 1994. In 1995, the Progressive Conservatives led by Mike Harris won the provincial election. The Harris government restored funding to the RHVP project.
  While the project was again funded, it still required environment approvals to continue. Norm Sterling, Ontario Minister of the Environment, exempted the project. The Government of Canada notified Hamilton that the project would require federal environment approval, which Hamilton applied for in 1998. Environment Canada initiated a full environmental review, which Hamilton opposed, launching a lawsuit, arguing that the project had already been approved. A federal judicial review board sided with Hamilton, clearing the project for construction, although the federal government appealed twice to overturn the verdict. After losing the second appeal in 2001, the federal government decided not to appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court.
  The City of Hamilton then launched a $75 million lawsuit against the Government of Canada, alleging misconduct in delaying the project. The lawsuit named federal cabinet ministers David Anderson, Sheila Copps, Herb Dhaliwal and Christine Stewart, as well as 65 federal employees as defendants. The lawsuit alleged "the defendants abused their public office by engaging in targeted malice towards the City's completion of the Expressway" and utilized environmental assessment "in an unprecedented, illegal and unconstitutional manner in order to achieve that objective."
  In 2008, after rejecting an offer to settle by the Government of Canada, Hamilton Council voted 8–6 to continue the lawsuit and remove a $450,000 spending cap on the suit.
  In November 2009, Hamilton Council voted to continue the lawsuit, and defeated a motion to make the legal costs public.
  Opponents criticized the expected environmental damage of the project and questioned the economic viability of highway building in the face of declining oil production. Opponents asserted that two groups would be the chief beneficiaries of the expressway: long-distance truckers travelling from Detroit to Buffalo, and land developers on the Hamilton Mountain. Opponents also took issue with the city spending $220 million (its share of the project) to build the expressway.
  Opponents also argued that the need for the expressway was not shown in studies. A 1963 transportation study which supported cons
caption: The Red Hill Valley Parkway at Queenston Rd under construction in May 2005
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