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Ontario’s speed camera ban blocks program in Orangeville and Mono

November 13, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By James Gerus

The Ontario Government’s new law to ban Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) has put future plans to build cameras in Orangeville and Mono on pause, indefinitely.

As part of the Ford Government’s new Bill 56, Building a More Competitive Economy Act, all municipalities in Ontario are required to discontinue their use of speed cameras.

Orangeville and its neighbour, Mono, did not have Automated Speed Enforcement at the release of Bill 56. They were both in the process of bringing them into the community, or, in the case of Orangeville, starting a pilot project for the cameras on specific streets.

Orangeville Mayor Lisa Post and Mono Mayor John Creelman said they wish there had been more time and transparency to have an open discussion with the Ontario Government before such a law was rushed into place.

Orangeville was in the early stages of a two-year pilot project installing cameras on Spencer Avenue and Alder Street to determine whether it was a traffic-calming procedure they wanted to pursue.

“We had just gotten past the approval point and had just started early negotiations with the company that would have been doing it for us,” said Mayor Post.

When the town caught wind of the government putting the ban in effect, they were able to pause without moving forward and spending money on the project.

Mayor Post said she is grateful that, while other municipalities have already spent money on their ASE programs, Orangeville has not yet reached that stage in developing its pilot project.

“It’s a big loss for a lot of them, because they already invested in that infrastructure, thankfully, we hadn’t yet,” she said.

Mayor Creelman, who prefers to call them “safety cameras” rather than the commonly used term “speed cameras,” is particularly disappointed by the Ford Government’s quick move to put the ban in place.

While he aimed to have them on Hockley Road and Airport Road, he was also trying to address concerns about the safety cameras that some members of the community had been raising.

The Mono ASE program was originally scheduled for deployment around spring 2026, but the ban shut it down. Mayor Creelman and Mono council are now looking for alternatives to curb speeding. While some feel speed bumps are an alternative, Mayor Creelman says it is not always the best solution.

“It’s all very well and fine to say ‘put in speed bumps,’ but they play havoc with snow plows, they play havoc with emergency vehicles… so they are not the solution,” he told the Citizen.

When asked if he’s ever been the recipient of a safety camera ticket, Mayor Creelman said no, “I’m the kind of person that everybody passes.”

The trigger speed at which someone would get a ticket for going over a certain kilometre while driving was private information, but both Mayors Post and Creelman thought that ticketing drivers going only a few kilometres over the limit was irresponsible and not the intended job of ASE.

Doing so “was not deploying the technology in a responsible fashion. The whole point is to deter serious speeders,” said Mayor Creelman.

Regarding where the money from ASE would have gone, Mayor Creelman said it should have been used to offset policing costs, while Mayor Post wished to use the revenue for traffic calming.

Going forward, there are plans to tackle the issue of speeding in other ways,

“In the areas where we have ongoing speeding issues, we’ll be looking through our approved policy and trying to figure out which other measures might be as effective in that area,” said Mayor Post.

“The Ford government has promised that there will be additional funds for traffic calming,” with a detection of humour, she adds, “I’ll wait to see that happen.”

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