The 407 Was Just the Beginning
The 407 Was Just the Beginning.
Ontario got absolutely fucked on the 407 deal.
Let’s stop pretending otherwise. The province didn’t “lease” a highway — it handed over a 99-year money-printing machine for the price of a used Honda dealership. It wasn’t a transaction. It was a mugging with paperwork.
We sold the 407 — a highway that now generates over $1.7 billion a year in revenue and close to $700 million a year in profit — for $3.1 billion.
Three point one.
That’s not a typo.
That’s the whole joke.
The private owners made their money back decades ago. Now they’re just harvesting pure, uncut profit until 2098, on a road Ontarians paid to build, maintain, and expand. Meanwhile, drivers get charged whatever the company feels like charging because the province negotiated away any real leverage in the contract.
If you tried to buy it back today?
You’re looking at $35–40 billion — minimum.
A tiny 6.7% stake sold in 2025 for $2.79B, valuing the whole thing at over $41 billion. That’s not inflation. That’s what happens when you give away a golden goose, then act surprised when someone else starts selling omelettes.
People call the original sale “short-sighted” or “poorly structured.”
No. Let’s call it what it was:
One of the worst public-private deals in Canadian history.
The province wasn’t thinking long-term. They weren’t thinking about generational wealth, or stable infrastructure revenue, or public benefit. They were broke, desperate, and wanted a chunk of cash to make the books look less embarrassing before an election. They sold the crown jewel to fix a bad quarter.
It would be like selling your house to pay off your credit card bill, then renting your bedroom back at surge pricing.
And now? No politician wants to touch the buyback conversation because nobody wants their name tied to an extra $40 billion of provincial debt — even if buying it back would eventually pay for itself. So we all dance around the truth:
We got rinsed.
Hosed.
Taken for a ride on the very highway they sold.
But here’s the thing:
The 407 wasn’t an accident.
It was a test run.
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The Blueprint: How Conservatives Sell Everything
The 407 was the template for a whole ideology — a belief that public infrastructure should be privatized because “business does it better.” That’s the pitch. The truth? Business does it cheaper at first, and then charges you whatever they want after you’ve sold off the tools to compete.
This is how the scam works:
Step 1: Starve it.
Cut budgets. Understaff it. Neglect maintenance. Let the public system struggle.
Then point at it and say,
“See? Government can’t run anything efficiently.”
Step 2: Sell it.
Unload it at a discount to private companies — usually friends, donors, or people waiting to offer you a cushy job once you leave office.
Call it modernization. Innovation. “Public-private partnership.”
It’s a fire sale with a marketing department.
Step 3: Become dependent.
Once you sell off the garbage trucks, guess what?
You don’t have garbage trucks anymore.
Now you have to pay whatever the private companies charge.
And they will charge — because now they own the trucks, the routes, the leverage, and the contracts.
You get the bill.
Every year.
Forever.
Step 4: Repeat.
Now they’re whispering about privatizing water systems.
Water.
The most essential public service we have.
We are actually entertaining the idea that private companies should control the thing humans literally die without.
How are we this stupid?
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The Great Lie: “Business Does It Better”
No — business does it cheaper at first because they cut corners the public isn’t allowed to.
Lower wages.
Fewer staff.
Worse working conditions.
No long-term planning.
No accountability.
And then, once the public option is gone?
Prices skyrocket.
We see it every time:
- energy
- transit
- waste collection
- public housing
- long-term care
- highways
- and soon — if we don’t wake up — water
The tax savings are temporary.
The service cuts are permanent.
And the cost to fix the damage later is astronomical.
The 407 proved that.
We sold a multi-billion-dollar asset for pocket lint.
Now it’s a $40-billion private toll empire.
And the same people who sold it are still saying, “Privatization works!”
For who?
For the public?
Or for the handful of companies who buy our assets for pennies, then charge us dollars to use what we built?
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Public Services Aren’t Supposed to Be Profitable
That’s the whole point.
Public services exist to serve the public good, not shareholders.
Not hedge funds.
Not foreign investors.
They’re supposed to be reliable, stable, and sometimes even expensive — because society is expensive. Civilization is expensive. Functioning infrastructure is expensive.
But selling it off?
That’s not saving money.
That’s pawning your tools and then renting them back forever.
We don’t get rid of a cost —
we trade it for a bill that lasts generations.
We trade ownership for dependence.
We trade long-term value for short-term ideology.
We trade strength for vulnerability.
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The 407 Was a Warning
If we keep letting conservatives sell everything that isn’t nailed down, we’ll wake up one day and realize we don’t own anything anymore:
Not the roads.
Not the water.
Not the power.
Not the infrastructure that makes life possible.
We’ll be tenants in our own province — paying rent on things our grandparents built and our parents maintained.
And the worst part?
We won’t even be surprised.
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If I’m wrong, if this isn’t exactly what keeps happening…
if public assets aren’t being converted into private profit while we clap like idiots…
Fact check me.