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“It will be the biggest tunnel in the entire world,” Ford boasted of his plan unveiled last fall to skepticism from opposition parties over concerns it would cost tens of billions of dollars and take many years.

Ford acknowledged at a Scarborough auto parts plant that a feasibility study is not yet complete, nor is a cost estimate, for what he conceded would be an “ambitious” effort to dig an “express” tunnel with traffic and transit lanes.

“It won’t happen overnight,” he cautioned. 

“That Doug Ford would throw out this idea with no cost estimate and no timeline is just insulting to the people of Ontario,” said Green Leader Mike Schreiner. 

Stiles, who was in Sault Ste. Marie detailing a $4-billion plan to lure 3,500 more doctors to Ontario, said the faster way to ease gridlock on the 401 is to negotiate with the private owners of the less busy Highway 407 to scrap charges for motorists. 

“Ford would rather spend $100 billion on a Fantasy Tunnel than just remove the damn tolls on the 407. I’ll get them removed, permanently,” she wrote on social media.

Crombie also took a shot from Thunder Bay.

“While Doug Ford wastes your money on a tunnel that will never actually get built, Ontario’s Liberals will get you a family doctor,” she wrote on X.

Ford said forecasts show the 400-series highways in the º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøarea will be at capacity in the next 10 years, so “we owe it to the drivers” to proceed with a tunnel.

He pledged this week to remove tolls from the provincially owned portion of the 407, from Brock Road in Pickering east to Highway 115/35. Tolls would remain on the rest of the highway. 

With the Ontario Medical Association saying 2.5 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor, opposition parties are trying to make health care an issue in the Feb. 27 campaign while Ford concentrates on fighting U.S. President Donald Trump’s threatened 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports.

The Conservatives have pledged to get two million Ontarians a family doctor within four years.