Good morning. As speed-camera vandalism sweeps across Toronto, Doug Ford is calling for an end to photo radar − more on that below, along with a potential teachers strike in Alberta and Canada’s blow to the U.S. travel industry. But first:

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has had it with speed cameras. He’s had it with a bunch of stuff of late: the slow pace of major infrastructure projects; Canada’s “wishy-washy” Criminal Code; Crown Royal (and, presumably, the less-than-dramatic pour you get from its narrow neck). But he finds speed cameras to be a particular municipal menace. “This is nothing but a tax grab,” Ford told reporters on Tuesday morning. “I’m dead against this photo radar.”

In that respect, he’s not alone: Hours earlier, people cut down 16 speed cameras across Toronto – more than 10 per cent of the city’s supply – in an Etobicoke-to-Scarborough overnight blitz. There have been at least 800 incidents of vandalism against Toronto’s cameras so far this year. One enormously popular target on Parkside Drive, along High Park’s eastern edge, has been toppled seven times in the past 10 months. Just after Christmas, someone dragged the camera 200 metres before tossing it into a duck pond. It bobbed in the icy water for weeks.

Speed-cam vigilantism is obviously nothing new. Last year in northern Italy, one vandal claimed at least 15 successful blows. He called himself Fleximan, after the flessibile (or angle grinder) used to take down cameras, and he liked to leave notes that said “Fleximan is coming.” In Oregon, a former U.S. solider shot out 17 cameras over a two-week period. Speed cameras have been fired at in Alberta, as well.

But some jurisdictions are starting to bow to disgruntled drivers and get rid of the things. In his press conference on Tuesday, Ford approvingly referenced City of Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca, who hit the brakes on speed-camera fines earlier this summer. Alberta, which had been a provincial leader in photo radar, slashed 70 per cent of its 2,200 cameras in April. At his announcement of the new policy, Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen called it “a historic day for Alberta drivers as we turn up the heat, we fire up the grill, and say goodbye to the photo radar cash cow.” He wore a custom-made apron with the words “cash cow” crossed out, just to make the point absolutely clear.

Here’s the hitch: Alberta’s cameras were becoming less and less of a cash cow. For the fiscal year ending in 2024, the province pulled in $145-million from speeding fines, down $26-million from 2023 and $58-million from 2020. That’s because – come at me, Fleximan – photo radar tends to work. Individual fines are typically enough to persuade drivers to change their behaviour. In the first week after Vaughan installed its 10 cameras this spring, the city issued nearly 13,000 tickets. By week three, average speeds had dropped almost 20 per cent.

Researchers have clocked the same pattern in New York City: Cameras go up and drivers slow down, with a 75-per-cent plunge in speeding tickets between 2019 and 2021, despite a temporary surge in the early pandemic. When Toronto installed mobile cameras near schools and in high-collision areas, the number of speeding cars decreased by 45 per cent – and the number of cars going at least 20 kilometres an hour over the speed limit dropped by 87 per cent. Once those cameras were removed, everyone’s lead foot returned.

Does every speed camera work as effectively? It does not! Toronto drivers routinely blow past the 40 km/h limit on Parkside Drive, in part because the street’s design – wide, with long stretches between traffic lights and a sidewalk on just the one side – encourages them to go faster. Since the speed camera was installed in 2022, it has doled out more than 70,000 tickets and generated $8-million in fines. Those numbers would undoubtedly be higher if people didn’t keep cutting the camera down.

Bike lanes could help persuade drivers that Parkside isn’t a highway. So could curb bump outs, designated turning lanes and additional bus stops, all safety measures that Toronto council has approved, though the project has been stalled for nearly four years. Still, Parkside’s photo radar hasn’t been an unmitigated failure: The number of crashes fell to 158 in 2023, down from 232 in 2019. Doug Ford might disagree, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater – or chuck the speed camera into the duck pond.

With the very real fear that masked ICE agents will grab them at work, undocumented immigrants face a dilemma: earn an income and risk arrest, or stay home and go hungry. Read more here from The Globe’s Adrian Morrow about life under these raids.

At home: Alberta teachers have officially started the clock on a provincewide strike set for Oct. 6.