The other day, Maurice Chamoun was doing some work at his friend Nawal’s home on St. Laurent Boulevard, directly across the road from Queen Elizabeth Public School. Out front, on the median, was a speed camera. I asked them what they thought of it. Read MoreI visited the 10 busiest speed cameras in Ottawa to see if they’re all just cash grabs.
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I visited the 10 busiest speed cameras in Ottawa to see if they’re all just cash grabs.
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The other day, Maurice Chamoun was doing some work at his friend Nawal’s home on St. Laurent Boulevard, directly across the road from Queen Elizabeth Public School. Out front, on the median, was a speed camera. I asked them what they thought of it.
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The two were divided. Nawal supports cameras outside schools. Chamoun opposes them everywhere, echoing Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s claim they’re nothing but cash grabs.
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“I’d take them all down and put up red-light cameras at every intersection in Ottawa,” Chamoun said.
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The Evening Citizen
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Chamoun dismissed the city’s survey of more than 1,000 residents, which found that of the 35 per cent who’d been dinged by a camera, 69 per cent said they’d changed their driving habits. “People slow down for them, and then immediately speed up when they’ve passed,” he insisted.
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When I told him that I’ve driven more carefully since getting nabbed last Christmas Eve on King Edward Avenue, he remained unconvinced. “Well, you’re one in a million,” he said.
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Camera E013 outside Queen Elizabeth school is one of 60 in Ottawa, with 24 more set to go live by the end of November, notwithstanding Ford’s promise to do away with all of them. Installed in the spring of 2022, it’s one of the city’s busiest: In the first seven months of this year, it caught just over 6,700 speeders, the seventh-most snap-happy speed camera in town.
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Whether motorists speed up later is beside the point. Cameras outside schools are meant to make that stretch safer for students, and E013 is doing just that: Since 2022, the average speed of passing motorists has dropped from 50 km/h to 43.3, while the percentage of high-end speeders there fell from nearly four per cent of drivers to just 0.2 per cent.
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Similar examples abound. Since a speed camera was installed outside Holy Trinity Catholic High School on Katimavik Road — Ottawa’s sixth-busiest camera this year — in 2020, the average speed of passing motorists has dropped from 45 km/h to 35.1.
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Still, there are enough head-scratching examples in Ottawa that Ford — adept at following his populist gut over data — could point to for support. So I visited Ottawa’s 10 busiest speed cameras to see whether any were simply municipal ATMs, as Chamoun and Ford claim.
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I challenge Ford to stand outside Heritage Public School in Colonial Road in Navan (E044, fourth-busiest with 8,132 violations this year), where the so-called sidewalk is little more than pavement flush with the road, and tell residents the camera there isn’t doing good work. It was only installed this year, so trend data isn’t in yet. But Laurie Hamilton, at nearby JT Bradley’s convenience store, says residents she’s spoken to support it. “No one likes getting a ticket, but you should come back at 2 p.m.,” she says, when both shoulders outside the school are lined with parents’ cars waiting to pick up their kids. Candace Elliott, a mother of two Heritage students, points to transport trucks speeding past as more than enough reason for the camera.
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Things are less clear in Orléans. Camera E029, on Jeanne d’Arc outside Terry Fox Elementary School, cracked the top 10 with 5,629 violations in seven months. The four lanes there are part of an active school zone, with a 40 km/m speed limit from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., weekdays, September to June. The camera was only installed last year, and early data only shows modest improvements so far — the average speed dropping just 3 km/h.
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The mother of all Ottawa speed cameras, though, is on King Edward Avenue at Bruyère Street. With nearly 23,000 violations in the first seven months this year — almost twice that of the city’s next busiest camera — E038 deserves the nickname Cash King.
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Since October 1965, when planners decided Quebec’s Autoroute 5 should spill into downtown Ottawa with all the ease of a rectal thermometer, King Edward has been a funnel for speed and trucks. But the hoops drivers go through before getting their souvenir photo in the mail are ridiculous. The speed limit for motorists entering Ottawa has already dropped from 100 km/h to 70 by the time they hit the Macdonald-Cartier bridge. Halfway across, it drops again, to 50. Before they reach King Edward, it lowers twice more — to 40 and then 30. I tried sticking to that lowest speed limit, but the lumber truck getting larger in my rear-view mirror made it impossible. Four different speed limits on a short stretch of road, the last one better suited to a Zamboni, are less of a safety strategy than a setup for confusion — and tickets.
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Two other speed cameras in the top 10 might similarly raise eyebrows, or hackles, about being a cash grab. Camera E036, despite being located on Walkley Road just outside Canterbury High School’s fenced-in sports field, isn’t there because of the school. It’s one of four cameras installed in 2024 listed as “high-speed location to be piloted.” Over seven months this year, it took second spot with almost 12,000 violations.
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Similarly, camera E060 is also on Walkley Road, where it claimed the eighth-highest infraction tally this year with almost 6,000. Installed at the end of last year, it is one of five speed cameras put in place not because of schools or speed pilots, but nearby parks — in this case Heron-Walkley Park, essentially a path running between the two arteries. The relationship between the camera and pathway is unclear, and, when the camera was installed, compliance was already at 88 per cent.
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Perhaps fittingly, the DriveTest centre on Walkley Road — where budding motorists are tested on their driving proficiency — is located between these two cameras.
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What makes getting a ticket hard to swallow is that the city and province aren’t forthcoming about the thresholds for handing out speeding tickets, instead adhering to the “just don’t speed” mantra. According to Coun. Tim Tierney, who chairs the city’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee — formerly Transportation — motorists in 50 km/h zones won’t be ticketed until they hit 61, a difference of 11 km/h. The threshold in 40 km/h zones is likely lower, but he didn’t know what the number was. The city says that oft-repeated reports of drivers receiving tickets for driving just four or five km/h above the limit are untrue—so why not just tell us what the real number is that we have to watch on our odometer? Keeping it secret is doing no good, clearly, as they could all be gone soon if Doug Ford has his way.
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At the Oct. 8 city council meeting, Tierney brought forward a notice of motion that he hopes will save the speed cameras outside schools by agreeing to remove the 10 cameras in non-school zones. He calls it his “save the furniture” proposal. Later, he adds, the city could work with the province to identify other zones, such as outside seniors’ residences, that would benefit from having cameras installed. “But my current focus is 100 per cent school zones and getting the province to the table to be part of the process.”
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Tierney expects council to support the motion when it comes to a vote on Oct.22.
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Speed cameras are not the enemy Ford makes them out to be. The data, especially from school zones, is hard to argue with: Motorists slow down, compliance increases, and kids are safer.
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But the city hasn’t done itself any favours by installing cameras in places that look more like revenue generators than safety tools. Those are the sorts of things that give Ford talking points. If the city wants to keep cameras where they matter, it needs to tighten up how and where they’re deployed.
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OTTAWA’S 10 BUSIEST SPEED CAMERAS
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1. King Edward Avenue, at Bruyère Street: 22,927 violations (January to July 2025)
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2. Walkley Road, between Halifax Drive and Harding Road: 11,845
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3. Merivale Road, in front of St. Monica School: 8,771
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4. Colonial Road, in front of Heritage Public School: 8,132
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5. Cedarview Road, in front of Cedarview Middle School: 7,898
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6. Katimavik Road, in front of Holy Trinity Catholic High School: 7,096
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7. St. Laurent Boulevard, in front of Queen Elizabeth School: 6,708
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8. Walkley Road, at Colliston Crescent: 5,937
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9. First Avenue, beside Glebe Collegiate Institute: 5,732
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10. Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard, in front of Terry Fox Elementary School: 5,629
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