5 ms·

Canadian federal government will stop investing in new road infrastructure

20 points by voisin 3y ago

tharmas 3y ago
In Canada's climate people are going to get out of their cars and walk and bicycle? In the majority of Canada Winter lasts for 6 months.
- slily 3y ago
  No idea why this is getting flagged, I guess some people don't realize that Canada has real winters. You have to be masochistic to suicidal to rely on cycling between December and March, sometimes longer than that depending on the weather that year. I would love to see eco-fascists practice what they preach; let's see Guilbeault bike to work all winter in a location without adequate public transit, and we will see what happens when he gets his first flat in the cold and dark.
  - redeeman 3y ago
    such is life for a great deal of people. Now forgive me if I am wrong, but perhaps you are a littttle bit too sheltered from real life? :)
  - thesh4d0w 3y ago
    Because there's a ton of methods of transportation that aren't car or bike? You seem to have forgotten public transportation exists. Are you canadian? Cause I am, and I support this.
    - slily 3y ago
      I lived in a rural area of Canada as recently as last year, and believe me I tried to use public transit. Once again, if you support it, try it yourself. Not in the middle of whatever city you inhabit. Go out into the sticks, spend a winter walking half an hour to the bus stop and working around the inconsistent schedules and delays, and we'll see how you feel about it. I bet you'd give up real fast after missing the last bus for the first time and having to find a taxi willing to get you all the way back home. You need at least ONE reliable way to get around year-long, so you can't tell people that they will have to work around inadequate road infrastructure by biking around. Listing it as an alternative to driving in Canada is therefore a false equivalence. Work on public transit that serves people adequately and we can talk about disincentivizing people from driving, but Canada likes to do things backwards recently, which is why I no longer live there. It's easy to talk down to people when you don't have to contend with their issues. But I don't blame you for doing so. I do blame politicians since it's their job not to. By the way, I didn't say that I don't support better infrastructure for alternative modes of transportation. But you do it by investing there (and preferably not taking twenty years to complete every project with several extensions and exceeding the budget by a multiple), not with eco-fascist methods of threatening and withholding needed resources.
  - throwaway211289 3y ago
    lots of people do stuff like that, and i live in WINNIPEG
  - Tiktaalik 3y ago
    There's tons of people that bike in the winter. Montreal has a special winter bike share with studded tires even. But it's beside the point because there exists obvious alternatives to cycling in the winter, which is to use public transportation.
    - fooster 3y ago
      Get serious. In the majority of the country public transporation is absolutely abysmal.
      - Tiktaalik 3y ago
        Hence why the Federal government is interested in investing in public transportation.
  - maxvt 3y ago
    It is getting flagged because transit is a thing, investment in transit is the most glaringly obvious way to reduce our reliance on roads in moderately-and-up populated areas, and the author ignores that. In less-populated areas, biking/walking is not feasible anyway, the distances are too large regardless of weather (see any documentary of the Amish lifestyle, many have to rely on out-of-community drivers for some errands because distances to store, doctor, etc. are too far for a horse and buggy).
    - slily 3y ago
      Public transit is also not a legitimate option in "less-populated areas" in my experience, see my cousin comment. But my interpretation is that Guilbeault, kind of like Trudeau, is a weird ideologue who sometimes spouts stupid unrealistic things, but probably isn't stupid enough to actually go through with it once he gets a reality check. I see that he walked back on the original statement somewhat. With that being said I have no confidence in Canada's ability to develop a solid public transit network with people like that at the helm. Every project that I've seen recently has taken forever, ran well over budget, and barely covered any ground. If you're working from the idea of removing cars backwards instead of having a vision for a public transit system that is actually pleasant to use and would encourage people to transition organically, of course it's going to be a mess.
    - tharmas 3y ago
      Is transit a thing in the Niagara Region? Niagara Falls, St. Catherines, Welland, Fort Erie? Only major cities in this country have adequate transit. How many cities north of Toronto have adequate Transit?
  - Pet_Ant 3y ago
    You can walk to school year round in many parts of Canada. There is no bad weather, just inappropriately dressed people.
  - 8note 3y ago
    You don't really. Being active outside is fine, and the bigger challenge is getting to hot, rather than too cold. The big things is clearing snow off of the paths. Canadians will spend all day in -30C out skiing. Half an hour on a bike is nothing
- wk_end 3y ago
  Lots of Canadians - not to mention Scandanavians and New Englanders and mid-westerners, all of whom have comparably cold and bitter winters to what most of Canada has - walk and bike, even in winter. But, beyond that, they can take buses and trains and subways and streetcars. Like most people do in Montreal and Toronto already. Beyond beyond that, this doesn't mean all roads in Canadian cities are going to be destroyed. As the article says, the government will still help pay for maintenance. And cities and provinces - who are the ones who are actually responsible for the vast majority of the roads in the country - can still do whatever they like. It's just that the federal government isn't going to help pay for it.
  - jbm 3y ago
    The dislike of public transit emerges from other issues. Canada has its own oligarchy; if they had to use public transit, it wouldn't be a problem. Instead, private planes and private airports for them, traffic jams at YUL and YYC for us. In Calgary, we have issues with safety and drug use on transit, while our mayor and city council commute by car. Moreover, while any action on transit safety gets delayed, the police get turned on the impoverished who make the mistake of being in-or-near city hall. These issues are all connected, and the safety issue / reputational issues need to be tackled if we want people to appreciate public tarnsit.
  - tharmas 3y ago
    Take public transit? How many cities in Canada have that? Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, a couple of others with adequate Public Transit. There's plenty of cities in Canada that have VERY LIMITED public transit. And Canada's Winter climate throughout most of the country is actually a lot colder than the populated parts of Scandinavia. And I'm not talking about the far north in Canada either. Edmonton is far far colder than the populated parts of Scandinavia.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
It’s kind of funny that this is making news now because I’m pretty sure this has been the general policy of this government for years and years at this point to favour investment in public transit projects over highway projects.
- jbm 3y ago
  Have there been any major investments in passenger rail that I don't know about? (There has been one in Montreal that I'm aware of.) "Major" rail would not be intra-city but rather between cities, and the Canadian system (Via) is not very good at all (not even between Montreal and Ottawa). This announcement pre-supposes the highway network in Canada is sufficient as-is, which is debatable. Even major cities are not well-linked; for example, Highway 1 between Calgary and Vancouver has many areas that are frankly scary to drive on and land-slides have cut off the cities. (Incidentally, there is no direct train between the two cities either, although I guess you could get onto a VIA train in Banff if you really wanted to) This policy is also contradictory with the increase in the population that the government is also pursuing. You can only cope with so many people in Megacity 1 and 2. If a second-tier city in Canada has a large population increase, they obviously will have to revise and improve the road network. As such, I can't really see this policy as being serious. My guess is that this is cost-cutting and virtue-signalling to and will be reversed by the next PM. The Liberals will not be lasting more than an year more at most, and they will not be re-elected. The depressing part of these unserious political "announcements" is that they turn a positive into a negative. "Punitive environmentalism" for the everyday person will make it impossible to meet any climate goals.
  - Tiktaalik 3y ago
    There's been a complete lack of investment in inter city rail and it's really depressing and something the government needs to get better at. We should have high speed rail in Canada. That being said it takes two to tango. The Feds are giving guidance here to the Provinces, who are primarily responsible for the inter city transportation network within Provinces, that they're not terribly interested in highway expansion as a further solution to inter city transportation problems. The good Provincial politicians will work with the Feds in moving forward with rail based solutions. The bad ones will be beligerant and move forward with their own solutions and forgo Federal aid. Setting inter city concepts aside, this government has made enormous investments in intra-city public transit, much more so than previous governments and should be commended for that. There's lots of major, important public transit projects that wouldn't have happened without that Federal funding.
wk_end 3y ago
I don't know if CBC changed the headline or if OP did, but it's "Feds will stop investing in 'large' road projects, environment minister says" (emphasis mine) > Guilbeault later clarified his remarks, telling reporters Wednesday that he meant to say Ottawa will not put up the cash for "large" road projects. > "Of course we're funding roads. We have programs to fund roads," he said. > Guilbeault said Monday the federal government will be there to support provinces paying for maintenance but Ottawa has decided that existing road infrastructure "is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have." > "There will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network," Guilbeault said, according to quotes published in the Montreal Gazette. > "We can very well achieve our goals of economic, social and human development without more enlargement of the road network." > Guilbeault said the federal government is intent on moving people out of their cars and into public transportation, which the government has spent billions to build. > He said the federal government also wants to encourage "active transit," which means getting people to walk and cycle.
- ta1243 3y ago
  CBC https://web.archive.org/web/20240214164536/https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guilbeault-no-new-roads-1.7114867 https://web.archive.org/web/20240214164536/https://www.cbc.c... > Feds will stop investing in new road infrastructure, environment minister says They say the minister later clarified his remarks. I really wish news sites had a wikipedia style revision history, would do wonders for transparency.
UI_at_80x24 3y ago
I approve of measures like this provided they actually follow through and support mass transit initiatives. We've had ~100 years of bad ideas that we need to undo. (specifically related to this issue) This feels similar to the decision to eliminate the penny. "A lot of people won't like this change, but it's the right thing to do and about time we did it." I know of few G8 countries that take those kinds of steps. Now if they could only work on serious day-to-day emergencies that are crippling this country.
- asoneth 3y ago
  I agree that most regions have underinvested in mass transit, but even if the Federal Government does not step in to fund transit I think it still makes sense for them to stop subsidizing large highway projects. Rather than citizens sending tax money to Ottowa so that the Federal Government can choose large projects in each province, it seems fairer and more cost effective to let each province decide what kind of transportation infrastructure makes the most sense for them. Some will choose to widen highways, others will choose to invest in mass transit, and others might decide to lower taxes. But with a couple exceptions like the Trans-Canada Highway, many of the projects that receive funding seem more like local projects that don't need to involve the Federal Government. Also see https://www.strongtowns.org/highways https://www.strongtowns.org/highways
- skeeter2020 3y ago
  not sure if you're in Canada but federal road projects are typically trans-provincial highways and there's really no other way to get around our giant country. Mass transit is an inappropriate non-starter in this scenario. Doesn't feel at all look eliminating the penny. Maybe eliminating cash?
  - wk_end 3y ago
    High-speed rail (300+ km/h across the prairies!), buses, even air travel are mass transit options that would work as well or better than personal cars for addressing the vast majority of travel across Canada.
8jef 3y ago
Title should mention federal gvmnt plan to stop invest in _large_ road infra, specifically, road capacity increases, or enlargements. In reality, this is all much fluff. This article has clearly been put up by oil lobby. Guilbeault is merely a minor minister in a declining minority party, nothing he does will last. In Canada, environmental debates have turned religious the same way abortion debates have, all backed by so-called conservatives, which really are born-again extreme far right wingers, or something like that. Trump inspired crazies do call the shots, like in many places right now. In reality, as Premier Smith framed it, this is much more a rural vs. urban kind of debate that won't be addressed until rurality and rightists stops hiding behind oil lobby nonsense, which might never happen because money. We're stuck.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Context: roads are a provincial responsibility, not a federal responsibility. This is a non-issue.
skeeter2020 3y ago
Everyone in support of this is using it as a proxy for "fighting climate change" but none of the suggestions (walking, biking, buses, subways) are alternatives for the transportation on the roads the Federal government helps fund (inter-provincial highways) and/or they still use the same projects (big infrastructure like tunnels and bridges). A few points: * the Federal government already does very little funding of road projects (directly) * this "announcement" does not signal any increase in funding for the projects supporters here want to see * this minister doesn't directly control any of the actual departments that would be involved in funding, beyond the approval process that makes pretty much all large projects (roads or otherwise) impossible to get started * Guilbeault is a central-Canada true Liberal who's viewpoint represents a pretty small perspective. Given the current climate I bet he's really speaking to his base to try and get re-elected, more than any broader pan-Canadian concern.
kkfx 3y ago
Curiously, but not surprisingly, many comments here seems to be polarized between the "collective transports" vs "personal cars", collective, not public, because they are privately operated so using the term public might distort the reality of their nature. Why Canada decide to build big new roads? Because those who take τέχνη not ideology know that the climate change means for Canada the essential impossibility to maintain most long roads in most of the country due to increasing permafrost liquefaction, large natural fires and so on. Roads will be more and more substituted by air, not by collective transports or bikes. That's is. Heavy transports will do their best to go on water when they can, the rest by air. Because most northern countries have no choices.

20 points by voisin 3y ago

In Canada's climate people are going to get out of their cars and walk and bicycle? In the majority of Canada Winter lasts for 6 months.

slily 3y ago
No idea why this is getting flagged, I guess some people don't realize that Canada has real winters. You have to be masochistic to suicidal to rely on cycling between December and March, sometimes longer than that depending on the weather that year. I would love to see eco-fascists practice what they preach; let's see Guilbeault bike to work all winter in a location without adequate public transit, and we will see what happens when he gets his first flat in the cold and dark.
- redeeman 3y ago
  such is life for a great deal of people. Now forgive me if I am wrong, but perhaps you are a littttle bit too sheltered from real life? :)
- thesh4d0w 3y ago
  Because there's a ton of methods of transportation that aren't car or bike? You seem to have forgotten public transportation exists. Are you canadian? Cause I am, and I support this.
  - slily 3y ago
    I lived in a rural area of Canada as recently as last year, and believe me I tried to use public transit. Once again, if you support it, try it yourself. Not in the middle of whatever city you inhabit. Go out into the sticks, spend a winter walking half an hour to the bus stop and working around the inconsistent schedules and delays, and we'll see how you feel about it. I bet you'd give up real fast after missing the last bus for the first time and having to find a taxi willing to get you all the way back home. You need at least ONE reliable way to get around year-long, so you can't tell people that they will have to work around inadequate road infrastructure by biking around. Listing it as an alternative to driving in Canada is therefore a false equivalence. Work on public transit that serves people adequately and we can talk about disincentivizing people from driving, but Canada likes to do things backwards recently, which is why I no longer live there. It's easy to talk down to people when you don't have to contend with their issues. But I don't blame you for doing so. I do blame politicians since it's their job not to. By the way, I didn't say that I don't support better infrastructure for alternative modes of transportation. But you do it by investing there (and preferably not taking twenty years to complete every project with several extensions and exceeding the budget by a multiple), not with eco-fascist methods of threatening and withholding needed resources.
- throwaway211289 3y ago
  lots of people do stuff like that, and i live in WINNIPEG
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  There's tons of people that bike in the winter. Montreal has a special winter bike share with studded tires even. But it's beside the point because there exists obvious alternatives to cycling in the winter, which is to use public transportation.
  - fooster 3y ago
    Get serious. In the majority of the country public transporation is absolutely abysmal.
    - Tiktaalik 3y ago
      Hence why the Federal government is interested in investing in public transportation.
- maxvt 3y ago
  It is getting flagged because transit is a thing, investment in transit is the most glaringly obvious way to reduce our reliance on roads in moderately-and-up populated areas, and the author ignores that. In less-populated areas, biking/walking is not feasible anyway, the distances are too large regardless of weather (see any documentary of the Amish lifestyle, many have to rely on out-of-community drivers for some errands because distances to store, doctor, etc. are too far for a horse and buggy).
  - slily 3y ago
    Public transit is also not a legitimate option in "less-populated areas" in my experience, see my cousin comment. But my interpretation is that Guilbeault, kind of like Trudeau, is a weird ideologue who sometimes spouts stupid unrealistic things, but probably isn't stupid enough to actually go through with it once he gets a reality check. I see that he walked back on the original statement somewhat. With that being said I have no confidence in Canada's ability to develop a solid public transit network with people like that at the helm. Every project that I've seen recently has taken forever, ran well over budget, and barely covered any ground. If you're working from the idea of removing cars backwards instead of having a vision for a public transit system that is actually pleasant to use and would encourage people to transition organically, of course it's going to be a mess.
  - tharmas 3y ago
    Is transit a thing in the Niagara Region? Niagara Falls, St. Catherines, Welland, Fort Erie? Only major cities in this country have adequate transit. How many cities north of Toronto have adequate Transit?
- Pet_Ant 3y ago
  You can walk to school year round in many parts of Canada. There is no bad weather, just inappropriately dressed people.
- 8note 3y ago
  You don't really. Being active outside is fine, and the bigger challenge is getting to hot, rather than too cold. The big things is clearing snow off of the paths. Canadians will spend all day in -30C out skiing. Half an hour on a bike is nothing
wk_end 3y ago
Lots of Canadians - not to mention Scandanavians and New Englanders and mid-westerners, all of whom have comparably cold and bitter winters to what most of Canada has - walk and bike, even in winter. But, beyond that, they can take buses and trains and subways and streetcars. Like most people do in Montreal and Toronto already. Beyond beyond that, this doesn't mean all roads in Canadian cities are going to be destroyed. As the article says, the government will still help pay for maintenance. And cities and provinces - who are the ones who are actually responsible for the vast majority of the roads in the country - can still do whatever they like. It's just that the federal government isn't going to help pay for it.
- jbm 3y ago
  The dislike of public transit emerges from other issues. Canada has its own oligarchy; if they had to use public transit, it wouldn't be a problem. Instead, private planes and private airports for them, traffic jams at YUL and YYC for us. In Calgary, we have issues with safety and drug use on transit, while our mayor and city council commute by car. Moreover, while any action on transit safety gets delayed, the police get turned on the impoverished who make the mistake of being in-or-near city hall. These issues are all connected, and the safety issue / reputational issues need to be tackled if we want people to appreciate public tarnsit.
- tharmas 3y ago
  Take public transit? How many cities in Canada have that? Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, a couple of others with adequate Public Transit. There's plenty of cities in Canada that have VERY LIMITED public transit. And Canada's Winter climate throughout most of the country is actually a lot colder than the populated parts of Scandinavia. And I'm not talking about the far north in Canada either. Edmonton is far far colder than the populated parts of Scandinavia.

Tiktaalik 3y ago

It’s kind of funny that this is making news now because I’m pretty sure this has been the general policy of this government for years and years at this point to favour investment in public transit projects over highway projects.

jbm 3y ago
Have there been any major investments in passenger rail that I don't know about? (There has been one in Montreal that I'm aware of.) "Major" rail would not be intra-city but rather between cities, and the Canadian system (Via) is not very good at all (not even between Montreal and Ottawa). This announcement pre-supposes the highway network in Canada is sufficient as-is, which is debatable. Even major cities are not well-linked; for example, Highway 1 between Calgary and Vancouver has many areas that are frankly scary to drive on and land-slides have cut off the cities. (Incidentally, there is no direct train between the two cities either, although I guess you could get onto a VIA train in Banff if you really wanted to) This policy is also contradictory with the increase in the population that the government is also pursuing. You can only cope with so many people in Megacity 1 and 2. If a second-tier city in Canada has a large population increase, they obviously will have to revise and improve the road network. As such, I can't really see this policy as being serious. My guess is that this is cost-cutting and virtue-signalling to and will be reversed by the next PM. The Liberals will not be lasting more than an year more at most, and they will not be re-elected. The depressing part of these unserious political "announcements" is that they turn a positive into a negative. "Punitive environmentalism" for the everyday person will make it impossible to meet any climate goals.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  There's been a complete lack of investment in inter city rail and it's really depressing and something the government needs to get better at. We should have high speed rail in Canada. That being said it takes two to tango. The Feds are giving guidance here to the Provinces, who are primarily responsible for the inter city transportation network within Provinces, that they're not terribly interested in highway expansion as a further solution to inter city transportation problems. The good Provincial politicians will work with the Feds in moving forward with rail based solutions. The bad ones will be beligerant and move forward with their own solutions and forgo Federal aid. Setting inter city concepts aside, this government has made enormous investments in intra-city public transit, much more so than previous governments and should be commended for that. There's lots of major, important public transit projects that wouldn't have happened without that Federal funding.

wk_end 3y ago

I don't know if CBC changed the headline or if OP did, but it's "Feds will stop investing in 'large' road projects, environment minister says" (emphasis mine) > Guilbeault later clarified his remarks, telling reporters Wednesday that he meant to say Ottawa will not put up the cash for "large" road projects. > "Of course we're funding roads. We have programs to fund roads," he said. > Guilbeault said Monday the federal government will be there to support provinces paying for maintenance but Ottawa has decided that existing road infrastructure "is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have." > "There will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network," Guilbeault said, according to quotes published in the Montreal Gazette. > "We can very well achieve our goals of economic, social and human development without more enlargement of the road network." > Guilbeault said the federal government is intent on moving people out of their cars and into public transportation, which the government has spent billions to build. > He said the federal government also wants to encourage "active transit," which means getting people to walk and cycle.

ta1243 3y ago
CBC https://web.archive.org/web/20240214164536/https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guilbeault-no-new-roads-1.7114867 https://web.archive.org/web/20240214164536/https://www.cbc.c... > Feds will stop investing in new road infrastructure, environment minister says They say the minister later clarified his remarks. I really wish news sites had a wikipedia style revision history, would do wonders for transparency.

UI_at_80x24 3y ago

I approve of measures like this provided they actually follow through and support mass transit initiatives. We've had ~100 years of bad ideas that we need to undo. (specifically related to this issue) This feels similar to the decision to eliminate the penny. "A lot of people won't like this change, but it's the right thing to do and about time we did it." I know of few G8 countries that take those kinds of steps. Now if they could only work on serious day-to-day emergencies that are crippling this country.

asoneth 3y ago
I agree that most regions have underinvested in mass transit, but even if the Federal Government does not step in to fund transit I think it still makes sense for them to stop subsidizing large highway projects. Rather than citizens sending tax money to Ottowa so that the Federal Government can choose large projects in each province, it seems fairer and more cost effective to let each province decide what kind of transportation infrastructure makes the most sense for them. Some will choose to widen highways, others will choose to invest in mass transit, and others might decide to lower taxes. But with a couple exceptions like the Trans-Canada Highway, many of the projects that receive funding seem more like local projects that don't need to involve the Federal Government. Also see https://www.strongtowns.org/highways https://www.strongtowns.org/highways
skeeter2020 3y ago
not sure if you're in Canada but federal road projects are typically trans-provincial highways and there's really no other way to get around our giant country. Mass transit is an inappropriate non-starter in this scenario. Doesn't feel at all look eliminating the penny. Maybe eliminating cash?
- wk_end 3y ago
  High-speed rail (300+ km/h across the prairies!), buses, even air travel are mass transit options that would work as well or better than personal cars for addressing the vast majority of travel across Canada.

8jef 3y ago

Title should mention federal gvmnt plan to stop invest in _large_ road infra, specifically, road capacity increases, or enlargements. In reality, this is all much fluff. This article has clearly been put up by oil lobby. Guilbeault is merely a minor minister in a declining minority party, nothing he does will last. In Canada, environmental debates have turned religious the same way abortion debates have, all backed by so-called conservatives, which really are born-again extreme far right wingers, or something like that. Trump inspired crazies do call the shots, like in many places right now. In reality, as Premier Smith framed it, this is much more a rural vs. urban kind of debate that won't be addressed until rurality and rightists stops hiding behind oil lobby nonsense, which might never happen because money. We're stuck.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Context: roads are a provincial responsibility, not a federal responsibility. This is a non-issue.

skeeter2020 3y ago

Everyone in support of this is using it as a proxy for "fighting climate change" but none of the suggestions (walking, biking, buses, subways) are alternatives for the transportation on the roads the Federal government helps fund (inter-provincial highways) and/or they still use the same projects (big infrastructure like tunnels and bridges). A few points: * the Federal government already does very little funding of road projects (directly) * this "announcement" does not signal any increase in funding for the projects supporters here want to see * this minister doesn't directly control any of the actual departments that would be involved in funding, beyond the approval process that makes pretty much all large projects (roads or otherwise) impossible to get started * Guilbeault is a central-Canada true Liberal who's viewpoint represents a pretty small perspective. Given the current climate I bet he's really speaking to his base to try and get re-elected, more than any broader pan-Canadian concern.

kkfx 3y ago

Curiously, but not surprisingly, many comments here seems to be polarized between the "collective transports" vs "personal cars", collective, not public, because they are privately operated so using the term public might distort the reality of their nature. Why Canada decide to build big new roads? Because those who take τέχνη not ideology know that the climate change means for Canada the essential impossibility to maintain most long roads in most of the country due to increasing permafrost liquefaction, large natural fires and so on. Roads will be more and more substituted by air, not by collective transports or bikes. That's is. Heavy transports will do their best to go on water when they can, the rest by air. Because most northern countries have no choices.