Trans-Canada Highway must be more than a ’60s-era goat path

Public funds need to be directed to basic useful things, like roadways

The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck once unfavourably compared the making of laws with sausage making. His quip was that it was better not to see the ingredients that go into either. That caveat should be applied to other aspects of governance, such as how our tax dollars are spent in ways that are unhelpful to our daily lives, including our vacations. For many Albertans, summertime means a trip to British Columbia. I know. I was born and raised in paradise, a.k.a. Kelowna. I well recall the hordes of tourists that arrived every summer to visit the local beaches, waterslides, minigolf courses and the then-existing Flintstones’ amusement park. I digress. Having lived on both sides of the Rockies, and as one who regularly travels the Trans-Canada Highway, the black ribbon that winds between craggy peaks and river valleys never fails to remind me of nature’s raw beauty — but also of this basic truth: How our tax dollars are spent on much else other than basic useful items, including functional highways.

Some fascinating history about the Trans-Canada Highway: It resulted from a number of unrelated, but critical developments. One spur was the American ability to quickly build the Alaska Highway in British Columbia during the Second World War. That demonstrated just how swiftly a highway could be con- structed. The rise of the postwar automobile culture after the war was another.

Also, when Newfoundland and Labrador joined Confederation in 1949, Parliament responded with the Trans-Canada Highway Act. It was meant to knit together mid-century Canada in the manner that the Canadian Pacific Railway joined the nation in the later 19th century, in the railway age.

In 1956, the federal government and the provinces came to a cost-sharing agreement, with Ottawa picking up 90 per cent of the tab for the Trans-Canada expansion. The goal was to complete the highway by 1967, Canada’s centennial year.

In the West, the most difficult stretch to build was the Rogers Pass section from Golden to Revelstoke. There, the highway follows some early, abandoned rail tracks that were too steep even for railway cars. That critical cross-country and interprovincial link opened on June 30, 1962.

Fast forward to the present and regular travellers will know that some progress has been made in upgrading the nearly seven-decade-old national highway. Over the past decade, a bit of the worst part, near Golden, was straightened out with a four-lane reconstruction. It included a soaring bridge that now abuts the Kicking Horse canyon.

Still, travel the Trans-Canada, and for much of it, one yet traverses a two-lane highway built in the period when Elvis Presley, and later, the Beatles, were charttoppers.

Back to your tax dollars. Having observed federal and provincial finances, I well know of the billions misspent and misallocated. Avoiding the same in the future means such dollars could be applied to pavement anywhere, but would be especially useful in British Columbia. Imagine a Trans-Canada artery that resembles the Swiss alpine highway system instead of a glorified goat path, where mountain goats actually do wander by one’s vehicle near Golden.

Examples of past government spending that could have been redirected? Successive federal governments have sent Montreal aerospace manufacturer Bombardier $2.2 billion since 1966.

Then there are the provincial governments across the country that spend billions time and again, bailing out government employees’ pension plans, rather than adjust to new demographic realities, so civil servants can retire with full pensions in their late 50s.

My vote: Avoid the pension bailouts and the taxpayer subsidies for Bombardier. Use the saved cash to instead fourlane the Trans-Canada between Golden and the British Columbia interior.

As Bismarck would have observed, it might be better not to ponder such matters, especially on holidays.