National Post (National Edition)
I know what some of you are thinking. ‘We need a national cycling strategy? ... Why does literally every damn thing have to be the subject of a national strategy? Isn’t this weakness for ‘national strategies’ an incredibly moronic and trite feature of Ca
Hey, guys, Jagmeet Singh has found the signature policy that is going to blast the New Democrats into power. You won’t believe this, but it’s a “national strategy” for something. That something is cycling, which as we all know is the single most heroic and socially improving habit a human can adopt, with the possible exception of donating blood to injured cyclists.
On Thursday, Singh visited a bike shop in Ottawa to talk about his national cycling strategy, mess with some cool bikes, and led a squadron of cyclists of all shapes and in all configurations (the inevitable recumbent-bike guy was present) on a brief 21st-century analogue of Soviet May Day tank parades. All participants allegedly survived.
Bikes are an important feature of NDP Leader Singh’s image, and the idea of a “national cycling strategy” is not new to the party. Indeed, before Singh velocipeded stylishly his way into the House of Commons, a member of his caucus had already introduced a private member’s bill for a national cycling strategy.
I know what some of you are thinking. You are thinking “We need a national cycling strategy? Why? Biking is almost inherently a local activity. Why does literally every damn thing have to be the subject of a national strategy? Isn’t this weakness for ‘national strategies’ an incredibly moronic and trite feature of Canadian politics? Aren’t there good things, any of them, that we don’t need ‘national strategies’ for? Why don’t these jerks shut up, or at least find a different way of saying the same thing?”
I mean, you were thinking all of that, right? Weren’t you?
This is not a column about cycling either being secular sainthood or social poison. I don’t own a car or a bike, so I’m on Team Public Transit And Sturdy Shoes. The arguments between cyclists and drivers, with their weird, bilious mutual fear and intensity, are nothing but theatre to me. This is a column about “national strategies,” and it is probably a little unfair to use Jagmeet Singh’s adoration of bikes as a peg. But he is asking for it.
Pick a news database or just use a Google proximity search to find the number of “national (blank) strategies” that are in the Canadian newspapers at any time. The Liberal government announced a National Dementia Strategy last month, to widespread applause. It joins our cornucopia of state alongside our National Housing Strategy and our National Shipbuilding Strategy. Someone or other was also heard whining for a National Volunteer Strategy, although I’ll bet we have one of those written down and gathering fungus someplace.
This newspaper, at around the same time, had a different story noting Canada’s shameful absence of a National Genome Strategy
to buy DNA workups for children suffering rare inherited illnesses. As is typical, the strategy would mostly just be “paying for something we now don’t.” There’s really no “strategy” involved at all. As I stewed over Mr. Singh’s plea for a bike nation, this part of the Canadian “national strategy” mind virus began to annoy me just as much as the disregard for the constitution that many of these appeals involve.
Of what, for example, would the NDP’s vote-winning “national cycling strategy” actually consist? If you look at their failed bill C-312, the lack of a bona fide strategic element becomes clear pretty quickly. The bill envisions the federal government paying for “safe and efficient cycling infrastructure,” presumably with municipalities doing the actual building and planning if they choose to. It urges promotion of cycling, and proposes keeping cycling consciously in mind when making laws concerning industry, trade and transport. Maybe, it adds, we can gather data on how much people bike and who does it and where.
There is no actual Manhattan Bike Project, no program with specific stages, to supersede the demon motorcar. The “strategy,” from a federal standpoint, is mostly money and talk. And what else could it be, in a decentralized federal state, or indeed any country of at least medium size? Canada is both federal and enormous. The idea of a “national cycling strategy” might have some practical meaning and desirability in Belgium or San Marino. In Canada it is bound to be nine-tenths aspiration.
If federalism means anything, it surely carries the possible implication that different cities and provinces will have different policies and different degrees of overall friendliness toward cycling. We don’t all need to agree, or to live the same way. Why wouldn’t Canada be allowed to have some communities where cycling is impossible, and others where it is made mandatory in the hope of producing a race of human-bicycle velo-centaurs?
I worry, looking at the federal government’s ineptitude in handling its carbon tax litigation against the provinces, that such a notion has become literally unthinkable. A federal Justice Department full of educated lawyers demonstrated very serious trouble in coming up with a strong answer to the constitutional question “What makes carbon emissions ‘national’ as a concern?” And this is not just a procedural issue. It is, in fact, the first question that should greet any appeal for a National Something Strategy: how is this crap the business of a federal government at all?
I’M ON TEAM PUBLIC TRANSIT AND STURDY SHOES. — COLBY COSH