Time to reverse federal funding that prioritizes cars over transit

The winter of 2016-2017 was a good one for paving and civil engineering companies in Kings-Hants. Then-Treasury Board president Scott Brison was in mid-mandate and on trips back to his Nova Scotia riding from Ottawa he brought with him federal funding for two new highway interchanges—one to serve New Minas, a big-box store area of about 6,000 inhabitants between Wolfville and Kentville in the Annapolis Valley, and one to serve Lantz, a commuter subdivision community of 2,200 in the Shubenacadie Valley. Federal funding? $7.5-million for one, $14-million for the other (both matched with equal provincial money). At the other end of the country, the Bella Coola Bus continues to see grand success. It operates 66 hours a week, serves a mixed (Nuxalk and non-Indigenous) community of 2,000, providing door-to-door public transit service over a 40 km route. It serves a hospital, schools, government offices, and occasionally rescues people afflicted by cougar-bite injuries. Bella Coola is 450 km from the next larger community, and the bus is a lifeline of service and safe transportation to its residents. There were 25,000 rides last year. Federal funding? Zero. The bus is funded by B.C. Transit, the local hospital district and, of course, the fare box. (It's $2.50 per ride, $60 for a monthly pass.) Rural public transit just isn’t a federal responsibility. It’s provincial, right? Well, yes, but so are highways, and yet successive federal governments have continued to find ways to fund highways and other car infrastructure projects that increase carbon emissions, separate our communities rather than bringing them together and, at the end of the day, generally leave rural and Indigenous communities out in the cold. (Sure, there’s the Trans Canada and Yellowhead highway networks, and they do serve some rural communities, but there are far more that are served by only provincially funded roads, or not even that.) Every reader of The Hill Times knows that the federal spending power is pretty broad, so long as they show up with a large enough cheque. So the choice to fund highway interchanges over rural public transit is an active one—and one the Green Party of Canada insists we must reverse. Beyond the funding question, though, transportation is freedom. If people can get where they need to go, when they need to go, with their dignity intact, then we, as a society, have taken a massive step forward in levelling the playing field for our citizens. Whether we speak in the language of human rights or simply policy priorities, the Green Party of Canada believes that all citizens of Canada must be able to get where they need to go, when they need to get there, with their dignity intact—all without destroying the planet. But we will never be able to do that by paving more wilderness for highway interchanges so that more people can commute longer distances. It is clear that solutions must be locally driven, evidence-based, use existing infrastructure where possible, and always prioritize low-carbon modes. This means funding for rural and remote transportation. This means passenger rail at a minimum restored to standards of the early 1990s. This means federal government offices always being situated in locations served well by public transit, and walking/cycling infrastructure in cities. This means restoring something that resembles the Saskatchewan Transportation Company and Western Canadian Greyhound bus networks that vanished overnight in the spring of 2017 and the fall of 2018, respectively, without the federal government lifting a finger to stop either. The federal government understands that it has a role to play in the system-wide success of our movement of goods. It's the same for air passengers. Those roles are clearly in their jurisdiction. Somehow, though, our government started spending a lot of money to get urban commuter cars on and off highways, too, while ignoring national, regional and rural public transportation. Greens want to reverse that. We need active federal participation in national, regional and rural public transportation. For all its glory, the Bella Coola Bus service ends at Firvale, 40 km from its start point. It’s 410 km to the next bus stop, and our government should be helping to fix that before funding more highway exits. Ashley Morton is co-president of the Green Party of Nova Scotia and former vice-president of Transport Action Atlantic, a public transportation advocacy organization. The Hill Times