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In the summer of 2010, driving our family on a cross-country trip to the west coast, we were working our way through the seemingly endless stretch of northern Ontario on the two-lane highway that passes for the “Trans-Canada.”
As just a “road,” it’s not terrible. It’s maintained, well-paved, and has passing lanes every 10 – 15 kilometres. If it was “just a road.” But it’s not. It’s the “Trans-Canada Highway.” The “TCH.”
In places, it is the only road that connects Eastern Canada with Western Canada. One road. A single band of a 10 metre, 30 foot wide piece of asphalt. That and a couple of railway tracks are the only transportation links tying the country together.
There are reasons. This is the “shield” — an enormous expanse of ancient, hard rock worn down by repeated glaciations leaving a fragmented topography of granite outcroppings, lakes, swamps, bogs, and forests.
It is a landscape that challenges any ambition to build a road across it. The result is a road that twists and turns around obstructions. Get behind a car pulling a trailer and it may be a while before you see an opportunity to pass. It is not a road that lends itself to easy use by transport trucks. Not surprisingly, many truck drivers (and many other drivers) choose to cross the border and drive through the United States. It’s faster — it’s both shorter and has divided, higher-speed highways. And, often, the price of gas is lower.
In an excellent example of a “chicken and egg” dilemma, it has been argued that it would be a waste of money to upgrade the highway through northern Ontario. The traffic volumes don’t warrant the expense.
Yes. And if it was a dirt road, there would be even less traffic.
During COVID, truck traffic across the borders was dramatically affected. In fact, in the post 9/11 world crossing the border has become increasingly problematic. Future world events could make that even worse.
At one point, when we had switched drivers, I was looking out the window and noticed a large military C-17 transport flying in the distance. Canada had just purchased 4 of them. A couple of years later Canada purchased a fifth aircraft. In 2014 the total purchase cost of the aircraft and support was estimated to be almost $2 billion.
A 2016 study estimated the cost to build highway across northern Ontario was about $500,000 per kilometre. Even if that number was doubled to $1 million per kilometre, the purchase cost of the C-17 fleet of 5 aircraft would be sufficient to complete the twinning of all 1,900 kilometres of Highway 17 across northern Ontario.
This improvement would make the Canadian route competitive with trucking through the U.S. if one considers the potential for delays and disruptions at the border. The boost in economic independence could benefit the Canadian economy both directly by improved shipping costs and, indirectly, by affecting the local economies along the route both from trucking and personal, pleasure, and tourist trips.
By improving the resilience of the Canadian economy this could, in fact, be seen as a kind of “defence” spending. This is a kind of defence spending that could actually “pay” the country every day rather than cost us. Wise investments that grow the economy can make it possible to have the national wealth that can afford more conventional defence spending.
Proving the point, in 2016 the newly-built bridge carrying the Trans-Canada Highway over the Nipigon River suffered a temporary structural failure due to a design flaw. The old bridge had already been demolished. There was no alternative route through Canada for the 1,300 trucks per day that used the highway at that time. For the time the bridge was out of service, the country was physically divided in two.
That’s just embarrassing.