Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says the federal government will stop investing in new road infrastructure — a comment that immediately drew the ire of the Opposition Conservatives and some premiers who said the climate activist turned politician is out of touch.
Guilbeault said Tuesday the government will be there to support provinces paying for maintenance but Ottawa has decided that the 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.
The federal government also wants to encourage "active transportation," which means getting people to walk and cycle.
This is something I support for many reasons.
Firstly, they don't help reduce congestion over the long run. The fundamental law of congestion, which has been supported by evidence over and over for more than 50 years, says:
people drive more when the stock of roads in their city increases; commercial driving and trucking increase with a city's stock of roads; and people migrate to cities that are relatively well provided with roads
I don't disagree at all, but I do want to caution that as people who support changes in where investment money goes we have to make sure that "big city" changes like high speed rail aren't all we talk about. The opponents have a good talking point regarding people who drive 10,20,50 km to work not having access to bus or rail.
Yes, that is often the fault of those provincial leaders not investing in it, but it doesn't change the criticism. We need to make sure we are investing in rural provinces and suburban areas to make public transport preferable in those areas too. Especially town to town transport or we won't win rural support.
“Of course we’re funding roads,” Guilbeault said. “We have programs to fund roads, but we have said — and maybe I should have been more specific in the past — is that we don’t have funds for large projects like the Troisième lien that the CAQ has been trying to do for for many years.”
I think it's more a clarification than a walk back. They aren't going to grow the road system, but road maintenance and safety upgrades were never on the chopping block.
That's exactly what I took from reading the original article. You'd have to want to see something else in order to see it some other way, or be an incompetent reader.
Less waffling and more shitty comms, which unfortunately has been a consistent problem with this government for years, particularly for files where Guilbeault is minister. That guy shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a microphone...
The federal government also wants to encourage “active transportation,” which means getting people to walk and cycle.
Don't just encourage it.
Feds need to incentivize people and invest in programs to support it. Bypass Premiers who oppose, and directly fund municipalities who want to build out their active transportation networks.
MPPs are discussing the issue in committee. The study authors are pushing the city to consider reinstating its cap on drivers, on the grounds that fewer drivers could mean each driver gets a greater share of the rides.
For the love of god please don't.
This is a supply and demand problem, an oversupply of drivers results in lower wages, and the market should sort itself out in the long term.
Uber and Lyft regulate the balance of supply and demand via price, which they alone determine. The ride sharing companies want enough capacity that riders don't have to wait, and drivers want to be on the app where the users are, but clearly drivers are willing to put up with more than they should in the hope they get rides. Riders don't care about this issue at all, and I'll bet Uber take more of a driver's pay than the taxi companies used to.
So the government has a few good options:
Class drivers as employees, since they effectively are, if you want them to earn minimum wage. Nobody cares that any other class of contractor gets below minimum wage, so why do we care about ride share drivers?
Set rules or establish a market maker for ride sharing, like financial markets have, which would let the demand and supply sides both negotiate and freely set prices. This could/should involve capping the amount of money the ride share companies take. Uber/Lyft effectively tax both riders and drivers and make the market strictly less efficient than it otherwise would be.
Just ban Uber and Lyft. Other countries have done it. If you go to Ireland their free taxi app is every bit as good as Uber with all the regulatory compliance of the taxi industry.
Lend money out for local companies to create their own local ride sharing apps. If drivers are contractors they can run the local ones too which will compete for price.
Build their own ride sharing app (except don't because I don't want to see some huge contractor go to a company called "GovServiceWorks" with 4 employees to contract an RFP, collect the cheque, and outsource the work to India, all while saying they misquoted the price and getting 10x what they need)