WINNIPEG – Ken Rivers is going south to Vancouver. He winches the straps tight on his load of heavy equipment parts, checks his customs papers and pulls onto four-lane Highway 75 at Winnipeg.
Rivers has no deliveries for the United States, but he will join thousands of other freight haulers who avoid the Canadian highway system and drive the American interstate highways to cross Canada.
“Yes, it is farther from Winnipeg to Vancouver via the United States,” said the Alberta truck driver. “I’ll make it to the coast half a day sooner and I will make it. It’s safer, faster, there are places that service the transportation industry. And my truck will be in one piece. Why wouldn’t I take the big road?”
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Rick Etherington, vice-president of the Saskatoon-based Yanke Group, says his trucking firm regularly uses the American system.
“From Eastern Canada we cross at Windsor-Sarnia and return to Canada as far west as Vancouver. Our drivers need services, our trucks need repairs and we believe it is a lot safer south of the border,” he said.
The highway system that stretches across Canada is known to truckers as “the skinny and the rough.” In British Columbia the mountainous Golden to Banff, Alta., stretch is “carnage corridor” and the lower mainland is “the big sleep.”
In contrast, the U.S. interstate is respectfully dubbed “the big road.” Without slowing for urban areas, stopping for traffic lights or waiting in lines of slow traffic on two-lane, sometimes shoulderless roads, traffic moves constantly from east to west and back again.
The same is not true for the Trans-Canada.
A 1988 federal-provincial report outlined the problems of Canada’s national highway system but provincial ministers of transport say they have seen little federal action or money to follow the recommendations for improvements.
In Western Canada the provinces will receive next to no money from Ottawa to maintain “the skinny” this year.
“We’re getting zero this year. We’re getting zero next year and for the foreseeable future the same,” said Glen Findlay, Manitoba minister of highways.
Alberta’s Walter Paszkowski and Saskatchewan’s Judy Bradley will get the same non-share. B.C. will receive $30 million in federal tax rebates over the next five years.
Each of the provinces spend millions of dollars annually on their road systems.
“It might not be so bad, except (the federal government) keeps on taking a 10-cents-a-litre fuel tax and is giving us nothing in return,” said Barry Martin, of Saskatchewan Highways.
Said Manitoba’s Findlay: “They told us the last time they increased the fuel tax that it was earmarked to reduce the deficit. They eliminated the deficit. Now what is their excuse? If they aren’t going to commit to funding our national highway system why should they be allowed to tax it?”
In September a demand was made by the four western transport ministers that the federal government either begin spending the fuel tax on roads or suspend fuel taxes.
In B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the federal government raised $2.729 billion in fuel taxes in 1995-96. Of that money $35.5 million was returned to the provinces for highways.
In the same period the western provinces brought in $1.724 billion in provincial fuel taxes and spent $1.701 billion on roads, says the Canadian Automobile Association.
In total, the federal government collected more than $5 billion in national road taxes in 1995-96 and returned $300 million to the provinces.
The CAA estimated that in that same year, Saskatchewan spent 65 percent of its fuel taxes on roads, Manitoba spent 86 percent, Alberta 97 percent and B.C. 111 percent of what was collected.
“They tell us highways are a provincial responsibility. Then we, as ministers, keep asking the question year after year, why are you taxing for them? Let us tax for them. We have to fix them,” said Findlay.
Alberta has spent the most on highway development and construction and has exceeded the targets for a national system that were set out in the 1988 federal report.
The result is a four-lane road that meets a damaged and bottlenecked two-lane juggernaut in Saskatchewan and B.C., said Barrie McPhalen, president of the Alberta Roadbuilders Association.
Confined by the neighboring provinces, Alberta and Manitoba have turned their attention south and concentrated on building better highways to the United States.
“There is no national highway system in this country, especially in the West,” said McPhalen. “We have no choice. We have to turn to the American roads.”
The U.S. will spend $170 billion (U.S.) over the next five years to improve the interstate highway system, according to American officials. Of that total, more than $10 billion is guaranteed to be spent in the Pacific Northwest and up to $30 billion if the economy remains strong.
Compared to several other nations, Canada is spending less on highways as a percentage of government revenues, fuel taxes or gross national product.
Canada spends 5.5 percent of federal fuel taxes on highways, compared to 31 percent in the U.S. and 100 percent in Great Britain.
A new report on the Canadian highways system is being prepared for release this fall. Participants in the latest analysis say it will call for the spending of $18 billion to upgrade and repair the Trans-Canada.
“It was only $12 billion (Cdn) 10 years ago when we looked at our national road the last time. If I was smart (as president of a road construction organization) I would keep my mouth shut. We could really make some big money some day,” said Tony Toth, president of the British Columbia Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Association.
Back in Winnipeg, trucker Rivers wonders why Americans are getting the benefit of his spending on food, fuel and truck repairs.
“Jean ChrŽtien is missing out on my tax dollars,” said Rivers.
Findlay agrees taxation losses compound the problem, in Manitoba and elsewhere.
“We’re cutting off our noses to spite our faces. We are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to develop the local economy though servicing a national highway system that works. In turn we lose the road taxes and it spirals ever downward.”
Officials in B.C. say the highways report is rumored to contain an estimated $30 billion gain to the provincial economy if the full recommended $18 billion is spent on the system.
And B.C. may suffer most if changes are not made, say officials in other provinces. The west coast port system may be threatened by a more efficient transportation system in Washington state.
“Some genius somewhere along the line decided that the best thing he could do was to concentrate all of the nation’s Pacific export traffic right through the middle of Vancouver,” said Toth.
“The result was a design that drives exporters to Seattle and other U.S. ports. That move is costing us in tax dollars, processing fees, port fees and jobs in Canada, and that threatens Vancouver as a port.”
