If there’s a secret plan to build a superhighway from Mexico to Canada, Manitoba’s hog farmers would be thrilled.
But unfortunately for hog producers and other prairie farmers who rely on often-snarled access to the U.S. market, the rumoured road has three enemies: Canadian far-left nationalists; American right wing isolationists and economic reality.
“I think the idea that there’s a conspiracy is pretty much a joke,” said Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch, who would love to see an eight lane, multibillion-dollar highway.
“It would be great if they did, but it isn’t too likely.”
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To Canadian farmers who have to haul their livestock and grain to the United States, the most common fear is getting down to the border without blowing a tire on any of the many potholes that pockmark the route – especially Highway 75, which leads from Winnipeg to Pembina, North Dakota.
“When you cross the border, it’s just a day and night difference,” said Kynoch.
“As soon as you cross the border, it’s a beautiful highway. But when you come back across the border, you know you’re back in Canada because it’s bump, bump, bump.”
To most farmers, having better and speedier access to the U.S. market probably doesn’t sound controversial. But opening North American borders to freer trade concerns those who fear deeper integration of North American economies.
The battle cry was raised most recently by aged American crooner and U.S. right winger Pat Boone who wrote, “we’ve arrived at the most precarious time in this country since the revolutionary war.”
His cry was echoed by left-wing Canadian activists at the protests against the recent Canada-U.S.-Mexico summit in Montebello, Que., last week, who also fear a superhighway, commonly said to be “four football fields wide.”
While there are no signs of a superhighway being seriously planned, there have been long-standing hopes from people like Kynoch that such a route could one day be developed.
The Manitoba government has also promoted the idea of building a trade corridor down the centre of North America, from Manitoba to Texas and south to Mexico, an idea premier Gary Doer has championed.
Doer has said that Manitoba’s economy would benefit from better access to the U.S. markets. Proponents of the Port of Churchill would love to see the sub-Arctic facility bring in more foreign goods to channel into the U.S. market. Right now the port is reached only by a low-capacity rail line.
