I’m sitting on the West Coast Express, on my way into the LPCBC offices, enjoying a coffee I bought on the train, typing my blog entry on my laptop (which would be plugged into the provided power if I didn’t have a ridiculously good battery), connected to the internets with my Telus/Sierra Wireless internet stick. Life is good.
Obviously the best option for the environment is to live where we work. My wife an I moved to Mission when I was working in Abbotsford (neighbouring communities) and she was pregnant (my in-laws live in Abbotsford). I had been driving back and forth from Vancouver to Abbotsford each day, a commute that easily took 3 hours, if not more, out of every day. There was no commuter rail option to Abbotsford, so I had to drive it each day. It not only was bad for the environment, it was bad for my family, and it was bad for me.
Now that I tend to be working in the City more often than not, we will be returning to Vancouver (Quadra here I come!) sometime in the next year or so. We are fortunate that we have this option, since we still own the house we purchased pre-boom in town.
But lets face it. A lot of people just don’t have the option of living in Vancouver, even if they work there. Unless you are willing to have roommates, are single with a good job, or are a DINK (Double Income No Kids), Vancouver just isn’t affordable. Hell, it isn’t really affordable for most of the people in those three categories. For all of Vancouver’s green planning and high density living, it is just out of reach for a lot of people.
Which brings me back to the train. The West Coast Express (think Go-train, but with trains that only go into the city in the morning and out of the city at night) is a great service, but it only really helps those who live in the Tri-Cities and the North Fraser Valley. The South Valley (Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, etc.) just don’t have good commuter options. These people have no choice but to get in their cars, and drive into the city to work.
The new Port Mann Bridge is supposed to help make the lives of these people easier. But all it is really going to do is increase the cost of their daily commute by as much as ten or eleven dollars due to new tolls. The new bridge will apparently have the infrastructure to support a light rail option, but that isn’t being built with the bridge.
There was a real opportunity in this country to make a difference for average Canadian’s with the Conservative’s Economic Action Plan. We could have truly invested in the long term economic health of our nation. Instead, we built gazebos and washrooms in rural conservative held ridings.
Some people put our national municipal infrastructure deficit at one hundred twenty three billion dollars. That’s just what is needed to keep what we have working. That does not even begin to address the long term growth needs, nor does it address the need to begin to convert our aging infrastructure to technologies that don’t destroy the environment we depend on.
I have no faith that Stephen Harper understands or cares about the long term health of our country. His total focus is on retaining power for him and his friends. We have already let him undo so much of the progress the Chrétien and Martin governments made to addressing Canada’s economic problems. Progress that should have begun to allow us to fund long term investments into transportation and environmental technologies without unduly burdening our children with an unreasonable debt.
Michael Ignatieff is concerned with the long term health of our nation. He doesn’t allow the desire to win (which he has, of course. You can’t truly be an agent for change from the Opposition benches) to interfere with the need for a long term vision. Mr. Ignatieff not only dreams big for this country, but he is willing to listen to other people’s dreams and incorporate them into his own.
So I sit here, sipping my coffee, looking at the magnificent Burrard Inlet pass by the windows, and I reflect on how lucky I am to have this opportunity. And I wish for a government that understood that its responsibility is to provide these opportunities to more Canadians because that is what will make Canada stronger.
