Environment minister sets off on bumpy but beneficial road to address climate change

Opinion

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This article was published 14/02/2024 (601 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the midst of a global warming crisis, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has just started a raging, fiery debate over infrastructure funding.

And we should all, eventually, thank him for striking the match.

In comments made at an infrastructure conference and published in the Montreal Gazette, Guilbeault said Ottawa has decided the existing road infrastructure “is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have.”

Further, he said, there will be no additional federal funding to “enlarge the road network. We can very well achieve our goals of economic, social and human development without more enlargement of the road network.”

In adopting this policy, Guilbeault is taking one of the boldest — and riskiest — steps towards putting the federal government’s money where its mouth is on climate change.

Our continuing compulsion to build more, longer and wider roads is completely contrary to efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Road construction — from the machines used, to the materials — emits huge quantities of carbon.

As well, longer and wider roads actually do little or nothing to reduce congestion because they tend to encourage more people to drive. And finally, local governments often do nothing to calculate the future costs of repairing and maintaining costly new infrastructure assets.

When you consider all those factors, you can see why it’s important that governments at all levels spend infrastructure dollars in a way that is more sustainable and less damaging to the climate.

And we’d be able to take an important step towards those critical goals if Guilbeault’s comments do, in fact, represent a change in policy. As it stands now, the federal minister’s comments set off a chain reaction of clarifications and dangerously misinformed denunciations.

In the wake of initial news reports, a “senior government official” told CBC in cryptic fashion there was no change in federal infrastructure funding policy. Although not definitive, that comment suggests Guilbeault may have over-reached in describing new policy.

That forced Guilbeault to add to his initial statements, clarifying that he meant new “large” projects like the controversial proposed “third link” tunnel to connect Quebec City to the nearby Lévis municipality.

That apparent equivocation did little to soothe the frayed nerves of provincial governments. Guilbeault was soundly attacked for his comments by premiers who know that federal dollars are an essential ingredient in any large infrastructure project.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he was “gobsmacked,” and pledged that his government would continue to build new roads “with or without a cent from the feds.” And Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Guilbeault didn’t live “in the real world” and was betraying Canadians who live in suburban, rural and remote areas where there is a lack of public transit.

Could Guilbeault be walking back his original comments? Officials from the offices of Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham and Premier Wab Kinew said they have not been informed of any significant change in federal infrastructure funding policy. However, you can bet that there will be an extra degree of intrigue when the federal budget is tabled, likely sometime next month.

Before throwing in with the torch-and-pitchfork crowd, it’s important to pay close attention to what Guilbeault actually said and what it might actually mean.

First, Ottawa will continue to pump billions of dollars into maintaining roadways across Canada. That is an important point that some of the alarmist premiers seem to miss.

There is virtually no scenario where Ottawa isn’t providing money to maintain roads in remote and rural communities. However, if Guilbeault can be believed, the federal government may not want to participate in ring roads or freeway extensions, or feeder routes for badly planned but quickly growing suburban communities.

Which is to say, it would be defensible, even preferable, to have the federal government apply fiscal pressure to wean provinces and municipalities off of our national obsession with building more and larger roads. An obsession that is clearly evident here in Winnipeg.

Right now, the city is trying to get a handle on the cost of two mega-road projects: the $500-million widening and reimagining of Kenaston Boulevard and the $500-million extension of Chief Peguis Trail.

In the past several years, environmentalists and their supporters in the broader electorate have ramped up criticism of these two massive projects based on their cost and — more importantly — the fact that they will not achieve their stated goals of easing traffic flow and reducing congestion.

Costly widenings and underpasses in the southwest part of Winnipeg, proposed and built on a promise to ease congestion, have only made traffic worse. There is no reason to believe that the Kenaston and Chief Peguis projects will produce different results.

The world needs to burn less fossil fuel to slow the pace of climate change. The federal government’s attempts to drive lower consumption through taxing gasoline and oil at the pump has been an utter failure. New levers, incentives and disincentives are needed, and perhaps the time is right for a federal policy change to make it prohibitively expensive to build new roads.

For the sake of the planet, let’s hope Guilbeault has the support of his own government.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com