It’s a poorly kept secret that the left-wing, labour oriented New Democrats governing Saskatchewan are hostile to the United States.
They parrot the “friends and most important trading partner” line, but they really don’t believe it. The NDP are socialists to the core – suspicious and antagonistic towards the US. Nor are they afraid to sacrifice the economic interests of residents of border constituencies to make their point. After all, it’s not like the southern rural areas are NDP strongholds.
What evidence is there for this? As I do nearly every year, over the past few weeks I’ve made road trips to North Dakota and Montana. Despite the fact that these border states are as sparsely populated as our own province, particularly near the Canada-US border, the American roads are well maintained – this is typical.
It must come as a shock to American residents when they cross into Canada.
This is what the last 50 miles looks like on those highways on the Saskatchewan side of the border leading to the ports of Northgate, Monchy and Climax. With broken pavement, huge potholes (never ignore a red hiway surface warning marker in this province) and eroding shoulders, these highways are in dangerous condition. According to border agents, there are American tourists who turn around after a few miles. Who can blame them?
What they don’t know is that all of these highways improve dramatically, for no identifiable reason, around 50 miles into the province.
It’s much the same crossing the border between southern Alberta and Montana.
As an oilfield engineer I’ve driven a lot of highways, all of Alberta, western Sask, and central Montana and I’ve never highways in the poor shape that Sask’s are. That Sask’s spring road bans (limiting the weight of trucks that can travel on the highway) are province-wide, instead of Alberta’s highway by highway depending on the condition, underscores the transportation philosophy of the two provinces.
Does Mr. Harper really have a chance to win the election? Please I hope so with all the prisoner voting among other things that goes on.
Yeah, the whole prisoner voting thing merits a post. Problem is, it’s so distracting being barraged by Liberal ads that are designed to scare us away from the notion of lower taxes.
Its been said roads around Peggy’s Cove Nova Scotia looks much the same.
In Newfoundland you can tell which ridings are Tory and which ones Liberal by the conditions of the roads.
The Liberals were in power there for about 15 years and in some Tory ridings the roads are disintegrating.
The famous Cape St. Mary’s Bird Sanctuary lies in the Tory stronghold of “St. Marys The Capes” (Now called Placentia St. Mary’s) and the road up to the gate is absolutely wretched.
Once you get onto the park proper the road is immaculate because it is under Federal jurisdiction.
I do wonder if people turn around and head back well before then however.
The same thing is true of any highway, much less secondary roads, when comparing Quebec to NY State or Vermont, or…(good lord) even Ontario.
You drive a beautiful smooth highway on the US side( with some road work, and occasional patches (of clearly signed) roughness, true) into Quebec, and suddenly you are swerving to avoid dubious road “surface” and holes, large bits of truck tire decorate the curves, whole sheets of pavement have lifted off, and the the thought of pulling off to the side if banished by grungy road shoulders chock full of gravel(if your’re lucky).
God help you if you are tailing a semi and it drifts off lane centre…instant hail of gravel. The bridges in Quebec also have exposed rebar where the concrete has flaked. That can’t be good.
My favorite is off the west end of Montreal island some years ago on the pre-stressed concrete deck snapped. (That is, the steel cables, or attachments, corroded and allowed the concrete to un-stress. What, they don’t *inspect* major highway bridges?)
The result was the deck of bridge on one end jumped about 2ft up. So that cars, trucks, rolling at highway crusing speed at night were suddenly sailing off the impromptu ramp and down the highway. (Yee hah! Not.) Could have been worse, I suppose, could have lifted a wall into uncoming traffic.
Man, East Germany under the communists had better looking roads.
On the other hand, Quebecers don’t discriminate, the whole province seems to be like that.
Of course the reverse is true when comparing Michigan to at least Southern Ontario. The road system in Michigan looks like the stretch of Southern Saskatchewan, while the Ontario side is not perfect it is far better.
Hah… you guys should come to Ottawa-Vanier, you’d lose it. Our riding has voted Liberal since before Confederation, and boy does the infrastructure show it! I drive along Sussex everyday to work, and they’ve been doing tons of construction there recently. Didn’t know why (the roads were fine), until I saw, they’re INSTALLING GRANITE CURBS!!! The aprox price I heard was $2000 sq/ft!! I think the NCC has infinite bucket loads of cash to drop on whatever they can think of for Ottawa.
Heh I guess I shouldn’t complain given that I live here and granite curbs *do* look nice, but man if I lived in the rest of Canada i’d be pissed. Oh and as for the highways out of Ottawa, 416 & 417, they’re immaculate. Good enough to eat off of!