Generally, if someone hollers, “road trip!” in my direction, I grab my toothbrush and car keys and am out the door without further thought. What’s not to like about a road trip?
But I’m about to embark on a road trip that kind of makes me wish I had to stay home and have my wisdom teeth extracted. All the more painful since I’m not sure I have any to extract.
Normally, road trips are a joy. Pack some gear, some snacks, some beverages, a map before I came to unwisely rely on GPS navigation, and a sense of adventure. For this road trip, I’m thinking of including several dozen fire extinguishers and a Nomex® onesie.
That’s because I’m driving to Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories. Ironically, the thought of driving there conjures up so many of the issues raised by the federal tourism ministry’s Canada 365 strategy, the coincidence is eerie.
The normal jumping-out-of-my-skin excitement at the thought of a road trip is butting up against the Wall-o’-Flames that is northern British Columbia and Alberta, and has been since May. And after running one of those gauntlets there are more fires burning in southern Northwest Territories than I’d like to think about.
This is probably a good time to mention I think the idea of driving there is, well, crazy. Under normal circumstances, I’d bail. But normal circumstances fail to include the budget-breaking amount already paid to the company that is going to raft my wonderful wife and I down the Nahanni River for 12 days.
A rational person might hit me over the head with a gentle reminder of the economic notion of sunk costs at this point. Forget about what’s already been spent and take the safe way out; money’s money, your skin’s your skin. The safe way would be to ditch the road trip in favour of a plane ticket.
The intersection of this conundrum and Canada 365 is a feature of Canadian travel known well to anyone who lives in the country and would like to venture far from home, but stay in the true north strong and free. It’s best illustrated by some people I met in Newfoundland six years ago. Finding out I lived in B.C., they said they’d love to visit the province. Asked why they hadn’t, they explained they could fly anywhere in Europe and most other places in the world for a fraction of what it cost to fly within Canada.
Having kept an eye on the fires, I thought the sane thing to do would be to check out flights. It’s virtually impossible to fly from Vancouver to Fort Simpson when I need to. I can understand that. And from where I am, Edmonton is on the way. I can fly from Edmonton to there for $2,500. I’m assuming there are a number of other costs associated with that price, including an extra night of lodging in Edmonton, since the flight leaves bright and early in the morning.
By comparison, I can fly from Edmonton to London for $1,400, to New York for $748, or to Paris for $1,421. All of those destinations are multiples of air miles further than the distance to Fort Simpson. Yeah, I know, law of large numbers, as in the large numbers of people who would rather fly to London, Paris or New York.
But still, if a key element of boosting Canadian tourism by almost 40 per cent in the next seven years is getting people to far-flung places like Fort Simpson—that ticks several of the strategic boxes, i.e., recreation and the great outdoors, Indigenous tourism—we can’t be expecting people to pay as much or more to get there as they’ll spend once they arrive. Would it be better—notwithstanding running counter to the country’s blind adherence to universality—to direct the majority of the funds and effort into established tourism hotspots where people are more likely to go?
Whistler is one of those spots. It is also, and I hate to say it, probably a lost cause. A lost cause for any of us who already find it far too busy. But the decisions have already been made to grow, grow, grow. Don’t blame me.
The twin soft spots in the plan are workerbees and housing. The machine in place already needs more workerbees, and there isn’t enough housing. The Chamber of Commerce is, reportedly, working on a housing and labour survey to “inform its advocacy efforts moving forward.”
Presumably the goal is to generate some hard numbers. If not, we already know more of both is necessary. And the RMOW is committed to building more housing, “regardless of cost.”
This is probably a good point to put in a meaningless plug for putting the brakes on growth, but that ship has already sailed. Whatever shortages we currently have don’t seem to stop local businesses from expanding.
The primary pinch point in this endless cry for more labour and more housing to feed more business is cost. Where is the money to build the housing coming from?
The Chamber says, “The other main challenge that businesses are facing is the cost of doing business. We have seen multiple cost increases...”
If you want to see multiple, multiple cost increases, try building buildings. Every input is more expensive, in some cases obscenely so, and expanding so fast, it’s hard to get a handle on just how much it’s going to increase from the first budget to the built cost.
And once you’ve swallowed those inputs and built that “affordable” housing, you’re faced with a mortgage that’ll layer on more cost increases, as anyone who currently has a mortgage can verify. That additional cost will remain in place for five or 10 years before the rate roulette wheel spins again.
I would humbly suggest, therefore, any advocacy efforts the Chamber cares to undertake be directed to Canada’s tourism minister and his provincial counterpart. With the town’s businesses running at less than full capacity, a strong case can be made for funds to support housing construction.
And there is historical evidence to back it up. When the provincial government of the day “bailed” Whistler out in the early 1980s, it was roundly criticized. But that investment paid off like a broken slot machine and continues to pay off every day of the year.
The feds can place their tourism money bets on far-flung parts of the country, or they can invest them where they’re more likely to see some results. My money is on the former. It’s the Canadian way.
