Leong: Stop saying Canada is too big for us to get things done | Only Sports And Health

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There was a time when Canada’s awesome breadth was in itself a call to action.

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In its early days, our forebears laid down ribbons of steel to lace the country together. Where that couldn’t happen, we spanned the gaps with bridges and ferries.

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Alongside the rails grew a parallel network of telegraph cables, allowing for near-instant communications wherever the wires reached.

And where there weren’t wires, Canada has intimate links with innovators who were the first to send messages by radio, using wireless telegraphy and audio broadcasting.

Later, in the television era, engineers overcame the vast distances with a microwave communications network.

And where that wouldn’t suffice, we sent satellites into space to finally reach every last nook and cranny of the country we call home.

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We are very, very far from those days.

Today, Canada’s large size is more often than not an excuse to explain why we can’t do or have something.

The latest example is the failure of Calgary-based Lynx Air, an ultra-low-cost carrier whose maiden voyages in November 2021 were meant to herald an era of affordable travel in a country where commercial flight is more or less under the stranglehold of a duopoly who’ve neatly split the country between themselves.

Instead, Lynx flew its last flights on Sunday — the end of a short experiment in low-cost flying that earlier doomed Swoop, a WestJet subsidiary that ended up being folded into its parent company.

Some observers have said Canada’s large size and population clusters distant from each other made up some of the reasons for the difficulties being experienced by ULCCs in gaining a foothold in the domestic travel market.

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Uh huh.

Add affordable flying to the long list of things Canada apparently can’t do because it’s too damned big.

Western Canada hasn’t had consistent, daily regional and cross-country rail transportation in decades, apparently for the very same reason — this despite the fact there are pockets of high-density population that could support such a service.

The same fate has befallen Atlantic Canada, although for a much shorter time.

Meanwhile, in Canada’s most populous areas along Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, we still haven’t managed to put together high-frequency rail, let along high-speed trains like every other normal, advanced Western nation.

It’s not just trains: Canada hasn’t had an integrated national bus system since Greyhound threw in the towel in Western Canada in 2018, and then everywhere else in 2021.

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And building electric charging infrastructure for next-generation vehicles has been something of a slog.

People who can’t or won’t fly only have a patchwork of unco-ordinated services to help them get around the country.

Similarly, Canada apparently can’t have affordable mobile phone service because … the country is too damned big.

As with the transportation examples, our extensive geography is often cited as a reason why our wireless operators can’t possibly sell us services at less expensive prices, as it is in every other advanced economy on the planet.

Consumers in places like the United States and Australia — also huge countries with large, dense population centres separated by great distances — would tell us otherwise.

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And not to be outdone, Canada’s large size has also occasionally been cited as a reason why the prices for certain groceries are sky high.

Enough with the excuses.

The reason we can’t have a truly competitive airline industry, an integrated national ground transportation system, affordable mobile prices and less expensive groceries has to do partly with regulations and completely with the willingness of corporate entities to look beyond short-term shareholder value.

We can’t change geography, but those other things are totally under people’s control.

Canada’s expansiveness should be an instigator for innovation to propel the nation forward, not an excuse to stagnate or backslide.

rleong@postmedia.com

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