Can we all get along?
In B.C. and the rest of Canada, that Rodney King appeal to community unity and tolerance in the wake of interracial violence in the United States resonates north of the border on a different front, because, with this province and Alberta so recently at logger-heads over pipelines and wine, the answer today to King’s question, sadly, is no, too often we can’t get along.
Regional political interests continue to trump national economic priorities.
However, the Canadian Global Cities Council (CGCC) is hoping local governments can look beyond their parochial interests to build a more focused and competitive country and economy. It’s lobbying for a national strategy in a land where national strategies get lip service but not much else. The CGCC’s Planning for an Urban Future: Our Call for a National Urban Strategy for Canada calls for a countrywide plan that would support long-range infrastructure planning and funds to promote economic growth in Canada’s urban centres.
It sees its national urban strategy built upon a trio of policy planks that include the federal government identifying urban policy goals while city leaders develop long-range urban infrastructure plans and policies. Federal funds to bankroll infrastructure priorities would be based on per capita grants. The plan would replace the current system of patchwork project approvals under which political expediency is the guiding principle.
In light of the economic importance to local, regional and national interests of such trade corridors as B.C.’s Asia-Pacific Gateway, the CGCC plan makes abundant sense.
But sense is not abundant in Canada, nor are national strategies in a country where such fundamental economic drivers as energy development still have no authoritative national policy to guide them. Instead we have pipeline blockades, wine prohibitions and other examples of small thinking in a big land.
Cooler heads have prevailed for now in the B.C.-Alberta dispute, but until, as King appealed, getting along is a guiding principle rather than a political afterthought, Canada will remain a bit player on the global stage.
