Could we build the railway or trans Canada hwy today

[Ka-El]

If a person or party campaigned on building a road or bridge somewhere (something quite common in fact), it will garner a lot more support than if a person or party campaigned on building a pipeline.

That is a fair point Omni, and unfortunate I think considering the benefits that could be realized by all Canadians if we did go ahead with some pipeline construction (the eastern route leading to our own refineries is a case in point). I think you identified the problem though. People see pipeline construction as benefiting mainly private interest “to maximize profits at the cost of responsibility” with Canadians taking all the risk for only a small portion of the reward. Certainly, after Harper signed off on allowing foreign (Chinese) corporate interests to sue Canadian taxpayers (via municipal, provincial and federal government) if we tried to introduce laws or regulations that might interfere with that corporation’s ability to maximize profit on extracting our raw resources, trust in politicians (deservedly) took another hit. It is unfortunate, because I do believe if someone made the effort to adequately inform the electorate of the benefits, and the steps we would take to ensure it was done correctly, responsibly and safely (ie. that corporations would be expected to meet our expectations and not the other way around) we might get more people on board and ultimately make this a reality. Maybe even build more refineries. We will be using oil for many years yet. It is too bad we can't trust the decision makers to work in our collective interest.

[dirtybiker]

Exactly, knowing the Port Mann total cost is in neighbourhood 3.3 billion. A fixed link to Vancouver Island could run into the hundreds of billions.

No problem, didn't JT give that much away in like 3 months ?

Seriously though.

A bridge to the Island would be a death trap when it came to weather patterns.

A tunnel, ya, that's the ticket !

(uncontollable shivers up spine)

[Jlabute]

I dont think we could. It would disturb the spirit bear or something. It would be endless protest. Totally insane

If there were no highways and railways, we may not have had a Canada either. BCs entry into the confederation was dependant on accepting the railway. Getting raw materials coast to coast would take too long by boat and truck, or route through the United States. Transportation would be faster and more Green via train, and better built if done today.
As a matter of scale, so few natives are in this portion of the continent that any burial places won’t be encountered. With B.C. being about 1M sq Km, having it all owned by less than 23k natives in 1870 is asking to be colonized and modernized which is all good. Europeans are the indigenous of Newfoundland. There were no natives there up to 1870.

[hobbyguy]

Fundamentally, the problem with doing anything large in Canada is that people don't respect democracy. We elect representatives to make decisions, and there are those who will respect no decision unless it fits their "manifesto". The Leapers, for example, respect no one else's rights, only their own point of view.

There is a balance to democracy, and that means accepting the decisions of those we elect, and being very careful whom we elect. Factional loyalty, adherence to ideologies, and all such dogmatic/unbalanced approaches just don't work.

[Jflem1983]

Anyone still think we could build er today. BUMP

[floppi]

I'm thinking it will be harder today because Canada have yet settled the land dispute problem with the First Nations. It's mind boggling that we are in the 2nd century trying to negotiate it. It's not like you can just move them out by force or wait until they all die from starvation like what happened when the transcontinental railway was built in the 1800's. So yeah, as we saw from the recent court decision, much much harder today than in the past.