Chris Selley: Is the Liberals' 'Canada Strong Pass' a one-off gimmick, or something more substantial?
I have had some fun in the past at the expense of the Liberal Party of Canada's distinctly upper-class obsession with the Great Outdoors — this notion that every Canadian has soloed a canoe through morning mist amidst the haunting call of loons, or if they haven't, then something has gone awry.
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I'll have a bit more fun with it here now that details of the 'Canada Strong Pass' have been released … but that's not to say there's nothing salvageable from this endeavour.
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Two of the main items offered free or at a discount this summer are travel on Via Rail (free for kids travelling with an adult; 25 per cent off for 18-to-24-year-olds), and campsites at national parks, which will be free to visit during the day this summer.
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But it's the third week of June. Most people — people who aren't politicians, for example — will already have booked their vacations by now. And if they haven't, good luck finding a nice campsite before Labour Day (when the discounts terminate). Those reservations became available in January and February, depending on the park, and they go very quickly. (Perhaps ironically, those who booked before the Canada Strong Pass became official will be eligible for partial refunds.)
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Via, for the record, directly services a single national park: Jasper. I found a 'discounted' youth fare from Toronto to Jasper on July 2 … for $503. That gets you a plain old seat, for 70 hours and 35 minutes. Airlines will get you as far as Edmonton in 4 hours for less than that.
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I found a rare available berth on Via — a seat that converts into a semi-private bunk — for the Aug. 31 departure, but the youth discount doesn't apply to those. And if it did, it would still be 25 per cent off $1,612.
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Of course Via is more useful between cities in Eastern Canada; trains don't sell out months in advance the way the long-distance routes do. But the Canada Strong Pass is framed as a national unity exercise, and at this point in our history, transporting Ontarians and Quebecers back and forth on summer holidays probably isn't going to offer much of a nationalist boost. Two Solitudes is an 80-year-old book; Canada contains more solitudes now.
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Having vented my spleen, let me also say the notion of building national unity by encouraging domestic travel isn't at all daft, and nor is offering free or discounted entry to national museums and historic sites. Many Canadians are appallingly ignorant of the things they might learn there.
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