Prime Minister announces "Road to Resources" Mackenzie Valley highway to Arctic

The year was 1958, and the PM was John Diefenbaker, when the Road to Resources program was announced.  Apparently folks around Dief the Chief were under the impression such a road might facilitate economic development in the region!

Seventy years on, apparently the folks around Mark Carney are under that impression too! So what's been happening lo these seven decades of wasted time? Well, nothing, obviously, but why?

It's not as if modern infrastructure hasn't been built in other remote parts of the world. The Russians have enjoyed road access to their arctic since motorized transport was invented, so what's our problem? Obviously, laying down 500 miles of gravel isn't all that far up the tech ladder for a nation almost near the front of the pack in AI and quantum compute.

The think tank here at Falling Downs has studied the matter for years, and the answer is chrystal clear. The reason this great nation, a proud and resilient land of immigrants who once built a railroad from sea-to-shining-sea in ten years, can't build a 500 mile gravel road in seventy, is because of our CANADIAN VALUES!

Yes, unlike our adversaries, we are a DEMOCRACY where citizens have HUMAN RIGHTS.  If a citizen in Russia were to object to a gravel road, he or she would be shot dead in the town square as an example to the rest of the villagers. You rarely hear about that sort of thing happening in Canada, where everyone enjoys the basic human right  of tying up development in frivolous litigation for years.  And btw, Canada is so forward looking on citizens rights you'll get to enjoy them even if you just strolled down Roxham Road last week.

Or take the Chinese Communists. Sure, they may have built more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined (and every inch of it with stolen IP), but ask yourself, are their people free?

There you have it, people of Canada!

You can have freedom and human rights, or you can have gravel roads. Sometimes difficult decisions must be taken

Miracle in Toronto

That Delta plane crash in Toronto has been the top story on Canadian news networks for days now. But what really gets the Canadians revved is when US networks cover anything that happens in Canada. A lot of Canadians have a bit of an inferiority complex vis-a-vis our big neighbour. We disguise that by pretending to be morally superior. Whereas Americans are xenophobic racists who object to illegal migration, Canadians built a welcome centre for illegals on the famous Roxham Road on the New York-Quebec border. And if that isn’t virtuous enough in itself, they actually closed it down during Covid, only to re-open it when the virus scare, if not the virus, was in retreat. We’ve always been somewhat holier than thou with the neighbours, and I’ve always considered that a spot of compensation for that underlying inferiority complex. That’s why it’s so awesome to see the outpouring of national pride these past few days. On our twenty minute drive into town, there’s a couple of dozen Canadian flags flying in front of folks who never had them before, often not even on Canada Day. You can thank Trump for making Canadian nationalism great again! But I digress. The world’s attention briefly falls on Toronto, and Torontonians are basking in the attention, because it’s affirmation of Toronto’s status as a “World Class City.” There’s no city in the world more desperate to be considered “World Class” than Toronto. While the US and international news outfits have long since pulled their satellite trucks back to the the states, CBC is still opening every TV news show with a picture of a commuter jet lying upside-down on the tarmac at Canada’s busiest airport. For at least the past 36 hours, that iconic photo has been accompanied by a soundtrack of experts trying to convince you air travel is perfectly safe! Maybe… maybe not so much. The fact that all aboard survived that crash strikes me as a divine miracle rather than an argument for the safety of air travel.

Somali refugee says living in Canada "like torture"

Here's a Canadian story that doesn't seem to get much publicity in Canada. I'd not heard of this until I stumbled upon it at Al Jazeera today.

Maybe that's because it doesn't jive with what we might call the Canadian consensus, namely that we are an unimpeachable font of virtue on the world stage. The idea that an affordable community in the nation's capital, a mostly immigrant community which happens to be 90% non-white, would be bulldozed to make way for more profitable housing just doesn't square with our smug sense of superiority.

So we ignore it.


A heads-up to the Border Patrol office in Champlain; keep an eye on Roxham Road. If too many people find out what it's really like to be a refugee in Canada, the traffic will soon be heading the other way.