For months, pressure has been building on Ottawa to ride to the rescue of an American rail service from Seattle to Vancouver.
Just this week, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson called for the federal government to quit being so stingy and cough up the pittance it would take to keep the run alive. A conga line of politicians and tourism officials from both sides of the border has formed behind the mayor, all urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to switch tracks and see the significant return on investment to be realized for a mere half a million a year.
Amtrak has been running a line between Seattle and Vancouver for a while now. Before the Olympics, the company put on a second run to accommodate the expected spike in interest in Vancouver as a destination.
These passengers have to clear customs, which costs money. Ottawa agreed to cover that amount, about $1,500 a day, on a one-off basis throughout the Olympics and a period thereafter, but it was understood the subsidy would disappear at the end of October. After that, Amtrak would have to pay the customs freight, which it says it won't do. The deadline is looming, thus the outcry.
Amtrak and B.C. tourism officials say the new service has generated more than $11-million in economic activity in Canada since it's been in operation. How could the feds not cough up the yearly $500,000 it would take to cover Canada Border Services Agency costs when there's so much to be gained economically? Is this a classic example of being penny wise and pound foolish?
Maybe. But we should get used to it.
The real problem is that Amtrak's timing couldn't be worse. It comes as Ottawa is warning the provinces to expect less in the way of federal transfers as it tries to get its books in order. Treasury Minister Stockwell Day is asking cabinet colleagues to find ways to cut their budgets, not add to them.
Maybe $500,000 doesn't sound like a lot of money. But if the federal government took that approach across the board, we'd never have a balanced budget. In fact, taxpayers would prefer it if Ottawa considered $1,000 a lot of money and parted with it grudgingly.
The feds have agreed to grandfather the CBSA's costs for the previously existing Seattle-Vancouver service. But any future CBSA overhead associated with new runs between the two countries will have to be recovered through other means, such as user fees.
Get ready for the era of creative thinking. There are going to be fewer federal dollars available, so people are going to have to innovate their way around these problems.
In the case of the second rail line, I had a question no one seemed able to answer: CBSA agents go to the train station in Vancouver to clear passengers through customs. Why? The train goes right through a border crossing at Blaine, Wash., where there are already plenty of CBSA staff working. Couldn't the train stop there on its way to Vancouver and have the passengers cleared at point of entry? It would appear cheaper than having staff go to Vancouver.
Alternatively, if the service is so good for B.C.'s economy, why doesn't the provincial government step in to cover some or all of CBSA's costs for the new run? Perhaps the answer is to hike the cost of the trip by $10 (it's only $35 one way), which would, by my calculations, provide almost half of what the CBSA says it needs to cover its expenses. The B.C. government could cover the balance.
If this service is as economically beneficial to B.C. as people say, some creative thinking should be able to save it.