Quote:
Originally Posted by trece verde
What's being missed here and in statements by others is the claim in the original post that I was musing about that this has been an issue for 20 years. in other words, not just as a result of the current government's policies that some of you find so anathemic, but of their predecessors as well. Elementary school, indeed.
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This is sort of misleading. The problem may trace back that far but the rate of population growth was lower and the stock of infrastructure was relatively more robust so the situation wasn't as dire and priorities were different. In that period, federal government spending was also more restrained. In recent years the debt exploded, reducing the capacity for future action, but fundamental problems like infrastructure and housing affordability didn't improve. I'm not sure we even saw healthcare improvement despite all of the pandemic-era investment.
I don't think Canadians are wrong to feel a sense of malaise over the past few years. Life is getting more challenging for a lot of people as costs rise and quality of life degrades, though thankfully inflation seems to be subsiding finally (with a now potentially permanently lower standard of living than what might have existed without that inflation). The overall picture was very different in 2004 or 2014.
It depends on the city but I think Vancouver might be worse for infrastructure investment now than it was in the 2000's or 2010's. We got major highway improvements and complete new transit lines back then. Right now the road work is minimal and by the time the Broadway extension opens I think there probably will only have been a few km of train expansion in recent years (~6 km Broadway extension that won't even reach UBC; Canada Line is around 20 and Millennium around 25). Why is it that this city is so much larger and growing so fast now but building less than in the past?