Angry in the Great White North

It's funny how people don't see the connections somehow.

Or maybe they do, but they know better than to point them out.

In case, Peter Duffy of The Chronicle Herald paints a grim picture for Halifax.  An airport falling apart, essentially abandoned:

Talk about a waste of money. Officials at the Halifax airport will spend millions this summer to upgrade the main runway. Someone should remind them that, with the cost of jet fuel out of sight and airlines, including Air Canada, cutting routes and grounding equipment, there aren’t going to be many aircraft to use it anyway.

Just so that it's clear, the "upgrade" is really maintenance:

Runway Restoration Program Continues at Halifax Stanfield International Airport

Halifax, N.S. – The 2008 portion of the Runway Restoration Program at Halifax Stanfield International Airport is underway.

Halifax International Airport Authority (HIAA) is in the fourth year of its six-year runway restoration program. This year’s work focuses on the longer of the Airport’s two runways, Runway 05/23, as well as some taxiway and apron areas. The work is vital to maintaining the integrity and operation of runways that have now reached the end of their lifecycle.

As Duffy suggests, extending these runways past the end of their lifecycle is a waste of time.  With jet fuel prices rising, flights are being scaled back.

So what does Duffy think ought to happen?  Let the runways crumble?  Shut down the airport to large aircraft?  Limit flying to small craft that can use small lightly constructed runways?  Let flying become the sole domain of the wealthy while for the rest of us the world ends at how far we can pedal a bike in half a day?

Perhaps he does.  I wish he would just go and say so.  I mean, in the same column, but under a different section heading, he praises Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion for promising to raise fuel taxes even higher:

As well, the man is naïve if he honestly believes consumers won’t be on the losing end before this is over, no matter which party is in power. Guaranteed, food, fuel and electricity will cost us more than today’s already-onerous prices. (Just ask motorists in B.C. who start paying a provincial carbon tax on fossil fuels next month.)

Even so, full marks to Dion for having the courage to open a very dangerous door, politically. It was long overdue and had to be done — despite the pain that awaits within.

So there is pain coming with Stephane Dion's plan.  The shifting is just nonsense.  It's a tax and we're all going to pay.  It's going to hurt.

How much?  Peter Duffy doesn't say.  But Peter Duffy thinks the airport runways ought to be allowed to crack and crumble and be overgrown with weeds.  Halifax doesn't need an airport, not at the fuel costs the way they are today.  So what else will crack and crumble and be overgrown with weeds should Stephane Dion be given the chance to tax all fuel?

Peter Duffy doesn't say.