Good morning. It’s getting harder and harder to find flights out of small Canadian cities – more on that below, along with a return for Jasper residents and the water that’s hiding in the cracks of Mars. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Following the murder of a fraudster, Ontario’s Law Society is urged to warn lawyers who are working for notorious clients
- Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk about the assassination attempt and deportations during a glitchy chat on X
- Ukraine pummels Russia with drones in a bid to expand control, its biggest attack since the war began
- Israel keeps up its strikes in Gaza as fears of a wider war grow
Transportation
Fewer flights, higher costs and countless detours
If you want to travel from Halifax to Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, you can drive east for roughly four hours, not counting traffic or bathroom breaks. No car? Well, the Maritime Bus has a daily route that’ll take you there in seven hours. A train might be faster, but Via Rail yanked its service 34 years ago. Of course, you could fly, but not direct: After WestJet cancelled its routes in November, 2020, and Air Canada followed suit two months later, 240 direct flights each month vanished into thin air. Now, passengers just trying to get from one part of Nova Scotia to another have to stop over in Toronto or Montreal – and sometimes both.
According to new reports, it’s a problem playing out in small towns and medium-sized communities across Canada. Big-city travel has rebounded nicely since the pandemic hit: The Canadian Press found that over the past five years, flight volumes rose 12 per cent between Toronto and Vancouver, 19 per cent between Vancouver and Montreal, and 51 per cent between Ottawa and Calgary. You can even score a discount on those airfares, despite widespread inflation. But regional air travel remains well below 2019 levels, and you’ll definitely have to shell out for a flight. There are 100-per-cent fewer routes, for example, between Quebec City and Rouyn-Noranda, and prices for the trip have rocketed up by 173 per cent.
The road less travelled
At the start of the pandemic, when most fliers were staying put, airlines seized the chance to streamline their fleets: out with the clunky older models, in with newer and bigger planes. Our two main carriers reduced their roster of short-haul routes, too. Air Canada scaled back much of its operations in Western Canada, while WestJet pretty much dropped out of the market east of Winnipeg. Instead, they opted to load passengers from smaller communities onto fewer, larger flights – not just because half-empty planes eat into profit margins, but because cutting down on gas-guzzling takeoffs lowers the cost of fuel.
That allowed airlines to boost their profits and simultaneously make up for a pretty serious pilot shortage. Thousands of pilots lost their jobs early in the pandemic, and it’s been hard to replenish their ranks: Some ditched the industry altogether, while others fled for gigs in the States, where high travel demand has translated to 40-per-cent wage hikes over four years. That pay disparity is very much on the minds of the pilots who’ve remained in Canada. After a year of contract discussions, Air Canada and its pilot union still aren’t close to a deal, which means more than 5,000 pilots could go on strike as early as Sept. 17.
Timed out
None of this helps Canadians trying to get around without a three-province plane detour. And for those who don’t have the means or inclination to drive, options are limited. In 2021, Greyhound cancelled the last of its service, blaming a lack of government funding and competition from Via Rail. But the train isn’t exactly a sure bet: Via’s routes were slashed by 55 per cent in 1989, and now 96 per cent of trips run along the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. Last year, just 59 per cent of Via’s passenger trains managed to get to their destination on time. (CN owns most of the tracks Via runs on and gives priority to its own freight trains.)
Sure, we could – and should! – invest in high-speed rail service. The federal government is looking into the possibility of 1,000 kilometres of dedicated tracks between Quebec City and Toronto, a stretch that accounts for 60 per cent of Canada’s population and 40 per cent of its GDP. But those trips still leave out residents in further-flung regions, who depend on timely air access for their medical appointments, their education, their groceries and jobs.
“Aviation is really a load-bearing wall holding our country together,” Reg Wright, the president and CEO of the Gander International Airport Authority, told The Canadian Press. “And there’s a lot of rural and remote communities like my own that are wholly dependent on air travel to have that economic and social utility and be meaningful participants in the global village.”
The Shot
‘Some people might be able to stay. Some people may not.’
The water and gas may not be on, but Jasper residents will be allowed to return to their homes, at least for a look, on Friday. In the wreckage of the wildfires, locals see an opportunity to both rebuild their community and to finally create the housing they’ve needed for decades. Read more about that here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Days after he was meant to start his new job, Birju Dattani has resigned as Canada’s human rights commissioner, following an investigation into past tweets that raised concerns with some Jewish groups.
Abroad: Just outside of Athens, more than 700 firefighters battled an 25-metre-high blaze that moved “like lightning,” burning homes and businesses and blanketing the Greek capital in smoke.
Way abroad: New findings from NASA suggest an entire ocean’s worth of water may be hiding beneath the dusty red surface of Mars.
Big bucks: After cutting hundreds of jobs, the CBC paid out more than $18-million in bonuses this year – with roughly $3.3-million going to just 45 execs.
Bigger bucks: Despite U.S. and EU sanctions, US$2.3-billion in dollar and euro banknotes have made their way into Russia since the invasion of Ukraine 2½ years ago.
