Wanderings – Carney summer travel plan no break
The federal government just announced its planned “Canada Strong Pass” – an incentive to get people to travel in Canada more. The program offers some free admission perks for youth, free or discounted VIA travel for youth, and free day-use entry to national parks for everyone. While the idea of a travel program to get people to travel domestically is great in theory – Prime Minister Mark Carney’s travel plan misses the mark entirely.
Discounts for families to travel this summer are great, if people know in advance that they’ll happen, and if they are available for a wide array of people – sadly, these are not.
Most families with kids are planning their travels months in advance and are not waiting until June to see if there may be something available. Ever try booking a hotel or cottage to stay at in Prince Edward Island or Charleston Lake? If it wasn’t booked six to nine months in advance, good luck to you. Your travel plans will quickly change from the red sandy beaches of PEI to the charming hills of Pembroke in very short order. No offence to Pembroke, of course.
Discounted and free tickets on VIA Rail are great, if you can rely on the trains to operate on time – or at all – but outside of the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, what options are there for travel? A five-day trip across Western Canada in a 70-year-old reclining chair on rails is what you get unless you pay for the upgrades. Tempting, but no thanks.
Day-use passes for the national parks is a great idea. In fact, it should be something always offered. Our tax dollars pay for national parks and museums. Our municipal taxes pay, in part, for municipal parks, and we don’t pay admission for those. Federal and provincial parks and museums should be the same.
In the official release from the federal government, and subsequent responses from the Department of Canadian Heritage, no reasons were provided on how they developed their program. No one at that department was willing or able to answer why there were no discounts or incentives for people 25 or older, or for those with no children under 18 years of age – except for the free Parks Canada day pass. For those people, you should want to travel domestically purely out of patriotic duty to your country – more or less.
Frankly, this is a nonsense program announcement before the politicians take an unearned summer break. It is a distraction from the real issues facing the country, and it will make little difference in travelling except for some crowding at certain federal attractions.
People here are not travelling in Canada, or elsewhere, because they are worried about the economy – or they cannot afford it. A free pass or a discount is great if you have the means to be able to use it. Free isn’t free, after all.
Our economy is not doing well. All economic indicators are pointing to a recession, and people have seen no redress in wages compared to the record inflation that happened in the last five years.
Housing costs are through the roof. Rent is more than double what it was before the pandemic. Energy costs are high. Food costs are high. Mortgage rate increases caught a lot of people by surprise. And jobs are getting more difficult to find.
People can’t afford to travel just like they can’t afford many other things. Families – with or without kids – are unable to pay for vacations, even discounted ones.
Carney says those solutions are coming to substantially fix the economy – when? After the summer break? Too little, too late. If Canada’s economy needs a radical change, why isn’t the government sitting in the House of Commons all summer to effect that change?
This summer travel plan, paid for by us, which gives some of us discounts and the rest the bill, is an unworkable scheme that benefit the few, while the majority pays.
A better solution to this is to have MPs sit on Parliament Hill over the summer and get to work on fixing economic issues, attracting new businesses, and building new trade relationships. Those actions will help build Canadians’ confidence in the economy, and maybe then everyone will feel better about booking a vacation – domestically or abroad. No half-measure incentive programs required!
This column was originally published in the June 25, 2025 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.