03 Apr Billy Joe’s foolish causeway fix

Posted at 23:01h in That's life by

The Chronicle-Herald quotes Port Hawkesbury Mayor Billy Joe MacLean as saying tolls should be restored to the Canso Causeway, as part of an apparently forthcoming federal-provincial deal to improve maintenance on the 59-year-old structure.

This is a bad idea. Until they were abolished by Donald Cameron’s Progressive Conservative government in 1991, the Canso Causeway tolls ranked as one of the least efficient taxes in Nova Scotia history. I don’t recall the precise numbers, but the cost of operating toll booths around the clock swallowed up more than half the revenue they generated. It was a thinly disguised make-work project, and a poor one at that.

Contrarian has no problem with users paying for highways, but the way to achieve that is with motor fuel taxes, not with wasteful revenue schemes.