New Brunswick’s minister of transportation and infrastructure says the federal government will need to shoulder the lion’s share of the cost to upgrade the dikes protecting the Chignecto Isthmus.
Jeff Carr told the legislature’s estimates committee on Thursday that Ottawa has already offered to pay for half the cost of the project, with the remainder to be split by New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. That offer, while appreciated, is not good enough Carr says.
“The federal government has offered (to pay) half of the bill and we believe that the federal government needs to be the major funder in this project, it is a piece of national infrastructure and it’s a critical one and we’ll continue as a government to make a priority on getting that done,” he said.
The Chignecto Isthmus is a narrow strip of marshy land that connects New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, protected from the ocean by a series of dikes built by the Acadians hundreds of years ago. Those dikes are in need of an upgrade to ensure the ocean is held back, with a report released last year saying that climate change-related sea level rise threatens to flood the area by the end of the century.
Green MLA Megan Mitton, who represents the area, fears that the increased amount of powerful storms means those dikes could fail even sooner.
“This essential piece of infrastructure that really is at risk every year, it really could happen this year that the dikes breach,” she said.
The cost for the project ranges from $190 million to build new dikes, to $200 million to repair and raise the existing ones, all the way to $300 million to raise the dikes as well as install steel sheet pile walls at select points. It’s estimated that construction could take up to a decade.
That’s too much for the provincial governments of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to take on, even with the feds paying for half, Carr says.
“The behind scenes work is happening between the two provincial governments on governance structures and those pieces like that, we just need the federal government to be at the table in a more substantial way,” he said.
“We appreciate their generous offer, we really do … but we feel the federal government needs to take a more important role.”
Progress towards a funding agreement is being made, Carr told the committee, with an upcoming face-to-face meeting with all parties currently being planned.
But Mitton says she doesn’t want to see the project delayed over disagreements on the funding formula.
“I know that there’s concerns over funding and I don’t want to see haggling over percentage points over who’s going to pay for what share and (then) be too late to protect the people in my community, so that’s what I’m really worried about,” she said.
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