QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Rural Economic Development
Newfoundland and Labrador Fixed Link
December 1, 2022
According to your mandate letter from the Prime Minister, you must contribute to the development of infrastructure, “in line with the Government’s broader infrastructure strategy.” One goal of your government’s infrastructure strategy is:
Support major nation-building projects that will benefit people across various regions, connect our country and improve quality of life, including the Newfoundland-Labrador fixed transportation link.
Minister, could you tell Canadians and, in particular, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, where this project is? Do you have any idea of the level of expenses involved in this project and how much the federal government will be called upon to finance it?
That is a wonderful question. It is dear to my heart, senator, because it would be in the northern part of my riding and connected to mainland Canada.
This conversation has been going on for many years in our province of Newfoundland and Labrador. What is interesting is that technologies have changed over the years. My counterpart and friend Minister O’Regan was in Norway a few months ago and visited a subsea tunnel that was built at a quarter of the price that was estimated 20 years ago. So the prices are coming down.
On your question about the costs of this, as Newfoundland and Labrador MPs, we’ve had reach-out from people in the business sector, asking, “Would the Canada Infrastructure Bank please do a request for interest, because we are interested in doing this?”
I think that that is the best way to do it. It will not be money from the provincial government. It will be a loan, as you know, from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. But there is interest from the private sector to get this done. They see it as looking after our oceans with the whales issue. We are looking at how we get the transit, we’re doing transborder traffic and we’re doing traffic of goods and services from all over the world.
I think you are going to see this fixed link come, and it will be a public-private partnership and it will be through business driving this. At the end of the day, senator, if business is not supporting this, it cannot be a wish of the federal government. It has to be business supporting it, and they are telling us that this is what they need to see the movement of goods from Europe, especially now with the Northwest Passage opening up.
