In a joint announcement Thursday, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the federal government say they’ve reached an agreement on funding the protection of the Chignecto Isthmus.
Both provinces say they have committed $162.5 million, or 25% of the funding towards the estimated $650 million dollar project. The federal government had already committed to $325 million, or 50% in funding through the Disaster Assistance and Mitigation Fund.
On CBC radio Thursday, federal minister Dominic Leblanc said it was a “happy day”. But Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton wonders if the announcement had more to do with the impending federal election.
“My impression is that nothing really changed on the New Brunswick side,” said Mitton, “because the previous government had accepted the offer in the fall.” Both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick has signed a Memorandum of Understanding last year to advance preliminary work on the project, despite the fact that lawyers from both continued to pursue a court case seeking full funding from the federal government.
“I think that, you know, probably this government, the federal government, wanted to make an announcement around this before the federal election, which is likely to be called Sunday,” said Mitton.
And because of the impending federal election, Mitton is calling on all federal party leaders to make public commitments to the 50% federal funding as part of their campaigns. “There’s so much up in the air right now,” says Mitton. “I would like to see that commitment.”
The MLA says she has also reached out to New Brunswick Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Chuck Chiasson to ask him to ensure that the deal is locked in before a federal election call. “I hope that this does it,” says Mitton. “I hope that things are signed and and that there can’t be backtracking.”
Mitton says the MOU with Nova Scotia, and the emergency contingency planning of transportation routes across the Isthmus, are a good sign. “It feels like it’s starting to be taken seriously,” says Mitton, “after decades of people fighting for this.”
A news release from the province of New Brunswick says the project will take ten years to complete, with “preliminary engineering studies, design work and land acquisition occurring during the first half of that period and most of the construction taking place during the last half.”
The release says there will be two major components to the project: raising at least 13 kilometres of dikes to withstand rising sea levels, and the replacement and addition of a number of large and small aboiteaux, the special gated passages in the dikes that allow fresh water to drain but prevent tidal waters from coming in.
Mitton says that although the funding question appears to be settled, she still has questions about other aspects of the project, such as whether natural systems like salt marsh buffers will be incorporated into the design, and whether ongoing maintenance costs are being considered.
And she’s hoping that the decade long project won’t get completed too late. “Everything to do with this project has gone too slowly,” says Mitton. “And what that means is that there’s a risk any year that we’re going to have flooding and lives in our community are at risk.”
