A Flin Flon city councillor isn’t letting Premier Greg Selinger off the hook over a question relevant to her community’s future.
Coun. Leslie Beck says that during a recent forum, Selinger gave her no assurance that western Manitoba will be considered as a route for a potential highway to Nunavut.
“He wouldn’t answer my question,” says Beck, who says she questioned Selinger at a Q and A meeting at last month’s Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention in Winnipeg.
Beck says there was an assumption that the oft-discussed highway would run up the east side of Manitoba.
“I asked for some assurances from the premier that these talks were still open and that…we [would] be included on the west side,” she says.
Beck says her question was initially misunderstood. She says she was “cut off” after offering a clarification, her question left unanswered.
After she returned to her table, Beck says a ministerial assistant gave her a business card and said the question could be addressed at a later time.
Beck says a west-side route for the potential highway could benefit Flin Flon, and that her understanding is that a route passing through Thompson on the east side would cost taxpayers significantly more dollars.
A highway linking northern Manitoba and Nunavut has been discussed for years, but no concrete announcements have been made.
According to CBC, a 2012 case study found that an 1,100-km road from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, to Sundance, Manitoba, would cost $1.2 billion.
That is widely viewed as a tough sell to taxpayers, but as the Winnipeg Free Press observed in 2012, the highway, along with an accompanying power line, “would save hundreds of millions of dollars annually in freight and fuel costs.”
Then there’s the fact that Canada’s newest territory – with 36,585 people and counting – is not yet accessible by road.
Frank Busch, an Aboriginal author and businessman originally from South Indian Lake in northern Manitoba, told the Free Press that “a moral responsibility” comes into play.
“Having parts of our country that are completely disconnected and do not share in the benefit of being Canadian after 150 years is inexcusable,” said Busch.
Churchill MP Niki Ashton supports a Manitoba-Nunavut road link but says Ottawa needs to step up to help make it happen.
The Reminder gave Selinger a chance to respond to Beck’s statements, but he had not responded as of press time.
