MP Carr reverses earlier promise to visit Churchill

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This article was published 26/10/2017 (2961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Federal Energy Minister Jim Carr has no imminent plans to visit Churchill, despite promising a visit to the northern Manitoba town last week.

“I want to go to Churchill when it’s the best time for us to share what’s up to date,” Carr said Thursday.

On Oct. 13, Ottawa threatened to sue Hudson Bay Railway owner Omnitrax for $18.8 million if it didn’t repair the flood-damaged transportation link to Churchill within 30 days. That same day, Carr told the Free Press he’d be visiting the town of 900, located some 1,600 kilometres north of Winnipeg on the shore of Hudson Bay, “next week.”

However, two weeks later, Carr’s office said he has no plans to do so by this weekend, and couldn’t explain what caused the delay.

That’s irritated Grand Chief Arlen Dumas, head of the Association of Manitoba Chiefs, who is leading one of the two groups that formed a consortium, at Ottawa’s request, to transfer ownership of the rail line and Port of Churchill.

Dumas said the mixed messages aren’t helping a palpable sense of abandonment that has festered since parts of the rail line washed out 22 weeks ago.

“No one has taken the initiative,” he said. “The greater issue to me, is my community members in the North who are being held hostage — by Omnitrax and by the federal government. Their livelihoods are being used as bargaining chips.”

Dumas said he got a call from the Prime Minister’s Office after he led an AMC press conference Oct. 19, warning Ottawa’s legal threat “degraded our efforts” to restore rail service.

“They were quite concerned that I was so critical of the government,” he said.

Churchill faced a blizzard last week, and this week, Carr made a pre-scheduled visit to the Middle East for cabinet duties, yet Carr didn’t cite either reason when asked why he hasn’t visited the town.

“We’re encouraged by how the negotiations are going,” he said. “The 30-day clock is ticking, and we’re hopeful that it will have a happy ending.”

Two Manitoba MPs briefed on the talks say Ottawa is now negotiating how much money it’s willing to give the consortium to repair and run the line.

Dumas claimed a “faceless bureaucracy” was “misinforming” the PMO, Carr and other MPs — an allegation he first raised months ago, when cost estimates widely diverged between Denver-based Omnitrax, Ottawa and the consortium.

The grand chief accused officials of “being too conventional” in seeking “an arrangement that’s financially, in their option, responsible.”

Sources close to the talks say they’re not expecting Carr to announce a takeover deal whenever arrives in Churchill, and Carr has vaguely hinted at some initiative would part of an Arctic strategy.

The area’s MP, Niki Ashton, said in a recent interview residents had a “glimmer of hope” with the legal threat, but a lack of “concrete action” frustrated them.

“The federal response is not good enough,” said Ashton. “There’s no more time to waste.”

Meanwhile, the head of a granting agency aimed at restoring Churchill’s economy said he was perplexed by a letter Omnitrax’s Canadian head, Merv Tweed, published in the Free Press, taking shots at the fund.

“Manitobans would be better served asking what happened to the $4.6-M fund that was announced in September 2016, ostensibly to support ‘projects that grow sustainable revenue in the region,’” Tweed wrote. He was referring to the Churchill Region Economic Development Fund, which is administered by the government organization Community Futures Manitoba.

CFM noted it publishes all the fund’s projects online every three months. Those currently include a quarter-million dollars to retrofit asbestos in the town theatre and school, and slightly more for a hydroponic food-growing system at the local research centre.

But the grants, normally used to stimulate new job opportunities, also show the deteriorating conditions the town faces. Churchill’s Home Hardware store has been given $25,000 to help bring in a large portion of supplies to get through the winter.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca