The need to read the fine print

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This article was published 15/08/2023 (793 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pre-election promises are the empty calories of politics.

The combination of tax cuts and new spending commitments can be irresistible sweet treats at first glance, but sometimes have dubious nutritional value when voters take a closer look at the ingredients.

Heather Stefanson and the Progressive Conservatives revealed a passel of promises dressed up as government declarations — from a $1.5-billion upgrade for the Health Sciences Centre to $1 million to help the Winnipeg Sea Bears bid for the 2025 Canadian Elite Basketball League championship — prior to a 60-day blackout on announcements about government programs, a mandate in the Election Financing Act.

It’s a time-worn political ploy, one the NDP and former premier Greg Selinger used on the eve of the 2016 provincial election campaign, which it ended up losing to Brian Pallister’s PCs.

Stefanson’s proposals were so plentiful that one commitment to fund studies for a second deepwater port on Hudson Bay almost sailed beneath the political surface.

The province has committed $6.7 million to a investigate a project by NeeStaNan Projects Inc., an Indigenous company from Calgary. It seeks to build a port at the mouth of the Nelson River that would be the terminus of a utility corridor from the landlocked provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Rail lines and pipelines would be built within the utility corridor that would cross through Treaty 8, Treaty 6 and Treaty 5 territories in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to transport commodities such as potash, natural gas, wheat and bitumen for export abroad.

NeeStaNan says using the proposed port would save thousands of kilometres from existing shipping routes that use ports in Vancouver, Prince Rupert, B.C., or Thunder Bay.

Manitoba’s funding for the studies, which would include assessments of the project’s environmental and social impacts, is contingent on similar support from Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Myriad questions surrounding the project would need to be answered during the company’s research.

Among them is Port Nelson’s viability as a deepwater port.

The site was considered for one during the 1910s, and a bridge and artificial island were built, but questions about the Hudson Bay’s depth at the mouth of the Nelson led to a Hudson Bay port being built instead in Churchill, which remains in operation today.

NeeStaNan must also address how the Nelson River port would affect the Hudson Bay environment, and how the utility corridor will maintain the northern ecosystems of three provinces while transporting potentially hazardous commodities such as bitumen, the petroleum product mined at oilsands megaprojects in northern Alberta.

It must also figure out how to maximize the port’s shipping business, which has proven to be a difficult task for those who’ve owned the Port of Churchill, whether it was U.S.-based Omnitrax or the Arctic Gateway Group, a consortium of First Nations and local governments that took over the port and the Hudson Bay Railway in 2018.

NeeStaNan says it has many First Nations on board, and its website mentions how an economic driver such as a port, owned by an Indigenous company, could improve opportunities for First Nations, Métis and Inuit people, many of whom rely on government assistance.

The port would bring new industry to Manitoba, which also relies on federal money, in the form of transfer payments, to pay for the services it provides its citizens.

The Nelson River port project may not be the usual junk-food politicians hand out like Halloween candy during an election campaign — but like many things, it’s critical that we read the ingrediants list carefully before we decide if wew’re buying.