$3-B all-weather road construction set to begin in Berens River

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This article was published 30/08/2015 (3715 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BERENS RIVER — Construction will soon begin on the next phase of a multi-billion-dollar road linking northern Manitoba First Nations to the south, the province said.

The Manitoba East Side Road Authority has announced the beginning of the next stage of construction of the $3-billion, 1,000-kilometre all-season road.

The next phase will take one year and will cost $12 million. It involves building the first of two bridges needed to link Berens River to Bloodvein First Nation. The road to Bloodvein was completed in the fall of 2014.

The project went to tender in May and was recently awarded to Ontario construction company Innovative Civil Constructors Inc. It will also see the creation of 50 jobs for Berens River residents.

“The announcement means a lot,” Berens River Chief Jackie Everett said. “It brings us closer to the all-weather road. It was only a dream at one point. When talking to the elders, a lot of them state they never thought they’d see this day.”

Everett said fly-in communities such as Berens River, which is about 400 kilometres north of Winnipeg, need an all-weather road to reduce the cost of goods and services and increase access to health care and social services.

Winter roads are only open for a handful of weeks each season.

Since 2009, the road authority has been working to build a permanent road network connecting Berens River and a dozen other First Nations on the east side of Lake Winnipeg — more than 36,000 people — to the outside world.

The project comes with a price tag of $3 billion — a 2011 estimate — and will see more than 1,000 kilometres of road built in the province, divided into two major areas. Right now, funding is only from the provincial government, with a 30-year timeline for the project.

Conservative Leader Brian Pallister called the project wasteful and said if elected, he would amalgamate the authority with Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation.

“The (authority) is a clear and egregious example of how this government can’t see wasteful spending when it’s staring right at them,” Conservative spokesman Howard May wrote in an email Sunday.

“Simply put, they’re building a road. You don’t need to create an entirely new and separate bureaucracy with its own logos, website, letterhead, administrative staff, communications staff, fleet of vehicles, office space downtown — the list goes on and on — to build a road,” May wrote.

Ernie Gilroy, CEO of the authority, said there’s more to it than that, and amalgamation would have a “very significant influence” on the project, which he said includes experts on aboriginal relations and economic development that MIT doesn’t have.

“We don’t just build roads, we build economic developments,” he said. “They’d need to hire them or replicate them in MIT.”

“Building a road is building a road — it takes time, but it’s not that hard. Our big mission here is to make sure that the local people in the local communities share in the benefits,” he said.

The authority signed contracts with all 13 First Nations involved, promising job creation for locals, as well as training and procurement of local goods, services and camps. Out of the 1,000 new jobs involved in the project, about half went to locals, Gilroy said.

Eric Robinson, minister of aboriginal and northern affairs, wrote off Pallister’s criticism.

“Mr. Pallister would be well-served if he actually visited some northern communities, and get an actual look at the people and the challenges they face on a regular basis,” Robinson said.

Robinson said the next big hurdle is securing federal funding, which he said has so far been limited to an investment of less than $3 million for training.

“If we had engagement from the federal government on a cost-share basis, we would get the project done in half the time,” Robinson said. “I’ll be raising (it) with whoever is elected in October at the national level.”

aidan.geary@freepress.mb.ca