EDMONTON — Alberta Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen has written an open letter to federal Minister of Transport and Internal Trade Anita Anand urging the government to take action on interprovincial mega-infrastructure projects in order to ensure Canada’s competitiveness and viability.
“Canada has been stuck in a situation where it cannot complete nation-building projects like the Canadian Pacific Railway that was completed in 1885, or the Trans-Canada Highway that was completed in the 1960s,” he writes. “With the uncertainty of U.S. tariffs looming over our country and province, Canada needs to take bold action to revitalize the productivity and competitiveness of its economy – going east to west and not always relying on north-south trade. There’s no better time than right now to politically de-risk these projects.”
He has proposed four recommendations to “strengthen Canada’s economic corridors and supply chains” by:
- Creating an Economic Corridor Agency to identify and maintain economic corridors across provincial boundaries, including consultation with both Indigenous groups and industry.
- Increasing federal funding for trade-enabling infrastructure, such as roads, rail, ports, in-land ports, airports and more.
- Streamlining regulations regarding trade-related infrastructure. This would include repealing or amending the Impact Assessment Act and other legislation to remove the uncertainty and ensure regulatory provisions are proportionate to the specific risk of the project.
- Adjusting the policy levers that support productivity and competitiveness.
“We ask the federal government to join us in a new approach to infrastructure development that ensures Canada is productive and competitive for generations to come and generates the wealth that ensures our quality of life is second to none,” he adds.
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