28 October 2015
Guest Comment, News/North, October 26, 2015 by David Connelly, a strategic advisor to aboriginal and industry leadership seeking to develop social economic opportunities by working together
Give them roads!
Like Roman leaders promising bread and circuses to quell the masses. Roads to communities, roads to parks, roads to resources. Promises sprinkled across the territory.
The political math is easy. Voters see and use roads. Politicians can chop roads into something for everyone. Roads distribute cash to community contractors and provide short term local jobs. Well-planned roads can improve safety, access and allow more efficient development of resources.
There is little co-ordination in the flood of promises; little consideration for getting the most for Northerners from our tax dollars and territorial debt.
Every election there is talk about southern taxpayers finding a billion dollars for an all-season Mackenzie Valley Highway. We had a window when industry wanted our energy resources and would have helped pay. Our chance to act has past and is unlikely to open before 2030.
We took too long and made it too uncertain and complicated. We succeeded in driving developers away from the Arctic Ocean to Alberta. Without industry, who will pay the road tolls, royalties and taxes to recover the cost of building the highway? Tourists, fish fishing, agriculture, crafts, harvesting and renewable energy cannot. Without future revenue it is doubtful governments will re-allocate over a billion dollars from other priorities.
Some roads can keep giving to the North. Other roads keep taking. The GNWT's NWT Transportation Strategy 2015 to 2040 is a thoughtful must-read for candidates. Under its three pillars – capturing opportunities, strengthening connections and embracing innovation the first priorities are, "Developing priority transportation corridors ... which will support sustainable resource development (including) improved access into the Slave Geological Province from Yellowknife to Nunavut; promoting and capturing opportunities with industry; and continuing to innovate."
Let's not make the same mistake with the Slave Geological Road to Resources as we did with the Mackenzie Valley Highway.
Twenty years ago there was momentum behind the Bathurst Road and Port initiative. An all seasons road from Yellowknife to the Arctic Ocean. A vision which could have turned proven metal deposits into economically viable multi-generational providers of road tolls, contracts, employment, royalties, taxes and impact benefit agreements and extended the life of the diamond mines. Naysayers won. Many worried a road "would let opportunities drive past Yellowknife." Two more commodity cycles came and went. Twenty ice roads were built and melted. But for diamonds, the NWTs mining industry has collapsed. Fortunately, diamonds are flown out not trucked. Most of the diamond mines plan to close in the next decade. We will lose their royalties, tax base, impact benefit agreements, employment, home owners, renters and customers.
The cost of metal mines are 250 per cent higher without an all-season road. The upfront cost of a road is prohibitive to any one mine. But it can be repaid over the lives of several mines.
These mines would provide road tolls, employment, impact benefit agreements, royalties and corporate, personal, municipal, fuel, payroll and school taxes. These revenues could build roads, schools and health facilities in communities.
Transportation corridors that keep building our territory, now there is a strategy for leadership to drive!
