During recent budget debates in the legislature, I asked the Minister of Natural Resources when the Shubenacadie Canal Commission could expect an answer to a funding request made at a meeting with the minister over a month earlier. We quickly learned the NDP had made the decision that it would not be contributing $500,000 to critical restoration work on the canal's Dartmouth infrastructure. It just hadn't told the commission. The result is the canal commission will now lose $500,000 each from the municipality and the federal government which had been committed pending provincial cost sharing. This after the Minister of Finance said he was trying to take advantage of all funds available for cost sharing from other levels of government.
The canal commission is an agency established by provincial law to manage provincially owned assets between Dartmouth and Maitland. This decision may end up costing the province significantly in future years. Infrastructure is collapsing and may lead to flooding. Buildings, trails, and parkland are in need of maintenance and repair. The commission has been successful at securing matching dollars from the private sector, foundations, and other levels of government, but almost all of those grants and contributions require provincial capital contributions to trigger.
The waterway has many roles. It a source of drinking water and farm irrigation in some areas, and historic remnants, flood control, and active transportation routes in other parts of Nova Scotia. In the absence of capital funding, the provincial treasury may have to take on the full cost of operating and maintenance work, at much greater cost to taxpayers.
Created in 1986, the commission first saw its operating budget from the province slashed by the Tories in 1999 from $186,000 to $32,000. The commission continued to receive periodic capital funding for work on canal infrastructure. The commission is has been extraordinarily effective with limited funds. Even as a solely volunteer organization, it takes far more than $32,000 annually to cover operating expenses of the interpretive centers, trails, and land it manages for the province. The loss of capital funding makes things far worse.
The minister says that funding is gone for at least three to four years. Meanwhile, the infrastructure becomes more expensive to maintain and repair, and cost sharing opportunities are lost. That may end of the ability of the commission to leverage volunteer support, and significant dollars from other levels of government and the private sector.
At the end of the day this is about more than just money. It's about the treatment of hardworking volunteers. The Minister of Natural Resources did not even bother to write the commission and tell them they had been denied funding - he left them hanging. The minister also hasn't responded to a list of nine issues the commission says would help move the commission's business plan forward at have no cost to the provincial treasury. It's becoming rapidly clear that, despite the NDP saying the commission needed better provincial support in opposition, now in government, that view no longer applies.
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