Provincial gateway council concerned
Published Friday November 6th, 2009
The New Brunswick Gateway Council is concerned the recent creation of two additional groups in Nova Scotia could lead to further delays in final decisions on funding.
The NDP government of Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter announced last month it is creating a gateway secretariat and an advisory council. The province said it will hire a chief executive officer - whose role and salary range would be the equivalent of the provincial deputy minister - to oversee the secretariat.
"The New Brunswick Gateway Council has been working very hard to create regional co-operation," New Brunswick council chairman Capt. Al Soppitt stated in a press release. "The council has initiated meetings with many other Gateway-focused councils in order to standardize priorities and progress toward having one Atlantic Gateway voice.
"This new secretariat and Gateway council will be yet another group with a provincial focus as opposed to a regional one. The Atlantic Gateway advisory council was put in place to advise and assist Minister MacKay in reaching this regional consensus. What we would prefer to see would be a joint commitment by all four Atlantic premiers to achieve common goals through the Atlantic Gateway Initiative."
Rayburn Doucett, the president and CEO of the Belledune Port Authority, who also sits on the provincial council, agrees the new Nova Scotia groups could add an extra layer of bureaucracy.
"We are now moving toward meetings with Nova Scotia and our goal has been and still is to speak with one voice from Atlantic Canada," he stated in the release.
"This cannot be achieved by setting up a new organization or more councils. It is only by working with the existing structure and with the individuals that are in place that this goal can be reached. I would urge the four Atlantic governments to support this concept and not add new structures."
The New Brunswick Gateway Council is the group's new name, selected to better represent its expanded membership.
The Southern New Brunswick Gateway Council was formed more than 18 months ago with a mandate to improve the competitiveness and efficiency of the region's transportation network and to promote the importance of trade, tourism and transportation to the region's economies.
The council released its wish list of 15 priorities to improve transportation infrastructure a year ago, but they've yet to land on the desk of Peter MacKay, the federal minister responsible for the Atlantic Gateway initiative.
MacKay said in September he was hoping to have a list of the region's priority funding requests in his hands this fall. The minister had earlier named a 13-member advisory panel of prominent business leaders from throughout Atlantic Canada to help put together the region's final wish list.
"We've put together a private-sector advisory group that is made up of some of the leading businessmen in Atlantic Canada," he said. "Coupled with the information we're receiving from provincial ministers all of this is being compiled for a report that we'll be receiving sometime later in the fall for contemplation. Then we want to make informed decisions about where the best investments will be made."
The New Brunswick council hopes to make progress on setting regional funding priorities in the near future. Soppitt said members of his group expect to meet with their counterparts on the Greater Halifax Gateway Council in the coming weeks to discuss greater regional co-operation.
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