MP calls for dredging

By Dan Hilborn
Published Sept. 7, 2005


The rookie MP for Burnaby-New Westminster is joining a chorus of voices calling on the federal government to provide new funding to dredge the Fraser River, to keep open the second largest port in the country and ensure the safety of homes and businesses along the waterway.

Peter Julian made the call less than one week after federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre told the Vancouver Sun that any future Fraser River dredging funds could not come from his ministry.

"The Fraser River dredging program has a shortfall of less than $4 million, and the response from the transport minister is that they don't fund port facilities directly," Julian said. "Well, they do, and they have in other parts of the country.

"That funding needs to be there to ensure we have the port facility and access to the port facility at all times," Julian said.

Lapierre told the Sun on Aug. 23 that a federal infrastructure program may be the best place to fund the dredging, which costs the Fraser River Port Authority more than $3 million per year.

In 1998, the federal government gave the port authority a one- time lump sum of $14 million to pay for its dredging operations, but that money has since run out. Dredging costs the port a total of about $7 million annually, but more than $4 million is recovered by selling the sand to other businesses.

Federal Industry Minister David Emerson also joined the call to establish a new funding program for Fraser River dredging, and said the issue may be comparable to the provision of funding for ice breaking along the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Sun reported that the Canadian Coast Guard provides 95 per cent of the funding for icebreaking work related to flood control.

Despite the support from local politicians of all stripes, including the mayors of all nine affected cities, Ed Kargl, vice- president of business development for the port authority, is not confident that the future federal funding will come through.

"I'm not very confident at all," Kargl said Tuesday morning. "The minister at our last meeting pretty much slammed the door on the funding strategy as we proposed it - which was a fund of about $50 million, which if properly invested would spin off the shortfall. He said Ottawa is not going to go along with that.

"Clearly, someone has to dredge the Fraser. We have to for navigation purposes. But there's a lot more than just that. There are other parts of the river such as secondary channels and we aren't going to do that because we don't have the money for it.

"We'll keep the river open for ships as long as we can, but if there's other dredging requirements, we'll say it has nothing to do with us."