The tab to fix rural roads in the North Peace is quickly nearing $1 billion, but the region is having little luck securing an increase in provincial funding.
Jackie Kjos, who helms the rural roads task force for the Peace River Regional District, gave the board an update Thursday in which she shared few successes and listed the many challenges that threaten to cut off communities and shut down industry.
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“Our roads are way worse in 2020 than they were in 2018,” Kjos said.
The state of the roads have caused recent havoc for business, according to Kjos.
Canfor’s sawmill in Fort St. John came within three days of shutting down because of a rural road slide in the Graham and Upper Halfway area.
In Upper Cache, a large canola operation couldn’t ship out a time-sensitive load due to road bans, and a buffalo rancher spun out in an accident that killed half a dozen calves at $2,000 a head.
Road bans this year have lasted 104 days — the fourth longest stretch in 40 years, Kjos said.
“There’s real economic impacts that are hitting not just people in the rural area, but the communities that are supported,” Kjos said.
The good news is that the region’s $20 million budget for rural roads hasn’t been touched while others in the province have seen annual cuts of up to 20%.
The bad news is there are up to 400 kilometres of rural roads that need to be brought up to standard — at a cost of about $1 million per kilometre.
And that’s not including the cost to repair any slides.
The cost to fix Farrell Creek hill alone is $100 million, while there are seven slides threatening the Upper Halfway road, Kjos said.
“Any one that can go at any time,” Kjos said. “There’s 900 people, 6,000 loads of Canfor’s wood back there. It is catastrophic what would happen if we lose one of those roads that are the only access like that.”
Key corridors like Beryl Prairie, Aitken Creek, and Golata Creek “have fallen apart,” Kjos said.
Three-quarters of permitted extraordinary loads hauled in B.C. are in the northeast. And road conditions are expected to get worse as the province ramps up plans to reclaim dormant and orphan wells, up to 625 per year.
On top of it all, there has been a revolving door of district managers at the Ministry of Transportation — the Peace region is now on its fourth manager in three years. And the task force only gets a short lobbying window of five minutes when meeting with ministers and their deputies.
“We’ve been playing pretty nice,” Kjos said. “We might need to apply a little more pressure.”
The task force relaunched in 2017 after it was first established in 1997 to lobby for more rural roads funding. In 1998, the region got $11 million; in 1999, $6.5 million; and later $103 million. But times have changed, and getting any significant new dollars has been a hard sell, Kjos said.
“The economics were different at that time,” Kjos said. “We were pulling in between $1.6 to $1.8 billion a year in oil and gas, so it was quite easy to build a business case — very difficult in this environment to build a business case, even before COVID-19 came along.”
Tumbler Ridge Mayor Keith Bertrand suggested increasing enforcement to keep industry accountable for damaging the roads by overloading their trucks.
“I can tell you from personal experience, not all loads are 100%, and a lot of the deterioration of those roads is because of overweight loads,” Bertrand said.
Kjos said she was reluctant to step in between the ministry and its relationships with contractors and CVSE.
“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” Kjos said. “Our goals are no different than the ministry of transportation’s, in that we want a healthy industry but we want to protect the roads, so the person who lives on the road and drives a minivan can get to town.”
Kjos presented a 10-minute video on the state of local roads at the meeting as part of her lobbying efforts. In it, the region’s clay soils are compared to peanut butter when thawing or wet.
Bertrand suggested Kjos include pictures of a fracking convoy.
“Meeting it on the road, it’s quite intimidating, especially on a rural road,” he said. “That might be a challenging task, to get a capture of a convoy, but it’s a pretty impressive sight and I’m sure Victoria has no idea.”
Director Tony Zabinsky, a councillor from Fort St. John, noted concerns about the region’s dwindling aggregate supply, largely being taken up by BC Hydro for the Site C dam.
“We’re finding that small gravel pits are already being used to their full capacity,” Zabinsky said.
“It’s going to affect the rural roads and building these things … If we got to bring in aggregate from another region the trucking costs are going to be astronomical.”
Kjos said that is part of her workplan. Local gravel supply is critical for the long-term.
“We’re questioning where gravel is being allocated this year, in particular where we got some roads that you’re bottoming out with a four-wheel drive and it hasn’t made the list. There’s a few of those we’re concerned about,” she said.
Kjos did note that the task force has seen some success in getting more pullouts built, and that a community meeting with Director Karen Goodings helped to bring improvements to the Milligan-Peejay road, which was in “terrible shape’ in early 2019. A planned $100,000 spend for pothole repair turned into $4 million of pavement overlay, she noted.
“That was a gain of $3.9 million, which we were pretty happy on achieving,” Kjos said.
Goodings suggested a meeting with the premier would go a long way to highlight the region’s problems.
The board must get the province “to understand how important the roads are to economy of our area,” Goodings said, “and to make sure to get that message out that we’re in fact prepared to boost the economy if the province would be prepared to help us out with some funding.”
— with files from Matt Preprost and Tom Summer
Email Managing Editor Matt Preprost at tsummer@ahnfsj.ca
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
