Are we in store for the mother of all campaign promises?
I couldn’t help but think of that possibility after reading Delta MP Carla Qualtrough’s letter to Premier John Horgan with regards to a new crossing of the Fraser River.
Dated May 15 and included on this week’s Delta council agenda, the letter details how the Liberal MP was pleased to learn the region’s mayors and First Nations chiefs have reached a consensus on a new crossing, but the crux of the correspondence is in the fourth paragraph where she touches on the availability of federal funding for such projects. Qualtrough states the Liberal government has “committed significant funding” for these kinds of large-scale undertakings, adding that, in her opinion, a replacement of the George Massey Tunnel would fit such parameters.
You don’t even have to read between the lines to ascertain that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals would be willing to throw a substantial amount of money at the project, but the only hitch is there isn’t one for the feds to support because at this point all we’ve got is the provincial NDP government studying potential crossing options.
That exercise isn’t expected to be completed until the fall of next year, way too late for Liberal re-election purposes, which is presumably why Qualtrough is not only impressing upon Horgan the urgent need for a new crossing but the necessity to identify the project as a provincial priority. If he does so by this fall, I suspect a whopper of a campaign pledge – perhaps something in the half-billion-dollar range – would quickly follow.
A key member of Trudeau’s cabinet who’s looking to get re-elected in what’s traditionally been a right-of-centre riding, Qualtrough would get great mileage out of an announcement that provides “significant” federal dollars to address a traffic bottleneck that’s been the bane of commuters around here for decades. It would also take the age-old practice of using our money to buy our votes to new heights, making former Delta MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s pre-election spending spree four years ago look like chump change.
The only question that appears to remain is whether there will be a crossing identified in time to be the recipient of the Liberals’ largesse.
