Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley wants partners backing a proposed oversized load corridor the federal government turned funding down for earlier this year to move ahead with the project.
The $12 million project would permanently raise utility lines, adjust streetlights and improve roads to ease the movement of large industrial vessels and components made at Sarnia-Lambton metal shops and fabrication businesses.
Currently, those industrial suppliers face high costs to temporarily raise utility lines and move large vessels and industrial components from their shops to Sarnia Bay so they can be shipped to customers outside the region.
Studies for the project have estimated the additional business that could come from a permanent corridor could add the equivalent of 2,600 full-time jobs in the coming years, as well as $263 million to Canada’s gross domestic product.
Sarnia, Lambton County, St. Clair Township and the Sarnia Lambton Industrial Alliance had pledged a total of $6 million to the project after several years of study and were seeking another $6 million in infrastructure funding from the federal government but were turned down in the spring.
“I think we should proceed,” Bradley said Wednesday following a Lambton County council meeting where his motion passed asking for a report on how the $6 million already pledged could be used to start work on the corridor.
“We have set aside half the money we need,” he said.
“This is not a time to be timid.”
The project has been led for several years by the industrial alliance, a group of local industrial services companies that have been expanding beyond their traditional customer base in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley to export markets outside of the region.
Bradley said he doesn’t want to see progress on the project stalled, awaiting a second attempt at federal funding a few years down the road.
He said that along with the jobs the corridor would help create, it would also strengthen secondary industries and Sarnia Harbour.
“We should move now . . . do as much upgrading as we possibly can” while still pursuing additional funds from the federal and provincial governments, Bradley said.
“Half the funding is in place already, so why would we sit and wait two years or three years for the provincial or federal government to respond?”
He said the “business case is there” and the project has wide support in the community.
Bradley said he believes the fact that Monte McNaughton, MPP for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, was named infrastructure minister in the new Ontario government “is a real asset.”
Bradley said McNaughton can help by talking with his federal counterpart about the Sarnia project and “how jobs can be created really quickly for a really minimal investment.”
He added the project could “strengthen a sector I think the provincial government will want to strengthen, which is the industrial base.”
pmorden@postmedia.com
http://www.theobserver.ca/2018/07/04/mayor-wants-job-creating-project-to-begin-without-the-feds