Things looking up for town of Churchill after province makes funding announcement
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/01/2018 (2264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA — The mayor of Churchill says his northern Manitoba town is making headway in carving out a sustainable future.
“We’re looking for 2018 to be a prosperous and a joyful year. That’s what drives our momentum, to look ahead,” Mike Spence said Tuesday.
Last weekend, three provincial ministers visited the town of 900 on the shore of Hudson Bay, as did the chief representing Manitoba’s northern First Nations.
Churchill lost its railway lifeline in a May 23 washout, starting a feud between the federal government and Omnitrax, the American company that owns the local port and Hudson Bay Railway, which it says is too unprofitable to fix.
On Sunday, Finance Minister Cameron Friesen announced the province would fund repairs for the sprawling town complex, which is a provincially owned asset. That includes repairs to the roof and the movie theatre, which is used for education programming. The amount of funding will be determined in a public tender process.
The 225,000-square-foot complex includes the town’s school, hospital, theatre, bowling alley, curling rink, library and gym. It was built in 1975, when the town housed thousands of Cold War-era troops.
Sunday’s funding announcement was the first peek at Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister’s September pledge to contribute a half-billion dollars to the town over the next decade, including existing funding, on the condition Ottawa find a fix to the railway.
The town council met with Friesen, Municipal Relations Minister Jeff Wharton and Environment Minister Rochelle Squires. Spence said he asked Squires to consider a polar bear research centre; last month, he had objected to the province’s decisions to send two orphaned bear cubs to a Winnipeg zoo.
Also in town last weekend was the head of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak. Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson toured the town’s hospital, which she has said could be used to serve northern patients.
As the Free Press reported, the town is pushing for a greater role for the hospital as the province restructures its entire health-care system. Locals fear without a bolstered role, the town’s declining population will shift even more services south.
Churchill residents already fly south to give birth, after the town lost a birthing unit that had serviced locals and residents of western Nunavut.
Next week, Spence will accompany the hospital head and a federal official to Tadoule Lake, one of three First Nations communities near the Nunavut border that have asked to have physicians form Churchill help as needed, instead of flying to more distant cities.
Spence said the town has also proposed a working group between the federal, provincial and First Nations governments to use the medical amenities already in Churchill, which is located some 1,600 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Both Spence and North Wilson say a Northern Ontario school could be worth emulating.
Based in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, the Ontario school trains locals for health jobs, to reduce the amount of short-term workers. “It’s not about getting people in your facilities and then having them moving onto southern pastures; it’s about people who want to be part of your community,” said Spence.
Since September, a federal negotiator has been leading talks aimed at transferring ownership of the railway and port from Omnitrax into local hands. Spence is co-leading one of the two northern Manitoba groups aiming to run both assets together.
Meanwhile, a left-leaning think tank says Ottawa’s months-long dispute with Omnitrax shows the need for change to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
On Tuesday, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported cases arbitrated under NAFTA’s Chapter 11 dispute mechanism have cost Canada $95 million in legal fees – a figure it said it learned through an access-to-information request. That’s in addition to the publicly known $219 million paid out in damages and settlements.
In November, Omnitrax filed a Chapter 11 notice, saying it intends to file a claim for $150 million if Ottawa’s transfer talks don’t offer fair compensation to the Denver-based company. Omnitrax claimed Ottawa had sabotaged its northern Manitoba investments by closing the Wheat Board monopoly in 2012.
In Tuesday’s paper, the CCPA noted Omnitrax’s Canadian head, Merv Tweed, voted to end the Wheat Board when he was a Conservative MP, but said the company has a good chance of winning a hefty settlement from Ottawa.
“Even though Omnitrax’s legal case appears shaky,” the paper reads, “Canada has lost seemingly flimsy cases before.”
The CCPA argues outside investors could fund Omnitrax’s legal case in exchange for some of its rewarded compensation, a trend it says has become common in Chapter 11 disputes. It also says companies tend to win disputes more than governments.
The paper recommends Canada shelve the Chapter 11 mechanism, which it says would concede to one of the American demands in the ongoing NAFTA renegotiations.
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca