REGINA – The Saskatchewan government is not taking responsibility for rural roads, the opposition Tories said last week.
Money provided to rural municipalities for road construction and rebuilding has been capped, said Cannington MLA Dan D’Autremont.
But municipalities in the province’s southeastern corner have to go ahead with construction projects because of heavy road use by oil industry vehicles, he said.
D’Autremont said the loss of the Crow rate and rail line abandonment mean other municipalities will soon face a greater number of heavy trucks on their grid roads.
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Elgin Harrison, reeve of the RM of Reciprocity, said in past years the government has approved cost-shared construction and would pay its share later. This year the province will not approve any funding, he said.
“We still can collect from past years. It’s the roads that have to be built this year that we can’t get money for,” he said.
Harrison said there are roads his municipality should build this year that the province would normally fund to 60 percent.
“It looks like we’re going to have to put them on hold because it’s not going to be 40 percent that we pay, it’s going to be 100 percent,” he said.
In the legislature, transportation minister Andy Renaud maintained funding for roads has not been reduced.
“We still fund between 50 and 80 percent of the designated road system, and there are 53,000 kilometres of that system,” he said.
Oil money would help
Harrison said roads could be paid for with money the province gets from the oil industry, like royalties.
“We have close to 1,000 oil wells. The government is getting probably several million dollars a year just out of our one municipality alone.”
He said the province also earns money from the fuel tax paid by the approximately 300 tanker trucks operating in the southeast.
“In five years they went from spending 93 percent of (the fuel tax) back on the highway system to 27 percent in 1995,” he said. “Our highways are just terrible. They’re on the verge of being criminal negligence.”
Last year the RM of Reciprocity spent $250,000 on gravel for municipal roads. Harrison said there are about 595 kilometres of road in his municipality and oil trucks use nearly every kilometre.
“We’ve been able to keep them up but the costs are astronomical,” he said.
Other municipal officials have said cutbacks mean they will only be able to replace roads every 30 to 40 years instead of half that time.
Renaud said there is pressure on roads, but placed the blame elsewhere.
“The system is certainly under attack by the change, the federal government deregulation to transportation,” he said. “Mr. Goodale allows railways to abandon branch lines. The grain elevator companies are rationalizing their system. Certainly there is a lot of concern on our rural roads.”
