By Thia James

City to seek support for second bridge from Northern communities

Nov 13, 2013 | 5:29 AM

Prince Albert’s city council on Tuesday approved forwarding a resolution calling for the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) to lend its support to the city’s bid for a second bridge.

But the city’s mayor, Greg Dionne, said he would be bringing the issue up at the New North mayors and councillors meeting at the Prince Albert Travelodge on Thursday. He will be seeking the support of mayors of Northern communities for a second bridge in Prince Albert.

New North represents 35 northern Saskatchewan communities, including Cumberland House, South End and La Loche.

“This is a Northern issue,” he said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “It’s just not a Prince Albert [issue].”

The aim of soliciting support from the Northern leaders is to add weight to the renewed push for the second bridge ahead of next year’s SUMA convention.

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New North supported the city’s push for a second bridge in the past, writing letters, Dionne said.

“But what we’re doing is we’re putting pressure on SUMA. Like, I don’t understand why the board does not make those decisions. Why do they have a resolutions committee making those decisions. To me, that’s a board decision,” he said of SUMA’s resolutions approval process.

At the SUMA convention, the resolution approved by Prince Albert will go to a resolutions committee, which makes a recommendation to SUMA’s board. Dionne said that last year, the city brought forward a similar resolution to SUMA and it didn’t clear the resolutions committee.

“Because, they claimed it was our issue and not a regional issue. Well, that’s untrue. As you know, it’s a regional bridge. It’s not our bridge…”

He pointed to a resolution that the Town of La Ronge put forward and SUMA approved, which he said only benefitted La Ronge. “If you can do it for them, you can do it for us,” he said.

“The pressure is on SUMA to stand up and represent their membership.”

The importance of a second bridge in Prince Albert is growing with the number of vehicles travelling along Highway 2, as Coun. Don Cody pointed out. With twinning work on Highway 11 now complete, and the completion of the St. Louis bridge looming, he expects traffic on Highway 2 to increase.

“That traffic has to go across that bridge. And if you add 6,200 more cars a day, and you add double the cars over there, I can tell you, if it [the Diefenbaker Bridge] ever goes down again, that bridge will have traffic clean up to the cemetery. That is not acceptable. It just simply isn’t acceptable.”

He added that he believes the city should put as much pressure as it can on SUMA, because he thinks it’s the “pressure point.”

“Last year, they didn’t recognize this as a provincial resolution. They recognized it as a regional resolution. Well, it’s not regional, it’s provincial. It is provincial because let’s face it, 80 per cent of the traffic that goes north has to come through here. And if that isn’t … provincial, I don’t know what it is.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames