John “Santa Claus” Duncan is back in town today, and this time his sack of toys might hold the most magical gift of all: the mythical McKenzie Avenue interchange.
The Vancouver Island North MP — the only Conservative up for re-election on the Island — has spent the past couple of weeks popping up all over the rock to make funding announcements on behalf of the federal government.
Today, he is to appear with B.C. Transportation Minister Todd Stone and Langford Mayor Stew Young at a news conference just off the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway and Admirals Road/McKenzie Avenue.
The location makes it likely the announcement will have to do with the long-awaited Saanich interchange. Young’s presence is an indicator that Duncan might have something for Langford in his bag, too — perhaps the completion of the Leigh Road interchange, a project that has been driven by Langford from the get-go.
If so, we’re looking at the most-significant roadwork since the completion of the Vancouver Island Highway Project in 2001.
The McKenzie intersection is the most crash-prone on the Island, with 79 collisions in 2013. Building an interchange there is seen as the key to easing the constipation of the Colwood Crawl.
“The No. 1 bottleneck in British Columbia, outside the George Massey Tunnel, is right here on Vancouver Island at that particular location,” Stone told the legislature in April.
Although highway construction is primarily a provincial responsibility, Stone has said the size of the project — $80 million or more, according to a radio interview he gave in May — meant B.C. would be looking for help from an arm of Ottawa’s New Building Canada Fund.
That $10-billion initiative funds bricks-and-mortar projects — roads, bridges, sewer, water — in which the cost is typically split equally among the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
Don’t know if that means Saanich would be on the hook for any of the interchange costs; Saanich municipal officials were conspicuous by their absence from the notice of the news conference. The project has always seemed like a higher priority to motorists going to and from up-Island and the West Shore than to residents of Saanich itself.
The interchange was supposed to have been built in the late 1990s as part of the Vancouver Island Highway Project, but those plans were scuttled in 1996, with the decision blamed both on a capital-spending freeze and internal wrangling in the NDP government of the day. Some New Democrats worried the interchange’s intrusion on Saanich’s Cuthbert Holmes Park would create a backlash.
In 2008, federal Conservative candidate Troy DeSouza came within 68 votes of defeating Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca Liberal MP Keith Martin by campaigning for the revival of the project; in fact, election day found DeSouza standing beside the highway, waving to drivers creeping through the Colwood Crawl.
The need for a McKenzie solution was so pressing that it actually backfired on the Conservatives in 2009 when Ottawa announced funding for the lower-priority but “shovel-ready” McTavish Road-Pat Bay Highway interchange instead. (And that was before we learned it would be built as a dizzying carnival ride designed to spit out discombobulated drivers in random directions.)
Likewise, there’s bound to be some politically motivated grumbling about the politically motivated timing of today’s announcement. Duncan has covered the Island like a German tourist in recent weeks, showing up at CFB Esquimalt to announce $17.7 million worth of projects for the base, in Victoria with $1.6 million for trades training, in Colwood to reveal $33.6 million worth of Parks Canada spending, in Langford to contribute to affordable housing, in Parksville to fork over $3 million for the water system, in Tofino to kick in $400,000 for a reservoir. …
The Globe and Mail reported last week that 83 per cent of projects approved under the New Building Canada Fund so far had gone to Conservative ridings. If so, the highway work would run counter to the trend, as southern Vancouver Island’s four federal ridings are split between the New Democrats and Greens. Since it’s taxpayers’ money that is being spent, some argue it should be up to the local member of Parliament, not the closest Conservative, to make the announcement.
Others couldn’t care if it’s Vladimir Putin who gets credit, as long as we finally get an interchange.
