Transport minister asking feds to prioritize economic corridors

By Alexandra Noad - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on February 22, 2025.

Alberta’s Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors has issued a call to action to the federal government to help ensure the country’s economy is competitive and successful amid tariff threats from the US.
On Friday Devin Dreeshen posted an open letter urging Anita Anand, federal minister of transport and internal trade and her colleagues to act and advance investments in interprovincial mega-infrastructure projects.
According to the open letter the “lack of leadership” from the federal government has caused many infrastructure issues including inadequate funding for trade infrastructure, federal red tape, such as the Impact Assessment Act which has added “major costs and significant delays” to projects and opaque funding programs have caused many applications for highway projects put forward by the Alberta government go without decisions for several years.
Alberta has worked to advance economic corridors by signing agreements with Saskatchewan and Manitoba to collaborate on joint infrastructure as well as a similar agreement was signed with Northwest Territories. The letter says Alberta hopes to see an agreement among all 7 western provinces and territories and eventually expand the economic corridors to the entire country.
The letter also states Alberta recognizes the importance of working with Indigenous communities on the development of major infrastructure projects, which Dreeshen believes will be key to their success.
Alberta is asking the federal government to take immediate action as the provinces are unable to tackle the Canadian economy on their own.
The letter is asking the federal government to create an economic corridor agency to maintain corridors across provincial boundaries, increase funding for trade-enabling infrastructure, such as roads, rail and inland ports, streamline regulations regarding interprovincial trade and revisiting how they support airports especiallty in less-populated regions of the country.
In a news release, Dreeshen says Canada is in a position where it can’t complete nation building projects like the Canadian Pacific Railway or the Trans-Canada Highway like they used to and with the looming threat of tariffs these projects are needed to encourage east to west trade rather than north to south.
“With the uncertainty of US tariffs looming over our country and province, Canada needs to take bold action to revitalize the productivity and competitiveness of its economy-going east to west and not always relying on north-south trade.”
Trevor Lewington, chief executive officer of Economic Development Lethbridge says Lethbridge is in the top 10 most vulnerable cities to US tariffs because of the agriculture it produces, however Economic Development Lethbridge is working with the Town of Coaldale and the Town of Taber to promote what southern Alberta has to offer for exports.
“That’s a marketing project to promote the agriculture richness that’s here and we’re both trying to attract new food processing to our region, but also promote the products and services that our region can export.”
Lewington adds he believes Alberta has a responsibility to help the global population.
“In my mind, southern Alberta has both the capacity and the responsibility to help feed that growing global population.”
According to Lewington the toughest part of building nation-wide corridors, but it must be a priority for the provinces.
“Getting all of the provinces to agree on one system and the differences is going to be challenging but I think it’s got to be a priority for all governments across the country.”

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