As P.E.I. faces funding drop, road builders urge Ottawa to keep the cash flowing

Road builders on Prince Edward Island are urging the federal government to keep infrastructure cash flowing into the province, with a deal to fund major road projects approaching its end date.

P.E.I.'s latest funding agreement with Ottawa includes roughly $200 million over a 10-year period from the federal government's Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program and New Building Canada Fund.

That funding is set to end in the next two to three years, and no replacement fund has been set up yet to give reassurance to long-term planners.

Mike Annear, with Kings County Construction and the P.E.I. Road Builders Association, says that's startling to workers in the industry — given that the money is being used to meet the province's growing demand for major road projects.

"It can be devastating to our industry, and actually to the Island. We'd like to see the budget increase. It's starting to increase in some of the other provinces; we need it to increase to catch up with the growth," he said.

"If you start adding all these housing [projects] and these people, we need to increase the amount of money that's going back into our infrastructure. So the province needs those federal dollars."

Last week, transportation ministers from across the country met in Quebec with many topics on the agenda — including federal funding.

"My provincial and territorial colleagues and I were able to share our concerns with the federal government with regard to transportation infrastructure funding, notably roads," Québec's minister of transport, Geneviève Guilbault, said in a release.

P.E.I.'s minister of transportation, Ernie Hudson, echoed that point in a provincial news release Monday, calling on Ottawa to put a new funding model into place.

"We must secure stable, long-term federal investment to maintain and improve our system," he was quoted as saying in the news release.

The provincial news release noted that when the transportation ministers met, the federal minister pledged to take their funding concerns to the Liberal cabinet.

In the province's fall 2024 capital budget, the P.E.I. government estimated it would spend more than $67 million on paving, roads, bridges and more in the next fiscal year. 

Annear says federal funding is critical to keeping Island roads cared for and creating new roads as P.E.I.'s population grows. Without that commitment, he said it's hard for businesses to plan for the future.

"Everything that's going on today, it makes me uneasy," he said.