Cyr Fears the Financial Repercussions Budget has on Future Generations

MLA for Bonnyville-Cold Lake Scott Cyr says there is nothing positive he sees in the provincial budget for our region and he fears what the financial repercussions of the budget may have on future generations.

“We had the Highway 28 mentioned in the budget as a long term goal and we have more money going into Water for Life,” MLA Cyr says if there was any positive take-aways, those would be it. However, neither of these investments are clear on how they will benefit the Bonnyville-Cold Lake region.

Highway 28 is earmarked as a goal and has detailed that work will be done near Red Water, AB and nothing further north. There was no mention of twinning the highway, adding passing lanes, extending power lines to allow a heavy load corridor to the region, nor was there mention of any work between Bonnyville and Cold Lake.

“That Water for Life is for funding stuff like the waterline from Cold Lake to Bonnyville,” Cyr explains the budget does not detail or earmark funds for this region, “just the program so far. I’m optimistic that something could come out of that. We’re asking to do the engineering to figure out the costs and how to do it.”

There was nothing in the budget regarding the hospitals in our region, Cyr says he’s hopeful that some of the infrastructure money the government announced it would invest will go to hospitals in our region. “They announced $4.4 billion dollars in ‘other’ infrastructure spending. I’m hoping that we have a piece in there.”

“We are running massive deficits to keep the lights on, as anyone knows, that’s a bad thing to do.” Cyr explains his biggest fear from the budget is what it means for future generations, “the fact is we’re pushing our debt to a future generation, our children. That bothers me to no end, that my little girls are going to have to pay for our mismanagement now.”