New Brunswick premier sends Carney letter outlining priorities, wish list

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This article was published 01/05/2025 (472 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt has written to the newly elected prime minister calling for urgent action to develop national trade and resource corridors to provide an alternative to commerce with the United States.

“Trade and resource corridors are urgently needed to move goods and resources across the country,” Holt said in the letter dated Thursday.

“As Canada’s most trade-oriented province, New Brunswick needs unimpeded access to markets across Canada, and the rest of Canada needs full access to New Brunswick’s seaports.” 

Mark Carney, whose Liberals won a minority government in Monday’s federal election, promised during the campaign to create a $5-billion fund to accelerate port, railway, inland terminal, airport and highway projects.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump first threatened to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada, the premiers and federal government have been working to tear down interprovincial trade barriers and expand international markets.

However, when asked for a timeline for such a resource corridor, Holt cautioned that it is “complicated to predict” one.

“There has been quite a bit of talk of establishing trade corridors, energy corridors, resource corridors. What does that mean exactly, right? Are we talking pipelines? Are we talking rail? she told reporters at her weekly news conference.

She gave the example of the defunct Energy East project – a 4,500-kilometre pipeline to transport crude oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to Quebec and New Brunswick. The project was announced in August 2013 and cancelled in October 2017 after strong pushback from environment groups and politicians in Quebec.

But now the conversation around pipelines has changed, Holt said, because of the trade war with the U.S., and the potential that Canada’s export access to that market will be further restricted. “There’s a lot of alignment between the premiers and the federal government on the need to strengthen and build our trade and energy and resource infrastructure.”

Holt’s letter also touched on several other subjects, including improving access to health care; tapping the potential to exploit critical minerals such as tungsten and molybdenum; ensuring New Brunswick gets its fair share of immigrants; and building more homes. 

As well, the premier urged the newly elected Liberal prime minister to make full use of Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, located in her province, to expand soldier training in unspecific new areas. Gagetown, she said, “is Canada’s largest military training area and has ample space to support an expanded role in training our soldiers for new challenges.”

In his platform, Carney made a number of promises to improve national defence, including by modernizing the recruitment process to attract more soldiers. He would do that by increasing salaries, building more on-base housing and improving health and child care services. He also pledged to create a new defence research bureau for domestic artificial intelligence, quantum computing and cybersecurity technology.

Holt ended the letter on a hopeful note, and added she would appreciate an opportunity to meet with the prime minister. “While we face unprecedented uncertainty in a destabilized world, we can all be certain of this: Canada will rise to meet whatever challenges lay ahead.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2025.