The most pressing transportation issues in Atlantic Canada will be on the agenda this week as Ministers and staff from the four Atlantic provinces meet in Mill River to exchange ideas and strategies in dealing with the challenges ahead.
Transportation Ministers and officials from Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are meeting over the next two days for the 10th Annual Atlantic Transportation Ministers Meeting prior to the upcoming national meeting of Canadian Council of Transport Ministers later this month in Quebec City.
“Meetings like these are a great opportunity to discuss transportation issues that have an impact on this region,” said Transportation and Public Works Minister Gail Shea, chair of this year’s meeting. “We know that our provincial systems are really part of larger regional and national networks and working together like this is a very important way to ensure that our transportation mandates and programs are designed intelligently to benefit our region as a whole. This will be the third of these meetings since I’ve become Minister, and I always come away from them with a greater appreciation of how inter-related our issues are and how willing our neighbouring provinces are to look at things on a regional basis.”
The 10th Annual Atlantic Transportation Ministers Meeting will take place September 9 and 10 at the Mill River Resort. The meeting and the agenda will see the four provinces taking turns leading a round-table discussion into each issue ending in greater regional awareness of what is important in each province and, from that, the Ministries can set direction and make decisions about how to work together for the benefit of the Atlantic region. Much of the content is similar to what will be deliberated upon at the annual national meetings of Ministers later this fall. Topics and issues to be covered include: the National Highway System, transportation policy development in support of trade and tourism, border crossings, small airports viability, impacts of various federal acts regulations and programs, and highway safety and regulation, among other regional issues.