Strathgartney Park will be preserved from highway development- that’s good news. Indeed, the park should be expanded. But while it’s great that so many of us spoke up successfully against ruining it, the newly-stated intention of the PEI government to build a new section of highway in the Bonshaw-New Haven area is still a flagrant waste of our province’s finances.
There remain many critical questions about the wisdom of spending eight million of our dollars on another highway mega-project. Where will the money come from to maintain the smaller roads and byways of our Island? What additional spending cuts will be made in other departments? Should we be paving and destroying farm land and forests? Just because the federal government wants to give funding, should we base our economy on these types of expensive projects and import-export trucking, instead of supporting local production of Islanders’ basic needs? When will we start getting off the fossil fuel addiction that’s burning away our natural world?
Safety on this section of the Trans Canada could be improved with a fraction of the cost and destruction. In fact the proposed project ignores the safety problems of high speed traffic in Bonshaw and New Haven.
This is another in a long history of gifts to large construction companies, and another blow to our feeble attempts to be the ‘Green’ province.
Strathgartney Park may soon be the only undeveloped green space in the area.
It reminds me of the lonely big beautiful tree in the middle of the clear-cut near our home: a small oasis amid the destruction.
We can do better! I hope our government will reconsider the long-term impact of this project.
Tony Reddin,
Bonshaw