I was pleased to visit Barry’s Bay to deliver $1,872,740 in funding from the Federal Investing in Canada program. The funds will be put towards the rehabilitation of Paugh Lake Road.
The funding for the rehabilitation of Paugh Lake Road is helpful in the wake of the high water this spring across the Upper Ottawa Valley.
Earlier this year, Paugh Lake Road was washed out. It is a critical evacuation route, so to have it cut off puts the entire community at risk. With the high cost of rehabilitating the road, the Township can only do limited work. This injection of funding will allow for the much needed work to be completed.
The project will rehabilitate approximately 11.7 kilometres of Paugh Lake Road. This fall, a culvert replacement is the first on the to-do list. Ditching, guard rail installations, sidewalks and road resurfacing will be done next year.
Paugh Lake Road is a key emergency route in Madawaska Valley Township. Paugh Lake Road serves as a connector between Highways 60 and 17. By the Federal Government providing this funding, it will allow the township to fund other infrastructure projects. The new construction will also see the installation of new culverts which will allow water to drain properly.
This project was part of ten infrastructure projects in Eastern Ontario funding through the Investing in Rural and Northern Communities Infrastructure stream of the Federal Investing in Canada program. Of these ten projects, five are located in Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
Maintaining infrastructure is expensive for rural and remote municipalities. The challenge is a sparse population, spread out over a large area. Significant infrastructure is necessary to maintain, with a smaller tax base with which to fund repairs. That is why the previous-Conservative Federal Government expanded and made the gas-tax infrastructure fund permanent.
In 2014 it created the Building Canada Fund, which the Investing in Canada program is funded through. These investments helped give all municipalities access to a stable and predictable source of infrastructure funding, and periodic extra funding for emergency or shovel-ready projects.
Pictured in Photo (L-R): Operations Supervisor Mike Phillips, MP Cheryl Gallant, Operations Manager Hilary Kutchkoskie, Treasurer Amanda Hudder, Mayor Kim Love, Councillors Mark Willmer, David Shulist, Carl Bromwich