Manitoba Designates Land in Winnipeg as Proposed Location of Inland Port

(The Canadian Press – Winnipeg Free Press)

The Manitoba government has identified a chunk of land in northwest Winnipeg as the location of a proposed inland port for Manitoba. The designation was made Wednesday under the CentrePort Canada Act, which also establishes a non-profit corporation to promote and administer the proposed port.

The plan is to use the airport and its geographic location in North America as a hub to import goods from Asia and Europe, then distribute those goods throughout the rest of Canada and parts of the United States by air, rail and truck.

The inland port designation also helps qualify the province and city for millions more in federal money to build new roads, rail lines and add new infrastructure like sewers and utilities around the airport.

Dave Angus, president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, says this is the best economic opportunity for the province.

But critics say the plan is out of touch with economic and geographic reality. They say Minneapolis-St. Paul is better suited as a distribution hub, as it’s closer to major markets and also connected by rail to ports on the West Coast.

“All they’re doing is banging their head against the wall,” trucker George Smith said, adding higher Canadian fuel prices means more goods go through the U.S. rather than Canada. “There are not enough loads,” Smith said. “There isn’t an intermodal hub for that.”

Premier Gary Doer said this project won’t be Winnport, a similar plan 20 years ago that never got off the ground. “We have everyone working together now. Why didn’t past endeavours work? I don’t think everyone was at the table,” he said.

Last week, Ottawa and Manitoba pledged $85 million to fixing up Highway 75 from Emerson at the U.S. border north to Morris. The project is also being done, in part, to deal with heavier truck traffic heading north and south.

Bob Silver, co-chair of Doer’s Economic Advisory Council, said the hope is that when these things start coming together, more private investment will follow. That, in turn, creates jobs.

“Government will not build a building that says, ‘CentrePort’,” said Silver, president of Western Glove Works. “Private business will build the buildings when the infrastructure is there, the roads and sewers.”

Tory Opposition Leader Hugh McFayden said he supports the project, but want to examine the province’s plan to use tax-increment financing to fund it.

The TIF legislation, introduced on the last day of the spring session, is designed to create “tax-increment financing zones,” which are areas where increased tax revenue from improved properties are shovelled straight back into the same few city blocks.