By Andrew Macdonald
- MacPolitics: Tory Campaign Manager and Agency Entrepreneur Chad Bowie Condemns Trudeau Gov New Policy Banning Money For Large Twinning Projects – ‘My Folks Won’t Walk Ten Hours From Monastery To Loblaw In Antigonish To Get Groceries’
Back in 1991, at a Strait Region media job, I attended a multiple fatal car accident, involving a family from Ontario at Monastery, Antigonish County. As I recall a family of five died when their car on a two-lane deathtrap highway and a petroleum truck crashed.
A dangerous location for many historic accidents, Monastery is still operating as a two-lane deathtrap highway.
While Don Cameron became the first NS premier to call for a twinned highway from Amherst to Sydney – he was premier in 1992, the road to the Canso Causeway is still not twinned.
Then a Liberal leadership contender in 2021, Labi Kousoulis promised a twinned highway from Yarmouth to Sydney if he ever became premier.
Originally, then premier Iain Rankin was not for twinning to Bridgewater or the Canso Causeway, believing vehicles pollute, when he was a Liberal leadership contender.
During the 2021 election, Rankin did a 360-degree turnaround and promised twinning to Bridgewater and the Canso Causeway, the gateway to Cape Breton.
But now that the Trudeau Environment minister has declared Ottawa will no longer fund large-scale road twinning, at least until the Trudeau regime is still in power – I dare say twinning to Cape Breton and Bridgewater is a dead issue.
The Notebook on Saturday reported a journalism deep dive on the Trudeau ban for new highway monies to go to the provinces – those stories – three of them – are found elsewhere on this website.
For this story, I caught up to Monastery-raised Chad Bowie, who operates a campaign management and PR firm in Ottawa. He specializes in helping to elect Tory candidates across the country.
His firm is called The Chad Bowie Group.
I spoke to Bowie, who was fresh from attending the weekend before the NS Tory convention and being the youngest campaign manager for any political party in NS when he as a 26-year-old managed the Tory Jamie Baillie campaign in 2017 – a campaign that saw then Liberal premier Stephen McNeil win by a 15,000 province-wide vote margin.
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced earlier in the week that the Trudeau government would no longer fund large-scale twinning projects – because cars pollute.
Thankfully, in 2018, the Trudeau government provided $90M in co-funding with the Nova Scotia government of Stephen McNeil to build the 40-km twinned highway between New Glasgow and Antigonish, which opened last summer. In 2018, Ottawa also gave funds for a $90M twinning to Hubbards and more funds for twinning to Wolfville.
Now, the federal government says it will no longer co-fund new large road construction with the provinces.
This means Ottawa has no desire to twin the 103 HWY ALL The Way To Bridgewater, where 26 people have died since 2009. It also means no federal money twin the 104 HWY to the Canso Causeway.
Word from Ottawa on not funding new large-scale twinning projects came on Thursday when Trudeau’s Environment Minister Guilbeault gave a speech in Montreal saying Ottawa will not fund new road projects in an effort to battle climate change. The thinking is that new highways promote more gas-combustion vehicles on roadways.
“Guilbeault noted that about one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation,” reported The Montreal Gazette.
“While his government supports electrification of vehicles, it has also been investing heavily in other programs and plans to move Canadians out of private cars and onto public transit or active forms of transportation,” added the newspaper.
The Gazette reported the Liberal government has committed $30 billion to develop public transit since 2016, and has announced the country’s first recurrent financing program for public transit projects, which will provide $3 billion per year for projects starting in 2026.
The Liberal government also introduced an Active Transportation Fund in 2021, investing $400 million into projects that encourage walking, cycling, and the use of wheelchairs, scooters, e-bikes, roller blades, snowshoes and cross-country skis.
“Besides funding these types of projects, all levels of government must make the hard decision to stop expanding the road network,” said Guilbeault.
The federal minister said the government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure, having determined that the existing network “is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have.”
Money that in the past was regularly invested in asphalt and concrete for the ever-expanding road network is better invested into projects that will help fight climate change and adapt to its impacts, he said.
As for Chad Bowie, he does not pull any punches, as he condemns the new Trudeau policy.
“I think Trudeau’s Environment Minister is a lunatic. That he is still in the job says more about the prime minister, than it does about anything,” Bowie tells The Macdonald Notebook.
“This is complete insanity. There are just no words for how ridiculous this is. It is shocking to me the prime minister stands behind the minister.”
Bowie “reads” the new policy as meaning under Trudeau there will be no new twinning work to the Canso Causeway or Bridgewater. “That is certainly how I read it.”
“I will tell you one thing. If I was a Liberal MP anywhere in Atlantic Canada, or across the country, but especially in Atlantic Canada, if I was on the backbench, I’d be up and arms over this ludicrous, insane policy,” cautions Bowie.
“It just proves the Liberal party is divorced from reality. This is insane,” adds Bowie.
“My question for Guilbeault: Where does he expect all of the electric vehicles he is mandating us to drive them? This is ludicrous.”
Bowie says the new Trudeau policy convinces him more that in the next election, the federal Liberals will be wiped off the electoral map in Nova Scotia.
“I don’t think there is a safe Liberal seat anywhere in Nova Scotia.” Bowie says that includes Sean Fraser’s seat being lost in the 2025 election. Fraser is the political minister for NS and the Housing minister.
The no new highway funding policy, says Bowie, “is further proof the government has lost touch with reality. Governments have best-before dates and they have expiration dates. And governments do get to be more disconnected in their time in office.”
“I think what we are seeing is that is the general condition of the Trudeau government – but on steroids,” explains Bowie. “It’s a government that has completely lost touch with anyone who does not live in downtown Montreal, where the Environment minister lives, or downtown Toronto,” explains Bowie.
“As the government becomes a little more tired, I think a lot of the front people, the insiders who help run the government, I think I lot of them have fleed, and this is when you start to see really stupid ideas come to the forefront,” referring to the new road building policy.
To Bowie, the policy is politically shocking. “It’s an egregious ridiculous example of that (loss of touch with the electorate).”
Bowie has driven over the twinned highway to Antigonish, built with Scott Brison’s money and the McNeil government. “It’s an excellent highway.”
“Twinning is great. It also is much safer. This has been something Nova Scotians have been expecting for a very long time. We need more cross-province twinning,” he tells me.
“I think we will get more twinning but we will just have to get it under Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre – Not from Justin Trudeau and his road-hating Environment minister.”
The Environment minister wants more people to walk, cycle and ride scooters, rather than drive cars.
“Try telling my parents to walk 10 hours to Superstore to get groceries,” adds Bowie, noting Monastery is a 30-minute car drive to the Town of Antigonish. A walk would take many, many hours to complete.
“It is so crazy that I wonder if it is one of those things, they will backtrack on before your publication comes out. This is a government in total freefall and in desperation mode. We have already seen them climb down on the Carbon Tax, which was supposed to be the signature legacy policy of Justin Trudeau. They have already succumbed to pressure and down a bit of a half climb down on that – at least half until they get to the election.”
Bowie is referring to the fact the government is freezing the Carbon Tax on home heating oil – the dominant source of fuel among Atlantic Canadians – for a three year period, bowing to pressure from Atlantic Liberal MPs.
“I would not be surprised if the same thing occurred here (with the new no-road twinning policy)”, adds Bowie.
“I am sure the Liberal backbench, particularly MPs in Atlantic Canada, but also with any rural community where driving is an essential of life. I am sure those MPs are up in arms today and I am sure the minister and PM are getting an earful. I would not be surprised if this policy will be overturned.”
