By Andrew Macdonald
- Frank McKenna – Modern Day Dean Of Well Built Twinned Highways
When Frank McKenna roared to power as Premier of New Brunswick in 1987 – taking every single legislature seat – he inherited a horrific road network system from the Richard Hatfield regime.
McKenna quickly went about twinning all the roads in New Brunswick, while premier from 1987-1997.
Nova Scotia would twin much later, with the former McNeil government beginning twinning projects in 2019.
McKenna had strong connections while premier with Ottawa, relying on those relationships to get co-funding for his ambitious twinning projects.
First came federal money from Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who was PM from 1984-1992 – the late Mulroney had a soft spot for NB and NS because he went to school in both provinces, leaving behind a mill town in Quebec.
Then Jean Chretien came to power in 1992, and as PM, he also directed hundreds of millions of dollars to NB twinning programs.
“We started with the Mulroney government. Brian Mulroney was extremely good to me and in every budget, he would squeeze out money for New Brunswick’s roads,” recalls McKenna.
“You could not get another prime minister who would actually know New Brunswick and the geography, because he spent so much of his life in the Maritimes.”
McKenna went to high school in NB, and then went to ST Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, graduating from the Class of 1959.
“Brian really got us well started (on twinning roads), and then Chretien came through” with more highway funds.
At a golf match, at the end of the game between McKenna and Chretien, the then PM told the then premier he would give $300M to allow McKenna to finish the road twinning program, as he prepared to leave the premier’s post in 1997.
“The last piece we needed, I pretty well had all the money I needed, and then it came to the end of my time and I made the decision to leave (the premier’s office). I told Prime Minister Chretien five to six months before, just out of courtesy.”
“Frank you come to Ottawa and we play some golf and we talk about your future,” the PM said in 1997 to McKenna. “We played some golf, and (Chretien) said, ‘So you want to be in the Senate. I said, ‘No, Jean, I want to go to work, I do not want to go to the Senate’. He said, ‘What do you want, you have been a good (premier). I said, ‘I need money to finish the highway, I need $300M and that will save lives and finish the highway twinning. He said, ‘That is a lot of money, a lot of money’”.
“Then we got to the 18th hole and I was putting in order to tie him. And he said, “Frank you miss this putt, I give you your money, you make that putt, you are in trouble,” recalls McKenna.
In 1992, Don Cameron was premier of NS and often talked about an Atlantic Expressway from Amherst to Sydney, but his government never got Ottawa co-funds to twin NS roads. Decades after he was defeated as premier in 1993, the late Cameron told me since DEVCO coal mines and Sydney Steele Mill got billions from Ottawa, there was no road money left for NS.
Frank McKenna committed to twinning roads in New Brunswick when he was premier from 1987-1997. (Contributed).
But, McKenna pitched Mulroney and Chretien on the fact twinned NB roads would actually help NS, as a neighbouring province, because you had to drive through NB to get to NS.
“Don was one of the best I ever dealt with, Donnie Cameron,” as far as relations with premiers in that era, says McKenna.
McKenna says there “could be any number of reasons” why NS did not get twinning money in that era. “I think the most practical one is that we had the worst highways in the country (in NB) when we started (to twin in 1987). We had horrific accidents, people in the summertime with tractor-trailers running into travel trailers and four-car pile-ups. When people got to Fredericton it was a windy two-lane highway, and get behind a tractor-trailer and do something stupid”, adds McKenna.
“It was a horrific highway system” and NB “was also a highway for the rest of Atlantic Canada. We were able to convince Mulroney that when we were putting money into NB highways, we were putting money in Nova Scotia’s highways at the same time. That all made sense and the Mulroney and Chretien government did start funding Nova Scotia highways but it was after we were well along with our highway system in NB.”
Former NS premier Stephen McNeil recently spoke to The Macdonald Notebook on his significant twinning of NS highways. Click here to read that story.
