By Cheryl Jahn

Opposition eyes Dease Lake Rail Line

Jul 27, 2022 | 3:38 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It was a project launched in 1969 by then-Premier WAC Bennett to forge a rail line between Fort St. James and Dease lake in Northern BC. But when Dave Barrett’s NDP government took power in 1972, a commission was struck to look into the feasibility of that project and found it was well over budget and the project was killed in 1975 by the SoCreds. Now, Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon says, with the changing times, that project needs to be resurrected.

“I think it’s something we have to look at,” says Kevin Falcon, Leader of the Official Opposition. “To see if we can extend that line and open up all the mineral resources in the Northern part of the province. Right up to the Alaskan panhandle. Knowing as we have a situation where we all to move toward a greener future, environmentally, we’re going to need some of those precious metals that are going to help build the electric vehicles and wind turbines and all the other things that are necessary for a greener planet.”

The State of Alaska is also on board. A report from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, finished in 2019, touted the economic benefits of that line for that state. It found “… the rail line will reduce the cost of mining exploration, development, operation, imports and exports, fundamentally changing mining cost structures that will result in economic viability of deposits at lower mineral price levels.”

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It went on to say the rail line “… will have a dramatic positive economic impact on resource industries within these regions, including mining, forestry and oil and gas, that will inevitably result in job creation.”

“This, in turn, will open employment opportunities and assist in lowering unemployment and retaining existing residents, particularly in First Nations communities and among youth.”

It went so far as to compare the project in significance to the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880’s and the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950’s. “The engineering is done, all the way to Dease Lake,” says Mike Morris, MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie and an advocate of the project. “The rail bed’s in, it’s going to have to be modified to meet the modern-day standards. I’ve talked with an engineering company. We’re looking at a billion dollars to upgrade it to the highest standards from here to Watson Lake.”

Kevin Falcon says, in this new, green era, government has to think boldly, citing the decision to forge ahead with Site C. “So it is with the extension of the Dease Lake Rail line,” says Falcon. “That could open up a part of British Columbia that could create enormous opportunities for British Columbians for generations to come. So we’re going to look at that. We’re going to do the cost-benefit analysis bit and I think it’s something that’s very exciting actually.”

The original plan was to get the line to Watson Lake, but there is another plan to push the line through to Whitehorse.