The Americas | Canada

Now let's dig an expensive hole

A plan for an improbable tunnel finds backers

|halifax, nova scotia

ABUTTING the open Atlantic and forming Canada's rocky eastern fringe, Newfoundland is a very long way from the country's main cities. But if Danny Williams, a millionaire businessman elected as the province's Conservative premier last month, gets his way, it will become a lot less remote—or at least its two constituent parts will be less remote from each other.

Mr Williams has revived an old plan to lay a 17km (11 mile) tunnel costing at least C$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) under the Strait of Belle Isle, which separates the island of Newfoundland (population: 490,000) from Labrador (pop: 28,000), on the mainland. The tunnel would sit in a ditch cut from the shallow river bed. It would carry power and fuel lines; cars would cross on electric trains.

The promoters, headed by Tom Kierans, a 91-year-old mining engineer, argue that the tunnel would bring both economic and political benefits. They hope it would revive the province's economy by attracting tourism and industry. Despite offshore oil, and a big nickel mine at Voisey Bay, Newfoundland has lost a tenth of its population in 20 years. Politically, the tunnel would tie Labrador more closely to Newfoundland, to which Britain's Privy Council awarded it in 1927. Until then, it had been claimed by Quebec, with which it has growing road and rail links. The Quebec government has never wholly relinquished its claim.

Alas, the tunnel looks like a white elephant in the making. The site is 12 hours by road from St John's, Newfoundland's main town (of 180,000 people). A new road links Red Bay, on the mainland, to Cartwright, but neither place has links to anywhere very useful. Mr Kierans talks of 3,000 cars a day using the tunnel. That smacks of fantasy: the proposed bridge linking Sicily (pop: 5m) to Calabria (pop: 2m) is expected to carry fewer than 5,000 cars a day.

Newfoundland has a long history of expensive follies. The government sank C$18m into a failed scheme to grow cucumbers in hydroponic greenhouses. Mr Kierans was himself behind an attempt to bring hydro electricity from Labrador to the island by tunnel, abandoned in 1975 because of water leakage after C$75m of public money was spent.

Enthusiasts argue that Canada was built on improbable engineering feats, such as the trans-continental railways across the vast emptiness of the prairies. Mr Kierans points to the success of the 12.9km Confederation Bridge linking Prince Edward Island (PEI) to the mainland, opened in 1997. Two-thirds of its C$1 billion cost was covered by bond sales, and tourists have flowed across. Mr Kierans hopes private money might pay for most of the tunnel. But PEI is much less remote than Newfoundland. In eastern Canada, geography is still destiny—and, cynics might say, boondoggles are a growth industry.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Now let's dig an expensive hole"

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