The Sue Math (1)

This posting will be in rebus math, so that certain bloggers will better understand it. Here goes:

≈ $1.7-billion

≈ $4.2-billion

> $10-billion

None of which makes any sense anyway until Newfoundland nationalists get over their unwillingness to spend any provincial revenue in Labrador, and their rampant, paranoid, Quebecophobia, and do this:

The construction of Route 138 from Natashquan to Old Fort was pegged at $550-million in 2003.

The upgrading and complete paving of Route 389, from Baie-Comeau to Labrador West, has been estimated at a similar amount.

And they are probably both wrong: the completion of the entire Trans-Labrador Highway — and, just in case Danny Williams or any of his ministers are unclear on the concept, the entire Trans-Labrador Highway doesn't end in Happy Valley-Goose Bay — has been ballparked at $1-million a kilometre.

Call it a billion and you won't likely be too wrong.

Furthermore, the second phase of the Route 138 extension, from Havre-Saint-Pierre to Natashquan, financed with 50-cent Brian Mulroney federal dollars when it was still the Prime Ministerial Riding, came in at more than double what was budgeted. The 1986 announcement was worth $50-million; the final bill was $115-million.

(The first phase was the 1970s-era extension from Sept-Iles to Natashquan. That would make the 1960s-era extension to Sept-Iles, what, the zeroth phase?)

That's about $2-billion, in two provinces, to complete the highway system that is an absolute prerequisite for any mode of fixed link — even one which is, almost certainly unrealistically, priced at $1.7-billion in 2005 dollars.

And that's without even figuring in any upgrades which a fixed link might demand of the highway system on the Northern Peninsula.

Before there can be any fixed link between Labrador and Newfoundland (and why do the NewfNats insist on calling it a "tunnel to Labrador?") there has to be a fixed link within Labrador, and between Labrador and Quebec.

And even that's no guarantee that the fixed link would make any more sense than it does now.