By Curtis Galbraith

County officials push for hospital, roads, museum funding at RMA convention

Nov 29, 2018 | 4:30 AM

County of Grande Prairie officials say they renewed the push for a new Beaverlodge hospital during the recent Rural Municipalities of Alberta convention.
 
Reeve Leanne Beaupre says they met again with Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen and Health Minister Sarah Hoffman and reminded them of commitments the province made in the spring.
 
“They were quite aware of the concerns. They’re still hearing it from a lot of people, as well as the political pressure. At this juncture, they just don’t have the funds to fund it. They did commit to doing some more background work on the hospital itself.”
 
Beaupre says the County and the Town of Beaverlodge have already offered to help move the project along by doing things like site preparation.
 
County people are also hoping the province will find the money to twin Highway 40 south of Grande Prairie.
 
It is currently listed as unfunded in the province’s budget documents.
 
Beaupre says detailed design work has already been done.
 
“They have said that it would be a three-phase approach, but it’s presently in the unfunded program, which is better than not being on the program at all. Unfortunately, there are no funds, so we’re going to continue to advocate and keep the pressure on for them to actually find the funding because it needs to come sooner than later.”
 
County Council approved spending $20,000 on a study to look at the possible social and economic impacts of twinning Highway 40 at Monday’s meeting.
 
Beaupre adds she is disappointed that the province will not be providing any operational funding for the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum.
 
County delegates met with Culture and Tourism Minister Ricardo Miranda at the convention.
 
She says they were told the ministry has no extra funding available for it either.
 
“The museum itself is a provincial treasure that has provincially-owned assets in it. It would have been nice to hear from them that they were able to come up with some sort of funding for it.”
 
Beaupre says the museum currently gets its money from municipalities, fund-raising, and sales.
 
County Council voted Monday to advance it $150,000 of its $400,000 annual grant for 2019 to get it through this year.