New Brunswick cuts snowplow staff, plows

New Brunswick will employ fewer people and plows this winter to clean up the roads after storms.

Staff in the snowplow program will be reduced by 28, mostly through attrition, Transportation Minister Claude Williams announced Thursday.

With more cuts next winter, the department hopes to save $2.2 million over two years, he said.

Depending on the weather, the provincial government spends between $55 million and $75 million a year maintaining roads and highways during the winter.

Williams's goal is to reduce this spending by $4 million a year as part of the province's effort to reduce the deficit.

The cost-cutting includes the retirement of 21 old snowplows — five per cent of the fleet — because they are expensive to maintain and often break down. The move could save $1.1 million, he said.

Despite the smaller number of staff and plows, Williams said service won’t be hurt.

"I want to assure New Brunswickers that the level of services will not be impacted negatively, and that the Department of Transportation will continue to assist emergency responders whenever necessary," he said.

Gordon Black, a regional director with CUPE, which represents the 28 winter staff the government is planning to cut this year, disagrees.

Attack on rural roads

Black said he believes the number will actually be closer to 100 based on the expected cost savings. He says fewer staff, fewer snowplows and less salt will impact roads.

Black calls it another attack on rural New Brunswick.

"Safety issues in turn are impacted now by the closing of health centres, people have to drive further, the roads are going to be in worse condition, so we could be in a hell of a mess ... we will be because it's cuts that are going to affect services that affect safety," Black told CBC News.

There are 450 assets plows, graders and loaders.

Williams said his department also hopes to save money through stricter monitoring of salt use this winter and by not plowing private roads with fewer than three year-round residences.

Under this plan, more than 200 private roads in New Brunswick would be ineligible for government plowing.

"I think it's a very very dumb idea," said Joyce Wood, who lives in East Branch, a tiny community in southeastern New Brunswick.

She said she has many neighbours who live on dirt roads with fewer than three full-time residents.

Those are the roads the province says it will no longer plow after this winter.

"A lot of people have tractors but some don't have cabs on them, they'd freeze to death plowing it themselves and then if it drifts in, you've got to do it over again, for what?" Wood questioned. "[It's] something that we pay taxes for the government to do and we expect them to do it."