The New Brunswick and federal governments will spend more than $45 million to improve connections to the Fundy Trail Parkway.

The Fundy Trail Parkways connector stretches for 32 kilometres, from Saint Martins through Sussex and ends in Alma, N.B.

Premier Brian Gallant says the investment will increase the number of tourists who visit the province, and help create jobs.

“Once this is all finalized it’s going to improve the experience… it’s going to increase the amount of tourists coming to New Brunswick and coming to this region of the province as well, which in turn creates jobs for New Brunswickers,” says Premier Brian Gallant.

The provincial share of the project is $32.3 million, with the remaining $13.2 million coming from Ottawa.

“The Trudeau government is very committed to investing in making sure we have infrastructure that will last for a long time, impact a lot of people and allow businesses to grow,” says Fundy Royal MP Alaina Lockhart.

While pleased the project is moving forward, Sussex-Fundy-St. Martins Conservative MLA Bruce Northrup says this announcement should have been made a long time ago.
“It was a long time coming, since the 2014 election there hasn’t been anything done by the provincial government over the last two years,” says Northrup.

Visitation was up 15 per cent at Fundy National Park in 2016. Park officials expect that number will continue to grow.

“Our visitation is about 300,000, we’re between 300-350 thousand visitors a year, so in the next couple of years we expect that number to keep growing,” says Andrew Fry, Fundy National Park visitor experience manager.

The project involves some new road construction and upgrades to Little Salmon River Road, Creek Road and the Shepody Road.

The connector road to Sussex will be finished by 2019, the section to Alma will open in 2020, with the entire project expected to be completed in 2021.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis.