The country’s former Environment Minister is throwing his support behind the Lower Churchill Falls Hydroelectric project.
Jim Prentice, who now serves as Senior Executive Vice President and Vice Chairman of CIBC, addressed the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council in Halifax Wednesday afternoon. The focus of his speech was the importance of government investment into the country’s electricity markets.

“New electrical generating capacity will reach nearly 40,000 megawatts from all sources over the next 20 years,” he says. “That means close to $200-billion in investment over that period.”

Prentice says that massive investment would not only benefit the environment, but the economy as well.

“(CIBC) economists calculate that for every $1-billion which is invested in the electricity sector, we create close to 1,100 jobs,” he says. “So the electricity demands of which I speak account for the creation of more than 320,000 jobs in Canada over the next two decades.”

Prentice refers to the Lower Churchill Falls Hydroelectric project as a development that will take the Atlantic region and the country to a new level of industrial development. The $6.9-billion project at Muskrat Falls in Labrador should be completed by 2017.