Nice summary Ringer. I’d call this a hit by the pitch I was looking for.

Federal Budgets don’t usually go into specific projects, more about themes and priorities. I was looking for Freeland to talk up critical minerals and energy security/climate change. Check.

Next I was looking for money for the indigenous infrastructure, ie. Roads. Check.

The Indigenous Community Infrastructure Fund was launched in March 2021 with a target of $1 billion dollar spend with no investment timeline. 

Looks like Budget 2021 has raised that $1 billion to $4.3 billion over 4 years. Somewhere in the next 4 years the EA/negotiations/agreement for the north-south road will be signed and sealed and there’ll $3.3 billion more than there was yesterday to get that road funded.

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/the-canada-infrastructure-bank-launches-its-indigenous-community-infrastructure-initiative-to-accelerate-new-investment-and-reduce-the-infrastructure-gap-848675661.html

Ball is back in court to Matawa and Rickford (if he doesn’t get shuffled out of his portfolio, and Ford if he doesn’t get rolled by his own caucus).