Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Gordon Campbell went to Surrey on Monday not to announce funding for the $1-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road project, but to praise it.

"This announcement is not a road project, but is about where we are headed as a country," Harper said at the Fraser Surrey Docks deepsea port facility, plugging the Conservative government's infrastructure-spending plan.

It was previously announced that Ottawa would provide $365 million for the project, and the province $635 million. It will be built by a private-public partnership. The private partner will be selected later this year.

Major construction on the new highway -- a 40-kilometre route that will link port, rail and industry facilities to existing highways -- is expected to begin in 2010.

Outside the port property, a couple of dozen protesters waved placards, citing environmental concerns about the entire Gateway Program -- of which the new highway is a part -- bringing "more big ships, big trucks and big highways" into Metro Vancouver...

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