The St. Jean bridge remains a front and centre issue for the Rural Municipality of Montcalm.

The structure was taken down four years ago due to safety issues and essentially has left the community and surrounding area with no local access across the Red River.

"It's a big concern for our community for people on both sides of the river," said reeve Derek Sabourin. "Basically our municipality has been cut in half and we would expect more of a response from our government, but it's hard to get answers from anybody right now."

The former NDP government initiated a transportation study of the Red River corridor which included the St. Jean bridge issue and involved public input at an open house in St. Jean. An initial finding that was shared with the community recommended that any replacement bridge should likely be established to the south of St. Jean and not in the community itself. However, outside of that little bit of information, nothing else has been forthcoming.

"We feel that we have been treated poorly on this and that we've been ignored by the previous provincial government and we still haven't had anything from our current provincial government in terms of answers or time frames or solutions to our concerns here."

Sabourin says the bridge issue has created significant problems for the community and local businesses, and recreational facilities have suffered as a result. He adds, it has also caused local safety issues for first responders in addition to being a major inconvenience for local ratepayers who are forced to drive extra miles to get across the river.