Infrastructure. It is quickly becoming the buzzword in the federal election campaign. With good reason. For decades, Canada’s infrastructure deficit has been growing.
Over its time in government, the Conservative Party has promised large infrastructure spending programs, but has had a more difficult time actually getting the money out the door. This is partially a procedural problem. With short, northern construction seasons, lengthy and complicated application processes tend to scuttle even shovel-ready projects.
Add to that political considerations—where the parties’ votes are coming from, pressure to appear fiscally responsible etc.—and you have a recipe for crumbling roads and bridges.
The Liberal Party has recently unveiled a plan to spend nearly twice what the Conservatives have promised. It is unclear how the Liberal process would work, but again it seems it would involve some kind of application process and looks like it favours grandiose big city projects.
It is not just a big city problem, however. For years now, Yorkton, for example, has needed to overhaul Broadway Street both on the surface and underground. Without federal and provincial transfers, however, it is impossible for City Council to entertain.
Meanwhile, infrastructure projects must be undertaken every year. Since the only recourse municipalities have to generate revenue is property taxes, the burden has been increasingly shifting to property owners—to the tune of around six per cent a year in Yorkton—which is both unsustainable and unfair.
One of the best things the Conservatives did in office is implement the Gas Tax Fund, which provides predictable and sustainable revenue to municipalities. Similarly, the Saskatchewan government gives municipalities a share of the provincial sales tax.
It is not enough.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has long advocated for this kind of core federal-municipal funding on a per capita basis.
In FCM’s 2015 Federal Election Platform: Strengthening Canada’s Hometowns, the federation calls for an increase of $1.5 billion in dedicated funding through a predictable mechanism like the Gas Tax Fund and some other common sense proposals that reflect municipalities’ ownership share in public infrastructure.
The NDP has promised to give municipalities another one cent of the gas tax ($422 million) on top of a $1.5 billion increase in core funding.
That is not an endorsement of the NDP by this newspaper, but it is an approach that works because while the federal and provincial governments have the authority to levy income and consumption taxes, it is cities and towns that know best how infrastructure dollars should be spent.
Voters can help their hometowns by making this an election priority with their local candidates.
