To the Editor:
The Harper government's plan for public infrastructure across Canada is too small and unambitious to meet the nation's real needs.
The Conservatives try to make it sound like they're doing something "big" by bundling several different programs together and then adding-up everything they might hypothetically invest over a full decade into the future. But all that slick packaging cannot conceal the hard reality that it's too little and too slow.
Some of Canada's public infrastructure dates back to the 1960's. Overall, it's worn down. It's not adequate to service a population that has doubled and an economy that has increased 50-fold. Technologically, it's out-of-date. And new issues, like severe variations in climate spawning more difficult weather conditions and the rise of crucial new export markets in Asia, are presenting new infrastructure requirements.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has identified more than $200-billion in important community-based infrastructure needs that are growing increasingly urgent. Even if the Harper government actually delivered on the vague infrastructure promises it has made 10-years into the future - which are sheer fantasy - they would only touch a fraction of what needs to get done.
Two major components of the Harper government's plan illustrate these difficulties.
In one stream of funding, they say they have set aside $1.25-billion between now and 2019 for the most expensive undertakings to be designed, financed, built and managed over the long-term by the private sector - i.e., P-3 projects known as "public-private partnerships". But here's the rub, that total amount of federal P-3 money for the whole country over the next five years is equivalent to what's needed to build just one highway by-pass around my city of Regina.
So the amount of federal funding available to any one project will cover only a very small portion of local costs. The overall national P-3 budget - which expires entirely in 2019 - is clearly inadequate.
In another stream of funding, the feds claim to be extending the existing "Building Canada Fund" (BCF) for a whole decade, but what they won't admit is that any significant funding will have to wait until after 2019. In the five years immediately ahead, the BCF has been severely chopped.
Up until last year, this program was helping municipalities (who are responsible for about 65 per cent of Canada's infrastructure) with annual federal investments in the order of $1.6-billion. But as of this year, that annual federal contribution is slashed down to just $210-million - for the whole country. That's a budget cut of 87 per cent.
And it gets worse, the Harper government promised its entire infrastructure package - as little as it is - would be fully negotiated, up-and-running and ready to receive applications from local municipalities on April 1st, in time for the new construction season. It's now six weeks later and not a wheel has turned.
Moreover, the feds will not even confirm what portion of the reduced BCF will be earmarked for municipalities. They will find themselves in competition with bigger provincial projects and with other government entities like universities and technical schools. So the smaller annual BCF budget will be stretched across a whole range of different needs, again illustrating its fundamental inadequacy.
Justin Trudeau is calling for a Canadian infrastructure plan that will be truly transformative, aiming for a goal of funds invested or facilitated by the Government of Canada annually in the range of one-percent of GDP.
Such a plan would help Canada catch-up on its debilitating infrastructure deficit. It would help drive job creation and economic growth in the single most cost-effective way. It would enhance cooperative federalism. And it would transform the present value of low interest rates into long-term capital assets underpinning greater Canadian prosperity and productivity.
Ralph Goodale, MP, Wascana, SK.
