Trudeau blames recalcitrant Ontario for delayed infrastructure cash

Ipolitics.ca
March 22, 2019
Marieke Walsh

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is using his post-budget tour to bash Ontario’s Ford government for delays in rolling out critical infrastructure cash for cities.
Trudeau was in Mississauga on Thursday to tout the doubling of infrastructure cash that Ottawa will send directly to municipalities rather than the usual funding stream that goes through provinces.

“While many provincial and territorial governments have been working hard to get projects done for Canadians, others have been withholding federal infrastructure dollars. That’s not fair,” Trudeau said.

“Here in Ontario it’s been over a year since we signed an agreement with the province for more than $11 billion in federal funding, and we still haven’t received a single project for approval.”

In Tuesday’s federal budget, the Liberals announced a one-time cash infusion of $2.2 billion for municipalities through the federal gas tax fund. In Toronto that means approximately $167 million more for the city, in Mississauga it means approximately $80 million.

In March 2018, the former provincial government signed a $30 billion, decade long, infrastructure funding agreement. The deal was to be cost shared between Ottawa, Queen’s Park and municipalities but none of the money has been released and the federal Liberals lay the blame squarely with Premier Doug Ford’s government.

Last week the province announced it will open one stream of the funding, targeted to small municipalities and First Nations communities. A spokesperson for federal Infrastructure Minister François-Philippe Champagne, noted to iPolitics that covers just $250 million of the $11.8 billion that Ottawa committed.

Spokesperson Ann-Clara Vaillancourt also noted that Ontario isn’t alone in lagging behind other provinces and territories. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have also been “slower” to put projects forward for approval.

“We’re facing gridlock not just on our roads, but in getting funding to the communities that need it,” Trudeau told reporters today.

“Because this province, and a couple of others, have been unwilling to move forward in partnership with the federal government on infrastructure investments,
we decided that doubling this municipal infrastructure transfer, this year, would be a way of getting the much-needed investments.”

Trudeau and Ford have been at loggerheads since Ford took office on issues ranging from funding services for asylum seekers to the carbon tax. Until this month, infrastructure issues, which are typically easier for different governments to co-operate on, had not been among the flash points between the two governments.

Ford’s government is dismissing the criticism from Trudeau as an attempt to shirk responsibility ahead of the fall federal election.

“It’s convenient after four years of Liberals being in power, on the eve of an election, that it is provincial governments impeding the development of infrastructure.

Not their own government and their own department making that a political priority,” Stephen Lecce, the parliamentary assistant to the provincial infrastructure minister, said Thursday.

He disputed the federal government’s figure that before Ford took office more than 2,000 projects were approved in Ontario. “Not many are shovel in the ground,” he argued.

“Justin Trudeau has had four years to get infrastructure projects done, and the fact that he can’t point to many examples of success in that respect speaks to his own record,” Lecce said.

But information pointed to by the federal government shows that construction for the majority of products approved by the Liberals has already started.

Detailed statistics provided by the province later in the day show that 1,799 projects, or 89 per cent of them, are already underway.

A spokesperson for provincial Infrastructure Minister Monte McNaughton said the province has only opened one stream of infrastructure funding because of “the limited fiscal and administrative capacity of our municipal partners.”

His spokesperson, Brittany Allison, said the decision was made at the request of municipalities.