Liberals want to start spending on infrastructure ‘very soon’

Theglobeandmail.com
Nov. 20, 2015
By Chris Hannay

“We need to expand how we think about infrastructure,” Amarjeet Sohi told the audience at a Canada 2020 conference in Ottawa last night in his first public address as Infrastructure and Communities Minister.

Mr. Sohi said his 10 years as a bus driver and two terms on Edmonton city council give him a good handle on what we traditionally think of as infrastructure: roads, buses, sewers, bridges and the like.

But the Liberals won the election last month on a pledge to go $10-billion in deficit for three years to boost spending on infrastructure, and the kind of projects they’re looking at go beyond the traditional definition.

The Liberal plan has three main focuses: public transit, green (perhaps similar to the push Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals made in Ontario in the last decade) and social infrastructure, which includes social housing, child care and seniors facilities.

For now, as the government is still getting set up, details are few. Mr. Sohi said spending will come out “not in a knee-jerk, ‘get money out the door to whatever project happens to be ready’ kind of way - but a strategic, long-term, collaborative plan” based on cities and communities’ needs.

(Mr. Sohi may have been referring to the flood of infrastructure money that was announced by the Conservatives just before the most recent campaign. A Globe analysis this summer showed one fund, for community infrastructure projects, was spent disproportionately in Conservative ridings.)

Mr. Sohi told reporters after the speech that Liberal infrastructure funding would begin “very soon.”

“What we proposed and what we promised was to start investing immediately because our plan is to intervene in the economy to create jobs and deal with the issues our communities are facing,” he said.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS MORNING

> Finance Minister Bill Morneau will provide his first fiscal update this morning on the state of the economy and Ottawa’s books.

> The Department of National Defence is “winterizing” housing at Canadian Armed Forces bases in Ontario in anticipation of an influx in Syrian refugees. They’re to begin arriving in early December, and the resettlement will cost $1.2-billion over six years, the Canadian Press reports. As many as 900 refugees will be flown out per day, mainly from Lebanon and Jordan, according to CTV.

> Liberal MP Arif Virani shares his experiences of growing up in Canada as a refugee from Idi Amin’s Uganda.

> The story of how a group of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar resettled in Canada.

> Why the U.S. ambassador and others are starting to refer to the Islamic State as “Daesh” - though Canada is not, for now.

> Gerald Donohue, who was given $65,000 in contracts from Mike Duffy’s office, is testifying at the senator’s trial.

> And Robert Fife, the CTV News reporter who, among other stories, broke the news of Nigel Wright’s $90,000 cheque to Mike Duffy, is The Globe and Mail’s new Ottawa bureau chief. He begins in January.

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WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

“President Barack Obama completed a globe-girdling tour this week that sharpened the focus of the foreign-policy priorities that will shape his legacy. The President’s aims are clear: rallying nations to see global warming as the existential threat; delivering on the ‘pivot to the Pacific;’ strictly limiting U.S. casualties in Middle East wars; and shaping the Sino-American relationship that will dominate the coming century.” - Paul Koring (for subscribers) on Obama’s global tour.

Gary Mason (Globe and Mail): “Given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s solemn promise to confer with First Nations on just about everything, it will be fascinating to see where [Northern Gateway] goes.”

Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail subscribers): “There has not been, nor will there be, any European solidarity in dealing with the mass migration [from Syria].”

Don Braid (Calgary Herald): “Everybody who knows what the [Alberta] NDP is up to realizes there will be a climate change policy, and it will be aggressive.”

Michael Den Tandt (Postmedia): “Battered and bruised, and facing the imminent rollback of much of its legislative agenda of the past 10 years, the Conservative party has a sterling opportunity to reclaim some precious moral high ground.”