Kathleen Wynne urges Ottawa to boost funding for neglected infrastructure
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne asks the federal government “to do its part” by increasing its annual investment in infrastructure to 2 per cent of GDP.

theStar.com
Aug. 6, 2014
Richard J. Brennan

Premier Kathleen Wynne wants $12 billion a year from Ottawa in infrastructure funding or more than four times what the province gets now from the federal Conservative government.

“We are calling on the federal government to increase its infrastructure funding to 2 per cent of GDP annually . . . we would see the immediate results of that kind of change in investment,” Wynne told reporters Wednesday at a special interprovincial summit on infrastructure in Toronto.

“I believe this is the time to fill that infrastructure gap that has existed,” she said, adding that more money means more jobs and economic stimulus.

The Toronto summit was attended by some premiers, including Manitoba’s Greg Selinger, provincial cabinet ministers, as well as municipal and private sector representatives.

When asked if she really believed that the federal Conservative government was going to cough up $12 billion a year for Ontario, Wynne said with a wry smile: “I am making a proposal.”

Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver told the Star that Wynne’s request is “divorced from fiscal reality.”

“We are not going to engage in a wild spending spree, which will create massive deficits and increase the debt. . . . We will also not jeopardize our top credit rating and we will not add to the intergenerational burden,” he said.

Oliver said since 2006 Ontario has received more than $12.3 billion from various federal infrastructure programs or more than three times what the previous Liberal government paid out to the province from 1993 to 2006.

Earlier, Wynne told the gathering that Canada’s aging infrastructure is in dire straits and is especially threatened by severe weather being experienced across the country,

“Public infrastructure‎ in Canada has been neglected by all levels of government for too long,” Wynne told the summit Wednesday.

“And I would argue that now — time is up,” she said, adding progress can only be made when the provinces and the federal government work together.

Wynne said the provinces are doing what they can to make improvements, but the real problem can’t be tackled without Ottawa’s financial assistance.

“We need that federal support. We need it in an ongoing way. We need it to be adequate, we need it to be permanent, reliable and flexible enough to address the different infrastructure priorities in each part of the country,” she told reporters.

Wynne said, for example, the province is spending $130 billion over 10 years on infrastructure compared to the federal government spending $70 billion over the next decade on the whole country.

Wynne acknowledged that Ottawa is looking to balance its books, but cautioned that, at the same time, it still has a responsibility to set priorities, “and a huge part of that is investing in infrastructure that is sorely needed in every part of the country.”

She noted that investment in infrastructure started to drop off in the 1970s “when Canada pulled back from a period of postwar infrastructure investment.

“This mistake wasn’t fully apparent until the 1990s. That’s when the crack could no longer be hidden,” she told the gathering of premiers, provincial ministers and municipal and private sector representatives.

Wynne noted that according to a Statistics Canada report, 10 per cent of private sector productivity gains between 1962 and 2006 were due to investment in infrastructure.

Wynne said too often governments now wait for special events like the Olympics or Pan Am Games to invest in infrastructure.

“We should question why we need an international event to bring‎ these projects online,” she said.
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Wynne emphasized that increasingly severe weather is putting pressure on aging infrastructure.

“When infrastructure fails the costs are catastrophic,” she said.

Manitoba’s Selinger said his province is a case in point having been ravaged by flooding.

On July 1, 2013, the Manitoba government increased the provincial sales tax to 8 per cent from 7 per cent to go entirely to infrastructure spending. The Ontario government considered a similar move but abandoned it.