Infrastructure budget cut by almost $1 billion

The Alberta government will spend nearly $1 billion less than planned over the next three years on fixing hospitals, post-secondary institutions, roads, bridges and other public infrastructure.

Budget documents released Thursday show the province still plans to spend $2.7 billion on its capital maintenance and renewal program by 2020-21, but that’s down $969 million from what the NDP government promised. That’s a decline of more than 25 per cent.

“We certainly see a reduction there, but one of the things we know is that compared with historical budgets, it’s still more money for maintenance than we have seen in the past,” Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen said after the budget speech.

“We know that if we do that for the next couple of years, by the time we get to 2021, we will back at the levels we were before.”

The NDP has often criticized the former Progressive Conservative government for chronically underfunding facility repairs at times of financial distress, and building up a monstrous deferred maintenance tab.

Premier Rachel Notley’s government significantly boosted maintenance spending for the first three years of its mandate, but now has a number of large infrastructure projects on the go as well.

Jansen said a decision was made to prioritize projects that will help “remove the impediments to growth.” These include a new Calgary cancer centre, LRT projects, a new Edmonton hospital and a lab facility.

“We had to take a good hard look at this budget and decide where we were going to do the restraint piece,” she said.

Any urgent maintenance that could imperil the health and safety of Albertans will be dealt with, she said.

The maintenance funding cuts affect a number of ministries.

Health will see a $105-million reduction over the three years, while post-secondary schools get a cut of $165 million.

Maintenance of seniors’ facilities is being reduced by $42 million, and provincial parks will see a $32-million decline.

But the biggest drop is for repairs of roads and bridges, which were handed a $514-million cut.

Alberta Transportation issued a statement saying the reduction in maintenance spending was made possible by “careful, robust investment” in past years.

The reduction means 930 km of road is anticipated to be paved in 2018-19, down from 1,100 km in 2017-18 and 1,160 km in 2016-17, the department said.

About 16 per cent of Alberta’s roads are currently listed in poor condition, and that number shouldn’t change over the next three years, despite the drop in spending, the department said.

The budget also shows a $54-million drop for school maintenance spending, but Education Minister David Eggen said funding hasn’t actually changed.

“Any movement you see in the maintenance fund is that I moved some of it from operations to capital to ensure that school boards are spending that money on the capital, on the actual physical infrastructure,” he said.