Infrastructure cash tipped to begin flowing
• Canada’s infrastructure programs have been very much works- inprogress, with billions of dollars earmarked for shovelsin- ground projects over the past two years — but with a sizable chuck of that money still unspent.
The government funding flow has generally got stuck between Ottawa and the provinces, resulting in major delays in planned projects closest to local taxpayers — such as roads, bridges and water treatment facilities. But the new federal minister responsible for funding these nationwide infrastructure projects is promising to get “that money invested as quickly as possible.”
On Wednesday, Amarjeet Sohi acknowledged that the process has been slow in the past, but he said the pace of funding is set to pick up considerably.
“On the New Building Canada Fund, I have signed off on close to 164 projects since November of 2015,” Sohi told reporters in Ottawa. “And in the next couple of weeks or a month, you will be hearing about some major announcements.”
The minister’ s comments came as he unveiled a $ 69.7- million infrastructure agreement between Canada and the Yukon. The money is earmarked for 22 projects — mainly for wastewater and public transit projects.
Ottawa will provide $52.3 million of the total cost of the Yukon projects under two new infrastructure programs — the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund and the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund.
“We hope ... we can get that money invested as quickly as possible,” Sohi told reporters.
“We are ready to proceed with any other province or territory that is ready to sign,” he added. “We are ready today, and we will be ready tomorrow — and we hope that the sooner we get those agreements in place, the sooner we will be in the process of approving those projects.”
The Yukon announcement is the second funding agreement under Ottawa’s Public Transit Infrastructure Fund. The first one came last week in British Columbia, where $ 460 million has been allocated for transit projects.
The Liberal government inherited the Conservative’s New Building Canada Fund, a rebranded program that was meant to flood the country with infrastructure cash following the 2007- 08 recession.
But with billions of dollars left over in that building fund, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — in his mandate letter to Sohi — said the minister was expected “to re-engage our municipal governments as key partners in the development of our plans and to ensure that across our government we collaborate with municipalities on issues that affect them.”
Joining Sohi at Wednesday’s announcement was Currie Dixon, the Yukon minister responsible for community services, who told reporters that “when the New Building Canada Fund was announced in 2014, there was some new criteria and new structure put onto the application process.”
“But we didn’t quite agree with the way it was working,” he said, adding that the Liberal government “has changed much of that system. To put it simply, it’s a single-stage process, as opposed to a multistage process that we had previously faced. So, that’s a positive step forward for us.”
Also joining Sohi on Wednesday was Liberal Yukon MP Larry Bagnell, who said funding for water treatment projects — such as the one announced Wednesday — are necessary in remote communities of Canada. “Some of them don’t have access to clean drinking water all the time and their sewer systems don’t work,” he said.