Liberals rush cash out before invoices

ECONOMY

OT TAWA • The federal Liberals appear to be cranking up the pace for getting infrastructure money out the door and into the hands of local governments.

The amount of cash already allocated for the first quarter of fiscal 2016-17 to- talled $ 62.9 billion, up 5.7 per cent from the April- toJune spending in the previous year, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.

A large portion of that money has been earmarked for infrastructure projects, one of the cornerstones of the Liberal platform during last year’s federal election.

Infrastructure funding — $ 11.9 billion over the current fiscal year that ends in March, 2017 — will go to municipalities across all provinces and territories for projects such as roads, bridges and water treatment.

The projects fall under Ottawa’s Building Canada Fund, launched by the Conservative government after the 2008- 09 recession. The initial program was criticized by local officials for major bottlenecks in funding, often resulting in delays in getting work started before the end of the construction season.

“What we are seeing is the pace of spending in the first quarter of the fiscal year (is) a little bit faster than the pace of spending that we have seen in the past. The government has changed the way they are dispersing funds. It’s a little faster during the year. It’s not that they are spending more,” said Mostafa Askari, assistant parlia- mentary budget officer with the independent spending watchdog.

“Typically, on infrastructure funds in the past, the way that the government paid (local areas) is that they waited for them to provide invoices for the different stages of their projects,” Askari said. “The new government said that they want the recipients to get their money by the end of the fiscal year — whether they have an invoice or not.”