How do we know if infrastructure pays off ?

If the federal government is going to shovel $180 billion out the door for infrastructure, it should have a plan for the money more detailed than “Let’s shovel $180 billion out the door as fast as we can,” the Senate’s finance committee says.

What are we getting for our money? Is it doing what it’s supposed to do? How can we tell?

The committee, doing a credible job of the sober second-thinking the Senate is supposed to do, observes that the Liberals are treating their marquee infrastructure program like a version of the Conservatives’ recession-fighting stimulus program of 2008-2010.

Then, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty had an interest in getting $47 billion into the economy as fast as possible, and building useful things like roads and bridges and water pipes was the happy byproduct. “Shovel-ready” was the key attribute.

Maybe we want to apply different standards to a $180-billion, 10-year construction program.

“When the primary goal is to get the money out the door, the performance metric is based on that output,” the committee’s report says. “Infrastructure Canada’s current performance reporting simply refers to the number of projects completed and their value. In the absence of a strategic plan, Infrastructure Canada is unable to develop meaningful objectives and related performance measures.”

As of the end of 2016, the federal infrastructure department had approved 1,402 projects worth $5.8 billion. Of those, 308 have started. How will we tell whether they’re “working?” The government relies on simple multiplier formulas, for instance, assuming every million dollars spent creates 18 jobs related to construction.

Virtually all these criticisms apply to the Ontario government’s $160-billion infrastructure program, too.

Even though the government prizes moving money out fast, the senators say, it’s got a needlessly tricky system for doing it. The billions of dollars are divvied up among 30 federal programs that fund different things.

“In the current situation, it is very difficult to know how best to access federal infrastructure funds, especially in jurisdictions with limited resources,” the Senate report says.

In many cases, the feds defer to provincial governments’ decisions about what to fund, which simplifies things somewhat. It also “adversely affects predictability, flexibility and respect for municipal priorities,” the report says.

A week ago, the City of Ottawa released a report on the lessons it learned from planning and starting construction on the first phase of light rail. Among them: Struggling with knowing when to apply for money, because the sooner you ask the sooner you get some, but the less reliable your estimates are for how much a project eventually will cost. So, it’s even more complex than the Senate lets on.

Cities really like the way they get a share of the revenues from the federal government’s tax on gasoline, because that’s a straight cash payment. It’s convenient and efficient, but also the ultimate example of the spending without measuring the senators worry about. The government is collapsing some of its funds so there are fewer places to apply and trying to make the applying simpler. A strategy, with indicators of success, is supposedly on its way this spring but we’ve been spending without one.

“Without this kind of plan and reporting, it is very difficult for Canadians and parliamentarians to hold the government to account for the results it should be achieving with its infrastructure spending,” the committee says.