LUNATIC GOVERNMENT FUNDING CREATES PREDICAMENT FOR OTTAWA WATER NEEDS

Ottawa is stuck figuring out how to pay for almost two dozen water projects it’s already got underway after the federal and provincial governments turned down more than half of the city’s requests to their multibilliondollar programs for new pipes and treatment plants.

That’s the flip side of an announcement by Mayor Jim Watson, Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli and Ottawa South MPP David McGuinty at city hall on Tuesday morning: The city is getting $45 million from the two bigger governments for everything from a new snow dump on West Brook Drive in Stittsville to better ventilation at the main sewage plant in Gloucester. New anti-flood measures in Bridlewood, a bunch of new culverts, you name it.

Between them, the upper governments are covering three-quarters of the costs of 18 such projects in Ottawa, among several dozen in Eastern Ontario at large. But the city’s on its own for another 22.

Public-works projects are the cornerstones of the economic plans at both Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill. Ontario’s promising a $190-billion construction program over 13 years, having started pouring money into it after the 2014 election. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s nationwide promise is for about the same amount over 12 years.

It’s a stunning amount of money. A whole year’s budget for Ontario, for everything the provincial government does, is about $130 billion. But we have skimped for a long time, and crumbling roads and leaky water mains are the result. They’ll probably be OK for a little bit longer, we’ve kept telling ourselves, and we’ve mostly been right. But eventually anything will start to fall apart.

“The combination of years, if not decades, of infrastructure deficits and new growth requirements are truly daunting,” Chiarelli said. “We know that every dollar invested in infrastructure is a dollar we’re investing in quality of life.” And in employing construction workers, engineers and planners.

Since city governments own a lot of the roads and bridges and transit lines and water systems in Canada, a lot of the money involved has to go to municipalities first. Naturally mayors have all lined up outside ministers’ doors, holding open big sacks and waiting for the cash to burst forth.

Which is what Ottawa did, and assumed there’d be money for everyone. All 18 of the projects funded Tuesday officially started more than a year ago, at the beginning of April 2016, though that’s a paper formality, indicating the city’s readiness to roll and not the actual beginning of work. The other 22 have some city money set aside but only a quarter of what it’d take to complete them, because the other governments were supposed to fill the rest of the sack.

Now, said city infrastructure manager Alain Gonthier, he’s got some thinking to do. “We’re now going to go back to council to identify the projects that were not approved; how will we be able to fund these projects?” he said.

This is a lunatic way to pay for clean water to drink and for sewer systems that don’t befoul our rivers. We’re not talking about massive national-scale efforts. We’re talking about $50,000 creek dredgings. We’re talking about a $4,000 project in Montague Township to “exercise” its water valves, and a $4,700 pump for Madawaska Valley’s sewer plant, all awaiting a yea or nay from the feds. A city government decides what it needs to build and buy, but then has to go begging other governments for money to do it. Deciding takes longer than a fingersnap, so while the city is making its list, it needs to have some idea how much money it might have to work with, so the bigger governments that have the money announce zillion-dollar construction programs with planning horizons that go beyond a decade. A dozen budgets, changeable economic conditions and two or three elections now, with the spending promises fresh and everybody keen, Ottawa gets funding for fewer than half the things it wants. But it had to put its own quarter-share of the project funding aside and be ready in case the province and feds said yes.

In fact, a Chiarelli spokesman said late in the day, there might be approvals for more Ottawa projects to come. So maybe more announcements ... and more city money that has to wait for them.

Keeping cities as supplicants seeking largesse from patrons in richer governments actually gets less stuff built and draws out the process. But it does maximize the number of mutual fondlings the politicians can organize to congratulate themselves for doing what governments are supposed to do. So at least there’s that.

Mayors have all lined up outside ministers’ doors, holding open big sacks and waiting for the cash to burst forth. Which is what Ottawa did …