Under the cover of a Speech from the Throne devoid of content the federal government slipped out some hard facts about failed job creation that Stephen Harper would prefer Canadians didn’t notice, Liberal Infrastructure Critic Gerard Kennedy said today.
 
“The government now admits for the first time that it did not spend nearly half of last year’s budget commitment for infrastructure stimulus jobs,” said Mr. Kennedy. “This amounts to a failure to deliver 30,000 jobs for Canadians at the height of the recession when they were most in need of job-creating stimulus spending.”
 
According to the government’s final Supplementary Estimates released yesterday at the same time as the Throne Speech, the Conservatives didn’t spend at least $1.4 billion in infrastructure funding from its plan in budget 2009, including at least:

• $874 million unspent out of the $2 billion for the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund;
• $186 million unspent out of the $200 million for the Green Infrastructure Fund;
• $240 million unspent out of $495 million for the Provincial/Territorial Base Funding; and
• $135 million unspent out of $250 million for the Building Canada Communities Component.
 
With matching by other levels of government, this amounts to $1.4 billion that would have created 30,000 jobs.  Since Supplementary Estimates only show the maximum amount of unspent funds remaining, the actual final expenditures could be much lower but will only be known when Public Accounts are released in the fall.
 
“In yesterday’s Throne Speech, the Harper government downplayed their failure to create jobs, despite this stunning admission,” Mr. Kennedy said.  “Canadians have been let down, and by the time the final accounting is done, we fear their job creation failure will be even greater.”
 
Last year, the government promised to directly create 190,000 new jobs over two years.  It has so far refused to release any tabulations of what jobs have actually been created by federal government action.

“The big question going into today’s budget is whether Canadians will get value for the billions more being borrowed this year,” concluded Mr. Kennedy. “The Harper government failed to create the jobs it said it would in 2009-10 and there may be serious cost over-runs and incomplete projects in the year ahead as a further result.”