A report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer today shows that delays by the Harper government in getting infrastructure stimulus funding out the door means municipalities – and, ultimately, the local taxpayer – could be left having to pay for millions of dollars worth of projects, Liberal Infrastructure Critic Gerard Kennedy said.
“PBO Kevin Page’s report today is a serious warning of possible poor value for Canadians,” said Mr. Kennedy. “The gross mismanagement of infrastructure funding by this government should be a big concern to taxpayers.”
As a consequence of delays by the federal government, projects are running behind schedule and the rigid artificial deadline of March 31, 2011 will likely not be met by many.
The report identifies the risk of half a billion dollars of uncompleted work being dumped onto local property taxpayers. Anywhere from 24% to 46% of participating communities could be short-changed by the “dine and dash” attitude of the federal government towards Canada’s cities and towns, who offered to shoulder a big portion of the task of getting unemployed Canadians back to work.
The report does not pick up those projects which have had to overpay a premium in order to have projects completed by the artificial deadline.
Deadlines made sense as targets so projects would get underway, but total inflexibility will cost Canadians millions of dollars, said Mr. Kennedy. The Conservatives believe they can reclaim hundreds of millions at the end of the fiscal year to pose as better fiscal managers.
“A key question now is, will the new Infrastructure Minister Chuck Strahl be more practical and helpful than his predecessor?” Mr. Kennedy adds.”Canadians realize their interests have suffered from John Baird’s conflict between his other role of defending and promoting the Harper Conservatives at all costs and sensible serious management of these projects.”
The report also contains a further caution about the Harper government’s unhealthy wilful ignorance of facts. Like the Opposition, the PBO has had to resort to doing his own surveys to make up for the poor quality of what is being collected by the Harper government.
Even after a year into the program, the government still had not collected any reports for more than 25% of projects worth a total of $2.5 billion.
Also noteworthy are revised figures that show only 8% of funding had actually been spent at a time last fall when the government was claiming it had spent 90%.
