The Conservative government is asking Parliament to approve a
2007-08 budget for the Western Economic Diversification program that is 20 percent lower than this year’s budget.
However, a senior official from WED Canada says the proposed budget cut does not signal a retreat from diversification programming.
Rather, WED director general of finance Jim Saunderson said it is a combination of completed projects and bookkeeping changes.
In the fiscal year beginning April 1, the government is asking for a western diversification budget of $253.2 million compared to approved spending of $315.5 million for 2006-07.
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Saunderson said “peeling back the onion skin” identifies three major reasons for the cut.
WED this year invested $29 million in a project to construct a container terminal at the port in Prince Rupert, B.C.
“That was a one-time investment and our involvement in the project has been completed.”
The program also spent $12.5 million this year helping pay for infrastructure investments in Saskatchewan and Alberta to commemorate their 2005 centennials.
“That event is obviously over, but these were investments in institutions that will remain as assets for those provinces.”
WED helped build a new RCMP museum in Saskatchewan and invested in the Royal Alberta Museum.
Last year’s WED budget included funding for Infrastructure Canada projects in the West, but that program is being phased out, resulting in a $22 million budget reduction for WED.
The program will be replaced next year by the Municipal Rural Infrastructure fund and the Canadian Strategic Infrastructure fund that will be included in the Industry Canada budget.
However, Western Economic Diversification will continue to administer some of that funding, even if it is not in its official budget. Saunderson said the spending’s emphasis will be on making infrastructure more environmentally friendly, including roads, water and sewage.
Meanwhile, a senior WED official recently told the Senate agriculture committee studying rural poverty that the agency does not differentiate between rural and urban issues.
Assistant deputy minister Ardath Paxton Mann, who is responsible for British Columbia programming, said the agency has been told in public consultations that it should stick to its economic development knitting and not stray into rural social programming.
The resounding message from public consultations was “more focus on economic development and diversification within the department and not let the department get diluted into the social side of things,” she said.
“There were enough agencies taking care of that.”
She told senators that investments by WED in rural infrastructure are an attempt to make small rural communities more attractive places to live.
“This fund was designed to mitigate the concerns of small rural communities who felt there was not sufficient funding being allocated to them because they were small and because of issues like rural depopulation and perhaps reduction of transportation on highways and bridges,” she said.
“Their concern was that perhaps the infrastructure dollars did not need to be allocated to those communities. In fact, this program has indicated that it does need to be allocated and it is being allocated.”
