OTTAWA – Investment of close to $1.6 billion in public infrastructure program funds during the past three years has created 1,400 long-term jobs in Western Canada and close to 28,000 temporary jobs.
This is the tally provided in an analysis of the $6 billion infrastructure program dreamed up by the Liberals for their last election campaign and cost-shared by all three levels of government.
Overall, says the report published last week, the program had created 9,240 long-term jobs and over 101,000 temporary jobs by last July. This was tens of thousands more jobs than predicted and the administration was “essentially trouble free.”
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The program expires at the end of the year and the Liberals are debating whether to extend it.
The analysis by University of Toronto engineering professor Richard Soberman, while favorable to the existing program, cautions against trying to repeat it, even if it might be popular.
“It is not obvious that this particular shared-funding initiative should become a permanent federal program,” wrote Soberman.
Most of the priority projects have been completed and the returns on further investments would diminish.
Still, because of government and public support, “there may be strong support for extending the program on the basis of both its economic and political accomplishments.”
He said there had been more than 12,000 projects approved throughout the country, ranging in size from a $207 million water treatment project in the Vancouver area to a $300 project in Bitter Lake, Alta.
Throughout the regions, it allowed governments to rebuild roads and bridges, water and sewer systems, school and recreational buildings.
Long-term benefits
In many cases, the economic benefits of the projects went far beyond the immediate, although the net effects sometimes were mixed and some jobs merely moved from one community to another, said the analysis.
In Wynyard, Sask., some program money was put toward an expanded water treatment plant for the town.
This “allowed the poultry processing plant (Sunnyland Poultry Products Ltd.) to increase employment and output by introducing a second operating shift,” said the analysis. “The same company, however, then consolidated its operations by closing a plant in Saskatoon.”
Because of its lower unemployment level, western provinces did not receive a portion of the money that matches its population.
By July, the four provinces with 28.2 percent of the population had received 26.3 percent of the funds, although not all the money had yet been allocated.
In total, $523.8 million federal dollars had gone into the West.
Since the municipalities or provinces sometimes contributed more than their one-third share, the total three-government investment over two-and-a-half years was $6.5 billion.
In a breakdown of Saskatchewan spending, Soberman said Ottawa had invested $57.7 million, including $10 million to projects approved in rural municipalities.
The province did not contribute matching dollars to the projects sponsored by rural municipalities, according to the report.
