With work on health-care reform well under way, prime minister Paul Martin is shifting his focus to another election promise, creating a new deal for cities and communities.
During the 2004 federal election campaign Martin vowed a re-elected Liberal government would give municipalities more predictable infrastructure funding through billions of dollars in GST and gas tax rebates.
“This is now the file which he is turning his attention to,” said Mark MacLeod, Saskatchewan’s representative on the External Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities.
Martin delivered on part of that commitment in his February throne speech, announcing a $500 million down payment on what will amount to a $7 billion GST rebate to Canadian cities over the next decade.
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The next challenge is figuring out how to dole out a further $5 billion in gas tax revenue, MacLeod told the 879 delegates attending the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities midterm convention last week.
He said the gas tax rebate represents a “great opportunity” for the province’s rural municipalities because Martin made it clear the money is to benefit communities of all sizes.
SARM president Neal Hardy is pressuring provincial politicians to hold Martin to his word on that.
Len Taylor, the province’s minister of government relations, assured SARM delegates that would be one of his priorities when he met with his provincial counterparts to devise a distribution strategy for the gas tax revenue.
He also told delegates the province is close to signing a separate agreement with Ottawa to replace the Canada-Saskatchewan Infrastructure Program, which expires next fiscal year.
More than $250 million will have been invested in provincial infrastructure projects by the time the program wraps up, including 109 successful applications from rural municipalities.
Taylor expects $76 million in new funding will be made available over the next four years under the replacement agreement. Project applications should be available early in the new year.
One of SARM’s priorities before its next annual convention is to devise a strategy on how to spend new infrastructure money.
The association’s Clearing the Path committee has identified a lack of rural transportation infrastructure as one of two key impediments to economic development. Recommendations on how to fix that problem unveiled at the midterm convention include:
- Establish a province-wide network of primary weight roads that would be maintained in part through funding provided by high-volume users.
- Create a common set of policies and rates for truck traffic within municipalities.
- Set up a one-stop office for obtaining overweight permits and road maintenance agreements.
- Enforce weight limits.
The other barrier the committee identified is the tangle of boundaries and inconsistencies in regulations across the province’s 297 rural municipalities.
To resolve that, the Clearing the Path committee has recommended setting up regional economic planning commissions or blocks of municipalities, towns, villages and other development agencies.
Hardy said it’s not a unique concept but it is time to update the regional approach to meet the new realities of consolidation and centralization.
The committee hopes to have its final recommendations ready for the 2005 annual convention in March.
