January 25, 2007

Infrastructure investments overdue: AMO

BRIAN BAKER

staff writer

NIAGARA FALLS

Ontario’s $5 billion infrastructure deficit is proof positive that infrastructure investments are long overdue, according to Pat Vanini, Executive Director for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).

“Each year, $5 billion of investments have been deferred or cancelled because the money just isn’t there,” Vanini told delegates at the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Construction Association’s annual general meeting.

“The infrastructure deficit would be almost gone in five years, if we had that kind of investment.”

The infrastructure deficit is just one piece of a larger problem facing the AMO: funding structures were changed during the 1990s under the Conservative government, resulting in a loss of billions of dollars in conditional and unconditional grants; the transfer of 4,000 kms of provincial roads to municipalities; and reductions in the half a billion dollars in arbitrary investments.

“Simply put, Ontario’s municipalities do not have sufficient revenue to finance that broad range of programs and service responsibilities,” said Vanini.

And he said municipalities cannot continue to raise property taxes because Ontario “already has the highest property taxes in all of Canada.”

A joint provincial-municipal fiscal and service review is taking place to observe the funding and delivery of provincial health and social services programs as well as infrastructure.

“Ontario is the only province that takes provincial health and social services from property taxes, and frankly, we have seen that this has cost us,” said Vanini.

There is a $3 billion fiscal gap between the cost of health care and social services and the revenue that province makes. It has resulted in cutting core programs and services.

“And the infrastructure investments are probably the hardest hit,” concluded Vanini.

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