Extra $40M in federal budget for Winnipeg

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This article was published 20/03/2019 (1855 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s like Christmas coming early for Winnipeg city hall — Tuesday’s federal budget held a surprise for Canadian municipalities: a one-time doubling of federal gas tax revenue.

For Winnipeg, it will mean an extra $40 million-plus to spend on infrastructure projects and a chance to do some of the reconstruction of residential streets that had been shelved due to a funding dispute with the province.

“When I heard the number, my reaction was, ‘You’ve got to me kidding me,’” Mayor Brian Bowman said.

Bowman spent an hour Thursday afternoon in the downtown Winnipeg offices of Jim Carr, the senior federal cabinet minister from Manitoba and the minister of international trade diversification, where he was briefed on the budget’s impact on Winnipeg.

The 2019 plan includes a doubling of gas tax revenues, distributed directly to municipalities across the country, amounting to an extra $2.2 billion dispersed.

A total of $72 million will be spread among municipalities across Manitoba, based on population, with Winnipeg expected to get a little more than $40 million.

According to Winnipeg’s 2019 budget book, the city was expecting to receive almost $44 million in federal gas tax revenue this year, which has already been allocated to a variety of infrastructure projects. It appears the bonus $40 million could salvage at least part of the city’s street reconstruction program.

The city had planned to rebuild 53 neighbourhood streets and 11 lanes this year, but scrapped it, saying the province had retroactively refused to pay $40 million for 2018 street work. Rather than increase property taxes or borrow to make up the lost money, council decided to use money it had planned on local street work in 2019 and 2020 to pay the province’s share.

Bowman said council will decide how the new extra funds are spent.

“I’d like it to go to roads, local roads in particular. There could be other things, active transportation networks, recreation,” the mayor told reporters. “Council will ultimately have to decide.

“The sooner that (federal) budget passes and the sooner those funds flow, the more flexibility we’ll have for this year, especially this year’s construction season. If we get into May, June, it’s going to severely restrict or limit outright our ability to invest in roads for this season.”

Carr said Ottawa will write the city a cheque as soon as the federal budget is approved by Parliament, which he said will occur no later than the end of June.

“They will be given a cheque and they will spend it as they see fit,” the Winnipeg MP said.

Missing from the Thursday meeting was Premier Brian Pallister or a representative of the provincial government.

“The province has said it prefers bilateral meetings and it’s not interested at this stage in trilateral ones,” Carr said.

A spokesman for Pallister said the issue of the premier’s non-participation is a “Liberal-manufactured issue to distract Manitobans from the ongoing scandals in Ottawa.”

Press secretary David von Meyenfeldt said Manitoba “will not proceed with trilateral meetings unless the federal cabinet implements a regional minister structure. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with federal ministers and departments on matters within their respective areas of responsibility, such as the infrastructure minister on infrastructure priorities.”

Last month, the Free Press revealed Manitoba had roughly $1.9 billion in federal allocations that were sitting untapped, due to slow carbon-retrofit negotiations, half-finalized housing agreements and spats over cost-shared infrastructure projects.

In mid-February, Carr reached out to Pallister and Bowman, requesting a meeting on the issue. Pallister instead offered to dispatch deputy premier Heather Stefanson, with his office saying the premier would attend if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was at the table.

The meeting seemed on-track until Carr’s revelation Thursday.

The Winnipeg MP said the federal government and city hall are aligned on many issues, and he looks forward to having the province join them in discussions of mutual interest.

Carr said there are no meetings planned with Pallister, nor any member of his government, to brief the province on the federal budget.

 

— with files from Dylan Robertson

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca