Transport Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2009

[John Forster, Associate Deputy Minister, Associate Deputy Minister's Office, Infrastructure Canada]

It was Tuesday. We were given a one-week deadline.

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

Yes. We were given a one-week deadline. We provided the information on Tuesday. We delivered it to the committee and they are now looking at it.

We would be happy to provide exactly the same data that we provided to the government operations committee.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Through you, Mr. Chair--and again, I'd be happy for the minister to answer any of these questions--how is the ministry able to make claims about the progress of its spending, the billions of dollars that it has requisitioned, if it's refusing to ask Ontario for the schedule H information?

Why wouldn't it want job creation numbers? How is it making claims today about job creation in the absence of having looked at the numbers that are obviously readily available?

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

I'm going to turn it over to my colleague John Forster, who's actually the associate deputy for infrastructure and who has the details of everything that we have collected.

[John Forster]

The claims data and progress reports we ask from all provinces are in an online system. It includes things such as project start dates, tender dates, and money being expended. The job creation impact of the entire stimulus package, the entire economic action plan, is done by the Department of Finance. They assess the job creation benefits of the entire stimulus package across all the programs and across all the departments rather than each of us going off to do our own.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Forster, just to be clear, there are 1,700 projects that the federal government has put federal taxpayer dollars into--borrowed money, at least--and you have not asked the provincial government to give you the job creation data that it's collecting. You've not done that at all. Is that correct?

[John Forster]

We're not asking, in our claims and progress reports, for a project by project breakdown of jobs--

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

That's incredible.

To the minister, through you, Mr. Chair--

[John Forster]

If I may finish the answer, I think one of the things you'll find if you look to the experience of the United States with this kind of reporting, this recipient reporting of job creation, is that it's very inconsistent. In their first audit of that, the government accounting office in the United States has found a lot of difficulties and problems with doing it, so the government is taking a different approach, which is to do a macro-level assessment across the entire stimulus package on job creation.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Again, Mr. Forster, we have a right here and we have a need here, and the fact that your department, which is charged with creating jobs, has chosen not to ask anything about creating jobs is I think absolutely unacceptable--

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

It's hardly a surprise, because we've told you in committee that we weren't accepting that information.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

You weren't accepting it?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I've told you on numerous occasions that we cannot impose the burden on municipalities to look at every--

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

But it's happening.

It's happening, Minister.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Just listen. If we accepted the information, we'd have to validate whether it's correct. If you look at the United States, you see that it's been a hodgepodge and very inconsistent and has not had much integrity.

What we have said from the get-go--and you can't say this is a surprise--is that we're not going to say to municipalities to tell us where this steel was made, what the efficiency levels were, and how many jobs were created, or to tell us where this engineering work was done and whether it was three or eight people who worked on it.

That shouldn't be a surprise at all because we've said right from the get-go that we weren't going to do it. If we did accept it, then we'd have to somehow have an army of bureaucrats to validate whether that was in fact the case.

After I told you that, you voted confidence in me 18 times. So you must have been satisfied, because you stood up in the House of Commons 18 times and voted confidence in the government.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

You'll notice, Minister, that my disposition has changed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

You have seven minutes, Monsieur Laframboise.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the ministers for being here.

Mr. Minister, you are here before the committee, and you want to ask us for $547 million in additional appropriation authority for infrastructure. You know that Quebec had municipal elections on November 1. During the 30-day period leading up to the elections, no political decisions can be made, since mayors and councillors are in the midst of an election. So no political decisions are made.

Afterwards, it is time to prepare budgets. There are a lot of new city councils, and you said it yourself, or at least some of your colleagues in the House of Commons did, no announcements were made in Quebec during the last election campaign because you did not want to interfere with the municipal elections. And that is good. It is just that today, in the fourth report, you are stating that the government's deadline for the provinces and territories to have committed all the remaining funding is January 29, 2010.

Are you aware that in Quebec, since, I would say, at least August, no decisions have been made by cities or municipalities because of the municipal elections, and no decisions will be made. They are in the process of passing budgets. Some have even asked for an extension until the end of January in order to table their municipal budgets. Therefore, a number of municipalities will not be able to submit requests.

You seem to be sticking to the January 29, 2010 deadline at all costs. Are you flexible on that at all, or is it non-negotiable?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I am aware of your concerns. Of course, municipal elections were held in Quebec in recent months, and no announcements can be made in the 30 days leading up to the elections.

We have worked very well with Minister Laurent Lessard on this issue. We have asked municipalities to fill in one-page forms by December 15, I believe, and I am certain they will be able to make decisions and announce projects by January 29.

Sometimes, I find it frustrating because we cannot move as quickly as we would like. But we respect the laws that are unique to Quebec, laws that make it not only necessary, but also mandatory to work with the provinces in areas under their jurisdiction. I hope we will receive the applications. The forms are just one page long, and I hope that it can be done by January 29.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Minister, all of the municipalities do not have the budget surpluses they need to commit funding as of now. There are often borrowing by-laws, time limits, political decisions to be made. Your fourth reports says this:

The Government has set a deadline of January 29, 2010, by which time provinces and territories must commit all remaining funds. This will ensure that uncommitted stimulus funding can be put to work quickly for the benefit of all Canadians.

That means that funds might not be spent, in Quebec, in cases where cities do not have enough time to submit their application. Those funds would go to the rest of Canada.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I want to point out that my goal is to ensure that approximately 22% or 23% of stimulus funding is spent in Quebec.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

But if ever....

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We are going to work very hard to achieve that goal. In some provinces, if not the majority, some money has been spent in areas under federal jurisdiction. They had that choice. It was done in Ontario, British Columbia and a few other provinces. Regardless, in order to complete their projects by April 1, 2011, municipalities will have to fill in the one-page form by the end of January.

The other day, we made an announcement in Gatineau, along with Laurent Lessard. The mayor said that he had already completed a good number of projects and that if there was extra money, he was prepared to carry out more.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Minister, Gatineau is one of the wealthy cities in Quebec. It has the financial resources it needs. However, even some big cities do not have enough....

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I understand your concern, but I worried that if I told everyone to take their time, decisions would be put off until May 1.