It's Budget Day...

As National Post columnist James Cowan put it this  morning, “The Conservatives love infrastructure: What the #!%*?”

Reports abound this week thanks to strategic information leaks that Minister Flaherty will announce $7 billion in funding for infrastructure over the next two years–that includes university repairs, construction and sustainable energy. He may have also mentioned something about “shovels in the ground.”

Getting those shovels in the ground is a whole lot easier said than done. Funding isn’t all a project needs to get started. Minister Baird has addressed issues like training skilled workers (supposedly there’s $1.5 billion set aside to retrain workers) and the painfully slow Environmental Assessment process that’s holding up projects like the Detroit-Windsor border crossing. In meetings with the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario, Baird has said his office is aware that EAs are a major flaw in this “shovels in the ground” plan.

On top of all that, it’s not yet clear whether this will be new funding or expedited funding from the already allotted and self-proclaimed “unprecedented” $33 billion Building Canada Plan.

More details and commentary after 4:00 PM today…

Hello again, readers. The budget has come down and it’s sort of anticlimactic. All that leaked info turned out to be mostly correct, which means we haven’t got a whole lot of news to report.

As expected, there will be a $1.5-billion training fund for laid off workers.

About a third of the $40-billion stimulus package will go towards infrastructure projects and home construction.

Nearly $12 billion will be set aside for “shovel-ready” public works projects, a quarter of that aimed at the classics: roads, bridges, sewer and water mains. There will be a $1 billion fund for green infrastructure projects.

This is new funding on top of the Building Canada Plan announced in last year’s budget. Some criticize that provinces and cities have seen little of the $33 billion announced in Budget 2008. But, to be fair, that money was meant to be doled out slowly over seven years. This new money is meant to be speedily allocated–but with all the red tape associated with getting a project off the books, that may be too much to hope for.

Flaherty told reporters the government is well aware of the need to “reduce red tape and needless duplication.” But can they do it?

The other hitch: the federal government won’t be spending alone.  Provinces and municipalities will have to contribute their own funding in order to get projects started. High-profile projects like the revitalization of Union Station in Toronto (which Toronto Mayor David Miller is pushing for), the Evergreen transit line in Vancouver, road upgrades in Quebec City and the Summerside wind energy project on Prince Edward Island all sounds great to the feds–as long as the provinces and cities share the cost.

At least the feds have indicated that this is not a long-standing offer. If cities and provinces are interested in taking the partial funding, they need to act fast or get out of the way. And plenty will. The new money may sound like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket considering out Top 100 list alone represents $61 billion worth of infrastructure projects. I can already hear them all sharpening their elbows as they step up to the funding table…