The CBC found that spending helped preserve about 70,000 jobs in the province last year and added almost a full percentage point to Ontario’s economy in 2009.

Pedro Antunes, director of National and Provincial Forecast with the CBC, said, “The additional boost to infrastructure spending in 2009 and 2010 is noteworthy, both in terms of growing the province’s gross domestic product and in maintaining employment during the recession.”

In 2009, government infrastructure spending is expected to have supported 182,897 jobs in the province; this figure is estimated to rise to 223,268 jobs in 2010.

Ontario’s Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Brad Duguid, says it feels good to get this “third-party validation” that the work his office is doing—and has done in the past—does make a positive impact. Duguid says that while “critics” like to pull MEI’s numbers apart, it’s hard to argue with a credible authority like the CBC.

Duguid also says the ministry will move on from frenzied, ad-hoc stimulus spending and return to the more “measured approach” his office has taken in the past with programs like Renew Ontario.

The CBC found that programs such as ReNew Ontario and Move Ontario did indeed help growth in public investment overtake the rate of growth in private investment.

In addition to the short-term impact in countering the downturn in the business cycle, infrastructure investment can lead to productivity gains in the medium and long-term. The report found that productivity in Ontario has benefited from strong infrastructure growth more than Canada as a whole, and more than other developed economies.

The CBC did this research for Infrastructure Ontario, the provincial body that Duguid says has been “vigorously monitoring” the progress of the stimulus funding program in Ontario.

Following Ontario’s big water-related announcement this week, Duguid will announce a major new project that affects Hamilton’s harbour. Duguid said, having started Ontario on the right energy path with the Green Energy Act, now it’s time to get water and wastewater moving in that same direction. The Feed-in-Tariff program has just resulted in more than 500 new green energy projects, most of them solar power installations, being approved.

Minister Brad Duguid sat down with ReNew Canada editor, Mira Shenker, this morning for a casual chat.

Duguid will also unveil a new joint federal/provincial program tomorrow—rumours have it building on the $32 billion Ontario has invested as stimulus funding. “Once [that program] is done, where do we go from here?” said Duguid. While it would be “unrealistic” to think funding could continue at this rate, Duguid said the ministry is returning to its Renew Ontario roots and focusing on long-term programs—possibly a 10-year infrastructure program.

In even more announcements teasers, Duguid said he would be joining Federal Minister of Infrastructure, John Baird, tomorrow to announce joint funding for some new provincial assets.

I talked to Gerrard Mulhern, executive director of the Ontario Concrete Pipe Association, who says this is about the Ministry of Transportation’s (MTO) failures as much as it’s about infrastructure failure.

“MTO has highway maintenance contractors doing inspections and the culvert inspections are a joke and a waste of money,” says Mulhern. “I’ve seen some of the inspection reports. If you ask the MTO what qualifications and training are required for these inspectors, they can’t answer.”

“There’s no way that they’ll identify culverts like this one [with a visual inspection,” says Mulhern, who estimates that around 5-10 thousand culverts on MTO and municipal roads are in immediate need of rehabilitation or replacement.

“They came within minutes or hours of that highway completely collapsing,” he says. “That’s a problem. The solution is fix them.”

But based on Mulhern’s estimates, it could cost around $100-200 million just to fix those pipes in critical states. And that’s if they’re addressed before they fail—reacting to a disaster is far more costly than being proactive. In a year when the Province is running a deficit, extra funding for maintenance is not on the books.

What about the stimulus fund? Wouldn’t this have been exactly the kind of “shovels in the ground,” ready-to-go project the feds would have been happy to co-fund?

Funding is really only part of the problem. As Mulhern said, inspectors are under qualified. He suggests getting the consulting engineering community involved.

Of course, MTO isn’t saying any of this—yet. Mulhern believes if they found the $200 million needed to make these fixes, their spokeswoman would change her rhetoric.

The idea was put forward by Regina Mayor Pat Fiacco at the BCMC’s last meeting in Ottawa and is now getting unanimous support from all members. The goal is to bring together for the first time all three orders of government, along with private industry and members of FCM, to discuss infrastructure challenges, best practices and potential solutions for narrowing the infrastructure gap. It’s now estimated that municipalities will have to spend at least $100 billion to bring assets like roads and pipes up to acceptable levels of service.

Mayor Pat Fiacco, whose city will host the summit, says, “This conference will be the first step in tackling Canada’s infrastructure needs.”

Carl Zehr, chair of the BCMC, says, “Together with the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, we´re co-funding infrastructure projects that will create more than half the 220,000 jobs promised in the Economic Action Plan.”

Fiacco says that stimulus funding is helping build and repair critical infrastructure, but it’s only a first step. ”Now we need to bring all partners together at a national infrastructure summit to turn those investments into a down payment on our long-term infrastructure needs.”

Mayor Kelly echoes Fiacco’s sentiments, saying that everyone involved should now come together at a national infrastructure summit, “to turn those investments into a down payment on our long-term infrastructure needs.”

The mayors emphasized the importance of protecting longer-term investments in cities, pointing to a new FCM public opinion survey that shows 69 per cent of Canadians believe local infrastructure investments are among the most important areas to protect from federal budget cuts, second only to healthcare.

And if you agree that investment in infrastructure is the best tool available to stimulate the economy and create economic development opportunities—as Toronto Mayor David Miller does—then it only makes sense to work on delivering more of that funding. Miller says, “We can make our economy more productive by investing in public transit and reducing traffic gridlock. We can make Canada greener and more prosperous, but we have to continue working together.”

The mayors are also calling on all parties in the House of Commons to sustain important, core federal funding for cities, including the permanent Gas Tax Fund, the 100 per cent GST refund, and affordable housing programs.

In his speech from the throne this afternoon, Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor, David Onley, said Ontario will see job creation and a stronger economy—that’s not news as far as goals go. What we did find exciting is that of the two tools McGuinty mentioned for achieving that growth is the province’s export of  clean-water technology.

The government will introduce a new Water Opportunities Act, designed to take advantage of the province’s expertise in clean-water technology. According to Onley, Ontario companies already employ 22,000 in a growing sector that’s worth US$400 billion annually.

This proposed Act is part of the Province’s new five-year Open Ontario Plan.

Beyond water, the plan will capitalize on Ontario’s other natural resources, such as chromite, a key ingredient in stainless steel. Northwestern Ontario is said to have one of the largest deposits of the mineral in the world. Onley said the government will work with northerners and Aboriginal communities to take advantage of the find and continue to protect half of the northern Boreal Forest.

The plan also includes the already-announced Green Energy Act, which could create an estimated 50,000 jobs, as well as a $32-billion investment in roads, bridges, public transit and energy retrofits for schools that will create an estimated 300,000 jobs.

The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure has created a pretty good website to help track infrastructure development through the new plan.