Ontario North promised more infrastructure funding – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – May 13, 2016)

http://www.timminspress.com/

TIMMINS – Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne told municipal leaders in Timmins on Thursday that her Liberal government plans to continue spending money on infrastructure for things like roads, waterlines and sewers.

While it was welcome information for the mayors and councillors attending the annual FONOM (Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities) conference it sounded a lot like an election speech which is not completely unexpected, given that Ontario voters will go to the polls on June 14, 2018.

Wynne alluded to that when she mentioned that her government is effectively at the halfway point and she listed the many and varied achievements of the Queen’s Park Liberals under her direction. “So we’re nearly halfway through our mandate to build Ontario up so really this morning I want to show you what it is exactly that we are building in Ontario,” the premier told the delegates in the morning session.

Wynne said when she came into power, she had taken over a previous Liberal administration that she described as being in a fragile post-recession recovery.

“Our infrastructure all across the province had fallen behind,” she admitted.

“We needed to get building as an immediate stimulus and to promote long-term growth. So I put into action the largest infrastructure investment in Ontario history,” said Wynne.

“We are now in year-three of that plan and in our 2016 budget we increased the investment to more than $160-billion over 12 years,” she continued.

She added that infrastructure spending “obviously means different things in different parts of the province.”

By example the premier mentioned how the province is helping to fund transportation infrastructure projects in the south such as light rail transportation links in Toronto, Mississauga, Waterloo and Hamilton. The price tag for those is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation website.

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