The Big City Vote – The Conservatives

Image from the Conservative “True North Strong and Free” plan.

“Ottawa has stuck its nose into provincial and local matters. Into areas where they didn’t have much expertise. While at the same time neglecting what it had to do. Accordingly, our roles and responsibilities in our respective areas of jurisdiction have become muddled.” – Harper’s 2006 speech to the FCM.

At a time when cities are urgently calling for concrete Federal involvement, it seems the Conservative government wants to un-muddle themselves from the cities agenda.

As far as cities are concerned, the 11th-hour Conservative platform [PDF] is about maintaining the status quo:

Infrastructure: The Conservatives re-iterated their commitment to the Building Canada Plan, which will invest $33 billion in municipal infrastructure between 2007-2014. (That includes the Gas Tax transfer to cities and tax rebate for cities, but also funds for provinces, border crossings, and public-private partnerships).

In the 2008 budget, the conservatives announced that the Gas Tax Fund will be extended beyond 2014, at a rate of $2 billion per year, and become a permanent measure.

However, the permanent Gas Tax Fund is not indexed to growth and no new measures are proposed to address the growing municipal infrastructure deficit, which doubled in the past 5 years alone. Last November, Harper flatly refused to lend further support to cities, emphasizing that municipalities are a provincial, not a federal responsibility.

Transit: Although the Conservatives introduced a tax credit for transit passes in 2006, the government did not follow through the previous government’s commitment to fund public transit systems.

Housing: The Conservatives will renew 3 housing programs due to expire next march: the Affordable Housing Initiative, which provides for special needs tenants, the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, which renovates and maintains affordable housing, and the Homelessness Partnering Strategy are secure for 5 more years. The conservative platform also introduces additional tax credits for first time home-buyers.

A statement by the President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities called the Conservatives’ $1.9 billion investment in these programs “a clear, positive and timely response to Canada’s homelessness epidemic and the growing need for more affordable shelter.”

The “Tough on Crime” thing: Although the Conservatives dedicated 5 pages of the platform to new criminal laws and tougher penalties for law-breakers, they do not provide additional support for municipal police who would have to enforce most of these measures. According to the FCM, municipal spending on police has increased three times as much as federal spending (and twice as much as provincial) in the last 20 years.

Basically, as far as Harper and the Conservatives are concerned, cities are just not their problem. They’ll maintain existing programs and let the provinces juggle the skyrocketing costs of municipal services like transit, drinking water and policing.

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This week, Spacing Montreal takes a look at what each federal party has in store for cities. For an overview of the issues, see Monday’s post.