The Big City Vote – The Bloc Québécois

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.

Unsurprisingly, the Bloc’s response to questions about municipal infrastructure and services is “more money for Quebec” (and the other provinces).

It doesn’t matter where the money comes from: the Bloc would like the Canada to combine funding sources like the gas tax transfer and a portion of the GST, into a “single, unconditional, recurring transfer fund.” Once the provinces received this guaranteed this lump-sum, they could chose to share the extra cash with cities.

But would this structure really allow more money to trickle down to Canada’s cash-strapped cities?

When it comes to infrastructure, the Bloc outlines a plan to divvy up responsibilities according to the financial capacity of each level of government: the federal would cover 50% of expenses, the provinces 35% and cities 15%.  Like the Green Party, the Bloc promises to pressure the government to bring the Gas Tax Transfer up to 5 cents per litre immediately, rather than waiting until 2009-10.

The Bloc also calls for the federal government to increase investments in housing totalling $2 billion per year, allowing for the construction of 20,000 public housing units per year, 5000 of which would be in Quebec. Furthermore, they want increased subsidization of community-based programs to alleviate homelessness, amounting to $50 million in the province of Quebec.

However, in the last couple of years, we’ve seen how Quebec has handled projects like Highway 25 and the Notre Dame extension in Montreal. They have pushed through car-oriented development even when the city explicitly made transit a priority. More money for Quebec does not necessarily translate into the kind of development that the city wants and needs.