While it took years of lobbying and persuasion for the federal government to finally start investing in cities, a Conservative victory may wash that hard work away. Harper said he is committed to the 5-cent gas tax, which goes to fund public transit infrastructure, but the tax has to be “supplemented.” That sounded good when I read it, thinking maybe he had other ideas on how to fund public transit. But what Mr. Harper wants to do is to give money to build roads. The Tories would implement a five-year fund for highways and border infrastructure worth $600 million in its final year. He also would track progress in reducing traffic by creating a road congestion index. “The national highway system is the backbone of the economy,” Harper said.
While some urbanites are afraid of the Tory social agenda, I’m much more scared about how they would deal with city issues that the last Parliament treated as an important issue. Conservatives are not federalists, and are quite adamant that the provinces are the ones to deal with cities.
Also, read this editorial from the Toronto Star. While I’m no fan of the Liberals, they are the ones, with the help of Jack Layton and the NDP, who have paid the most attention to the national importance of our large cities. Sadly, at times they’ve paid too much attention, screwing up projects like Toronto’s waterfront revitalization. Check out Andrew Spicer’s blog [ here and here ] on a recently revealed Liberal controversy down by the lake.
