Right in the centre - Good news, but is it sustainable?

Details

Published on Thursday, July 28, 2016

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

It was good news to see that the senior levels of government were putting some money into municipal infrastructure this past week. The federal government is putting up half and the other half is being split between municipalities and the province. Hopefully that doesn’t mean there will just be less projects funded.

The bad news is that the senior levels of government, namely the Manitoba and Canadian governments, don’t understand the problem. There isn’t enough money being spent on infrastructure. What is being spent is being expended in the wrong way. The federal and provincial pots of infrastructure money should be divided up equally among all municipalities on a per capita basis. Instead, the way it has been done for decades is on a competitive application system that pits one community against another, each municipality, town or village has to apply. Some get funding, most don’t. It’s a very unfair system with governments picking winners and losers. Unfortunately, there are many more losers than winners and overall, the country’s infrastructure continues to crumble.

If the current system continues and there is no sign that it won’t, the infrastructure funds will be put out there to fewer and fewer communities. Quite frankly, some communities are not serving enough people to justify more infrastructure money if it has to be put out on the current system. We have heard for years that governments have to set priorities and shell out the tax dollars carefully. 

Governments should not be giving money to industry. Canada’s most flagrant case of public money going to private industry would appear to be Bombardier. Huge dollars are going to that private company. True, they employ a lot of people, but due to government grants, they sell highly subsidized products. Maybe all countries do it that way, but even if it is so, it’s not necessarily right.

When a person adds up all the money that goes to industry, I think there could be a lot more bridges, roads, water and sewer lines and water treatment plants built. I have said many times before that I would have supported taxpayer money going into the MTS Centre, the Investors Group Field and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights if the government had made sure every community had clean water first. They didn’t and many communities across Canada are still hard pressed for clean water, let alone other infrastructure.

Neepawa needs a new hospital and maybe a new school as well. Several towns need new care homes. Some hospitals are no longer certifiable because of declining building infrastructure. Sandy Bay should have a hospital as there are 5,000 plus people living there. 

It’s highly doubtful if the current federal Liberal government will apply business sense to governing. It’s just not the Liberal way. It’s hard enough to get that business sense drummed into Conservative party people. Canada and Manitoba need much stronger leadership than we have had. Some very difficult decisions are going to have to be made. So far, any attempt at business sense is mostly window dressing at both the federal and provincial levels of government.

What actually needs to happen is for a majority of voters to realize that governments can’t and shouldn’t try to afford to do everything. When medicare came in, it was never assumed that all things would be covered. It was for basic heath care and hospitalization. Now, a whole range of very much elective items are added to the list of covered services. Our education system is being stretched to do far more than basic education. Our schools have become nursing stations, day cares and food banks.

If we truly examine our sustainable capacity, there will need to be a lot of changes.