Budget 2007
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Budget Speech

Action To Promote Economic Growth

Investing In Infrastructure

Mr. Speaker, the need to invest revenue in infrastructure to promote sustainable growth is one of the principal reasons we are fighting so hard to achieve what we were promised under the Equalization Program. We will proceed this year by strengthening investments in highway, marine and air transportation infrastructure, public buildings, municipal capital works and the like. Our investment this year will total some $440million, and that spending will generate an estimated 5,700 person-years of employment. This spending is part of the six-year Infrastructure Strategy we announced in 2006.

A particular focus for our government this year is Labrador. Under our recently released Northern Strategic Plan for Labrador, we are making unprecedented investments in a host of initiatives benefiting all corners and communities of the Big Land. A major component of this plan is the Labrador Transportation Strategy, in anticipation of which we are making a major commitment this year of $17 million for construction of Phase III of the Trans-Labrador Highway. Last year, we also made a commitment to apply a sealed surface on Phase I of the highway and budgeted $15 million, to be cost-shared 50-50 with the federal government. Once again, we are putting forward our $7.5 million share and challenging the federal government to match it. Let me make it clear, however, that our government will proceed with hard-surfacing this year with or without a federal contribution.

To implement the Northern Strategic Plan over the next five years, we will invest $55 million for new initiatives bringing our total investment in new and existing initiatives to support the plan’s goals to over $250 million. Among the major investments proceeding this year is an energy rebate to address one of the most pressing issues for rural isolated communities in Labrador. The rebate, at an annual investment of $1.6 million, will reduce the cost of basic electricity consumption needs of Labrador rural isolated residential customers to a level on par with the Labrador Interconnected Rates. Customers in the Labrador Straits area will receive a similar rebate to achieve the same goal.

Last year, our government invested $60 million in road work initiatives, and this year, we will increase our investment in the Provincial Roads Improvement Program to $66.5 million. Early announcements are enabling tendering and construction work to proceed sooner. In addition, we will increase the summer road maintenance program by $2.5 million to approximately $17.5 million, bringing our total investment in summer and winter maintenance to $48.6 million. We will allocate $10 million to start the Torbay By- Pass and extend the Team Gushue Highway, subject to cost-sharing with respective governments. Having already achieved a significant expansion of the National Highway System in this province, we will invest $15.5 million as our share of funding to upgrade our Trans-Canada Highway portion of the national system. This year, with the initiatives just mentioned and more besides, we are increasing our total investment in provincial roads to more than $160 million. This roads program will generate an estimated 2,100 person-years of employment, and a substantial amount of that investment will be spent in rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

To ensure we properly protect the road work we are commissioning, we will strengthen our enforcement of weight restrictions for commercial vehicles by increasing highway monitoring both in Labrador and on the island and investing over $1 million to install Weigh-In-Motion technology to supplement the work of our provincial weigh scales operations. We will also make use of cutting-edge technology by purchasing an Automated Road Analyzer, a device that pinpoints road deterioration so we can catch problems before they worsen and target our repair monies strategically.

Many of our rural communities rely on marine transportation services. We are investing in their future by upgrading our intraprovincial ferry system. We will invest an additional $1.3 million for a total of $10.3 million to refit government-owned ferry vessels. We will invest $5 million for maintenance and construction of terminals and wharves. And we will invest another $15 million under our Vessel Replacement Strategy so construction can commence on two new ferry vessels for which design work is nearly complete. We have also reduced rates on intraprovincial ferry routes.

Economic opportunities are advanced by the improvements we make to infrastructure at the municipal level. In recent years, fourteen of our larger towns and cities have seen their annual Municipal Operating Grants lowered in phases by $3.6 million under a planned $5 million reduction. With the improvement in our fiscal situation, we are now canceling the third phase of this reduction, enabling those fourteen municipalities to invest the retained $1.4 million in their respective municipal priorities.

Municipalities are increasingly looking to their neighbours to find new ways of addressing common challenges through cooperation. While some have found ways to regionalize or share common services for the benefit of their residents, others have come to recognize they can provide more efficient and effective services to their residents as merged municipal entities. While we are not prepared to force any municipalities in this direction, neither do we believe in placing needless barriers in their way. So we are investing $2 million this year to help equalize the debt of towns that seek to work cooperatively at the municipal level.
 


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