Liberals slam delays in non-profit infrastructure funding
For Immediate Release
January 25, 2010
Liberals slam delays in non-profit infrastructure funding
OTTAWA - Infrastructure Minister John Baird should be at Parliament today answering questions and providing information to Canadians about his troubled infrastructure stimulus program, Liberal Infrastructure Critic Gerard Kennedy said today.
At a Parliamentary committee on December 2, 2009, Mr. Baird promised to release a list of non-profit infrastructure stimulus recipients “within a few days.” Instead, 54 days later, no list has been made public while Mr. Baird and his colleagues have made select, one-off announcements, like the one today at the Toronto United Way.
“Charitable organizations and the Canadian public who pay the bills don’t deserve this kind of poor treatment,” said Mr. Kennedy. “Mr. Baird can't escape accountability for the failures of his programs.”
In December, the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed that only 12 percent of announced funds had started to create jobs. The non-profit sector was forced to cope with a highly-erratic application process, given only a few weeks in the dead of summer to apply, and then received no response from federal government for six months.
“Average Canadians have seen almost no benefits from the billions of dollars Mr. Baird and Mr. Harper have been bragging about,” said Kennedy. “The stimulus part of the program has failed – and now the question is whether long-term value will even be realized."
$335 million of the Ontario portion of the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund has yet to be announced, despite the promise in the budget of a year ago to have projects started by the end of May 2009.
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Contact:
Office of Gerard Kennedy, MP: 613-992-2936