Impact of the
Federal Budget
Limiting new initiatives in the face of uncertainty
CANADIAN CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION
By Bill Ferreira, Vice-President, Government Relations & Public Affairs, Canadian Construction Association
On March 22, the federal government presented its lat-est
budget, which is more of a clarification rather than
a new document. With so much uncertainty in the U.S.,
the federal government has decided to limit new initiatives. Changes
to existing programs, while directional, have very little new money
attached to them.
Deficit and debt
The projected deficit will reach a peak of $28.6 billion in 2017-18 be-fore
falling slightly over the next five years. As a measure of debt-to-
GDP, the federal government is expected to maintain a 31.6 per cent
level for the next two years before the ratio begins to fall again to 30.9
per cent by 2021-22.
Infrastructure
There was no new money announced in the budget, but a few ad-ditional
details were released regarding Phase II of the infrastruc-ture
program. First, the new funds will require the signing of new
framework agreements with the provinces and territories. These are
expected to be finalized by the fall of 2017. Second, the funding for-mula
for Phase II is changing, with the federal government now only
covering 40 per cent of estimat-ed
costs for projects with a mu-nicipal
or private, not-for-profit
partner; 50 per cent for projects
involving a provincial govern-ment;
and 75 per cent for projects
involving Indigenous communi-ties
or the territories.
Innovation
Budget 2017 also makes available $950 million to support innova-tion
across Canada in seven superclusters, including infrastructure
and transportation.
Skills development and training
This year’s budget announced the creation of a new organization
that will work with the private sector, educational institutions and
the not-for-profit sector to identify employer-demanded skills, ex-plore
new approaches to delivery of skills training and share infor-mation
and analysis to inform future training investments. Budget
2017 will invest $1.8 billion over six years to expand the labour
$ million CWWF PTIF NBCF NBCF – Small Communities
Allocated Remaining Allocated Remaining Allocated Remaining Allocated Remaining
AB 132.3 64.4 345.3 1.9 260.5 587.2 93.2 0.9
BC 222.8 2.3 460.0 0.0 642.1 557.9 107.9 1.1
MB 49.0 46.2 53.0 29.9 140.4 527.5 35.9 10.7
NB 76.8 2.6 8.7 0.0 326.0 28.3 29.6 9.8
NL 70.6 0.0 2.4 2.6 169.7 144.4 10.1 24.8
NW 49.1 2.6 0.3 0.0 72.0 0.0 111.3 74.8
NS 86.0 0.0 29.5 2.7 122.8 261.0 14.2 28.4
NU 36.7 14.7 0.0 0.0 93.7 200.6 26.6 --
ON 66.6 503.1 754.7 645.3 100.0 2,300.0 268.7 3.3
PE 16.4 39.2 0.7 0.0 24.4 224.9 3.2 24.5
QC 217.8 145.9 153.2 770.5 1,600.0 1,600.0 19.9 157.0
SK 47.4 41.9 28.7 0.0 177.6 215.4 16.8 26.4
YK 51.4 0.0 0.9 0.0 69.2 187.4 — —
JANE KELLY/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
CWWF) Clean Water and
Wastewater Fund
(PTIF) Public Transit
Infrastructure Fund
(NBCF) New Building
Canada Fund
(NBCF-Small Communities)
Fewer than 100,000 residents
saskheavy.ca | Quarter 3 2017 | Think BIG 43