Constructors pleased with Ontario budget

Sousa announced Ontario’s first balanced budget in 10 years, with a $600-million surplus projected for the 2017–2018 fiscal year and similar small surpluses the following two years. Document headlines focused first on pharmacare, housing regulatory reform, health care spending and a boost to child care but construction stakeholders digging deeper welcomed the hike of almost $2 billion extra per year in infrastructure allocations over the next 10 years.

In the next fiscal year the annual infrastructure spend will escalate from $13.54 billion to $15.57 billion. The province’s 10-year infrastructure plan now projects total spending of $156 billion including $56 billion on public transit, $26 billion on highways, more than $20 billion in capital grants to hospitals and almost $16 billion in capital grants to school boards.

"It was a little surprise, I would have estimated it would be around the $13 billion assigned to it a year ago,” said David Frame, Ontario General Contractors Association (OGCA) director of government relations, of the total infrastructure spend. "An increase of $2 billion is substantive.” This is the first budget in the last three years that boosts spending in the ICI sector, said Frame, noting increased capital allocations for the education, social and justice sectors. As for heavy civil, he calculated transit spending received the biggest boost, with almost $1.8 billion per year in new pledges.

"It’s always a good thing when there is more money for public infrastructure,” said Council of Ontario Construction Associations president Ian Cunningham. "There was lots of spending on new schools and so forth and that is good for construction. I think it was a good construction budget.”