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B.C. won’t be adding to its ambitious plans to build more highways, bridges and transit projects, even as Ottawa offers extra cash for shovel-ready capital plans to help stimulate the economic recovery from COVID-19, says the finance minister.

Carole James said she’s more interested in offering immediate and short-term support to the hundreds of thousands of B.C. workers who’ve lost their jobs than relying on developing new capital projects for employment.

It’s an approach supported by the B.C. business community.

“Infrastructure will certainly be part of it, but I think this economic recovery is also going to have to take into account things like education and training,” James said.

“Young people are going got be particularly hit if you look at the job loss numbers. That 18- to 30-year-old category is going to face challenges. The sectors hit hardest are retail and accommodation and tourism. Who tends to work in those industries? Young people. This is going to have to focus on investing in people.”

The federal infrastructure minister, Catherine McKenna, has said she’s considering billions for provincial projects that could quickly begin construction, in an attempt to create new jobs, boost businesses and stimulate the economy.

But B.C. already has a $20 billion capital plan for the next three years, previously praised by the business sector as ambitious and aggressive. Half of that is to be spent this financial year on schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, transit, housing and B.C. Hydro projects.

B.C. already has signed federal commitments for funding on major projects like the $2.8 billion Broadway Subway line.

“Many of the programs that the federal government has been talking about, we are already subscribed to,” said James. B.C. is “certainly open to more funds,” said James, but it’s unclear whether increasing the federal share of previously announced projects is what Ottawa has in mind for stimulus.

James is taking the right approach, said Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president of the B.C. Business Council.

Although major infrastructure spending has historically been used to help pull economies out of recession, it now takes so long to get permits and environmental approvals for large B.C. building projects that it would take years to get any actual economic benefit, he said.

“The governments in Canada collectively have created regulatory systems that have made it almost impossible to use infrastructure spending as a counter-cyclical tool because by the time you get through the approval processes, the recession is over,” said Finlayson.

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Meanwhile, S&P Global Ratings has reaffirmed the province’s AAA credit rating, but downgraded its economic outlook from stable to negative. S&P’s wrote in its report that B.C. retains its “considerable economic strengths” of low debt, fiscal prudence, relatively wealthy residents, abundant natural resources, and close proximity to Asian markets. But if the province posts notable deficits in the next two years it could lose its AAA status, according to the agency.

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Vancouver Sun