Train to nowhere; How to tell if Harper's serious about balancing the budget
Taylor, Peter Shawn.
National Post; Don Mills, Ont. [Don Mills, Ont]29 Jan 2010: A.17.
Today is the day the taps are supposed to be shut off. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised that his government's massive $40-billion stimulus plan -- with its $12-billion in infrastructure spending and $8-billion for housing -- will come to an end now. Whatever hasn't been allocated yet gets taken off the table.
With the spending orgy done, Ottawa claims it will now turn its focus to getting the federal budget back in the black. Some observers see Harper's appointment of fiscal conservative Stockwell Day to the Treasury Board as a sign the party is well and truly over. We'll see.
Since the Tories have spent the past year as the most spendthrift government this country has ever seen, it seems a big ask for Ottawa to revert to tightwad status overnight.
Of course the biggest problem with going from spending to cutting is that it's far more enjoyable for politicians to make voters happy than it is to disappoint them. And even before the economic crisis the Tories were rather liberal when it came to spending on favoured demographics.
From a taxpayer's perspective, it's difficult to tell whether a switch has actually been made: There are significant time lags in reporting Ottawa's financial situation and the spin can often be confusing. So how will we really know if today's deadline marks a change in federal behaviour?
We need a quick method of checking the federal government's commitment to austerity. Fortunately we have just such a thing. It's called the Region of
Waterloo Rapid Transit Project Business Case.
Waterloo Region, a municipality in southwestern Ontario comprising the cities of
Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge, is home to a vibrant technology sector dominated by the University of
Waterloo and BlackBerry-maker RIM. The population is around 500,000.
Like many smaller urban centres that dream big, local councillors figure the quickest way to grandeur is to build themselves a light rail transit (
LRT) system. Last summer they voted overwhelmingly to approve an
LRT on King Street, the region's main north-south corridor.
But like many big schemes, the
LRT only seems like a good idea if someone else is paying for it. The region's plan for the $819-million tab is to ask the federal and provincial governments to split it. Ontario will pay the bulk, but Ottawa's share is a not-insignificant $256-million.
The business case justifying this proposal has been submitted to both governments and an answer is expected in a few weeks or months. Then we'll know if Ottawa is serious about cutting spending.
That's because by any practical metric,
Waterloo Region's
LRT makes absolutely no sense. If Ottawa approves this proposal, we will well and truly know its newly claimed commitment to fiscal prudence is a sham.
LRTs are meant to serve large metropolitan cities with high-volume commuter traffic heading to downtown employment cores.
Waterloo Region lacks it all: population, commuters and a downtown.
As an amalgam of three distinct cities,
Waterloo Region actually has no downtown core to speak of. Most RIM employees work in numerous buildings scattered across the suburbs, making them unlikely to take transit. By way of comparison, the smallest city in Canada with an existing
LRT is Edmonton. It has a metropolitan population twice that of
Waterloo Region and a downtown commuter employment base that's five times larger.
In order to justify its business plan, the region has heroically assumed transit ridership along the route will triple immediately once train service begins. This presumes more
LRT riders in
Waterloo Region than currently exist in Minneapolis, a city of three million people.
Oh, and another thing.
Waterloo Region's LRT will be two minutes slower than the existing bus service. That's right, $819-million buys a new transit system that isn't quite as fast as what's already there.
The only thing the
LRT has going for it is politics. Smaller-centre urban Ontario is fertile ground for the federal Conservatives and
Waterloo Region boasts four Tory MPs. Significantly, the closest race in the last federal election saw rookie Conservative candidate Peter Braid shock longtime Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi by 17 votes in the well-heeled riding of Kitchener-
Waterloo.
So it's no surprise Conservatives are keen to demonstrate their love for the region as often as possible. The day after municipal councillors approved the
LRT, another local Tory MP, Gary Goodyear, claimed his government was ready to pay its share, no questions asked.
Yet it's obvious there's no way
Waterloo Region's
LRT request for $256-million can withstand serious scrutiny with fiscal prudence as a criteria.
If the federal government does come through on this request, it will stand as an instant and unmistakable sign that political calculations have trumped any claims to austerity. It will also open the door for other similarly sized municipalities -- Hamilton, London, Quebec City, Halifax -- to demand LRTs of their own.
The decision on
Waterloo Region's
LRT will set a precedent in many ways. Every taxpayer in the country should be watching this train's schedule.
- Peter Shawn Taylor is editor-at-large with Maclean's magazine. He lives in
Waterloo Region and is a member of the local group Taxpayers for Sensible Transit.
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