Infrastructure money will benefit P.E.I., says MP Wayne Easter

Malpeque MP Wayne Easter says his government's first federal budget will benefit many Islanders.

Federal finance minister Bill Morneau delivered the Liberal budget in the House of Commons yesterday that includes plans to spend $12 billion on infrastructure over five years.

"You will see that the investment remains for the various infrastructure programs that we committed to," said Easter.

"That will go some distance in terms of helping P.E.I. with water, sewage, roads in the smaller communities with those needs to kind of build the foundation in terms of the infrastructure going forward."

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But former Scott Armstrong, former Nova Scotia MP, the federal Conservative's critic for Atlantic Canada said he doesn't think the infrastructure money will flow until 2018 at the earliest. 

Armstrong agreed with Charlottetown mayor Clifford Lee that the money for the work needs to start now. 

Armstrong said the promise to support the Atlantic ferry system, including Wood Islands to Caribou, was good news. 

The amount committed is $52 million, an increase of $34-million in spending.

Easter said there will also be an investment in rural broadband to help P.E.I. businesses in rural areas that can't do business because of the lack of access.  

"What I say to my friends in Toronto is why would you live in Toronto when you can live on Prince Edward Island and do the same thing because of the technology available today. But because we don't have broadband enough in the rural areas, we in fact can't do that. So there's a big investment in terms of trying to get broadband into rural areas," said Easter.

The federal government has committed to reopening veteran affairs offices across Canada including the one in Charlottetown.

The government plans to run a deficit of $29.4 billion this coming year, something Armstrong took issue with, saying the Liberals broke a key election campaign promise. 

"We left them with a $3.2 billion surplus, they campaigned on spending a $10 billion deficit, they said they'd have three small deficits moving forward to have a balanced budget in 2019. That's what Canadians were told but now that they're in government, they've tripled the amount of borrowing they are going to be doing," said Armstrong. 

"This is all money we're going to have to pay back through tax dollars in the future and they have no plan for when they're going to balance the budget." 

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