Infrastructure Minister John Baird has slammed a Liberal report that suggests Ottawa has moved too slowly on its infrastructure stimulus, and that the money has been doled out disproportionately to Conservative-held ridings.
"The Liberal facts are just plain wrong," Baird said at a news conference in Oakville, Ont.
The Liberals say that only 12 per cent of the $4-billion in Infrastructure Stimulus Fund projects has gone out the door, meaning that jobs are not being created at the rate that was expected.
But Baird says three-quarters of all projects slated to begin this year are underway and that is very clear that it is a two-year infrastructure plan.
He cast the Liberal report as "a major and unwarranted attack on the hard work of small towns and big cities across the country."
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff unveiled the results of his party's research at an empty field in Burlington, Ont., about 60 kilometres southwest of Toronto. The field is a location where a $2.3 million city park project has yet to break ground.
"So, it's not only that the money isn't getting out," Ignatieff said, making one of several gestures to the empty field with his hand during the news conference. "Where it's getting out, it's going systematically to Conservative ridings. We think this isn't good enough and we want to say so loud and clear."
Ignatieff said it's "one of the reasons, one of the important reasons why our party is unable to continue supporting this government and why we've withdrawn confidence from the government."
Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for the prime minister, has said the Liberal criticism of the pace of infrastructure investment isn't credible.
After hearing about the Liberal research on Wednesday, Soudas said that if Ignatieff were successful in provoking an election, it would put the brakes on the very investments he is concerned about.
"If it were up to Michael Ignatieff, we would be six days into an unnecessary and opportunistic snap election," said Soudas.
At the news conference, Ignatieff said that position was "an absolutely absurd charge."
"That's saying that democracy is bad for Canadians, choice is bad for Canadians," Ignatieff said. "No infrastructure money will be slowed down, it couldn't be any slower than it is already. That's the point, it's not moving. They're not doing their job."
Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy, the party's infrastructure critic, led the research into the way the infrastructure money is being spent.
According to the Liberal research, a maximum of 4,800 of an expected 40,000 jobs have been created as a result of the ISF money.
"This is a breach of trust for Canadians who thought -- because they were given direct assurances -- that there would be jobs created with the money provided for infrastructure," Kennedy said at the same news conference where Ignatieff spoke on Thursday.
Instead, the government delayed the money so they could "set up a system that gave the Conservatives control of which projects to approve and they used that control to favour themselves in Conservative ridings right across the country."
The Liberal research suggests that the average Conservative riding got more than 10 times the amount of money as opposition ridings in B.C., and a nearly three-fold advantage in Quebec. In Ontario, Conservative ridings got 11 per cent more than opposition ridings.
Kennedy said that more than 108,000 unemployed construction workers across the country could be working now "had the government made public-interest choices instead of their own choices."
With files from The Canadian Press
