Liberals delay $2.14 billion they couldn’t spend on infrastructure last year
OTTAWA — The federal government failed to spend $2.14 billion that was earmarked last year to rebuild roads, bridges and other large-scale projects aimed at helping people in their day-to-day lives, newly released documents show.
The recent department report shows spending from Infrastructure Canada was about 40 per cent lower than the $5.3 billion that had been planned for the last fiscal year, which ended March 31, 2017.
The largest chunk of the spending shortfall was $1.48 billion that didn’t get spent on various large-scale projects, representing about 90 per cent of what the government expected to spend on things like new transit and water systems, two key areas of focus on the Liberal agenda.
It’s not clear from the documents how long it’s expected to take for the money to actually flow to projects.