The province’s decision to cancel the Connecting Link program is hurting local municipalities, say Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott and Perth-Wellington MPP Randy Pettapiece.
“The cancellation of the Ministry of Transportation’s Connecting Link program is a disgraceful abrogation of responsibility on the part of the Liberal Government,” Arnott told the Ontario Legislature recently.
Arnott noted that the Connecting Link program had provided municipalities with a stable source of funding for up to 90 per cent of the cost of necessary road and bridge repairs on provincial highways passing through built up areas. It is a program which has been in place since the 1920s, when George Howard Ferguson was Premier of Ontario.
Cost significant
The cost to local municipalities will be significant.
“For the Township of Centre Wellington, this represents a massive download of the full cost of repairing the St. David St. bridge in Fergus next year,” Arnott pointed out afterwards.
“I call upon the government to either reconstitute the Connecting Link program as it has existed for generations, or help to fund each and every one of the Connecting Link municipal infrastructure projects we need in Wellington-Halton Hills.”
Pettapiece said the province should bear primary responsibility for the cost of maintaining provincial highways.
“I ask the Minister of Transportation, what does he think Toronto or Mississauga might say if he suddenly told them to start paying for the 401?”
Pettapiece said multiple ministers of transportation have bragged about the government’s Municipal Infrastructure Investment Initiative program, “as if it were somehow a replacement for Connecting Link. It’s not, and the minister should admit that it’s not.”
