Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne believes the province will be in trouble if it doesn’t catch up with its infrastructure needs. Although she doesn’t have the specifics of what the federal government will provide the Ontario, she expects to hear what projects will receive investments soon.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne worked hard during the federal election campaign to ensure Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, and now she is looking to him for the promised infrastructure money to flow.
In a year-end interview with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Wynne said that what had been missing during the nearly 10-year Conservative tenure in Ottawa was the "ability to have an ongoing relationship" with the federal government.
"There just wasn't one," she said.
She and former prime minister Stephen Harper barely spoke to each other, and the province suffered as a result.
Now that a friendlier government is in office, Ms. Wynne is focused on getting some things done for Ontario.
For example, she said her officials have already started discussing infrastructure investment with their federal counterparts.
This is in contrast to the Harper Conservatives, who, last summer, just before they called the federal election campaign, made two significant infrastructure announcements, bypassing the province's wish list of projects it had asked to be funded.
The investments – totalling $45.3-million – went to Tory ridings, and there was no consultation or involvement from the province.
Although she doesn't have the specifics of what the federal government is going to provide for the province, she expects to hear soon about what projects will receive investment.
A key plank of the Trudeau platform was to nearly double infrastructure investment to $125-billion over the next 10 years. In her election campaign last year, Ms. Wynne also promised to invest heavily in infrastructure – $134-billion over 10 years.
Ms. Wynne is facing an election in 2018, and she has put a lot of her political capital on delivering infrastructure, especially in transit. The federal government's support is key to this file.
In addition, her government's partial privatization of Hydro One, which has proven extremely controversial and has met with a lot of opposition, was done to invest in transit infrastructure.
"I am so convinced that if we don't invest in infrastructure, we are going to be in trouble, not in 50 years, but we are going to be in trouble in 10 years, if we don't catch up," she said. "So, that's why we are making this push."
The government hopes to raise about $9-billion from the partial sale, $4-billion of which will go to transit funding.
However, in the interview, Ms. Wynne talked about how difficult it was for her to make that privatization decision.
"I knew the Hydro One decision was going to be a challenge because it was a hard decision for me."
She said her "inclination" would have been to find other ways to fund the investments. But, she said she would be abdicating her responsibility as Premier if she "held on to an ideology and didn't allow myself to evolve my thinking …"
"I knew that it would take some explaining for people to understand that investment in these new assets was not going to be possible unless we made that change," she said. "There is a sense sometimes that there is just infinite money and if government just had the political will they could just build everything that is needed, and do everything that is needed, and that's not how it works."
Another of her priorities for 2016 is the implementation of the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, (ORPP), the workplace pension for Ontarians who don't have one.
She is going ahead with it regardless of what happens on the national front. It is to start in January 2017.
On Sunday and Monday, new federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau was to meet with his provincial and territorial counterparts in Ottawa to talk about economic issues, including pension reform.
The Trudeau government campaigned on working with the provinces to enhance the Canada Pension Plan. It did not provide a plan as to what that would look like, but it needs the support of at least seven of the provinces representing two-thirds of the population to make reforms.
"Obviously we are open to what they want to do on CPP, but we want to get going," Ms. Wynne said. "And one of the reasons that we are designing the ORPP to be consistent in as many ways as possible with the CPP is, if that happens, if at some point there is a need to roll it in, then we will do that. But we are carrying on with the ORPP."
Editor's note: An earlier digital version of this story incorrectly stated that the Liberals' expansion of the Canadian Pension Plan would need the support of two-thirds of the provinces representing two-thirds of the population to make reforms. The government in fact needs the support of at least seven of the provinces. This digital version has been corrected.