City threatens to sue province over rapid transit funding

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This article was published 03/07/2018 (2270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city is threatening to sue the provincial government if it doesn’t pay its share of the Southwest Rapid Transitway project.

The province fired back at city hall, accusing Mayor Brian Bowman of nothing more than electioneering in the run-up to the civic election in October.

Bowman confirmed Wednesday that the city, embroiled for months in a multimillion-dollar funding dispute with the province, has now sent a letter to the provincial government demanding it immediately transfer the roughly $8 million in payments that have so far been withheld for the second leg of the corridor.

“It’s a very serious matter. The demand is that they honour the commitment. If not honoured, all legal remedies will be considered,” Bowman told reporters during a press conference.

“It is a serious concern when you have a level of government not honour its written legal agreement.”

The transit corridor project, which continues the rapid transit line for buses from Jubilee Avenue to the University of Manitoba, was originally budgeted to cost $587 million.

The city and the province agreed to each pick up $225 million of the costs, with Ottawa contributing the final $137 million.

The overall price of the project then dropped by $120 million when the consortium building it found cost savings.

A provincial spokesman told the Free Press in February that the provincial Conservative government will not make any more payments until the deal is amended to reflect the lower overall cost.

But Bowman said the city has already lowered the financial contributions of all three levels of government when the costs went down.

Bowman emphasized discussions are still continuing with the province. He would not say what the province is saying it wants to pay now, but said if the city agreed, it would force Winnipeg property taxpayers to pick up a larger share of the costs than under the original agreement.

The mayor also pointed out the agreement was signed by the current provincial government.

Despite the so-called blackout period of provincial government communication because of the upcoming byelection in St. Boniface, Municipal Relations Minister Jeff Wharton came forward to comment on Bowman’s statements.

“Well, it is an election year and obviously the mayor is running for re-election, so we can appreciate that,” Wharton said. “I understand you have to do some things that maybe you need to do to get re-elected, but that’s not what we’re doing here.

“The bottom line is that we have been working collaboratively with the municipal city officials and our officials to produce a mutual resolution and we’ll of course address taxpayers of Manitoba in a positive way.

“We’ve never said that we weren’t in full support of bus rapid transit phase two… it’s simply, we understand that there’s significant savings, so taxpayers of Manitoba deserve to take full credit for those savings.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca