A Toronto MP claims that the federal government favours Conservative ridings, but Ontario's deputy premier disagrees.
Gerard Kennedy charges that recreational facilities in Liberal and NDP sections of the province don’t get adequate funding.
Toronto has 23 ridings, 21 of which are held by Liberals and two of which belong to the NDP.
Kennedy says those ridings get about 38 per cent less cash than Conservative parts of Ontario.
“The [federal Liberals] draw conclusions based on the analysis that they’ve done,” deputy premier George Smitherman countered Thursday outside Queen’s Park.
But, he continued, they only looked at the Recreational Infrastructure Canada (Rinc) program. While that would indicate that Conservative ridings received more cash than Liberal holdings, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
The Rinc program was open to not-for-profits and municipalities, he explained.
“So the fact that there are 450 municipalities, many of them small, meant that there were more requests in the mix for smaller communities.
“I think that’s why you see it’s a little more distributed towards rural Ontario and by coincidence, that happens to be where Conservatives represent the ridings."
Toronto scored big when other initiatives were considered, Smitherman argued.
"The knowledge infrastructure program, which is for post-secondary education, you’ll see that Toronto actually comes out with a higher degree of investment than its proportion of population...I’m pretty confident that there’s going to be a very equitable regional distribution once we’ve completed the allocation of all those dollars.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper also dismissed Kennedy's allegations. He said that it was the Liberal Ontario government that chose which
projects would receive funding.
But later in the day, Kennedy defended his position.
"The facts are clear. Not only is the recreation fund unfair, but it
remains unfair when you take all the funds, as the data we released
today for northern Ontario shows," he said in a statement.
"What I will say is that the Ontario distribution is less unfair than
other provinces (e.g. Conservatives awarded themselves 34 per cent more
in recreation funding in Ontario but 82 per cent in the West), thanks
undoubtedly to the fine work of my former colleague, Mr. Smitherman."
The Globe and Mail looked at more than 750 projects funding by
Recreational Infrastructure Canada. According to their research, Tory
ridings received an average of $2.1-million, compared to $1.5-million
on average for opposition constituencies
Stimulus program favours Tory ridings (Globe and Mail)