BY CRAIG GILBERT
Prime Minister Paul Martin?s main man was in town last week to talk to the mayor and members of city council.
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GODFREY |
Parliamentary secretary to the prime minister focusing on cities, John Godfrey, said Greater Sudbury is just the kind of city Martin is focused on.
?The prime minister recognizes cities are the best platform for delivering federal programs,? he said.
?These meetings are a really important step in formalizing a new structure with cities, the provinces and the government of Canada.?
He placed the blame for the infrastructure deficit and the financial woes facing Sudbury and the rest of Ontario on the Ernie Eves and Mike Harris Conservative governments.
?The only way to get things going again is to focus on regional growth spots,? he said. ?Sudbury isn?t just Sudbury, it?s the whole area,? since the city is Northern Ontario?s hub for education, retail and industry.
?That?s why we are making it a point of getting out of the big cities. Shutting down everything but the five major Canadian centres just won?t work.?
The new Liberal government at Queen?s Park will have to do its share, he said. The downloading of provincial responsibilities to municipalities
without funding to back them up has dug a hole too deep for any one tier of government to fill.
?We can?t carry the whole can, but we can play a role.?
The new deal for cities is really two-tiered, Godfrey explained.
The first tier is funding, plain and simple. Getting the gas tax money promised to Canadian cities by Martin into their coffers needs to be the next step on that front, Godfrey said.
The second, more complicated tier relates essentially to communication.
?We look at all the rest of government services and ... ask, how do we make all our existing programming work to support the vision (of the city)??
That involves local MPs co-operating with local MPPs and municipal politicians to ensure everyone is on the same page.
?Let?s figure out whether there?s a Sudbury agreement between the three levels of government so we can drill down on specific projects.?
Godfrey, in addition to meeting municipal officials from smaller communities in the area in St. Charles Wednesday night, was in town to make a pair of FedNor funding announcements.
The Nickel Basin Federal Development Corporation received $500,000 accounted for in the March federal budget.
Sudbury MP Diane Marleau said that means Ottawa has now invested $5 million in the small-and medium-size business incubator.
Greater Sudbury received $342,294 to help implement the MySudbury.ca community portal, which will put tourism, economic development and some municipal processes online.
At his meeting in St. Charles, it was made clear to Godfrey that insurance, cellular phone and Internet services are challenges faced by small, remote communities.
To that end, projects like the community portal need to be encouraged as a way to deal with places like post-amalgamation Sudbury which have to
service a large area with few resources.
