Here’s What Patrick Brown Thinks About The 2019 Federal Budget

Brampton | Ontario | Latest News |

Published March 20, 2019 at 12:16 pm

The final budget from the federal Liberal government before the fall election was delivered this week.

The final budget from the federal Liberal government before the fall election was delivered this week. From the various outlined spending measures, such as help for first time home-buyers, they are obviously meant as pre-election incentives to help Liberal fortunes at the polls.

Nevertheless as he previously stated before, Brampton mayor Patrick Brown said he would accept help for the city from any level of government of any political stripe, whether it’s from Justin Trudeau’s Liberals or Doug Ford’s Conservatives. The mayor was quite vocal when this federal budget was released on various measures he found were helpful to Brampton.

So what is in the federal budget is making Mayor Brown happy? Mainly two things: increased funding for the city’s infrastructure from the gas tax, and a nod to the cyber-security centre in Brampton.

For years, a portion of the federal tax on gasoline in Canada was allocated directly to municipalities to fund local projects in various cities, towns and other communities. In the budget, the Liberals announced they are doubling the gas tax funding. For Brampton, this means the city will receive 2 instalments this year, usually $33 million in total, but because of the increase that amount is increased to $49.8 million, an additional $16 million.

As pointed out by a local Brampton MP, there is a $246 million infrastructure gap in Brampton alone.

The other area of focus that Brown touched on concerning the federal budget was the acknowledgement about Ryerson University’s Cyber-security Catalyst, which became a line item in the budget: $80 million over the next four years starting in 2020 to 2021 to support three or more cyber-security networks across Canada affiliated with post-secondary institutions.

“The networks-to be selected through a competitive process-will expand research, development and commercialization partnerships between academia and the private sector, and expand the pipeline of cyber security talent in Canada,” with additional details to be announced later.

“Brampton advocated for this in our pre budget submission. Ryerson University’s cyber-security catalyst in Brampton should benefit significantly thanks to this line item. This fund was created with Brampton in mind,” said Brown.

The cyber-security centre has been widely talked about as Brampton continues to attempt to bring a full fledged university presence to the city, after the provincial Conservatives cancelled funding for the Ryerson satellite campus last fall after Brown was elected mayor.

Although he sounds initially happy with the investments in Brampton, Mayor Brown has also previously said that the days of politicians doing campaign stops and photo opportunities during an election in the city without following through on their promises would come to an end.

With a federal election scheduled in October, it will be interesting to see if either the federal government or Brown keeps the promises they made for Canada’s ninth largest city.

Do you think these two areas in the federal budget will be beneficial to Brampton?

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