Transports et infrastructures

Fiscal Policy and Recessions: The Role of Public Infrastructure Spending finds that infrastructure spending is not an effective policy for stimulating the economy during a recession because major infrastructure projects have very long timelines, and the recession will be over by the time shovels hit the ground. There is also evidence from the United States and Canada that increased federal spending on infrastructure merely replaces spending from lower levels of government, meaning the level of overall government spending remains the same.

Myths of Infrastructure Spending in Canada finds that only 11 cents of every dollar in new federal government infrastructure spending will be spent on highways, bridges, railways and ports—projects that can actually help improve Canada’s economy. It also dispels other myths about infrastructure spending in Canada. For instance, it finds that governments have in fact significantly increased infrastructure spending over the past 15 years, and the value of Canada’s total infrastructure is currently at the highest level in four decades.

Metro Vancouver's Transit Plan: Static Thinking in a Dynamic World looks at the rapid technological advances affecting personal transportation and how Metro Vancouver’s proposal to raise taxes for transit expansion all but ignores these changes.

How Existing Budgets could Fund Metro Vancouver’s Transit Expansion Plan outlines the dramatic spending increases among Metro Vancouver municipalities (73 per cent, collectively) and at TransLink (105 per cent) over the past decade.