Myths about Jason Kenney’s so-called Economic Plan

Here’s the first myth:

Under the NDP Government, an average of $7.2 billion was spent annually on capital infrastructure. That's business as usual.

THREAD 1/ #ableg

Jason Kenney is claiming he's dramatically increased infrastructure spend to $10 billion this year... but let's unpack that.

He started with a pretty traditional Capital spend, $7 billion this year, and now he's "adding" another three billion.

But is he really?

2/ #ableg

Half of that is $1.5 billion, being spent on the KXL pipeline, where most of the jobs will be in the United States, and may ultimately be a $1.5 billion pipeline to nowhere if Joe Biden wins the Presidency.

3/ #ableg

Another $960 is an acceleration of maintenance spending.

This is smart. But it's neither game changing, or new.

It was announced 51 days ago.

4/ #ableg

The final "new" elements of Jason Kenney's infrastructure plan - roughly $200 million in municipal infrastructure funding - was announced two weeks ago.

So did Jason Kenney announce anything "new" yesterday? The answer is no.

5/ #ableg

More importantly, ppl will need to watch for the difference between announced spend & actual spend. Generally, gov is successful at getting between 85-90% of new infrastructure spend out the door. & Kenney made his announcements very late into the construction season. 6/ #ableg

So, in summary: this is an expected gov response. It's a good shock absorber.

We'll see if actual spent reaches the year high of over $9 billion that occurred under our Government, but let's be clear: nothing is new here, & the overall number is not a game changer. /end #ableg