Former Halifax Mayor Walter Fitzgerald says voters will punish provincial and federal politicians if they don’t come up with money for the city’s sewage-treatment project.
Fitzgerald, who helped launch the current Harbour Solutions Project in 1998, says he’s disappointed Premier John Hamm wrote a letter to Ottawa requesting sewage treatment not be funded through a new infrastructure program.
But he’s not surprised Hamm is now pledging to make a cleaner harbour a priority for Canadian Strategic Infrastructure funding, given his need to hold onto eight Tory seats that are all or partly within Halifax Regional Municipality.
"I think he’s realized he’s made a mistake, because in the next election, Halifax would be tight," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said the current mayor did well to wring support for CSIF funding from the premier when it’s clear the Tory government would win more votes if it channeled federal money into highway construction.
"I think Mr. Hamm has to be put on the spot, and I think Peter Kelly has done an excellent job by forcing him," the ex-mayor said.
Fitzgerald first got involved in harbour cleanup efforts in the 1970s, during his first turn as mayor of the former city of Halifax. He was a city alderman in the early ’90s when a project collapsed under the weight of increasing costs.
The current $315-million project got started at a symposium in 1996, where Fitzgerald, by then mayor of newly amalgamated Halifax Regional Municipality, browbeat experts to devise a "realistic" sewage treatment plan. It first went before council two years later.
Fitzgerald left politics after losing the 2000 election to Kelly.
He said the city is letting senior levels of government off easy by offering to raise two-thirds of the money itself through water charges. The remaining $105 million shouldn’t be onerous for Ottawa and the province if it’s spread over several years, he said.
If senior governments appear ready to balk, Kelly should threaten to do the project without them. Halifax voters would not forget at election time why their pollution control charges increased.
"Kelly should say, ‘We’re going it alone, and if you don’t want to help us, you’re against us,’" Fitzgerald said.
Source: Halifax News