VANCOUVER -- The B.C. NDP released its budget for the next fiscal year on Tuesday and included the province’s highest level of capital spending ever recorded.
In the 2020 budget, the province made capital commitments totalling $22.9 billion over three years.
"By building schools, roads, hospitals, housing, post-secondary facilities and more that our growing province needs, our plan is supporting 100,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction," Carole James, B.C.’s finance minister, said during her budget speech.
Some of those investments include:
• $6.4 billion for major construction projects for new and upgraded health facilities and medical equipment
• $7.4 billion for priority transportation projects like the Pattullo Bridge replacement, the Broadway Subway and improvements on Highway 1
• $2.8 billion for replacing or renovating elementary and high schools in several communities across the province
• $3.1 billion for post-secondary facilities
• $1 billion for construction of low and middle-income housing throughout B.C.
"But infrastructure is about more than ferries, roads, bridges and transit – it is also about the flow of ideas, knowledge and opportunity," James said.
"British Columbia is growing, and we need to ramp up infrastructure investments – digital and otherwise – to keep goods, services and people moving and B.C. businesses thriving."
