Nenshi worries as federal infrastructure fund stalls

Calgary officials are growing concerned about the lack of detail from the federal government about a national infrastructure program it promised earlier this year.

In its March budget, the Conservative government announced it would renew the Building Canada Fund with $14.4 billion for infrastructure projects over 10 years.

The fund was scheduled to expire in the spring of2014.

But Coun. Brian Pincott who just returned from meetings on the subject in Ottawa said details about the new phase of the program are still not being made available, even though it was supposed to be up and running by next April.

Pincott said the lack of a national program will affect the city's ability to meet the needs of Calgarians.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi says he's worried about the impact on Calgary's future infrastructure projects if the details arent hammered out quickly.

If you lose a construction season, that's actually really devastating because you lose contractors to multi-year projects, he said.

It adds a lot of expense so I hope that the federal government comes to its senses quickly and comes up with a flexible set of criteria so that we can actually get the work done.