The premier followed through on a budget promise Monday with an annual $100 million infrastructure fund for small, rural and northern municipalities.

Kathleen Wynne made the announcement in St. Thomas in southwestern Ontario, saying the new Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF) is now up and running and accepting fund requests.

The fund will guarantee $100 million a year from the province for road, bridge, water and waste-water projects in smaller communities that say the money is sorely needed.

“One of the things I’ve heard about consistently has been the importance of infrastructure, not just in the large urban centres like Toronto and Ottawa, but in communities of all sizes in every part of the province,” Wynne told a news conference.

"It’s through those infrastructure investments we can address the diverse needs of communities across the province.”

The fund is part of a broader 10-year plan by the ruling Liberals to spend $130 billion on transit and infrastructure – from new hospitals and schools to highways, roads and sewers. The government says the renewal will help build the backbone of the economy, deal with traffic and commuter gridlock and create an average of more than 100,000 jobs a year in construction and related industry.

Half of the $100 million will be distributed by application and the other half through a formula-allocation process. Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Jeff Leal, joining Wynne for the announcement, said the fund will transition to a solely formula-based model by year four.

“That’s certainly the advice that I received,” said Leal.

Wynne said eligible communities will be notified of their possible grant amounts under the formula portion of the fund in the weeks to come. Expressions of interest are now being accepted for the application-based $50 million. The first grants are expected to be awarded in early 2015.

The community infrastructure fund will enhance the economic prospects and quality of life in Ontario's tinier towns, claimed the premier.

"It is very important that we make investments in a consistent way and that those investments are stable enough that communities can count on them and they can plan," said Wynne.

Infrastructure is one of the many hot topics being discussed at the ongoing Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) annual meeting in London this week. Wynne, who said her government’s relationship with AMO is “a very good one,” will address the conference Tuesday.

On Monday, AMO president Russ Powers' initial reaction to the new rural fund was positive.

"We're very pleased that the announcement now provides a permanent, stable and predictable allocation of $100 million in the first go-round– half of it is formula based," he said. "We're quite pleased our persistence has shown up in the premier's announcement today."

But NDP Finance critic Catherine Fife, who is also attending the AMO meeting, wanted to know how the government could afford the fund.

"I don't think the government is being upfront about where they're getting the money from for the $100 million," said Fife. "We push them day in and day out at Queen's Park. They talk about the one-time sale of assets like the LCBO and Hydro One – those are revenue streams we require for the province of Ontario. They can't identify half of the transportation and infrastructure funding. It hasn't been fully costed out."

AMO's meeting runs until Wednesday.

Wynne also announced the Small Communities Fund – a separate federal-provincial program – is now accepting expressions of interest. The fund is a $272-million commitment, matched and managed by the federal government, geared toward municipalities with populations less than 100,000.

Similarly, the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund has a cutoff of 100,000 persons or less for a municipality to qualify. Wynne said her government worked with the federal government to align the OCIF with the federal funding. Furthermore, she used the Small Communities Fund as evidence of why her government has continuously requested the federal government increase its contributions to national infrastructure spending.

Wynne recently called on the federal government to quadruple its annual infrastructure funding to $30 billion a year, $12 billion of which would go to Ontario.

“There’s so much more we can build if we can find that kind of collaboration,” the premier said.

Progressive Conservative Infrastructure Critic Ted Arnott, at AMO as well, argued Wynne's requests to the federal government are a smokescreen for her Liberal government's fiscal follies.

"I don't think what the government has done overall has been satisfactory for rural Ontario," said Arnott. "Also, we see the government asking the federal government to come up with $12 billion for infrastructure, which I think is just meant to divert attention from their own mismanagement."

Premier says $100-million small-town infrastructure fund is ready

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