Published plans and annual reports 2022–2023: Ministry of Infrastructure

Ministry overview

Ministry’s Vision

The Ministry of Infrastructure (MOI) is committed to maximizing the Province’s public infrastructure and infrastructure investments to benefit the people of Ontario. Whether it is building new infrastructure or making key investments to upgrade Ontario’s schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, transit, water, wastewater, stormwater or broadband infrastructure, the Province makes strategic investments efficiently across government by prioritizing infrastructure activities and unlocking existing opportunities.

The Ministry is responsible for strategically guiding infrastructure investments to support strong communities through planning, funding, overseeing and prioritizing infrastructure initiatives. This includes managing the implementation of the Infrastructure for Jobs & Prosperity Act, 2015, which establishes mechanisms to encourage principled, evidence-based, and strategic long-term infrastructure planning with the goal of job creation and training opportunities, economic growth and protection of the environment, and incorporation of design excellence into infrastructure planning.

The Ministry is leading the investment and expansion of access to high-speed internet to ensure that every region in the province has access to reliable high-speed internet by the end of 2025. Through the Building Broadband Faster Act, MOI is responsible for helping to remove barriers to access, making it easier for the underserved and unserved communities across the province to have access to reliable high-speed internet sooner. MOI also works with partner ministries to further address legislative and regulatory barriers to high-speed internet deployment.

MOI develops, designs, and oversees the delivery of municipal infrastructure policy and programs to ensure alignment with broader provincial infrastructure policy. The Ministry also manages the government’s relationship with the federal and municipal governments in order to make informed infrastructure investments. The Ministry negotiates with other government partners to implement and directly administer funding programs that support local infrastructure across Ontario.

MOI leads the Province’s efforts to build new sustainable and complete communities near transit, while reducing the cost to taxpayers to build transit infrastructure. This allows the Province to take advantage of the relationship between transit, housing and commercial spaces to create vibrant communities and leverage third party investments to explore new funding avenues and opportunities to deliver cost-efficient transit solutions.

The Ministry acts as the steward of provincial asset management planning, including developing tools and analyses to consistently track both current infrastructure assets and planned investments across government. The Ministry is also responsible for the municipal asset management planning regulation.

The Ministry of Infrastructure has legislative responsibility for Infrastructure Ontario which supports the government’s infrastructure procurement through strategic oversight. MOI is also responsible for the oversight and funding of Waterfront Toronto in partnership with the federal government and the City of Toronto.

COVID‑19 Response

• The global pandemic has placed tremendous pressure on all governments, including our municipal partners. The ministry recognizes that there is a need to provide municipalities with stable funding to support critical local infrastructure projects.
• On October 28, 2020, the province announced that it was providing up to $1.05 billion in combined federal-provincial funding under the COVID‑19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream. The funding is part of the federal-provincial Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP).
• The COVID‑19 Resilience stream is delivering over $1 billion in federal-provincial funding to support over 10,500 projects across all sub-streams. This includes:
  • Approximately $700 million in federal-provincial funding to support nearly 9,800 education-related projects, which are being administered by the Ministry of Education (EDU);
  • Up to $100 million in federal-provincial funding to support over 100 long-term care projects, which are being administered by the Ministry of Long-Term Care; and
  • Up to $250 million in federal-provincial funding to support over 550 critical municipal-level infrastructure projects, which are being administered by the Ministry of Infrastructure (MOI).
    • Note: a minimum of $6.5 million of MOI’s funding and $42.5 million of EDU’s funding has been allocated to support 30 Indigenous Education projects
• To help address the impacts of COVID‑19, MOI continues to honour project extension requests from funding recipients under the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund (CWWF) and the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund (PTIF). These extensions are providing recipients additional time to complete previously approved projects and are subject to final approval by Infrastructure Canada.
• MOI has also worked with Infrastructure Ontario and other capital ministries to pilot an Accelerated Build Model to increase surge capacity in the health, long-term care and corrections sectors.
• Beginning in 2022, MOI is providing an additional investment of $1 billion through the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF), which will bring the total investment to nearly $2 billion over the next five years. This additional funding will support municipalities to build and repair roads, bridges, waste and wastewater infrastructure in 424 local communities.
• While many municipalities have been able to make significant progress on their asset management plans, the Province also recognizes that some municipalities are facing resource constraints in meeting the timelines as a result of COVID‑19. For this reason, the phase two timelines and all subsequent timelines under the Municipal Asset Management Planning regulation, O. Reg. 588/17, were extended one year by amending regulation O. Reg. 193/21, which came into effect on March 15, 2021.
• The Province is committed to stimulating the economy through major infrastructure projects such as Transit Oriented Communities which will not only create jobs but offset the cost of transit construction.

Ministry programs

The following are the major programs, services and initiatives delivered by the Ministry of Infrastructure:

Infrastructure Policy

The Ministry manages the implementation of the Infrastructure for Jobs & Prosperity Act, 2015. As part of the Act, the Ministry is responsible for developing Ontario’s long term infrastructure plan, including gathering and assessing data on the Province’s existing assets, analysis of future infrastructure needs, and a strategy to meet those needs.

The Province will focus on infrastructure projects that provide the greatest benefit to the people of Ontario by ensuring projects are feasible from a technical and commercial perspective, align with the government's priorities and provide the greatest value of money for any investment of public dollars.

The Ministry develops, designs, and oversees the delivery of infrastructure policy and programs to ensure consistency with broader provincial infrastructure priorities, including alignment with the municipal asset management planning regulation. Active programs include:

• The Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF) — provides small, rural, and northern communities with annual funding to build and repair critical infrastructure and help develop, update, and improve municipal asset management plans.
• Asset Management Planning tools and supports — provides funding to third party delivery partners that work with municipalities to help them develop and improve their asset management plans.
• Accelerated High-Speed Internet Program (AHSIP) — a new, transparent and competitive procurement process that enabled Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to bid for provincial subsidies through a series of reverse auction events for defined geographic areas aimed at connecting underserved and unserved communities across Ontario.
• Leading the expansion for access to high-speed internet through application-based projects, including Improving Connectivity for Ontario (ICON) program, Brighton Pilot Project, Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN), Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT), Bringing high-speed internet to the North, Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC), and Telesat’s Lightspeed project.
• The Strategic Priority Infrastructure Fund (SPIF) — provides infrastructure funding to strategic community projects and sports and recreation facilities through its two streams. The Priority Local Infrastructure stream supports new builds and renovation of larger multi-purpose facilities for community, culture, and recreation purposes. The Sport and Community Renewal Stream provides funding to support the renovation and rehabilitation of sport and community infrastructure. The fund also supports the sport and recreation sector, which was one of the hardest hit sectors during the COVID‑19 pandemic.

In addition to these provincial programs, the Ministry leads the implementation and negotiation of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), which is a federal-provincial cost-shared infrastructure program.

The Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program includes up to $11.8 billion in federal funding for Ontario across the four original funding streams:

• Public Transit: $8.3 billion
• Green Infrastructure: $2.85 billion
  • $867 million of the $2.85 billion under the Green stream was allocated to the COVID‑19 Resilience Stream in 2020 (see details below)
• Community, Culture & Recreation: $407 million
• Rural & Northern Communities: $250 million

The ICIP program will unlock up to $30 billion in combined federal, provincial, and local investments in communities through 2027–28. Since June 2018, Ontario has committed to investing a total of $10.2 billion in transit, green, community, culture and recreation, rural and northern and other priority infrastructure under ICIP.

In October 2020, the Province announced the launch of the new COVID‑19 Resilience Infrastructure stream under ICIP, which leverages up to $1.05 billion in federal-provincial funding. This stream was created to respond to the impacts of COVID‑19 and has more flexibility, expanded project eligibility and accelerated approvals.

• In Spring 2021, the federal government enhanced this stream with additional funding of $26M for ventilation projects across Ontario.

The Ministry of Infrastructure is focused on implementing this program and continues working closely and collaboratively with the federal government and with local communities to implement funding programs for each of the funding streams.

Ontario continues to work with the federal government to oversee the delivery of program funding to recipients under previous infrastructure funding programs, including the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund (PTIF), Clean Water and Wastewater Fund (CWWF) and the New Building Canada Fund (NBCF). Aside from project-specific extensions, these legacy programs are currently winding down and are not accepting applications. While the Ministry of Infrastructure oversees these programs, some are administered by partner ministries or agencies (e.g., Infrastructure Ontario, MTO).

Policy, Research, and Agency Division

The Ministry collects data and performs analysis to support evidence-based infrastructure planning decisions about the investments required to maintain service levels across the province.

For example, the Ministry provides guidance to other government ministries regarding methods to measure the condition of infrastructure assets and related information for the purposes of standardizing provincial asset management practices. The Ministry then collects that data to feed into its analytical models. The Ministry has built and maintains an analytical model to project infrastructure renewal needs into the future. Over the past few years, the model has been improved by expanding the number of assets that are included and increasing the number of parameters that can be changed to build different scenarios.

The Ministry is also building and leveraging existing models that help to project future infrastructure expansion needs based on infrastructure capacity and demand across sectors. This analysis informs the prioritization of the government’s capital planning.

To meet the requirements of the Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act, 2015 and inform infrastructure planning more broadly, the Ministry continues to collaborate with capital ministries to standardize evidence to enable comparison of infrastructure needs across sectors. In addition, the Ministry continues to develop a suite of research initiatives to understand and develop best practices in infrastructure planning and to support the enhancement of government-wide practices in related fields, such as asset management. These initiatives include the collection and analysis of municipal asset management plan data to build the Ministry’s knowledge of municipal infrastructure needs. The Ministry also collects data on the condition of municipal assets from other sources, such as the Canada Core Public Infrastructure survey.

The Ministry leads venues for strategic and technical discussions across ministries with capital planning and delivery responsibilities in order to guide infrastructure policy initiatives collaboratively across government.

The Ministry also administers the Unsolicited Proposal (USP) framework and intake portal that accepts infrastructure related proposals (including transit lines, highways, health care facilities, housing supply projects, and energy generation proposals). The framework provides a clear structure for receiving and evaluating proposals submitted by the public and stakeholders to leverage private sector innovation and facilitates government decision-making.

As part of its responsibilities, the Ministry oversees the Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation (Infrastructure Ontario) in support of the government’s policy and program delivery. Infrastructure Ontario is a classified agency, non-share corporation created under the Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation Act, 2011 to provide advice and services as directed by the Minister of Infrastructure. The Agency delivers a range of services on behalf of the government, including:

• Realty services;
• Modern infrastructure procurement projects;
• Infrastructure loans and various commercial transactions; and
• Infrastructure-related advisory services.

Infrastructure Ontario uses a range of procurement models to deliver its services to ministries and agencies. The delivery models in this spectrum can range from what is often referred to as a Traditional Procurement Approach, to other models that include more private sector responsibilities, typically referred to as Public-Private Partnerships (P3). The P3 model is typically used to delivery large, complex public infrastructure projects, as it makes use of private-sector resources and expertise to provide on-time, on-budget, and on-specifications project delivery.

In partnership with the Federal Government and The City of Toronto, the Ministry also oversees the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (Waterfront Toronto), which has a mandate to carry out the tri-government initiative to revitalize and transform Toronto’s waterfront into sustainable new communities, parks and public spaces, and to foster economic growth in knowledge-based, creative industries. The Province, alongside the federal government and the City of Toronto, have provided $1.25 billion in funding to support the Port Lands Flood Protection Project. This project will help create a resilient neighborhood by protecting southeastern portions of downtown Toronto from flooding, and by delivering a substantial return on investment by unlocking the area’s potential for future residential and commercial development.

Transit-Oriented Communities

In Fall 2021, the Ministry took responsibility for leading the oversight and implementation of the Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) program for Subways and GO Heavy Rail/Light Rail Transit (LRT), which are delivered by Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx. The TOC program is part of the government’s plan to build vibrant, sustainable, mixed-use communities near transit, while reducing the cost to taxpayers to build transit station infrastructure. TOC will increase ridership, reduce congestion, and provide a mix of housing, including affordable housing options, while creating jobs.

The TOC program is a comprehensive initiative involving land-use planning, public and Indigenous engagement, and municipal approvals that may involve accelerated timelines. As such, a high degree collaboration across ministries and levels of government is required to ensure the program’s objectives are met.

The purpose of inter-ministry and municipal engagement for the TOC program is to support the successful implementation of the program across the priority subway projects, at new and existing GO and LRT stations, and for other potential transit projects, including providing strategic direction, advice, oversight and issues management, as well as to ensure timely and effective decision-making.

Ministry Administration Program

The Ministry Administration Program provides strategic advice and support services that enable the Ministry to achieve government objectives and fiscal priorities.

The program provides financial, human resources, planning, legal, communication and other corporate services for the Ministry’s operational programs.

2022–23 Strategic Plan

Key decisions approved for 2022–23

• The Getting Ontario Connected Act, 2022, which amended the Building Broadband Faster Act and the Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act, will help ensure underserved and unserved communities across the province have access to reliable high-speed internet sooner.
• Through the total combined investment of nearly $4 billion from the 2021 Budget, the Ministry is continuing its efforts to help connect all regions of Ontario to high-speed internet by the end of 2025. This includes proceeding with many applications-based projects, joint federal-provincial funded projects, and finalizing commercial agreements with successful proponents of the reverse auction led by Infrastructure Ontario.
• As noted in the 2021 Ontario Budget, the Ministry is investing approximately $200 million to provide infrastructure funding to larger, strategic projects and to sports facilities through the newly established Strategic Priorities Infrastructure Fund.
• As noted in the 2021 Fall Economic Statement, the Ministry is increasing the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF) by $1 billion over five years ($200 million per year) to help small, rural and northern communities build and repair roads, bridges, water and wastewater infrastructure. This brings the total investment to almost $2 billion over five years starting in 2022.
• Commercial agreements were executed for the East Harbour, High Tech, and Bridge TOC sites which will be monitored over the years to realize the value to the Province and offset the cost of priority project transit construction. The remaining Ontario Line South TOC sites (Exhibition, Corktown, Queen-Spadina, King-Bathurst) will be brought to the market in Fall 2022 for selection of a building partner.

Key issues & risks impacting program delivery

• The COVID‑19 pandemic has had unprecedented impacts, including delays in planned expenditures by recipients and significant supply chain issues for projects in transfer payment programs such as Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program and other legacy Federal / Provincial Infrastructure programs.

Detailed financial information

For additional financial information, see:

• Expenditure Estimates
• Public Accounts of Ontario: past editions
• 2022 Ontario Budget

Agencies, Boards and Commissions (ABCS)

Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation

The Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation (Infrastructure Ontario or IO) is a classified agency, non-share corporation created under the Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation Act, 2011.

IO’s mandate is to provide a range of advice and services, as set out in the Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation Act, 2011, to support the Ontario government’s initiatives to modernize and maximize the value of public infrastructure and realty. Infrastructure Ontario fulfills its mandate through the following roles and activities, subject to written direction from the Minister, as required:

Modern Procurement and Project Management

Infrastructure Ontario is dedicated to the renewal of the Province’s hospitals, courthouses, and other essential public assets. Ensuring appropriate public control and ownership, IO also uses Private-Public Partnerships (P3) through a broad spectrum of delivery models to build vital infrastructure, on time and on budget.

Infrastructure Lender

Infrastructure Ontario provides Ontario municipalities, universities and other public entities with access to affordable loans that help loan recipients build and renew public infrastructure through the IO Loan Program.

Commercial Project Advisor

Infrastructure Ontario also leverages private sector partnerships and investments for revenue generation, liability/cost reduction and efficiency in government services and investments.

Government organizations

Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation

The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (Waterfront Toronto) was established by the federal government, the Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto to oversee and deliver the revitalization of Toronto’s waterfront. Waterfront Toronto has a mandate to implement a plan that enhances the economic, social and cultural value of the area and creates an accessible and active waterfront for living, working and recreation in a fiscally and environmentally responsible manner.

Waterfront Toronto develops and implements a coordinated and comprehensive waterfront vision while promoting and encouraging public and private sector engagement in revitalization efforts.

The Ministry has oversight of Waterfront Toronto jointly with the federal government and the City of Toronto.

Note, the amounts above for revenue and expense incorporate consolidation adjustments for MOI and do not reflect revenue and expense amounts reported publicly by Waterfront Toronto.

Ministry organization chart

• Minister, The Honourable — Kinga Surma
• Deputy Minister, Infrastructure — Carlene Alexander
  • Director, Communications — Lidia Piccolo
  • Assistant Deputy Minister, Transit Oriented Communities Secretariat — Mirrun Zaveri
    • Director, Transit Oriented Communities Policy and Delivery — Dawn Palin
  • Assistant Deputy Minister, Broadband Strategy — Jill Vienneau
    • Director, Strategic Policy and Analytics — Brett Smith
    • Director, Implementation and Accountability — Sean Keelor
  • Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure Program Design and Delivery — Adam Redish
    • Director, Infrastructure Program Policy — Trevor Fleck
    • Director, Infrastructure Program Delivery — Paramjit Kaur
  • Chief Administrative Officer & Assistant Deputy Minister — Grant Osborn
    • Director, Agency Policy and Accountability — Chris Monahan
    • Director, Infrastructure Policy — Carolina Torres
    • Director, Infrastructure Research and Data — Vijay Gill
    • Director, Corporate Coordination — Virginia McKimm

Annual Report

2021–22 Results

The Ministry of Infrastructure continues to create and deliver key initiatives to support the government’s top priorities, including building provincial infrastructure, creating jobs, and increasing economic growth. The following successes highlight the achievements of the Ministry for the 2021–22 fiscal year:

Infrastructure Policy

• Successfully launched the COVID‑19 Resilience stream, under ICIP, providing $1.05 billion in joint federal-provincial funding to support over 10,500 projects across multiple sub-streams delivered by EDU, LTC, and MOI.
• Launched the second intake of the Green Infrastructure stream, under ICIP providing $330 million in joint-federal provincial funding to support 144 projects.
• For the Community, Culture & Recreation Infrastructure steam under ICIP, 36 projects were approved and announced for a total of approximately $260.3 million in joint federal-provincial funding.
• Launched the Strategic Priorities Infrastructure Fund (SPIF), which will provide infrastructure funding to strategic projects and sports facilities. Twenty-five active SPIF projects are being funded for over $200M in provincial funding.
• In the 2021 Ontario Budget, new funding was announced, bringing the total investment in broadband infrastructure to nearly $4 billion over six years beginning in 2019–20. This commitment is to ensure that every region in the province has access to reliable broadband services by the end of 2025.
• Successfully launched a new, innovative, and transparent competitive process led by Infrastructure Ontario, to help connect the underserved and unserved communities in the province to high-speed internet.
• Passing of the Getting Ontario Connected Act, 2022 in April 2022, which amended the Building Broadband Faster Act and the Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act. This legislation ensures that underserved and unserved communities across the province will have access to reliable high-speed internet sooner.
• In the 2021 Fall Economic Statement, Ontario announced a $1 billion increase in the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF) to help small, rural, and northern communities build and repair roads, bridges, water and wastewater infrastructure. This brings the total investment to almost $2 billion over five years starting in 2022. Funding was provided to municipalities commencing in January 2022.

Agency Oversight

• Ontario has continued to meet its commitment of providing the P3 market with updates four times a year.
• On May 2, 2022, the government released its latest Infrastructure Ontario Market Update, which included 38 projects, with 26 projects in pre-procurement and 12 in active procurement totalling more than $50 billion in contract value.
• In IO’s Annual Report 2020–2021, IO reported that of the 74 projects that had achieved Substantial Completion since the inception of IO’s P3 program, 95% were completed on-budget and 81% were completed within three months of the scheduled Substantial Completion date established at Financial Close.
• IO successfully oversaw the Loan Program, which offers affordable, long-term, fixed-rate loans to borrowers from eligible public sector clients. Since its inception, the IO loan program has approved over $11 billion in loans for over 3,420 projects representing 455 communities and organization.
• In 2021–22, the Province also provided provincial funding in support of Waterfront Toronto’s Port Lands Flood Protection Project. This project will help create a resilient neighborhood by protecting southeastern portions of downtown Toronto from flooding, and by delivering a substantial return on investment to unlock the area’s potential for future residential and commercial development.
• Waterfront Toronto’s short-term Borrowing Consent term was extended for five years from March 2023 to May 15, 2028 and Waterfront Toronto’s borrowing limit was increased by $50 million from $40 million to $90 million. These amendments support the ongoing work of revitalizing Toronto’s waterfront and help move priority projects forward that enhance the economic, social and cultural value of the waterfront.

Infrastructure Policy and Research

• In March 2022, the Ministry released Building Ontario: Getting Shovels in the Ground — a public report that highlights Ontario’s key infrastructure accomplishments from 2018 to 2022, as well as infrastructure priorities for the future across a range of infrastructure sectors, including transit, roads and bridges, health care and education infrastructure.
• The Ministry of Infrastructure continues to lead the cross-ministry, Asset Management Steering Committee, which coordinates the standardization, collection and use of asset management data across government. This coordination and standardization are a pre-requisite to ensuring that central decision-making regarding infrastructure planning and investment is informed by data and evidence.
• In 2021–22, the Ministry supported Treasury Board to improve capital planning and prioritization, by leveraging the ministry’s work on standardizing asset data and forecasting cross-sector asset management needs.
• In 2021, the Ministry updated the integrated asset inventory that includes data on the location, value, age, and condition of many provincial assets. The Ministry updates the inventory on an annual basis and continues to expand the data on assets collected as well as growing the number of assets contained within the inventory. The inventory now contains information on over 20,000 assets with a replacement value of more than $260 billion.
• The Ministry met all audit criteria in the Office of the Auditor General’s 2020–21 Annual Report on Environmental Audits, released in November 2021.
• The Ministry continued to manage the Unsolicited Proposal (USP) Framework to identify innovative infrastructure proposals from individuals and organizations. Since its launch in 2019, the Ministry forwarded almost forty proposals to partner ministries for initial assessment, of which several are now under detailed assessment. In detailed assessment, Infrastructure Ontario may work with the participant and impacted ministries to provide the government with advice and options for realizing the value and public benefit of these proposals.
• The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario released a report on the state of repair of municipal infrastructure in Ontario. This followed a report on the state of repair on provincial infrastructure in 2020–21. Both of these reports relied heavily on the data collected and a model developed by MOI, who worked with the FAO during the research conducted for these reports.
• MOI continues to update and maintain the Ontario Builds website and map, which allows the public to track the status of thousands of infrastructure projects that receive provincial funding across the province.

Transit-Oriented Communities

• Led TOC program planning, overall decision-making, and coordinated government approvals.
• Led TOC program implementation, including coordination of TOC and transit planning (with the Ministry of Transportation), and coordination with key partners from across government, including the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Ministry of Education, and other land use and program lead ministries.
• Developed program policies and oversaw authority to enter into commercial arrangements.
• Developed stakeholder engagement and communication plans for TOC, working with Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx, and negotiated with local governments.
• Worked with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to request the issuance of 11 Minister’s Zoning Orders for Ontario Line South, High Tech, and Bridge TOC sites.