Public infrastructure is vital to every person in Ontario and critical to our economic competitiveness. It is the foundation of our quality of life and the foundation of our economy.

It is the schools our children attend and the colleges and universities where the youth of Ontario seek higher learning and opportunities. It is the pipes that deliver the water we drink, the hospitals we depend on and the affordable housing that gives people a home. It is the roads and public transit that get us to where we want to go.

It is our provincial highway network that carries $1.2 trillion of goods every year, and our 14 borders that roughly 45 million vehicles, including nine million trucks, cross to get into the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner.

Yet for years it was neglected. The scope and scale of Ontario’s infrastructure deficit is enormous – estimated to total as much as $100 billion or more.

In May 2005, the government launched ReNew Ontario, a strategic, five-year infrastructure investment plan to correct the neglect of the past and build for the growth of the future. Together with its partners, the province will invest more than $30 billion to repair, revitalize and expand public infrastructure by 2010.

The plan brings a more strategic and coordinated, longer-term approach to public infrastructure investment to ensure that Ontario is ready for the nearly four million new people who will make Ontario home over the next 25 years.

It is a plan of action and activity well underway in every sector and in every region of the province. Infrastructure investments in the first two years will total more than $11 billion, well on the way to meeting the target of more than $30 billion by 2010.

The ReNew Ontario Progress Report 2006 highlights some of the government’s key achievements in the past year and a half and illustrates how ReNew Ontario is making Ontario a great place to live and invest – now and in the future.

[Learn more about the ReNew Ontario Progress Report 2006]