Ontario will spend another $1 billion this year to help municipalities repair and build roads and bridges as well as improve public transit and affordable housing, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced Thursday.
  
The money is on top of the $300 million earmarked for municipal infrastructure in the government's fall economic statement and another $150 million announced last month by McGuinty in a speech to municipal officials.
  
"You just can't grow this economy unless you make substantive investments in infrastructure," McGuinty said after unveiling new double-decker buses for GO Transit in north Toronto.
  
Despite a flurry of spending announcements in recent weeks leading up to next week's provincial budget, McGuinty said his government intends to deliver balanced budgets even though Ontario is grappling with a slowing economy.
  
He acknowledged that provincial revenues would be "coming at a slower pace" but said the billion-dollar boost for infrastructure will enhance productivity and create an estimated 10,000 new construction jobs.
  
"What we want to do is be prudent and be responsible in terms of how we invest limited public dollars, and you've got to invest them in a way that makes a difference," he said.
  
McGuinty, who's come under fire for massive job losses in the province's hard-hit manufacturing sector, also defended his government's decision to invest in public-transit buses that were built in Scotland.
  
"I think Scotland's the only place that makes these buses," McGuinty said after taking a tour of one of the new double-deckers.
  
"If we start saying that the only place that we're going to buy from … is within Canada or within Ontario, then what if the States and other parts of the world were to match that? Then they'd stop buying our bi-level rail cars from Thunder Bay, and those people would be out of work."

'Buy Ontario' bill rejected

While McGuinty was climbing aboard Scottish-made buses, the Liberals were voting down an NDP bill to support a "Buy Ontario" program, said NDP Leader Howard Hampton.
  
The bill, defeated by a vote of 41 to 20 Thursday morning, would require municipalities and transit authorities to give preference to mass-transit vehicles whose final assembly is done in Ontario and where at least half of the total dollar value of the purchase price is attributable to Canadian-made parts and labour.
  
McGuinty wouldn't say how the province will disburse the extra funds for infrastructure, saying that would be outlined in the March 25 budget.
  
Not all of the money is new. The $1 billion includes $100 million that McGuinty said Monday would be spent this year on repairs to 4,000 affordable housing units.
  
The new funds will also add to any money that may flow from Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's proposal to give a portion of the province's future surpluses over $800 million to municipalities.