The image is persuasive: Thousands of industrious workers wielding shovels to fix Canada's crumbling roads and bridges, netting a windfall of earnings for their families and motoring the economy out of recession. Trouble is, it may be an image from another era.
While infrastructure spending is a great way to prop up economic activity, many economists don't see it doing much for job growth, where money may be better spent on daycare and nursing homes.
The knocks against infrastructure are that it is not as labour-intensive as it used to be, tends to employ many more men than women and, these days, requires skills in engineering, technology and architecture that are already in short supply, critics say.
"A lot of this ethos of infrastructure-equals-jobs comes from the 1930s when you put a lot of guys to work digging ditches and shovelling gravel. And we don't do that any more," said Dr. Jim McNiven, professor emeritus and former dean of management at Dalhousie University.
"You can't just take unemployed people off the street and have them build roads and overpasses," he said.
Much new funding may well wind up being spent on new machinery rather than hiring, he added said.
"You might as well just send a cheque to Caterpillar in Illinois."
He's speaking from experience. Dr. McNiven oversaw job creation programs as Nova Scotia's deputy minister of development during the recession of the early 1980s. He believes now, as then, that employment growth should focus on the services side of the economy, where three-quarters of Canadian jobs already lie. It's where our economy has tilted in recent decades and where hiring could be stepped up quicker.
"If you want to create jobs, as opposed to buy equipment, you do daycare expansions, more help in senior citizens' homes and more community services. And you need to be more imaginative."
He's not alone in his skepticism. As Canadian employment losses mount, questions are emerging over what will best bolster job growth as the employment outlook deteriorates.
Canadian employers shed jobs for the second month in a row last month. Companies' opinions about future employment levels are the gloomiest in at least a decade, a Bank of Canada survey showed this week.
"Job creation will be a major issue and will probably be the No. 1 factor determining policy at this point," said Benjamin Tal, economist at CIBC World Markets Inc.
Just about everyone agrees Canada badly needs an infrastructure overhaul - and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised to boost such spending in his Jan. 27 budget. South of the border, president-elect Barack Obama hopes to create three to four million new jobs, partly through infrastructure spending.
Mr. Flaherty said last week that he wants to hear ideas from all parties and levels of government on how to best resuscitate the economy.
At least $61-billion in public and private money will flow into infrastructure projects this year, according to a report released today by ReNew Canada magazine.
The largest slated for this year, at a capital cost of $6.5-billion, is the Romaine Hydroelectric Complex Project in Quebec.
The second largest, Ontario's Bruce A Nuclear Generating Station Restart, plans to hire 250 people this year - mostly in skilled positions such as nuclear operators and control technicians.
Finding those specialized workers "has been and probably will continue to be a challenge," spokesman Steve Cannon said.
Labour experts are proposing a range of other options, from converting traditional factories to green manufacturing as global demand grows, to spending on retraining and education.
A low-skilled, unemployed worker, for example, could get a stipend for retraining at a community college.
In Alberta, where an economic boom caused a spike in school dropouts, many could now be nudged to finish high school, helping to create a better-educated work force for when hiring ramps up again.
