By PATRICK MALONEY , SUN MEDIA

London will have access to $1 billion in economic aid for southern Ontario, a city Tory backbencher says, appearing to counter what a senior minister said only days ago.

Though many agree the new Southern Ontario Development Agency is good news, there appears to be confusion over how the program announced in last week’s federal budget will operate and who will be eligible to tap it.

“London is not excluded,” London West MP Ed Holder said, noting comments last Friday by federal Industry Minister Tony Clement were misinterpreted.

“The point he was trying to make was that smaller centres that often feel left out shouldn’t.”

The federal agency is expected to have a $1-billion budget over five years, to help southern Ontario, its manufacturing sector shedding thousands of jobs, regroup amid recession.

Clement touted the agency as not meant for Toronto and area but more for “small-town Ontario.”

Even London might be too big to qualify, he suggested to reporters.

While noting cities like London and Windsor would be covered “in one way or other,” Clement said “these agencies are really designed specifically for communities of a size . . . such as St. Thomas.

“That’s where we’re going to see the most impact.”

St. Thomas has been clobbered with more than 5,000 manufacturing job losses in the last year, but the toll is also mounting in London, including 600 announced last week at train locomotive-builder Electro-Motive Diesel.

Clement was unavailable for comment today, but his office said his comments shouldn’t be “extrapolated” and that details of the program are still being ironed out.

Joe Preston, Tory MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London, wouldn’t say whether London will be part of the program, saying it’s too early to know which communities will or won’t be helped.

“I don’t know how it will be set up but . . . I’m just excited that we’ve got this,” he said.

“We almost have to slow down, breathe a little and make sure we get this right instead of saying, ‘I want, I want, I want.’ ”

Southern Ontario is the only region nationwide that hasn’t had a federal economic development agency before. While the plan is similar to one the New Democrats suggested in their last election platform, confusion over the details is unsettling, London-Fanshawe NDP MP Irene Mathyssen said.

“The chief thing is to get the money to flow,” she said. “We can’t get a hold of (the plan’s particulars) because there’s this lack of clarity.

“The devil is in the details and there are none.”

London-North-Centre MP Glen Pearson, the city’s Liberal MP, said he believes Clement didn’t intend to exclude London from the aid.
 
“I have spoken to Minister Clement about it (and) he feels the words he used were probably misunderstood,” he said.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that money’s still