Mayor Larry O'Brien said he should have chosen his words more carefully when discussing the light rail project, adding the word "affordability" was the wrong word to use.

O'Brien told CTV that he worried a multi-million dollar rail plan wasn't affordable -- and then retracted his statement in an interview later on Friday.

He added that the city treasurer has ensured him that the project is an affordable plan for the City of Ottawa.

The mayor says he wasn't raising concerns about whether the project is affordable; rather he wanted to say that the detailed costs of the project will need to be reviewed by the next city council after a procurement process is established.

"I think this is the first seed of doubt he's cast," said mayoral candidate Jim Watson, a one-time mayor of Ottawa himself.

"If we only have $1.8 billion in funding and we have a plan that's $2.1 billion - anyone can do the math - we are already $300 million short, and that's even before tenders go out. So i suspect we are going to see a shortfall of over $300 million."

'Affordability'

Earlier today, O'Brien told CTV Ottawa the next council will need to determine if the light rail plan is an affordable choice for the city.

"Now that we have the money funding envelope together, we can go out and get some quotes and we can find out whether it is really affordable and those quotes will come back early in the next term, so we're not going to try to ramrod this thing through before the end of this term," O'Brien said Friday morning.

"We'll get through the official process of tendering, we'll get the numbers. A new council will be able to ascertain at that time about the issue of affordability, but we'll take it a long way and give the new council some exciting work to do."

The mayor added the city needs to proceed with the project, given its importance to the future of the capital.

"The question shouldn't be: can we afford to? It should be: can we afford not to?" O'Brien said.

Federal funding

The mayor made those comments Friday morning after the federal government confirmed its share of funding for the first phase of the $2.1-billion project is imminent.

Sources told CTV Ottawa the federal government will make its funding announcement late next week.

"It's a big, big, big project. It's a lot of money, but the city's a big city, it's a big government and they have to make big decisions," said Transport Minister John Baird.

When asked if the project is a good plan for the City of Ottawa, Baird said: "I'll let the city council take care of that. My job as a federal MP, as a federal minister, is to be a funding partner and that's what I'm committed to do."

Council voted 19-4 to approve the functional design of the project and move forward with an environmental assessment in January 2010.

The cost of the first phase has already ballooned from an original estimate of $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion. It includes building a transit tunnel through the city's downtown core, as well as laying light rail tracks from Blair Road to Tunney's Pasture.

The Ontario government committed its share of $600 million in funding late last year. The federal government is expected to match the provincial funding. So far, the federal government has committed $200 million to the project.

With files from CTV Ottawa's Kate Eggins and John Ruttle