Thank you.
We, in this generation, have been the beneficiaries of the foresight in investment of our parents and grandparents, and I truly hope that as we move forward we are able to give that to our children and grandchildren as well. This is a real challenge in today's environment. Our perspectives have shortened, and we are working very closely with what's happening today rather than what's happening in the distant future.
Most of us have spent the majority of our adult lives in times of relative excess capacity, and now we're moving into times of relative scarcity. That means we have to ask different questions and to seek different answers.
It's often useful to think of infrastructure in three different areas: social infrastructure, economic infrastructure, and the infrastructure deficit. The infrastructure deficit is perhaps the most insidious. It's beneath our feet. It's under our streets. It's in the walls. We really haven't invested what we should have invested over the last decades, and we face a big bill. If we ignore the maintenance needs of our existing infrastructure, we do so at our peril. This is something that I think the committee needs to take into account as it looks at new projects versus existing projects.
The other part of the infrastructure deficit lies in things where capacity increases have been postponed, and that puts a brake on the Canadian economy. It keeps a friction in the system that keeps us from achieving our true potential.
If the last 20 years of infrastructure investment have focused on interurban development, the next 20 years will focus on cities. Nowhere is the infrastructure challenge facing cities greater or more evident than in urban mobility, whether it be pedestrians, cyclists, transit, cars, goods movements, or service movements, and these last two are often forgotten in the discussions. It is truly important that we allow the cities to flow in the way they have the potential to flow. Be it economic inclusion through the ability to get to a job, or the ability of a small electrical contractor to get to a customer, both are equally important.
What we really need in cities are a couple of decades, not a couple of years, of serious investment to allow cities to reach their true potential. We need to achieve a national consensus on the need to invest in infrastructure—its benefits, its costs. And we're seeing this around the world as countries develop national infrastructure plans that lay out a prioritized set of projects and programs that allow people to address social, economic, and the infrastructure deficit issues.
Consensus is very hard to achieve and very hard to maintain, but that can be an incredibly powerful way to guide progress. Similarly, when things change in the external environment, it also allows you to change directions. I would take you to the experience of the U.K. They've now completed their second national infrastructure plan, and they have changed directions quite severely. Had they not had that first plan, they would have been at a complete loss as to what to do.
The final point is about paying for it, and there are two concepts that are quite useful for your deliberations. These two concepts generally get muddled up by 70% or 80% of the people who talk about these issues. One is called funding infrastructure, and that's who ultimately pays for it, be that the taxpayer or the user. The second part is the financing of infrastructure, which pertains to how to pay for the initial construction. When those two terms get muddled up, the debates end up completely at cross purposes. I would ask as you go through your deliberations that you please remember those two concepts.
Now is a brilliant time for Canada and for Canadians to be investing in infrastructure, and I believe we owe it to those who follow on to make those investments today and for the next two decades.
Thank you.