Transport committee  Well, again, I think part of the solution is leveraging the asset management plans that many municipalities have invested in. For municipalities and other communities—and this is certainly true of first nations, where there may be less capacity to develop these plans—we should do

Transport committee  That's a bit like asking, how long is a piece of string? There are so many ways that infrastructure can impact people's lives. I can give you an example, something that is maybe not considered nuts and bolts infrastructure, but something like community housing, community centr

Transport committee  Yes, I'd say that getting projects approved is much more complicated, and for a host of reasons, some of them quite justifiable. In other cases, I think we just sometimes need to stop, take stock and ask if all these steps in the program or project approval are necessary. Sandr

Transport committee  Agility and flexibility are very key to successful infrastructure. It's entirely appropriate for the government to have prescriptive programs that are trying to achieve certain things, but they're not going to solve all the problems for all the municipalities. There are a lot of

Transport committee  Thank you and good evening, Mr. Chair. I am John Gamble, president and CEO of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies - Canada. I thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your deliberations this evening. We are the national voice of over 400 firms that provid

Transport committee  There's no question, our members in Alberta have had a particularly difficult time because of, first of all, the fall in commodity prices, and particularly, but not exclusively, the price of oil and, to some degree, mining. A lot of firms that provide consultation to the mining s

Transport committee  At this juncture, there's really a lack of clarity. If you read it, it's a very inspirational or aspirational piece of legislation. There's nothing in there that's a bad idea.

Transport committee  What we need to determine is whether it is practical. Is it something that should be done through projects? Is it too broad? You set a standard for us as engineers, and we'll meet it. Now we have members who do environmental assessment. In my background, I used to write them in O

Transport committee  I think the asset management planning is absolutely critical because it's requiring the municipality to take a long-term view of their municipality and their needs and their vision for their own community. Then they would plan a road map, figuratively speaking, about what assets

Transport committee  Absolutely. The asset management plan is the outcome of prudent planning by municipalities that are very focused on infrastructure needs. It also—

Transport committee  Again, I'm not getting into the details of the application process, but traditionally, application processes at all levels of government across this country have been very project focused. It's about getting this project done and getting it in the ground, and this led to what you

Transport committee  Not necessarily, if you do it in an orderly way. I think what will be a bottleneck is these two spikes coming five years out from now, when both programs are going to be ramping up to their full stride. That's when I'm more fearful of a bottleneck. At least here we have the luxur

Transport committee  I won't presume to speak to the inner workings of Infrastructure Canada. It's beyond my expertise, clearly. I would share your observation that dollars spent today are far more effective than dollars spent later. The point of the funding is not the spreadsheet; it's about actual

Transport committee  I warned you; I'm like a fire hydrant.

Transport committee  First of all, as far as I'm concerned, there are no villains in the room. You've all made significant investments, and we're grateful for that, but we all want to do better. To your specific point, the investing in Canada plan was basically built on top of the building Canada pl