Transport committee  Personally, I think that in an ideal world what you're suggesting should apply. I think the real world is incredibly complicated, and politics in fact is really deciding among a series of greys, not black and white. I'll give you a very specific example. Obviously a portion of

Transport committee  The building Canada fund I think allocates $200 million in 2014, if I'm not mistaken. But that only speaks to the amount of money that Ottawa would expect to send out of Ottawa in the form of a cheque. We believe that this is a vast overstatement of what will actually occur, an

Transport committee  For sure. Our submission to Mr. Lebel, as part of his consultations into a long-term infrastructure plan, called for essentially a renewal or continuation of the existing small communities component of the building Canada fund, which essentially is a dedicated envelope of funds w

Transport committee  You're certainly right that at the local level many municipalities consider housing—especially publicly owned housing—as a form of infrastructure because indeed it is. It's a very large capital cost, especially for Ontario municipalities. But when it comes to translating municipa

Transport committee  No, I don't. I wouldn't characterize my analysis as critical. I think I'd counsel caution that a one-size-fits-all national approach to this might end up costing everyone more money instead of maximizing benefits. So a province-by-province approach is certainly something we woul

Transport committee  But I certainly expect Infrastructure Canada to be able to demonstrate that the cost of complying with any regulation, not just this one, outweighs the benefits that regulation will bring. That's all I'm suggesting.

Transport committee  I'm counselling caution so that doesn't end up being the case. But some of the approval processes for federal application-based funding programs can reach three or four years. That is a very real cost to capital. Every day that public funds sit in Ottawa, rather than being invest

Transport committee  FCM developed seven principles to help guide the federal government's negotiations with the European Union to ensure that the subnational procurement provisions of CETA treated municipal procurement as fairly and reasonably as possible. One of those provisions, for instance, was

Transport committee  I was going to agree with Mr. Dijkema that in fact there are various provincial rules. In fact, the Agreement on Internal Trade ensures that these kinds of monopoly practices are theoretically illegal. Because we don't become involved in this detail in municipal operations, we

Transport committee  The new P3 fund is worth $1.25 billion.

Transport committee  I mean for every rule of thumb there are exceptions.

Transport committee  Certainly one of the recommendations we made to the federal government and to PPP Canada was that a portion of the P3 Canada fund be set aside or dedicated to actually investing and building a municipal capacity to consider and possibly use P3s. So it's really around capacity bui

Transport committee  Well, as I said, several anecdotal examples have been raised, and I don't have the information because we're not experts in tendering. Again, we're a national organization representing municipalities from across—

Transport committee  I hesitate to describe it as reckless since I believe closed tendering is employed by other orders of government, including the federal government. I think there are lots of reasons for closed tendering. The City of Montreal is one example. Provincial regulations certainly play a

Transport committee  Certainly the needs facing municipalities on infrastructure in particular have grown through things that are outside anyone's control, such as the need to adapt to a changing climate. That's a reality municipalities face. There are other things like new federal waste water regula