Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, good afternoon and thank you for having us.
Today, as City Councillor for the City of Drummondville, I am joining the representative from the Conseil régional de l'environnement du Centre-du-Québec to explain to the committee the repercussions of municipal land-use planning on urban conservation.
I will give a little background first. Municipalities are a provincial responsibility under the Canadian Constitution, and the law indicates that municipalities must organize their land-use planning. In addition, in the case of the Drummondville municipality—located 100 km east of Montreal with a population of about 72,000—the municipality garners about 60% to 70% of its revenue from property taxes calculated on the basis of property value. So the land is very valuable for municipalities.
However, over the last two generations in North America and many other places around the world, land-use planning has been based on urban sprawl, as you probably know. For instance, during that period in Quebec, each time the population has increased by 1%, the area occupied by the city has increased by 5%. So there is a strange correlation. That puts tremendous pressure on conservation. Fundamentally, the goal or the best thing for urban conservation is to limit the encroachment of urban areas on conservation areas. The best conservation areas are those left alone.
Therefore, municipalities are trapped in a structure where they must constantly—and quickly—build new neighbourhoods to acquire new revenue and pay for the very expensive infrastructure in older neighbourhoods. That creates something of a vicious cycle, where cities are constantly expanding. So green spaces are constantly being encroached upon.
Clearly, a number of consequences stem from urban sprawl. The first consists of repercussions on urban conservation, as I mentioned. I will spare you a detailed explanation of all the consequences. Nevertheless, Canadians could benefit greatly from better land-use planning. Those benefits include the reduction of atmospheric pollution, better rain water management, food security by limiting the division of agricultural lands, and energy security by reducing oil consumption. It is also a matter of public health, as automobile dependency discourages the use of active transportation and leads to obesity and cardiovascular issues. Improved urban density—the objective of better land-use planning—would encourage the use of public transportation and would, in turn, improve its profitability.
I would like to highlight one specific repercussion of land-use planning—the impact on public finances. Every time a city expands, urban conservation is greatly affected. The building of streets, sidewalks, and waste water and sewer systems costs taxpayers a small fortune. In fact, a report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities recently revealed—you have perhaps heard about this—that, if all the roads whose state ranges from fair to very poor were replaced at the same time, the cost to Canadian taxpayers would be $91 billion. That is a major impact.
I have some examples of best practices and best land-use planning in Quebec. If you are interested, I will share them with you during the question period.
In closing, if nothing is done to improve land-use planning, urban conservation will always be under pressure. That will be inevitable.
Thank you.