Our association represents the private sector engineering companies in Canada. It's a $12-billion-a-year industry that employs about 72,000 people. Our brief today is also about what is really the backbone of any national economy, and that is infrastructure.
People everywhere in the world need clean drinking water, efficient waste treatment, safe transportation, and reliable energy. The bad news, however, is that for decades this country has ignored infrastructure and underinvested in its development and renewal. Today our total accumulated infrastructure debt is well in excess of $60 billion, and this second national debt of Canada is growing by more than $2 billion a year.
A quote by John F. Kennedy says it well: “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” Certainly the sun is shining on Canada and Canada's economy, and the time has come for us to fix the proverbial leaky roof that is our infrastructure.
The good news is that governments at all levels have recognized the problem and are now committed to investing in our infrastructure. So what Canada now needs, as Marie Lemay said, is a long-term national infrastructure plan that would cover at least twenty years. It would include strategic priorities, targets, and, most importantly, long-term spending commitments from all orders of government. We simply can't invest billions and billions without a well thought through plan.
To help develop this long-term infrastructure plan effectively, Canada will need a national round table on sustainable infrastructure, to which my colleague Marie Lemay was referring in her presentation. Consequently, as an association and an industry, we strongly recommend that $1 million a year for five years be included in the next federal budget for this round table.
A related infrastructure issue is how construction design professionals like engineers are chosen. Low-priced bidding for professional engineering services, which some governments like to use, results in what are really false economies that choke innovation and ultimately negatively affect our productivity and competitiveness. But we have good news on this front. A formal group of public sector infrastructure experts, recently working under the aegis of the National Research Council of Canada, Infrastructure Canada, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, has just released a best practice guideline for selecting an engineer--one really developed by the public sector for the public sector.
Our recommendation in this case is very simple: that Canada adopt the InfraGuide best practice for selecting a professional consultant. This will ensure that we are investing wisely in the upfront engineering design of our infrastructure.
Our last issue is Canada's international aid program. CIDA is currently in the process of de-Canadianizing our Canadian aid. We are taking the Canadian brand off our Canadian aid programs. CIDA has also abandoned its funding of infrastructure. This comes at a time when the leaders in developing countries have clearly said to all of us that infrastructure is their single top priority.
Just to summarize, then, our association is asking for four things today: first, a long-term plan to renew Canada's infrastructure; second, the establishment of a national round table bringing together infrastructure experts; third, the selection of engineers based on skill, and finally, CIDA funding for infrastructure in poor countries.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.