Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Canadian Construction Association welcomes this opportunity to appear before you today and share with you the views of our nearly 16,000 member firms across the country on the infrastructure measures contained in the recent federal budget. It probably comes as no surprise to you that since our industry builds that infrastructure, we very much welcome these measures. We certainly believe that investing in Canada's infrastructure provides the biggest bang for the stimulus buck in the short term, in terms of job creation and economic impact. For every $1 billion, according to an Informetrica Limited study, some 11,500 jobs are created, more than half of which are not created in the construction industry.
But perhaps more importantly, it is also our belief that investing in Canada's infrastructure is an absolute priority, not just for the short term but for the long term as well, in order to secure our country's future economic prosperity and social well-being.
Because of past neglect, our vital public infrastructure—our roads, bridges, sewer systems, hospitals, and schools—are in a critical state of disrepair. It has come to the point that, rather than providing a safe and healthy environment and quality of life for our citizens, our public infrastructure is beginning to threaten those basic, fundamental necessities. Instead of providing the tools by which to allow business and industry to compete, thrive, and remain productive, our crumbling public infrastructure adds to business costs, makes us less competitive, and inhibits productivity. We need to upgrade and maintain our public infrastructure so that it once again works for Canadians and works for Canadian business and Canadian industry, rather than against.
Some of you may have seen the University of Waterloo study of last year that was presented in the August publication of the Institute for Research on Public Policy. It concluded that not only had Canada's infrastructure deficit reached $200 billion, but that our failure to invest in our public infrastructure in any meaningful way during the 1990s was the primary reason for the productivity gap that exists between the manufacturing sectors in the United States and in Canada. In looking at aggregate investments on the part of governments in both the United States and Canada, it found that the U.S. managed to increase its productivity advantage over Canada by more than 20% in the past 10 years alone. During that period, Canadian investments in infrastructure declined by 3.5%, whereas in the United States they increased by more than 24%.
Why dwell on this? It is to make the point that a nation must not simply invest in its public infrastructure to create jobs in the short term or to kick-start an ailing economy, which it will do, but a nation must invest in its key strategic public infrastructure because it is the course of sanity. It is no coincidence that every nation in the world that has recently announced a stimulus package has, as a key cornerstone of that package, significant reinvestment in critical public infrastructure. Those nations understand that, yes, investments in infrastructure will provide the stimulus in the short term to help their stagnant economies along, but their governments also know that, much more importantly, those investments will ensure that they have the modern and efficient infrastructure in place to best position their nation to take advantage of the economic growth that will come when the global economy begins to recover.
Mr. Chair, this is why CCA strongly supports infrastructure renewal. But investing in infrastructure is also wise not only for tomorrow but also for today.
The landmark investment that budget 2009 makes in university and college infrastructure renewal is worth particular note. CCA has been a strong proponent of increased federal investment in college renewal. As most of our labour force comes through the college system, we know how stressed the situation is currently for colleges. Unfortunately, community colleges remain the poor cousins within the Canadian post-secondary educational family. Many of them were built 40 to 45 years ago and have been sorely neglected. Many community colleges of sizable enrolment have backlogs—for some colleges, a three-year wait for a construction trade program. The equipment is woefully outdated, there is no capacity, and yet college enrolments are on the climb. The downturn in the economy has only exacerbated these challenges as many displaced workers turn to colleges for retraining or upgrading of their skills.
A Canadian Federation of Independent Business study in 2006, in surveying their members as to where their new workforce was coming from, said that for every university graduate, they're going to need six college graduates in the future. Our college system just does not have the capacity and has been neglected for far too long. We certainly welcome the novel, first-time identification in a federal budget of the need to support community colleges. We would ask, however, that this committee consider providing for a better proportion of that program. Currently it's been established that 30% only of that program would go for college infrastructure. We'd like to see a much more equal situation.
In closing, I'd like to leave you with one thought. Quite frankly, our greatest fear is that infrastructure, having had its 15 minutes of fame as the stimulus solution to these recessionary times, will soon fade from sight, and that we in Canada will lapse back into our previous culture of design, build, and forget.
I look forward to your questions.