Good morning, and thank you for letting us present today. We have a written submission, and there are three points I would like to highlight.
The first is on the innovation strategy to meet our infrastructure challenges. As we know, there is a $123 billion infrastructure deficit across Canada, and that's just to fix the existing infrastructure; it's not for new construction. In Manitoba it's $11 billion, which equates to about $10,000 per Manitoban.
We need to look at programs like the GST rebate, of which municipalities get 100%. We need to look at programs like the gas tax agreement, which is a really good program. It doesn't matter what size the municipality is; you have access to funds.
Building Canada is a great program, but unfortunately it's ad hoc and short term. It's not good for long-term planning and sustainable funding. We need these programs to help municipalities with long-term planning and funding and to give them some predictability when they're doing their budgets.
The prairie grain roads program was excellent and was taken up right across Canada. It was well-received, well-used, and a good use of money.
The one thing about this strategy is that it needs to involve the municipalities. Our association was not allowed to provide any input to the Building Canada fund. For other infrastructure programs we did have a seat at the table and were able to input and bring a municipal lens to the table to show what municipalities need. We were very disappointed this time around that municipalities were not allowed at the table and decisions were made at the federal and provincial levels.
The second point I'd like to make is to stop the offloading of responsibilities to municipalities. Right now municipalities are doing non-traditional municipal work like policing, health care, and housing—things that municipalities never had responsibility for. These things are now on our table, and that's preventing municipalities from doing what they normally do, like streets and all those other things. We need to stop this downloading.
There are always regulations and things coming down, but new money never comes with them. You expect municipalities to comply with these regulations, yet no money comes. The pile keeps getting higher and higher. Municipalities are now at the point where they're willing to turn water treatment plants back to the province because they can no longer pay for these requirements.
The third thing I would like to mention is that a rural champion is needed to stimulate the rural economy of Manitoba. We need someone at the cabinet table who has rural experience. We need someone who understands rural Canada, small-town Canada, small-town Manitoba. We need that person there for their input so that when these policies are being made in Ottawa they are looked at with a rural and municipal lens.
The rural champion should understand rural Canada. I think that's very important, because with all of these programs that come down, it seems there's no thought given to rural Canada. When these programs come down it's very hard for small municipalities, towns, and villages to figure them out, because the people who design these programs just don't understand rural life. A lot of these programs are very cumbersome. We need a streamlined process. So we feel that if we had a rural champion at the cabinet table it would make things a lot better.
Thank you.