Good afternoon.
I'm John Gamble, president of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies. I'm accompanied by our vice-president of policy and public affairs, Susie Grynol. We're pleased to have this opportunity to appear before you.
We are a business association representing approximately 500 consulting engineering companies across Canada that provide professional services to both public and private sector clients. Today we'll be providing key highlights from our written submission provided earlier.
Public infrastructure, to our mind, is a core business of government and is vital to our economic, social, and environmental quality of life in Canada. Therefore, we applaud the significant infrastructure commitments from successive governments, including the more recent $12 billion infrastructure stimulus fund and the ongoing $33 billion Building Canada plan.
While these programs have made significant progress in renewing Canada's infrastructure, they have been insufficient to overcome the infrastructure investment shortfall accumulated over many decades. Recent reports and studies observe a decline in infrastructure investment from nearly 6% of GDP in 1960 to approximately 3% in 2004.
It's our view that we must return to a long-term strategic infrastructure investment plan in order for Canada to properly address its infrastructure investment gap and preserve our competitiveness. In order to do this, we are offering three recommendations, which will now be outlined by Ms. Grynol.