I can certainly provide the committee with updated numbers for our municipal infrastructure deficit. We have not calculated it in a while, but it would be relatively easy to bring that up. I will also suggest to the big city mayors' caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities which keeps updated numbers, that they make sure the committee has those numbers.
That said, when you break it down within the city alone, on public transit, in terms of infrastructure that needs to continue to be built, we're looking at, in the low, up to $10 billion. When you think about affordable housing, 15,000 units are required. I'm going to drop a zero if I try and multiply through the average cost of a unit, but we're looking at a couple billion dollars there. That's just transit and housing. The big money, of course, is in roads, water, and wastewater infrastructure. The City of Calgary, for example, has about a $3.8 billion debt. Almost all of it is for water and wastewater infrastructure. When you look at a city this size, 1.2 million people, you are easily looking at $20 billion in unfunded infrastructure, and you just multiply that through by communities across the country.
Now the good news is that the previous government of Canada and the current Government of Canada have recognized that in ways that governments before them didn't, and we've been whittling away at that as part of our economic stimulus work, but also as a real interest in the need to build infrastructure. I'll give you one very fast example.
When I was first elected, I created in Calgary our first ever permanent fund for social infrastructure. You know, the transportation infrastructure and the environment infrastructure have the gas tax and other forms of funding. We had nothing to build libraries, recreation centres, and fire halls, so we've set aside from our own tax base $42 million a year, 50% of which is for maintenance of existing facilities and upgrades, and 50% of which is for new, and that has allowed us to build new libraries and four new recreation centres, as well as buy some personal protective equipment for our firefighters and fire halls. But you know, we have to actually do it. Nobody wants to sponsor the renovation of a locker room or the fixing of a leaking roof in a hockey arena, but all of this stuff has to happen.
With that, I have to go.