Good morning. My name is Ralph Groening. I'm the vice-president of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities. We are the one organization that represents all third levels of government in the province of Manitoba, including the City of Winnipeg.
We're pleased to be here to present a few policy items that are of importance to us. You have the information, so I will move ahead with my comments.
The AMM made a federal budget submission in February of this year that outlined five priority items: infrastructure funding, and I'll comment on that further; community policing, which has become a major part of municipal expense; housing; disaster financial assistance, which I will also add a few comments to; and wireless communications and broadband Internet connectivity. While all of these items are of extreme importance to Manitobans and Manitoba municipalities, in the interest of time I am going to only touch on two of them.
One item is the federal disaster financial assistance funding.
Extreme weather events suggest that we can expect that disaster events will cost Canadians $5 billion by 2020. Manitoba is the second-largest recipient of disaster financial assistance. We are not proud of that particular title, but a strong federal program over the years has helped municipalities recover from some of these disasters. The flood of 1997 is one that I think quickly comes to mind and that we're all too familiar with.
Unfortunately, federal changes came into effect in February 2015 that resulted in the downloading of these responsibilities to the provincial governments. There was no consultation whatsoever, either with the province or with us. As a municipal organization, we were not consulted prior to any of these significant changes coming into effect, which have tripled the deductible and had a major impact on our communities.
The AMM is concerned that these downloads will make their way to the municipalities, and they already have. This new formula will impact our ability to recover from future disasters. We ask that these changes be reviewed and ultimately reversed to ensure that the safety of Manitobans, in the event of a national disaster or extreme weather event, is not compromised. We think it is also important to give consideration to a national disaster mitigation policy, and I think there's been some previous discussion about that.
The other item that I will provide some detail on is infrastructure funding.
The AMM is the only municipal association in Canada—the only association—that is working alongside federal and provincial partners to help select projects financed under the new Building Canada fund. I emphasize that we're the only municipality, the only organization, that is and has been able to do that.
We certainly appreciate the opportunity to work with federal and provincial governments. Working together is absolutely key to any successful infrastructure program, and with 80% of infrastructure funding in the budget of 2016 still to be allocated, there are many opportunities to build stronger partnerships. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has called for full contributions from all three partners, and that includes 50% federal, a full one-third provincial contribution, and the remaining 17% or so from our organizations.
We believe it is important that federal investments benefit all Canadians, from city dwellers to those who live in rural, remote, and northern communities.
Finally, we hope that phase two of this infrastructure program will include predictable, flexible funding models that will allow local decision-makers, such as people on the ground and people who know best in many cases, to direct funds to the projects that are most needed.
I thank you for the opportunity to emphasize two of those points and the opportunity to speak on behalf of my organization.