Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to apologize, I left my French notes at my office.
On behalf of Mayor Jean Perrault, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, I wish to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak about how federal and municipal governments can work together to better the lives of Canadians across this country.
I am joined today by Andrew Cowan, the Green Municipal Fund's senior manager. Unfortunately, Shannon Watt is in Saskatchewan today, meeting with the municipalities there about how we can work closely with them.
FCM has been the national voice for municipalities since 1901. We believe that Canada's quality of life and economic growth depend on healthy cities and communities in each one of your ridings. To track new talent and investments, improve productivity, and protect our environment, Canada must have strong and secure foundations at the local level. This is all the more important during these challenging economic times.
One area in which federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments can all work together is the area of integrated energy systems. Municipal, provincial, and federal governments must work together to create the regulatory conditions that foster innovation, promote new opportunities, and prepare the Canadian economy for the new era of energy and economic opportunities and of limitations in the future.
Across Canada, municipalities, many with limited financial resources, are actively working with local businesses, community organizations, and developers to create and implement integrated energy-based projects.
The ideal approach to meet and achieve energy sustainability in municipalities would involve building and using energy from multiple locally available, non-depletable sources, so that the overall energy supply is the aggregate of multiple low-impact sources. We also have to implement urban design and development approaches that support the intensification and thereby facilitate more efficient and affordable energy infrastructure options. We also must reduce or eliminate demand through various technical and management-based practices.
To support these initiatives, FCM and the federal government are working together through the FCM Green Municipal Fund. The GMF provides below-market loans and grants, as well as education and training services to support municipal initiatives and improve air, water, and soil quality and protect our climate.
Grants are available for sustainable community plans, feasibility studies, and field tasks. Funding is allocated in five sectors in municipal activity: brownfields, energy, transportation, waste, and water. To ensure the greatest possible impact, GMF partners with federal departments, agencies, provincial governments, the private sector, and NGOs to facilitate uptake of integrated energy planning and infrastructure projects.
Some of the types of integrated energy projects supported by GMF include integrated community energy planning, district heating, run-of-the-river hydroelectric generation, waste heat recovery and reuse, green building construction and retrofit, the use of solar and wind, and landfill gas capture and power generation.
Since inception, GMF has approved over 66 energy capital projects and has been involved in many more across this country. Examples of these projects can be found in communities all across the country, including the District of West Hants, Nova Scotia ; la Ville d'Otterburn, Québec; the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Alberta; and the City of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. From coast to coast to coast we're working with municipalities and the federal government to make this happen.
The technology and knowledge being developed in these communities are used by Canadians to design new equipment and develop new construction techniques that can be exported from your communities across Canada and around the world. These projects can be the birth of new jobs, new business, and even new industries right here at home.
A $1 million investment into alternative energy infrastructure projects can result in 10 person-years of employment, but there is the added value of future economic potential through improvement of local skills and industry capacity of the Canadian labour force.
FCM has many examples from every region of Canada of local projects creating locally based solutions that have created new intellectual know-how that can be the basis of new companies and jobs. Andrew can talk a little about that later on, during the questions and answers.
Replicating that innovation and opportunity—that success—across Canada could be the beginning of new industries. We can export Canadian knowledge, Canadian designs, Canadian technology, and Canadian-made solutions around the world. Because the research and development is happening here in Canadian communities, big and small, we'll create new jobs for the years to come.
In each of your ridings, I'm sure there are examples of individual Canadians, companies, and communities taking steps to find new ways to effectively integrate energy systems when designing new projects, or looking for operating cost savings when retrofitting existing infrastructure.
Today the federal government has an opportunity to effectively show leadership and get involved in promoting energy integration over the next two years through the Building Canada plan and the Budget 2009 infrastructure stimulus spending.
These are some examples. On a case-by-case basis many local integrated energy systems could be strong candidates for the new P3 public-private partnership office that is part of the Building Canada plan. Or the $1 billion community adjustment fund could offer funding for local solutions to create jobs and find new and innovative revenue sources for small communities hard hit by the economic downturn in certain industries. The $2 billion for colleges and university infrastructure offers a prime opportunity to promote integrated energy systems within these institutions across Canada and possibly build centres of excellence for research and knowledge-sharing.
Municipalities are moving forward, but more must be done. We need to work together with all stakeholders to develop the policies, support the research, and encourage the new technology. With the financial support of the federal government, FCM's Green Municipal Fund is ensuring that some of these many projects proposed each year receive funding, but there are many more who would like to participate.
Through partnerships like this we can realize the potential opportunity before us. Municipal governments are ready to work with the federal government in the promotion and implementation of new policies and programs that encourage the creation of community-specific integrated energy systems that take advantage of this opportunity to build the Canadian infrastructure we need to succeed in the years ahead.