Transport Committee on Oct. 19th, 2010

[Brock Carlton]

...based on my understanding of the situation in Quebec.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Perhaps some of my colleagues will find this piece of information interesting: we talked to the municipalities and they said that there is a shortage of water and sewer pipes. You cannot use an eavestrough meant for a house to replace an 85-year-old water pipe in an old community.

Have you heard about this too, about a shortage of water and sewer pipes?

[Gabriel Miller, Director, Government and Media Relations , Federation of Canadian Municipalities]

In our conversations with the Union des municipalités du Québec, a number of factors were mentioned, including the availability of materials. The association has more information on this, but we think that all these factors are much worse and more serious because the deadline is a lot tighter. So, if it is difficult to find the labour or the materials, the problem becomes a lot more serious when we only have a year to complete the project instead of two years.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Yes, I am talking about a shortage of contractors... It is an issue at the moment and I imagine it is the same in the other provinces too. The provincial governments and the federal government have their separate economic recovery plans. We have seen it in the United States. President Obama spent billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructures. You must know that it is not by accident that we are doing this infrastructure renovation work right now. It is to keep people employed in order for the economy to keep going during this crisis.

And I can tell you that, in Quebec, there is a shortage of contractors, there are not enough contractors to get the work done. Mr. Miller, have you heard about this?

[Gabriel Miller]

I have not heard about a situation as serious and specific as the one you have described, but it is one of the things that people have mentioned.

In my view, that is exactly why we need to hold a discussion specifically on the situation in Quebec. We get the impression that aspects related to the labour market, materials and contractors should be addressed specifically. If that's the case, that is what we'll have to do. That is one of the challenges with a plan that is designed for the whole country; these types of situations come up. In a number of regions, there is not enough work. But we see that there is a lot of room in the market, and, in some areas, there is a lot of work for contractors. That is exactly why we need flexibility, as Mr. Carlton said. This is a large country with a number of regions that have different circumstances.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Guimond.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming in today on this particular topic.

What I've found on this topic is that I really haven't been able to comprehend why the government has so far been so difficult to deal with on it. To my mind, it seems clear there was a partnership entered into between municipalities and provinces and the federal government, with the federal government having a very large stake in seeing that the stimulus funding was conducted in a fashion that could work and that the projects identified were not regular business, that these projects would be in addition to municipal capital programs that were already agreed upon.

The federal government, in order to create stimulus--and knowing, as you're saying, that infrastructure programs actually work very well for stimulus and that the results would be very strong--went into this and put the burden on the municipalities to completely deliver these in a certain timeframe. Well, I haven't seen a good reason why the federal government has now decided that they can't be flexible...they're moving on this issue.

It's my concern that.... Just as the representative from the Saskatchewan association, Mr. Harvey, mentioned, there's some concern that we won't get the answer about the extension soon enough so that proper decision-making can take place. If we continue to delay this decision on the part of the federal government as to what is fair and what is proper about extending the deadline, we're going to run into extra costs for the municipalities on projects that they went into in good faith.

Do you see that as a particular issue here?

[Brock Carlton]

As I said in my comments, we're calling on the federal government to instruct the bureaucracy to get on with the practicalities of working case by case to find flexibility where it is fair and reasonable to do so. So sure, we're concerned about the timing. We want this thing to move on so that effective planning can be put in place to finish off the projects in a timeframe that is going to allow everything to succeed, that the jobs continue to be in the economy, and that the stimulus package plays out its full benefit in our country.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

As you know, many municipalities say they're going to finish up the jobs. Are they saying that now with confidence or are they saying it...? Do they fully understand what the end-date finish means for these projects? Or is simply that they've spent the money, that they have the materials on site? I've heard all of this as well, with municipalities saying that they've spent the money, and here's the material on site, so isn't that good enough for you by March 31?

[Brock Carlton]

Our members knew the rules of this game in terms of the end date and timelines the day it started, so they are working exceptionally hard to make sure they are within the timelines given under the terms and conditions of the original agreement.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Do you want to add anything to this about the nature of the end-date completion of the projects and the extent to which municipalities anticipate it as meaning that the projects are completely finished or that they've spent the federal money?

[Dale Harvey]

I think municipalities are understanding that the projects be completely finished by the deadline. In our case, it's going to be whenever the construction season ends. We really don't have six months. We have whatever the weather will allow us to do.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So in many cases, you will understand by November or December exactly how many projects have not been completed in the construction period?

[Dale Harvey]

In our case, that'll be the fact.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Does that follow right across the country?

[Brock Carlton]

I think it's fair to say that these folks are delivering projects with a great deal of intensity but also with a high degree of professionalism. They know the timeframes they're working towards and they know the planning cycles and the planning they need to follow through on to get things done on time. They're all well aware of the time constraints and what needs to be done to deliver.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Last Friday I went to a ceremony held in Yellowknife for announcing money for a project to upgrade a commercial street. My thoughts on looking at that commercial street were that it was going to be very difficult to have it completely finished in that timeframe. The municipality indicates that it isn't going to be, but it may be that the scope of the project will change as they move along.

I'm concerned that in order to meet this timeframe municipalities are making choices here that may not be in their best interests. That's why I'd like to see the minister move ahead very quickly to establish the new timeframe so municipalities can make good choices. They went into this in good faith to provide a basis for economic stimulation in this country.

There are two partners in this: the federal government, which got what it wanted out of this, and the municipalities, which have to complete these projects and get what they want out of it. I'm really concerned that we're not giving them enough information right now about what the end date should be in order for them to make good decisions today about proceeding with their projects.

[Dale Harvey]

In our case, there's really nothing you can do. As was mentioned earlier, you can't do a bunch of overtime or anything. You're at the mercy of the weather. You're not going to get a contractor to come in and help another contractor for two weeks and try to finish up before things freeze up. It's a little different. Maybe if a municipality is doing a building construction project or that type of thing, you could maybe speed things up through the winter, but when you're working outside in Saskatchewan or the Northwest Territories....

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Trost.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will try to time myself, but my watch isn't working, so I'm at the mercy of the chair.

Thank you to our guests for coming here today. I'm not as intimately familiar with the situation across the country as I am with the situation in Saskatchewan. I am an RM ratepayer; my folks have farmed, and so have my relatives and so forth. I'm more than aware of the way the weather situation was this spring, because when I was trying to do some landscaping on my acreage, it just wasn't going well.

Let me just say that from my personal observations—and I could be wrong—rural municipalities in Saskatchewan probably have the toughest time to get the infrastructure done. Correct me if I'm wrong on any of what I'm about to say, but they don't have full-time professional construction staff the way a larger city would. Most of the RMs are between 1,000 and 5,000 people, correct?

[Dale Harvey]

Yes, they're mostly contract work--

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Except for Corman Park, maybe, there are very few. You usually have one administrator for the RM, and you have people doing a bit of the gravel work, so you have to bid the contracts out.

The rainfall this summer was about three times what it normally would be. I was listening to one of my other colleagues talk about it being hard to get hold of contractors. Saskatoon has been going through a bit of a building boom, and in Saskatchewan, we're competing with the Fort McMurray projects. The University of Saskatchewan is building like crazy with federal grants and things of that nature and the oil patch in southern Saskatchewan is going great guns. Things are going along pretty good, and I see you nodding, so there's no disagreement.

If there's any place in the country where it should be tough to get a project done, it should be Saskatchewan, correct?

[Dale Harvey]

Right.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Yet you guys are getting your projects done. On September 15, we had a meeting of Saskatchewan MPs and another representative of SARM. He was saying that you guys are getting the projects done to the point that there was only one they were really concerned about. How come you guys have done such a great, efficient job in getting things done when you've faced more adversity than just about anyone else in the country?

[Dale Harvey]

That's a good question. I guess we're just good.