Certainly the needs facing municipalities on infrastructure in particular have grown through things that are outside anyone's control, such as the need to adapt to a changing climate. That's a reality municipalities face. There are other things like new federal waste water regulations. Municipalities welcome any requirement to improve the quality of our natural water bodies, but at the same time they come with very significant costs: $20 billion to $40 billion. As I said earlier, these are new costs that are added on top of the already significant costs of 30 years of disinvestment by all orders of government.
Again, this speaks to Mr. Poilievre's point that municipalities may well be spending more on infrastructure, probably because they haven't been spending enough for the last 30 years, but probably because of significant new costs. This doesn't include non-capital costs that are increasing because of downloading from other orders of government. This could be provincial downloads, for instance housing responsibilities in some provinces or indirect federal downloads like reductions in federal policing, which require municipalities to undertake border patrols on the Great Lakes.
These costs aren't traditionally meant to be borne by property-tax-based municipalities, but nevertheless are. We believe it's those kinds of areas we're working with the federal government to solve. We're working very productively in some areas. It definitely drives up costs, and it makes it more difficult for municipalities to invest the kind of money and energy to ensure our infrastructure is there for the entire economy.