You're certainly right that at the local level many municipalities consider housing—especially publicly owned housing—as a form of infrastructure because indeed it is. It's a very large capital cost, especially for Ontario municipalities. But when it comes to translating municipal needs into the federal structure, we came to realize that it wasn't a great fit, primarily because the federal government delivers funding for housing and housing-related programs through CMHC and HRSDC, and funds for all other types of publicly owned infrastructure through Infrastructure Canada.
We suspected that trying to conflate the two would either lead to confusion or in fact it would lead to underinvestment, likely in both areas, because you'd end up with a confusing mix of objectives and a program that's run by one department or the other. So we really separated the two.
I think in some ways for administrative efficiency in terms of being able to interact with each department according to what its accountabilities are...but the needs are the same. Our position on the federal role in supporting municipal infrastructure or municipal housing needs are the same, but we're looking at the two different departments separately.