Evidence of meeting #57 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was projects.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
David Yurdiga Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Carlton, we hear a lot about infrastructure deficit. The numbers vary from person to person depending on who did the numbers.
Is the deficit different from one part of the country to the next? Does the economy play a big factor where they live? Does the north have more infrastructure deficit? What's your take on that?
Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
It does vary based on several variables.
Some of it could be due to pressure of economic activity and population growth. The climate, the north, and the changing climate of the north, is a different variable on the pressure of the infrastructure in that area.
Generally speaking, the infrastructure deficit is greater in the east because the infrastructure is older. The cities are older. You can look at Montreal's infrastructure as opposed to Calgary's. There are different generations of infrastructure investment because of the nature of the way this country was developed.
So yes, it varies across the country according to several different variables.
Conservative
David Yurdiga Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
I noticed, especially in Alberta when the economy was booming, that a lot of municipalities couldn't move forward with their infrastructure plans because the cost to do business had sometimes tripled. Even with government programs, they were unable to come up with their share. The economy is a big factor.
Have you had any members from the federation bring forward this concern, the cost of doing business in a hot economy?
Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
It's mentioned, especially when you have programs that have a very short timeframe, for example, the economic action plan. I mean, we all knew that it was a very intense moment, had a very tight timeframe, but that intensity did drive up cost. We know that.
One of the challenges with municipalities, the smaller places in particular, in coming up with their one-third, is that in previous iterations you could stack your gas tax with a building Canada fund application to get your one-third. You can't do that now, so the smaller members have lost the capacity to use the gas tax in stacking with other federal money to finance a project that is larger than the resources they get from the gas tax.
It may appear like a relatively small detail in the subtext of the building Canada fund, etc., but it is a very significant issue for our smaller members.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you. Your time has expired.
We'll now move to Mr. Komarnicki, for five minutes.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I have a couple of questions for Ms. Dedman.
You mentioned that there were a few pockets of brilliance or perhaps some bright lights out there. Can you tell us a bit about that? What was it about their practices that you found to be particularly intriguing?
President, Canadian Public Works Association
As I mentioned, some of the western provinces are engaging in advanced asset management practices. The City of Edmonton, the City of Calgary, for example, have adopted a very similar practice to what Australia and New Zealand are engaging in. For the most part, Australia and New Zealand are the leaders in asset management practices. They led the way. There is a lot of the principles that came out of their work that are now being adopted in Canada, and those principles have been adopted by some of the larger communities like Edmonton and Calgary.
Further east, Ottawa, for example, is doing an excellent job of asset management. Hamilton, for example—
President, Canadian Public Works Association
The principles of asset management are based on value. It's assessing what the needs are, investing the right money at the right time to get the maximum life out of your assets. It's doing long-term financial planning to ensure that assets are replaced at the appropriate time, because if you get into emergency repairs as opposed to proactive maintenance, it's much more expensive.
It's a holistic approach to looking after these assets.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I know that you mentioned there was the Envision system.
Can you tell us a little about that and why you feel that's important? What advantages does it have?
President, Canadian Public Works Association
Sure.
Again I go back to looking at sustainability as we invest in our infrastructure going forward. Envision is one tool that we've seen at use in Canada. It was developed by our sister organization, the American Public Works Association, the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Tell us, what does it do that you think is important for smaller municipalities or any municipalities to adopt?
President, Canadian Public Works Association
It provides a framework and a rating system with standards municipalities set out to achieve. Depending on the long-term carbon footprint of your infrastructure, for example, or the cost, you get the impacts on society and the environmental impacts of this going forward. It assesses all of those to give a rating to that piece of infrastructure.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Is it a paper tool or a software program that can be easily inputted on each particular infrastructure?
President, Canadian Public Works Association
Yes. It includes a software program. You can use it at all stages of your project and rate each of those steps you're planning by looking at what is the best option for the location. It gives you a rating for those different options.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I understand that the gas tax fund does allow use toward that kind of capacity building. It is a predictable source of funding. It has been indexed to inflation, so it's the kind of fund that could be used. Perhaps one element missing is the stacking portion spoken of by Mr. Carlton, but a fund like the gas tax fund goes to the municipalities year by year, based essentially on population. Every municipality gets funding.
Is there any reason you can see why municipalities haven't yet adopted some of these best practices? What are your organization and the federation doing in terms of getting the municipal memberships on board with some sort of a uniform program that would be good not only for them, but for provinces and the federal government to understand what's happening on the ground?
President, Canadian Public Works Association
On the sustainability side there's not necessarily an investment that's required. We see the role of the federal government more for supporting and promoting the use of those type of tools. On the asset management side, however, the current gas tax program does include building capacity for asset management of one of those categories.
I go back to comments made earlier where, when it's prioritized against other projects, some of those more visible projects are the ones that are seen as the greater need, so that funding isn't put—
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
What I gather from what you're saying is although there are sort of short-sighted priorities, they're missing the fact that you need to get in position to be able to manage your assets. Why is somebody at your level or the FCM level not ensuring that municipalities get on board?
President, Canadian Public Works Association
We are doing that. Part of that is through the infrastructure report card. The first one was done in 2012 and the second one is coming out in 2015. For part of the 2015 report card that has come out, FCM and CPWA, along with other organizations, including the Canadian Network of Asset Managers, have developed an asset management primer that's now available across Canada. It sets out the principles and it sets out the best practices.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Mr. Carlton, did you wish to make a comment at all?
Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Yes. I think it's unfair to characterize in a simple way a decision a municipality makes as a short-sighted investment, as opposed to an asset management investment. It's just not that simple. Municipalities are faced with enormous pressures and enormous challenges, and so decisions are made to invest their infrastructure dollars in certain places, not always in short-sighted ways.
I think the asset management opportunity created by the gas tax is a step in the right direction, but I agree with Kealy there's a federal leadership role here that's really important. Our members are prepared to see some degree of conditionality around the infrastructure investments related to effective asset management. What's needed is national leadership to create the national scope and perspective that says, “here's the kind of asset management in general that we want to see in this country“. So let's start building the capacity, some federal.
Do you want me to stop talking?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
No, I'll allow you to finish. I was signalling to Mr. Komarnicki that he was out of time.
Chief Executive Officer, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
We recognize there is kind of a national vision here that drives the sustainability agenda through effective asset management that drives an agenda of effective investment and effective priority setting using good asset management. You need the provinces and territories involved because they're part of the framework of how all of this stuff works, and they're more granular in terms of their involvement in the particulars around asset management related to a certain political jurisdiction.
Just in parenthesis, I would say that we are doing work on asset management. We had a very productive round table discussion with the department. We have a small program out of our own resources that is helping to identify good practices and finding a mechanism to share that so others can learn from it, but our financial capacity to invest in that is extremely limited. FCM alone is just a drop in a very big bucket.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
We'll leave it at that.
We're going to start into the second round and we're going to go to Mr. Kellway, for three minutes.
NDP
Matthew Kellway NDP Beaches—East York, ON
In light of the discussion about asset management, Mr. Carlton, you had tied investment to GDP at 4% to 5% as what ought to be happening. Is that just a kind of rough measure you throw out, or is there a dollar figure you'd like to put on that? Presumably, if you tie it to GDP, you end up as we did in the dip, where governments in the 1990s chose to get their fiscal houses in order as opposed to making those kinds of investments, etc. Is there a dollar figure you'd put on this, or are you happy with infrastructure investment at the federal level being tied to economic growth?