Thank you for allowing me to contribute my comments on this important issue.
As you have been told repeatedly, the infrastructure deficit in Canada has reached serious proportions, leaving billions of dollars in future expenditures as a burden on the next generation. Anything we can do to lighten that load is welcomed by municipalities across Canada. Certainly, the present commitments will make only a small dent, but continued support from all levels of government will be crucial to our eventual rehabilitation of the assets that make Canada strong.
My city, Burnaby, is a model of sustainable asset management and fiscal responsibility. We have no debt, and we maintain reserves in the amount of $700 million for the replacement of our infrastructure and the development of our community. There are many cities that strive for the same goal, but there are consistent obligations placed upon us by other orders of government that make our job much harder.
On a regional level, we have recently completed the massive upgrade of our water system to meet federal and provincial objectives, with minimal contributions from senior governments. We are now obliged to replace the existing Lions Gate waste water treatment facility, and again we are struggling to obtain support from the very government that ordered the replacement. It is incredibly frustrating and disheartening.
In British Columbia, many people believe that the political influence on the distribution of federal funds is a major factor in the decisions on infrastructure projects, rather than the prioritization of the projects by level of importance and impact. In my 28 years of experience on municipal council, I tend to agree that the process is not sufficiently objective or impartial. In fact, the political lobbying required to get support for much-needed infrastructure has become unseemly in a democratic policy-driven society. We need to know that the process is based on solid criteria and is a transparent process. That has not always been the case.
I am also greatly concerned about the diversion of federal infrastructure funds to private sector organizations such as railways. It came as a great surprise to me that railway infrastructure was being funded by building Canada fund money. It seems to me that the private sector should be responsible for its own needs, based on their own market viability. Public funds should be for public purposes.
Finally, I am very aware of the debate going on in this committee about the privatization initiatives that are euphemistically called “private-public partnerships”. As one of the mayors involved in the Canada Line project, I could go on for hours about the flawed process that was undertaken to build a transit line operated by the private sector. Suffice it to say that the project has created very little new ridership at a massive cost to local municipalities. We ended up funding well over half the project and continue to pay higher interest rates on the money borrowed by the private sector.
Over and over again, auditors general in various provinces write lengthy reports on the excess costs of the P3 model, but their voices are not heard in Ottawa. Instead, the federal government relies on reports from the organizations that benefit the most from these projects and ignores the reality. In fact, the federal government insists that all major projects go through this lens, and it is made clear that projects will not be supported if they fail to embrace this ideological commitment to turning public sector infrastructure into private sector for-profit operations.
At the municipal level, we are quite capable of determining which projects will benefit from a private sector presence and which must necessarily remain public. We do not need Ottawa playing Big Brother from 5,000 kilometres away, and we certainly resent being forced into privatization initiatives on the threat that funding will be withheld.
To summarize, we need a fair and impartial process for infrastructure funds that is based on objective criteria. We need to be sure that there is no political interference in the dissemination of funds that come from our hard-working communities and are redistributed by Ottawa. We need Ottawa to cooperate in an open procurement process where the best interests of our communities is the highest priority and there is no predetermined political direction that insists on privatization.
Canada should be an example to the rest of the world in showing that the even-handed management of limited financial resources can achieve great results for our citizens. We can all accept losing in a fair process, but it is un-Canadian to stack the deck and cheat communities out of their fair share of limited financial resources for political reasons. We can do better and we should do better.
Thank you very much.