Bonjour. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for inviting me here today.
As has been mentioned, I'm President and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, but I'm also this year's chair of the Canadian Global Cities Council, or CGCC for short. This is a coalition of the chambers of commerce of the eight largest metro regions in Canada. We've come together to focus on issues of international and domestic competitiveness as they pertain to our economies. Collectively, we represent 52% of the country's GDP, more than half of the country's population, and 65% of the country's workforce. Our focus is very much on how we can help our city regions continue to thrive as economic drivers for the national economy.
The challenges in city regions, particularly on infrastructure, can have national consequences. For example, delayed goods shipments in the Toronto-Waterloo region cost $650 million per year in higher prices of goods for consumers nationally.
To address these challenges, we spoke with many of you earlier this year about our latest report calling for a national urban strategy. In that report, we called for a national shift in how Canada supports and finances city region infrastructure. Our vision would lead to three broad policy changes.
First, the federal government could shift its role from due diligence in projects to instead measuring infrastructure outcomes, consistent with the approach used by national infrastructure agencies in several leading OECD countries, and should designate a central agency to inventory existing and required urban infrastructure.
Second, city and city-region leaders should lead the development of long-range priority plans for urban infrastructure. I'd be happy to discuss how that could work in our Q & A time.
Third, federal funding for urban priorities like infrastructure should fund the plan with direct grants rather than funding projects or programs over time. Like Montreal's REM, this would give cities and city-regions more flexibility to substitute federal, agency, pension investments, or other revenues for the municipal share of costs.
To be clear, the CGCC applauds the government's focus on infrastructure renewal, whether it is efforts to increase the federal funding ratio to support projects, support for cities that are facing a housing crisis, or setting up the framework for world-class projects through the Canada infrastructure bank. Progress is being made.
The old funding models are broken. Currently we're in a situation where Ottawa commits money and then wonders why dollars aren't spent more quickly. Everyone reports back that it's because not enough projects are shovel-ready. Our approach recognizes the complexity of urban infrastructure. It would allow cities to apply federal funding to different stages in the process as needed to fix this.
That's why we're proposing a different urban strategy, not to exclude or forget rural infrastructure, but to adopt the funding model to meet the needs of unique urban circumstances across the country.
Our report offers a path forward toward a faster, more targeted, better prioritized, and more financially sustainable infrastructure model. We need to move quickly. The right infrastructure will ensure our cities remain competitive as places to live and work. Without it, we risk falling further behind our peers in Europe and Asia who are investing much more and doing it more quickly to stay in the top global tier of competitive urban economies.
Thank you very much.