Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to testify.
I will testify in English.
I'll be happy to try to answer your questions in French as well.
The approach I will take with committee today is a little bit different. I like to come at this from a different end of the spectrum in terms of how we deal with resiliency and, specifically, what we do with the recommendations and the learnings from this study. There is an opportunity, I think, to have greater effectiveness for the committee's recommendations and your learnings on resiliency.
The Canada West Foundation is the think tank—the public policy research, dissemination, education and advocacy organization—for the four western provinces and is working to create a strong west in a strong Canada.
For the past 10 years, with a collection of national organizations including the Business Council of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Construction Association, the Western Canada Roadbuilders and recently CM&E, we've been working on resolving an existential threat to Canada's prosperity, which is the decline in global perception of the quality of our transportation infrastructure.
Over the past 10 years and over several governments, there's been a consistent decline in the global rankings of Canada's transportation infrastructure. We've gone from being viewed as having top 10 infrastructure a decade ago, to 32nd globally in the specific measure of transport infrastructure from the World Economic Forum. The World Bank rankings on the logistics performance index show a similar decline for Canada.
This is a systemic problem. It's not one strike, one bad flood or one bad winter; it's a systemic problem. We've been working on a systemic solution to the problem with the aforementioned groups.
What the 10 years of research have shown—amongst other things—is that Canada is one of the few G7 and one of the few G20 countries not engaged in national infrastructure planning—long-term, 10- to 30-year planning done on a regular basis with long-term pipelines of projects. You begin to see where this leads to the work that you're doing on resiliency.
Of the recommendations in our report, there are seven steps needed in the national plan, such as collecting data, understanding the one system for supply chain and logistics that connect the entire country, and being able to turn data into decisions. There is also planning and decision-making based on criteria of national significance. These are long-term, rigorous criteria that apply across decades. This is the opportunity, I think, for the work of the committee: to think about the report you're writing and how you shape your recommendations to fit into the development of this national plan that will include these criteria.
If you want seriousness about dealing with resiliency and if you want seriousness and rigour in terms of dealing with environmental impacts, the best way I would argue, or that the research shows to be one of the most efficient ways, is to incorporate the criteria into long-term national plans. You signal to the private sector that, above and beyond the reasons that everyone presenting has shown you of the seriousness of the problem, there's another business case to do this. The long-term signal you do sends this.
I will just conclude by noting that this is not just another report recommendation. The coalition we have with the private sector has been joined by the premiers. The call for Canada's first national infrastructure plan will be put on the table at this July's Council of the Federation meeting. It has the support of premiers from coast to coast. This is something that indeed is coming.
As you think about your report and as you think about the input and the recommendations that you get, I'm here to urge you to shape those recommendations and thinking to fit into the development of a national infrastructure plan.
Thank you very much.