Natural Resources committee  To go back to your first point, one of the biggest challenges municipalities have, as you said, is that they have to plan things over the long term, but they do not have long-term funding. All the funding they have is short-term and project-specific funding, especially if it come

Natural Resources committee  I was just looking at the various announcements made in the Building Canada plan, as well as the economic stimulus plan, and going through these to see what envelopes of currently available cash would lend themselves to these types of projects. It was just one example. I know th

Natural Resources committee  It is project by project. I can't give you a blanket statement. It depends on what is going on, the local requirements, and the local need.

Natural Resources committee  I apologize, I will answer in English. In each province there are agreements between the federal government and the province—and in many places municipalities—to flow federal funding to certain types of projects. In each province they have different agreements, and we would res

Natural Resources committee  The provinces and territories are always there when municipalities deal with the federal government. If you look at all of the different federal infrastructure programs, it's always a three-level agreement: federal, provincial-territorial, and municipal. Together, they work to en

Natural Resources committee  If I could quickly add to that, something the federal government can do right across this country, wherever you have an institution, is work with the local municipality to do integrated energy, such as in a tax centre somewhere that employs a lot of people but also generates a lo

Natural Resources committee  There are a number of federal programs right now. I think there are upwards of 15 different federal infrastructure programs that municipalities have some access to. Some of them require matching funds; others are straight transfers. If you're talking about the economic stimulus,

Natural Resources committee  Going back to your earlier comment about why your local community chose to go geothermal, it's because it came down to cost. That's why a lot of municipalities are embracing this and have been for quite a while. Unlike more traditional development in which one person builds a bui

Natural Resources committee  The role for the federal government right now is to encourage these programs. We have to get the knowledge out there; we have to make sure that people are aware of what's out there. We have to make sure that programs are available. The GMF is an example of a program that the fe

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to apologize, I left my French notes at my office. On behalf of Mayor Jean Perrault, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, I wish to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak about how federal and municipal governments