CCA Congratulates Mowat Centre on Report Addressing Canada’s Infrastructure Gap
The Canadian Construction Association congratulates the Mowat Centre: Ontario’s Voice on Public Policy for its latest contribution to Canadian policy development through its report From the Ground Up: The Role of Local Governments in Building Canada’s Economic Infrastructure Network. The Mowat Centre is the latest Canadian organization to examine the link between public infrastructure, economic competitiveness and the role of local government and provide recommendations on how best to address Canada’s infrastructure gap.
Commitments by the new Liberal government to make major investments and double federal infrastructure spending provide an excellent platform to address Canada’s infrastructure needs. But the Mowat Center concludes that even with higher levels of investment, it is necessary to be strategic and get the most out of each dollar spent.
The Mowat Centre advocates for an integrated infrastructure investment approach that ensures a prominent role for municipalities. Currently, there is no consistent strategy or alignment across governments in Canada to support infrastructure planning and investments. In particular, inadequate engagement with local governments — which own and manage the majority of Canada’s infrastructure — is a notable gap. Since the 1950’s the federal government share has decreased to 12% of capital stock, while the municipal share has grown to 51%.
Report Excerpt
Involving all orders of government — and strong coordination among them — is critical to strategic decision-making, particularly for infrastructure projects that will likely have the greatest impact on economic growth and productivity. Effective coordination will also take advantage of the value of the private sector, as it can and will play a key role in many trade-enabling and economic infrastructure projects. This will ultimately help ensure that infrastructure is built to meet an over-arching purpose — rather than the prevailing fragmented and piecemeal approach — maximizing the impact of every dollar spent toward infrastructure and harnessing economic growth opportunities to ensure future prosperity.
The report can be downloaded here.