Last year I was appointed to the Canadian Infrastructure Council, a group of 11 professionals from across the country with expertise in housing, Indigenous communities, water and wastewater, transportation, and natural systems. It has been a truly amazing experience led by our Chair Jen Angel and Vice Chair Peter Weltman, and supported by a Secretariat who have assembled the leaders in various fields, data from across the country, and led an extensive public consultation with over 150 groups in March and April this year, plus 46 submissions emailed in to the Council. This built on the 300 people the government consulted in 2021.
The report, Building Foundations for Tomorrow: Assessing Housing-Enabled Infrastructure Across Canada/Bâtir les fondations de demain : Évaluer l’infrastructure favorisant le logement au Canada has three major recommendations:
- Make better use of our existing infrastructure, both built and natural: prioritizing management, maintenance and upgrades; enhancing and preserving natural infrastructure; implementing demand management practices to reduce consumption; and,encouraging projects that can deliver multiple benefits.
- Strengthen coordination among partners: Streamline regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions; promote innovative made-in-Canada practices across design, procurement and delivery; focused on outcomes, inviting the use of new technologies and improved efficiency; establish major infrastructure project pipelines to align capital, labour and materials; and mobilize private capital through predictability, shared risk and blended finance.
- Build for the future with data and resilience at the forefront: Adopt standardized terminology and adaptable methods for asset management and risk assessment to improve public-private coordination; invest in open, transparent data systems for infrastructure capacity, climate risk and market risk, including labour force and supply chain, to inform long-term planning; design infrastructure that will withstand future climate scenarios and population growth; support smaller communities with technical capacity and planning tools.
Some of the 2022 data used in the report includes the fact that more than 11% of the infrastructure in these three areas was in poor or very poor condition, which would cost $126 B to replace. For water and wastewater infrastructure, this would cost $107B to replace: main issues are insufficient water loss control policies (e.g. leak detection and repair). Solid waste infrastructure is generally in good shape except in rural and northern areas. More than 13% of public transit related infrastructure was in poor or very poor condition with a replacement value of $15 B.
Canada’s drinking water use is still high by global standards at 401 L/person due to lower water prices and differences in metering practices across the country, as well as higher water losses. Waste diversion from landfills and incineration is now 27%, up from 21% in 2002. This is well behind the leaders (South Korea is at 54%, Germany 45%) and the US (30%). Most Canadians still drive to work (79-85%), while public transit usage for the commute is just 11%. 84% of urban Canadians live within 500m of a transit stop compared to just 10% of rural residents.
In general, we know that infrastructure takes a long time to finance and build, we have significant labour shortages (need 380,000 new construction workers by 2034), and municipalities have very little revenue or revenue generation capacity other than user fees and property taxes. Green bonds and tax increment financing have been used and BC uses the Municipal Finance Authority of BC to lend to small municipalities at lower rates. There is a lack of coordination between the different levels of government including planning, approval, assessments, consultations and regulatory compliance which can increase timelines. The report goes into a little detail on regions of Canada and their specific climate risks: but we know that a $1 investment in climate resilient infrastructure can lead to $13-15 in savings. Asset management plans are critical to assess current infrastructure and plan for the future, but less than 70% of Canadian local and regional governments have asset management plans for our three types of infrastructure (AMPs for solid waste were the least common).
One exciting thing for us planners out there is a brand new set of data the Council asked Statistics Canada to produce: 30-year community level population projections for every census subdivision over 800 people, out to 2049. This is going to help local jurisdictions plan for their housing and infrastructure needs. The dataset was launched on November 28, 2025–please use and circulate it!
The Chair of the Council, Jen Angel, and I will be presenting the NIA/ENI to a sold-out crowd at the State of Cities Summit in Ottawa tomorrow, December 3!
