RC116 JanFeb 2025 - Magazine - Page 26
MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE
With an urgent need for sustained government funding to address
aging infrastructure, what strategies can secure long-term
investment in municipal infrastructure?
JOHN GAMBLE: First, we need to understand the current state of our
infrastructure. We need to have an adult discussion of what kind
of infrastructure we need in this country to be economically viable
and environmentally viable to improve our social and cultural
spaces, and what that should look like in 10, 20, and 40 years. Then
we can make data-based, evidence-based policy decisions. It’s not
just about mitigating risk. Our infrastructure needs to be viewed as
an investment to be leveraged, not an expense to be minimized.
OWEN JAMES: I totally agree that this is the crux of asset management,
having that data and evidence to support decision making. One of
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RENEW CANADA – JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025
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RCCAO
The recent failures of critical water infrastructure highlight the dire
state of municipal infrastructure in Canada and has renewed calls for
governments to provide sustained funding to fix the issue.
OWEN JAMES (ASSOCIATED ENGINEERING):
The level of awareness around
our water systems is somewhat
limited. It’s inevitable that there
could be issues or failures and
sometimes we’re not prepared for
that. The e昀昀orts to reduce water
consumption as they enact the
subsequent repairs is probably a
little bit more challenging from a
communications perspective. How
do you communicate to a council
when your system is still running
昀椀ne and dandy? We need to invest
in our infrastructure even though
everything looks like it’s going
昀椀ne. One of the biggest challenges
is how we communicate this stu昀昀.
JOHN GAMBLE (ACEC—CANADA):
People only seem to talk about
infrastructure when something
like this happens. It is so essential
in every aspect of our lives; it’s not
just the lack of water coming out
of your pipe in the morning, it’s
the disruption of business. And if
you look at the rest of our linear
infrastructure, it’s how commerce
happens, how people get to their
jobs; it also connects communities. Infrastructure touches us every
single day of our lives socially, economically and environmentally,
and we need to give it the seriousness it deserves.
STEPHANIE BELLOTTO (ONTARIO SEWER AND WATERMAIN CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION):
From an Ontario perspective, the two storms we experienced this
summer were considered once in a hundred-year storms, but now
they’re happening a lot more frequently. The 昀氀ooding, as a result,
put the state of Ontario’s infrastructure into the spotlight, which is
otherwise treated as out of sight out of mind. We’re still using the
infrastructure built by our grandparents; the capacity built from 50
years ago is not able to support the growing population that we’re
seeing today. Governments are now aware of this and [are] making
substantial investments in our water, wastewater and stormwater
infrastructure; but we’re also busy playing catch up with having
to repair our aging infrastructure while also expanding to
accommodate for this growth. There needs to be a long-term
solution to 昀椀x how we can properly fund and expand this critical
infrastructure.
