The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) submission to the federal government requesting a 20-year infrastructure funding plan won't solve problems overnight, but it's an important first step, said local FCM board member Garth Frizzell.
The Prince George city councillor will travel to Ottawa next week to meet with MPs and senators to discuss local and regional infrastructure issues during the group's board of directors meeting.
"We take our priorities and we present them one on one," Frizzell said, adding he will also be joined by Coun. Cameron Stolz.
Teams of municipal reps will join up from the same geographical region to present what previous infrastructure funding programs have done and explain what still needs to be done and ways in which it can be accomplished, said Frizzell.
The meeting comes on the heels of this week's long-term infrastructure plan submission, outlining the FCM's priorities for the upcoming federal infrastructure plan.
The current federal funding, the Building Canada Fund, expires in 2014. A new plan needs to be included in the 2013 federal budget in order to have a program in place for the 2014 construction season.
"This is the time, this is it," Frizzell said. "[The federal government] said they're interested...The needs are there, they're obvious, they want to do something and they get money back when they commit to construction jobs."
The most critical component of the FCM recommendations for Prince George will be the expansion of the big funding programs - the Gas Tax and Building Canada Funds and the development of the Core Economic Infrastructure Fund.
The new fund would see the feds invest $2.5 billion in the program, which would be matched by municipal, provincial and territorial governments to a total of $7.5 billion per year.
The city, like others in the province, has to put together a five-year financial plan. "This lets us put a lot more certainty into these plans," Frizzell said.
Finding ways to fund the growing infrastructure gap is a problem facing communities across the country, which are responsible for more than half of the country's infrastructure but only receive eight per cent of the tax base to help maintain it.
"The infrastructure debt is tagged at $230 billion across Canada," he said. "And if you take that and apply it by size to Prince George, it would look like $350 million owing on infrastructure that we haven't replaced. And our budget's about $160 million, so you can see that's just not feasible."
Frizzell noted it shouldn't be dramatic incidents - like this summer's car-swallowing sinkhole in Ottawa or bridge collapses in Quebec - to sell the need for ongoing infrastructure funding to the federal government as well as the public.
"We want to put a plan together that is stable and is going to address the needs of the communities," he said. "We couldn't raise the tax high enough to pay for all the infrastructure that we need using property tax, it's just not reasonable. We're going out and saying let's work on this."
