Getting Climate Ready: How Should We Rethink Infrastructure for Long-Term Resilience?

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Getting Climate Ready: How Should We Rethink Infrastructure for Long-Term Resilience?

City Talk, May 15, 2025

Mary W. Rowe Hi everybody, it’s Mary Rowe. Welcome to CityTalk. I’m excited to be able to talk to you today about what we affectionately call CRIS, which is the Climate-Ready Infrastructure Service. It’s a national program that CUI is doing in conjunction with Housing Infrastructure, I think it’s Housing and Infrastructure. I think the department may have been, well, the minister is Housing and Infrastructure now. Maybe it’s still Housing Infrastructure and Communities Canada. Somebody smarter than me can put it in the chat whether or not you know whether the department has been renamed. I suspect there are people from the department on the call. Or whether it’s just the minister’s portfolio has been renamed. But anyway, we’re delighted to be part of this conversation and to have people coast to coast talking to us a bit about this program, but also the challenge, the resilience challenge that we’re facing, and I was interested last weekend to see a Globe and Mail columnist refer to the infrastructure deficit. This is a term that we started using last year for the Summit, and said there is an infrastructure deficit, and it’s a gargantuan thing, a number that kind of takes your breath away. But even more interesting when you … How you define infrastructure and what’s included. So all of that is up for grabs today. So as you know, the Canadian Urban Institute is across the country, but I happen to be in Toronto today. If you recognize my backdrop, you know I am. Last week I was in Newfoundland, and next week I’m going to be in London … and so coming to a town near you. But Toronto is the traditional territory, and many are putting in the chat where they’re coming in from … the ancestral territory continues to be the home for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. We have particular treaty arrangements that we have made here in Toronto. Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaty, signed with the Mississaugas of Credit. But also… Historically the ancestral territory for the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Wendat, the Mississaugas, as I suggested, the Huron-Wendat and the Anishinaabe. So it continues, and what is such an interesting reflection on this is, as we become more and more Indigenized, we hope, in our approach to reconciling the relationship between land and people, which is the call that Indigenous communities continue to put in front of us, settlers. This program is an interesting one to think about that and to think about how are we closing those loops. How are we strengthening our relationship around decision making and its impact on natural resources, natural habitat. But also, how do we work with nature in ways that boost resilience. All of that is part of the Climate Readiness Infrastructure Service, and it’s a pilot. Love pilots, gotta love pilots, I used to say during COVID that, during COVID, we were all working on pilots on how we create communities and cities and what that would look like when we were in a place of emergency, could we try some things? And that’s a lot of what CRIS is doing too, is we hope, piloting approaches that then, part of CUI’s mandate is to be the connective tissue to folks. This is what we’re trying here, have you thought of it there? Or, you tried this, we might modify it and try that. I appreciate all the people coming in on the chat. If you haven’t before checked in on a chat, why not let today be your first day, where you actually open the chat and tell us where you’re coming in from, and maybe post a question or a resource. The chat on CityTalk is always a very lively thing. And we publish it. So if you’ve got something smart to say, say it. And if you’ve got a good resource to post, post it. And you’ll get lots of support in the chat from other folks who will read what you’ve posted. So, to introduce us a bit to CRIS, I’d like to ask Jeb Brugmann, who’s one of the senior members of the team at CUI, to … who I think is coming in from Dublin today. Dublin, not Dublin, Ontario, I’m assuming, Jeb. Dublin as in Ireland, yes?

Jeb Brugmann I was just applauding Dublin for being Dublin, Ireland, but I’m coming in from the east end of Toronto.

Mary W. Rowe Oh, you’re in … So you’re a few blocks from me. I could scream out my back balcony. You’d hear me.

Jeb Brugmann There you go.

Mary W. Rowe But can you talk to the gang a little bit about what CRIS is? You know, I don’t want to say this in a disrespectful way, but you are kind of an elder statesman on this. You’ll see in the chat, Jeb is the founder of ICLEI. And we’re contemporaries, so that’s why I can tease him about his age. But you’ve seen a whole trajectory of how we’re approaching resilience, investment, and planning, not just in Canada, but around the world. And so… Maybe give people a sense of what the CRIS program is, but also just, what have you observed over 30, 35 years and where do you think we’re going on this, and how this program might inform that? So, welcome to CityTalk, I know you’ve been on before but, waiting with baited breath …

Jeb Brugmann It’s a pleasure. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Mary, and colleagues and fellow panelists. I’m such a CRIS enthusiast. I’ll explain what it is, but first let me say to this point of infrastructure deficit, one of the first things I did when CRIS was established was reach out to colleagues in the U.S. State Department and other countries to say this is what you bloody need to do. So this is an amazing step forward in the way that the federal government in Canada can stand up and provide really essential technical services, access to, in this case, smaller municipalities. So let me describe what CRIS is. Climate Ready Infrastructure Service is a unique service program that is based on having a sizable roster of experts, now more than 70 experts, and an expert is typically a team within an engineering or design firm … Made available through an off-procurement process to deliver technical support, design support, scopes of work to small municipalities of under 30,000 people across Canada. And it is budgeted still to be around for three more years, three and a half more years. So the ambition is that we will be able to help small municipalities define their projects clearly, prepare scopes of work for the next step pre-feasibility technical work … They need to understand what their options are for the more feasibility stage design and capital project design aspects of their infrastructure projects, and then have it paid for, for them. Without having to go through a procurement process. So I’m just going to say a quick thing about why this is so essential for even big municipalities, but especially small ones, of course. What we find with CRIS, like one of our first projects with Churchill, Manitoba … Permafrost is melting. The whole drainage system of Churchill, Manitoba is collapsing as well as the soil in which people’s foundations are planted. So the scale of climate change impacts on small municipalities can be enormous to, you know, obviously crisis level, but they have minimal staff. A place like Churchill has almost no staff just to run current operations. Limited operational capacity, very limited access to technical expertise out of their own budgets. There isn’t a budget for it. And there’s just not a great experience with doing quality project preparation as it is, because there’s not time in the day to do it. There’s not someone assigned to take a project from project definition through pre-feasibility, through feasibility, and then find the money to do it or get it in a capital budget. So it’s really, in addition to getting an engagement with a scope with an engineering company to help think this out, we’re a partner with the head of public works and the chief administrative officer of a small community like that. To sort of walk with them on the journey of preparing a project that hopefully will be ready for an application to get some kind of funding. We don’t help with the funding. That’s not our job. Our job is to deliver what we call an options report. To evaluate what are the ways you could go about solving your problem. So I’m going to leave it at that, and we can talk about the complexities of integrating climate into infrastructure projects, maybe a little down the line. To conclude your point, infrastructure deficit, we’ve known there’s this infrastructure gap forever, so this sits on the small municipalities, perhaps more than anyone. Because they’ve never had this capacity to move forward a project pipeline in the same way that some of the larger municipalities in our country have been able to do so.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, and we’re talking several thousand municipalities. I mean, people forget that Canada is, well, it’s a massive geography with a fairly small population, but that population is distributed across communities of all sizes. And as you say, one of the interesting things for us on this program is to try to figure out, well, what’s the priority? What’s the sweet spot? In terms of where the best intervention could be made, and also who needs the support most, I guess that’s part of the point. Let me just invite one of our panelists, Jason, to come on. And Jeb, I’ll come back to you. But Jason, why don’t you come on. You’re in the village of Cumberland, and I want people to know where Cumberland is, what the size of Cumbland is, and just tell us about your particular set of challenges. I was teasing you earlier, but the camera angle for me has gone smaller … but I know there’s a, there it is. I want people to see that this is the size of the municipality we’re dealing with. Jason has a yellow jacket behind him that he has to go put on when he’s finished, I’m sure. Jason, tell us about Cumberland. Population, nature, where is it? And then maybe we can hear a little bit about the particular challenges that you’re facing and then what’s your interaction so far with CRIS been?

Jason Wallace Great. So yeah, so my name is Jason Wallace. I’m the manager of municipal projects here at the Village of Cumberland. We are a population of about 4,800. We are on Vancouver Island. Kind of in the middle to north area. Just in the Comox Valley. Our project we’ve been working on is the replacement of a dam here in Cumberland. It was built in 1897, so of course has had its useful life kind of come to an end at this point in time. So we were trying to figure out how best to take on a substantial project like that in such a small community. We don’t have the large tax base that some of the cities have. So, we had to really understand what we’re building, what it was going to look like and how to make sure it’s going to be able to handle another 100 years. And so when we look at that, we had to take into account some of these challenges we’re having with extreme water flows and then heavy drought periods in this area. On Vancouver Island, we’re seeing more and more, like other places in the world, extreme events, you know, the one in 100 year events, I’ve heard a few people say, are more like a one in two year event at this point. You know, we’re seeing them so commonly, so when we started this project, you know, we had a bit of a preliminary idea of what we probably were going to have to do, but we just felt like we needed some further information to ensure that it was gonna be resilient to last the test of time. We reached out then to the Canada Infrastructure Service to discuss what maybe could be done. You know, small communities, we don’t always have access to these, you know, amazing engineering firms kind of all over the country. So they connected us with KWL engineering, who did a climate hazard assessment on this project and came up and spent some time with us to really understand what we had and what we needed to work towards to make sure that as we’re doing this, we’re not trying to prepare for the storms that we used to have, we’re trying to prepare for the future and what is to come. We now are going to be using that assessment to better understand the scope of the project as we move forward and get into the design side of things, as well as use it to hopefully be able to gain further funding. Another problem that small communities have is you can only take on so many projects at a time. And as time goes on, things get more expensive, so even if you have some funding available, if things slide a couple of years, you know, you end up in a situation where your funding is not going to be able to handle the project that you need to be able to complete. So, this process is really going to help us all around ensure that the project is done in a way that we’re comfortable will support this vibrant community as it grows and as the climate changes, but then also make sure that we’re doing it in a way that we can fiscally handle. So, you know, it’s made a big difference for us. The report that we have, it’s incredible, it really gives a lot of information and highlight into, you know, the challenges we may need to face and what we need to be prepared for. And I think it’s going to really dial in the scope of the design in a big way, which has huge implications for your time and your cost when you’re able to be that connected.

Mary W. Rowe What was the value of the project, Jason, do you remember? What was the CRIS investment in the project?

Jason Wallace  I believe it was about $40,000 is what they put forward for us to be able to connect with KWL. And so for a community like this, that’s not something that we have to prepare for design. It just, to be realistic, especially on a project like this, you know. We can’t, we’re working on a wastewater treatment plant right now. We’ve put everything we have into that, so the idea of then turning around and saying we’re going to put thousands of dollars into a preliminary report, just wasn’t something that was going to be feasible for us. So this really opened up a door that we didn’t have.

Mary W. Rowe Kind of greases the skids to get you into the next stage. How long have you worked for the town, Jason?

Jason Wallace I’ve only been here since December.

Mary W. Rowe Oh, so you’re new. And what’s your training? What’s your particular discipline that you bring to it?

Jason Wallace So I was previously the procurement manager for 12 years about, at North Island College. And so I did project and procurement work there for a long time and then came over here from there.

Mary W. Rowe That’s great. And just for people, for people’s benefit, when you say a hundred year event, what does that mean?

Jason Wallace So that means it’s the probability of an amount of rainfall. And so a certain amount of rainfall, the probability it’s going to happen is about, you know, one in every hundred years you’ll see this amount of rainfall come down.

Mary W. Rowe Mm-hmm.

Jason Wallace We’re seeing these heavy rainfall events so commonly now, you know, we’re seeing, I think we’re just seeing a lot more of the extremes on a regular basis. We’re seeing snowfall amounts that are quite substantial and then rainfalls that come after that, which, you know, in this area we don’t get real cold in the wintertime. So we’ll have a heavy snowfall event on one day and the next day we’ll get a heavy amount of rain that’ll fall and it’ll warm up to plus 10. And all that snow turns into water on top of the fact we’ll get 100 millimeters of rain in 24 hours, and all of a sudden our water systems are … Need to be able to handle that amount of flow coming at them.

Mary W. Rowe I think that… Go ahead, I’m sorry, keep going.

Jason Wallace I was going to say, and we’re just at this point realizing that our system needs some help to really be able to handle that.

Mary W. Rowe I think one of the benefits of a program like this, Jeb, I’m going to ask you to comment on this, is that when you have, one of the little adages I often use is, how do we make money smaller? Because infrastructure investments typically in Canada, administered by the government of Canada, and then provinces come to match and then municipalities come in. They tend to be in the multiple zeros, you know, because infrastructure have been things like bridges and, you know, highways and things like that. And so they’re making investments in the millions of dollars, and often in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and sometimes the community, as you said, needs a more modest amount. But the actual transaction costs to make those smaller investments is tricky. Which is why I’m assuming, Jeb, this is what CRIS is doing. It’s kind of coming in at a particular moment in a cycle of repair and investment, where this might have been a gap for Jason. He wouldn’t, his town would not have had the resources to catalyze this, which I guess the CRIS investment’s going to do. Am I right?

Jeb Brugmann Well, it sounds to me … Hi Jason, how are you? And congrats on the new position. They’re lucky. I mean the Village of Cumberland is lucky to have a Jason on team, right, to do this kind of work. A lot of us don’t. We’re talking, just with the CAO who happens to be the treasurer, happens to a bunch of other things as well. That’s great. So, I think, as Jason said, what really mattered here, correct me if I’m wrong, Jason, is the opportunity to get a top-notch, technical team behind you to evaluate what your options are, and you can put a capital budget limit on, you know, your options. There’s a bit of cost-benefit analysis that goes into that as well. So one of the underlying things of, do we always have to go big, is that there tends to be a fallback to a set of established solutions, and in the process of doing this kind of an options analysis, we can figure out what is right size for the budget of the municipality, as well as what are your options for solving your problem as well?

Mary W. Rowe So the CRIS program is a bit of an interpreter, intermediary, and then matchmaker. That’s the other thing. So I want to bring in the other side of it, the roster expert side and see if I can get that perspective, because not everybody has access to large consultancies that may have the most expertise, right? So Lexy, can you join in, put your camera on and just talk to us? Lexy works for Stantec. So Lexy, just explain to us your … what’s your life, where are you, what do you do? And then we’re going to hear a little bit about how you fit in the CRIS program.

Lexy Relph Thanks Mary. And I will touch on some of those points because that’s exactly what’s been going through my mind as we’ve been discussing this. So my background is actually in mechanical engineering and buildings engineering. But I’ve been working in sustainability for 27 years or so. And now I’m part of Stantec’s Climate Risk, Resilience, and Sustainability team. And we’re actually a small core group of about 30 people within Stantec, which many people have heard of. We’re a large multinational, multidisciplinary consulting organization with a lot of technical expertise. And so, now I’m a team lead within that group and have been privileged to be able to work on some CRIS projects recently. But also through my work, I’ve been able to see what a lot of different municipalities and other governmental organizations are doing. It’s certainly a challenge to work with the smaller municipalities. I did have the privilege of working with Cumberland a few years ago. Jason, you’re part of a great group because they’re so forward-thinking. I worked on a climate action plan in 2023. Actually, one of my site visits was during an atmospheric river, so it was very topical and timely. I was in full Gore-Tex all day, wandering around looking at different assets. But part of what we’re seeing is that, especially as a large organization, we have so many technical experts and we have access to people who really want to help. But because we’re so large, we also have restrictions on what we’re able to do in terms of the types of clients that we serve often, just in terms of the budget and the level of expertise we can provide. So a lot of the work we do end up undertaking is often for larger municipalites. Like the primary scale one is greater than 30,000 people. And provincial, federal, state level. So having an opportunity for smaller municipalities to tap into resources to undertake some of this really important infrastructure work. Some of its prioritization to just get … Like we have infrastructure renewal demand that far exceeds the availability of funds to support it across the country. And so there’s this huge prioritization exercise that’s underway, right? And in order to make sure we can support those decisions, everybody at every scale needs to be able to figure out how they can best put their available funds to support the projects that really need work. So, having this opportunity to come in and actually work with smaller organizations is wonderful. I love doing it. I want to do more of it, and this just really facilitates that. And it’s true that if you have a bigger tax revenue base, you’re going to be able to do more with that. And so there’s a disproportionate burden on the smaller communities to try to make it happen. And not just in the technical work and being able to support that from the availability of resources to do the work. So yeah, Cumberland, you’re very lucky to have Jason and folks, but even just the funding application, you need people to put that together, and the CRIS application is so easy compared to some of these other ones. It’s just … It’s really facilitating the opportunity for smaller communities to take advantage of expertise at different scales. And I think it’s wonderful, and I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to be a part of the Salt Spring one that I worked on recently. I have colleagues also working on the Churchill project that Jeb was mentioning. We have another one underway that’s focused more on GHG mitigation in Alberta. Hope that answers those questions.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks, Lexy. You know, it’s interesting. I appreciate that our colleague, Raina, from FCM is on the call because, and thanks, Raina, for plugging into the chat to recognize that there are other funding opportunities for municipalities of different sizes. And we have several people in the chat who are, those of you that have been willing to throw your name into that chat, I know where you are, and a number of them are coming from larger cities too. And what’s interesting about this, I think. Is this sort of continuum. And people like you at Stantec and other professional services are, as you suggest, working at all scales. And this is an interesting kind of, you know that term about an urban acupuncture, I think it’s called, that the mayor of Bogota, I think originally sort of coined, but this idea that you can make an intervention in a key place in a system, that will have a catalytic effect. I’m interested, you know, maybe we’re gonna, maybe large cities have something to learn from what Cumberland is doing. Or that you in a smaller community can try something that a larger city would then be able to adjust and adapt to, and I’m wondering in your professional services, do you see that, Lexy? That you can actually trade, you know, accumulate knowledge across different scales, and make interventions at different sort of levels.

Lexy Relph I’ve never really thought about it from the perspective of scale, but certainly I have been very privileged as a consultant to be able to see a lot of different projects and a lot of clients. And absolutely, we take lessons learned from one organization, one client, and apply that to other projects. And that’s part of the value of working with diverse teams that do have a lot of different touch points and a lot different experiences. I think it’s also really important to make sure that we’re including a lot of people at the table, not working in vacuums and getting all the subject matter experts to participate in these projects, and pulling people in and also really listening to what the communities have to say. And not just flying in saying, we’re the experts, we can solve all the problems, but making sure that we’re really listening and trying to solve the problems that need to be listened to, that really need to be solved, and not just trying to swoop in and save the day. Yeah, when we can. Taking lessons learned and applying them to other communities, but it’s also really important to understand the context. And I think first and foremost, that’s what we need to do. But yes, and that’s part of these programs, I think, that’s really valuable, is applying those lessons learned. So hopefully. There’s a way of collecting these case studies and having them published, I’m sure that’s part of the plan. Fantastic, because I think that’s what people need to see. They’re like, oh, well, that’s great. And it just sort of tweak those ideas so that we can start to grease the wheels.

Mary W. Rowe You know, my example, go-to example on this is always curbside recycling. You know this is something that everybody takes for granted mostly not in every community, but everybody understands that you should try to separate your waste and recycle and reuse what you can. And a lot of that early piloting was done in small communities. And so I think we have lots and lots of lessons to remind ourselves. And as you suggest, the engagement piece is critical. To make sure that you’re doing things that are context specific and that you are benefiting from local knowledge. So I’m gonna ask Danya, the fourth panelist on this from Tamarack to come on and speak specifically about that. Because Tamarack’s in this business, and, Danya, you had a life before you joined Tamarack, so you can tell people a bit about that. And I know we’re hearing from you today in Montreal, so, maybe give people a sense of you, of Tamarack, and your particular approach,  not just to CRIS, but generally to engagement generally.

Danya Pastuszek Thanks so much, Mary, Lexy, Jeb, Jason. I’m not here as a resident of one of these small cities, but I just feel like naming that for a minute, I’m normally in Pembroke, Ontario, which is a town of 16,000 people. It’s the big shop city in Renfrew County, surrounded by much smaller cities and areas, and I just think this project is so essential, as I walk around life, both as a community member and in my role at Tamarack, there’s not a day where I don’t learn something that could be useful in a project I’m working on. And so, I think this ability to provide a way to bridge between expertise, technical expertise, and the deep expertise that exists in municipalities and communities is just such a valuable asset and a really great model for the kinds of bridging work that we need to have, even more fully across our ecosystems. And you know, when I think about infrastructure, I think about it in terms of, maybe a slightly different kind of infrastructure. I think about it as the kind of infrastructure that some of you may see in the places where you are, and I know some of your places, so I know that it’s there. But it’s a softer kind of infrastructure. It’s an infrastructure that only happens when people are coming together, like previously said, across different sectors and different experiences. When municipalities, and organizations, and businesses, and residents of the community have ways of coming together to share information about what some of the needs are in communities and what the assets are … Have infrastructure to communicate amongst each other. And to the broader community, about some of the complex problems and the ways that we can try to solve them together, that have infrastructure, to invite people into being part of those solutions and experiments. And that have infrastructure to make sense of what’s happening together, figure out how to iterate. We at Tamarack, and I personally really think that this kind of infrastructure can be so essential to the success of the kind of work that we’ve been discussing here for the last 30 minutes or so. And so, what we’re excited about it, CRIS, what we are trying to bring to CRIS is this ability to really have community be engaged, I think in a way that’s relatively new for the world. Not just at the point of once something gets decided upon and is being implemented, but really at all stages. Jeb, you talked about the scoping part of this work. So I think it’s about community engagement in scoping, in design, in implementation, in evaluation. And that’s one of the things I think is so exciting about this project is the opportunity really to bridge between physical infrastructure and technical infrastructure, and then just more kind of civic or partnership infrastructure.

Mary W. Rowe I’m going to ask everybody to put their cameras on, and Wendy to put us into the Hollywood Square’s place, which is the one I like, where I can see everybody at once. Jeb, I know you’ve been waiting to comment, so why don’t you comment a bit on what you’ve heard, and then I’ve got some … There’s also an interesting question in the chat from Richard Gould, which I’m gonna put to you in a sec. But Jeb, why don’t you first comment and then I’ll go, Richard, thank you Richard, nice to see you again. And thanks for your question. I’m going to pose it. Go ahead, Jeb.

Jeb Brugmann So I just want to emphasize a few points that have been made by my fellow panelists here. One is this part of the best practices material that we’re developing, is all these options reports, so, lo and behold, across the country, many municipalities are dealing with very similar types of things. And the roster experts, like Stantec, have agreed to allow those reports to be shared property with the Canadian Urban Institute. So the Canadian Urban Institute has access to a body of work that, at some point we will be able to share out in a broader way, so there’s a big body of work that’s being developed through this. It’ll be hundreds of of reports. Secondly, an important one is that we’re also learning where the community practices from the expertise point of view, across the engineering firms. The big ones like Stantec, but even smaller ones that are more regionally focused, and maybe just a few heads in the office … What’s the standard of practice for doing a climate risk assessment in infrastructure projects of different kinds? And that’s an evolving community practice, so we’re hoping to convene things in such a way that the, over the technical services community in Canada can be, you know, moving forward as a community of practice, as well as just these one-off assignment. So I just wanted to highlight that.

Mary W. Rowe Richard has a question in the chat which I think is really interesting around aggregating opportunity, do people see it in there? So people that aren’t reading the chat, Richard’s asking, used to be in the Annapolis Valley, in Kings County, and everybody had their own separate systems, yet you could walk from place to place. Is there a way for us, maybe I’ll ask, Jeb, I’ll ask you this first and then we can hear from our colleagues. Is there a way for three or four municipalities to band together and put something up to CRIS, Jeb? Does that happen?

Jeb Brugmann Yes, there is a way. And my guess is, none pops to my mind right away, but certainly sometimes we start the conversation with the regional government, with a mid-level tier government. For instance, one of the counties here in Ontario is building out emergency services facilities on five different sites across the county. And those are serving different sub-municipalities and villages within the county, so we’re able with that two-tiered approach, to engage in a more strategic conversation and kind of roadmap out. We might just focus the service on one facility, but really think through in a long-term plan and climate, from a climate adaptation or energy efficiency point of view, where are the opportunities and options for doing things at bigger scale in this case. And we do have engagements with both Kings County and Annapolis Valley. So Richard, we’ll loop back with you. Because one of them, I can’t remember precisely, but one of them is their wastewater treatment system. So there’s an options report coming out already. And I believe that they have looked beyond on how to scale up and connect together. So we can move back with you on that.

Mary W. Rowe If everybody can, Danya open your mic, because we really can’t hear the crowd. I know there’s a lunch crowd behind you, that you’ve warned us about, but we really can’t hear them. So just put your mic open so we can all talk freely. I’m interested about intervention points, you know, where do we, do we think that we’re at the right phase of this? Is this the right sort of sweet spot for intervention? A sense from maybe Lexy, you, based on a national consulting practice, where do you see the most urgent needs?

Lexy Relph I think that’s an excellent question. This is definitely hitting an open area that hadn’t been really well addressed previously, and so I’m really excited to see how this all manifests over the next year or so, or however long the funding is available. But in terms of those options analysis type approaches, as you were mentioning, Jeb, it’s really critical just in terms of being able to prioritize resourcing limited funds available to undertake infrastructure upgrades, which are so desperately needed everywhere in Canada, at every scale. But I think for these … For these smaller municipalities, it’s absolutely critical that there’s some additional information. There’s only so much that you can do in-house, so I think it’s really important. The work that we just completed on Salt Spring Island was a little bit different. I’m reading Richard’s question too, and it’s interesting because, everywhere that I’m thinking about regionally is all very disaggregated and so on. And Salt Spring Island is a great example of that. So we’re working with the North Salt Spring Waterworks District. They cover most of the water distribution for Salt Spring Island, but not all of it. This is an island with 11,000 residents, so it’s not … But they also have, I think, 10 or 11 different smaller distribution systems and suppliers from a very limited supply of water. So there’s a lot of this disaggregation that’s happening. So I think understanding that and having an opportunity to review not just what the options are, but also these opportunities for engagement across different entities, so that there can be more collaboration, is so crucial. And so, what we did actually with that project was not an options analysis. We undertook a vulnerability analysis on, not the supply side of the way we already know how much we know … there are atmospheric rivers, we know what’s happening with precipitation, but thinking about when you actually get the distribution side, what are some of the other climate vulnerabilities that exist? We’ve got sea level rise, we’ve got erosion, we got flooding. What … How does that impact actual distribution systems? But when you think about it, you can’t operate in a vacuum. And so, having these types of studies is really going to support, not just understanding what the alternatives are, but what those interconnection points need to be, working with other agencies and local governments to undertake change at scale. It’s just, it’s going to be really, really critical to continue those types of engagement. And I know that Jason too, you’ve probably been dealing with that more broadly with regional government. I remember multiple issues. So, I don’t know, I’m not sure I’m allowed to, but I could bounce it over to Jason to maybe talk about his experience as well with how those all connect together.

Jason Wallace Yeah, and we, in our area of the Comox Valley region, we have a few different municipalities and you know, we do a lot that we collaborate quite closely on. Other items, you know, we’ll have a discussion and find that there isn’t as easy a way for us to work together on some of these items. I just find in our area. We might be separated by five to 10 kilometres, but the actual situation around us is substantially different. Cumberland is kind of up the more mountain side of it, while many other communities are right down at the ocean level. And so, what you get is that, although it’s not a massive distance between them, you know, how it gets impacted, you know, we don’t, in Cumberland need to worry about sea level rising as much, you know, we’re high up. But we do have to be heavily concerned on snow melt and heavy rain events and drought situations in the summers. And so that’s where having our rip hazard assessment being completed, and we’re looking at these projects to understand what climate might impact on infrastructure later on, was so powerful. And bringing up some of these options that we have. But definitely collaboration, I think, between communities is key for so many different aspects, especially when you have smaller communities. There are some larger centers around here, but none of them are massive, you know, we don’t have any large, large cities in this area. So we all have to make sure that we’re connecting as much as possible whenever we’re able to, for sure.

Lexy Relph And I think that, just bouncing back to me, and I think, that’s part of the value of this CRIS funded work, is that those necessary points of collaboration can be identified and teased out a little bit more as well, which really helps to support the next steps. So it’s not just an options analysis in terms of necessarily technical outputs. But it’s an options analysis in terms of, who do we need to be working with in order to move the needle and make change? And I think communication is so critical to what we’re doing in engagement, and I think Danya, that’s why the work you’re doing is so important, because we’re just not going to be able to make the change unless we can take this excellent availability of funded projects and then leverage it into actual practice and implementation.

Mary W. Rowe You know, I’m a big… Go ahead, Danya.

Danya Pastuszek I’ll be super brief, Mary, I just wanted to say, I really appreciate that, Lexy. One thing I know a lot of us think a lot about is leavers have changed, so, the roster is an amazing asset and it can’t do everything, right? So, one of the values of having these kinds of cross-community collaborations is that if there is a regional policy fix, if there is a national policy fix, if there’s a narrative issue that we need to correct, or an information gap, those kinds of ideas can get surfaced and move forward. Even if it’s not in the context of the roster. So thanks for bringing that up. Mary back to you.

Mary W. Rowe Back to you in the studio. You know, I am a big fan of disaggregation. You know, we’ve gone through decades where we thought aggregating was the answer. We’re going to make everything bigger. It’s like this industrial model where everything is bigger. But I think we’ve come to appreciate that resilience actually is strengthened if you make things smaller, and then have relationships to stitch them together. And that’s why I think what the CRIS model is doing with communities like Cumberland and the different communities that you’re citing, is so important, because big cities can take from that and see the extent to which they could invest at the neighbourhood level. With interventions and then stitch those together, right? Rather than big aggregated systems. So I’m just saying, yay for aggregation. Jeb, I see your hand up. I know you’re going to come in behind me, because you and I are old resilience advocates for making things smaller. But there are a couple of questions in the chat. One is, which Vanessa’s asking, understandably … She’s saying, okay, well what can big cities learn from smaller ones? Lexy, you might start with that, and then I want to hear Danya and Jason’s view, but I’m going to go, I’ll go to Jeb first. And the other question is, and I think this is also interesting from Lindsay. I mean, listen, your questions are always interesting. Don’t get me wrong. They’re always interesting! But Lindsay, yours is topical because you’re saying, what’s the relationship between the infrastructure deficit and emergency preparedness and community resilience. I don’t know how many of you saw, like I did, if you read the fine print, that one of the ministers appointed on Monday has community resilience in their title. We’ll all know when the mandate letters come out. But I thought that was interesting. That that’s penetrated somebody’s political head there to put that in a ministerial title. So Jeb, why not first to you? On whatever it is you wanted to comment around resilience being smaller. And then let’s think about, what can larger cities learn from smaller? And then is there a relationship here with emergency preparedness and resilience? Jeb, first, and then I’m gonna go around the table. So I’ll come to Lexy after you. Go ahead, Jeb.

Jeb Brugmann Yeah, one example that comes to my mind in terms of learning how to be smaller is we’re just scoping out a project now on an island off the shore of Nova Scotia. And it raises the issue of microgrid for an island.

Mary W. Rowe Yep, yep.

Jeb Brugmann And I worked in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, where they had a massive centralized grid and it continues to fail. I think just last month they lost all power supply in Puerto Rico. And the key solution we came up there was microgrids. Because, actually, what survived in this storm is when there was a microgrid. So in any case, I think we will find examples that are birthed out of very effectively designed projects, or conceptualized projects anyway in small municipalities, that we could then transfer to the larger as well. So I think it goes both ways, I think. There’s a mutual learning between the two. I really, just take a moment to address Lindsey’s question, in terms of learning as well. We are finding, for instance, there are a number of municipalities, of course, they have facilities and they want to do greenhouse gas reductions, energy efficiency and facilities. It’s an opportunity to look at resilience hub functions for those facilities. There are also, I mentioned a county before, a great county that is building five new emergency facilities in the design criteria for that. Having emergency functions in terms of safe locations, backup refrigeration for medical supplies, things like that can come into play. So resilience hubs is one example. We also are starting to scope out collaborative amongst what could be up to 10 municipalities that have flood challenges on critical roadways. And evaluating how to prioritize road projects that need repairs because of flooding or washing out, according to how critical they are for emergency services functions within the region. So there’s, there’s a way in which we can make just basic investments, like annual road repairs, in a way that assures the capacity of emergency services to make access when there’s an extreme weather event of some kind.

Mary W. Rowe This is informing this kind of sequential looping that we’re trying to identify how early can we do it? Lexy, Danya, then Jason, thoughts on this?

Lexy Relph Well, so one of the one of the questions you’d asked was about scaling small municipalities to large and, you know, it’s a challenge. Larger municipalities have more bureaucracy and it’s challenging, and more different organizational structural hurdles that have to be overcome. But I think that the opportunities for innovation at smaller community scale is something that can definitely be used to inspire innovation at larger community scale as well, because sometimes by necessity, you have to become creative when you have fewer resources. And I think there is an opportunity for larger municipalities maybe to think a little bit more outside the box. And see how those smaller municipalities are pulling ideas in.

Mary W. Rowe You know, I’m so interested in the way you answered the question because I … You answered it as an administrative question. That the level of bureaucracy in a larger municipality may be the impediment and I’m so agreeing with you, because we experience microclimates in big cities. I can have storm water overflow in one part of Toronto, and the other part of Toronto hasn’t even had any rain. Let alone their sewer system is not backing up. And so, but as you suggest, as the city has formed up and amalgamated, it’s formed up systems that make it almost impossible to do an intervention at that block level, right? So interesting the way you answered that. I’m always curious, can we take programs like this one to illustrate how we need money to get smaller, how we decision making to be devolved so that you can respond more quickly. Danya, do you have a thought on that? You work at all scales.

Danya Pastuszek You know, I had such a powerful experience in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba a couple of years ago, being at their leadership table. So this is the cross-sector partnership that the community has built to work on community identified issues. In that room, which came together very quickly, you had every leader of the business, you had every, maybe not every city councillor, but many city councillors, you had teachers, you had so many of the sort of systems leaders and communities, and you had community members and residents. And I think one of the immense assets of smaller places is the ease at which you can sometimes build relationships, and bring people together, and understand because it is a smaller space, some of how different people see issues. And I just think there’s so many examples of where what’s happened in smaller places could spread to other places. I look at the low-carbon transportation work happening in the municipalities and the regional district of the Kootenays right now. I look at the data dashboard around climate and economic mobility that’s been built in Finger Lakes, New York. I think of Regina, which is a slightly larger city, but still smaller than many in our country, the large cities anyway, that’s made a commitment to 100 percent renewable energy status by 2050, and the energy planning that they are doing. I don’t think the spread happens naturally. I think it has to be thoughtfully designed and iteratively designed but the value of doing that, of finding ways to answer the question of, what is it about this thing that worked? What’s transferable to other places? And what’s the pathway to have it inform other things? They’re tricky questions, but they’re really important ones to ask.

Mary W. Rowe It’d be great to have a CRIS, all of you in positions of power who could even respond to this question … Be great to have a CRIS that works at larger scales too, because the roster capacity that we’re building, that exists in Canada, that’s the interesting thing, as Lexy’s illustrating, there are many, many, many, many, Canadian firms that do this, and some of them are small, and some of them are big, and some international, and some are hyperlocal. And just to create that network of collaboration, and how do we do that at all scales? Jason, your particular perspective as the spokesperson for small communities everywhere. Thoughts that you’re observing that would be translatable to a larger community?

Jason Wallace I think when you look at these small projects and, you know, we’re having conversations around resiliency, emergency preparedness. I think small projects can be translated into larger centers almost as redundancy. So you think about that idea that, you know, we might create a small dam on a small reservoir, because that’s what we have available to us and that’s that we have for funding. That’s going to create some sustainability within our water supply. It’s not going to create enough sustainability for a city of a million people, but if you have a small part of that community that maybe is undersupplied or under-supported or in an emergency situation is going to be in a very challenging place, maybe a project similar to what we’re doing might be supportive of a small piece of that larger urban centre. So I think it’ll allow for some of these projects that we’re required to do because it’s what we have available to us, but maybe could be innovative ideas for a larger centre to be able to have, like you’re saying, these smaller, more redundant systems in place to support if something where to go sideways. I think if you look at things like emergency preparedness, that’s gonna become, that’s a key part of it. You have to have a redundant system that has backups in place. Because you don’t, you can’t have a wildfire situation and have the water supply not work. You know, and if you have multiple access points for water supply that’s going to create that ability to respond much quicker and deal with those challenging situations as they come up. So I think that’s what small communities maybe can bring to support. And then same kind of on that idea of you know, resiliency and emergency preparedness. And maybe that is from a small community idea, they’re the same thing. Your system has to be able to continue to function, not only for a long period of time, but for different situations that we’re going to have come up. And we don’t have a huge system in place to handle these emergency situations, so we have to make sure we’ve scaled it to a place where we’re going to be comfortable to deal with any situation within what we have available.

Mary W. Rowe Another word to add to the, we’re bringing back, we’re taking these words that have traditionally been sort of dismissed and taking them back. And that would be redundancy. You know, that we went through this phase where everything had to be efficient and lean and suddenly we’re removing redundancy. Does anybody remember that? And it was like this bad word. But in fact, redundancy is right up there with disaggregation. These are all the fundamental principles of resilience. Isn’t this great? Okay, a couple of other questions in the chat that I’m gonna ask you to respond to, and then we’ll wrap up. And it’s always great, thanks to everybody in the chat who’s participating. Lots of interesting ideas being floated there. And here’s a sort of, I don’t want to put words in the questioner’s mouth, but I think that what we always worry about with these kinds of programs is, are we ending up finding something that was going to happen anyway? Or do we have some sense that this actually, I know Jason, you suggested it did allow you to do something different, but I’m gonna ask Jeb, how do we make sure that this kind of a program is actually incentivizing and equipping a small municipality to do something that it was not going to do already? You’re muted, Jeb.

Jeb Brugmann Sorry for that. I think Lexy will have an important point to make on this and riffing off of what you said at the beginning Lexy, I just think for many technical services firms, it’s very difficult to have the incentive to respond to a small procurement from a small municipality just isn’t there.

Mary W. Rowe Okay, so put that in plain language because I know what you’re saying, but what are you, and maybe Lexy, do you wanna respond? Basically, small municipalities may not have the capacity to do the RFP. If they do issue the RFP, does a big firm like Stantec take the time to respond?

Jeb Brugmann And if I could just embellish it a little bit, Mary, which is one of the ingenious things in the whole model that HICC came up with in our partnership, is that the contracting with Stantech does not require a procurement process. So Lexy and her team do not have to figure out how to respond to a municipal procurement, which can have a bunch of other challenges associated with it as well. So over to you, Lexy.

Lexy Relph And I absolutely agree and you know, I’m fairly new to being part of a large consulting organization, but it is definitely a challenge. There are a lot of constraints in terms of what we can actually pursue. And pursuit costs, and I think the clients don’t often recognize this, it’s a huge amount of overhead, like it’s really challenging. And so proportionally, smaller scopes of work require pretty big upfront investment to put forward in order to complete a proposal. And if we don’t get a large return on investment, because it’s generally small scope, then sometimes we just can’t, we can’t go ahead with pursuing it at all. So that’s a big challenge. So I think by removing that and having this roster of subject matter experts, it allows that to be opened up to a broader group. So, absolutely. I think that’s a fantastic way for smaller communities to have access to a broader pool of technical experts, and I think that there’s also, and as you said, Jeb, just being able to get your foot in the door and actually put this together, your smaller organization with fewer resources to actually assemble an RFP and figure out what it is you want. This gives everybody an opportunity to think about it. Somebody asked in the chat, is this something that happens before you’ve done all of your planning? It can, right? This can be the tool that you can use to then support where you want to prioritize your activities going forward. And that’s why it’s so valuable, because it would be really hard to acquire that funding in the first place from other sources to actually get it.

Jason Wallace I’ll say that’s what we used it for. We are at the very, we don’t have a design started, we have no preliminary design. We brought this in to help us really scope that together. So this, and the simplicity and the speed we were able to move by having the service available to us was in my opinion, in my experience, lightning fast. And we went from a very simple, easy application to being linked with a group who came up here two weeks later and a report was in our hand, you know, a couple months after that. So we would likely not even have our RFP really out on the market by the time we had a report complete, ready to help the project.

Jeb Brugmann And the key thing is, to Robert Plitt’s comment here, climate might not have been considered in the procurement either. So it also prioritized service to you to make sure that you had support to integrate climate.

Mary W. Rowe So you inserted it into it.

Danya Pastuszek I’ll be so fast. I’m learning so much about some of the barriers that exist for municipalities and for consultants in this space. And I just want to add to this list of things that it could do, again, the piece around community engagement. We did some research through our community climate transitions network a couple of years ago that showed that some of the projects that have the most staying power, get the most uptake, are the ones where there is strong community consultation and opportunities for participating in decision-making from the earliest stages. And so that is the thing that really excites me that could be additive. We just don’t have the resources in place for that as a society right now, and CRIS gives us a chance to build that in.

Mary W. Rowe That’s great. Listen, thanks everybody. What an interesting program. I hope that we’re continuing to learn together. I appreciate everybody coming on the chat to participate, ask a bunch of questions. And great to have the Village of Cumberland here on CityTalk. You heard it here first, and Jeb, always great to have you, and Lexy, welcome to Stantec, we’re glad that you’re there. And that you’re there herding cats in a large international NGO, Canadian-owned, I appreciate, but working all over the world. And then, Danya, similarly to you, Tamarack, bringing the community development roots of Tamarack, and the engagement that you’re now interpreting and moving into the economic climate space more profoundly than perhaps it was before, so it’s great to have all of you here. A week from today we’re doing another CityTalk. We’re skidding into the end of the school year with a couple more, we’re going to get them in before June, and next week it’s on My Main Street. It’s going to be highlighting very specific examples of initiatives that have worked, in that, which in essence was a kind of roster program where lots of small businesses across southern Ontario, you know, applied for resources. Modest resources, many, many rural, to support business activity and activation activity to build their local economies. And so, I think these roster models are really great for us to continue to test, and figure out whether they work, and what’s the best and what the worst, and how do we adjust to make money smaller, but also just to make money land on the ground in the way communities need it. So Jason, great to have you. Lexy, lovely to meet you. Thanks, Jeb, as always, and Danya, great. We’ll see you next week for CityTalk on My Main Street. Have a great week, everybody.