What’s the Big Deal? Why Infrastructure Matters for the Future of Canada

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.

CityTalk

CityTalk, Nov 2024

What’s the Big Deal: Why Infrastructure Matters for the Future of Canada

Mary W Rowe Hi, everybody, it’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute. Thanks for joining us for another installment of CityTalk. We had quite a lively conversation on Monday last … two days ago. Some of you may have just seen the title card we had that went up first, but that was actually two days ago, today we’re all about infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, and all of these sessions, both Monday’s and Wednesday’s, and then next week we have one on the 28th – are all leading us down the road to the second annual Summit on the State of Canada’s Cities, where we hope you’ll join us in Ottawa. And in fact, we have a little promo video that Wendy is going to show you, because what we’re hoping is that you will then show it to all your colleagues to make sure that we get as many people in Ottawa. I just want to just … before Wendy … I’m just giving you a moment here to tee it up, but before Wendy shows it, just to say, you know, I always say we’re the Canadian Urban Institute, not the Canadian Stay at Home Institute, although right this moment I am at home. But generally, why it’s so important that we actually be in physical proximity to one another. And so that’s why we’re doing this Summit in real life, in the nation’s capital. We think it’s so important to have these kinds of interactions. So if you find your way to Ottawa, please come. We have a full agenda, as you know, on the 5th. And then we have all sorts of fabulous things on the 6th that are across different parts of the city. So … The region actually, because some of it is happening in Gatineau. So I think the point that we’re just making continually and what we want the federal government to understand is that there are real people working on real solutions and real challenges in real places of all sizes across the country. And so if you can get your way there, get your way there. Wendy, can you show this beautiful video? Then we’ll put a link in the chat for you all to share it on social. And also remember that even though, if you can’t come or you’ve got people in your world that can’t come, it’s important they know that it is happening, that we are having this kind of gathering. So, Wendy, over to you to show folks this beautiful promo that you did.

Summit Promo Video “Hi, it’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute, and I’m coming online here to say please come join us in Ottawa, December 5th/6th for the second annual State of Canada’s Cities Summit. It’s a very interesting time. I don’t have to tell you that Canada’s at a time of great transition, as is North America. And where are we going to find solutions? In the local. So please come and be part of it because we’re going to talk about infrastructure. Infrastructure is everything that you can see around you and a lot that you can’t see. And so part of what we have to talk about is how do we find new ways to invest, create infrastructure, everything from housing and streets and transit and parks and cultural facilities, all the things that inform yours and my collective life together in cities and in communities across the country. That is infrastructure. So I hope you’ll come and be in Ottawa with us December 5th and 6th for the second annual summit on the state of Canada’s cities.”

Mary W Rowe Beautiful. There, you got me again. So, you know, before you get really tired of seeing Mary Rowe, just remember, there will be hundreds of people there, including folks that are on this webinar today, and people, as I say, coming from communities of all sizes, a really great program. They’ll put it in the chat, I’m sure, so that you can see what the 5th looks like, what the 6th looks like. These are always a work in progress, lots of changes, of course, but really appreciative of how many people are putting their shoulder to the wheel and making an effort on this. Remembering that in Toronto, where I happen to be today, the Urban Institute’s across the country, lots of folks coming in, as I suggested, in Ottawa, but also lots of folks that work on Urban Institute projects across the country. Today in Toronto, the traditional territory, the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnawbe, the Haudenasaunee, the Chippewa, and the Wendat peoples. And there probably isn’t a topic that is more closely aligned with the exclusions caused by colonialism than infrastructure.  I’m sure that my colleagues will speak a bit to this. And it’s a legacy and it’s a challenge, but it’s also something, it’s kind of the gift that keeps giving or the gift that continues to need to be invested in. And so I’m going to ask my colleagues to come on in and put their cameras on, because our great partner at the School of Cities at the University of Toronto took on the research piece here to try to bring together the best folks working in academia across the country to start to flag, well, what is the scale of the challenge? And, you know, we all joke about this that infrastructure, it’s just a dreadful word in so many ways, just too many syllables, sounds too serious. But we’re trying to, you know, I always joke, we’re trying to make infrastructure sexy. We’re trying to get people to recognize that it is the underpinning that makes your life work. And we are, even though we’re a young country, relatively, our infrastructures, in many cases, were put in place a century ago. And so, you know, things wear out. We all know this, you know, just like we need new knees or new hips or whatever the hell it is, you know, communities need that kind of investment, too. And so we’re trying to strike the right balance, and I’m interested in the chat. Can I just encourage people always, I always say, if you’re a lurker, you know, this is your moment. Come out, get on the chat, post your questions there, post your musings, give us examples. But I think that part of what we’re trying to do is sort of lift the lid, lift the hood and start talking about, how are we going to invest in these kinds of enabling conditions? And on Monday, we talked about the political context that’s emerging south of the border, and what is the impact that’s going to have? And then all the political things that will happen here in Canada, too. So how do all of these things, in their aggregates, affect the way we invest in our places? And obviously, one of the important places to start is to understand how big is the challenge. So, Karen, I’m going to go to you first, the director of the School of Cities, to give us a bit of an overview of the research that you commissioned. And then you’re going to be in Ottawa giving us the dirty nitty gritty details. But  I just want to sort of topline from you, and then I appreciate that we’ve got these other folks coming in to join us to talk about the specific pieces of the pie that they’re focused on. So over to you, Karen. Thanks for joining CityTalk.

Karen Chapple Thanks so much, Mary. The School of Cities was really thrilled to partner with Marie and the Canadian Urban Institute in doing a call for papers on the infrastructure deficit. And what we’re really interested in is understanding, in Canadian cities what is that deficit and, you know, how can we address it and address our issues of democracy and equitable prosperity in our cities? So, we together commissioned a report, these articles, we got 17 universities, 44 researchers contributed to this from 17 universities across Canada with 12 different articles. We have a handful that are on transportation sustainability, we have a handful on social infrastructure, and we have a handful on housing and governance. And there’s much more… Many more topics that we want to cover. But what we wanted to really raise to the forefront of people’s sensibilities is that something seems to be amiss in Canada. We seem to be in decline. And if you look at how we’ve handled our challenges in the past, if you look at, for instance, after World War Two and the infrastructure spending we did then, which was 3% of GDP, and you look at what we’re doing now, and we’re spending 1.5% of GDP on infrastructure spending, social and physical, we are really at a point where we’re not addressing the challenges – climate, inequality, standard of living, the immigration that we need to sustain our economy and so forth. We’re just not at that level. So that’s why we’re putting this work forward.

Mary W Rowe Wow, fascinating. Karen, when you say I mean, we’ve talked about this, there are all these sort of short form ways that people sort of cavalierly refer to things, you know, they’ll say, we can’t do big things anymore, and it’s a kind of coffee shop chatter, I feel, that we all fall into, we just started complain, wring our hands, we can’t do big things anymore. And is it just a lament that things are too complicated? But when you’re saying we’re spending half as much GDP as we did, now 70 years ago, the GDP was obviously much smaller, but we were still able to put 3% towards it. And you’re saying now we’re at one and a half, now even with the growth of the GDP, is it still for you a reasonable metric to say, wait a second, folks, what’s going on?

Karen Chapple I think so, absolutely. And if we look at other countries…

Mary W Rowe I was going to say, how do we compare?

Karen Chapple  The U.S. is spending trillions, right? So we’re not keeping up…

Mary W Rowe Do we have any idea what percentage is an appropriate percentage? What would we be aiming for? I guess that maybe we can talk about in Ottawa together, is there a number? And I’d be interested if anybody in the chat has a number, you know, we got smart people on this chat. They’re looking at jurisdictions all around the world and lots of folks come into this CityTalk from other places. What’s the right number? And also,  when you think about when you had 3%, that was often brand new spanking, new infrastructure. Right. Now we’re talking about a lot of rehab. Correct.

Karen Chapple Rehab and clean energy, and preparing for climate change and disasters, and the acceleration of the disasters in Canada. So, yeah, I might ask Drew actually, what’s that number? What’s that right number?

Mary W Rowe Yeah. Well, Drew I’m not going to come to you yet because I want to get all around the room, so Drew, just keep your powder dry there and we’ll ask you what should the number be? But, Karen, one more thing to you and then I see that Aditi has joined us. You know, Aditi, just FYI for your benefit, I went to the University of Toronto, in the previous century, just saying … 100 years ago. And as anyone who knows the University of Toronto, hands up anybody that knows the University of Toronto on the chat. Classes at U of T start ten minutes after the hour. And so, if you have a noon class, it starts at ten after 12, you have a 9:00 class, thank God, it started at ten after nine. And, you know, for 45 years I’ve basically worked on that clock. For me if it’s on the hour, I kind of figure we’ve got that ten minute grace period. It’s funny how four years of your life can condition you, so, welcome to CityTalk. I knew you had a class. We’re glad to have you come on whenever you could come on.

Aditi Mehta Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Mary W Rowe We’re delighted. I’m going to ask each of you to talk a little bit about your particular perspective. But Karen, one thing back to this. Talk to me from your point of view. You and I talked about the title of the summit when we were dreaming it up and whether we could call it an infrastructure deficit, and how could we emphasize how critically important this is, but at the same time not turn it into a sort of scaremongering kind of, too big a problem to tackle, kind of conversation. So when you look at the body of work and all the researchers you’ve been dealing with on this and your ongoing work about it, do you think that is there a path to fix this?.

Karen Chapple Yeah,  well, I’m always a glass half full person, so, absolutely …

Mary W Rowe I was going to say you’re from California, but actually, you’re from Ontario, so those are your Ontario roots showing through. Yeah. Yeah …

Karen Chapple Right. That’s right. And, you know, it’s just that Canada got sloppy. You know, we didn’t do an infrastructure plan. We didn’t do a data inventory, a data repository. You know, we haven’t reinvested on an ongoing basis. So.. And it’s not rocket science. It’s not like we don’t know how to build social housing any more.

Mary W Rowe Right. Well, and it is interesting, as you suggest, you know, you sort of build, build, build, baby build, and then you have the momentum of the investments that were made at that time, and you kind of ride on those for a period of time. And now here we are, and I think that’s why it’s such a rich conversation for us to have because we’re so affected by what goes on south of the border and we’re affected by global markets. So are we, can we keep up or are we going to be left behind? What are the challenges available to us? So. Karen, don’t go away because I’m going to want to come back to you at any point, I’m sure. Actually, let’s go to you first Aditi. Are you good to just jump right in? Talk to us about your particular interest in infrastructure and how you approached your contribution to this research, and what are you seeing? And then I’m going to come to the guys, you’re all guys, and we’ll probably go to you next in Saskatoon, Daniel, because I’m feeling for you because you got snow. Okay? Aditi, talk to us what your particular angle is.

Aditi Mehta Great. Absolutely. So when I was thinking about how to approach this call about researching infrastructure deficits, I actually thought about the media, and I thought about media infrastructure deficits. And the reason for that is, because in policy and planning, we are obsessed with thinking about both procedural justice and distributive justice. So procedural justice meaning do we have fair, representative processes to come to decisions that benefit stakeholders, and distributive justice meaning what are material outcomes? Who benefits? What are they getting? But what we don’t really question is how do we know what we know about cities in the first place? And a lot of knowledge about cities is being generated by elite institutions and academia and people with specific types of technical training, and then also by our mainstream media outlets, and that’s sort of the starting points of how we even begin to solve problems about infrastructure deficits. So I decided to kind of attack, or think more about that starting point with this belief that explanations of our social world are incomplete because they don’t always incorporate different perspectives and points of view, and therefore focused on community media, and community media is a really, really broad term. It’s defined in opposition to mainstream media, but looking at local outlets, reporting about, telling stories about neighborhoods, marginalized populations, perspectives that we don’t necessarily hear or know, and those organizations play such an important role in the neighborhoods and communities they serve, but they’re really ignored in urban policy and planning. People don’t talk about them. You see them being talked about in media policy or in media departments, but not so much in urban policy and planning. So I wanted to elevate and highlight the important roles they play, and also talk about how there is a huge infrastructure deficit in the way that we make sense about our urban environments. So I can keep going. Should I pause? Should I keep going?

Mary W Rowe You can pause and jump back in. But just let me say, I love that notion of how do we make sense? You know, it’s interesting, when CityTalk started, which was in April of 2020, just as the pandemic was descending, and we used to get hundreds, like we still do, on to this this platform, but we were doing at that point three a week. It’s kind of bizarre, I look back on it and think, how they hell did we do it? But, what we found is people were trying to find ways to make sense. That’s exactly the phrase that they used Aditi. And I’m so interested that you’re flagging, and I think this is a larger message, and let’s hope the media get it from us again, although you’re saying let’s be clear, the media is limited, but let’s hope the general public in the city building community gets it from us, that modes of communication are infrastructure. Right. And I guess that’s a question back to you, in your research,  do you look at the importance of how localized that can be? You know what I mean, versus, I mean, honestly, after the American election, we’re all fatiguing with the critique of the legacy media. But what about hyper local media? Could  that be seen as a really pivotal piece of infrastructure at a unit of analysis we can all wrap our arms around?

Aditi Mehta Yes, absolutely. And I’m going to answer that. But before I answer that, I also want to bring up one important element that’s really critical to the Canadian context, which is the online news act. So as many of you probably know, when you go on to your social media channels, you can’t access news links because of the online news act, because the Canadian government was trying to charge Meta and Google fees  for posting Canadian content to keep the media businesses alive, and in response, Meta basically blocked all the news. So that also makes the infrastructure deficit in Canada even more pertinent because we’re seeing circulation of so much misinformation and people, that’s where people are getting their news. They’re getting news from their social media outlets, and not just places like Instagram, Facebook, but also WhatsApp. And WhatsApp is owned by Meta, and particularly community based organizations, that’s how people are circulating news information. So I just want to highlight that on why this is such an important issue and infrastructure deficit in our cities. So in my research, what I wanted to do was I wanted to better understand the community media landscape across Canada. And there’s a lot of large organizations that have databases of various community based, community media organizations. However, I find the definitions for these organizations to be really broad, and they all do such different things. And so I created my own definition, and I was really interested in organizations that were addressing a hyper local community, as you said, so a hyper local geography, or addressing a very specific community based on race, ethnicity, history. And so I was looking for organizations that did that. And then I was also really interested in organizations that had a training piece. So organizations that were training residents in media production and media literacy, because that to me is a big way of how we can address the deficit for people to even be aware and conscious of where their news is coming, for how to make news, how to intervene in news and circulate information. So those were sort of my parameters. And then I started by looking at our largest census metropolitan areas, and I found 62 different organizations that sort of fit those definitions. And a lot of those organizations define themselves in opposition to mainstream media and, really in their mission statements, discuss and talk about how they are elevating stories and knowledge that are relevant to the populations that they serve that often we don’t even see in mainstream media, that’s invisible in mainstream media.

Mary W Rowe It’s so interesting. Boy, oh boy. Honestly, we could just do a whole day on this. And I appreciate you bringing in this perspective. And I don’t think we’ve ever had a CityTalk where procedural justice and distributive justice were ever defined, so thank you for enlightening us on that. And also the chat, as usual, is a lively place, and we’re being… They’re outing themselves. The legacy media are here and they are on that. So that’s good, this is all part of the evolution. Daniel, I’m going to come to you next. The great thing about this infrastructure topic, as cumbersome a word as it is, I appreciate how all-encompassing it is. It’s stuff you can see and it’s stuff maybe you can’t see. And Aditi  just kind of, you know, underscored that a bit, which is so important and useful. Now Daniel you’re about the stuff we can see, right?

Daniel Fuller We’re sort of about it all. I just wanted to say, I’m in my neighborhood community association. I manage our neighborhood newsletter. So I produce hyper local media with my neighborhood community association, quarterly with that. So I’ll put a posted link in the chat and I have a second, but …

Mary W Rowe That would be great. And, the important thing is that you are both an academic thinking about big ideas and big systemic changes and levers, but you’re also thinking about the place in which you live and work. And we all have to be both-and. So that’s great. Okay, so talk to us about your particular perspective and the contribution you made to the piece that Karen’s group pulled together.

Daniel Fuller Yeah, so our work was related to our Interact study, which is the Interventions, Equity and Action, and Cities team, and we looked at, effectively, distributional inequities. Thank you, Aditi, in cycling infrastructure in four Canadian cities, Victoria, Vancouver, Saskatoon and Montreal, to try to look at, you know, where is cycling infrastructure, what does it look like, where is it built on the ground, and where are there, sort of pockets of places where there’s a lot of cycling infrastructure and a lot of equity seeking groups, and more importantly, the opposite, not a lot of cycling infrastructure and a high proportion of equity deserving groups. And we made some nice maps in our report, so I’ll try to talk through those. But we looked at a number of different equity seeking groups, looked at racialized people, recent immigrants, people who are living in low income households, children and older adults in our work. And really, two key sort of aspects that jumped out in our in our work were that the highest areas, the areas with the highest proportion of a low cycling infrastructure and a high proportion of equity deserving groups were areas where there were children and older adults. So, across all the four cities, it tended to be that areas with not a lot of cycling infrastructure had a relatively higher proportion of children and older adults. And I think, just to sort of make the broader case for why cycling infrastructure is an important area for this sort of conversation, I think cycling infrastructure gives us a really good example of the jurisdictional challenges of doing, actually building infrastructure for something that is relatively easy to build and relatively cheap to build. So we don’t have, you know, major problems, we’re not spending billions of dollars on cycling, you know, they’re not mega projects, but they’re hyper local and they always require, through this multi-jurisdictional kind of conversation, funding these kinds of things. We can see that in Ontario right now with the bill that was put forward, people are probably following that, and every cycling kind of infrastructure conversation and across lots and lots of cities is basically a big fight. And it’s hard to get these things through, so it’s a good example of how we can think about infrastructure from a multi-jurisdictional perspective, and something that can get the conversation going, I think.

Mary W Rowe You know, you raise, you know, the big, the J word, jurisdiction. I just feel like in Canada, this is our constant preoccupation, whose jurisdiction it is. You know, and I, I often talk about, I reflect on back to when we started CityTalk in April of 2020. You know, when we were all in total shock mode about what this pandemic was going to mean to us, and to our families, and to our livelihoods and to our neighborhoods. Remember those days? I know you all want to forget them. Four and a half years ago. Is that right? Gosh, it is. And we didn’t spend 10 seconds wondering whose jurisdiction it was to deal with the challenge. Not 10 seconds. I see our, one of our great CityTalkers and a great city builder for years, Kathy Crowe on the chat. Kathy is an advocate, tireless advocate, for how we’re addressing homelessness, how we’re supporting people that are inadequately housed. And she’s made the point in the chat about – that has to be housing infrastructure, or supportive housing infrastructure, mental health infrastructure, all these things. And I know Kathy will agree with me, that when we were in that state of crisis in the spring of 2020, jurisdiction stopped mattering, you know, and now we’re back to, now I’m going to come to Drew. Stephen, I’ll come to you at the end. Now, I’m going to come to Drew, because, Drew, honestly, jurisdiction is so frequently used as an excuse for why we don’t address something. And you’ve been in government. You’ve served in a bunch of different orders. Can we overcome this and just deal with what the practical challenges are, and stop worrying about whose authority it is and whose jurisdiction? Let’s just, I don’t think regular people care anymore. They just want it fixed.

Drew Fagan I’m not sure regular people would ever care, Mary I mean …

Mary W Rowe That’s right, but I guess what I would say … No, no, I misspoke. I don’t think they care who’s responsible for it. They just want it fixed, they want the garbage to be picked up, they don’t care. People do care, but don’t we feel people are getting a bit fed up? Like if we take the housing discussion across the country, how many times we see this happening, where one politician says it’s that and one politician says it’s the other, and people are just, same with mental health, people are getting fed up with this. So, Drew, talk to us. Tell us, is there a path here where jurisdiction can matter less and where results could matter more?

Drew Fagan So  let me get to that, Mary, and let me do a bit of context. First of all, I love the way you start. That infrastructure’s a $100 word. There was a famous American journalist called Teddy White, Theodore White, who some of you will know, who once wrote about infrastructure and said the word hid political explosives. And we’re seeing political explosives, for example, on bike lanes, right. I mean, it’s a boring thing that is fundamental. Let me add a couple of things in the context of what we were saying about GDP and how Karen  started. So we’re spending more on infrastructure. 1.5% of GDP puts us, you know, not far off kind of the average within the OECD countries, the major industrialized countries. The last time I looked, we’re not at the top, we’re not at the bottom. You know, we’re in the middle at best. And we’re spending more. All jurisdictions are spending more. The federal government spending a lot more than it did 15 years ago. The province, you know, over the last decade has been spending significantly more, liberal and conservative, federally, provincially. You’re seeing that with all governments, no matter what political stripe, because they know it’s necessary, because from about the mid 80s until about 2005, maybe even a little bit more than that, going back, governments didn’t spend. That was the era of debt, and deficits, and no government looks out to infrastructure ten years, or 15 years, or 20 years from now. They cut the stuff that’s long term as opposed to short term. So, we’re making progress. Are we making progress fast enough? No, we’re not. And in part, that’s because it’s not just the spending has increased, but may not be enough, but Canada is a little immature with regard to how we decide what to spend it on. The political process is particularly heavy here and the policy process is a little lighter. And I compare that to say, Great Britain or Australia or New Zealand. So that’s all the background I think, and Karen, we write about this a little bit in the opening chapter of the book, which is great. So jurisdiction. Part of the reason why jurisdiction matters, and Mary, you know this is because it leads to accountability. If, the feds for 20 years have provided funding, it used to be known as the gas tax, going back to Paul Martin’s era. It’s now the community building fund. Billions of dollars with regard to funding directly to cities. And it gave cities complete autonomy, virtually, within about 20 areas. Fundamental areas of infrastructure decide how they spend it on. They love that program. Why do they love that program? Because they get to choose. And you know that, again, political decision making is fundamental with regard to that. So I would say, in that case, the accountabilities aren’t probably strong enough. Now, the cities will say we’re the people who can best decide. And I understand that the bureaucracy around this can be very complex sometimes, and it can be a very heavy hand. But you need to find that right balance. I’d say one thing with regard to jurisdiction in the sense of accountabilities. And then let me get to how well they’re working together, and then I’ll close. Is that, looking back to that period that Karen talked about in the postwar era, when we were spending 3%, we were spending more, but the accountabilities were different. Who owned the infrastructure was fundamentally different. Cities didn’t own anywhere as much infrastructure, in percentage terms, as they do now. So now they own about 60% of the infrastructures , bunch of reasons why that’s the case. But they have nothing like 60% of the ability to tax and raise funding for this. Federal government is spending a lot on infrastructure now compared to what they did. They only own about 3 or 4% of the infrastructure. So it’s mostly transfer payments. So, you know, some sense…

Mary W Rowe Yeah. I mean, all these jurisdictions … Well,  I did the “J” word again. But the way in which the fiscal arrangements that exist in Canada really manifest their dysfunction when it comes to these kinds of topics. And I’m interested your suggestion that 60% of the assets now are owned by a municipal government. Right. Do I have it right?

Drew Fagan Roughly, yeah.

Mary W Rowe And what’s interesting, I mean, remember the sinister side of it, too, Karen, if we go back to the good old days, you know, when the railway was built, it was also done through exploitive labor and tons of very bad behavior, and as I suggested the outset, you know, that’s where a lot of indigenous violation occurred. So it’s not like it was all great back then, but now we’ve got this complex set of situations, and I want to add our $100 word infrastructure. Everybody Google this one – subsidiarity, which is a European, a principle that’s commonly used in Europe to devolve the authority and responsibility for  decision making to the order of government that’s closest to it. So that’s one interesting principle. Can we ever move closer to that? And on the chat, I’m going to come to you now, Steven, because this is a perfect lead in for you. On the chat, somebody is flagging “Yea, but what about regional?”. So it’s all well and good to have these municipal discussions and municipal government discussions, but in fact, so much of the infrastructure we require has to straddle a municipal boundary and needs to be approached regionally, and where would that be truer than in your neck of the woods in terms of mobility? So why don’t we go to you, and also equity, I would say. Both of those things. They don’t stop at an arbitrary municipal boundary. So over to you, your perspective ,then I’m going to have everybody put their cameras on and we’ll have a lively conversation, and please don’t disappoint me in the chat. Put some questions in there. They are doing that already. Okay. Go ahead, Steven.

Steve Farber Okay. So, great conversation so far. I’m glad a lot of things have been defined for me already, distributive justice and transportation accessibility. So I’m going to pick up on those two threads because that’s really my area of expertise. I run a national project called Mobilizing Justice, which attempts to create better outcomes for marginalized groups in the Canadian transportation system from coast to coast to coast. And one of the projects that we implemented in that effort is the development of a transportation equity dashboard, and I’m going to put the link to that in the chat right now. And this leverages new data sets that were created by the federal government to help Infrastructure Canada with their, become more of an informed investor in transportation infrastructure. And what we have in this data set is, for every single block in Canada, rural and urban areas, measurements of how well the transportation system is allowing people to reach essential destinations like workplaces, education facilities, health facilities, parks and recreation, cultural facilities and so on. There’s about seven buckets of categories, and we’re looking at different modes of transportation. So it’s more data than we really know how to use. And it is kind of the biggest problem, which is a good kind of problem to have. And what we are trying to do with the dashboard is put an equity lens on it, a social equity lens, and try to look at the differences, both between communities and within communities,  and which population groups are being provided with benefits in the transportation system. And, you know, thinking about how we can cut across jurisdictional issues, thinking about orders of government, one of the things that we can do is have data sets that actually highlight, to residents and decision makers, how their region is faring compared to everyone else in the country. It’s a bit of a name and shame game.

Mary W Rowe I was going to say, does that work? Do people just get depressed and say, well, you know, throw their hands up, there’s no point? Or do you think there’s a kind of competitiveness… That Edmonton’s doing better?

Steve Farber You know what? I think that it does work. And I think one of the issues is that only, according to one of our surveys that we carried out, only 65% of decision makers, sorry, only 35% of decision makers think that transportation should be planned with an equity lens at all, right. Most decision makers today still think we’re in this like welfare economic framework. We’re just trying to do the maximum good for the most amount of people, and we don’t care about the distributional effects of our infrastructure decisions. And what we’re trying to do is really build pressure on that front so that we can actually get these, get that ratio reversed. I want to see a world where 70 or 80% of our decision makers understand how poorly we’ve underserved certain demographic groups in this country, and how imperative it is that we actually use our infrastructure spending to address some of those gaps, right. And, you know, just, you know, the most obvious thing that came out of this report when we look nationally is just how underserved indigenous people are in this country when it comes to access to destinations. And it’s not just rural communities, it’s within a lot of our cities as well. But if you add in that regional perspective and look to the rural areas and communities outside of our major cities, we see unbelievable deficits, right. And this has major systemic consequences. If we don’t have a country, if we don’t have a transportation system that works for everybody, I think that we’re going to keep running into this recognition that it’s not working for anyone. And so that’s what our report really focuses on. There’s a lot of detailed maps and tables and charts that show nuanced findings across some key dimensions, but it’s really just a teaser, right? This is a teaser for Ottawa.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, Ottawa teaser …

Steve Farber … For our dashboard, in our reports that are going to be forthcoming. And I would encourage the audience here to go, you can type in your community name, look at our map and see how your community is doing, understand which population groups are being underserved and how and where. And it’s really going to help you generate ideas for what you want to consider in terms of new transportation infrastructure for where you live.

Mary W Rowe Can I ask everybody to unmute themselves so that we don’t have to be worried about that? Just open your mikes, and even if you have a barking dog, we usually can’t hear them. And I’m going to ask everybody who’s viewing to turn your view to gallery so that you don’t just look at the speaker because this is a group conversation. You know, I often, Steven, just riffing on you for a second, I often talk reflectively, I have years of experience working in the U.S. and I’ve commiserated with a number of other folks about this, that when you’re in Canada, you’re sort of constantly confronted with the vastness of the geography and a relatively small population. And yet we have all, I mean, listen, I know we’re not tiny, but you know what I’m getting at. The U.S. is ten times our size and they have much more density, and same with Europe, they have more density, they have closer proximity, so the challenge to service, and to have these kinds of forms of connection  over such a challenging demography, challenging geography, challenging history, not saying that, not giving us excuses. I’m just saying we’ve got to be really resourceful, which is why this notion of  biting it into smaller pieces. And Aditi, I want to come back to you, because I think that the local media argument and the transparency and the accountability that can come from greater access to information locally,  can we start there? Can we start by supporting communities at the hyper local level to come to terms with their infrastructure challenges, and then see if we can grow it from there?

Aditi Mehta I think so. I think that is how we even build a critical consciousness among urban residents about what’s missing in their communities. And it’s the starting point to even begin organizing, or advocate for some sort of change, or incite some sort of change. So I think that, I mean, all of the deficits that the various panelists have spoken about, I don’t know if people who are experiencing those deficits know exactly where to begin and how to make their voices heard. I think absolutely. And one other point I wanted to make is that a lot of times when we talk about information infrastructure, we think about broadband or the Internet. And obviously, that’s a really key component  of media infrastructure, but then the conversations end there, and it’s one thing to have the infrastructure to communicate, circulate news and information, but it’s another thing to actually have spaces of expression, or opportunities of expression and spaces to organize around what’s being expressed.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. Even just the old fashioned, you know, if we build it, they will come. I mean, the virtual version of that. Let’s just have more, there’s lots of physical, spatial people on this, call, planners and architects, and they are those people that believe you can actually build shared physical spaces, and you’re saying, well, actually, they’re not just physical. They could be virtual as well. Could you just go back to when you just said urban, just, I can hear Zita Cobb and Shorefast, our great partners saying “it’s not just urban Mary …”. You know, every community of every size has issues around investment, connectivity, infrastructure. If Zita were on this call, as she was on Monday, she’d be ranting about the inequality of air access for rural communities across the country. So, I think we’re back to then, how do you get this stuff paid for? And we’re actually arguing, I think, for a collective asset. Infrastructure, libraries, everything. Social, hardcore, waste water, resilience. All of it. City building, community building. How do we get it paid for without taking us down that dreadful path you just took us down, Drew. Which just is kind of brain numbing, even for those of us that live in this world. If I had people over to the house and I said, Come on, we need to change this. You can see even in the chat, people who just won’t have, are not on for a constitutional conversation. So, go ahead, Steven. Hand up.

Steve Farber So …

Mary W Rowe How can we pay for it?

Steve Farber So a couple of things, because in the transportation community, we’ve kind of been fortunate that, at least quite recently, governments are spending a lot on transportation infrastructure right now and they’re finding money for it. There’s still more to be done. The big question in our kind of, in our sector, is how are we going to pay for operations, once the tracks are made or the busses are purchased using our infrastructure dollars, it’s again back to our municipalities to operate all of those services. And no one has the answer. Translink has a new funding model that they’re shopping around, that looks at new revenue streams. Municipalities need new revenue streams. If we own all of this infrastructure, and we have a responsibility to maintain it and then operate services like we do in the transportation space, we need a lot more money coming to cities to do that. We also need to, I’ve got two more things to say on this. One is we’ve got a very bad track record of wasting infrastructure dollars in this province, and I don’t know what the story is as much in the rest of the country. Starting projects,  stopping projects, trading projects. The politicization of it has caused a lot of waste, not just inactivity, but actually throwing hundreds of millions into one project only to switch  tracks and spend the money on an inferior idea.

Mary W Rowe So, Steve, I mean, again, I always want to flag that these conversations are, we never solve these things. You know, city building is our life’s work. Let’s be clear. Community building, rural building, whatever it is you’re doing, it’s never going to be solved in one hour. So nobody leaves here saying, Jeepers, they didn’t really solve anything. This is a conversation that’s evolving. The country is evolving, communities are evolving. But Steven, when we go to the scale that you’re talking about, part of my reaction is, make it smaller. Can we make these projects smaller? And is there a way to de-politicize them? You think about that for a second, I know you’ve got another point to come back to, I won’t forget. Daniel, I’m going to you next. I’ll come back to Steven. Go ahead, Daniel.

Daniel Fuller Yeah, I think another sort of key question, and I’ll point to the Saskatchewan Transit Association, which was canceled by the provincial government a number of years ago. I think there’s also key questions about how do we not lose what we have, or how do we not over politicize what we have? And I’ll highlight the work of one of my colleagues down the door, Jacob Alhassan, who’s done really good work on the impacts of the cancellation of that very local, very regional sort of transportation system for rural and urban communities that just like, disappeared from one day to the next. And I think we’re seeing that with cycling infrastructure, we’re seeing that with other kinds of actual infrastructure where things have gotten quite politicized, and it’s sort of going, oh well, let’s take this out because we think it’s, you know, it’s over politicized or all these other  challenges. So I think it’s also a key question, is, not only how we build it, but how we make the case for the things that we have and keeping the things that we have.

Mary W Rowe And Steven flagged the perennial challenge between operating and capital, and we see that in every sector. The cultural sector will tell you they can raise money from philanthropy to build the hospital wing or to build the gallery wing, but they can’t seem to secure resources to actually operate the damn thing. Drew, comment from you then Aditi, then I’ll come back to Steven.

Drew Fagan So the word depoliticize is an important one. These decisions are always going to be political, that there are ways to rebalance policy and good politics and good policy.

Mary W Rowe How?

Drew Fagan You know, a more robust role for policy advisers to government. Australia has an infrastructure commission. They study all projects over $100 million and then they say thumbs up or thumbs down. And the credibility of this organization and the fact that their advice and the reports are public, mean it’s more common that, if government approves a project that the commission says is bad value, they’re going to pay the price. New Zealand does the same thing, Great Britain does the same thing. Here, the advice is much more commonly private, and you know, it’s much easier to ignore it. I’m not saying it always happens. And Mary, you’ve been in government, but we all know examples where it has. And Steven made the point, we don’t make as much, we don’t get as much value as we probably should. By the way, we’re also an expensive builder. We’re a very expensive builder and we’ve never…

Mary W Rowe But again, that’s a large function. That’s a large function of how small we are …

Drew Fagan Whole bunch of regions. But let me ask a very simple question with regard to equity.  We’re in Toronto, and it’s more apparent in Toronto, but it’s apparent everywhere, drivers get access to the roads for free. But we make people who ride transit pay almost the full ticket, right? I mean, it’s very little subsidy. It’s an obvious thing with regard to equity and effectiveness, and we’re moving in the wrong direction.

Mary W Rowe Can we tackle that, Karen, then to Aditi, then Steven, I haven’t forgotten you.  Karen … Got a thought?

Karen Chapple Well, actually, I want to go back to where you started us off, by talking about infrastructure is invisible in your wonderful video. Because, you know, to me,  we’re talking about infrastructure finance, we’re talking about big transportation projects and we’re talking about how to manage them. But what about the communities around those infrastructure projects? And how then, you know, in terms of paying for things, you know, we pay, we budget for our transit projects. We do not budget for the public spaces, the walkability, the communities, the culture, the social infrastructure around those. So, how do we then bridge those gaps? I want to just throw that back at you. Like, how do we overcome the silos?

Mary W Rowe Well, and Aditi, I want to come to you, and I just want to chide my beloved friends and colleagues in the chat, that we make a blood sport of wringing our hands about when political decisions went south and all the nastiness of it. Honestly, I think there are people that just love saying how dreadful it was, and how this happened and that happened. Don’t we want to move to a new way of operating, where we come up with practical solutions, and let’s start being a jurisdiction that Sweden is talking about, that Denmark is talking about. Look how they do it in Canadian communities, rather than indulging in lamentations of how broken our system is, or “Do you remember when this happened in 1990?”. Listen, I’m old, so I know how tempting it is to just fill our energy with  lamentations, but I’m also impatient for solutions. Aditi to you, and then to Steven.

Aditi Mehta Yeah, I mean, I want to follow up on the point that Karen just made. How do we budget for, create line items for the really important work that’s happening at the community level, and oftentimes in these community media organizations? And I think that by highlighting or elevating the work of these organizations, we see that they’re more than just information shares. They’re also, they’re sometimes the first emergency responders in community after crisis. They’re community development organizations. They provide social services. So then if we can kind of understand the various roles they play, then we also then can expand the various spaces that they’re getting money from. They’re all nonprofit organizations, they can’t operate in like a media business model at all. So understanding these different roles, then, can help us bring money from various buckets at the local, provincial and federal level. And then, the last comment I’ll make is that Canada had a really, really radical funding program for community media between 1967 and 1980. It was started by the National Film Board of Canada, and it was funded by eight different departments at the Federal government, called the Challenge for Change Program. And there was this acknowledgment that we need media as a tool to address issues of poverty. And it was published about, countries all over the world were looking to Canada for that leadership on how to do this, and then the program died in 1980. But I think that we should revisit that program and bring it back as a as a funding mechanism for these organizations.

Mary W Rowe You know, the Challenge for Change program has been cited on CityTalk before by Zita Cobb, because the Fogo Process and what was happening with the relocation of those outport communities, was documented by the NPR Challenge for Change, sorry, the NFB Challenge for Change program. And it did affect, it created connective tissue for those communities and then they emerged in a certain kind of way. So I love the fact that you plugged that, I hope someone will put it into the chat,  about the Challenge for Change program that the NFB funded. And we could, while we’re at it, Google the Fogo process, you’ll see a perfect example of how it did enable that level of connectivity, which is probably right. Steven, just back to you for a sec, you had a point that you were still holding, and I’m interested, go ahead, do you remember what it was? Because I can I ask you another question, if you want me to remind you.

Steve Farber I have a couple of responses. [Go for it]. Yeah. So one is, one of the things that we’re doing with Mobilizing Justice, it’s related to this like, how do we have line items for these additional needs that we have when we’re building communities, and in our space, we’re trying to figure out how to have line items just for, like, the incorporation of an equity analysis to be performed when doing an infrastructure plan, right? And one of the things that we’re realizing is governments don’t know how to ask for that work. And they add, you know, they have a very short one, sentence description, and this needs to be viewed with an equity lens, and then the consultants who respond don’t see that there’s money in doing a good job with this, right? And so, one of the things that we’ve been doing is thinking about how we can help governments with the language of how they include the right things in their RFPs, so that the consultants see that it’s right in theory and can respond in detail. So I think that idea can be extended into other aspects of community building around transportation and housing infrastructure that we’re building. The other thing that I’ll…

Mary W Rowe Don’t worry, Steven, keep at it.

Steve Farber Now everyone’s … everyone in Ontario.

Mary W Rowe Everybody just got an Amber Alert, and we all … all those in Ontario, our phones just went off with an Amber Alert. Go ahead.

Steve Farber My audio’s switched, but you can still hear me?

Mary W Rowe We can hear you now.

Steve Farber Okay. So, yeah, so, I mean, we’ve got, we do also have, this links to how difficult things are in Canada. I mean, there are some inherent geographical reasons about Canada that mean that the we should be aiming way above the OECD average for infrastructure.

Mary W Rowe Like?

Steve Farber … Like we’re not going to be on the same par as the UK, a tiny island, a dense, tiny island, or Belgium,  like we have to be well above that because of our geography. At the same time, our productivity is really lacking right now, and I’m not an economist. But I am very scared when I see things like Ontario’s GDP per capita being lower than Mississippi’s or Alabama’s.

Mary W Rowe You know, I’m going to stop you, Steven, because I’m going to run out of time, and we want another session on productivity, because I thought you guys were doing a good job of debunking being preoccupied with productivity, because I would much rather we focus on this kind of …

Steve Farber We need to grow the pie so that we build money for infrastructure.

Mary W Rowe So, Aditi, you made an interesting point, and then I’m going to come to you, Daniel. You made an interesting point about when we’re in a disaster situation, when there is a sudden crisis, we become very resourceful, and we know that social media was the incubator. I was in New Orleans after Katrina, I watched. It was local media reports, local, we had different… Then it was just cell phones, frankly, and we were just doing peer to peer exchange, and it was all we had. So I think we’re at another moment here, guys, where we have to figure out all we had. If there’s anybody on the chat from INFC, or IHCC as it’s now called, if you’ve got an update on the timing of the Canadian infrastructure assessment, I think it’s imminent. Maybe somebody from the department could put something in there. Daniel, we want to come back to you, because Saskatoon is always important.

Daniel Fuller Thank you. Yeah, I think this is a classic example of Jeffrey Rose’s “sick individual, sick populations”. We sort of live in infrastructure and are always sort of in infrastructure. So it’s really hard to pull ourselves out and think, okay, what can we do and how can we address this? So, you know, there’s a classic quote that we’re, you know, way more people die from traffic crashes than plane crashes, but if a plane crashes, it’s a big deal, and car crashes just happen and nobody really worries about it. So, I think we have to think about how we can we can address these issues at a local level, and sort of, one of the things I was going to give an example of was, you know, in Saskatoon, we had 15cm of snow yesterday. And now, I’m sure all the city staff are concerned about the level of service. There has to be no snow on the roads and there will be, we will be spending tons of money until all that snow is plowed. But there’s no level of service guidelines, or anything for pedestrian infrastructure, for cycling infrastructure, any of those other things, and these are, like having those kinds of engineering level of service requirements for local things, local infrastructure, can really help make the case for the city to do things. Because, you know, for me, having lived in Saskatoon and St John’s, Newfoundland, they just can’t make the case because they don’t have the engineering guidelines, they don’t have the practices, the city is like, We want to do this, but they really can’t even make the case for, I need money, because they don’t have any guidance, I think, for key local challenges.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. And part of what the federal government is experimenting with, and CUI is supporting, is whether you can create a kind of intermediary roster role, where you can bring that expertise from the professional communities into those smaller settlement communities, whether they’re urban or rural. To bridge that gap, it’s going to take all of that, isn’t it? It’s going to take all of those kinds of initiatives. So I’m going to go around the room. We’re really, you’ve totally, you know, substantiated my comment that infrastructure can be sexy, because it’s been a great hour and it’s going to be a great time in the summit. Karen, they’re all dying to know when your report is going to be made public. So 30 seconds to each of you, or 20 seconds would be even better. What do you think we should think about between now and December 5th when we converge on Ottawa? What do you want us to bring there to have this discussion continue? Aditi, you first.

Aditi Mehta I want people to think about where they get their information, particularly information about the communities they live in and how some of those voices and perspectives can be elevated.

Mary W Rowe Perfect. 20 seconds to you, Drew.

Drew Fagan Think about it in a really local way. Think about how you’re impacted by all this stuff, personally, and in your communities. We can build out from there.

Mary W Rowe 20 seconds to you, Daniel.

Daniel Fuller I echo Drew. Think about it locally and think about equity. Think about the people who don’t have transit, don’t have access, can’t get places, and how your local community can help those people.

Mary W Rowe 20 seconds to you Steven. Your muted … your 20 seconds is going to be spent muted …. Don’t squander it. 20 seconds …

Steve Farber It’s probably for the best. So, I’m thinking about how we can tie infrastructure, capital spending to commitments for our offer for operational funding being there.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. Karen, last word to you.

Karen Chapple Bring your research and data gaps to the Summit. Tell us what they are and tell us how we in the university can make our research more useful for you. And then read our report, which will be out in two weeks, and we’ll have it at the Summit.

Mary W Rowe Pictures at 11, as they say. And there’s lots we still don’t know, so, as Karen suggests, and each of these folks have posed questions for you to think about, what do we still need to know? Thanks, everybody, for joining us at CityTalk. We’re back on the 28th to talk about the crisis and liquidity, where the cash is coming from to actually address, particularly purpose built rental, but housing, and how we’re seeing a kind of a sudden … not so sudden, but a kind of paralysis in the development cycle and how we’re going to experience that in communities across the country. So tune in on the 28th and I’ll see you all in Ottawa. Drew, Aditi, Karen, Daniel, Steven, thanks for being with us. See you soon. Great to have you on CityTalk. Bye, everybody.