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Canadian cities buckling under the weight of exploding populations

Urban centres continue to grow at record rates; can they support everyone?

About 53,000 new condo units are due to be completed in Toronto over the next 18 months.

Around the world – in Asia, in Africa, in South America – people are flocking to big cities in big numbers, wooed by economic, social and cultural opportunities.

Canada is no exception.

In fact, according to the CIA World Factbook, Canada is one of the most urbanized nations with an annual urbanization rate of 1.1 per cent. That, coupled with relatively high immigration rates, has led to population booms in the largest centres across the country.

Between 2006 and 2011, Canada's 33 largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs) grew by a whopping 7.4 per cent.

Growing pains

On balance, long-term population growth is a good thing for cities in that it facilitates economic growth and access to a wide array of public services.

But in the short-term, city governments – responsible for providing Canadians with safe water, good sanitation, efficient waste management, reliable transportation systems, access to health and community infrastructure, recreation facilities and a wide array of other services – are feeling the financial strain of population growth.

Unlike other levels of government, municipalities don’t have extensive taxing powers and aren’t sanctioned to run deficits on their operating budgets. As a result, they don’t have the resources to upgrade existing infrastructure or to build new assets in order keep up with the population influxes.

According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Canadian cities have an existing infrastructure deficit of $171 billion and new infrastructure gap of at least $113 billion. The immediate needs include upgrades to roads and bridges ($91.1 billion), waste management systems ($39 billion) and wastewater and storm water systems ($15.8 billion).

“A third of our infrastructure is at risk,” one FCM policy analyst explained.

“Our biggest cities – especially as a result of the growing populations – are facing very significant challenges that affect Canadians in a very significant way. It’s not something that the average Canadian thinks about on a daily basis.

“It’s the kind of service and the kind of core infrastructure that you come to expect and take for granted.”

In Canada’s largest cities, growing populations have resulted in traffic gridlock, crowded buses and subways, poorer air quality, safety concerns, a lack of affordable housing, a shortage of sport, art and culture opportunities and ultimately a lower quality of life.

Surrey, B.C. Mayor Diane Watts has faced some of those challenges in her city.

“The biggest issue with a fast-growing population is transportation infrastructure,” she says.

Surrey is now the second-largest city in British Columbia with a population of almost 500,000 people. It’s expected to be B.C.’s most populous city by 2025.

By 2040, the number of drivers’ licenses issued to Surrey residents is expected to increase by 50 per cent, while new road capacity is projected to grow just 12 per cent. The mayor says that without new funding for transit, those figures will mean a 40-per-cent boost in congestion and gridlock.

She adds that beyond infrastructure, population growth means that city governments are forced to get involved in policy areas that aren’t traditionally in their purview such as hospitals and schools.

It’s about keeping up with the exponential growth. We have to be innovative.

— Surrey Mayor Diane Watts

“It’s about keeping up with the exponential growth.” Watts says. “We have to be innovative. The city has come to the table in areas that we have no jurisdiction and we’ve been putting money in and land in.”

While most of Canada’s growth is in the West, cities like Toronto and Montreal are also facing similar growing pains.

Intense population growth in Toronto, for example, has caused a serious strain on hydro resources.

According to a recent analysis, demand for new electrical connections in the downtown core alone have increased by 58 per cent since 2009, requiring electric stations to operate at unusually high levels of capacity. The new demand, coupled with antiquated infrastructure, has resulted in an increasing number of brownouts and blackouts in recent years.

A growing Greater Toronto Area is also feeling the traffic and transit pinch. The region recently finished last – out 19 global cities – in terms of commute time. According to a Toronto Board of Trade report, the average Torontonian now spends an average of 80 minutes commuting to and from work every day.

 

Strategies to alleviate the pain

The seemingly simple solution to growing cities’ infrastructure deficits is more money. In their 2013 Economic Action Plan, the Harper government committed $47 billion in new infrastructure funding for cities over the next ten years.

But some, like Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, say that simple money transfers aren’t the answer.  He wants more taxing powers.

“It's not really a matter the quantity of money — we've had a lot of money to fund infrastructure from the province and the feds in the last five years or so. The problem is that it’s really sporadic. It’s sporadic, it’s episodic and it’s ad-hoc,” Nenshi says.

“If I want to build our transit plan which will cost $13 billion over 30 years, I don’t expect anyone to show up with a $13 billion cheque next week. But what I do expect is to have a real sense of predictability for 30 years on what funding I’ll have so that I can start borrowing money to build the stuff.

“It’s hard for any government to promise cash flow for 30 years, but if we had some taxing power transferred to us from one of the other orders of governments then we could make some of those decisions ourselves, knowing that we had that revenue source.”

In the meantime, many provincial and city governments are increasingly utilizing private-public partnerships – also known as the P3 model – to deal with their immediate infrastructure woes.

According to a recent Ernst and Young report, Canadian governments are the world leaders in P3 partnerships: Contracts for private financing, management or even ownership of public services.

It's not really a matter the quantity of money ... The problem is that it’s really sporadic. It’s sporadic, it’s episodic and it’s ad-hoc.

— Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi

In British Columbia, for example, P3s are expected to help meet 10 to 20 per cent of capital infrastructure requirements. To date, the province has used the model for roads, bridges and even hospitals.

Heather McNeill, a Regional Planning Division Manager from Metro Vancouver, says that any funding mechanism needs to work in conjunction with proper planning procedures.

She says that some regions across the country – to their detriment – allow for what she calls opportunistic growth. Opportunistic growth, she says, is where a lack of planning means businesses locate where it’s cheapest to do so – often where there isn’t the best service provisions or best infrastructure – and then governments are constantly playing catch-up.

Conversely, Metro Vancouver, which consists of 22 municipalities, one electoral area and one treaty First Nation, has a comprehensive long-term regional growth strategy.

One of their policies – which has won accolades around the world – is to develop pockets of high density.

“Our regional plan really focuses on urban containment and a focus of that growth in a series of 26 urban centres. So we’re focusing growth in certain locations,” McNeill says.

“That means you have the ability you have your housing, employment, community amenities … all close together [so that they’re] well-served by transportation, transit, roads and …[other] infrastructure.

“And so it facilitates the creation of complete sustainable communities.”

(Photos courtesy The Canadian Press/CBC)