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Canada's crumbling cities are on the verge of getting a multibillion-dollar makeover through a federal strategy that is being billed by the government not only as a shot in the arm for a fragile economy, but also as a long-awaited plan to rebuild the backbone -- from roads to sewage treatment -- of our communities.

For years, the country's ever-growing "infrastructure deficit" took a back seat to other priorities. Now it is on the lips of virtually every politician as a key solution for tackling an economic slowdown by providing funds to companies bidding for contracts and putting people to work.

Despite repeated warnings since the 1990s that much of the infrastructure has reached the end of its service life, the federal government is at least five years away from completing a study to get a handle on the extent of the problem.

Perrault's federation estimates that cities would need at least $123 billion to bring essential public infrastructure up to acceptable levels and an additional $115 billion to build infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population.

Within that $123 billion, the Federation estimates that $31 billion would be needed for water and waste water systems, $21.7 billion for roads, sidewalks and bridges, $22.8 billion for public transit, $7.7 billion for waste management and $40.2 billion for community, recreational, cultural and social infrastructure.

Pluralism may be Canada's new reality, entirely appropriate in a country that grows ever more urban and diverse. Diversity, of course, is shorthand for racial variety, simple ethnicity, multiculturalism, but it goes beyond that.

At the same time, traditional political distinctions – Conservative and Liberal, right and left – are less helpful today. Indeed, they have become obstacles. And though we cling desperately to outdated national myths, this is already the most urban century the world, let alone Canada, has ever seen.

The messy outcome of the federal election reflected the form of urban reality, but not its substance. As always, our system favoured rural over city voters.

There's no reason to believe this will change any time soon; Canadians have grown accustomed to federal governments that play little or no role in urban life, other than to set tax rates.

We talk about economic turmoil and taxes without articulating an idea of what we want Canada to be. Our political system has never seemed so out of touch, so unable to cope.

Undervalued and overwhelmed, Canada's cities, where the vast majority of us live, are fighting to remain competitive, but it grows harder and harder. National housing, transit and infrastructure programs are conspicuous in their absence.

Proposed pipeline and refinery projects around the lakes are expected to lead to total investments of more than $31-billion (U.S.) by 2015, spending similar in scale to expenditures at many oil sands projects. For this reason, the report says the various projects, when taken together, threaten to “wipe out many of the pollution control gains” achieved around the lakes since the 1970s.

The massive expenditures are needed because typical refineries can't process heavy crude derived from tar sands without costly upgrades.

Still, it's the provinces that provide the most glaring example of Canada's failure to keep up with its own evolution. Not only have they outlived their usefulness, these relics have become a divisive force that stand in the way of Canadian cities, which is where the future will unfold. Just look at Calgary and Edmonton, which despite being the most populous centres in Canada's richest province, are dull, dreary and decades behind the times.

The fact is that the gap between Canada and its political system has grown into a chasm. Our leaders – civic, provincial and federal – no longer reflect or operate in the real world. Unencumbered by the demands of reality, they are free to devote their time to their own needs and inter-governmental squabbling. It's really all they are able to do.

Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T's Rotman School of Management, spoke about dismantling the divisions between urban and rural issues, local and national issues.

"We need to move across the divide," Florida said, bemoaning the state of U.S. affairs. He said cities shouldn't be isolated from other concerns. "It has to be our obligation in urban areas to lead and help ... to benefit everyone."

During questions, one member of the audience raised the spectre of the Canadian Constitution, which delineates the provinces' authority over municipalities.

"The Constitution is an excuse not to do something," Miller said later, pointing to overlap in areas such as immigration, which is a federal responsibility, yet is an issue for cities, where most immigrants settle.

Most of the panel, which included environmental philosopher Ingrid Stefanovic, argued that urban issues were inseparable from national issues – from climate change, transportation strategy and the country's economic health, to immigration and concerns about urban sprawl and the environment.

Stefanovic, who argued cities and the environment should be viewed as one issue, said: "I think all political parties have to recognize cities are going to be playing an important role – should be playing an important role – in this election."

the minister had tipped his hand and that of the government. What he signalled goes beyond indifference, or even ignorance. The fact is neither Flaherty nor his Conservative colleagues recognize they have any responsibilities for Canadian cities per se.

The cities' task is to stop "whining," do their jobs and take care of the infrastructure, including potholes. Hiding behind some fundamentalist interpretation of the British North America Act and which level of government does what hardly constitutes leadership.

The Canada the federal government sees is not the one in which the rest of us live. It is an abstract construction, an approximation not to be confused with the truth.

The Prime Minister's comments come in the wake of a recently released report from the Conference Board of Canada, in collaboration with the federal government, that confirms high economic returns on cultural investment. The report, entitled Valuing Culture: Measuring and Understanding Canada's Creative Economy, calls the cultural sector's role “as a magnet for talent, an enhancer of economic performance, and a catalyst for prosperity” a universal phenomenon.

The Conference Board estimates Canada's cultural sector generated $46-billion, or 3.8 per cent of Canada's GDP, in 2007. The sector's total impact including “indirect and induced effects” on other sectors leaves an economic footprint of $84.6-billion, or 7.4 per cent of GDP, the report states. Those revelations paint a picture of industry stability: Statistics Canada reported culture accounting for an identical 3.8 per cent of GDP in 2006.

The report put 2003 employment in the cultural sector at 616,000 jobs.

Including direct and indirect contributions to employment, the report estimates that culture accounted for 1.1 million jobs in 2007.

Canada's culture sector is being driven by growth in digital technology and expanding Internet use, the report states.

The culture sector bridges geographical distances and creates greatly expanded social networks.

Broadbent shows the shortcomings of the current model of large-city municipal governance, in which cities of millions of people, with complex social and infrastructure needs, are governed according to rules set out in 1867 when Canada’s largest cities were little more than towns. While there are many individual problems, such as revenue sources restricted to property taxes and fees, the crucial problem is that cities are entirely dependent on provincial governments for permission to do anything new in any field of activity.

This situation makes it impossible for Canadian cities to develop coherent, long-term programs and infrastructure to deal with the challenges faced by jurisdictions with millions of residents and billions of dollars of economic activity, because funding and powers can be arbitrarily changed or removed at any moment. The various current programs and proposals to “share” federal and provincial revenues (gas taxes, 1% of GST) are not much use because they can be taken away at any time, wrecking whatever programs were dependent on them. Broadbent argues

Control of destiny is at the heart of the new deal for cities. Cities need to be able to have a vision of their future, to create a credible plan to get there, and to implement the policies and programs that make that future vision a reality. (76)

People worry that cities would make mistakes, but, as Broadbent notes in a key passage:

The practice of provincial and federal governments treating city governments like children tends to make them act like children. And anyone who has raised children knows that they become responsible people by being given responsibility. (77)

It’s time that big city governments were allowed to take full responsibility for managing municipal issues as they wish, with all the risks and possibilities that entails.

Consider, for a moment, just a few figures that show the size and scope of the crime industry in B.C.:

• There are an estimated 20,000 marijuana grow ops in houses across the province, and many thousands more hidden in the mountains and valleys of the interior. It's conservatively estimated that marijuana is an industry with revenues of $5 billion to $7 billion a year.

• In the last few years, according to the Canadian Border Services Agency, more than $1 billion worth of cocaine has been seized at borders in the Pacific region. One media report last fall found the amount of cocaine recovered at B.C.'s borders more than tripled in the previous two years.

• The province is the main port of entry for chemicals used in the manufacture of drugs such as methamphetamine and ecstasy, while B.C.-based Asian gangs are the largest suppliers of ecstasy to Canada and the U.S.

• In the last year there have been roughly two dozen gangland slayings in the Vancouver region. The number of homicides in B.C.'s Lower Mainland in the first four months of this year was nearly three times that of Toronto. And when Maclean's recently looked at Canada's most dangerous cities using data from Statistics Canada, 11 of the top 20 were located in B.C. Meanwhile the number of gangs operating in the province has jumped from less than 10 a decade ago to 129.

There are so many other very reasonable access options the ROM has effectively decided against: Free access to the permanent collection. Free access for a day or an evening. Keeping all admission fees at $10 or under. Having concession fees for the underemployed. Admission by donation. The list goes on. Almost every museum in Canada has some combination of these strategies–and has to, in order to keep their funding and their reputation.

By throwing more money at the ROM without keeping them to a truly equitable public mandate, McGuinty is basically encouraging bad behavior in their museum management. Maybe he can abide by that. But I certainly can’t.

Shame there was no mention of museum access in other cities. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Toronto the single most expensive city on the planet Earth for visiting the centrepiece museum? Isn’t there something wrong with that? Something that letting a few students in for free will not exactly address? Just as Pearson is the world’s most expensive airport (landing fees), but no one seems to care, there is a surprising tolerance for this gouging.

Cities, TTC, museums, airports - exactly how poor a country is Canada when it comes to government funding of anything other than health care? Think about that while you pay the world’s highest prices (plus GST!) for transit fares, airline tickets, ROM admission….

I agree that TO is not the most expensive city in the world. But the ROM fees are still far from reasonable and fair. This is particularly so for their permanent collection, which are the objects the public in effect owns. That’s why in MTL at the fine arts museum it’s free to see the permanent collection, extra for special exhibitions. Same at the Tate in London.

Also, the Louvre (9 euro daytime admission) has a variety of access strategies that the ROM does not: Discounts every day after 6pm. Free for all the first Sunday of every month. Free for those under 18 all the time. Free for those under 26 on Friday evenings. Free for those with disabilities, and their companions. Free for the unemployed. Free for those on social benefits. And these are obtained right at the gate, no need to get in line for rationed passes.

And the American Museum of Natural History permanent collection access is always by donation. They suggest certain donations, but ultimately all visitors regardless of income, can, yes, see the dinosaurs. Temporary exhibits require payment, as with the Tate and other museums.

A London monthly card for zone 1-2 is 93 pounds but that is also good for rail. A Twin Pass for GO/TTC is no longer available but for a comparable region it would cost far more than $185.

Based on purchasing power (relative to salaries, etc.) I still stand by my statement. Toronto is a bargain when it comes to skating rinks or housing or cost of living in general, but anything civic or infrastructure-related tends to be very, very expensive. To add to my list of “most expensive” — per-km toll highway, commuter train fares, observation decks…(ok, that last one is private and not civic but I still find it annoying.)

Leah is quite correct — all museums in New York that receive any city funding must use pay-what-you-wish admission or lose city funds. A noble principle that should apply to the ROM. MoMA is private and costs $20, but even that museum is free on Friday nights (4-8 pm).

Admission to the ROM, what with all the public funding it receives, should be based on suggested donation, along with possibly an admission ticket required for special exhibitions and the such. This way, let the clueless tourists shell out the suggested admission and everyone else get in for whatever they want to pay.

I am a New Yorker, and one of my favorite things about growing up there was how I could go to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the same day for, well, 5 cents each, with a stroll through Central Park thrown in. My high school was a short walk away from the Met, and we would go there to hang out after-school (dorky? yes. awesome? yes)

And as a UofT student, I would love to go to ROM on a regular basis - and now I will be able to. But it would be ultimately better for everyone if that were the case for all of us. Toronto would do well to create a stronger sense of civic pride and belonging, and cultural institutions of course play a huge part in that.

But the ROM does not at all feel like it is a public institution. I remember being annoyed when I heard about how they were having a ’special’ opening for the rich (or whoever) before the ‘official’ opening of the crystal last year - and really, wtf was that? Sure, throw a ball for those that contributed money - but to have it before the public opening just told me that they did not want to have them in there after us common folk contaminated the place.

But really, everything, and I mean everything, in Toronto seems to be more expensive than what I experienced in NYC - and the quality is worse - and there is no reason why it should be that way.

Do working poor people really have time to spend at any museum or gallery? I recall freebie nights at the AGO attracting mostly middle class but cheap Torontonians and some students–most of whom come from middleclass backgrounds.

But yeah, make the ROM free from midnight to six AM!:)

OTTAWA -- The rate of return to businesses and individuals of government investment in infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and sewers, is at least as great as the government's cost of raising the funds for that investment, a new Statistics Canada study suggests.

"Public infrastructure, the roads and water and sewer systems that comprise the foundation of Canada's economy, provided a rate of return to public capital at least as high as the government long-term bond yield over the period from 1961 to 2005," according to a summary of the study, which estimated that return "centres" on an annual average of 17 per cent.

The findings support the case for more such investment, a labour economist argued.

"Although we also need interest rate cuts, there is legitimate doubt about how quickly lower rates from the Bank of Canada will translate into lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses," Weir said. "In this context of financial uncertainty, direct public investment becomes even more important as a potential source of economic stimulus.

"Infrastructure investment would be a particularly effective type of stimulus because it would necessarily create employment in Canada," he added, noting the construction work would have to be done here and that many of the materials used in construction, such as concrete, would be produced here as well because it is impractical to import them.

The federation released poll results Tuesday that it said "shows Canadians overwhelmingly want the federal government to provide greater financial support to municipal governments."

"More than 90 per cent say the federal government should help municipal governments deal with infrastructure issues, a view shared across the country, including in Quebec and Alberta," the federation said.

The opposition Liberals also say the federal Conservative government should have spent most of last year's $10.2-billion budget surplus on upgrading the country's public infrastructure rather than paying down more debt.

Under the Liberal plan, any surplus greater than $3 billion -- which would be used for debt repayment if not needed for emergencies -- would be added to the $33 billion the government has already committed to infrastructure from 2007-2014.

While the author of the Statistics Canada report, economist Ryan Macdonald, said the study didn't attempt to measure whether there was a net benefit to government investment in infrastructure, it did stress the importance of such investment to the economy.