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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.

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.

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.

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.

As potential cuts to services loom large at city hall, community groups are mobilizing to fight back.

People for a Better Ottawa is a new coalition of community groups and individuals that will be launching its campaign today at the Jack Purcell Community Centre.

"We want to build a consensus that we need to build a balanced approach for the budget, that includes investments in social health and arts programs and services," said David Robbins, launch organizer. "I think that a lot of councillors would agree that there is not a lot of fat left to cut."

The coalition is composed of groups representing arts, culture, students, communities and others.

The coalition wants to work with the city to lobby the province for more money for issues such as infrastructure and services previously downloaded by Queen's Park.

However, getting money from the province is never certain, and Robbins said his group would be willing to advocate on behalf of a property tax increase as part of the solution.

"We need to improve and strengthen services, find other solutions for revenue that don't require contracting out or privatization and build on services for the long term," said Robbins.

These are the factors that are starting to drive businesses, employees and infrastructure to places such as Richmond, Surrey, Langley and Abbotsford. In the recent economic boom, jobs in Vancouver are growing at less than 2 per cent, compared with 10 per cent for Metro Vancouver's 21 municipalities. Combine all this with downturns in the export industry from the rising dollar, and it spells trouble for this growing city.

In the VEDC report, business and community leaders speak about a hollowing out, the prospect that Vancouver could be a bedroom community enjoyed by the wealthy, owned by absentee condo owners who prefer to do business elsewhere.

How will Vancouver keep businesses from voting with their feet, and taking their jobs and tax payments - and thus quality of life - with them?

What is most disheartening about the Warner case – brought to public attention after Warner spilled the beans – is it confirms what many have believed since the last federal election, which gave Harper a minority government with no Toronto seats and only a few on the edges of the GTA.

Harper and the Conservatives have written off Toronto. They'll curry favour with Quebec, solidify the base in the west, and to hell with the city slickers and their immigrant-loving, poor-coddling, bleeding-heart liberals and environmentalists and social activists.

It's bad enough that a national party would so alienate the country's largest city, its calling-card urban region, and the source of so much of its budget surplus. It should be cause for alarm in every urban region where Toronto-type problems are surfacing.

That may be our saving grace in the end. For as much as Harper doesn't care about the city of his birth, he can't ignore voters in all urban regions. The vast majority of Canadians live in urban regions. Sooner or later, he will have to acknowledge the cries of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which says the infrastructure deficit (gaps in funding for bridges, roads, sewers, water systems, transit, housing etc.) is approaching $100 billion across the country.

Toronto Mayor David Miller has led the call for one cent of the federal GST to be given to cities. For that campaign to work, other cities may have to step up.

One thing they have managed not to do is focus on a bunch of issues that intimately affect the single largest group of Americans.

We’re talking about people who live in cities and their suburbs. We’re talking about more than 80 percent of the population.

Oh, sure, the two parties have hardly ignored issues that matter to urban and suburban America, like the economy and education.

They’ve discussed the elderly, and cities have plenty of them. They’ve talked about minorities. Cities are loaded with them, too. Taxes? No one pays more than city people. Health care? City types get sick. Terror and security? Cities are more likely targets than farms are.

All these topics have popped up in the debates — but not issues that speak directly to everyday life in big cities and surrounding towns. Those have been shunted aside.

What are the candidates’ thoughts on mass transit, pollution, homelessness, poverty, the fast-growing Medicaid burden, the future of public hospitals, housing that a working stiff can afford, not to mention roads and bridges that are falling apart?

Don’t feel bad if you haven’t a clue what they think. They have not been asked to debate these questions, and for the most part they have not strayed from the script to offer an idea or two of their own.

Republicans or Democrats, “they’re in a bubble of avoidance” on issues that “apply to 95 percent of people’s lives day to day,” said Liz J. Abzug, a New York political consultant.

This is, for sure, a lament that also arose in past elections. But there is added poignancy to it this time, given who is running.

In both parties, the front-runners are New Yorkers: former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Who better than they to raise the banner of urban America? The same might be said about Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a former mayor of Cleveland.

While we’re at it, the Republicans will hold their 2008 national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. After the horrific bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August, who better than they to discuss the federal role in repairing urban America’s worn infrastructure? There’s been not a peep about it in the debates.

Well, some experts say, what else can you expect?

“We don’t pay attention to cities unless there’s a riot,” said Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but that’s the truth. It takes a riot to put cities on the national agenda.”

candidates “hit the themes that are highest on sort of a generic public opinion poll of what the top issues are: terrorism, security, health care.”

Fred Siegel, a historian at Cooper Union, describes himself as a fan of both Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton. Neither, he says, has much to gain by concentrating on big-city issues. “Hillary’s more worried about Methodists in Ohio,” Professor Siegel said. And while “Rudy is playing up his achievements in New York,” he also “wants to cast himself as a national, not a local, figure.”

But to Bruce Katz, the director of metropolitan policy at the Brookings Institution, “the political class at the national level is about 20 years out of date as to how the country has changed because of population growth, demographic diversity and economic restructuring.”

“We’re a metro nation,” Mr. Katz said. “It’s time to start acting like one.” For him, that means discussing, preferably sooner than later, issues like climate change, housing, infrastructure and transportation.

“If you’re not talking about cities and suburbs, you might as well not be having the conversation,” he said, “because these are the places where all this really comes together.”