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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.

"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.

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?

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.”