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FCM launches The State of Canada's Cities and Communities 2012

The State of Canada's Cities and Communities 2012 surveys the national challenges playing out in the places Canadians live, work, and raise their families.

The report has two parts. Part One takes a look at recent fiscal trends affecting our cities and communities. It reviews the financial challenges cities and communities have struggled with during the past two-and-half- decades, and what progress has been made in addressing them.

Part Two looks at the state of intergovernmental cooperation in Canada. It focuses on three areas where federal, provincial-territorial, and municipal governments have overlapping roles and responsibilities: policing and public safety, housing, and environmental sustainability.

The report shows that despite recent investments, the outlook for our cities and communities is uncertain. Local governments continue to operate without a stable, secure share of the total tax revenues generated by their communities. They also remain vulnerable to offloading of costly responsibilities by other orders of government. As a result, they are caught in a chronic state of fiscal insecurity, without the stable financing and settled responsibilities to effectively plan for the future. 

 

FCM launches Municipal Infrastructure Forum

The Municipal Infrastructure Forum brings together local government, business, and professional associations to support the federal government's new, long-term infrastructure plan, and to ask how they can work together to build the roads, bridges, water and transportation systems Canada needs to support its families, businesses, and national economy.

 

Federal government promises new infrastructure plan will deliver long-term solutions

On November 30, 2011, The Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Region of Quebec, launched an infrastructure planning process. The new process promises to stop Canada's aging municipal infrastructure from declining. A growing partnership between all orders of government generated this process, which will culminate in a new long-term infrastructure plan.

"Our combined efforts in fighting the recession proved that governments work best when they work together," said FCM's President, Berry Vrbanovic. "Today's launch is one big step toward keeping common sense collaboration alive in Ottawa, and protecting core investments in Canada's infrastructure when today's programs expire in 2014."

FCM will provide information and updates related to the process for developing a long-term infrastructure plan for municipalities. Learn more about what FCM is doing to find common-sense, long-term solutions to the municipal infrastructure deficit.

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Page Updated: 29/05/2012