Local and Urban Politics

Session: E11 - Roundtable: Trudeau and Urban Infrastructure

Date: Jun 1, 2017 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location: VIC-103 (Victoria Building)| iOS / Outlook

Participants & Authors/Auteurs:

The government of Justin Trudeau has initiated significant changes in the system of federal infrastructure financing. Building on its commitments to increase federal funding, on November 1, 2016 the government announced the creation of a new Federal Infrastructure Bank. This roundtable will focus on the implications of the Bank – and of the broader Trudeau reform agenda – for the financing and governance of urban infrastructure in Canada. Key questions to be considered include the following: How might the emergence of a federally-supported infrastructure borrowing mechanism affect the availability of financing for urban infrastructure? Are actual federal priorities in urban infrastructure changing under Trudeau, and if so, how? What do the Trudeau reforms in this field mean for transparency and accountability in infrastructure governance? How will the existence of an Infrastructure Bank influence the character of private sector involvement, and what are the implications for the future of public-private partnerships? Are the current reforms changing the politicized, ad hoc project decision model that prevailed under previous federal governments? And can an Infrastructure Bank address the problem of intergovernmental coordination in a fiscally and politically disaggregated system that has long produced major coordination challenges?