WESTERN PRODUCER — Rural concerns that include improving access to broadband internet are emphasized in a report detailing how Canada can best promote its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The crisis has shown how the federal and municipal levels of government can work together to protect people, communities and commerce, said the Partners for Canada’s Recovery report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
“Now we have an opportunity to learn from this pandemic and come out stronger than ever on the other side. But we can do this only by working together, as partners, for Canada’s recovery.”
The report offered recommendations for MPs to help municipalities following the federal election Sept. 20, which resulted in a minority Liberal government. Although the 38-page document also contains the concerns of urban areas, it outlines several rural priorities, said Robin Kurpjuweit, chair of the FCM’s rural caucus.
It recommends adding at least $150 million per year to the federal Universal Broadband Fund. The idea is to create a stream of needs-based funding for the next four years for areas across Canada that are the hardest for broadband to reach.
It would target small internet service providers and community partners who struggle to compete for funding with areas that are easier to serve, helping ensure “federal dollars drive cost-effective and rapid results where they are needed.”
Other recommendations include:
- Convening a national roundtable on digital infrastructure involving all levels of government to create a Canada 2030 vision for broadband, “ensuring deeper co-ordination with provinces and territories so broadband funding streams and deployment strategies are complementary and future-proof.”
- Launching a municipal digital capacity-building program to develop technical expertise, boosting local and regional broadband infrastructure planning and deployment in underserved communities.
- Developing a framework to monitor the progress of broadband to ensure communities see results, including requiring the federal government to annually report to Parliament.
However, the wider priority is improving and maintaining all rural infrastructure, not just the internet, said Kurpjuweit, who is also a councillor for Cypress County near Medicine Hat, Alta.
The report said municipalities own 60 percent of Canada’s infrastructure, as well as “deliver vital services, and help achieve federal social, economic and environmental objectives.” However, their core revenue tool is the property tax, which only amounts to about 10 cents out of every Canadian tax dollar, it added.
"Yet (municipalities) are rarely at the table when other governments discuss national challenges. With no ability to run deficits, they are confronting 21st century challenges with 19th-century fiscal tools: user fees, property taxes and other land-based tools that will continue to erode with COVID-accelerated transitions to e-commerce, telework and digitization.”
The FCM has worked with the federal government to help shape the Canadian Community-Building Fund, formerly the Gas Tax Fund. It helps pay for local infrastructure projects ranging from roads to arenas.
Kurpjuweit said Ottawa has been asked to “increase that fund to give rural municipalities the opportunity to spend on infrastructure projects in their communities where they need to, and hopefully create jobs and opportunities for people in the area to get back to work.”
The federal budgets for 2019 and 2021 each included a one-time doubling of the fund, transferring an additional $2.2 billion to communities each year. However, the situation faced by Alberta’s rural municipalities in particular underscores the need for a permanent solution.
Rural Municipalities of Alberta announced in early 2021 its members were collectively owed $245 million in unpaid property taxes from oil and gas companies, despite agreeing to tax breaks to help the province’s energy industry. A new tally is expected for this February.
Rural municipalities depend on such revenue to manage about 75 percent of the province’s roads and about 60 percent of its bridges, RMA president Paul McLauchlin said in a recent interview. Producers need this infrastructure to get their products to market, making it essential to plans to diversify Alberta’s economy by strengthening agriculture, he added.
Some of the problems faced by Western Canada were recently highlighted in the final report of FCM’s Western Economic Solutions Taskforce, which was launched in 2019. Its recommendations included helping the region’s energy-based communities as part of a “just transition” to net-zero emissions.
This could be partly achieved by creating an Energy Community Infrastructure Fund to support municipalities in oil and gas producing regions, as well as by “incorporating municipal perspectives into the proposed Futures Fund for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, and the proposed Just Transition Act.”
Other recommendations included fully implementing compensation for farmers for the cost of carbon pricing, as announced in the federal budget for 2021.
