A “new” Liberal minority

I waited to write this edition until the results of the election were in…and that took a while to get a definitive answer.  What a change from expecting a Conservative majority to expecting a Liberal majority, to settling back to another Liberal minority.  But this is expected to be a “new” Liberal minority under Prime Minister Carney.  So what can we expect?

I know that whoever was elected, the federal public service was preparing for what they call “employment transition” (what we call job cuts) – some by layoff, but mostly by hiring freezes and attrition.  Given the financial crisis we are facing due to US trade policies, federal spending priorities will be refocused to supporting impacted sectors and their workers.  This may come at the expense of other federal programs.  We’ll have to just wait for now to see how all this plays out.

One thing Mr. Carney seems adamant about is housing – “Build, Build, Build!” is the slogan to tackle the housing challenges for Canada.  Our job then, as the water sector nationally, provincially and locally, is to insert ourselves at the planning table – to be clear from the start, that water, wastewater and stormwater services are critical to any housing projects.  This was already a trend under the last government, but will be amplified under this new government.  We just have to make sure that our existing infrastructure is not forgotten in the rush for new, expanded infrastructure.  We should expect a renewed Canada Infrastructure Plan (with housing focus), as well as programs from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. 

For us at CWWA, we’ll maintain our relationships with all of our federal staff contacts and work to bring you any news as soon as we know it.  We’ll all wait to see who is named to the new Cabinet, and start to build those new relationships.

Tariffs

They’re on, they’re off, they’re higher, they’re lower.   We continue to track these tariffs and try to assess the impact on our sector.  We completed our national survey of utilities, asking “what is it you buy, and how much?”  The response rate was not huge and the responses very wide and ranging.  We are trying to make some sense of that and will share the results soon.  What we really hope to come out of this survey is a collection of examples of “how” to address tariffs and “pro-Canadian/anti-US” purchasing by-laws.

We also share this data with our trade commissioners so that they understand the impact on our utilities.  Earlier this year, we wrote the Minister of Finance with a request to exempt our sector, but as it was election time, we got no formal response.  We’ll try this again when we hear who is in the next Cabinet.  We also asked our partners in the US (AWWA & WEF) to consider requesting the same exemption on their side of the border.  They have their hands filled with changes at the EPA and funding programs as a highest priority.  Meanwhile, they are trying to assess the impact of the tariffs on their own member utilities, and with that information, they can determine any political advocacy efforts.

On the Road Again

I feel like I’ve been on the road for months, and I still have 6 more weeks to go.  Hopefully you’ve seen me at the Americana event in Montreal, or the WEAO event in London, or the BCWWA event in Victoria.  Next on the list is the OWWA event in Blue Mountain, the Blue Cities event in Mississauga and finally AWWA’s ACE in Denver (where we are all working to maintain our strong Canada-US relationship in the water sector).

Robert