Through Infrastructure Funding Opportunities

Decision-Maker Summary

Canadian local governments are seeking new strategies to deliver their core services in more financially and environmentally sustainable ways, including turning to infrastructure asset management as a key tool to manage infrastructure. Municipalities are increasingly recognizing that natural assets such as aquifers, forests, streams and foreshores can provide equivalent or better services to many engineered assets. Municipal natural asset management offers a sustainable solution to the multifaceted problems of supplying municipal services in the face of aging infrastructure, urban growth, and declining budgets. As this approach is being implemented in a growing number of Canadian municipalities, it is important to support the development of best practices and an understanding of how to facilitate widespread adoption of municipal natural asset management.

Growing evidence of the value proposition of municipal natural asset management provides the rationale for funding of natural assets through infrastructure funding programs. Infrastructure funding programs are designed to deliver and improve services for communities. Investing in natural assets and the management of natural assets is often a cost-effective approach. However, eligibility requirements, such as the restricting of funding to tangible capital assets under some infrastructure programs, can make it potentially more difficult to fund specific investments in natural assets projects and natural asset management. This summary provides an overview of Canada’s major infrastructure funding programs that offer potential opportunities to fund municipal natural asset management.