Partnerships

The Research and Analysis Division has taken the lead in developing different vehicles for research collaboration and is involved in different research groups in order to foster the development of an active, multi-disciplinary research community on issues related to public infrastructure in Canada's communities. These research collaborations involve other federal government departments and agencies, other levels of government, universities and research institutes, the private sector and other experts.

World Bank
Commonwealth Local Government Forum
Infrastructure Canada's Horizontal Research Roundtable on Infrastructure
ADM-Level Network on Infrastructure Research
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - International Futures Programme
Infrastructure Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories Research Collaboration

World Bank

On June 21, 2006, a Memorandum of Understanding in support of sustainable development objectives was signed between Infrastructure Canada and the World Bank.

Both the Government of Canada and the World Bank will work over the next two years towards a collaborative and integrated approach to assist cities in developing city performance indicators. Pilot cities will include Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal in Canada and the South American cities of San Paulo, Bogota, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre. It is anticipated that the draft city performance indicators and the applied results generated in the pilot cities would be presented by the World Bank at the next World Urban Forum in Nanjing, China in 2008.

Commonwealth Local Government Forum

Infrastructure Canada provides ongoing support for the development of the CLGF's Profile of Canada, which appears in the CLGF Handbook. INFC also provided support for the discussion paper D elivering Development through Local Leadership in the Commonwealth, which was used as a background piece for the CLGF's 2007 annual conference in Auckland, New Zealand.

Infrastructure Canada's Horizontal Research Roundtable on Infrastructure

Established in the fall of 2003 by the Research and Analysis Division, the Horizontal Research Roundtable on Infrastructure (HRRI) brings together more than 25 federal government departments and organizations to facilitate and foster targeted collaborative research on infrastructure. Members of the Roundtable meet regularly to share and strengthen their knowledge, identify opportunities to advance shared research interests and undertake new research on critical horizontal issues.

The HRRI's activities are currently focused on six priority areas for research:

Communities, Cities and Public Infrastructure;
The State of Infrastructure in Canada;
The Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Impacts of Public Infrastructure;
Financing Mechanisms for Public Infrastructure;
Technology, Innovation and Transformative Infrastructure; and
Governance Issues Related to Public Infrastructure.

For additional information, please see Our Research Results - HRRI.

ADM-Level Network on Infrastructure Research

In April 2003, Infrastructure Canada formed the ADM-level Network on Infrastructure Research to actively pursue opportunities to strengthen relationships among federal counterparts with an interest in infrastructure research. Currently about 40 ADM-level colleagues from 25 federal departments and agencies are members, exchanging information on research needs and activities, receiving regular updates from Infrastructure Canada on infrastructure research activities, and meeting once a year or so.

Later in 2003, as a direct result of the Network's first meeting, the Horizontal Research Roundtable on the State of Infrastructure (the predecessor to today's HRRI) was created to facilitate collaboration in areas of common interest within the federal family at the working-level. The ADM Network helps to guide the HRRI's activities (e.g., by identifying research priorities) and the HRRI's work feeds back into the Network to inform policy and decision-making.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - International Futures Programme

Infrastructure Canada has taken a leading role in a two-year research project that looks at the future of infrastructure, "Global Infrastructure Needs: Prospects and Implications for Public and Private Actors". Coordinated by the International Futures Programme of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the project examines the opportunities and challenges facing the infrastructure sector worldwide over the next 30 years, with the aim of developing policy recommendations for OECD governments to enhance the contribution of infrastructure to economic and social development. The study examines four sectors: transport; electricity; communication (including information infrastructure); and water.

The report “Infrastructure to 2030 - Telecom, Land Transport, Water and Electricity” was published in July 2006, and the follow-up report “Infrastructure to 2030: Mapping Policy for Electrictiy, Water and Transport” was released in August 2007.

Infrastructure Canada was one of the funders of the research project, and was part of the international steering group directing the work.

Infrastructure Canada has also partnered with the OECD, the Province of Ontario, and the City of Toronto to produce a Metropolitan Review of Toronto. This study will involve in-depth analysis of the economic, social, cultural, environmental and intergovernmental collaboration factors affecting the Toronto metropolitan region’s long-term prosperity. The study will be completed in early 2009

Infrastructure Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories Research Collaboration

Infrastructure Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories This link will lead you outside the Infrastructure Canada web site. Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) have developed a joint research initiative to improve understanding of the impacts of boom and bust economies on single-resource dependent communities in the North, with an emphasis on infrastructure related impacts. Through the initiative, Infrastructure Canada and MACA are working with communities, infrastructure practitioners, scholars and other experts to conduct relevant, targeted research that will support communities affected by the proposed development of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline and develop practical tools that will help communities minimize the negative impacts of resource development and maximize the positive ones.