2020-21 Departmental Results Report
Results at a glance

Priority 1. Make investments that build stronger, more inclusive and resilient communities to improve quality of life while enabling local economic growth and creating good jobs

Over the 2020-21 fiscal year, Infrastructure Canada made significant investments in physical and social infrastructure and launched an unprecedented number of new initiatives. We worked in collaboration with partners and stakeholders to maximize the impact of projects such as the construction of major bridges, investments in infrastructure for rural communities, and structural and natural infrastructure projects to increase the resilience of communities that are impacted by natural disasters. This work supports economic growth, the creation of jobs, and the mitigation of risks related to climate change. It also promotes greater social inclusion.  

As of this year, Infrastructure Canada is six years into the 12-year Investing in Canada Plan (IICP or “the Plan”), for which it is the lead department in horizontal coordination. Under this Plan, the Government of Canada committed to investing more than $180 billion in infrastructure. The IICP is designed to create long-term economic growth, support the resilience of communities, and build social inclusion and socio-economic outcomes for all Canadians.

An important component of the Department’s investments in stronger communities is its work on major bridges, which is comprised of the Samuel De Champlain Bridge Corridor Project (SDCBC) and the Gordie Howe International Bridge Project (GHIB). The SDCBC is fully operational, while outstanding construction work is expected to be completed in 2021-2022. The Department also collaborated with partners, making progress on the implementation of the Réseau express métropolitain in the bridge’s dedicated transit corridor, which will augment public transit in Montreal.

The Department also continued to support the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority (WDBA) in delivering on its mandate. The bridge is in its third year of construction, which continued without stoppage on all project components throughout the pandemic. Infrastructure Canada also promoted a stronger relationship with Bridging North America (BNA), the private-sector partner of the WDBA. BNA is delivering the Community Benefits Plan, which is a key feature of the GHIB that identifies opportunities that can advance economic, social or environmental conditions for the local communities, providing positive outcomes for the Windsor-Detroit region.

In terms of investing in rural communities, Infrastructure Canada worked with partners across the country to develop a rural lens that is aligned with the Rural Opportunity, National Prosperity: An Economic Development Strategy for Rural Canada. This lens was also applied to important Government initiatives such as the COVID-19 response and the Universal Broadband Fund and is used when developing programs and policies, ensuring that they take into account ways to be more accessible to rural communities.

In 2020-21, Infrastructure Canada also worked to increase the resilience of communities that are impacted by the effects of climate change through the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) and investments in structural and natural infrastructure. Through DMAF, a total of 69 infrastructure projects from communities of all sizes across Canada, representing a total federal contribution of over $1.9 billion, including over $891 million for 34 projects in rural communities, were approved since 2019. These projects have provided communities across the country with critical investments in a range of large-scale infrastructure solutions, such as the construction of seawalls, berms and dykes, wildfire mitigation activities, rehabilitation of storm water systems and restoration of wetlands and shorelines.

Further to meeting planned results in promoting resilient communities and enabling economic growth, Infrastructure Canada worked during the course of the pandemic to achieve a number of additional outcomes, thus improving the quality of life for Canadians. These outcomes are detailed in Results: What we achieved.

Priority 2.  Support informed decision-making by strengthening capacity in data, analytics, research, and results reporting

In 2020-21, Infrastructure Canada continued to work collaboratively with stakeholders across governments and the private and academic sectors to build a base of knowledge and understanding to advance departmental priorities and deliver on results for Canadians. This included working closely with key stakeholders and Crown Corporations in the area of alternative finance to bring forward research and data in matters pertaining to Public Private Partnerships (P3s) and producing reports on issues pertaining to global trends in the P3 industry.

Furthermore, as part of its ongoing commitment to provide consistent, comprehensive and easy to understand reporting on the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), Infrastructure Canada engaged delivery partners on data automation for public progress reporting, building on lessons learned from existing horizontal automated reporting processes. In June 2021, Infrastructure Canada started to provide the status of infrastructure project funding applications received in 2020-21 that are currently under review for the ICIP on its website. The new web-based project list includes filters that facilitate the searching of projects submitted by provinces and territories. This new resource complements existing publicly available tools such as the geo-map, the web-based funding table, and regular departmental reporting.

In addition to the public reporting, the Department published various datasets in partnership with Statistics Canada to ensure support of informed decision-making. This partnership also allows the Department to disaggregate and publish more data about rural communities. Already, this has resulted in new rural-specific analytical publications on monthly Labour Force Survey data, quarterly Rural Business Outlooks and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. Further, Infrastructure Canada published its second round of the survey of Canada’s Core Public Infrastructure (CCPI) providing state and condition data for nine key infrastructure assets, plus trends in asset management across Canada for reference year 2018.

Infrastructure Canada also strengthened the collection of data through the Canadian Cities Pilot Project, funding a three-year initiative in 2019 to improve data capacity across 15 Canadian cities through the development and use of standardized data on municipal services delivery and quality of life. Participating cities have made progress in 2020-21, participating in data workshops, capacity-building activities, and standardizing their city-level data collection.

The Department will continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders through the NIA to strengthen research, data collection and results reporting. The Assessment will examine Canada’s infrastructure needs with a goal of establishing an evidence-based picture of infrastructure in Canada and a forward-looking framework, as well as determining the best ways to fund and finance infrastructure projects in Canada.

Priority 3.  Work collaboratively with partners to deliver on infrastructure priorities and to advance investments quickly

Effective collaboration is integral to advancing the Department’s policy objectives, including long-term sustainable economic growth, a low-carbon economy and building inclusive communities. Infrastructure Canada has been collaborating with numerous partners to provide oversight and investment in projects in a range of areas including climate-smart and COVID-19 resilient infrastructure. This includes working with the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) as well as with other federal departments and agencies on the Investing in Canada Plan where, as lead department for the IICP, Infrastructure Canada maintains oversight and reporting on the Plan as a whole.

As part of working with our partners, Infrastructure Canada took steps to ensure that proponents viewed projects through a climate lens to inform the delivery of cleaner and more resilient outcomes. Under the Integrated Bilateral Agreements (IBAs), certain projects must submit a climate lens assessment as a part of the Department’s aim to build capacity in climate-smart infrastructure that will help combat climate change, reduce energy costs, and provide Canadians with safer and more resilient communities.

In terms of advancing investments quickly, the Department took initiative in working with other orders of government to address barriers to timely infrastructure investment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Infrastructure Canada worked with provinces and territories to implement a temporary new COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream, providing added flexibility to fund quick-start, short-term projects that might not otherwise be eligible under the existing funding streams and features an accelerated approval process.

In addition, Infrastructure Canada worked closely with the CIB and provided them with a wide range of support services, strategic advice and guidance related to Government of Canada policies and priorities. Our work on these important commitments will remain a priority for the foreseeable future as we continue to support the CIB’s role in delivering financing to attract private sector and institutional investment and to leverage the capital and expertise of the private sector.

For more information on the Infrastructure Canada’s plans, priorities and results achieved, see the “Results: what we achieved” section of this report.