Critical Infrastructure Supply and Resilience

Public procurement procedures pose many challenges for adapting critical infrastructure to climate change.

By favoritizing the lowest-priced bidders, calls for tenders tend to reduce the integration of performance and innovation criteria, preventing the implementation of sustainable and resilient solutions. This approach hinders the adoption of new solutions and complicates the modernization of critical infrastructure.

In addition, rigid regulatory frameworks and a lack of flexibility in public procurement processes make it difficult to experiment with and/or implement new approaches. Municipalities, often constrained by limited budgets, are turning to traditional solutions, which are proving increasingly unsustainable and, therefore, more costly in the long term in the face of growing climate impacts.

According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, a budget of more than $5 billion annually should be allocated to help Canadian municipalities adapt and prepare for climate change.