A practical plan to address $570 million of infrastructure reported in poor or very poor condition.

Victoria has an infrastructure challenge that cannot be solved by postponing it. The 2024 Corporate Asset Management Strategy identified approximately $570 million of City infrastructure in poor or very poor condition. The City’s current financial plan also says its asset-management system encompasses more than $3 billion of City owned and managed assets. These assets support the services residents depend on every day: roads, sidewalks and public buildings, underground water, sewer and stormwater systems.

Poor condition does not mean that every one of those assets must be replaced immediately. It does mean Victoria needs a disciplined, risk-based plan that identifies which assets create the greatest service, safety, financial and resilience risks and addresses them before deterioration turns into emergency failure and higher costs.

The Outcome

The goal is straightforward: stop the infrastructure backlog from becoming a larger financial and service problem for the next generation.

Victoria should know what it owns, understand its condition and risk, fund renewal predictably, deliver capital projects with professional discipline, coordinate construction intelligently and publicly measure whether the backlog is improving.

Infrastructure is not an optional extra. It is one of the basic responsibilities of municipal government. The question should not be whether we can afford to manage it properly. The question is how much more it will cost if we do not.

Treat Infrastructure as a Core Municipal Responsibility

I would make infrastructure renewal a core financial and management priority. The objective would be to move from a reactive model, repairing failures and responding to emergencies, to a planned asset-management model that makes the right investment at the right time.

How I Would Fund the Response

My priorities would be to broaden the tax base through additional housing and commercial development and aggressively pursue senior-government infrastructure funding, while also reviewing existing City spending and capital priorities. I would not begin with the assumption that the answer is another large property-tax increase or simply higher charges on new housing.

Victoria’s adopted 2026 budget already includes $160.1 million in capital improvements, while the overall property-tax increase is 7.28%. That makes prioritization especially important: infrastructure renewal must be integrated with affordability and the City’s overall financial capacity.

1. Establish a Public, Risk-Based Infrastructure Renewal Plan

The first step is to know exactly what we own, what condition it is in, what is most critical, when intervention is needed and what it will cost. I would require a long-term renewal plan that ranks major assets using transparent criteria such as public safety, probability and consequence of failure, service disruption, remaining useful life, climate and seismic resilience, repair-versus-replacement economics and opportunities to coordinate work.

The plan should identify the highest-risk assets first, establish annual and multi-year renewal targets, show the estimated funding requirement and report progress publicly. A $570 million condition figure is useful, but residents also need to know how quickly that backlog is changing and whether the highest-risk assets are actually being addressed.

2. Protect Infrastructure Funding and Improve Capital-Project Discipline

Infrastructure competes with many worthwhile priorities, but deferring necessary renewal can simply transfer a larger bill to future taxpayers. I would establish a predictable multi-year infrastructure funding framework and protect essential renewal from being repeatedly displaced by lower-priority discretionary spending.

Every major capital project should have a defined scope, approved budget, schedule, contingency, risk register and accountable project owner. Material changes in cost, schedule or scope should be reported publicly against the original approved baseline. Better project controls cannot eliminate construction risk, but they can identify problems earlier and improve accountability.

3. Grow the Tax Base Rather Than Relying Only on Higher Tax Rates

Victoria cannot sustainably address a large infrastructure backlog simply by increasing taxes on the existing assessment base. More housing and commercial investment can broaden that base and generate additional recurring municipal revenue. Faster, more predictable permitting and responsible development are therefore part of the infrastructure solution.

The City should also continue pursuing provincial and federal infrastructure funding, particularly where projects improve seismic resilience, climate adaptation or regional systems. Victoria’s accelerated underground renewal program demonstrates the value of this approach: the City says its 10-year program will increase capital infrastructure investment by 40%, with $53.8 million allocated to 78 projects and $15.3 million supported through Infrastructure Canada’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.

4. Coordinate Work So We Do It Once

When a street or corridor is opened for major work, the City should coordinate underground utilities, road reconstruction, sidewalks, accessibility, transportation improvements, lighting, trees and other planned work wherever practical. Digging up the same corridor repeatedly wastes money and creates unnecessary disruption for residents and businesses.

The City is already developing an integrated asset operations and management system covering facilities, underground utilities, fleet, street operations, transportation, surface infrastructure and parks. I would use that information to improve sequencing, preventive maintenance and long-range capital planning.

5. Measure the Backlog, and Make the Results Public

Infrastructure management needs measurable outcomes. I would support a public infrastructure scorecard reporting the value and percentage of assets in good, fair, poor and very poor condition; annual renewal investment; highest-risk projects completed; capital projects delivered on budget and schedule; emergency failures; deferred maintenance; and the projected infrastructure funding gap.

The key measure is not simply how much money City Hall spends. It is whether asset condition and risk are improving over time.