Ontario is the first province in Canada to regulate asset management planning at the municipal level. Regulation Asset Management Planning for Municipal Infrastructure, or O. Reg. 588/17, requires all 444 Ontario municipalities to have a strategic asset management policy in place by July 1, 2019, an asset management plan for core infrastructure assets by July 1, 2022, and for all other municipal infrastructure assets by July 1, 2025.

Importantly, the regulation also requires municipalities to inventory, value, and integrate green infrastructure – including natural infrastructure and, by extension, natural assets – into their asset management planning.

Ontario’s regulation is helping address the infrastructure challenge that Canadian municipalities are facing: according to the 2019 Canadian Infrastructure Report Card, much of Canada’s municipal infrastructure is aging and about one-third of it is in poor or very poor condition. That means it needs attention immediately or within the next five years.

Local governments are responsible for providing core services such as drinking water, wastewater and stormwater management, transportation, and recreation. But they have limited sources for revenue and therefore struggle to meet the demands of renewing and expanding infrastructure assets.

To help Ontario municipalities navigate and implement O. Reg. 588/17 as it relates to integrating natural assets and natural asset management, MNAI has developed a report: Advancing and Integrating Municipal Natural Asset Management through Asset Management Planning in Ontario. The report explains the strategic opportunities and advantages of adopting natural asset management, how to develop the strategy, a 13- step framework that municipalities can easily follow, and finally case studies as examples. The full report is available for download (here).

We hope municipalities in Ontario and all other provinces find this report a helpful resource.