Cities that Work for People: Connecting Social Policy and Infrastructure for Resilient Communities (HLPF 2026 Side Event)

Welcome everyone to Canada's official side event at the high level political forum.
The event is called Cities at Work for People, Connecting Social Policy and infrastructure for resilient communities.
My name is John Beale.
I'm the Director of the Local Futures Initiative at Conrad Grable University College at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
I'm joined by an esteemed panel today to talk about connecting social policy and infrastructure.
A few housekeeping items here.
We will have simultaneous interpretation that's available in English and in French, and the session will be recorded and is available on UN web TV.
Now, it is Canada's official side event, but we are also very pleased to be joined by co sponsors in the Republic of Germany and the Republic of Peru.
Today's session, what we're really looking to explore is how can strategies and solutions for confronting various challenges related to the mounting pressures and risks that communities face globally, how can we focus on physical infrastructure investments and social inclusion outcomes such as accessibility, equity, and housing stability, and how can those be considered together? Building resilient communities requires infrastructure planning that takes account of community needs and local realities from the very beginning.
What we hope to do today in this event is demonstrate how infrastructure delivers on SDG 11 outcomes when it's paired with strong social policies and community based approaches, as well as how social programs in turn depend on accessible, well designed infrastructure to succeed.
Our agenda for today, we'll have some opening remarks followed by a panel discussion, and there will be some time for questions and answers towards the end.
It's my honor to introduce the Honorable Gregor Robertson, Minister of Housing and Infrastructure and minister responsible for Pacific Economic Development, Canada.
Minister Robertson is member of Parliament for Vancouver, Fraser Views and South Burnaby and serves as serves as a former mayor of Vancouver, where he led major advances in sustainable urban development, including investments in transit, cycling infrastructure, and innovative housing solutions to address affordability and homelessness.
So over to you.
Thank you, John M.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you for joining us today.
It's my honor to welcome you to Canada's side event, the cities that work for People, Connecting Social Policy and infrastructure for resilient communities.
I extend my thanks to our co hosts, Germany and Peru, our distinguished speakers, all of you joining us today for sharing your brilliance here at this critical time.
Start by acknowledging we are on the traditional territory of the Lenape people and offer our respect to all indigenous peoples with these enduring ties to the lands and waters that we live upon.
Before, as John said, before entering federal politics, I served as mayor of Vancouver for a decade.
I worked with cities around the world on climate, energy, and urban development.
Those experiences certainly showed me what um that sustainable communities are really more than just those environmental goals.
They are about ensuring that the people can find affordable housing, access reliable public transit, live close to the essential services that they depend on every day.
These realities really sit at the heart of sustainable development goal 11, which is building inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities.
Canada is facing a series of challenges accessibility to housing, to homelessness.
Also, we have issues related to infrastructure, aging infrastructure and many other changes.
So these are closely related, one, another and our solutions also need to be lesions.
That's why we have an extensive list of sustainable development goals.
Too often, infrastructure and social policy are treated as separate conversations.
We can't invest meaningfully in the places where people live and move and connect without considering the social policies and services that help everybody thrive.
In turn, the social policies cannot succeed without being grounded in inclusive, accessible, and resilient physical environments.
As a mayor, I saw that housing decision was also a transit decision, a climate decision, an economic decision.
This is really the essence of people centered place based approach, one that recognizes that global challenges are experienced locally and that the effective solutions must reflect the lived experience of our communities.
When affordable housing, accessible transportation and welcoming public spaces are designed alongside social policies, they strengthen inclusion, the well being and resilience that we need to come from these decisions.
Sustainable construction also requires an innovative, productive industry with the capacity to build at scale.
Here we find ourselves leaning into SDG nine, the industry innovation and infrastructure goal to ensure that we get the best potential outcome in pursuit of SDG 11.
It does matter how we build.
In this world, we have to decarbonize how we build.
We have to ensure that we are being more efficient with materials, with all the energy use in our built environment.
In Canada, we are advancing a practical sustainable development agenda that brings together these priorities.
We are increasing housing supply, improving housing affordability, and investing in the resilient community infrastructure that supports it, including public transit and active transportation.
We are aligning the physical systems that shape these desired social outcomes.
This requires coordinated funding, planning, and partnership across all levels of government.
Sustainable development is not only about protecting our planet, it's about building the cities and communities that work for everyone.
Resilient infrastructure also creates good jobs.
Reliable transit connects people to economic opportunity.
Affordable housing is one of the strongest foundations of economic mobility.
When housing is out of reach, productivity and health suffer.
When infrastructure is strained, communities struggle to grow sustainably and they're less able to withstand the natural disasters that are increasingly damaging our communities.
When all of these costs rise, the opportunities narrow.
In September of 2025, the government of Canada launched Build Canada Homes, a new agency dedicated to building affordable homes at scale.
This is below market non market housing, of which Canada is in short supply.
I'm personally very excited about the opportunities that our new agency Build Canada Homes allows because it ushers in a new approach to how we build housing in our country.
If you want different results, you have to do things differently.
And that's exactly what we're doing.
We are leveraging public land.
We are pulling on flexible financing, working at nonprofit and public private partnerships, and modernizing the home building sector in a coordinated way to deliver homes faster and more affordably.
That's speaking to the industry modernization that we need to see with home building.
That includes scaling up modular and factory built housing.
Europe and Asia are considerably far ahead of us in terms of modernizing construction.
In Canada, we have enormous opportunities to work with low carbon materials such as mass timber.
We have some of the world's great forests as part of our resource base to build with, and we are very interested in collaborating with international partners to advance that much faster.
We're also aligning our housing and infrastructure directly through approaches like transit oriented communities that support new builds near public transit.
Connecting the new housing to affordable means of transit connects people and jobs to jobs and essential services.
We're also funding housing enabling infrastructures such as the wastewater, water, stormwater systems to support housing growth while advancing another of the big sustainable development goals.
That's number six, clean water and sanitation.
Obviously, all these have to work in harmony.
We are investing in climate resilient infrastructure everywhere with all of the infrastructure we build going forward.
It has to be future proofed and ready for the impacts that we know are more and more frequent and obviously those investments protect people and livelihoods.
Housing infrastructure and climate pressures do not operate in isolation.
The boundaries that are often drawn in the policies don't reflect how challenging and how the challenges are experienced in people's day to day lives.
That's why Canada's approach is about aligning those priorities and policies with how we build.
I'll approach the Daniel Trump lab.
2030 agenda, I mean horizon, we are trying to make decisions as many of you in Canada, we are adapting over time.
It's why world collaboration is key.
Fortunate to hear from speakers representing global, national and local perspectives.
Honored to have a mayor from Yorkton, Saskatchewan joining here on the speaker's panel to hear that local perspective.
We take that very seriously in our country.
Their insights will help ground this conversation in the practical experience and the forward looking solutions that we need.
Let's remember the 2030 agenda is not just a roadmap, it is a call to action.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to bring us all together and look forward to hearing the dialogues Buku.
Thank you.
Very much, Minister Robertson.
It's my pleasure to invite our co sponsor from the Republic of Germany, doctor Babel Kefler Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Doctor Kofler has also served as a member of the Bundesttag since 2004 and has previously held the role of commissioner for Human Rights Policy and humanitarian aid, bringing a strong focus on inclusion and global partnerships.
Please, the floor is yours.
Well, thank you very much, honorable Minister, honorable colleagues on the panel, mayors from York and from South Britain.
We also brought a mayor from Germany here to really have the cooperation on that level then.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
First of all, I really want to thank Canada for coming up with the idea of such an important topic for having a side event on that such an important topic.
For us, it's a great honor to be part of that discussion today.
We are discussing how we can shape cities, how we can offer good quality for the citizens, for all citizens who live in our cities and communities, and how to promote equal opportunities, safety, sustainable living.
I think this is the question which is in the heart of the discussion we will have today.
Despite progresses we made in the last decades in really fostering or supporting sustainable urban development, we know that there are a lot of challenges still persisting.
For example, yes, there's investment in infrastructure.
But if we are honest, the investment in infrastructure in mortal and bricks is most times much quicker than the social inclusion which has to come immediately within that constructing the new infrastructure.
Um, infrastructure is built, but we all see that not everybody or everyone is benefiting the same way.
Not everybody has the same access to communal services, is included in the same way when crises are occurring, when reaction is needed, for example, with floods or with heat waves.
We see today that estimated 1.2 billion people worldwide live in informal settlements.
And that is in effect in many parts of the world, and in some parts, they are already representing more than half of the population in the cities.
At the same time, large parts of infrastructure and housing remain, as I was pointing out, only accessible for a few people or maybe not a few, but not the majority of citizens.
Well, addressing this disparity between physical development and social inclusion is increasingly urgent in a few of what lies ahead.
As European, if I look to my neighboring continent Africa in Sub Sahara Africa alone, urban population are projected to nearly triple by mid century and two thirds of the infrastructure needed by 2050 has yet not to be built.
Thérèse is also great opportunities in that fact, big challenges, but also the opportunity to do better and to look ahead.
And that is why German Development Cooperation is supporting a just transition in cities worldwide.
A transition to low carbon lifestyles that is socially just and leaves no one behind.
Of course, we cannot do that alone.
That would be really a little bit overestimating our forces.
We are working with partners around the globe and like to promote integrated urban development across sectors.
That's also important from housing to mobility, from water supply to waste management.
And we always try to combine this approach with a strong focus on inclusive governance.
Together with our partners, we involve the people who are affected in planning, and we are organizing services close to the community.
When we connect bricks and mortar, the social inclusion and local ownership, We help build cities that are more sustainable in social test, making the people more resilient to future challenges and crisis.
We are partnering with countries, with the local level, with civil society, but we are also partnering with the UN level with UN Habitat, which takes this integrated approach.
It promotes poverty oriented, gender responsive and disability inclusive urban planning as the essential global standard and we are very happy to support from the German side UN habitat in that endeavor.
Good policy design at the national level often does not automatically translate into change at neighborhood level, and local innovations rarely feed back into national SDG processes.
And we are also here closing that gap.
The gap that is one of the central challenges, I'm sure we will discuss today.
Therefore, for us, it is important to support partner countries also in their fiscal decentralization.
That's why we have communities also here, but at the other end, we don't have to only pass on the challenges and the duties, but there has to be at least some financement.
I have to say that my mayors are watching me.
But there has to be some financing and Of course, alongside with the passing on of tasks and duties.
This fiscal decentralization and the effort to support the community and the local level is key.
We promote partnerships between German municipalities and their counterparts in partner countries to jointly develop solutions for sustainable urban development.
As co chair of Cop 28 Coalition for High Ambition multilevel Partnership for Climate Action, Germany advocates for a better alignment of national and sub national governance.
In this spirit, more than ten sub national representatives are part of our German delegation also here at the HLPF.
All of these efforts from global alliances to local fiscal reforms and municipal partnerships, pursue one objective to create cities that work for people.
This is where infrastructure and social policy are connected, where no one is left behind, and where resilience is built from the neighborhood level upwards.
Germany will take the insights from today's discussion into our bilateral partnerships and into our engagement in the new urban agenda process.
I'm looking forward very much to that conversation we have today, and I want to thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you both for helping open our session today in a great way.
I'd like to now introduce our speakers for the panel.
To my left here, Mr.
Kamal Kishore, special representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
With nearly three decades of experience across government, the UN and civil society, Mr.
Kishore has worked at every level from local recovery efforts to global policy.
He previously led India's National Disaster Management Authority and the G 20 working group on disaster risk reduction and spent over a decade with UNDP supporting recovery and resilience across Asia.
His work focuses on strengthening the link between infrastructure, risk reduction, and resilient communities, making him a leading voice on advancing SEG 11 in practice.
Welcome.
I'd like to now also introduce Mayor Aaron Keenley the mayor of the city of Yorkton, Saskatchewan.
Mayor Kenley was elected in 2024 after serving on city council 2016-2020.
With a background as an entrepreneur and business leader, he brings a practical solutions focused approach to local governance.
Known for his collaborative and adaptive leadership style, Mayor keenly emphasizes partnership across council, staff, and community to support resilient and inclusive growth.
His experience spanning business development and municipal leadership offers a grounded local perspective on how cities can respond to economic and social challenges in real time.
So welcome.
And our third speaker, Mayor Barbara Meyer, Mayor and head of the Department for Finance and Sustainability of the city of Zbrchn in Germany and representative of the Lord Mayor.
With a background in economics and political science, she's previously advised on Federal State Financial relations at the Sarand Ministry of Finance.
She plays an active role in national municipal finance discussions and co authors Germany's State Finance Report.
Mayor Meyer brings a strong focus on linking fiscal policy, sustainability, and urban development, offering a valuable perspective on how cities can align financial decision making with inclusive, resilient outcomes.
Welcome.
Welcome to each of you.
I'll start maybe we'll have some opening remarks from each of the panelists.
Mr.
Kusure if we can start with you maybe helping us set the scene and making the connections between integrating social policy and infrastructure as a way to reduce urban vulnerability and strengthen inclusive preventive resilience.
The floor is yours.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the opportunity and thank you, Minister.
Thank you, State Secretary for those remarks and hugely applaud Canada's leadership on these issues alongside other member states, including Germany.
What you're trying to do in housing is really something that the world will be watching and hoping to learn from housing crisis is all over, whether it's north, south, east, west.
Wonderful that I have this opportunity.
Just want to say that as we work towards sustainable cities, cities that work for everyone, there is another trend.
Cities from across the world, from Mumbai to Brisbne, from Valencia to Venice, cities all over the world are experiencing disastrous, unprecedented floods.
We saw earthquakes in Turkey in 2023, more recently in Venezuela.
And we are no longer in a situation where disasters were happening out there in the rural hinterlands.
Disasters are happening in the cities and they are hugely impacting communities, impacting local economy, impacting national economy, and, you know, having, you know, like having impacts which basically extend for decades.
It is not what we hear in the newspapers are catastrophic disasters, but there isn't everyday disaster happening in cities, both in the North and the South.
So it is absolutely essential as we try to close the gap on SDG 11 that resilience is a part of it and an integral central part of it.
It is really important that city planning takes into account hazard maps.
The regulation takes into account the fact that all the new infrastructure and all housing is resilient to hazards that a city is exposed to.
But I also want to say that it is not just about physical things.
It's not just about hazard maps.
You know, hazard maps is just one input.
The causes of vulnerability are more structural.
There is inequality, there is a vulnerability.
It is only a certain set of people who get relegated to floodplains.
You know, it is only a certain set of people who tend to build their informal settlements on unstable slopes that slide down when there is an extreme rainfall.
So there really has to be an inclusion lens to reducing risk as well.
In that whole thing, the whole notion of urban services, who gets the service in terms of waste collection, in terms of desalting of drains so that when there is extreme rainfall, they actually function as storm water drains.
In all of this, the key role of public participation in the imagination of a resilient future.
We just heard from our honorable state secretary about the infrastructure gap, 65% of infrastructure is yet to be built.
But as we build the infrastructure, it's not just the physical dimension, whose infrastructure are we building? For whom? There are instances where you have infrastructure that has been built extremely well.
It is resilient by itself, but it is creating vulnerabilities downstream.
You have, you know, piers of elevated metro line which are inside a drainage channel.
As a result, people taking the metro are just fine, but people living in the shadow of the metro are getting flooded.
I think there has to be that so What is the imagination when you are spending $5 billion on developing new infrastructure in terms of participation? Whose vision is being implemented in developing infrastructure? Likewise, integrating nature based solutions.
Nature is not outside the city, nature is very much a part of the city as well.
Yeah.
I also want to say that I'm really delighted there are two mayors on this panel.
I think cities are really leading the charge on reducing risk and building resilience.
We run a campaign called making cities resilient by 2030.
We have nearly 2000 cities that are part of it, but cities are constrained.
The municipal finances in many cities, particularly in developing countries, is really, you know, there is no fiscal space.
Cities are spending 80% to 90% of their revenue in just paying salaries.
What is the new imagination that we can bring to that? Let me now turn my attention a little bit to housing.
I want to quote just one statistic.
A little over two weeks ago, we had a big earthquake in Venezuela.
50% to 60% initial indication of losses are in the housing sector.
While Honorable Minister, we try to close the housing gap, it is really important that we close that gap in a manner that we build resilient housing which can withstand the hazards not just of now, but also into the future.
It is also an issue of inequality.
The new imagination that you're bringing about in terms of prefabricated housing, et cetera, will be a big step forward in closing that gap.
There is also an issue of what is the kind of market intervention we can have.
Cities where large part of housing market is driven by speculators, by definition, almost builds risk because speculators have no interest in long term resilience.
They want to make quick money.
How do we address the issue of equality in housing market so that everyone who's investing in housing has a stake in reducing risk and building resilience.
Thank you very much, really, looking forward to this conversation now.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
I think let's turn now to Mayor Keenley and bring in that local perspective for some opening remarks, especially thinking about some of your challenges in infrastructure development.
Yeah.
Thank you, John.
Thank you, Minister Robertson, for hosting us and State Secretary, other members of the panel.
I think it's going to be a really great conversation.
It's awesome to have another mayor from another place in the world.
As we come from different size communities.
I think there's going to be a real fulsome look at different communities throughout the world.
For myself, I am the mayor of a small city in Canada, a rural Canada in Saskatchewan named Yorkton.
We have about 20,000 residents in our city.
Our surrounding region that we serve is around 150,000 people.
But that tax base again is the 20,000 people that live in the small city.
It's largely agriculture would be our foundation.
When you think of all the farms out on the prairie plains, that is where I live.
We also host major industry that works with agriculture.
We have oat processing plants, we have the world's largest canola crushing plant.
If you're picking up canola oil anywhere, it's probably potentially come through my community.
And then because we support the region, whether it be healthcare, education, business, people are coming from all over our region crossing two different provinces to come to Yorkton to do their shopping and visit their doctor, that sets the stage for the community that we have.
Certainly, like many communities, probably everyone that's here, it comes from a community with an infrastructure deficit.
We certainly see that.
I think there's lessons that can be learned from the past and sometimes when we aren't putting money aside or we aren't maintaining our infrastructure, we get in a position like we are today where not only are we worried about the problems and trying to deal and solve the problems of today, but also planning for the future and having to repair some of the things that have happened in the past.
I think having really Strong future foresight is important.
I think there is a shift coming and I'm going to talk a little bit throughout the questions, I think on the communication and the relationships that we need to build, not only with other levels of government, but certainly with our own residents to encourage that forward thinking, future planning mindset.
One of the major infrastructure pieces that we're currently challenged with is again, small community.
We have the wastewater treatment capability to deal with our population, but because of the growth in agriculture, manufacturing that happens or processing, I should say, we Reached a point where not only is our aged infrastructure at capacity and not complying with environmental regulations, but also we are looking for obviously economic growth.
These companies have brought jobs to our community.
We are in desperate need of housing.
There are things like our provincial government is looking to put a new healthcare facility in our city, but the bottleneck is this wastewater treatment plant that simply needs to be replaced.
And so as we look at that, again, we're supporting the region, we're supporting our province and country in food processing, and we simply don't have the tax base as many smaller communities and smaller cities don't have the tax base to pay for major infrastructure.
So we're looking at anywhere 200-300 and some million dollar for this wastewater treatment plant.
And again, going back to our tax base being only 20,000 people.
There's been a lot of good planning done by our administration and by council in setting funds aside and reserves, knowing that this is coming, as well as being a good steward of those utility rates and making sure that everybody is paying their fair share and we're bringing in the amount of money that will be needed to pay the portion that is necessary for this infrastructure.
The other thing and going back to relationship that we're dealing with is with both the provincial government and the federal government and building those relationships, we've had strong relationships with Minister Robertson's staff and with himself and also in our province with those people looking at ways that we can collaborate on the funding.
When I think about, again, going back to the social part of it, I think something that needs to be stated is that all of I really try to focus on the foundation of things.
And so when I look at all the work that I'm doing, our council is doing our administration, all the people probably in this room that are working their jobs, it's for people.
That is the foundation.
And when I think about our community and the infrastructure, the core infrastructure that we're putting in place is to support the services and programs that our residents that our people need.
So people are at the heart of this.
And I think again, if you look at those foundational pieces, that's where you'll find solutions and that's where you'll find success.
So We've been working hard to find different ways to work with our current facility and what we have, we've seen major flooding as of recent and planning from the past that was very strong, very good, helped us to navigate through a period of flooding that maybe some of our neighboring communities struggled with.
But again, this one facility and one piece of infrastructure is a bit of a bottleneck and working hard to find ways to solve that so that we have more economic development, health care can be better in our community.
We'll see housing growth.
We're working with a number of organizations, social organizations in our community to look at ways that we can provide transitional housing and affordable housing.
Again, with the bottleneck in mind that is this critical piece of infrastructure.
But those are some of the challenges as well, as was mentioned, the opportunities that our community is facing and honestly really enjoying the work of trying to navigate to find solutions.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor Keeney.
Now to you, Mayor Meyer, for opening remarks, how you're navigating challenges tied to shifting economy, infrastructure, and urban planning using forward thinking strategies in Zabrken.
The floor is yours.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Really honored to be here today and have the opportunity to share some thoughts of my city, a Britain.
Let me just give you two or three words about Sa Britain.
Zap Britain is the capital of the German state of Salen in the southwest of Germany and you probably wouldn't know apritn but you certainly know Paris, I'd say.
Za Britten is actually only 1 hour and 50 minutes train ride away from Paris.
We're actually closer to the French capital than we are to the German capital.
And that makes us unique because we are located actually right on the French border.
For us, we combine the best of two countries we always say.
We are a German French capital and European cooperation in our everyday life is not an abstract idea, it is actually part of our everyday life, and we are very proud of this and happy about this, especially because of our history.
Um, you know that France and Germany were bitter enemies over decades, and, um, the conflicts there were like in the state of Salen in abuten the bloodiest fights were there.
And today we are close friends, like the closest friends you can imagine.
I think that Zaïre actually is one of the examples that shows us that reconciliation is always possible.
Maybe that can give us a bit of hope today in these times.
Yeah, we fight for sustainability for many, many years in Zaprtn We were one of the first cities in Germany that supported the Agenda 2030 in 2017.
Yeah, we have a sustainability strategy.
We have a committee for environment, climate and sustainability.
We have an steering committee that tries to bring forward the sustainable goals.
From my perspective, SDG 11 has been one of the most influential parts of the 2030 agenda.
It has been extremely important in putting sustainable cities and communities on the global agenda.
However, we should be careful not to see cities only through SDG 11.
From my perspective, the role of local governments in achieving the sustainable development goals is still too often underestimated.
Cities are not only responsible for one specific goal among 17, we are key actors in delivering many of them.
Like we provide and support education, we shape local energy systems and transition to climate neutrality.
We organize public transport and sustainable mobility.
We manage public spaces, we green our streets, we strengthen resilience to climate change and create opportunities for social inclusion and economic participation and From my opinion, the success of the SDGs as a whole depends to a large extent on local implementation.
Many global goals ultimately become tangible social and through local action.
And yeah, this is why I think that also in the discussion about the Agenda 2030 and beyond and the post 2030 agenda, I believe that the question is not whether cities should play a stronger role.
The question is, how can we equip them to fulfill the role they already have? So meaning putting them in a position where they are actually capable of taking sustainable action, and that means legally and financially.
Um, so from my point of view as a financial financial commissary of Officer Britain, as always, without financial capacity, sustainability remains an ambition.
But with financial capacity, cities really can turn sustainability into reality.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Before we continue, I'd be remiss just to not recognize a couple more members of Parliament from Canada.
On stage, we have Annie Kutraks, member of parliament for Vim in Quebec and also the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Jobs and Families.
Annie will deliver the closing remarks for the session today.
And in the crowd, we have Talib Nour Muhammed member of Parliament for Vancouver Grandville over here, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, welcome.
So going back into our panelists questions, maybe Mr.
Kusure, as we know, and as you alluded to, infrastructure alone doesn't guarantee social outcomes, and social programs often can't function without the right infrastructure underneath them.
You talked a little bit about the participatory process of inclusion.
From your perspective, how can national governments better support local actors in operationalizing resilience in a way that's inclusive? Thank you very much.
I think there are three things that need to happen in my view.
The first thing is that devolution of money, devolution of finance.
I think, of course, the local capacity, the local capacity at the level of city uh, is highly variable across the world.
You know, some cities are very well equipped to deal with large amounts of resources and spend them effectively, others don't.
But if there isn't capacity, we need to build that.
But at the same time, that enhancement of capacity and evolution of finance needs to happen hand in hand, not linearly.
I think if there is one risk worth taking, is the risk of devolution.
I don't think there is any risk, but if you have to take one risk, that's the one.
The second thing is that it's really important that large infrastructure systems that are financed from the national governments have the voice of the citizens of cities have a place in imagining what that infrastructure is like.
It cannot be a top down thing.
Infrastructure for whom towards what outcomes in terms of service delivery, for whose benefit.
I think that a lot of the times large infrastructure investments have their own political economy, which tends to neglect and tends to overlook local perspective, doesn't give enough space for the local voice.
The third one I would just say is that the mayor from Germany just talked about the fact that Actually, in some ways, SDG 11 is a keystone SDG.
If you do SDG 11 very well, you will achieve water, you will achieve energy, you will achieve better infrastructure, you will reduce poverty, you will reduce inequality.
It all really becomes real at the level of cities.
From a disaster risk reduction perspective, I always say that disasters don't happen in countries.
They happen in cities and villages and towns.
Country is a concept.
Cities are the real deal.
So in that context, it is really important that the whole notion of even o conventions, particularly biodiversity, nature based, must really become a reality at the level of cities as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Over to you, Mayor Meyer.
This next question around, we often talk about physical infrastructure and social programs as if they're the whole picture, but there's a third element between them, which is the relationships and the networks that connect people to one another and to the institutions.
This social infrastructure is often what determines whether an investment actually takes hold in a community.
In your experience, are there ways to deliberately nurture it so that the investments we make in housing, transit, and services go further? Yeah.
Thank you for that question.
I very much agree with that observation, actually.
There is indeed a third element between the physical infrastructure and the social programs, and I would call it simply trust.
Trust between neighbors, trust between citizens and public institutions, and the trust that people can actually influence the future of their neighborhood.
In, we use what we call integrated neighborhood development concepts.
Um, I don't know if that's the right translation, actually.
It just means that we don't just plan for the people, we plan with the people.
Um.
Participation is at the heart of this process.
We involve local stakeholders, organize discussions in neighborhoods, meet people at weekly markets, and use digital participation tools.
Every one of us knows participation is not easy.
Yeah.
You, you have to get to the people and you have the people to actually participate.
Therefore, you need the trust of the people, the trust that they can actually make a difference.
And this is where in a Britain, our community development projects become essential.
We have eight community development projects like organizations across the city, working in neighborhoods that are facing particular social challenges.
Most of them, they have been part of the neighborhoods for more than 50 years.
So it's a big transition in these neighborhoods, community development, and they are trusted places and trusted people where residents receive advice, meet their neighbors, develop local projects, and connect with public institutions.
At the same time, they act as an early warning system for the city administration because they know their neighborhoods so well, they often identify social problems long before they become crisis.
And their value actually becomes especially visible in times of crisis.
For example, during the COVID pandemic, they were the ones who helped us reach vulnerable residents quickly and effectively.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they were the ones who helped us organize local support for refugees arriving in our city and almost immediately.
My answer is yes, city can really build and strengthen these relationships and networks by investing in community development.
But these networks cannot be created through short term projects, and it is not enough to involve people only during the planning process.
We need strong local networks, we need permanent places, trusted professionals, long term political commitment, and sustainable funding.
Yeah, I say this not as a mayor, but also as the city's finance officer.
Um, also in a time where our financial resources are really restrained, but we are committed to these programs and we are committed in funding them sustainable because I'm convinced that investing in social infrastructure is not an extra cost, it pays off.
It's one of the smartest investments a city actually can make and we should see that in that way.
Resilience pays off and sustainability pays off.
Thank you so much.
Over to you, Mary Keenly and building on that idea of resilience and cities navigate many challenges from aging populations, climate pressures, demographic change, and all at once, they all come at once, and often that requires different kinds of responses in the way you design in the city.
Wondering how do you approach building infrastructure and social programs in a flexible way that allow you to adapt as conditions shift especially when the future is becoming harder and harder to predict.
Yeah.
Thank you, John, and I'm going to riff off a little bit of Mayor Meyer here, such a great response.
I think that when looking at these things, whether it be aging populations, the climate pressures, I'm going to speak to a little bit of the flooding that we just recently had, the demographic change that we're seeing in rural Canada with people coming from all over the world to locate in our small community prior, this was not a thing and we're seeing a whole lot of it now.
I think the biggest thing for new residents, for residents who've lived there their entire lives and for all of us is the building of community.
That is the social policy, building community, and that starts with communication.
Communicating to all of your residents to the surrounding region.
The communication will build the relationship.
Then as you work on those relationships and you foster those relationships and maintain them, that develops the trust that we're talking about here.
Now, when we're going to plan for the future, you don't have residents that are upset about what you're doing, they trust the process, they trust the decisions that you've made because you've made them before and they see that it's worked.
Then also one of the things that develops after you've built trust with your community is you're given grace and we're not always going to get it right as municipal leaders and as governments.
We're not going to get it right, but if you've built that relationship and created that trust, they'll give you grace when it doesn't quite go the way that you thought.
Most recently, just literally within the last couple of weeks, we've had major flooding in our region, and we did pretty good.
Our city did pretty good.
We didn't see a lot of widespread sewer backup that we've seen in previous floods.
We had an absolutely disastrous flood in 2010 and another one just a couple of years later where entire neighborhoods were wiped out.
They're now green spaces.
We've put in floodlas there and just left it as green spaces and preparing for should this happen again.
The point I want to make on this is that when I was elected on council ten years ago and we were looking at flood mitigation and I'm new to this.
I'm just an entrepreneur, young guy who's coming on and they're talking about tens of millions of dollars, which for a community like ours is a ton of money.
And I'm looking at these plans and I'm like, man, I want to build a new arena.
I want to do something that's fun and for the community and right now.
The more that you get into the work and the more that you listen and you understand the needs to plan for the future, to be resilient, to plan sustainably for things that could happen, you find yourself in a position where like, Yeah, let's work on this flood mitigation.
Let's work on the water and where it's going to go, should this ever happen again.
So again, the reason I bring that up is that we've just had a flood and we didn't have major problems.
And so now I'm able to go and talk to the residents and they're like, wow, we made it through.
Unfortunately, and my heart goes out to the neighboring communities because we've been there.
I stopped by my parents' home during the flood of 2010, opened the back door to see if everybody was all right, and there was a television and a couch floating by right at the ceiling level of the basement.
I've seen the disastrous floods before, and right now we're dealing with multiple First Nation communities.
One of them has no road access, a temporary emergency bridge has had been brought in.
There's a number of other communities downstream from us.
Um, that are completely flooded out.
The story that I'm able to share with my residents is the fact that look at what those decisions ten years ago, 15 years ago, when we put those tens of millions of dollars that none of us knew, is this a good idea? Why are we doing this? I don't know.
The fact is that the climate is moving in different directions, it's unpredictable.
We don't know what's coming and you have to prepare, you have to.
Then what we need to do is we need to communicate that to our residents.
We need to communicate it to them because someday some of those residents are going to be sitting as counselors or mayor or administrators in our communities and they need to have that future foresight.
They need to be thinking about building resilient and sustainable communities.
When you tell the story to the people, Hey, we didn't do so bad moving through this flood, things were pretty good.
You can relay that story of the decisions from the past and the reason that we did it.
Now you're building that communication, now you're building that relationship, and now you're telling a story that will encourage them to support future decisions that are going to be made as we plan for the future and as we spend money on things that maybe aren't bright and shiny and it's not a new arena, it's a wastewater treatment plant.
You know how many people in my city are excited about wastewater? Not many.
But the truth is that things like this, we realized this flood that happened, again, we're a city of about 20,000.
We have about because of our industrial partners, we have about the wastewater of a city of 40,000 that rolls into our plant and through this flooding time, we saw levels of over 110,000 population equivalent water coming through.
We ended up having to pump, unfortunately, or bypass millions of liters into the river because there was just no place to put it.
So now when I talk to my residents about the necessity for us to spend large amounts of money, hopefully in collaboration with the provincial and the federal government, but large amounts of money that my residents are going to spend when they want a new arena and they want new things, those wants are not going to outweigh the need, that is that wastewater treatment plant because the next time there's a flood, there is no bottleneck, there's no water that's going into the environment when we're taking care of it.
So I think telling those stories, communicating well is so important on working with aging populations.
So again, our region, is made up of a lot of rural communities and those communities have a lot of farm families.
What we see is that as the parents and the grandparents age, they move to our community.
Having programs for our aging population, for our seniors is so vitally important.
One of the things that we're now a little over a year into when we receive grant funding is a program that I believe comes from Europe, but it's social prescribing.
Seeing this amazing program where doctors can prescribe people who are an example would be a couple on a farm.
Maybe one of the spouses passes away, they end up moving into my city.
And they've never paid bills before or they don't know where to go to make friends or where the social events are happening and they can actually be prescribed a community person that we've hired to basically help them navigate.
We've also done social prescribing or not social prescribing, barriers to access for our houseless and vulnerable population.
The access that they need, you just see barriers when you try to get involved in the healthcare world or when you're looking for some form of support, maybe you need ID, maybe it's food insecurity or housing.
The municipality actually coming up with started with, I believe it was a federal grant, but coming up with the people to put in place to help people navigate the programs to get more involved and to be able to access health care, to be able to access some of the social supports that we have in our city is also really important.
And then the demographic change that we're seeing in our community, as mentioned, we're seeing a lot of new people, new residents to our community, a lot of new Canadians and really working hard to try to meet those people where they're at.
Most recently, we had a delegation come to council.
They have the people.
They found the people to build a committee for the city of Yorkton to help us find the gaps.
For me, it's difficult.
A proper council, a proper administration has perspectives of everyone, and we are missing and lacking some of those perspectives.
Hearing from the community and hearing from people say, we want to get involved, listening, as Mayor Meyer was saying, listening to the people, having them involved gives us a better opportunity to provide the services and the supports that all of our residents need, and it's honestly work that very excited about.
We're overhauling transportation, looking, reviewing at how we can do it better.
Being in a small community the size of ours, we don't have major transit like the big cities here do, but it's still absolutely necessary, especially for the vulnerable population, especially for people needing accessibility needs.
And that is another thing that we're reviewing and regardless of the size of the community, I think your priority needs to be people, and it needs to be building the sense of community.
It needs to be building that civic pride and you do that by not leaving anybody out or leaving anybody behind, but including everybody.
Thank you very much.
We've reached the stage where we are looking at final reflections.
I will offer a brief question to each of our three panelists.
Maybe if you can just take a 32nd response and then we can open it up for a little Q&A before we close.
The question to Mr.
Kusure first, what is one practical step governments can take right now to better connect infrastructure with social policy? Create space for people's voices.
Thank you.
Mary Kenley.
Yeah, I mean, that's great.
I think listening is so key and then actually hearing and putting some of those things in place that you're told.
I think that again builds that trust.
But you're absolutely right.
Thank you.
Mayor Mayer.
Yeah.
God.
Yeah, that would be my answer, listening to the people and giving them the feeling that they are actually hurt so that they can make an influence.
I think that's really important, especially in that time now when we need the trust of the people to save our democracy.
Thank you very much, everyone.
We have a few moments for some Q&A.
If you would put your hand up, we'll have time for probably a couple of questions.
In the front here, you can press the button by your microphone.
Much.
My question is to the panel, what gives you the most hope about the future of resilient and inclusive communities? Thank you.
Maybe we'll start with Mayor Meyer first.
There must always be hope.
No, seriously.
I think that we talk about sustainability for now decades and sometimes it is a bit frustrating because you can't really see the progress.
But actually, I'm in office now for six years and the feeling I got is that we are on our way.
Especially cities and municipalities are on their way because they want to create a better place for the people and the people actually want a greener city because they know that a greener city is better for their life quality.
That gives me hope, I'd say, because I see the progress we made in the last years on the local level.
And I do have a bit of hope now because my hope is that every individual is now seeing that sustainability pays off for himself.
It's not just a thing that we do for the future or for future generations, but the catastrophes, the crisis, the climate crisis, People feel it now.
We have the heat waves in our city at the moment.
We have energy prices going up because of the geopolitical situation and that makes an individual incentive for everyone to support the sustainable goals.
My hope is that we can explain that to the people.
Thank you.
Anyone else to take? Oh, Greg.
I wasn't sure if I was getting a nod from you, John, or if the floor is mine.
Things that give me hope, I think that I look at my three young children and see how much smarter they are at their age than I was at their age.
That gives me hope.
I think a lot of the topics that was brought up, green initiatives, climate change, understanding that things are changing and we need to be better, inclusion.
All these things weren't necessarily things when I was a teenager.
I'll tell you that or a young adult.
And so adults in the room sometimes still don't prioritize those things, but what gives me hope is the youth does.
I'm seeing all kinds of trends come back like thrift shopping, not just recycling, but reduce and reuse, slowing down consumption, unnecessary consumption.
These are things that our youth are passionate about.
When I grew up and I don't know if I'm going to go off line here, but drinking and driving was something that happened.
Shouldn't have, but it happened.
The youth now they have no interest in that.
They know it's not right.
I think for me, the short answer is the youth give me hope and I think there's so many ways and so many great things we can highlight out of that.
Thank you.
Okay.
I think we have time for maybe one more or two more questions in the front row there.
Can you hear me? Thank you.
First, thank you to the panel for highlighting the importance of local leadership.
My question is to the Honorable Minister for Canada.
Canada has highlighted the importance of local leadership and partnership in achieving the 2030 agenda.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity to strengthen collaboration between governments, communities, and partners to accelerate progress on SDG 11? Well, great question.
It's cutting to the chase of where the opportunities lie.
Certainly, we've just launched a new infrastructure fund B Communities Strong Fund that's really focused on direct delivery, working with local governments on those community infrastructure priorities, making it way more flexible than anything we've had before and also provincial and territorial stream that is collaborative with those provinces and territories.
I think that sub national partnership is critical.
That was my background.
It's interesting to be on the federal side of the table, but this is a round table.
We have to work together, we have to deliver because ultimately, we're all judged as we should be in a democracy by voters in the community.
They have to see us working together and delivering.
I think the pressures are enormous right now.
We talk about all these different crises at once.
So when we put together the next phase of funding federally, I think that the lens that we look through is, how do we get this to the ground and achieve all of these shared goals? How do we make it easier and more flexible? And pace is important right now.
It is with an election cycle in a democracy, we are expected to deliver as quickly as possible too.
So I think we're approaching all of this right now as we've got to move fast.
There's urgency and we have to be more innovative and make sure that we are delivering the federal piece and leveraging in Canada, it's about 40% to 45% at both federal and provincial levels and maybe 10% at local level.
But local level has about two thirds of the infrastructure responsibility.
It's a crazy formula.
We just have to make it all work as fast as we can.
We need to be judged by how we're delivering and how innovative and functional these new approaches are.
That's speaking with housing and infrastructure and communities, that's my department, but I'd say Annie can speak to this when talking about jobs and families and social development.
We need to see it across all of the departments so that when we're investing in defense and looking after the north of Canada, we're actually investing in the communities as well at the same time and making sure we're getting not just dual use but multi use out of every taxpayer dollar that we are investing.
Thank you for the question.
Unfortunately, I know there's a lot of questions still in the crowd, but we've come to the end of our session.
I love the interest and the excitement from everyone.
Hopefully, there will be an opportunity to still ask those questions after the session.
I'd like to thank the panelists, our esteemed opening remarks, our colleagues for opening remarks, and our panel.
This has been a fantastic discussion.
A few notes for me.
I love this idea.
The smartest investment we can make is in social infrastructure.
I think time and time again, we see that and I think in the polarizing world, that continues to ring true.
Thank you, everyone for that.
It's my pleasure to pass the floor to Annie Kutraks, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Employment and Social Development, Canada, as well as a member of parliament for Vim for some closing remarks.
Thank you very much, John, and thank you to all of our distinguished panelists for sharing your expertise and perspectives today.
I will certainly walk away feeling a little bit smarter and better informed on what makes cities work.
I would also like to thank our co hosts, Germany and Peru, for their partnership and all participants who joined us for this important conversation.
Disc Today's discussion highlights a simple and powerful message.
Resilient communities are built when social infrastructure and social policy work together.
No one can reach their highest potential in an isolated way, like we heard from our speakers.
Investors investing in housing, transport, community services, accessibility and public spaces, produce the best results when they are built by thinking of people's needs and supported by a solid network of social support.
Social programs can only reach their objectives when people have concrete and easy access to the services that they need.
We heard how resilience requires proactive planning and risk reduction.
Local leaders are responding to demographic, economic, and environmental pressures, and how communities can foster the social connections and civic trust that help people thrive.
Together, these insights remind us that infrastructure is not only about what we build, but also about the outcomes we create for people and communities.
Several themes emerge throughout our discussion.
For me, what stood out the most is when we say that plan for the people, don't plan for the people, but plan with the people.
I always say we as politicians and people who are in positions, the positions that we hold today is we could never be ahead of people.
If we don't want to be ahead of where the people are, it starts with trust and open communication and active listening.
So first, resilience must be inclusive.
Communities are stronger when infrastructure and services are designed with the needs of all people in mind, including those who are most vulnerable.
I would say especially for those who are most vulnerable.
I'm feeling quite vulnerable these days.
I'm recovering from a recent surgery, so I'm seeing the world from a very different lens in the last six weeks.
I So yeah, accessibility is very, very important.
Second, local knowledge matters.
Effective solutions are rooted in the realities of communities and informed by the people who live and work in them.
I think we can all agree that we heard some very passionate mayors on this panel today that tell us why cities are so important and how it all starts there.
And finally, collaboration is essential.
Progress depends on partnerships across levels of government, international organizations, community leaders, and civil society working together toward shared goals.
In that spirit, I would like to recognize the shared commitment demonstrated today by Canada, Germany, and Peru.
While our countries may face different circumstances, we are united in our belief that sustainable development is most effective when it is people centered, inclusive, and grounded in the realities of local communities.
As we gather here during this high level political forum, this conversation reminds us that achieving SDG 11 sustainable cities and communities requires us to break down silos and connect policy objectives with the places where people live their daily lives.
The SDGs are realized locally through practical partnerships, thoughtful investments, and community driven solutions.
Looking ahead, our task is clear.
Let's continue to integrate social policy and infrastructure planning from the outset, learn from one another's experiences, and invest in solutions that strengthen both communities and the people who call them home.
If we carry forward the lesson shared today, we can build communities that are not only resilient but also more inclusive, accessible, connected, and prosperous.
I would also say let's actively listen but truly listen to the youth because they're very, very smart and I am very fortunate in my current position to be working with youth groups and I couldn't be prouder.
Thank you once again to our moderator, our panelists, our co hosts, and all participants for contributing to this rich discussion.
I wish you all a productive remainder of the HLPF.
Thank you, M.
Thank you.