Federation of Canadian Municipalities
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is a civic advocacy group representing many Canadian municipalities. It is an organization with no formal power but significant ability to influence debate and policy, as it is main national lobby group of mayors, councillors and other elected municipal officials. It negotiates with the Government of Canada's departments and agencies on behalf of municipalities, and administers a number of funds.
The FCM also publishes the FCM InfraGuide, a best practice exchange among municipalities to aid in better public management of infrastructural capital assets. Its mandate is "innovations and best practices in sustainable municipal infrastructure" and advocates a "bottom-up approach" to "knowledge sharing" of "Canadian experience and research", and "national co-operation and participation" to "help decision-makers and technical staff -- in the public and private sectors -- make informed, smart decisions about maintaining, repairing and upgrading the infrastructure that sustains our quality of life." Areas in which it gathers such best practices:
- municipal decision making and investment planning
- potable water supply
- stormwater and waste water
- roads and sidewalks
- environmental protocols
- transit
- multi-discipline practices relevant to several such areas
Additional areas including continuous municipal performance audits, information technology and communications technology, are under consideration. For instance a project to reduce total cost of ownership of IT assets by better boot image management and control among larger-scale municipal government agencies. Also there are anticipated to be several projects prompted by the Kyoto Protocol requirements for greenhouse gas control.
The FCM was also instrumental in negotiating the "New Deal for Cities" under which Canadian federal gasoline taxes are remitted to municipalities.
Former President of the FCM Jack Layton rose to leadership of the New Democratic Party partially due to prominence gained in this role.
