When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was greeted by Mayor Gregor Robertson at Vancouver city hall on December 17, the headline was that it was the first time a prime minister had visited the city’s seat of government since his father, Pierre, did it in 1973. The optics underscored a modern reality: federal diplomacy now includes bilateral relations with major municipalities.

“Vancouver, like cities across the country, will now have a partner in the federal government on issues of housing, on issues of public transit specifically,” Trudeau told reporters that day.

One of the most successful messaging efforts of the 2015 federal election campaign was waged not by a political party but by Canada’s mayors. At regular intervals over the 78-day race, the country’s big-city mayors were able to place key urban issues such as infrastructure, transportation and housing on the campaign agenda.

Raymond Louie, the president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and a Vancouver city councillor, says the effort was about more than just money.

“What’s even more important than the funding piece is that as the government creates the policy that may affect local government, they do it in consultation with us,” said Louie.

With the advent of social media making some mayors — including Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, Vancouver’s Robertson, Toronto’s John Tory and, to the nation’s chagrin, his predecessor, Rob Ford — national figures and the gap between federal and municipal policy priorities narrowing on a range of issues from security to climate change, mayors seem to be having a moment.

“There has been, I think, an awakening of consciousness and understanding that local governments have a significant role to play,” said Louie.

He added that cities hit a “sweet spot” in 2015, where they were able to educate the public on the necessary services that local governments provide, and the provinces, territories and Ottawa realized they need to cooperate with municipalities.

“More and more Canadians are understanding that the local government level is the closest to the people and we provide the on-the-ground services they rely upon.”

Cities are also where most of the votes are, a fact driven home by both the promises made by Trudeau’s Liberal Party during the campaign that ended Oct. 19 and by the election results. The Liberals swept Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

The Trudeau government has promised to invest $125 billion in infrastructure — including $20 billion in transit — over ten years, though with the Department of Finance now projecting higher deficits than expected, those promises may have to be pared down. There’s also a plan to make housing more affordable and accessible through tax incentives and other measures included in the Liberal platform’s $20 billion “social infrastructure” program.

To ensure success in meeting municipal goals with the new federal government, the FCM created an action plan for the first 100 days of the new Liberal government. It provides policy proposals on how to create livable, green and affordable cities.

For the mayor of Iqaluit, Madeleine Redfern, a critical challenge for 2016 will be improving the quality of telecommunications in her community, which she says is critical for the city’s governance and business operations.

During the election campaign, the Liberal platform promised to expand broadband to remote and northern communities through the $500 million Digital Canada strategy. The project aims to motivate private companies to build broadband in hard- to-reach communities. Redfern would like to see how this will be rolled out in the coming months.

“As the world gets more advances in telecommunications, we are finding ourselves falling further behind,” she said.

The need for improved broadband access is part of a larger need to invest in infrastructure. Most of what is shipped to Iqaluit comes in by boat. Redfern said this creates an extra challenge when trying to keep up with the demands of ongoing infrastructure repairs and future projects.

“We are not like most southern cities or other northern capital cities like Whitehorse. They have roads to these cities that you can ship up construction material year- round.”

Iqaluit’s population has more than doubled to 7,000 since it became a territorial capital in 1999, heightening the demands on infrastructure. Redfern is hoping in the next year to see the first stages of the federal government’s new housing strategy developed because much of the current social housing is old and overcrowded.

“There is a quite a number of people living in social housing … in some cases there are 12 people living in a three-bedroom home,” she said.

Affordable housing is an issue for many cities, and the mayor of Halifax, Mike Savage, says too many of his constituents are spending more than a third of their income on housing. Next year, he will work towards developing policies to help provide housing near the core of the city, where people can live and work.

“Nobody wants a city where people can’t live in the core,” he said.

Infrastructure usually conjures up images of roads and bridges, but Vancouver’s Robertson says it also includes social infrastructure, such as arts and culture, which are “often overlooked and underfunded,” he said.

Robertson wants to work with the federal government to help foster and encourage the growth of the creative sector. With the changes to the temporary foreign worker program under the former Conservative government — and with Canada’s current immigration policies — it has affected the growth of this multibillion dollar industry in both Vancouver and Toronto, he says.

“We need a more responsive immigration policy than we have currently. Economic growth has been curtailed by federal policy in recent years … we need some action taken at the federal level, and that will support jobs being created on the ground in our cities.”

For Robertson, helping implement the 94 recommendations in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which the Liberals promised to do, is also important, not only for Vancouver but all cities — especially those in the western provinces. Mayors have said they need more support from the provincial and federal government to support urban aboriginal populations with education, housing and jobs.

He and other mayors across the country will keep the pressure on the both levels of government to follow through with the TRC recommendations. At the city level, Robertson says “we are committed to following through on those commitments.”

Mayor Michael Fougere of Regina, says the federal and provincial governments need to be working on a national climate strategy, to implement what was agreed upon at the United Nations conference on climate change. This agreement includes working towards the ambitious goal of keeping global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius.

“We know the impact of carbon emissions has a tremendous impact around the world, so to have the conversation locally you have to understand the national strategy because it has an impact on virtually all aspects of our life.”

In the new year, the mayor would also like to see a discussion on overhauling the taxation system, one that would provide more financial support to municipalities. Currently, Regina gets most of its revenue from property taxes.

The FCM reports that municipalities only get eight cents for every tax dollar generated, with the rest going into the provincial and federal pockets.

“We have an 18th-century form of taxation, for the 21st century,” Fougere said.

The priorities of Canada’s mayors for the new year are about improving the quality of life for their citizens, says Louie.

“All these things are part of an overall effort to be more effective and work together,” he said.