After several water main bursts and floods across the country this summer, municipalities and experts are warning that urban flooding could become more frequent due to the aging of Canada's infrastructure.
“We have good infrastructure in Canada. The challenge is that it's getting old and we can't keep up,” John Gamble, president of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies of Canada, told CBC News.
A major burst pipe in Montreal triggered flooding and boil water orders on Friday, just the latest in a series of infrastructure failures in recent months.
In June, Calgary declared a state of emergency and asked residents to reduce their water usage after the city's main water main failed.
A severe storm that caused massive flooding in Toronto last month raised questions about whether the city's infrastructure can withstand heavy rains. Vancouver experienced its own, less severe flooding in June after a sewer line burst in the Olympic Village.
“Sadly, we're going to see more of this rather than less … unless there's a really comprehensive effort to proactively address some of the infrastructure problems in this country,” Gamble said.
Maintenance crews in Calgary repair a burst water main that caused a local state of emergency in June. (City of Calgary)
In June, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) called on all three levels of government to convene a meeting to discuss the threats facing municipalities, including dilapidated infrastructure.
“Municipalities own about 60 per cent of the infrastructure in this country and yet we get less tax. Of every tax dollar collected, eight to 10 cents goes to local governments,” Geoff Stewart, president of the FCM, told CBC News.
Stewart said the funding model for municipal infrastructure maintenance is severely outdated and does not take into account factors such as rapid population growth and climate change.
“It was never designed to deal with our huge infrastructure. It was never designed to deal with climate change and climate adaptation and all of those things. And it puts a very heavy burden on communities,” he said.
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Mary Rowe, president of the Canadian Urban Institute, agreed that infrastructure maintenance places an unjustified burden on municipalities.
“I think the dilemma in this country is that we have a funding system that puts local governments at the very bottom of the chain,” she said. “Basically, they get whatever comes through to them.”
One problem municipalities face is the fact that their water infrastructure was built based on flood data that is now out of date due to climate change, Gamble said.
“As we have seen in recent years, we can no longer rely on this blindly,” he said.
Onlookers enjoy the spectacle of flooded and abandoned vehicles on the Don Valley Parkway after a heavy rainstorm caused the Don River to overflow its banks on July 16, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Gamble and Rowe both said it was urgent that all three governments work together to repair and renew infrastructure.
“Infrastructure is capital intensive and it is difficult to shift the tax burden to the lowest level of government. That is why all three levels of government need to work together on this issue,” Gamble said.
However, Rowe pointed out that the work of maintaining and planning infrastructure often takes longer than governments themselves, making it more difficult for governments to get involved.
“These are long-term things and political cycles are shorter. That's why I think it's difficult for politicians to commit beyond their own mandate, beyond their own term in office,” she said.
“If we look at past Conservative and Liberal governments, we have seen some very generous and extensive infrastructure programs. However, we have observed a pattern: Usually one program ends before anyone talks about the next one,” Gamble said.
Expert: National assessment needed as soon as possible
A key step to addressing the problem would be conducting a national assessment to determine Canada's long-term infrastructure needs, Gamble said, citing the Liberal federal government's 2021 commitment to deliver such a national assessment – a commitment that has so far not been fulfilled.
“This cannot come soon enough because this will lead to very good public policy, not only in terms of infrastructure but also in many other areas of public policy. [that] depend on … our infrastructure,” he said.
A spokesman for Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser said the government was still working on setting up an advisory body to conduct the national assessment.
“We plan to establish this advisory panel in the coming months, consistent with recommendations from the public hearing, which highlighted the importance of an evidence-based and transparent process,” a spokesperson for Fraser's office said in an email.
Rowe agreed that a national assessment would be helpful, but fears some issues could be lost in the dark.
“Maybe we need to figure out how to provide the right resources to local governments and regional alliances across the country, identify their priorities and then consolidate that into a national assessment,” she said.
“Sometimes I worry that we just set such a big, ambitious national goal for all of Canada and then it's so complex, expensive and arduous to implement, instead of actually reducing the problem.”
Gamble said something needs to be done soon to preserve Canada's current infrastructure before it completely deteriorates and becomes a far more costly problem for all levels of government.
“It’s much more expensive to fix these problems after the fact,” he said.