In just a few weeks, we have experienced flooding caused by the end of a hurricane and the rupture of a major water main in the heart of Montreal.
Both events have common points: the neglect of long-term infrastructure maintenance and planning and the challenge posed by climate change. Two situations that we do not ignore, but that we too often try not to face.
Before going any further, a word on the presence or absence of political leaders on the ground following disasters like those we have experienced in recent weeks: whether Valérie Plante or François Legault are on the scene in the hours following a disaster would not change anything. At a pinch, their presence could hinder the interventions of emergency teams.
Even if the mayor or the prime minister were to wear a frogman’s outfit for a whole day, it would not change anything, and judging them on their presence or absence in the minutes following a disaster is both too simple and certainly unfair.
It is certainly desirable to go and comfort the victims, but what we are asking of our leaders above all is to work to prevent new disasters once they return to their offices.
Similarly, the competence of our public services is not in question. The problem is that such events are occurring more and more frequently. Today, the priority should therefore be to understand the combined importance of climate change, aging infrastructure and the domino effects that necessarily follow. Especially since we know that such phenomena will multiply.
We will obviously wait for the results of the investigation into the pipe rupture in Montreal – a pipe that dates back to 1985 and therefore could not be described as aging infrastructure – before determining the exact causes of the disaster under the Jacques Cartier Bridge. But we can fear that several combined factors, including climate change, are involved in one way or another.
Montreal has never been on the hurricane end-of-life map. That’s no longer true: Hurricane Debby has just demonstrated it. In just one day, Debby dumped 50 to 100 mm of rain on the Montreal region, the equivalent of what the city normally receives during the entire month of August.
So it was not a predictable event. It is what is commonly called an “act of God”, from the English act of Godor a case of force majeure, a notion which has much less scope in the world of insurance than one might be tempted to believe.
There is no public fund manager who is going to propose rebuilding all the infrastructure so that it can withstand events that used to happen only once a century. But that does not mean that there is nothing to do. We must start preparing now to prevent the effects of events that will be more frequent and, above all, more intense.
This is not a concern that should be new to our leaders. As early as the 1993 election campaign, Jean Chrétien recognized the problem: urban infrastructure was starting to age across Canada, and it was time to invest in renovating it. This led to his flagship promise of a national infrastructure program, which was also justified by a high unemployment rate.
This election was to bring Jean Chrétien to power and, for a few years, he managed to reduce a large deficit while investing in infrastructure.
But the recipe was so popular that, 10 years later, new, less essential “infrastructures” were added to the program and diluted its effects. Including projects that were not really structuring, such as the renovation of zoological gardens… Which shows that the best intentions can be diverted by partisan imperatives.
But Mr. Chrétien will be credited with seeing, before many others, the need to renovate the infrastructure that no one wanted to worry about. As the former prime minister said at the time: “There’s no politician who wants to be photographed in front of a sewer. That doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
Today, 30 years later, Quebec, like Canada, would need a vast infrastructure program not only to repair old facilities, but also to prevent the worst effects of climate change, which were not yet discussed in the last century.
Unfortunately, in Ottawa, we hear a lot more talk about populist measures like scrapping the carbon tax – as if measures to limit climate change cannot be priorities in an election year.
In Quebec, the government seems to be prioritizing sending cheques quickly to disaster victims rather than disaster prevention measures. Short-term policies – that is, those that could have an effect before the next election – are always a more important issue than the urgency of addressing the causes.
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