It rained, therefore, in southern Quebec on Tuesday. It rained a lot, a lot. Something like a month’s worth of rainfall in a few hours, it was said. Montreal received between 80 and 110 millimeters of rain; Longueuil, between 100 and 125 mm. In Repentigny, L’Assomption, Joliette, a deluge of the same order.
The photos, the videos have not escaped anyone: cars advancing with difficulty on the flooded road, submerged up to the doors, flooded streets, muddy waves full of debris which break on the steps. Then, beyond the spectacular images, there was the more serious damage, which lasts beyond a difficult rush hour.
In Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Tuesday evening, there was consternation. After the deluge, the blackout, flooded basements, trashed property. A hard blow to cash for tenant families, for the uninsured. For the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve collective kitchen, too, an important organization in the fight against food insecurity in the neighborhood, which was flooded.
In the communities most vulnerable to climate change, the damage often follows one another like a fall of dominoes – if it still needs to be demonstrated.
It is no coincidence that water infiltration has more severely affected an area that is 85% less vegetated than the rest of the city, if we rely on the tool designed by Radio-Canada. to correlate the distribution of heat islands and vegetation cover with the average income per neighborhood.
“Rain, Madam Columnist, it’s still just rain, and we weren’t born from the last: leave us alone with climate change”, we object everywhere. Still, Tuesday’s deluge in Montreal is among the most intense on record. Two of the three most intense precipitation events have occurred in the past 10 years. Moreover, it is now certain that these events will be more and more frequent.
I am constantly amazed to see people stubbornly denying the obvious, even when they have both feet planted in water and mud. I tell myself that the relentlessness of some to dissociate extreme weather events from the clear (and terrifying) path that humanity has embarked on in terms of global warming may mask a deep anxiety. Denial to avoid facing the existential threat that imposes itself on us here and now, to avoid having to combine with loss.
Or is it simply the certainty of holding enough power to, oneself, escape the worst, without regard to the fate of others? Isn’t this cruelty expressed by Bernard Drainville’s already proverbial declaration: “Let go of me with greenhouse gases”?
Enough digressions – anyway, we no longer have time to manage the neuroses of some and the narcissism of others.
One thing is clear: even the smallest of gains will have to be fought for, and every political gesture counts to limit the number of lives disrupted by the disasters to come.
The municipalities seem to have understood that they will have to stamp their feet harder so that they are given the means to protect the population against the next upheavals. The irony will not have escaped attentive observers: a few hours before Tuesday’s deluge, the caucus of the big cities of the Union of Quebec municipalities summoned the Quebec government to pay them two billion more a year, at least for the next five years, to help them adapt their infrastructure to climate change.
This amount corresponds to the annual resilience bill for municipalities by 2055, according to a recent study carried out by WSP and Ouranos, whether it is road maintenance, the repair of water treatment systems or then installations for the absorption and channeling of rain.
A vast project, while incidents are multiplying and citizens are too often left to themselves to mop up the damage. Talk to the residents of Sainte-Marthe-sur-Lac, who lost everything in 2019 and were still waiting to be compensated last spring.
We also underlined the lack of investments for adaptation and resilience provided for in the Plan for a green economy, presented in April by the Minister of the Environment: 5% of the 7.6 billion invested by 2027. he discrepancy with the amount demanded this week by the municipalities is striking. How will we make up for the shortfall? Will the next government (whose colors we guess, let’s be serious) listen to the cities, which seem to take the risks to which the population is exposed much more seriously?
So far, in the election campaign, nothing indicates that the CAQ intends to redouble its ecological ardor. Québec solidaire may hound the outgoing government on the environmental issue, but the villainous cynicism of Éric Duhaime makes the status quo seem acceptable. This complicity on the right is all heard, notice.
For the years to come, will cities be the real bulwark against the Quebec government’s climate inaction? And how far will they be ready to lead this showdown?