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The mighty Ottawa River flowing beneath the gothic spires of Parliament Hill is one of Canada’s quintessential scenes.
It’s also a sobering reminder of the decrepit state of the country’s infrastructure.
Gobs of grimy froth collect along the shoreline because the City of Ottawa routinely dumps untreated sewage and storm water directly into the river – since March alone, enough runoff to fill more than 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
And the dumping continues. Every time there’s a heavy rainfall, antiquated storm sewers in the older sections of the city simply can’t handle the volume.
Massive underground storage tanks to fix the problem would cost $140-million – money the city insists it doesn’t have.
And that’s just one aspect of the capital’s desperate infrastructure needs. Completely eliminating sewer overflows in and around the city would cost as much as $2.2-billion over decades, according to a 2010 report by city officials.
Water mains are aging and failing. In January, a major pipe supplying water to Ottawa’s growing southern suburbs ruptured, swallowing a pickup truck and temporarily shutting a major road. More than five months later, 80,000 residents are still under an outdoor watering ban as the city works to repair the 35-year-old pipe.
Communities across Canada are facing a similar infrastructure squeeze: huge challenges and inadequate funds. Like the cash-strapped owner of an older house, cities are just barely keeping up with emergency repairs, let alone permanent fixes and improvements.
It’s the legacy from years of neglect, combined with some shoddy engineering and construction in the booming 1960s and 1970s – as well as misplaced priorities. Politicians are still far too fond of crowd-pleasing photo-op projects, such as concert halls and hockey rinks. Sewers, not so much.
An oft-cited figure, calculated by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, estimates that the country’s towns and cities are facing a $123-billion bill to renew their aging infrastructure. Sixty per cent of that is for water, sewage and transportation projects. And as the country grows and expands, new demands are emerging, including much-needed expansions of public transit and new sewage treatment capacity. That’s another $115-billion.
The total bill could run to $238-billion, or the equivalent of $7,000 per Canadian – a potentially crushing tax burden given that many Canadians pay no tax at all.
Ignore the problem, and you can count on more sinkholes, water restrictions and soiled waterways.
Neglect also carries an economic toll. Poor and aging road, transit, sewer and water systems mean there’s a lower ceiling on economic growth: they limit the potential for new home construction and business creation.
The Conference Board of Canada warned recently that the “infrastructure deficit is holding back the productive capacity of the Canadian economy.” The think-tank called on Ottawa to lead a major new national infrastructure program, in co-operation with the provinces.
Canadian municipalities want a renewal of the Building Canada Fund, which runs dry in 2014. The fund, partly paid out of federal gas tax revenues, is supposed to provide stable funding for local infrastructure.
More infrastructure money appears unlikely, at least in the short-term. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised “no surprises” in Monday’s reprise of the March 22 budget. Friday’s Throne speech talked about eliminating the deficit and curbing spending. There was no mention of infrastructure.
The tone at the federal level is shifting to spending restraint and deficit reduction, which doesn’t bode well for funding in the 2012, 2013 and 2014 budgets.
When the infrastructure money was flowing in 2009 and 2010, too much went to the unessential, such as community halls and parks. The City of Ottawa made choices with its own limited funds, and storm sewer backups took a back seat to renovated hockey rinks and other priorities.
The challenge ahead is to ensure that public funds go to less visible projects such as sewers – before pollutants get dumped into waterways.
Stephen Harper and his fellow Conservative MPs need only look down from their perch on Parliament Hill to see the work still left to be done.
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