Adaptation to climate change: money is lacking, reiterates the mayor of Quebec

Quebec municipalities need more money to adapt to climate change. The day after new violent thunderstorms and torrential rains, votes rise to claim an offensive from the Legault government.

A few days after another deluge in Montreal, the large region of Quebec received significant amounts of rain in just a few hours, Thursday morning, bordering on accumulations of 100 mm depending on the sectors.

The depression system that swept the capital region caused floods, caused damage to infrastructure and properties, in addition to forcing localized evacuations.

After this chaotic day, the mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, recalled the importance of investing in adaptation and prevention.

As we can see, extreme weather conditions are multiplying, intensify, transform each season. We do not know where they will strike next time, but we must prepare for ithe wrote on his social networks.

To get there, it will take money.

This is the reason why we have set up a financial reserve to adapt our infrastructurehe recalls, in reference to the reserve of $ 90 million set aside by Quebec City.

However, it will not be sufficient, according to the mayor, who invites the federal and the provincial to disburse. All cities in Quebec are demanding increased funding from the governments of Quebec and Canada to make our infrastructure more resilient to climatic vagaries.

With good investments and good technologies, we can at least mitigate the effects of citizens – and the costs that accompany them.

The town hall’s office refused to comment more on Bruno Marchand’s request.

For today, however, our priority remains the assistance to residents and traders assigned by yesterday’s rains and the restoration of streets and other damaged infrastructureconcludes the mayor’s message.

Billions to invest

The Union of Municipalities of Quebec (UMQ) has been following the Legault government for almost three years for it to improve its investments.

Most public infrastructure belongs to municipalities and they need lovesays Guillaume Tremblay, president of theUmbq and mayor of Mascouche. It is a choice of society. There are major investments to make in municipal infrastructure, including the rain sewershe adds.

It is not always popular to make a ribbon cut for a pipe in a street, but that is asking as investments in the Quebec government.

Since 2022, theUmbq supports his requests on a study by the WSP firm (new window). The report concluded that the municipalities of the province will need to spend around $ 2 billion additional per year until 2055 due to the chronic risks caused by climate change.

According to Guillaume Tremblay, the Legault government refuses to engage more.

Last March, the body severely criticized the last budget of the Minister of Finance, Éric Girard.

Currently, the deficit in maintaining assets of municipal water infrastructure amounts to $ 45 billion. This does not take into account the costs to extend the pipes, to increase the capacity of our infrastructure or to adapt them to climate changeshe reacted.

Quebec defends itself

The Government of Quebec defends itself and provides sums available to municipalities through various government programs.

There are in particular at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the Ministry of the Environment, Sustainable Development, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks.

Our government has prioritized adaptation to climate change in recent years. We have notably set up the program Accelerate the local climate transition In 2024 with funding of $ 500 million available to cities and MRCs to adaptsaid the government through the office of the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette.

In total, more than $ 1.9 billion is invested for adaptation to climate change.

What science says

The adaptation of municipal infrastructure to climate change is deemed necessary for a long time in Quebec.

In 2014, the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS) published a report on rainwater management (new window). More frequent extreme rains could thus lead to an increase in the risk of floods and network repressionscould we read it right away.

All regions of Quebec can […] expect significant increases in all abundant and extreme precipitation clues both in quantity and frequencyadded this report.

The design of new infrastructurewe said, As well as the replacement of existing infrastructure, must be revised in order to integrate the modifications of the rainy diets in a context of climate change.

Ten years later, the Ouranos organism abounds in the same direction. Knowing that extreme rainy events often result in major impacts, these results corroborate the need to adapt infrastructure and regional planning to these changes in precipitation diets.

According to Ouranos, these episodes could be two to three times more frequent within two decades.