Transport Committee on June 6th, 2023

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you for that.

You're absolutely right. There are funds we have available now: the Canada community-building fund, which was the former gas tax fund; the green building fund; the disaster mitigation fund; and even the ports modernization review. There's some funding that is expected to come through that review.

The bottom line is that when it comes to climate change and the cost, what we're trying to do, not only through those funds but also through the carbon tax—carbon pricing—is contribute a lot of the dollars we collect, in this case from the polluters, and repurpose that money back to the municipalities. The wildfires and the hundred-year storms, which are now five-year storms, cost money, and that lands, and quite frankly defaults, onto property taxes and water bills.

In giving through those funds at all levels of government, and particularly here at the federal level of government—the ones I just mentioned, as well as the carbon tax—money is going back to residents, with 90% going to individuals and 10% back to municipalities, which mitigates the impact on the property tax and the water bills.

However, you raised a good point about debentures.

Would you agree that if we had a sustainable fund, whether through the FCM or other mechanisms, municipalities could then take full advantage of debenturing a lot of that infrastructure work over a period of time? It could be handed down, but they would be using the funds available at all levels of government to pay down that debenture so that their operating budgets aren't impacting their capital planning and their capital budgets, based on that money sustainably funding their operating budget and mitigating the default impact on the property tax and water bills.

[Ryan Ness]

Thank you again for the question.

Through you, Mr. Chair, I can't comment on the specific design and use of debentures, not having studied that specifically at the institute.

Certainly we've heard over and over again that the existing funding mechanisms and capital-raising mechanisms available to municipalities are not adequate for their needs in terms of the scale of funding and the time frames over which they need to acquire that funding to adapt their infrastructure to the scale that's required.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Ness. I appreciate the answers.

On that same question, Mayor Valiquette, you commented a bit on the sustainable funding needed to satisfy the capital needs and therefore the operational budgets that are being impacted by capital.

Can you speak on debenturing and the ability you would have if in fact that sustainable money was made available to you?

[Antonin Valiquette]

Of course. Thank you, sir.

Actually, I'm going to trust the interpreters since my French is better than my English.

Mr. Ness is approaching the matter in the right way. When municipalities have a plan or a framework, such as the action framework that we have, that facilitates action. We in the municipality are in the best position to know our territory, the sectors that should be prioritized and the places where we need to do preventive work. The key is definitely sustainable and preventive funding. That would allow us the necessary flexibility to anticipate weather events and take action upstream.

We need a more sustainable, more reliable and more stable fund enabling us to take action before storms hit. That would considerably cut costs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Valiquette.

Thank you very much, Mr. Badawey.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval is the next speaker.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks once again to the witnesses for being here today. We have a busy meeting. So I hope everyone has an opportunity to speak as much as possible.

First, I'll go to the mayor of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Mrs. Bouchard, because that city, like many others in Quebec, has a duty to upgrade its sewer infrastructure system so its storm and sanitary sewer systems are separated for water treatment purposes.

Mrs. Bouchard, you have to discharge that duty by 2028, as you vaguely mentioned in your remarks earlier.

What does that mean for a municipality like Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu? How is it related to climate change and the impact that it has on infrastructure that we are currently discussing?

[Andrée Bouchard]

It has a major impact.

Climate change is a concern for us because our aging infrastructure doesn't allow water to drain adequately. Infrastructure upgrades are obviously a significant financial burden. Separating the systems isn't the only work we need to do; we also have to do everything else; we have to provide services to the public.

The main issue now, as in all Quebec municipalities, is housing. Our vacancy rate is 0.8%. We really need to focus on densification, but our aging system prevents us from doing so.

It's really the safety of our population that's at risk.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

If I understand you correctly, the standards you'll have to meet in future also present a challenge for densification because, if your sewers don't meet the standards for your system, which is already at maximum capacity, it'll be hard to add more people. Is that correct?

[Andrée Bouchard]

That's exactly correct.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I have another question for you.

Funding is available to assist in reconstruction works. How satisfactory is it right now?

[Andrée Bouchard]

The current funding level is absolutely unsatisfactory. That's why we're making increasing demands on the Quebec and federal governments.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you. You answered my question.

You discussed floods earlier. Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu is situated on the banks of the Richelieu River near Lake Champlain. We have previously welcomed representatives of the municipalities of Saint-Ours and Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, who told us about the problems involved in communicating about decisions the federal government had made regarding water levels, which are managed by means of dams and locks.

How are your communications with federal authorities?

[Andrée Bouchard]

Our communications are quite good. We have a tripartite committee involving public safety, which is a provincial jurisdiction, Vermont and the federal government. We have a committee that has been monitoring the situation since 2011.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I understand that, after the floods, you were able to obtain information on how water levels are managed.

[Andrée Bouchard]

Yes.

Unfortunately, it's as though it takes a disaster for us to get any information, but I hope we'll be better prepared for the next one.

As I said at the outset, the question isn't whether it will happen again, but rather when.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Valiquette, earlier you discussed shoreline erosion and sea level rise, which now impact your infrastructure even more than in the past.

How well does current federal funding help you cope with the consequences of these negative issues? Could it be improved?

[Antonin Valiquette]

Yes. It's always possible to improve funding programs.

You can draw a parallel with the first question that was put to Mr. Li during the first round of questions. The aim is to invest the money before the storms hit because they're what result in the biggest costs. However, we're more used to reacting to storm events.

Federal infrastructure funding programs do exist. However, we turn more to provincial public safety authorities when it comes to the protective works that we're used to in the Magdalen Islands, which are often created in reaction to violent storm and erosion events.

The municipalities have their work to do to characterize, target and prioritize the sectors and the means used to mitigate the effects of coastal erosion and submersion. However, we need federal tools, funding and programs that are adapted to those of the province so they can more easily flow through to the municipalities. As you may know, in Quebec, federal funding that's provided through the province is a special challenge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Valiquette and Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Next we have Ms. Zarrillo.

The floor is yours. You have six minutes, please.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

I'm going to direct my first questions to Mayor Bousez. I hope I pronounced that properly.

You really brought this down to the people level. You talked about how it impacts people on the ground when an extreme event happens like that. Two of the things you spoke of were a more robust communications ability and the protection of utilities.

In my riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam, we have a Coquitlam amateur radio emergencies safety society. We've leaned on that amateur radio society before in emergencies.

I wanted to understand from you, Mayor, how these emergencies impact people on the ground, just thinking of it more locally. What can the federal government do to support better communications, or at least a plan B and a utilities plan B?

[Patrick Bousez]

Thank you for your question.

I welcome the use of amateur radio for those who have the equipment and know how to use it. However, most of our citizens don't have that equipment or don't know how to use it. Our fire services and emergency preparedness services communicate over radio waves. However, our biggest communication problem is contacting our fellow citizens. It always comes down to money. Since our first role is to protect our fellow citizens, how do we determine whether they've left their homes, whether they're still at home or whether they need something? We have to be able to reach them.

During the ice storm in 1998, one of the tasks the mayor assigned me at the time was to call our citizens. We had a telephone book. Today, we don't know how to contact people. We can message people on all platforms when social media and the web giants are working, and that's a good thing, but it gets harder to contact our people when they aren't. That's why we go door to door.

What can be done? All telecommunications towers are under federal jurisdiction. Consequently, the federal government has to ensure that those towers can hold up under various hazards. We haven't discussed the floods we had in Vaudreuil-Soulanges in 2017, 2019 and 2023, or the violent wind storm in 2016, or the train derailment in 2018, all of which caused power outages in certain areas and across the entire MRC. When telecommunications towers go down in those kinds of situations, that causes major problems. So we have to find a solution. Is there a better technology? Perhaps, but I think it's up to the federal government to ensure that one telecommunications tower is equipped with a generator and at least batteries that can last several hours. That's the case of many towers now. However, batteries drain in two, three or four hours, and someone has to replace or recharge them. There should at least be one generator. However, there also has to be fuel at hand ready to be used and electricity so someone can go and top it up. That's already happened in our MRC.

Communications are still essential in every emergency situation. Having been in the municipal world for 15 years, I know that every event and hazard always presents a danger.

So the greatest danger is a lack of communication. We need to ensure that we have a more robust system. Our cell phone networks, our emergency telecommunications towers and even the communication systems of our fire services must be more robust, but all cell phone networks across the country even more so.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much for that information. I was living in L'île-Bizard during the first ice storm, close by you.

I want to use my last two minutes by going to Mr. Nielsen at TransLink. My riding is Port Moody—Coquitlam, so I'm obviously very familiar with TransLink and the new infrastructure that has come into my community over the last five years.

Mr. Nielsen, we know that the government has promised permanent and reliable funding, but that's not until 2026. I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing how important it is to have that funding advanced and to have it right away.

[Ralf Nielsen]

Through the chair, thank you for the question.

I think there are two aspects of funding. Building on Mr. Ness's comments, we actually need two streams. One is to learn to understand more about where our risks and vulnerabilities are. We're currently conducting inner risk, hazard and vulnerability studies just to be able to expand our knowledge. Once we know what our risks and vulnerabilities are, we can define what kinds of capital changes are needed for whether we retreat or advance or modify infrastructure or upgrade it, so we need that larger pot as well.

In the first few years, we're learning more about where our risks and vulnerabilities lie. We need consistent funding to do those studies. That's really important. The larger capital will come later. The permanent transit fund should hopefully even provide both, but in the interim, we need to get started. We need to understand what our current risk profile is. We've done some very high-level work. We generally know where our risks and vulnerabilities lie; now we need to go to the next levels of detail.

I hope that answers your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Zarrillo.

Next we have Mr. Muys. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and all witnesses as well, for your time and expertise.

Mr. Chair, I gave notice of motion on Thursday of last week with regard to the supplementary estimates and the ministers appearing. I'd like to move that motion for consideration. I know that it's been distributed by the clerk to all members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Do we have unanimous consent to have the ministers appear for supplemental estimates?

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])