Mr. Speaker, climate change denial is deeply embedded in the Conservative government's DNA. This explains the government's inertia on the issue at a time when our major trading partner, the United States, is signalling its intent to seriously address climate change. But I will not discuss GHG emissions this evening. I will not be talking about the causes of climate change and the need to do our part to address them. Rather, I will be talking about the impacts of climate change and the urgent need to mitigate or adapt to those impacts by upgrading our municipal infrastructure.
Climate change's bottom line is its devastating impact on water. It is becoming increasingly obvious to anyone who follows the news headlines that climate change is wreaking havoc, through more frequent and intense floods and droughts, on communities, the economy, and the environment. Our municipal storm sewer systems are not necessarily equipped to absorb the torrential rains we are experiencing on a more and more frequent basis. They were not built to receive such large quantities of water over such short periods of time.
Many of our older storm sewer systems are not separate from sanitary sewer systems. Both systems are combined. This means that when too much rainwater enters the system, it can cause raw sewage to overflow into nearby bodies of water or into home basements. The cost of such flooding can be enormous. For example, one three-hour rainfall event in August 2005 in Toronto produced over 160 millimetres of rainwater and led to 13,000 flooded basements, representing $500 million in damages. In fact, storm sewer runoff is the number one cause of urban water pollution. There is a clear need to invest in new dedicated storm sewer systems and to create catchment basins to capture overflow during heavy rainstorms that would otherwise spill into waterways.
We know, however, from the last Conservative budget that the federal government in the next three years will not be spending enough on municipal infrastructure renewal and expansion so that it can register a balanced budget in time for the next federal election. According to the 2014 budget, the federal government will spend, on average, only about $300 million per year on new infrastructure projects across Canada. How can the government properly help upgrade storm sewer systems and other municipal infrastructure, including other water infrastructure, on such a budget?