Calgarians need to pay more to keep sidewalks free of snow, ice

Given cost of all those hospitalizations from falling, this is tax money well-spent

Two CBC reports on snow two months apart should be enough for Calgarians to put two and two together.

The first report in December revealed that Albertans are falling on the ice and being injured at three times the rate of people living in Ontario. The second report came out last week and compared sidewalk-clearing rates for various cities across Canada.

The City of Calgary clears a piddling 268 kilometres of sidewalks in the city, and expects residents and businesses to clear the other 5,409 kilometres. Ottawa clears 2,100 kilometres of sidewalks with a snow budget of $64.3 million, compared to Calgary’s $38.1 million.

The city estimates it would cost another $55 million on top of that to clear Calgary’s sidewalks. It would mean a property tax increase, of course, and Calgarians have shown themselves to be severely allergic to tax increases.

But wait — fewer sidewalks are being properly cleared here and more people are slipping and hurting themselves than happens in Ontario. Cause and effect? Well, duh!

The CBC thoughtfully provided a chart in its December report that shows “rate of serious injury due to falls on ice” in terms of “average annual hospitalizations, per 100,000 population, from 2011 to 2016.” Alberta’s rate is 42.3 hospitalizations per 100,000 for serious ice injuries, while Ontario’s is just 14.

So those whose knee-jerk reaction is to balk at a property tax hike that would pay for clearing sidewalks might want to consider the costs of those 42.3 hospitalizations per 100,000 Albertans. They might want to think of lost productivity, the costs to the health-care system and the personal, emotional and financial costs to those who are injured.

The city can no longer leave sidewalk clearing to its residents. With all the snow we’ve had so far in February, the word is that the city has received thousands of complaints about treacherous sidewalks. Do you really think there are enough bylaw officers to police all of those and follow up on them?

Sheer volume alone would dictate that logistically, many of those complaints can’t be followed up after the initial letter to the homeowner until the sidewalks are bare and the lilacs are in bloom again.

The CBC reports give other reasons for the discrepancy in number of falls and money spent on clearing sidewalks, such as pedestrian infrastructure, weather patterns, etc. But so what? The bottom line is that Calgary’s sidewalks are dangerous and people are getting hurt.

The CBC report quoted Edmonton intensive-care physician Darren Markland after a particularly nasty bout of icy sidewalks in that city in December, where residents are also expected to clear the sidewalks.

Markland said people fell on the ice the day of the storm, but they were still slipping and hurting themselves several days later: “That was preventable if there was more rigorous maintenance and perhaps more enforcement of private owners who weren’t making their sidewalks and accesses safer.”

Meanwhile, the city of Ottawa clears residential sidewalks within 16 hours after a storm. “If you want to look at how to prevent this from happening, snow clearing is probably the most important thing,” said Markland.

Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra said: “We’ve got a monstrous amount of space that needs clearing, and we have amongst the lowest snow-clearing budgets of any big Canadian city. If citizens are demanding it, we might have to spend more money.”

We should be demanding it. When you can’t even walk your dog around the neighbourhood without risking broken bones because people haven’t cleared their sidewalks and driveway entrances, it’s obvious that residents cannot be depended upon to do the job. In fact, in a big city like Calgary, asking residents to shovel public sidewalks is just plain bush league.

Sometimes, not everything is about lower taxes. Sometimes, it’s about quality of life for the denizens of a winter city.