1980s & 1990s

BIRTH OF AN INFRaSTRUCTURE ‘MAINTENANCE DEFICIT’

November 1986: Newly elected mayor of Montreal Jean Doré says at a conference of Canadian mayors in Vancouver that municipalities want a national funding program to restore aging and deteriorating infrastructure. “If we don’t immediately attack the problem, in 10 years or so we’ll be facing massive problems of degrading quality of life.” June 1991: “We have to rebuild Montreal from the inside, otherwise it will crumble, it will collapse on itself, exactly like what is happening in several large American cities,” Doré warns a Quebec National Assembly committee. He says Montreal needs $2 billion for the city’s deteriorating road, water and sewer infrastructure over the next 10 years.

Road maintenance deficit: $335M

as of 1991. (A report accompanying the 1992 city budget says $1.8 billion needs to be spent by 2000 to rehabilitate or prevent deterioration of road, water and sewer networks; $335 million is for roads.)

Timeline to overcome deficit: 10 years Fact check:

Montreal didn’t invest $1.8 billion over 10 years, despite the launch of the federal infrastructure program. The 1990s were marked by recession. Doré and his successor, Pierre Bourque, were driven by austerity measures rather than road rehabilitation. A 1997 review of the $6.5-billion Canada Infrastructure Work Program found that across Canada, 60 per cent of the funds were used to carry out new construction or expand facilities, even though municipalities had lobbied for funding to fix decaying infrastructure and overcome their maintenance deficit. The federal infrastructure program is about job creation in the recession. In 1992, Liberal Leader Jean Chrétien called for a $1-billion program to build municipal roads and sewers to create jobs right away.