Speech on Canada’s Infrastructure (November 25, 2021)

Honourable senators, this week we have witnessed the deadly impact of severe weather on both coasts of our country, with the loss of human and animal life, the loss of homes and businesses and the loss of incomes and futures.

Weather is the Canadian reality — winter whiteouts, ice storms, forest fires and even atmospheric rivers are a fact of life. We are ruled by weather as any travelling senator knows.

But what the parade of rainstorms has put into sharp relief is the sorry state of infrastructure across Canada. In the last two years, COVID has also exposed other serious infrastructure issues. We need only remember the frightening story of the millions of dollars’ worth of much-needed PPE — masks, gowns and gloves — that were recklessly discarded but never replaced, leaving us at risk for months as the pandemic unfolded.

In fact, hospitals, seniors’ homes and even schools were not prepared and already facing critical staff and equipment shortages or faulty air circulation systems. Our health system virtually collapsed as many were denied service for a vast array of other life-threatening illnesses.

Entire communities often wait hours or days for police assistance. Others wait for an ambulance to take a stroke victim to a hospital or finally just decide to put them in a vehicle to drive them to an emergency room down the road. But if you don’t have a road or a bus or a train or a car to get to the hospital, then we know the outcome.

Supply chains come to a halt too, keeping food and medicine — not just Christmas presents — out of reach.

Infrastructure is in crisis. A 2019 report from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities showed that 40% of roads are in poor condition. Water and sewage infrastructure is out of date. Today, we still have boil-water advisories in First Nations and in many small towns, mine included.

Funding is piecemeal, which leaves provinces and municipalities to fix the potholes rather than moving the road to higher ground or securing the bridge. So we just patch things up or rebuild a road or the home in the same problematic place. It is all well and good to have aspirational goals to meet the climate change issues, but today we must deal with our reality.

Of course, we can always call in the army to fill sandbags or fight fires or clean bedpans, but that is not the answer. We need less bureaucracy and more common sense, more coordination and less finger pointing. We need a national infrastructure revitalization commitment. Let’s set a goal to update and modernize by 2030. Surely, in a wealthy G7 country, we can put the health and safety and lives and livelihoods of Canadians at the top of our agenda.