Montreal-area mayors say Quebec government has not delivered on promised flood relief

MONTREAL — A group of mayors from the Montreal region says the Quebec government has fallen short of its promise to increase financial aid for victims of torrential rain that hit the province earlier this month.

Last week, Quebec Premier François Legault suggested the province would expand its disaster financial assistance program after heavy flooding caused by the remnants of tropical storm Debby, which struck the province on Aug. 9 and 10.

During a visit to the hard-hit community of Louiseville on Aug. 16, Legault said the program could be temporarily expanded to include sewer backups, which had been excluded because they’re typically covered by private insurance. The government program had only compensated homeowners for water damage caused by overland flooding.

But during a radio interview earlier this week, Public Security Minister François Bonnardel said only homes where flooding had “mixed causes,” meaning that “the overflow of a river or waterway … led to a sewer backup,” would be eligible. “We’re not going to replace private insurers,” he said.

The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM), which represents 82 municipalities, says there has been no meaningful change to the program if sewer backups located far from waterways are not included.

Louiseville Mayor Yvon Deshaies said he’s been getting calls this week from residents who are confused about the program. People living on certain streets have been told they’re eligible for financial aid, he said, while residents of other streets have been told they’re out of luck.

“It’s confusing. People don’t know if they’re going to get help or not,” said Deshaies. Louiseville, a community of 7,000 people near the St. Lawrence River northeast of Montreal, suffered extensive flooding during the storm, and Deshaies says about 300 basements filled with water.

“I want all our people to be compensated. That’s what I want,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense for anyone in Louiseville to be refused.”

As of Friday afternoon, the government website for the disaster relief program says that people affected by the torrential rain on Aug. 9 and 10 should submit a request for financial aid even if they’re not sure whether they’re eligible. But the site also says homeowners are only eligible for assistance for sewer backups “if a nearby waterway overflowed.”

The Canadian Press obtained a screenshot of a message sent by the Public Security Department to municipalities that says, “if the flooding is caused by a sewer backup or water infiltration without the overflow of a nearby waterway, the disaster will not be covered by the (program.)”

Alain Mailhot, a professor of urban hydrology at Quebec’s national scientific research institute, said it doesn’t make sense to compensate people for sewer backups only if they live close to a river. Backups generally occur when surface runoff overwhelms the sewer system, and usually aren’t related to flooding from nearby waterways, he said.

“I imagine (the government) defined it like this to avoid having to reimburse everybody,” he said. “But from a hydrological perspective, it’s difficult to understand.”

Mailhot said it will likely be an “endless headache” to figure out who’s eligible for the program according to the new criteria. “I honestly don’t know how they’re going to be able to do it,” he said. “It’s a Pandora’s box. It’s going to be very complicated.”

Earlier this week, the CMM called on the province to adapt its program to the new reality of climate change. In a press release, the group requested that sewer backups caused by “urban runoff” during episodes of heavy rain be eligible for government aid.

“There has always been urban runoff, but we have to admit that the context of climate change will make these events more frequent and potentially more intense,” said Nicolas Milot, interim director of ecological transition and innovation at the CMM.

Flooding is no longer tied to waterways, but instead can happen almost anywhere, Milot said.

Milot said the government program was designed to complement private insurance, which often doesn’t cover overland flooding. The program filled a void, he said, but warned that many insurance policies won’t cover the full cost of the damage caused by sewer backups during extreme events like tropical storm Debby.

He also said many people whose homes flooded this month had never experienced flooding before and may not have been fully insured against it. “Obviously, this was an exceptional event that generated a risk that, in the normal order of things, we were not used to seeing,” Milot said. “So, it was understandable that citizens did not take this flood coverage. But the consequences for them are dramatic.”

Jean-François Girard, a lawyer and biologist with Montreal-based DHC Avocats, said it’s unfair for the government not to compensate everyone affected by sewer backups, when more and more flooding is caused by rainfall overwhelming city sewers. “This is the cost of climate-change adaptation,” he said. “We didn’t want to prevent climate change, so now we have to pay for the consequences.”

A spokesperson for the Public Security Department said that any expansion to the aid program will involve “analyzing each individual case to find out the reasons for the overflow to determine whether the case is admissible or not.”

Jean Savard, assistant deputy minister of public security, has also sent a letter to municipalities reminding them that the disaster assistance program “does not replace individual insurance policies.”

Meanwhile, several Montreal businesses are still recovering from a major water main break last Friday that sprayed millions of litres of water onto streets near the city’s Jacques Cartier Bridge.

The archives of Télé-Québec, a public educational television broadcaster, were damaged when water burst through basement windows and filled the building’s lower floors with three to seven feet of water. Spokesperson Catherine Leboeuf said the network’s content has all been digitized, but some artifacts, possibly including costumes from the famous children’s program Passe-Partout, have been damaged.

Leboeuf said it will be several weeks before employees can return to the building, but the network’s fall programming will launch as planned on Sept. 2.

Bell Media had to relocate broadcast teams for CTV News Montreal, Noovo Info and RDS to a mobile studio on Nun’s Island. A spokesperson says the downtown studios’ power infrastructure was hardest hit by the flooding.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 23, 2024.

Caroline Chatelard and Maura Forrest, The Canadian Press