Friday, June 27, 2025
Numerous events demonstrate the dilapidated state of our drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure. This is why a dozen partners from different sectors of civil society are joining forces and announcing today the creation of the Housing-Related Water Infrastructure Task Force.
The Tactical Group aims to place the issue of the investment gap in water infrastructure at the top of the public and government agenda. Its mandate is to propose concrete and innovative solutions to address this investment gap. Four key actions will be implemented:
- Map needs across Quebec in order to obtain an up-to-date picture of the situation;
- Identify available technologies to make current infrastructures more resilient and more efficient;
- Identify innovative financing solutions to address the deficit;
- Identify administrative barriers that undermine the ability to act in order to overcome them.
The Tactical Group, which brings together various areas of expertise (construction, engineering, urban planning, etc.) to tackle this priority issue, is made up of the following organizations:
- Association of Construction and Housing Professionals of Quebec (APCHQ);
- Quebec Construction Association (ACQ);
- Association of Road Builders and Major Works of Quebec (ACRGTQ);
- Association of Engineering Consulting Firms of Quebec (AFG);
- Quebec Association of Infrastructure Contractors (AQEI);
- Center for Expertise and Research in Urban Infrastructure (CERIU);
- Quebec Urban Development Institute (IDU);
- Order of Urban Planners of Quebec (OUQ);
- Environment Network (RE);
- Living in the City.
A first meeting of the Tactical Group will take place soon to establish the roadmap and framework, and define the next steps.
The state of water infrastructure: the blind spot of the housing crisis
This initiative comes at a time when the state of Quebec’s water infrastructure has been regularly in the news in recent months. This issue affects all regions of Quebec, which is why the partners involved in the Tactical Group have been actively lobbying on this issue for several years.
Currently, CERIU estimates that $49 billion would be needed in Quebec alone to replace all water and road infrastructure (above the networks) at critical risk of failure. As a result, municipal water infrastructure is no longer able to meet the needs of new construction, let alone those of denser projects, forcing many municipalities to implement construction moratoriums.
Recall that a few weeks ago, the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UMQ) published the results of a survey of 139 municipalities, which revealed that 43 of them reported having to reject housing construction projects due to a lack of water infrastructure capacity. As a result, 36,000 housing units could not be built this year, which is particularly distressing in a context marked by an unprecedented housing crisis.
Image credit: AFG Quebec.
