The Current - Why do some Canadian cities still struggle with snow?

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Cities like Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa could be digging out for weeks after an enormous snowfall. Toronto city councillor Josh Matlow says his municipality needs a better snow plan than just waiting for spring to do the work — and, we look at whether technology that heats the streets could solve this problem for good. 

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Unfortunately, it is often a terrible tragedy that brings us together Last week in Canada such a terrible tragedy occurred a catastrophe that will affect the country for decades to come There was snow on the streets of Toronto. Snow in Toronto. From the Rick Mercer archives, that is the CBC's Lyndon McIntyre with a very serious not at all sarcastic report. All jokes aside, large swaths of Ontario and Quebec are still digging themselves out after getting absolutely walloped with winter weather over the weekend. Toronto got 43 centimetres of snow.

Montreal has broken a record over 70 centimetres in the past four days. The CBC's Ainsley McClellan went out in her snow shoes to talk to Montrealers, hard at work. You seem very well equipped here. I bought it in 2009. After I had a heart attack I felt I can't travel that anymore. I had to leave my car three kilometers away.

It was stuck like six, seven times. Finally I gave up and I left my car there and just going to get it out. Now I will go there and take my time to dig it out. Yeah, I cannot go for a walk or anything. I mean, we're in the street right now. Have you tried the sidewalks at all? No. They are not able to clear it anyway.

So you cannot walk there. So you have to walk in the middle of the street. This is the first time that we experienced. Yeah. We've heard that it could take eight days for the snow clearing to happen. What do you think about that? Well, it's a big storm. Of course, we'd all like to see it faster, but life is life. You know, it's hard for, you know, going to work and coming back, where are you going to put your car?

I hope it won't take eight days, but we have to deal with. We have to deal with it. I'm sure some of you listening across the country might be rolling your eyes. Keep in mind though, Toronto is dealing with more snow than the city got in 1999. As you might recall in 99, the army was called in to help dig the city of Toronto out.

Josh Matlow is a Toronto city councillor. He's been calling for a better snow plan. He's with me in studio. Good morning. Good morning. Paint a picture for the rest of the country. What 43 centimetres of snow does to Toronto? 43 centimetres and then another 26 centimetres

a few days later, it's been a wallop. And I know that, you know, people like to joke about it and I get that. That being said though, beyond the snow, there are real life consequences for people. People who might be older adults with mobility challenges, young parents pushing strollers, people with disabilities, some of whom have been trapped in their homes for many, many days because not, let alone the roads, the sidewalks have been impassable in many cases. So the picture of Toronto has been both a less

safe, inaccessible city because of all the mountains of snow and icebergs over the sidewalks. But moreover, the city is saying, unlike cities like Montreal that are saying, you know, they got a similar amount of snow and they're going to get it done within eight days or more. Toronto is saying stick around for three weeks and maybe we to get it done within eight days or more. Toronto is saying stick

around for three weeks and maybe we'll get it done by then. Why is it going to take three weeks to remove snow? I mean, I was out yesterday and saw parents pushing their strollers on the road because the sidewalks are impassable. On road as cars are driving by and they're trying to figure it. That's not reasonable. Why is it going to take three weeks to get rid of snow? Because Montreal, I believe has done a better job at making choices about responding to extreme weather. They've invested in the equipment, the human power to be able to get the job done faster. They have these big trucks that follow the plows that scoop it all up and then they dump

it somewhere. Toronto has some of those, but I think it's just about 140 of those trucks, and we have over 7,000 kilometres of roads. Those trucks move at about a kilometre an hour. It's not getting done fast. Now, I successfully advocated when Mayor Tory was around to expand sidewalk snow clearing. I worked with my colleagues, we got that done. sidewalk snow clearing. I worked with my colleagues, we got that done. But the Mayor at the time did not support our efforts to take more seriously extreme weather proactive efforts. And they also approved a contract that is worth about $1.5 billion over 10 years that I've got serious concerns about whether or not there's enough oversight,

control and accountability for those contractors doing the work. And we should say the city of Montreal, the officials there are telling people in that city to be patient as well. They've only removed something like 15% of the snow. Ottawa is digging it, they're going to be at it for days and weeks as well.

But is it reasonable, as cities face an economic crunch across this country, is it reasonable to have all this equipment waiting? We didn't really get much snow in the City of Toronto at all in the last couple of years. Suddenly you get walloped. Is it reasonable to think that you can have that just waiting knowing that that's an expense when you could spend that money on something else? Is it reasonable to invest in fire trucks having no idea how many fires you're going to have? The reality is, we live in Canada. We are a winter city. We are indeed.

Indeed. And cities like Montreal and Toronto and Edmonton and other cities, perhaps not Vancouver and Victoria, but certainly many of us in Canada recognize that we're going to have some years like last year that are really mild, but we're going to have winters like this in 2022 and many others, where there are going to be major storms, maybe one, maybe more. And we need to make sure that we're investing in a safe and accessible city for everyone, because the repercussions of not doing it are that people are either trapped or at the very worst injured. And that's not acceptable.

Now, I think that we can do a better job. I also agree with anyone who would say we shouldn't be complaining that the city doesn't come and clear our snow an hour after it falls. Their patience is necessary, but three weeks or more seems like a plan to just let spring take over rather than us doing the work. Can I just ask you finally before I let you go about personal and individual responsibility. And it's not just people shoveling their sidewalks, but large businesses, major grocery store chains that are also not shoveling their sidewalks.

There used to be an ad that ran in Toronto, voiced by a guy named Ben Wicks, be nice, clear your ice. I remember that. Was what was said to Torontonians. What is the individual responsibility to clean off the snow in front of your house so that people can actually walk back and forth and you might be able to get out

the door as well without slipping and falling? Officially, if it's less than two centimeters of snow, it's our job to clear it and then after that we have the city that will help out. That being said though, during a major storm, I believe that we all have a responsibility to pitch in, help each other, help our neighbors. If we know that somebody is vulnerable on our street and our building, check in on them. That's how we should operate as a society. That being said, though, when all of our neighbors along with ourselves get together and we start pitching in and digging out and the sidewalk is finally somewhat clear, and then an hour later a plow comes and shoves all the snow back onto the sidewalk that we just cleared,

that's not acceptable and that's why I'm asking for the city to do better as I have year after year. Josh, thank you very much. My pleasure. Josh Matlow, Toronto City Councillor. While you struggle with another round of shoveling, if you're in Toronto or Ottawa or Montreal or parts beyond, imagine if those roads and sidewalks could clear themselves. Sounds like a dream in some places in Europe. It is a reality.

Thanks to geothermal energy. Seth Tworkin is a professor, Canada research chair in mechanical engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University. Good morning to you. Good morning. What are we talking about here? How could geothermal energy mean that I would not

need to pick up the shovel and that cities like Montreal and Ottawa and yes, Toronto, um, might have an easier go after a big storm. Well, the technology would be really simple. We would be putting pipes underground and then pipes under the road or embedded into the concrete and we would be running water, pretty cold water, but warm enough to melt snow.

So a few degrees above zero. Um, and there would be some antifreeze, some glycol in there to keep it from freezing. And that would be circulating under the ground using the heat. That's kind of deep underground, about, um, 30 or 40 meters deep. And it would be melting the snow and ice on the

sidewalk before it really has a chance to stick. I said in some ways, it sounds like a dream to some people listening. It might sound like a fantasy that you're going to have pipes under the surface that are going to help melt the snow, in some ways it sounds like a dream, to some people listening it might sound like a fantasy, that you're gonna have pipes under the surface that are going to help melt the snow. But this is being used in Europe, I said. That's right, so there are some pilots in Belgium

and Sweden, to my knowledge. There's also some private institutions that I know of in the US that use this for parking lots. I can think of some ski resorts, for example. So the technology exists. It's not particularly complicated. It just requires some will to look at it, install it, maybe do some pilots.

Will and presumably an enormous amount of money. If you're gonna dig up all the roads and put pipes underneath them and run the pipes from somewhere that's gonna provide the water that's gonna melt the snow, that must cost a lot of money, yes? So it can be expensive and have a high initial cost, but I'm not suggesting we do it for all the roads. I'm suggesting that we target certain areas first. On ramps with inclines,

bridges that tend to ice over quickly, or very high pedestrian areas. We also, I believe, have data on intersections that frequently have car accidents. So these are the tricky spots. You're not looking at everybody's street and everybody's sidewalk. You're looking at the areas that would be most complicated with a little bit of snow or ice. Well, that's where I would start. And once the technology was proven, I would look at spreading that to larger areas because I believe, and this warrants a deeper study, but I believe that the payback on the investment would be quite reasonable. Tell me

more about that because again, you could imagine people would say, spend the money to Josh Matlow's point, spend the money on more plows, spend the money on a snowblower that's going to help scoop up the snow that's frozen into ice on the side of the streets rather than this. But you say that money would work itself out. Well, yes. So there would be a variety of savings that we would need to consider. So first of all is the plowing savings and the salt savings.

There's also the environmental degradation associated with salting the roads. There would be less need for that. There would be potentially fewer accidents. So there would be fewer traffic jams, uh, less use of emergency services. Hopefully there would be fewer injuries associated with those accidents, fewer slips and falls. So there would be savings associated with, uh,

reduced healthcare costs as well. Um, few, fewer traffic jams, um, in, in the spring and the summer, just as much as snow can be an inconvenience, we know in Toronto that road work can really slow things down. And a lot of the road work is associated with potholes. The potholes are formed by water seeping into the concrete or into the asphalt, freezing over a cold night, and then causing big cracks.

If it's never freezing, that's not happening. So we might see a significant reduction of spring and summer road work as well. It's interesting that this is being piloted in places, I mean, you could imagine, again, people would say this isn't gonna work in a winter nation. It's being piloted in places that get a lot of snow. Yes, it would only work in a winter nation.

Unless you have four, five, six months of winter, the payback on it doesn't make sense. If you've only got a short one or two month winter, you're not going to be getting your money's worth. The technology exists. It's the same type of technology that we use for geothermal heating and cooling of buildings across Canada. It's the similar type of technology we use for skating rinks.

So we have piping under skating rinks that causes that water to freeze or stay frozen. It would just be a different temperature water and it would cause it to melt instead. For our friends who are slipping and sliding on what is left of the ice pellets in Eastern Canada or climbing over, you know, giant mountains of snow in Ottawa or in Montreal, this might sound really intriguing.

Seth, thank you very much. Thank you. Seth Thorkin is a professor and Canada research chair in mechanical engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University. There's some nice things about a lot of snow. I saw people, um, skiing, uh, downhill, like building kind of a little ramp down a hill and

they were leaping off, uh, uh, on the middle of a street in the middle of the snowstorm. There was a guy who was walking around with a shovel, helping people dig helping people dig out their cars because perhaps they weren't able to dig them out themselves. If there are good things that you have seen that have come out of the winter wallet that many parts of this country received, let us know. You can email us, thecurrent at cbc.ca.