Many Quebecers with water damage in their basements after record-breaking rainfall earlier this month caused by post-tropical storm Debby are disappointed after changes to a disaster compensation program have yet to materialize.
“It’s an exceptional situation, so we are looking to put in place exceptional programs,” Premier François Legault said after visiting the flood-ravaged community of Louiseville in Quebec’s Mauricie region a few days after the storm.
The storm broke records after bringing intense rainfall in a short period.
Laval resident Dominic Gratton, whose entire basement was flooded, watched the premier’s announcement and thought it might mean some help for him.
“We had about two feet high of raw sewage coming from the basement toilet and shower,” Gratton told CBC� News in an interview.
Gratton lost a sound system and a couple of guitars, and his entire basement will need to be gutted. He has some coverage from private insurance, but not enough to pay for all the damage.
Legault’s comments made him optimistic.
“It brought back hope of, you know, a little extra to recover, maybe quicker,” Gratton said.
“We took that, sort of, as a relief that something could and would happen,” he said.
But that wasn’t the case.
Visiting the flooded town of Louiseville, Que., after post-tropical storm Debby battered the province, Quebec Premier François Legault said ‘common sense’ pointed to expanded compensation. Weeks later, has anything changed?
Aside from a promise to be flexible, none of the rules for the provincial program have changed, many people are still being rejected and there’s a lot of confusion about who’s eligible.
“I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the people who will have to make these evaluations and decide we cover this person and we don’t cover that other person,” Alain Mailhot, a hydrologist with the province’s Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), told CBC News in an interview.
“I don’t see how they’re going to do it honestly,” Mailhot said.
Are sewer backups covered or not?
The provincial program in question is called the General Financial Assistance Program Regarding Disasters. It’s designed to be a last-resort assistance program for disaster victims who don’t have private insurance coverage.
Most basic private insurance policies don’t offer coverage for damage from sewer backups or overland flooding (when lakes and rivers overflow during spring thaw, for example), but people can pay extra for that coverage.
The provincial program has historically offered some compensation for overland flooding, but not for sewer backups.
That’s what François Legault said he wanted to change.
“If the sewer backups were exceptionally numerous due to flooding, well, common sense would tell us that we should maybe expand the program. So that’s something we’re looking at right now,” Legault told reporters in Louiseville.
But that’s not what’s happened.
“There will be no modification to the program by cabinet decree,” Robert Maranda, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Security, told Radio-Canada in an email on Aug. 23, more than a week after Legault’s comments.
“The difference will be in the way of analyzing each particular case to know the reasons for the overflows in order to see if the cases submitted are admissible or not,” Maranda added.
CBC News asked the ministry to clarify what that means.
“If water enters the building through sewer backup or infiltration following the overflow of a watercourse, the loss is eligible. However, if the flooding is caused by a sewer backup or by water infiltration without overflow from a nearby watercourse, the loss will not be eligible,” Thomas Ricard, a spokesperson for the ministry, told CBC News in an email.
Expert says provincial criteria don’t make sense
Mailhot said for him, that explanation doesn’t add up.
“I read that about six or seven times, and I’m not sure what interpretation I would give to it,” he said.
For one, Mailhot said most of the flooding that happened after Debby wasn’t connected to waterways overflowing.
“I suspect most of the floods were urban, particularly in Laval and Montreal,” he said.
“They weren’t linked to the fact that rivers overflowed, they were linked to the fact that the sewer networks were absolutely incapable of evacuating these volumes of water,” Mailhot said.
Mailhot also said there’s no precise way to determine if a sewer backup is caused by an overland flood.
CBC News asked the ministry how it would determine which sewer backups were caused by overland flooding, and was told there’s no specific criteria or formula.
“The ministry analyzes each case carefully, evaluating the causes and effects of watercourse overflows on buildings using, for example, geomatics tools and information from municipalities,” the ministry spokesperson Ricard said.
“Each file is different,” he said.
Changes unclear
It seems even people working at the ministry are not totally clear on how to interpret the changes.
In Louiseville, where the premier spoke about expanding the program, some residents were surprised to find out a few days later they weren’t eligible for compensation from the province.
Resident Johanne Beaulieu contacted public security officials a few days after Legault’s press conference requesting compensation. She was told she wasn’t eligible.
“The government agent told us they have maps, and that our street wasn’t part of the map,” Beaulieu told Radio-Canada.
After Beaulieu and other residents complained, the mayor of Louiseville contacted the local MNA, Simon Allaire.
Allaire told Radio-Canada that after rechecking with the ministry, he was able to confirm that Beaulieu and others would in fact be covered under the program.
“Louiseville is surrounded by rivers, so it’s reasonable to conclude that most citizens have water in the ground because the rivers rose too high and caused sewer backup,” Allaire said.
Mailhot said determining who gets compensation based on how near they are to a lake or a river doesn’t necessarily make sense.
“What is it based on? Is it one kilometre? Is it 100 metres? That doesn’t mean anything because it depends on the slopes, it depends on lots of factors,” Mailhot said.
“I have no idea of the fraction of flooding that could have been caused by that. It’s not easy to show that,” he said.
Feeling betrayed
Gratton said he feels betrayed by the premier and the ministry. After Legault’s comments, he sincerely believed he would now be entitled to some compensation.
“It was pretty clear to everybody in the neighborhood here that sewage backup would be covered as an as an exception for the Debby storm,” Gratton said.
“We went fast from hope to big disappointment. Maybe they talked too early or too fast and promised things that they could not turn over,” Gratton said.
“I don’t think it was the right thing to make a promise that just won’t happen to people that just lost everything,” he said.
The ministry told CBC News that as of Aug. 26, 7,795 people had applied for assistance, but they couldn’t say how many of those applications were approved.