Call North End sewage project to account this fall

Every few months, a water and sewer bill arrives in your mailbox, and every year it rises a little. Most of us pay without looking closely. It’s worth paying attention to now, because that bill has quietly become the way Winnipeg is funding the most expensive project in its history. This fall, it becomes a question on the ballot.

The project is the rebuilding of the North End sewage plant, now costing over $3 billion. The city has already raised rates — about $168 on the typical annual household bill in 2025 and roughly $44 more this year — with another increase of around $68 set for next year. Water and sewer rates have been rising for decades to pay for this plant.

Here is what should make you sit up. The city’s own staff warned that this year’s increase could have been much steeper — as high as 28.5 per cent — if the federal and provincial governments had not contributed more money. That shock was avoided only because Ottawa and Manitoba finally chipped in an additional $334 million.

Read that again: the difference between a manageable bump and a 28.5-per cent jump on your water bill was whether senior governments paid their share. Your bill is a dial, and they decide how far it turns.

And the dial is not done turning. The final phase of the plant, the part that removes the nutrients choking Lake Winnipeg, will cost about $1.5 billion. Roughly $1 billion of that is supposed to come from the province and Ottawa. Those commitments are not yet signed. This is exactly what the province was warned about this spring — the clock is running, and the money is not locked down. If it does not come, the city can only turn back to your bill.

Now look at who should be paying.

By the city’s own analysis, completing this plant will return about $47 billion in tax revenue to Ottawa and the province in the years ahead — roughly $25 for every dollar they invest. They are the ones who profit and hold the broad tools to pay for it: income tax, sales tax and the national treasury.

The city has one real instrument — a flat water charge that ignores what you earn — and it is loosening its low-income assistance rules to keep people from being disconnected. The government that gains the most is relying on the tool that hurts ordinary people the most.

And here is the part that should bother everyone, whatever your politics: even after all this spending, the plant on its own will cut the phosphorus reaching Lake Winnipeg by only one or two per cent. Barely five per cent of the lake’s phosphorus comes from the plant. The other 95 per cent runs off farms across the watershed, which the province leaves to voluntary measures that have done little.

So, we are paying more and more on the bluntest bill we have for a fix that won’t save the lake by itself, while the governments that should fund it and regulate the real source stand back.

None of this changes on its own. But on Oct. 28, for the first time in four years, we elect/re-elect our mayor and council. They will decide whether to keep raising your water bill or make the senior governments pay. When a candidate comes to your door or speaks at a forum, ask three plain questions:

Will you refuse to balance this project on our water bills and hold Ottawa and the province to the share of their windfall they say they owe? Will you get that billion-dollar commitment to the final phase signed before the next rate hike, not after? And, will you protect households already pushed toward disconnection while bigger governments drag their feet?

We’ve been paying for this on our water bills for 20 years. The province is being warned that its time is running out. This fall, remember that whenever those governments fail to pay, the bill comes to us. In October, we finally get to say so.

Hersh Seth is a Winnipeg resident and community organizer.