Inspecting Aging Infrastructure: Why Canada Is Facing a Silent Crisis
On June 5, 2024, a major water main in northwest Calgary suddenly gave way, flooding surrounding streets and forcing thousands of residents to live with reduced water pressure for more than a month. The pipe section that failed had been installed in 1975. It had been flagged as vulnerable as far back as 2004 — twenty years before its catastrophic failure. Less than a year later, in early 2025, the same feeder main system suffered a second major rupture. The independent investigation that followed concluded that age-related deterioration represented a known risk that had gone unaddressed.
In Montreal, a major water main burst in 2024 flooded surrounding streets, cut power to thousands of homes, and triggered a boil-water advisory. In Vancouver, it was recently revealed that nearly 150 kilometres of the city's sewer mains are more than 100 years old — well past the upper limit of what is generally considered the typical lifespan of sewer pipes. These incidents are not anomalies. They are symptoms. And they signal a crisis that has been quietly building for decades beneath the streets of virtually every Canadian city.
The True Scale of the Problem: Numbers That Should Alarm Us
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) estimates the national infrastructure deficit at $270 billion. Canadian municipalities own more than 60 percent of the country's core public infrastructure — roads, bridges, water systems, and transit — yet receive only 8 to 10 cents of every tax dollar collected.
Approximately 30 percent of water infrastructure — drinking water pipes and sewers — is in fair, poor, or very poor condition at the national level. In 2022, 13 percent of existing sewer pipes were assessed as being in very poor or poor condition. And in some provinces, the situation is even more concerning.
In Vancouver, it was recently announced that nearly 150 kilometres of sewer mains are more than 100 years old, well beyond the upper limit generally considered the typical lifespan for sewer pipes. An engineering expert quoted in a 2024 report summarized the situation plainly: Canadian water systems have been long underfunded and need new investment everywhere.
In Alberta alone, municipalities face a $30 billion infrastructure deficit. And these figures do not account for growth-related needs: considering the 5.8 million homes that federal and provincial governments are directing municipalities to approve by 2030, the gap could reach the equivalent of $600 billion in municipal infrastructure investment.
These are staggering numbers. But behind these national statistics lie very concrete realities: manholes that haven't been inspected in years, pipelines whose condition nobody truly knows, and failures that arrive as a complete surprise because nobody has taken a close look in far too long.
Why the Crisis Is "Silent"
Unlike a bridge that collapses or a road that visibly cracks, the aging of underground infrastructure happens in complete darkness — both literally and figuratively.
A sewer pipe that slowly fissures, a manhole that gradually infiltrates, an underground chamber whose walls corrode year after year — none of this is visible from the surface. No obvious warning signal. No indicator that anything is happening. Until the day it gives way.
This is what makes this crisis particularly insidious: it progresses without a sound, beneath our feet, in structures designed precisely to be buried and forgotten. And while it progresses, the cost of repair grows exponentially.
A crack detected early can be repaired for a few thousand dollars. The same crack, left unmonitored for five years, may have caused infiltrations that have weakened surrounding structures, contaminated the soil, or spread to several pipe sections. The repair then costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars — not counting the disruptions to residents and service interruptions.
In Winnipeg, a sewer leak in February 2024 led to more than 200 million litres of untreated sewage spilling into the Red River. Repair costs have already increased by 43 percent from initial estimates, with work continuing until June 2026. What could have been prevented with regular inspection became a major environmental, political, and financial crisis.
The Three Root Causes of the Problem
Understanding why the crisis has developed at this scale requires examining the structural conditions that made it possible.
Decades of Chronic Underinvestment
Municipalities have been underfunded for decades and municipal funding models have not kept pace with record growth. Underground infrastructure built in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s — during the great period of Canadian urban expansion — is approaching or has exceeded its theoretical lifespan, without municipal budgets having been sized adequately to fund large-scale replacement.
The problem is structural: towns, cities, and villages have been funded the same way since 1867, according to a formula that has not been updated to match population growth and the complexity of modern infrastructure. The 8 to 10 cents of every tax dollar that municipalities receive must fund the entirety of their asset portfolio — roads, buildings, parks, social services, and the entire underground network.
The Invisibility of Underground Assets in Political Decision-Making
Underground infrastructure suffers from a fundamental political disadvantage: it is not visible. A new bridge or a new road generates ribbon-cutting photos and press releases. A rehabilitated manhole or a replaced pipe does not.
This reality creates political incentives that favor new construction over the maintenance of existing assets. Elected officials are naturally drawn to announcing new projects rather than investing in the upkeep of infrastructure that nobody sees. The result, over several decades, is a maintenance deficit that has accumulated silently.
Inadequate Inspection as an Aggravating Factor
The third factor — and this is where the problem becomes directly actionable — is the insufficiency of inspection programs. Assets that are not regularly inspected are assets whose true condition is unknown. And assets whose true condition is unknown lead to maintenance and replacement decisions made on approximate grounds rather than facts.
Too many Canadian cities still manage their underground networks in a largely reactive way: intervening when there is a visible problem, when a resident reports something, when a failure occurs. Systematic, regular inspections of the entire network remain the exception rather than the rule.
Why? Because traditional inspection methods are expensive, slow, and complex to organize. They require mobilizing multiple teams, applying confined space entry procedures, blocking traffic, and manually processing data. In this context, inspection becomes an occasional and costly activity — rather than an operational routine integrated into the day-to-day management of the network.
What Happens When You Don't Inspect Frequently Enough
The consequences of under-inspection are not abstract. They manifest in very concrete ways in municipal operations and finances.
Late detection costs exponentially more
A frequently cited American study in the sector indicates that every dollar invested in preventive inspection saves on average between 4 and 10 dollars in long-term repair costs. This ratio reflects the simple reality that a small repair done early is always better than a large repair done late.
Emergencies disrupt operations and budgets
An unexpected infrastructure failure forces an emergency response that pulls resources away from established priorities, generates significant cost overruns, and disrupts other planned projects. In some cases, it triggers a political and media crisis that far exceeds the technical cost of the repair.
The absence of reliable data makes long-term planning impossible
A network whose condition is not regularly documented cannot be managed proactively. Rehabilitation decisions are made on insufficient grounds, priorities are approximate, and multi-year budgets lack the factual foundation needed to be defended before elected officials and the public.
The environmental risk is real
Sewer pipe failures can lead to spills of untreated wastewater into waterways — with serious environmental, regulatory, and reputational consequences for municipalities. Preventing these incidents necessarily requires precise knowledge of the network's condition.
The Good News: The Tools Exist to Turn the Tide
Despite the scale of the challenge, it would be wrong to conclude that Canadian cities are without options. The reality is different: the technologies that allow for more effective, more frequent, and lower-cost inspections exist today and are accessible to organizations of all sizes.
The most significant transformation in recent years in the field of infrastructure inspection is the democratization of the 360° inspection camera. Where it was once necessary to send an operator into a confined space or deploy a cable-mounted camera with a multi-person team, a single operator can today lower a 360° camera into a manhole from the surface and obtain, in just a few minutes, a complete, high-definition panoramic view of the interior of the structure — without ever physically entering it.
This evolution radically changes the economic equation of inspection. When the cost per manhole drops from $50-60 (traditional method, multiple-person team, confined space procedures) to $8-12 (one person, 360° camera, automated data processing), it becomes economically viable to inspect much more frequently — and therefore to progressively build the database that most municipal networks are critically lacking.
What Cities Can Do Right Now: A Three-Step Plan
Faced with the scale of the challenge and the reality of municipal budget constraints, here is a pragmatic approach to beginning to turn the tide without waiting for extraordinary budgets.
Step 1: Know Where You Stand — Establish a Baseline
The first step is to genuinely understand the condition of your network. This may seem obvious, but many cities do not have a complete, current picture of the state of their underground assets.
Start by identifying priority areas: the oldest parts of the network, those that have already experienced problems, those located beneath high-traffic arteries or critical buildings. These areas deserve a rapid inspection to establish an objective starting point.
With modern inspection tools, even a small team can cover a significant volume of manholes in a reasonable time. This initial inventory becomes the foundation from which all maintenance and rehabilitation decisions can be made in an informed way.
Step 2: Inspect Regularly — and Archive Data in a Structured Way
The point-in-time condition of a network has limited value. What truly has value is being able to observe the evolution of an asset over time — to see whether a crack has widened, whether an infiltration has worsened, whether a deposit has accumulated.
To do this, you must inspect regularly and archive data in a structured way, associated with each asset and searchable over time. Cloud-based data management platforms like RinnoCloud do exactly this: every inspection is archived, geolocated, timestamped, and comparable to previous inspections of the same asset.
A network that is inspected regularly and whose data is well archived becomes a manageable network. Problems are detected early. Intervention priorities are clear. Rehabilitation budgets can be planned on an objective basis.
Step 3: Use the Data to Justify Investments
Inspection data does not only serve operational maintenance purposes. It is also a powerful tool for defending infrastructure budgets before elected officials, justifying applications for provincial and federal grants, and communicating transparently with taxpayers about the true state of public assets.
A city that can present to its municipal council precise data on the percentage of its network in poor condition, the evolution of that condition over time, and the foreseeable costs of intervention is in a much stronger position to obtain the necessary resources than a city managing its network on approximate grounds.
RinnoVision's Role in This Equation
RinnoVision was founded precisely to address this context. Our mission — to democratize the inspection of manholes and confined spaces — is directly aligned with the urgent need that Canadian cities are experiencing: to inspect more often, more effectively, and at a cost that fits within real operating budgets.
Our RV-MAX 360 and RV-PRO 360 cameras allow a single operator to inspect up to 80 manholes per day from the surface, with no human entry into the confined space. RinnoCloud transforms every inspection into a durable data asset, searchable over time and shareable with engineers and managers. And AI-powered remote NASSCO coding makes it possible to produce reports compliant with industry standards without having to maintain a specialized in-house resource.
These are concrete tools, available today, that allow cities to begin closing their knowledge gap on the condition of their network — without waiting for extraordinary budgets or technologies still in development.
The Crisis Is Real, But It Is Not Inevitable
Investing in preventive measures is almost always less expensive than emergency repairs. This is not an opinion — it is an arithmetic reality that the incidents in Calgary, Montreal, and Winnipeg have illustrated painfully in recent years.
Canada's aging infrastructure crisis is real, documented, and urgent. But it is not inevitable. The cities that choose to act now — by investing in regular inspection programs, building reliable databases on the condition of their assets, and adopting technologies that make inspection economically viable at scale — will be the ones that avoid tomorrow's catastrophes.
The time to start is now. The infrastructure that will fail in 10 years is beneath your streets today. The only way to know is to go look.
Want to start inspecting your network more effectively? Contact the RinnoVision team to schedule a demonstration and discover how your operators can inspect up to 80 manholes per day starting in their very first week of use.