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The orange cones? Circumstantial evidence.

The detours? The same.

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The parade of Montreal mayors promising that next year will be when the city starts catching up on decades of underinvestment in roads and other infrastructure? See the above.

Since the early 2000s, the politicians in power at city hall have proclaimed every year that “next year” the city will begin investing a record amount of money to repair crumbling municipal infrastructure and that in 10 years — some have targeted five years — they’ll have caught up on decades of underinvestment by previous administrations.

And every year, it isn’t true.

An investigation by the Montreal Gazette into the past two decades of roadwork has found that while municipal administrations have been handwringing in public about the “maintenance deficit” and promising to invest historic sums to overcome it, no administration has ever spent what was needed or done the work that’s required to bring Montreal roads up to acceptable standards.