When a bridge collapsed in Montreal’s Laval suburb at the end of September, killing five people and injuring several others, I should think a shiver went down the spine of every senior transportation official in the country. If not, I’d like to know why. Elected or otherwise, whether they’re municipal, provincial, or federal servants of the people, they ought to be thinking hard about the roads and bridges they manage. And how they manage them.

If ever there was a wake-up call about the sorry state of our highway infrastructure, the Laval tragedy is it.

I’m not the only one saying that, certainly not the only one thinking it, but we really must step up the pressure. The sad thing — the immensely frustrating thing — is that we’ve been saying this for ages. But the message seems to fall on deaf ears. All of us in trucking recognize how important our highways and bridges are, obviously, but I really don’t think the folks in charge do. It’s not as if we haven’t had other wake-up calls over the years.

On the face of it, you can’t blame the Laval bridge failure on complacency, common though the affliction is. It appears, in fact, if we’re to believe some recent reports, that cost-cutting at the time of its construction may be at least partly to blame. Disputes between the Quebec government and the builder over money may well have led to construction shortcuts.

As my grandfather used to say about 10 times a day, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” He was right, of course.

Was that sage advice followed 40 years ago when the Laval bridge was built? Maybe not.

And if you look at other Quebec roads and bridges, especially those in and around Montreal, you have to wonder about the prospect of other such catastrophes. Driving into that great city along Highway 20 is an adventure at best. The road surface is shockingly bad.

Quebec isn’t alone in failing to maintain its transportation infrastructure. Certainly not. In my own adopted hometown of Toronto, I sometimes feel as if I’m taking my life in my hands when I drive on or below the elevated Gardiner Expressway. As was happening in Laval, bits of concrete fall off the Gardiner all the time, and attention is most definitely paid to it. But it’s Bandaid stuff, no better. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if a part of it collapses some day soon. Could be tomorrow morning at rush hour. Think about that one.

Go anywhere else in the country — anywhere at all — and you’ll find the same story.

Way back in 1998, the Council of Ministers of Transportation estimated that investment needs on the National Highway System were over $17 billion. Since that time, the NHS has actually been extended and costs have increased. They do that, you know, and remorselessly. The less you spend on maintenance, the more it costs later because the deterioration happens at a faster rate.

“If the current level of infrastructure under-investment is allowed to continue in Canada, the deficit could balloon to $1 trillion in 60 years,” says the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships.

Now both that dollar figure and the time frame attached to it are a little hard for mortal imaginations like mine to conceive. Too big, too far out. Besides which, in 60 years I’ll be really old and probably not driving too much, and anyway Laval proves convincingly that the need is right now.

But what we get is meetings and consultations and position papers and grand speeches and pretty much nothing much else. Sure, investments have been made here and there, some of them substantial, but we probably spend more on beer than on roads and bridges.

I’ve seen reference to a recent study of 35 Ontario towns and cities, for example, which reported that they needed to spend more than $700 million on road reconstruction. Actual spending? Well, it amounted to just $255 million. That’s a pretty big shortfall. And the brutal truth is that we have already used something like 79 percent of our infrastructure’s life expectancy.

I note that the federal government, which is famously absent from transportation infrastructure investment, has a fiscal surplus these days. And I seem to remember that between their haul and the provinces, they rake in rather a lot of money in fuel taxes and other road-related charges — about a third more than they pour back in collectively — so what gives?

The financial challenge is certainly not small, but I think it demands some creative thinking that we haven’t seen yet from any source.

The problem, I fear, is that this is a huge intellectual challenge and nobody is really up to it. Simple as that. Scary as that.