HRM’s pricey snow clearing

Halifax’s gold-plated sub-standard snow plows

by Giancarlo Cininni

Winter is coming, and with it a machine more ubiquitous in Canada than the Zamboni: The snow plow.

In Halifax, the snow plows suck. In June 2025, the Auditor General found that the HRM was not effectively managing its winter maintenance. Contractor and in-house performance was not being assessed or monitored—the municipality was not checking if the job was being done properly.

Perhaps relatedly, by the end of December the bike lanes in Halifax are barely visible, plows cause property damage, and response times to 311 complaints are slow.

According to the 2026/27 budget, Halifax plows approximately 4,322 lane kilometres of streets and 1,000 kilometres of sidewalks, bike lanes, and multi-use paths with a snow-clearing budget of $42,668,100. That comes to approximately $8,017 per lane kilometre of snow cleared (winter maintenance budget divided by total street surface serviced). Considering winter maintenance is the only part of the cities budget with unassessed, unmonitored in-house expenses (as found by the latest audit), this figure is probably higher.

When compared to other cities in Canada that get snow, Halifax’s lane kilometre cost seems high. Edmonton clears snow for $5,360.33 per lane kilometre (less annual snow, but a larger service area), and it costs Ottawa $6,182 per lane-kilometre (more snow, larger service area).

Perhaps the best comparison is London, Ontario which gets more or less the same amount of annual snowfall and has a similarly sized service area. London’s budget is approximately half that of Halifax’s, they pay only $3,836 per lane kilometre.

The only other major cities with a higher lane kilometre cost were Montreal and Quebec City. But these cities both receive much more snow, have a considerable amount of difficult-to-plow cobblestone streets, and implement the gold standard of snow removal. Montreal serves over 10,000 lane kilometres of streets and spends over $170 million, or 2.7% of their annual budget on snow removal—roughly $17,000 per lane/km. Quebec City takes the cake at $30,325 per lane kilometre of snow removed.