Almost every day, 21 year old Pearl Monk takes Hog’s Back Road and turns onto Colonel By Drive to get to Carleton University for classes. But when pothole season comes, she says she spends most of her drive swerving to miss holes in the road.
One day, she thought she had passed them all when — bang! — her car jolted, and it felt like she’d driven into a minefield. Pulling over, she saw a cracked tire rim and later discovered her suspension was blown — all thanks to a pothole.
In springtime, many Ottawa streets turn into an obstacle course of potholes, leaving drivers with blown tires, bent rims, damaged suspensions and repair bills into the thousands.
Monk’s pothole strike on Colonel By Drive happened to take place on a National Capital Commission road. However, the City of Ottawa is responsible for road maintenance on Colonel By Drive and the thousands of other streets throughout the municipality that deteriorate every year because of cycles of freezing and thawing that peak in March.
The City of Ottawa officially offers to do its best to compensate drivers for pothole-related damage to their vehicles, but drivers complain — and the city acknowledges — it is difficult or even rare to get reimbursed.
So, how do you file a claim and is it even worth the effort? For car owners like Monk, the answer is a frustrating and expensive NO — and a reality check on the city’s complaint and compensation system.
Monk says she didn’t bother to file a claim when her car was damaged. Since the incident would have had to be reported to the NCC’s client services team as well as the City of Ottawa, she assumed she wouldn’t receive money from either jurisdiction.
“I just don’t see the point in going through all the process of filing a claim when you aren’t going to get anything from the city,” she said. “It’s a waste of time.”
Making a claim to the city for pothole damage to a vehicle is the easy part: you just fill out a simple-to-use claim form on a City of Ottawa webpage.
However, thanks to a loophole in city policy, Ottawa’s local government is only liable if it was previously aware of a major pothole and failed to fix it within a “reasonable” time, defined as anywhere from four and 30 days.
The city states on the web page that “Ottawa receives hundreds of pothole claims each season, the majority of which are denied as the City’s maintenance standards regularly meet or exceed those that are prescribed by the MMS (Minimum Maintenance Standards for Municipal Highways).”
The city adds: “It is worth noting the Municipal Act, 2001, recognizes that the standard of care required of municipalities is one of reasonableness and not perfection. Applying this legal consideration means that the City is rarely legally liable for damage caused by potholes.”
It is worth noting the Municipal Act, 2001, recognizes that the standard of care required of municipalities is one of reasonableness and not perfection. Applying this legal consideration means that the City is rarely legally liable for damage caused by potholes.
— City of Ottawa document on filing claims for car damage from potholes
Nevertheless, the city reassures complainants that “all claims receive a fulsome, independent review to ensure that proper consideration is provided for assessing the City’s liability in relation to any and all damages claimed.”
That’s the city telling you it’s probably not worth the bother of filing a claim.
Once drivers know they aren’t getting compensation from the municipality, they will pay a large chunk of their own money to repair their vehicle. A tire replacement or rim repair can cost anywhere between $100 and $600, and if you have suspension damage, you’re looking at about a $2,000 bill.
After the incident on Colonel By Drive, Monk said her repair bill was $2,200, which she had to pay out of pocket until her auto insurance could reimburse her.
“It sucked,” she said. “It’s not like I can’t have a car for weeks as I wait for my insurance company to pay me. I had to pay out of pocket.”
Mechanics across the city report a surge in pothole-related repairs every spring. According to Jim Dickinson of Jim Dickinson Auto Tech on Gladstone Avenue, it’s one of the busiest times of the year.
“If you go into a crater, you are going to break something — a rim or a tire, and that’s the worst. We see a lot of those repairs this time of year.”
Every year, city crews fill more than 200,000 potholes across Ottawa’s 6,000 kilometres of roadways, according to Quentin Levesque, the City of Ottawa’s director of roads and parking services. Last year alone, workers repaired 218,145 potholes, according to municipal documents. The City of Ottawa says crews filled 33,701 potholes between Jan. 1 and March 24 this year, and responded to 562 pothole-related service requests.
However, many people aren’t in the habit of alerting the city to potholes on their street, so hundreds are not promptly filled. The city’s budget for 2025 includes $12.3 million for filling potholes, but there is no budget item specifically earmarked for compensating drivers.
Levesque says the best thing to do is call 311 and report springtime road divots through the city’s pothole hotline.
“Potholes are a common concern this time of year, and we appreciate residents’ patience as our crews work diligently on repairs,” says Levesque. “To ensure a timely response, residents who have suggestions or concerns about road maintenance are encouraged to report issues online at Ottawa.ca or call 311 and the City will respond as soon as possible to address it.”
Until the city improves its road repair strategy or changes its claims policy, Ottawa drivers will almost always be footing the bill for broken cars from crumbling streets — one pothole at a time.
