44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 24, 2021 02:00PM
- Nov/24/21 3:38:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my voice in support of the call for an emergency debate on the flooding situation in British Columbia, a critical situation.
In my time here in the House, we have had emergency debates on pipeline closures, on rail blockages and on climate action. This issue brings all of that together. A one-day rain event in British Columbia has caused untold hardship for British Columbians, but everyone in Canada has been affected by this event. I would therefore like to add my support to the call for an emergency debate.
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- Nov/24/21 6:59:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands talked about the tragedy of losing more than 500 people in the heat dome. Most of these people were low-income people living in urban heat islands, in apartments without air conditioning. The federal government could come up with the funding to switch the natural gas furnaces in those buildings to clean heat pumps that could cool those buildings as well as heat them, so we could save hundreds of lives across this country and reduce emissions as well.
I am hoping this is one of the ideas we have to come up with in this era of adaptation.
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- Nov/24/21 7:12:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the federal government spends a few hundred million dollars each year on climate adaptation, mainly through the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. It is chronically oversubscribed. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities said, basically, that it should be 10 times that size.
Where is the ambition? We need ambition here, just like we need ambition on climate mitigation.
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- Nov/24/21 8:28:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Burnaby South.
I would like to open by saying that my heart goes out to all British Columbians who have suffered hardships over the past days and weeks. Some have lost their loved ones in landslides. Others have lost homes, farms and their livelihoods. Some were stuck in vehicles for hours or days, waiting through the dark and the rain, fearing that at any time another landslide might come down and engulf them.
I thank the first responders and volunteers who have helped those on the highways, the brave members of 442 Transport and Rescue Squadron who flew Cormorant helicopters in very dangerous conditions from Comox to pluck marooned motorists off Highway 7 between Agassiz and Hope, and the workers and volunteers who have struggled to save homeowners, rescue livestock, maintain and rebuild the dikes and pumps that were essential to keeping the losses to a minimum.
I want to give a special shout-out to the gurdwaras, the Sikh temples around southern British Columbia, that got together and organized free food and aid to communities across the region.
From November 14 to 15, an atmospheric river poured rain into the mountains of the B.C. coast. This is normally a wet time of year in coastal British Columbia, but 20 rainfall records were set that day and several sites received an entire month of rain in 24 hours.
The rain fell on mountain snowpacks, on soil saturated by previous storms and, in some cases, soils and forests damaged by widespread fires the previous summer. Mudslides and debris flows roared down the steep mountain slopes to the roads and rail lines below and rivers swelled to overwhelm bridges and other infrastructure.
In a short period of time, all the highways and rail lines connecting Vancouver to the rest of Canada were damaged or destroyed. The Coldwater River flooded the town of Merritt. The Tulameen River took out homes along its path and then met the Similkameen River to flood the Town of Princeton. Over 100 first nation communities were impacted throughout the region.
The Nooksack River in northern Washington State overtopped its banks, its waters finding the low ground of Sumas Prairie in Abbotsford, flooding some of the best farmland in the country. A series of mudslides on Highway 99 west of Lillooet buried cars and trucks, killing at least four people, with a fifth still missing. Two landslides along Highway 7 between Hope and Agassiz trapped hundreds of motorists in the darkness. Some of the highways were simply buried in mud, rocks and trees, but the Coquihalla Highway, the major freeway connecting the coast to the interior of British Columbia, was simply destroyed in several places. The Nicola River, fed by the swollen Coldwater took out large sections of Highway 8. Both the CN and CP Rail lines through the Fraser Canyon were badly damaged. The Trans Mountain pipeline had to be shut down.
All the critical supply chains between the south coast of British Columbia and the rest of the country were severed. Prairie grain shipments to the Port of Vancouver stopped. Three-quarters of our grain is exported through that port and almost all the goods imported into Canada from Asia come through Vancouver as well. That came to a shuddering halt. Perishable goods, including vegetables and milk, that are usually trucked to the interior of British Columbia on a daily basis disappeared quickly from store shelves throughout my riding and the rest of the region.
This one-day rain event has laid bare many of the weaknesses in our supply chains and our transportation strategies.
What does the future hold? In the immediate future, British Columbia is bracing for two more atmospheric rivers. One is beginning to hit the coast as we speak here tonight and another one is scheduled to arrive on Friday. These storms will likely not be quite as wet as last week's devastating storm, but with soil saturated and flood water still present, they could easily bring more landslides and raise the flood waters again.
We have heard about the flooding that is happening right now in Atlantic Canada.
What does the government need to do? We have heard so much about climate action, and rightly so. We have to rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to limit the impact of climate change, but the global temperature increase we have seen to date is locked in. If we dropped our emissions to zero tomorrow, we would still be facing a future with increased flooding, catastrophic fires, heat domes and rising sea levels.
The unfortunate truth is that we will continue emitting greenhouse gases for the next three decades at least, and these climate change impacts will only get worse. Therefore, we must also greatly increase our ambition in funding climate adaptation, getting ready for the changes that are locked in.
Most climate adaptation funding from the federal government flows through the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which disburses a few hundred million dollars every year. It is chronically oversubscribed and therefore greatly underfunded. This disaster we are speaking of this evening will cost billions of dollars in rebuilding costs alone. The Abbotsford dikes may cost $1 billion just by themselves. It is almost, by definition, a fund to rebuild after disasters rather than prepare communities to avoid disasters.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Insurance Bureau of Canada have reported that the annual infrastructure costs of climate change in Canada right now are $5.7 billion every year. The Canadian Institute for Climate Choices estimates that the present annual cost of flooding impacts alone in Canada are about $1.3 billion, and that will rise by 10 times over the rest of this century.
We need to have meaningful investments for adaptation and we need to provide adequate supports for individuals in communities that have been devastated. Federal and provincial governments have downloaded a lot onto municipal governments when it comes to infrastructure construction and maintenance. These local governments need real help to rebuild dikes, roads and other infrastructure, and they need a dedicated fund to help pay for forward-looking plans to strengthen infrastructure, so it is ready for the climate of 2050 and 2100.
The Coquihalla Highway is only 35 years old and was basically destroyed in one rainfall event.
We have heard of “build back better”, but when it comes to this infrastructure, we have to build back stronger with bigger culverts, higher bridges and better designed dikes. We need to look for nature-based solutions, planning for future flood events by allowing rivers to spill their banks in places where damage will be minimal, ensuring that mountain forests above communities and critical infrastructure are healthy enough to intercept rain and hold moisture in their soils.
We have to redesign our buildings. Over 500 people died in last summer's heat dome in British Columbia. They were almost all low-income people living in apartments without air conditioning. We will have more heat domes, and we cannot see a repeat of this carnage. We need to act now to ensure low-income people across the country can live in housing with affordable and effective heating and cooling. We could provide those buildings with heat pumps that could effectively heat and cool the homes with clean electricity. We need to FireSmart neighbourhoods that are at the forest interface to reduce the chance they will be destroyed by catastrophic wildfires.
The way forward will be difficult, and I know from experience that these climate disasters are absolutely devastating to the people who have lost their homes and livelihoods. In my riding, the city of Grand Forks flooded in 2018. The aftermath of that flood and the rebuilding process have been very painful for the community.
The citizens of Lytton are experiencing the same pain and frustration, and I know the towns of Merritt and Princeton face a similar prospect. Therefore, we must plan for this uncertain future and ensure that communities have funds necessary not only to rebuild after natural disasters, but to adapt to climate change before being impacted by future weather events.
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- Nov/24/21 8:38:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola for allowing me to expand on that. Something we should be doing is learning from these disasters. They are very painful and the least we can do is learn lessons from them.
In the case of Grand Forks, much of the downtown area and a low-lying neighbourhood on the other side of the Kettle River were flooded and the city and the surrounding regional district applied for funding. They received $20 million from the federal government and another $40 million or so from the provincial government to help rebuild the city.
They decided to ensure this would not happen again. They redesigned the dikes along the river to flow so that if the river flooded, and the really low areas almost certainly would flood again, there would be no homes there. They had to buy out the people who lived there. It was very divisive and painful for the community. People had to give up their homes and often, because the funding was not as adequate as a lot of people thought it should be, they did not have enough money to buy another home in the city. It was very difficult for the city council and very difficult for the people involved.
To ensure people do not have to go through that again, we have to look at designing our cities so neighbourhoods will not flood in the first place and use innovative ways to ensure we can make our communities safer in the future.
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- Nov/24/21 8:41:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the question was should we spend federal monies directly or should we flow them through the province. In fact, the way it is done now is that they go through the province. The money I just talked about in rebuilding Grand Forks was a partnership between the federal government and the province, but the money went to the province and the province then co-operated with the city as to how to spend that. That is how a lot of infrastructure funding in Canada works. The money from the federal government goes to the province and the province decides how to spend that.
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- Nov/24/21 9:36:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear that the Leader of the Opposition is onside with the idea that we need to have a lot more ambition in funding climate adaptation for communities and in responding to disasters such as this.
As small communities like Princeton and Merritt are faced with tens of millions of dollars, if not much more, in rebuilding efforts, would he also be in favour of eliminating the necessity for a 20% municipal investment? It is something that small communities simply cannot manage, and they are the ones that know what to do and how to do it.
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- Nov/24/21 10:45:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola for his speech and for bringing up the example of Oliver and the irrigation canal. It was one of the most frustrating issues of my career trying to get that project funded. The government actually fixed that problem after four years of lobbying and three infrastructure ministers. Unfortunately, it came too late for Oliver.
I would like to give the member the time to talk more about what is happening in Princeton and Merritt and what the future looks like. He painted a vivid picture of what the past weeks have been, but what does the future look like? What do they have to do?
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