44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 26, 2022 11:00AM
- Sep/26/22 3:27:46 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask leave to propose an emergency debate on the urgent and escalating situation in Atlantic Canada following hurricane Fiona. Fiona was the strongest storm ever to make landfall in Canada, with several lives lost; many homes swept out to sea; bridges, airports and other infrastructure damaged; docks destroyed; and close to a million Canadians left without power.
While Fiona hit Atlantic Canada over the weekend, this is the first opportunity the House will have to discuss the federal response to the storm. We need to hear how the government plans to help Atlantic Canada in this unprecedented situation. I therefore ask that you, Mr. Speaker, grant this request for an emergency debate.
117 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 6:30:34 p.m.
- Watch
moved:
That this House do now adjourn.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is truly an honour to rise here this evening to begin this debate on the federal government's response to hurricane Fiona and the devastation it has brought upon Atlantic Canada. As the NDP critic for emergency preparedness and climate resilience, I felt it was an urgently needed debate, and I would like to thank the Speaker for granting my request and the Conservatives for agreeing that it is a necessary discussion.
I want to start by saying that my thoughts are with all the Canadians on the Atlantic coast who have been affected by this catastrophic storm. My thoughts go to the friends and families who have lost loved ones, to those who have lost their homes and to those who have lost their livelihoods.
I lived on the island of Newfoundland for three years, including some months in a remote lighthouse, so I know very well both the ferocity of Atlantic weather and the resilience of Atlantic Canadians. I have travelled widely in Atlantic Canada over the past 40 years or so, including visits to P.E.I. and Nova Scotia just this year, so I am familiar with many of the communities that have been devastated by hurricane Fiona.
Hurricane Fiona was no ordinary Atlantic storm. It was the strongest storm ever to make landfall in Canada. Atlantic Canadians remember hurricane Juan in 2003 and hurricane Dorian. Fiona combined the intensity of Juan with the size of Dorian. Fiona recorded the lowest-ever atmospheric pressure in Canadian history and packed winds of up to 180 kilometres per hour. The storm surges swept across the coast like a series of tsunamis.
The human cost has been catastrophic. Several lives have been lost. Hundreds of homes were destroyed by storm surges or high winds, and many were swept out to sea. Roads, wharves, airports and other infrastructure have been badly damaged. Fisheries infrastructure has been destroyed in the middle of the fishing season; agricultural crops were compromised just before harvest, and close to a million Canadians are still without power.
I must pause to say that I will be sharing my time with the MP for Victoria.
We knew this storm was coming. As it tracked north up the Atlantic coast from Bermuda last week, the forecasts were uniformly calling for a record-breaking weather event. I want to give credit to the scientists of Environment Canada for their strong modelling, which informed preparation for hurricane Fiona. It was those strong warnings, I am sure, that kept the injuries and deaths to an absolute minimum. I have heard people comment time and time again that it was a miracle that more people were not injured and killed, so for that I thank the science and the warnings that went out.
I received a call from the Minister of Emergency Preparedness on Saturday, and I thank him for that update on the federal response. He mentioned that the armed forces would be helping with cleanup efforts. I have since heard that the naval vessel HMCS Margaret Brooke will be travelling along the south coast of Newfoundland to carry out wellness checks in many of the small outports there that have no road connection.
These are critical tasks and I am happy to hear they are being done, but important questions remain: How prepared were the armed forces for this storm that we knew was on its way ahead of time, and is there more that could and should have been done in the days before the storm?
I know that most communities have armies of volunteers that step up in these situations to help with organizing accommodations and food and other emergency supplies for residents who have lost or been evacuated from their homes. I thank the volunteers, as well as the neighbours who helped people clear down trees from houses and driveways and first responders who are helping with immediate and emergency cleanup, including the power company workers who are working around the clock to bring power back to hundreds of thousands of cold and hungry Canadians.
As critical and important as these initial responses are, perhaps even more important is that we look ahead to the coming days and weeks and, unfortunately, often years for the government role in rebuilding efforts that must take place. It is late September, and winter is not far away in Canada. We have systems and programs for government support to help people who have their homes damaged by disasters, but those systems are embedded in bureaucracies that often turn anxious weeks into anxious months, while winter sets in and families still have no place to go. They are forced to rely on the kindness of neighbours or relatives, or forced to move out of their communities entirely while waiting for help to rebuild their homes and their lives.
We have government programs, such as the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which are meant to help communities hit by overwhelming events such as fires, floods and hurricanes. In my experience, these communities, especially small communities, are left to do a lot of the heavy lifting in the rebuilding process, while they have neither the financial capability to pay for those actions nor the manpower capacity to navigate the bureaucracy to access the programs.
There are a couple of examples from my home province of British Columbia. The town of Princeton was badly flooded by the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers in last fall's atmospheric river event in southwestern B.C. It faced about a $20-million bill in costs to repair infrastructure. Ordinary federal-provincial government revenue-sharing agreements dictate that Princeton and other similar communities would pay 20% of those costs. It might sound like a good deal to a large community, but the entire annual tax budget of Princeton is only about two or three million dollars. It simply cannot afford 20% of a disaster. We need to come up with a permanent change to these cost structures to accommodate small communities.
Second, there is the example of Grand Forks, a town in my riding that was devastated by flooding in 2018. After months of wrangling, some intense and difficult work by the community itself and difficult decisions to radically change parts of the community, a funding agreement was reached whereby the provincial government would cover about $38 million of the cost and the federal government about $20 million.
The City of Grand Forks waited an entire year to get a response from the federal government on their first request for funding under this agreement. They received repeated messages from the federal government that the basic agreement was changing and they would have to be responsible for more and more of the costs. They had to repeatedly resubmit detailed funding requests. It was a bureaucratic nightmare for a small community that was trying to recover from a natural disaster nightmare.
This kind of behaviour from the federal government has to change. We have to have a kinder and more co-operative relationship between the federal government and communities in these situations.
I will finish by commenting on more long-term issues. We spend about $5 billion every year fixing damages from weather-related disasters in Canada. Those costs are largely born by individuals and insurance companies; the federal government is covering only about 10% of those costs. That annual expense is expected to rise to $50 billion by 2050, 10 times what it is now.
If we are to face the rising costs of these climate events and if we are to maintain our economy and communities in this onslaught of fires, floods and hurricanes, we have to start investing serious amounts of money in climate adaptation. We need investments in community infrastructure that protects Canadians, so they do not see their homes wash away on a storm surge; investments in heat pumps that would allow low-income Canadians to have air conditioning, so we will not have a repeat of the 619 people dying in a heat dome event in metro Vancouver last year; and investments in FireSmart programs to protect neighbourhoods at the interface with forests.
Reactive funding is necessary, but surely we can see the economic and community needs that point to investing for the future we all know is coming. In the meantime I just want to reiterate my support for the people of Atlantic Canada. I know they will use all of their ingenuity and strength to recover from this catastrophe, and I hope all levels of government will be there to help them when they need it.
1444 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 6:41:18 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, again, from experience in my riding with all the flood and fire events I have witnessed in my years as a member of Parliament, I can speak to the importance of groups such as the Red Cross in helping people in these disasters.
It is often the Red Cross that really does a lot of the work in relocating people, putting people up in accommodation and feeding them while they are forced out of their homes. Donations to the Red Cross would be very welcome.
Tonight we are talking more about what we can do in this place to help the people of Atlantic Canada.
107 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 6:42:44 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member for Cumberland—Colchester represents the area where my mother's family came from, my ancestors, so I appreciate that.
It is important to work together in this place to get help for Canadians when they need it. One example I did not give is the Town of Oliver in my riding, which had a landslide that caused $10 million in damage. It did not qualify under DMAF for funding, and there were years of lobbying on my part. I tried to help them. The government eventually changed DMAF so that small communities can now access funding of under $20 million. It was too late for Oliver, but those changes can be made, and we need to work here together to make changes when Canadians need them.
131 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 6:44:46 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, obviously we need to put a price on pollution and make sure the processes, companies and individuals causing climate change around the world pay for that pollution so that we can do the things necessary to combat climate change. That is the mitigation part of climate change.
Tonight I have been talking about the adaptation aspect. We are stuck with the climate change we have right now. Right now, it is close to a 1.5° rise. If we stopped all our carbon emissions today, as I could only hope, we would still in this place where we would be having hurricanes and forest fires over the next centuries. We have to do both.
117 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 8:39:07 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the experience I have had in my riding in Grand Forks, where we had flooding in 2018. The regional district did a study as to what could and should have been done better to help the recovery process. There were things that came up as things that hindered the recovery and the rebuilding process. One was the inflexibility of the federal government in taking into account local solutions. The local governments were putting forward innovative solutions that would have helped people quicker and at a lower cost, but the federal government programs were totally inflexible. Four years later, the City of Grand Forks is still waiting for the full amount of money that was guaranteed to it, and those people are very frustrated.
130 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 8:51:59 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, just to follow up on the theme of planning ahead, again, in my riding we have had serious disasters, flooding especially but also fires. One of the issues that really constrain us in responding to those is the fact that there is no available housing in my riding before there is a fire or flood. Suddenly, we may have hundreds of people who have been evacuated from their homes with nowhere to go and people who have lost homes who want to stay in the riding and there is nowhere to go.
I am wondering if the member could comment on the need for some real, serious planning ahead to get affordable housing built in Canada so that we will not have these serious constraints when it comes to a disaster.
133 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 9:50:45 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his speech tonight and for his on-the-ground reporting as to what is really going on on Cape Breton Island. He made the point that the reason behind this and other disasters we have been facing is climate change.
I am wondering, given the member's role in this, if he would like to comment on the role that indigenous people across Canada should and could be taking in leading the fight against climate change, the fight we all have to be engaged in.
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 10:19:23 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to follow on that theme of the long term. Will the government be there to help the people of Atlantic Canada in the long term?
We have seen data that, right now, we spend about $5 billion a year in Canada fixing the problems of climate and weather events across this country. Every year, that is $5 billion. The federal government puts up about a tenth of that. Yes, Atlantic Canada gets storms every year, but they are becoming harder, faster and more devastating. It is predicted that, by 2050, we will be spending $50 billion a year. We could get ahead of that if we invested in the long term in some of these things that would make our shorelines more impervious to storms. Where I come from in British Columbia, we can make our rivers less likely to flood urban areas and make our forests less likely to burn cities down.
Could the member comment on this need for investing in the future to save us money in the future, save lives, save infrastructure and save homes by making those investments ahead of these disasters, instead of always reacting?
196 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 10:51:31 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Charlottetown for sharing the experiences he has had on the ground there. I visited Charlottetown in June, and my heart goes out to the people there who are facing all these difficulties.
He mentioned that we knew this storm was coming. Maybe there was some uncertainty around how strong the winds would be and how much rain would fall, but I remember debating in the House about something else last Wednesday, and talking about the oncoming Fiona and the high winds that would accompany it.
I am wondering if he could comment on what we might have done differently, in terms of being ready beforehand. He talked about two days ago the province asking for the army and a day later, it came. What if the armed forces had been there before the storm hit? Would that have made a difference? Would they be already helping to clear streets? Would they be helping do all the things that are going on now? We would have been ahead of the game. Is there anything we could have done to prepare beforehand? We knew this was coming.
195 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 11:21:10 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a question on the opening part of his speech. I think he was saying the government should be in it for the long haul to help the people of Atlantic Canada and other disasters across this country. The government always has their backs when there is a disaster, but sometimes it forgets about it fairly quickly.
I am wondering if the member might comment on the concept that we should be spending more money investing in the future in terms of these disasters that are getting more common, more serious and more catastrophic. Should we be investing more to adapt to climate change? Rather than always being reactive and spending billions of dollars after the fact, we should really be ramping up our investments every year in helping Canadian communities get ready for the future.
143 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 11:37:49 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I asked the member for Charlottetown earlier what perhaps we could have done before this storm hit. We knew it was coming days ahead of time. There are procedures, I know, for calling in the military. The province needs to request it. In this case, we knew this was going to be a bad storm. We knew it was going to be the storm of the century. We knew we would need help.
Would it not have been better to have some members of the armed forces on Prince Edward Island when the storm hit, so they could go to work immediately after the storm passed, and we could get things done in a timely manner? Perhaps there are other things we could have done that did not involve the armed forces, but we need to be working ahead of time now that we have the ability to predict these storms, especially a hurricane like this, where we knew precisely when it was going to hit.
168 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/26/22 11:52:19 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member has pointed out here many times the dangers that we face. Even if we stopped all carbon emissions in the world right now, we would still be in this situation for centuries where we would be having these incredible hurricanes, catastrophic forest fires and floods. That would not stop. What we are trying to stop is making things worse.
This is only going to get worse. There is this case for adaptation. We have to deal with the situation as it is now. I just wanted to touch on the heat dome, whether it occurs in B.C. or Alberta or wherever next time. This brings me back to P.E.I. as well. P.E.I. has a program around heat pumps. A really serious investment by the federal government in a heat pump program would allow people to have cooling, especially for low-income Canadians and especially in British Columbia, where not many people have air conditioning. That is what killed people. They were stuck in their homes. They basically got too hot.
We could save a lot of people if we provide low-income Canadians with heat pumps that would get us off natural gas and other forms of heating, and at the same time provide the cooling necessary to perhaps save them in a heat dome event.
225 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
