Thank you to all my colleagues. I’m here today to talk about Bill 168, the Stormwater Flood Prevention Act of 2024, and why I believe that it is so important that we work together to move this bill forward. I will briefly explain what the bill does and provide some context.

The bill asks the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to update the design guidelines with regard to the proper management of stormwater. The current set of guidelines have been in place since 2008. Since then, there is a wealth of new information and techniques that should be included in our guidelines. There is also a changing environment, and we must expect that our stormwater systems will be stressed and tested in new ways. It is vital that our guidelines keep up with a rapidly changing world.

Secondly, this bill requires the ministry to continue to report on the adequacy of stormwater management guidelines every 10 years. As I’ve just described, 15 years has left a gap in the province’s guidelines that needs to be addressed. A report every decade following this bill will help direct the upkeep of future guidelines and ensure that they are meeting the evolving needs of the province. I will expand on what these guidelines are later, but first, I want to discuss the need for these guidelines.

Firstly, Speaker, this is not a partisan issue. This is something that cuts clearly across party lines and is fully worth supporting. We found that 30% of the members in this House have had stormwater flooding in their ridings in the last 15 years. This is an issue that touches every corner of our province: 20 members of the government bench, 10 members of the official opposition bench and six independent members have all had recent stormwater flooding. If it hasn’t affected your riding, turn to one of your caucus members and ask them because I’m sure it will have affected one of your legislative neighbours and their constituents.

My riding suffered severe stormwater flooding on July 24, 2009; 1,200 homes in Glen Cairn were flooded. The community’s stormwater infrastructure was simply not designed to handle such a heavy volume of water. The storm sewers filled. The excess rainwater had nowhere to go except back up into people’s basements. That, in turn, filled the sanitary sewer system, overwhelming the pipes, causing further backups and filling homes with sewage. I would love to be able to tell those constituents this was a one-off situation that would never happen again, but they know better. It was the third flood in 13 years.

Now, post-disaster, some mitigation measures have been adopted, but this was a system built to suit the old standards and those old standards are the ones that are still in place today. Are those measures and old standards good enough to prevent future flooding? The planning and design experts don’t think so.

To pick an example from the government benches, I know the members from Essex and Windsor–Tecumseh have been severely impacted. In 2018, stormwater flooding cost the Windsor area $124 million. The title of the article in the Windsor Star was “Basement Flooding Can Cause Prolonged Harm to Mental Health, Study Says.”

Constituents from all ridings are being affected. The member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, as Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry, took a notable step in 2019, appointing a special advisor on flooding for Ontario. The special advisor’s report recommended that the government implement requirements for stormwater, exactly like the ones in this bill. We agree, and it’s time to listen to the experts. There is a desperate need for a proactive strategy to manage stormwater in the province today. If not proactive today, then we know it will be reactive, waiting for the next disaster to push us into action.

The science is already in. We know that proactively managing stormwater and building to manage it is vital, not just to protect our environment but to safeguard our investments, be it homes, streets, towns and cities, or our businesses and our economy. By 2050, total annual precipitation in Ontario is forecast to increase by about 9%. As recently as in 2013, 125 millimetres of rain in just a few hours did $1 billion worth of damage across southern Ontario. The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario reports that, without adaptation, increases in rainfall—remember that 9% figure by 2050—will likely cost Ontario municipalities an additional $1.8 billion per year; $145 billion by the year 2100.

Every member should be invested in our infrastructure’s resilience. Talking to engineering associations, they tell us that programs to prevent infrastructure damage are one tenth the cost of repairing that infrastructure. That’s exactly the preventative, precautionary mindset we need to have right now.

We’re talking about floods which disrupt all aspects of life in the province: our profitable economy, the movement of goods and, importantly, the homes that Ontarians work so hard for. Everyone wants more homes, more affordable homes. Everyone wants a home to call their own in this province. I support increased density and infill. However, it’s so vital that these homes and the supporting infrastructure are built to last, that they are safe and secure in the case of weather extremes.

Unfortunately, flooding has an especially damaging effect. Water can seep in and erode someone’s home. They might think they have escaped, only to find flood damage in the basement and in the walls of their home. Constituents of mine still talk about the 2009 Glen Cairn stormwater flooding. It’s left such a clear community trauma.

We see now in jurisdictions all over the world that flooding is becoming such an issue that insurers won’t even cover homes. This is a real risk that deserves the full attention of government because now is the time for action.

Truthfully, this bill and these guidelines are not enough to fully mitigate the forecast increase in precipitation, but it’s the important first step of a concerted update of our provincial approach to flood mitigation and stormwater management. The province’s own Provincial Climate Change Impact Assessment lists flood mitigation infrastructure and urban and rural stormwater management systems in every region in Ontario at high risk. Proactively adapting the stormwater management techniques of Ontario reduces the risk of flooding and is the most cost-effective strategy in the long term. That’s exactly what these guidelines seek to do.

The first requirement of the bill is that the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks publish and endorse the Low Impact Development Stormwater Management Guidance Manual. This is a manual that was prepared by the Ministry of the Environment. It’s an excellent document: 350 exhaustive pages of research into what could best help our developers and municipalities use the most modern best practices, techniques and standards for stormwater management.

So what considerations does the Low Impact Development Stormwater Management Guidance Manual actually address? It is, firstly, an expansive description of the techniques that can be used to manage stormwater in a way that reduces runoff. But it also establishes a vital new guideline around watershed permeability: i.e., how much water a geographical area should be able to absorb when it rains. What this guideline establishes is that, if we get a storm in the 90th percentile, the watershed as a whole should be able to handle all but 10% of the water. That 10% can be runoff, as in nature, as long as it is absorbed on site.

At 10%, there is a limit above impermeability. Above that—i.e., when we pave over green spaces with concrete and asphalt—flooding vastly increases. Floods that in the past we would only predict to happen once a year will happen with 10 times the frequency. So by setting the guidelines for 10% permeability, the guidance manual sets a bar that keeps our homes, families and investments, and the province’s investments, safe for future generations.

The current guidelines have not been updated since 2008. Since then, not only is there a slew of new techniques to incorporate, but there is better understanding of our changing environment that we must adapt to. Speaker, I do hope that the members listening will take the time to consider these guidelines. The province deserves a government committed to the newest techniques and the best practices. We have a chance here to greatly reduce potential stormwater flooding, protect valuable infrastructure, protect our citizens and communities from flooding, protect our economy, reduce the cost of insurance, and save money by avoiding costly infrastructure repairs. If enacted, this bill will save increasing numbers of Ontarians the heartbreak of stormwater flooding.

Thank you, colleagues, for your time and consideration.