- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
- Jun/2/23 11:49:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, natural disasters, including wildfires and floods, fuelled by climate change are making it difficult to get home insurance. Canadians cannot buy a home when there is an active wildfire within 50 kilometres and that covers most of the summer in B.C., and 10% of Canadians cannot get flood insurance. Canada is the only major country where the government does not have a backstop for earthquake insurance.
Canadians cannot afford to wait while their homes and businesses are destroyed.
Will the Liberals act to make sure Canadians have the insurance protection they need?
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- Mar/23/23 7:05:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this adjournment debate tonight arises from a question I asked regarding the impact of climate disasters on our country and specifically on our municipalities, and how the federal government must step up to help in a significant way.
We are living the effects of climate change because the chemistry of carbon dioxide and the physics of the greenhouse effect are locked in. We are trying, as we must, to reduce our carbon emissions to make sure we can get to net zero as soon as possible. However, even if we got there tomorrow, and it is clear we will not, we would still face the catastrophic fires, record-setting rainfall events, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather we are now seeing every year. That could go on for centuries, so we must adapt to these changes. They impact our farms, forests and water supplies.
The most immediate impact from extreme weather events is on our built environments, such as homes, businesses, highways and railways, destroying livelihoods and, tragically, sometimes taking lives. Almost by definition, impacts on our built environment are impacts on municipalities, and it therefore falls to municipalities not only to clean up and rebuild after these disasters, but increasingly to plan for the future and build resilient infrastructure. Communities simply cannot do this by themselves. What little capacity they have to raise funds for capital expenditures is quickly swamped by the scale of work that confronts towns and cities after floods and fires.
In 2018, the city of Grand Forks, in my riding, was flooded. After a couple of years of hard work and painful decisions, the city came up with a plan to rebuild in a way that would minimize the chances of a future disaster. That plan was budgeted to cost over $60 million for a city that regularly raises only about $4 million in property taxes. Luckily, the Province of British Columbia and the federal government came through with promises to pay most of that. However, in the past five years, costs have continued to climb and the city is still very much stretched to meet the fiscal challenges of that catastrophe.
The federal government has relied on the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund to provide money to municipalities through the provinces for disaster support. This fund has long been oversubscribed and underfunded. In last fall's national adaptation strategy, the federal government provided a top-up to DMAF, which was welcomed news, but it is still nowhere near enough. There must be more invested in adaptation projects that actually prevent future problems rather than just building back better after disasters. Analysis suggests that every dollar invested in adaptation saves up to $15 in the future. It is a huge return.
The minister tells me that the government will be providing up to $5 billion to B.C. after the 2021 atmospheric river event. We have to at least contemplate spending a similar amount in municipalities across the country every year to prevent future damage to infrastructure and livelihoods. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is calling for the total $2 billion top-up to DMAF, and long-term stable funding for projects of all sizes. I believe that long-term funding for adaptation must be at least $2 billion a year. Otherwise, we will continually face enormous cleanup bills that will get larger every year.
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- Feb/10/23 11:47:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians have seen what happens when we are not prepared for climate disasters: Homes are swept out to sea, and vital transportation corridors are destroyed by floods. Municipalities across Canada are asking for help, but the Liberals are not stepping up. Instead, according to Postmedia, the government is underfunding disaster adaptation by $13 billion.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is calling for action, so will the Liberals listen and immediately increase disaster adaptation funding?
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- Dec/8/22 7:39:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are living the effects of climate change. There are real effects on people and real effects on our economy.
Last year, in British Columbia, we had a series of catastrophic wildfires, one of which burned down the town of Lytton. At the same time, a heat dome brought temperatures in the high 40s to southern B.C., killing over 600 people in metro Vancouver.
That fall, an atmospheric river destroyed every highway connecting the southern B.C. coast with the rest of Canada, and some of those highways have only now just been reopened. Floods devastated the towns of Princeton and Merritt, numerous first nations communities and some of the best agricultural lands in the province.
The true costs of those events have yet to be calculated, but the federal government has pledged $5 billion in support to British Columbia to help communities rebuild. This year, B.C. has largely been spared, but this spring, it got a storm track, which is now called a derecho. We have had to learn a whole new taxonomy of climate disasters. It caused almost a billion dollars in insured damage losses to parts of Ontario and Quebec.
Then in the fall, hurricane Fiona became the strongest hurricane to make landfall ever in Atlantic Canada. Houses were washed out to sea and lives were lost. Again, the federal government has promised aid to the tune of over $300 million.
The Canadian Climate Institute reported in September that the impacts of climate change will slow Canada’s economic growth by $25 billion annually by 2025. That is half of the projected GDP growth in 2025 and 12 times all insured weather-related losses in Canada in 2021. Those impacts will increase to almost $100 billion annually by 2050.
My question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the question that triggered this adjournment debate, was based on that report. The Canadian Climate Institute report also found that proactive measures that help communities and Canadians adapt to climate change could reduce the impact of climate disasters. In fact, the report notes that a combination of global emissions reductions and Canadian adaptation measures could reduce the negative impacts by 75%.
Shortly after I asked this question, the government tabled its national adaptation strategy. The strategy included $1.6 billion in new funding to broadly address climate adaptation. About a third of that amount is to top up the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. That fund has been chronically underfunded and oversubscribed. Many communities trying to rebuild after fires and floods do not get the help they need.
Will the government stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and redirect those billions of dollars to help communities prepare for climate change?
We will save many times that investment by reducing the direct impacts of extreme weather on Canadian communities, and more importantly, reduce the tragic consequences of these climate disasters on the lives and livelihoods of Canadian families.
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- Sep/26/22 11:21:10 p.m.
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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.
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- Sep/26/22 6:41:18 p.m.
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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.
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- Sep/21/22 6:40:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, just before we rose for the summer break, I asked a question about climate adaptation, about being better prepared for the increasingly destructive climate disasters that are affecting our country.
We have had a series of terrible years of catastrophic weather in Canada. Last year was a terrible year in my home province of British Columbia, with a heat dome that killed 619 people in metro Vancouver, a series of fires that destroyed the town of Lytton and many other rural areas, and then a rainfall event that destroyed all of the highways through the Coast and Cascade ranges. It flooded a huge area around Abbotsford and the interior communities of Princeton and Merritt.
This year brought the derecho storm in May that devastated the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, with winds of up to 190 kilometres per hour, intense thunderstorms and several tornadoes. The damage to the power system from that storm was greater than that of the 1998 ice storm. It was the sixth-costliest weather event in Canadian history, with insured losses of $875 million.
This fire season in B.C. was quieter than last year. One fire on the edge of my riding evacuated some rural communities and destroyed one house. Another just over the hill from my house gave me and my neighbours some nervous moments, but the heat was in many ways longer lasting than last year and there is still a series of fires burning in coastal forests in British Columbia that rarely face that threat.
Now the east coast is bracing for Hurricane Fiona, one of the strongest storms in years to threaten the Atlantic provinces, with wave height predictions of up to 30 metres. That is 100 feet. It is clear that we are not talking about the impacts of climate change in the future tense anymore. This is happening now.
At present, Canadians, whether governments, businesses or individual citizens, spend more than $5 billion every year to repair the destruction from weather events. This is predicted to balloon to $40 billion by 2050. The federal government has been covering less than 10% of these costs. It is time that we faced up to the costs of climate change and made significant investments with provinces and communities to minimize the impacts that we know are coming. The federal government has to be a better partner with communities, especially small, rural communities that cannot pay for these costs themselves or even put up front a significant portion.
Princeton and Merritt, which were flooded last year, had to face 20% of cleanup costs. That was more than double their annual tax base. Grand Forks, a community in my riding that was flooded in 2018, faced costs of $60 million to repair the damages. The federal government promised $20 million, but even now, four years later, there was a year delay in getting the first payment to the municipality. Ten public servants consecutively handled the file, each requiring the submitting of claims and supporting documentation that had been lost or not passed on. The federal government provided claim template forms, only to have completed forms returned with requests for additional details that were never originally requested or required, and despite a clear contribution agreement signed in 2019, federal infrastructure officials have repeatedly and unilaterally changed the scope of allowable expenses.
The government must do better to support communities and their citizens who are being forced to deal with the impact of climate disasters.
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