Environment Committee on June 19th, 2017

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I'm surprised that nobody looks at anything, because I think it would have been a good discussion among two or three experts in the departments. No other expenditure throughout the last several years approached anything like that—not roads or bridges. There's a cry now for transit funding and so on, but to fix the city hall under the topic of community energy systems strikes me as calling for a need for somebody to say, “Is this really the best way?” Do we really want to spend the money this way? We'll leave it at that for now.

Now, on the question of flooding and the federal flood plain mapping framework, I think many of us in municipalities have experienced these once-in-a-hundred-year floods. In fact, we've had two or three once-in-a-hundred-year floods in the last five years or so in our municipality. How detailed is this mapping? It seems to me that for flood plains the chance of a flooding occurrence at the municipal level is a fairly small and detailed incident. How would the federal framework relate to municipal issues?

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question.

We have a very large technical working group. We purposely have in there representatives from municipalities, provinces, territories, academia, industry, and private sector experts in technically advancing the discussion on flood plain mapping, because we want the framework to be as comprehensive as possible in terms of having comprehensive flood plain maps.

There are four or five different types of mapping that have been identified and also what's required for them to actually complete those mappings, depending on what they have already and what the need is in their particular area. We have it peer-reviewed by the water resource people so that we can in fact demonstrate a level of integrity to the flood plain mapping guidelines that we've put in place.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Okay.

On the relationship with the insurance industry, we had a situation in our municipality that I actually didn't support, because it seemed as though the insurance industry wanted technical details from the city that would enable them to set premium rates for different parts of the city, which we didn't think was fair to our residents. What would you say the relationship is in the federal regard with the insurance bureau?

[Lori MacDonald]

We actually have a very good relationship with a number of the insurance industries right now. We have dialogue with them on likely a weekly basis right now. It's a whole-of-society issue. It's not just an insurance industry issue or a government issue. It's an issue even right down to the individual level, where we're taking that conversation.

The insurance industry wants to introduce a residential flood insurance market. There are some difficult decisions that have to be made. One of them would be sharing information, because that becomes a tension point as to whether you want to have the information shared about your home, which might be in a high risk area, and the impact that will have on property values and so on. That has an impact on the municipality and on the person who owns a home, but it also has an impact on what their rate of insurance would be, as an example.

When I spoke earlier about trying to address some of that, what are the preconditions we need to have in place to actually implement residential flood insurance? That's the kind of conversation we're having right now in trying to bring a number of players to the table in order to be able to make an informed recommendation on that.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I think that's important, because what we have been dealing with is the water that entered through the sewer backups and so on. That was typically under the house insurance, whereas the water that came in the basement window wasn't. That's what you're looking at.

[Lori MacDonald]

I think the conditions are very good right now. Earlier, I mentioned the awareness. We recently did some research in a survey. It showed that 86% of people said that, yes, they had the individual responsibility to make sure their home was safe from things like that, but then only 20% of people actually did something about it. That's this very large gap where individuals need to have an understanding, but so do municipalities and so do provinces and government in terms of how we bring all those pieces together to be successful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Your time is up. I'm sorry.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Linda.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

I'll continue with this. It seems to be a favourite topic.

There were major floods in Alberta of late and, more than 30 years ago, in the community I lived in, n the river flats in Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan River. Since that big flood, they've required any new housing to have the furnace above—not in—the basement. There are a lot of simple things that can be done to reduce costs in flood damage.

I noted after the big flood in Calgary and Canmore that there's this conflict that goes on. The mayors say, “Well, people really want to live along the rivers, and we get a high tax base.” But then I have to subsidize when they're flooded out. I think people are starting to take a closer look at this.

I am wondering if, at the federal level.... For example, we give out aid, right? Eventually the province or municipality will come to the federal government and say “disaster assistance”. Isn't it time, given the fact that we know that we have climate change, that unpredictable things can happen...? We know that there have been developments in flood plains, and we know that new developments shouldn't happen in flood plains. Isn't it time for the federal government to be putting conditions on it and saying that you—the province, the municipality—did the flood plain mapping, and you didn't do any measures, so you don't qualify for relief and you're going to have to bear the cost?

Isn't it time? We talk about it, but isn't it time that certain levels of government got serious about this? It's like a pre-existing condition. Insurers won't pay you if you didn't identify the pre-existing condition.

[Lori MacDonald]

We're having very good conversations right now. The disaster financial assistance arrangements are coming up for review in 2020, so in some of the conversations we're having right now, we're looking at the program to ask if it is still meeting its original intention. It was created in 1972. Our life has changed since 1972. We're talking about things like severe weather and climate change and what that means to us. We have to really rethink how we approach this.

The conversations with the Insurance Bureau are very timely in terms of the review coming up of the disaster financial assistance arrangements, with the conversations with respect to building codes, and with regard to the economic impacts we're seeing. Even if you just look at this spring alone, we haven't been seeing requests come in yet for those situations.

It's very timely. People are engaged in this conversation right now to get us to the next step with respect to how we manage this from a financial perspective.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

You're not sounding quite tough enough to me, but that's not your decision. That's the government's decision.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have 30 seconds.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

To go back to the budget again, if I look at the green infrastructure fund under “Creating Canada's Clean Growth Economy”, I see zero dollars for green infrastructure until 2021. Is that because there was a pre-existing commitment? Or is it simply that there isn't going to be any money for green infrastructure funding until 2020-21? That's on page 149 of the budget.

[Robert Judge]

I apologize. I don't have those figures in front of me. With the funding that will flow through for green infrastructure through the integrated bilateral agreements and the new disaster mitigation and adaptation fund that's being set up...these should be in place by the end of this fiscal, but then, I'm.... Without—

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Can you just get back to me?

[Robert Judge]

Yes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

You have two pages of initiatives. It's hard to tell which is which. It's on page 149 of the document, under “Canada's Clean Growth Economy”. It's the last one: zero dollars right up until 2020-21, and then only $76 million for the entire country. I don't know if that's because there was money committed before, so it's to forward.... I'd appreciate it if you could get back to us on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That would be great.

Are you good to come back to us on that? Okay.

I think we could go on. There are a lot of great questions. We focused on floods. There are still a lot of questions that the analysts had suggested and that I think our team may have in terms of Health Canada. Given that we just did CEPA, I think there are some things there that we would have liked to delve into.

I'd like to make a suggestion. We could continue, as we haven't had bells yet. Or what we could say is that maybe we'd like to have a two-year review. In the next year, we would have you come back and touch base again to see how we're doing in terms of some of these things we identified. I think you're telling us that there's some good work being done. Maybe we can touch base in another year. Obviously, you can see that the committee is interested in progress.

Mr. Eglinski, is that something you would support?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, I would, Madam Chair, but I don't think we had a lot on the agenda for today, did we? If we had the opportunity to ask more questions, I think most of us wouldn't mind taking another round because—

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I have a motion for which I'd like to seek unanimous consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I think we do have a few other things on the agenda, but we were going to take it into closed session to do that, and we wanted to decide about our next meeting on Wednesday—

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

All right, Madam Chair. I understand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

—so unless there's something burning, I think we should say thank you.

If the committee is interested, I'll just put it out there that we could ask to have you come back in a year. You could give us an update on where you're at, because there's clearly a lot of work being done. There's still a lot that we'd like to know about in terms of how it's being done.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

If I could just—