Evidence of meeting #20 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was homes.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
I have one quick point.
We're talking a lot about insurance incentives, adjustments in premiums, cap limits and so forth. That's all important, but don't forget the banks. We're in the early stages of discussions right now with the banks for homeowners who put the measures in place to mitigate flood or wildfire risk to get a couple of basis points shaved off the cost of their mortgage, because there's a lower probability of them having a flooded basement or having a house burn down. If you're holding the mortgage on a property, that's important. There are multiple financial drivers emerging rapidly.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Ellis Ross
Thank you very much for that.
We will now move to Mr. Bonin for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Feltmate, you talked about the reinsurance program, among other things. How long has the federal government been considering introducing such a program?
Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
I'm sorry, but which program is that?
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
I'm talking about the program for the 15% of people who can't get insurance. Is that the right percentage?
Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
Yes, it's 10% of the residential housing market and 1.5 million Canadians.
How long has the federal government been looking at this file? It's a long time. We have lots of policy on it. The problem isn't policy. We're policy rich and operations poor; that's the problem.
In 2016, we had the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change, which had explicit direction in chapter 4 on how to mobilize adaptation. Nothing happened from that report. In 2018, we had adaptation and resilience measures round tables and reports. Those came out in 2018, and within six months, they had been shelved.
In 2023, we had the national adaptation strategy. It put out 26 targets to mobilize action on adaptation, 10 of which are to be realized before 2026 closes. We're going to miss virtually all of those.
The problem is that we have known solutions to known problems, but we cannot get the federal government to act, to mobilize in that direction. That's the problem.
Bloc
Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
I think it's a very short period of time, like two to five years or something like that, because we know what needs to be done. To a large extent, we're doing it.
In what we're doing, to some extent we're saying, by the way, we'd like to get the support of the federal government. We're saying, “Come along with us.”
Bloc
Patrick Bonin Bloc Repentigny, QC
Mr. Kovacs, you're an expert in public safety and emergency management. When a disaster occurs, it's mainly the provinces delivering the response, and the armed forces may step in to help. Shouldn't the government strengthen the provinces' response capacity and ensure better coordination between actors, instead of setting up a new federal or national response mechanism? It seems to me that a more effective approach would be to apply the principle of subsidiarity, whereby local decision-making takes precedence. What would the mechanism add? What is needed at the federal level?
Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
It would very much be better to have a national system for emergency management. Almost all countries have done this. Canada right now does not have as much coordination between what the federal government does and what the provincial governments and the municipalities want. Having that coordination would be a good thing.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Ellis Ross
Thank you for that.
We will now turn to the Conservatives, with Mr. Bexte for five minutes.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today. I appreciate it. This is a very important topic, and some of my questions were stolen by other members across the way. They beat me to the punch, and that's fantastic.
I did want to talk about or ask some questions related to the comment about proactively incentivizing resiliency. We know that there are always unintended consequences from other actors and different levels of government doing things like civil works that impact each other. How do we develop a bit more of a coordinated organizational structure and strategy to make sure that, with other actors, we're not cutting off our nose to spite our face?
This may be a specific instance. I know that where there's been some overland flooding, we have flood maps. This goes to the next question, about flood mapping and the status of that. A road gets built that hasn't been included in that map and then exacerbates a flooding event because that water can't drain the way it used to drain. How does that impact the homeowner?
Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
I can build on coordination in particular, and it ties back to the earlier question as well. Our research shows that if the homeowner spends a dollar to protect their home and if the community spends a dollar to protect their home, there will be five to 10 dollars of avoided losses. The challenge right now is that the homeowners do not themselves get the five to 10 dollars. It is shared by the homeowner, the Government of Canada, the provincial government, the municipal government and the insurance company.
If we have a system where you're waiting entirely for insurance to pay all of the costs, it isn't adding up. It hasn't happened. Insurance does give discounts, but it is not enough to get homeowners to work.... Until we get that coordination, where all of those who are benefiting come together and coordinate what they are doing and jointly say that together they will put one big incentive or they will coordinate the different incentives they have.... How do you do that? Someone needs to lead. At the moment, the leaders have been the municipal governments—they are acting very effectively—and insurance companies. That's not coordinated, but they independently have seen their own enlightened reasons to do this.
At the moment, the federal government is not there, and the provinces are really not there. Someone—hopefully, the federal government—could bring all the beneficiaries together and say that they will now coordinate what we do or want to do and will give back some of the benefits they're getting. There's a lot of money on the table that's getting lost because we're failing to protect ourselves.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Following from that, how essential is it to complete modern flood mapping and keep it alive, so that it is updated in a meaningful time frame? That's for anyone.
Go ahead, Mr. Feltmate.
Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
Basically, Canada has to swallow some very tough medicine on flood-risk mapping. People like flood risk maps until they have them. Then, all of a sudden, they find out that this community over here or that community over there is designated as being in a flood zone, and people, I can tell you—I've been involved in this many times—go apoplectic when that happens. You've now devalued their property and stigmatized it. You've red-tagged it. Almost immediately, they start with, “How do we even know climate change is real?” That will be their response.
However, by not recognizing that we need flood plain maps to direct where not to build or where to reinforce building to mitigate the flood risk, and by not addressing it, this is what the graphic showed at the very beginning, with the costs going up exponentially. That's what you get. There is no way to cheat this system. If you cheat the system, you're going to lose. That's the way it is.
Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
I would add a small part, if I could, very quickly.
The flood maps are not ideal. They need to be improved. We have maps for wildfires, and they're excellent. We have maps for tornadoes. We have maps for hail. We have maps for a lot of climate risks, and they're outstanding. Flood needs some work.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Going a bit further on that, I'm not sure if you're familiar, but there was some overland flooding in my riding of Bow River, in Taber, Alberta, in 2018. Subsequent to that—not in 2018—the Horsefly spillway near Taber was a municipal and intermunicipal project to mitigate this. It's delayed, because of COVID—because of lots of other things—and prices are escalating. How do we bridge that gap when projects get delayed and inflation is rising? They ran out of project money, because the budget ran out. How do we get past that?
Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
Advise the Government of Alberta, which has to take the lead, with support from the federal government.
Before the 2013 flooding, there had been studies about what needed to be done for Calgary, and those things weren't done. There were losses in 2013. They were avoidable.
The key is to just get on and do something.
Conservative
Liberal
Bruce Fanjoy Liberal Carleton, ON
Thank you, witnesses.
Mr. Kovacs, I'd like you to elaborate. You were saying how flood mapping needs to be updated. You suggested that we know where the risk is stronger in terms of wildfires and hailstorms and other extreme weather events.
I wanted to give you an opportunity to elaborate on that. I would have thought that flood plains were more predictable, and I didn't get that impression....
Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
The most common hazard in our country is floods, so we need to get this one right—and it's not right at the moment.
Canadians experienced 13 billion dollars' worth of damage last year, and most of it wasn't from flooding. How do we look across all the hazards as part of our research program?
We know where the wildfires are. The maps are all agreed to; there's not a debate about the wildfire maps. We know where the hail happens. We know where the very strong winds create tornadoes and hurricanes. For most of the climate hazards—and for earthquakes, moving past climate—the hazard maps are determined. They were determined 20 years ago, and we just nudge them every year.
Floods keep changing. We have people moving into zones of high risk. We were trying in the seventies to stop that, but we have people moving there.
One part is where the water goes and how fast the water goes, but it's what you put in these different locations. We need to do better on the flood maps. Even if you get all of them up to date, they need to be maintained. That's part of the process as well. The flood map is a bigger challenge than the maps most of the other hazards.
Liberal
Bruce Fanjoy Liberal Carleton, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Feltmate, you brought up the ratio between measures to mitigate extreme weather events, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and measures to adapt. I think the ratio you shared was 26:1—mitigation versus adaptation.
I think it would be interesting to know, from a public policy standpoint, what a good ratio or at least a good range would be for that to be in. Has there been any study by the insurance industry or the adaptation community on what that ratio should be?
Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
In terms of a study, I'm not sure it was a study, but when you turn to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, for example, it was leaning more into the zone of 50:50. I'm not sure that was based on a rigorous algorithm more than a gut feeling. What they were saying was that it's certainly not 24:1. It's, I think, probably very much in that zone of a 50:50 ratio that many people would agree with.
