Thank you.
Good day, and thank you for the opportunity to support the work of the committee and speak on the important topic of extreme weather damages.
I'm Robert Muir. I'm a professional engineer who has practised across the country for 35 years, specializing in flood hazard and stormwater management for natural and urban systems. I'm currently the manager of stormwater at the City of Markham, where we developed a long-term, $386-million flood control program to reduce flood risks. The program, now in its 12th year of project construction, reduces sewer backup and overland and river flood risks through proven, cost-effective means.
Prior to joining the city, I was a partner at Dillon Consulting Limited, where I was the national water resources practice leader. My work there included developing and reviewing city-wide master plans to reduce risk in municipalities like Stratford and Windsor, Ontario.
In Markham and in the private sector, I've been active in the development of flood management guidelines, including Natural Resources Canada's federal guidelines on flood hazard identification and priority setting; the CSA standard, “CSA W210:21, Prioritization of flood risk in existing communities”; and the National Research Council's cost-benefit guideline, whose full title is “Guidelines on undertaking a comprehensive analysis of benefits, costs and uncertainties of storm drainage and flood control infrastructure in a changing climate”.
I'd like to draw from these NRC guidelines to comment on the October 6 motion by the committee. On economic losses, the motion states “that...insured losses alone...don't adequately represent [all public] economic losses”. Data provided by Munich Re and presented in the NRC guidelines supports that motion's statement. Specifically, expected uninsured losses were estimated to be over 90% of reported insured losses.
On finding a financially sustainable path forward to protect Canadians, the federal government has already taken important steps to reduce costs and risks. One step is through supporting guidelines for risk prioritization to guide its partners in identifying worthwhile projects. Another step is through grant funding like Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada's disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, DMAF, which funds 40% of project design and construction costs.
In Markham, five sewer upgrade projects have been completed with generous DMAF grant support, and more projects, including naturalized flood plain reclamation, are now ongoing.
In my opinion, the DMAF program is a strong template for financially sustainable risk reduction efforts, as it requires a minimum project benefit-cost ratio of 2:1 for approval. This was a unique requirement for infrastructure funding in Canada. A review of over 20 approved DMAF projects in our NRC guidelines showed ratios between 5.5 and 17 to one, showing the high cost-effectiveness of approved projects.
In the future, additional DMAF-type funding can continue to cost-effectively reduce risks across Canada. How much funding? I'm glad you asked, as the NRC guidelines included a case study to answer this specific question. We estimated that the 10-year national infrastructure project spending that could be justified based on damage reduction benefits was $28 billion. This compares with the $9.5 billion in project spending that DMAF program grants of $3.8 billion could support today.
In conclusion, three times more spending can be justified, even with pre-2024 extreme weather and damages. Increased weather risks and damage would only increase the benefits of project spending.
In closing, I'd be pleased to submit a brief on the above, including some further recommendations on tracking losses to help assess risk reduction effectiveness over time.
Thank you.