Environment Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2026

[Janice Myers]

What can developers do? I'm not going to give much advice to developers, except that I do believe we need to be using fire-resistant material to ensure that communities are built with the resistance to withstand fires. For flooding, I'm not sure what can be done and what the mitigation would be for that. Certainly, regarding fires, there are lots of mitigation techniques and the types of materials are very important when you're building.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like you to elaborate on the Canadian certified green representative certification program. What does that mean in practical terms and how is it being received by both realtors and homebuyers?

[Janice Myers]

It's a certification program for our member realtors. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips as to how many have taken it in the last year. There's a fair amount of interest and that is why we developed it. It's designed to help realtors understand how to help their clients who might be retrofitting their homes for better resilience or who simply want to understand the impacts of climate change.

I don't have the contents of the course in front of me, but anybody who's gone through it has highly rated it.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Redfearn, every disaster brings its lessons. Knowing what you know now and what the community knows now, are there things you would have done differently, that the community would have done differently? Also, what can be done to anticipate and prepare for the next event?

[Duncan Redfearn]

I think, in particular, it's planning and understanding those risks within your community—the land use planning, in particular. It's also understanding your flood mapping and that every property is impacted differently. Sometimes it's erosion, sometimes it's surface water and sometimes it's groundwater infrastructure.

We've learned so many lessons throughout our experience. Also, after having four one-in-10-year events, there's a certain amount of post-traumatic stress in some areas of the community as well.

I think it's that planning aspect of it and just understanding how the water moves in that collaboration with your regional partners and other local governments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Myers, to your knowledge, are there any co-insurance programs, here or anywhere in the world, where the government covers a portion of the home insurance premium, which would otherwise be too high for people to afford?

[Janice Myers]

Thank you for your question.

No, I'm not aware of that. I would say it's probably similar to an insurance program that the CMHC offers to mortgagees, so I think it has some very interesting possibilities.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I believe you said no earlier, but I'll ask you the question anyway.

To your knowledge, are there any figures on the number of residences that insurers are no longer insuring? In Quebec, for example, some homes are affected by new flood zone maps.

Do you have any data on the percentage of homes that are no longer insurable?

[Janice Myers]

That's a very good question. I'm not aware of anything that can help, other than private insurance stepping in. There are not any other programs that I'm aware of.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

You mentioned resilient homes. There's a program—I'll try to pronounce it properly—I believe it's Build Canada Homes. That program is now providing funding.

Do you think there should be criteria to ensure that homes are more resilient before granting funding? For example, should they have to be greener thanks to better insulation from extreme heat and cold?

[Janice Myers]

Are you speaking about Build Canada Homes and the non-market housing? Yes, I believe that kind of modular housing that would not only speed up construction but also do it with resilient materials is likely a really great path forward. I don't know if they plan on doing that, but I would expect this to be some of the criteria, for sure.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Redfearn, I think you talked about how difficult and challenging it can be to get funding when a catastrophic event occurs.

Can you expand on that?

In your opinion, how can more funding be made available, particularly by municipalities, in the event of a disaster?

[Duncan Redfearn]

I spoke to eligibility in terms of the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. The city fortunately has a number of revenue sources over and above taxation, including an electrical utility, which allowed us to build up some strong reserves in anticipation of these projects.

The $9 million that we've invested in this program so far for the City of Grand Forks is two years of taxation. It is fairly substantial and took careful planning.

At one point through our program, we were informed that improvements would not be eligible. The city ended up spending $2.9 million on the purchase of improvements on the 90 properties within the flood plain identified for acquisition.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I have some more questions about that for you, Mr. Coyne.

You said that there are no guaranteed funds for insurance and that there should be.

What do you think that would look like?

[Spencer Coyne]

Thank you.

That's a good question. You were asking earlier about a co-insurance program. We need some sort of national program where we all pay into it, kind of like the DFAA but for specific things like this, where the homeowner can pay into it and participate. I think that's probably the better answer than just expecting the government to pay for it.

I know that in the United States you can buy flood insurance. They have a national program. It started because of hurricanes and whatnot. I think something similar to that might be the answer, because more communities, especially out here in B.C., are being denied insurance because of natural disasters and extreme weather.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I'll go back to you, Ms. Myers.

You mentioned challenges around mapping, which is not updated.

Is it possible that some provinces or territories are more advanced than others in this regard?

I believe the mapping was redone in Quebec, so one of the challenges is to ensure that the other provinces do it as well. I don't imagine the federal government would ask the province to redo its mapping if it has already done it.

Are inequalities among the provinces part of those challenges?

[Janice Myers]

I can't say for sure, but I can say that there is not consistent mapping across Canada. That is one of the things that needs to be tackled, I think, so that we understand the risk across Canada and how the risk is changing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Ms. Myers.

Mr. Bexte, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, witnesses, for being here today. I really appreciate your time and your views on the circumstances.

Like some other members of the committee, I remember the first time that I heard the term “atmospheric river”. Then I recalled that it used to be called the “Pineapple Express”. It's been here for a very long time.

I'm going to take a look at this issue a bit from the point of view of the taxpayer. I don't think it's very efficient for taxpayers to be.... Let me back up a bit. Federal disaster recovery programs happen after the fact, after something has already happened, and that is not an optimum circumstance.

We could speak to federal insurance programs that would co-pay or participate with homebuyers and municipalities to mitigate, but again, that's after the fact, and that's still not optimum. I'm wondering about what disaster mitigation or adaptation mechanisms are most effective and what we should look at before the fact.

Mr. Coyne, could you tell me to what extent urban design aggravates circumstances and what we could do better compared to the circumstances we have on the ground today?

[Spencer Coyne]

I could go on all day about that one. There's a lot we can do.

Unfortunately, historically, we built our homes in flood plains. Our communities are based where the water is, and that is a big part of the problem we're facing. We build them here. We also [Technical difficulty—Editor] with fire, especially in rural British Columbia.

There are ways to deal with that. Like I said earlier, we can look at what we've done historically and try to correct that through nature-based solutions. We can look to Western science as well as traditional knowledge. We can mitigate a lot of that, but we can also do that through our zoning and through the way we build.

I mentioned earlier, in my speech, that we are talking about building to “get wet”. We allow you to build above the flood plain, but the garage for your car can be in the flood plain. You can still have your house there, but all your electrical and mechanical have to be above the flood plain. This allows you to continue to live where your house is, because we have no program to buy people out. Grand Forks was one of the few that were able to get secured funding to buy properties. We've had zero luck even having that discussion, to this point.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Mayor Coyne.

That leads me to another question. You stated that we build on flood plains. I live in southern Alberta, where we had the unfortunate, catastrophic weather event in 2013 and the floods. One of the towns most significantly affected is High River. The irony is not lost on me that this town has been called High River for a very long time. The river, indeed, did get very high.

I'm wondering where responsibility lies for mitigation or indemnification among municipalities and developers choosing to develop in flood plains or flood-prone areas. The rest of the country backstops with disaster recovery programs, but good choices in the first place would result in a better outcome.

You spoke to that a bit. Could you expand on it somewhat?

[Spencer Coyne]

If I could go back to 1860 and tell everybody not to build where we did, I definitely would.

[David Bexte, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

That's a good idea.

[Spencer Coyne]

Unfortunately, that's not an option now, and moving my entire community—and it is almost my entire community—is also not an option right now. We have nowhere to go except up a mountain.

The onus is on all of us. It has to be an all-of-us solution. I see that we're running out of time, but I think builders, property owners and government at all levels have to work together to find that solution.