Evidence of meeting #27 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 infrastructure.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses. I appreciate your time and commitment to show up at committee and offer your views and wisdom. It's important.
Mr. Boudreault, you spoke about insurance and premiums. How do we ensure that insurance does not incentivize bad behaviour?
I don't want to make this difficult, but you suggested that if we don't let the market adjust premiums based on the real risk, it hides the consequences, and that distributes the burden of the result unfairly. I want to make sure we let society make upfront decisions about where to develop and where and how to build to have the right incentives.
Professor, Department of Mathematics, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
That was my point about the economic incentives. Whenever you have a program that blurs the price signal, it increases the likelihood of taking risks. Making sure the insurance market is efficient at pricing risk will hopefully allow the incentives to reduce risk.
I briefly talked about the California case with the premium caps. It was pointed out as a contributor to what we have right now, where many households are exposed to wildfires in California.
I understand the issue of affordability. It could be short term. There could be conditions. It could be for low or medium—
Professor, Department of Mathematics, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
—low-income families, actually.
There are different ways of doing it, but what matters is making sure it's temporary. Ultimately, the price signal is there to reduce the risk.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you very much. I appreciate your analytical approach to decision-making. We have to measure the impacts on things, and this is one tool to do it, so I appreciate that a lot.
Mr. Martin, I wonder if, as alluded to by Mr. Boudreault, some of these concepts apply equally to flood, fire and urban interface circumstances. Quickly, do you have any analogies to the urban interface situation from the flood experience you have?
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Yes. Do you have any wisdom to transfer from flood planning to fire planning?
Conservative
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
I appreciate that.
Do you have any reports, data or studies you haven't mentioned that the committee might find useful? I would appreciate it if you would forward those to the committee.
February 26th, 2026 / 12:45 p.m.
As an Individual
We're currently working on a final paper that should be ready within the month, I'm hoping. That will relate the work we've done in three Canadian municipalities and two Dutch municipalities on flood resilience and the interface between the public sector and the private sector in municipalities with regard to flood resilience in Canada and the Netherlands.
I also have a piece in Policy Options that was titled something to do with flood amnesia. That is a synopsis, and I think it was a pretty good synopsis of the Dutch comparisons.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
If you could provide that to the committee, I'd sure appreciate it.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you very much.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to move a motion that I filed notice for yesterday.
That the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development invite the chief executive officer of the Major Projects Office, Dawn Farrell, to appear before the committee on a quarterly basis to provide updates on the Major Projects Office's work, priorities and activities; That each appearance be no less than one hour in duration; and That these quarterly appearances continue for the duration of the current Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Angelo Iacono
According to the clerk, the notice was given late and you can only move it as of tomorrow unless there is unanimous consent.
Mr. Leslie.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to seek some clarity on what I understand to be a long-standing tradition, we'll call it, where it is “two sleeps”. If an email is sent Tuesday night or Tuesday late afternoon, then that is the 48 hours. It's not a firm 48 hours. You have to send it by 11 a.m. on Tuesday to get to our 48 hours for this. I'd like some clarity on what the Standing Orders say versus what clear tradition has been.
The Clerk of the Committee Leif-Erik Aune
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Leslie.
I'm familiar with the tradition of “two sleeps”. Nevertheless, on June 16, the committee adopted its own routine motion for governing notices in the committee, which provides that notices filed with the clerk after 4 p.m. from Monday to Thursday will be treated as if received the following day.
I'm compelled by the committee's own routine motion in this regard, but again, as I've advised the chair, if the committee consents unanimously, then the motion could be moved.
Liberal
Eric St-Pierre Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Thank you for that.
There's been a flood of motions this week and I'm trying to keep up with the various motions that have been submitted. Would it be possible to recirculate this specific motion? If you have hard copies, yes, that's perfect. I just need to reread it.
Liberal
Gurbux Saini Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
You need unanimous consent and I will not agree to the consent, because this was late.