Honourable Chair and committee, today I'm joining you from the traditional territory of the Lkwungen peoples on southern Vancouver Island. Thank you so much for undertaking this study and for inviting us as a witness.
Personally, I'm a biologist with 27 years of experience in habitat restoration for provincial, local and first nations governments, and for non-profits like Watershed Watch. As some of you will know, Watershed Watch is a science-based charity. We work to defend and rebuild B.C.'s wild salmon and their habitats.
Since 2016, we've been raising awareness about the impacts of flood control structures such as dikes, floodgates and pump stations that are unnecessarily blocking access to important habitats for wild salmon in the lower Fraser River. We've mapped over 1,500 kilometres of formerly vital salmon habitats that are now cut off by floodgates that do not open enough for fish or fresh water to flow through. Because the floodgates are often closed, especially during the spring freshet, pumps are activated when water needs to pass through the dikes. Unfortunately, conventional pumps will kill any juvenile salmon that are drawn into them. Most existing pumps are not fish-friendly, and retrofits of these pumps are not required to be fish-friendly currently.
In recognizing these problems, a June 2021 report from this committee recommended: That the Government of Canada, the Province of British Columbia, and where appropriate, First Nation communities review the state of flood control/mitigation systems along the lower Fraser River and their impact on wild salmon, and co-develop a program to update pumping stations and other components, as necessary, to remove risks to wild salmon runs.
We are encouraged by this recommendation, as it supports work already ongoing in our region. For instance, in 2019, a project called resilient waters, which is funded by the B.C. salmon restoration and innovation fund—a provincially and federally funded project—began a review of the state of flood-control systems. It identified 27 priority locations for salmon habitat restoration and fish-friendly infrastructure upgrades. This is a great start. These locations must be part of flood recovery planning, yet a larger response is also urgently needed.
Many, if not most dikes, floodgates and pumps in the Fraser Valley are known to be aging and undersized for the increased water flows happening with climate change. November's floods brought us to a crossroads, and now we need to ensure that rebuilding supports salmon as well as public safety. Fortunately, well-established technical and planning solutions are available and have proven successful in other jurisdictions.
In the short term, the primary need is clear federal guidance and funding criteria to ensure that all flood infrastructure is fish-friendly. This guidance must come from Public Safety Canada, Infrastructure Canada, their provincial counterparts, and with the strong support of DFO.
DFO's regulatory guidance and oversight will also help to ensure that funds are not spent on renewed fish barriers and pumps that kill fish. One regulatory avenue currently is through the process to modernize the regulations for the existing facilities and infrastructure and the death of fish, for which the public comment period is ongoing. These regulations can ensure that flood infrastructure retrofits are fish-friendly.
We also recommend that the provincial and federal governments co-create best management practices to provide much-needed technical guidance for local governments to design and to install fish-friendly infrastructure.
Now that an estimated $5 billion is to be spent on infrastructure upgrades, we must be strategic. For this planning, we must think regionally, not just at the scale of individual local governments. We must consider nature-based solutions and green infrastructure, along with traditional infrastructure, for the multiple benefits and cost savings these solutions provide. For example, this can include giving the river places to flood safely, using setback dikes or restoring flood-plain channels.
As mentioned by other panellists, we can look to other jurisdictions and international best practices. These include the United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, to which Canada and B.C. are signatories. This framework includes a key concept of building back better during recovery. In Canada, building back better must acknowledge that Fraser River flood-plain habitats are needed by endangered salmon populations that require rebuilding plans under the Fisheries Act. Building back better must also incorporate other federal and provincial objectives, such as species-at-risk recovery, climate adaptation and mitigation, and reconciliation.
In the long term, the best outcomes will come from a holistic, collaborative and strategic approach to flood management.
I trust the solutions we proposed are actionable and will be recommended through Minister Murray to the Committee of British Columbia and Federal Ministers on Disaster Response and Climate Resilience. Following this presentation, a briefing note will be provided that will include further detail on the opportunities and benefits of investing in fish-friendly flood infrastructure and multi-benefit flood plain management.
Thank you for your time.