Transport Committee on May 30th, 2023

[Coree Tull]

No, the federal government has not yet come to the table with investments. I understand that perhaps there may be conversations that have started government to government.

Recognizing that the disasters we're seeing and the billions of dollars being put out by the federal government to react to the disasters happening in British Columbia can be dramatically rectified by pre-emptively investing in these natural defences, the watershed security fund would be a critical opportunity for the federal government to move forward not only on some of their financial commitments around the freshwater action plan, but also through infrastructure, agriculture and advancing UNDRIP and reconciliation.

That could happen by partnering with the provinces to provide the investments on the ground in watersheds that need to happen in order to make our communities more climate-resilient.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I have a question for Mr. Dupuis.

I wanted to ask about NGOs that might be operating in your community, the community partners that are helping with natural infrastructure. Do you have any examples from your community of how you partner with NGOs and even nations on resilient infrastructure?

[Sylvain Dupuis]

Obviously, our region is on first nations territory, and we have excellent co‑operation on that front.

As far as NGOs are concerned, we have less of those. Being pretty far from Montreal, we attract fewer NGOs. We do, however, have local groups, grassroots initiatives and community mobilization.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Can you share any of the projects that those community partners are doing, even if they're small in nature, that are helping with resilient infrastructure?

[Sylvain Dupuis]

In terms of climate change, we have very engaged environmental groups. They educate us on measures we should take municipally. That said, the federal and provincial governments limit what we can do. In many cases, we have to get their permission before we can take things further. That's something worth thinking about as far as changes go. It would mean we could be more proactive. Municipalities are the closest to the ground, so we are usually the ones most equipped to move quickly and put these kinds of projects and solutions in place.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dupuis.

Next, we have Mr. Muys.

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

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for this great discussion today.

I want to follow up with Ms. Tull about watersheds. You talked about, of course, the importance of healthy watersheds and natural sponges, and the experience in the 2021 B.C. floods where they obviously helped with the flood mitigation.

Where I'm from, in Ontario, we have conservation authorities that are responsible for watershed management. That was established in the seventies, after floods that happened before my birth, but obviously that was part of the infrastructure. I know there are other organizations involved in this space in terms of watersheds and the wetlands. I was part of one prior to my involvement in politics.

What would you say is the best role for the federal government to insert itself in—because there are other organizations, other levels of government, provincially driven stuff—to be complementary and not duplicative?

[Coree Tull]

Thank you very much for the question.

The huge opportunity we have in British Columbia right now is to see these proactive investments in the work that's happening to restore our natural infrastructure. As you said, our watersheds ultimately are nature's infrastructure and they provide the resilience that we need for our communities.

One of the challenges is that we are putting billions of dollars into rebuilding traditional hard infrastructure following devastating disasters, which needs to happen at times, but when you look at the health of the watersheds surrounding some of our highways, we're in no better situation than we were before. What we find is that we can get siloed into how we are funding the work that needs to happen. This is where we've already seen some unique opportunities in British Columbia with the investments that have happened in watersheds.

If we can start to make decisions and do the planning at the local regional level that needs to happen, where we can bring the federal government, the provincial government, and the philanthropic and private sectors together to invest in the work that needs to happen proactively, we have a huge opportunity to create more healthy, resilient and climate-safe communities.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Let me switch gears for a moment, then, to ask Mr. Lee a question.

You talked about the need to de-risk, to preplan, obviously being nimble at a time when some of these events occur and people have to rebuild. However, you cautioned against more regulation and rushing into it. Can you maybe elaborate a bit more on that so we have that on record?

[Kevin Lee]

There is so much going on right now in the building codes and standards environment that we have a lot of challenges. We know we need to be more energy-efficient with greenhouse gas emissions. There's talk not just about carbon emissions, but about carbon embodied in buildings. Then we have all of this climate change adaptation resiliency that we need to adjust to.

When we look at all of this, we also have this other big challenge of housing affordability. It's really important that we pull that all together, consider it and find the best ways to address all of this, while also recognizing that maybe some of this shouldn't be regulated yet until we find better ways to build things to be more cost-effective.

A lot of the energy needs to go into research and development and innovation focused around affordability. We have this challenge and we need to get there. However, before we regulate, let's do the work to find new technologies and test them out, make sure they work and make sure they're not having other unintended consequences.

The challenge right now is that these are all happening one on top of the other and there are a lot of things happening. We need to do this right away and it is urgent, but it's also critical that we get it right and we balance it all.

When you rush things through the code system, you miss things, or you can miss things, and that can result in other, bigger problems. We've seen that historically in Canada as well, when we've had major failures because things weren't accounted for in the code.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

To underscore, maybe you can just reiterate that planning process. Where has your organization been involved in looking into these things that are happening now?

[Kevin Lee]

We're heavily engaged in the building code process and the standards processes.

I think one thing that's missing from all of those processes—I'll speak specifically to the national building code—is that we don't have affordability as a core objective of the national building code, and it needs to be there. It needs to be considered along with everything else at the exact same time. That would be a big move that would help everyone a great deal, I think.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Muys.

Next, we have Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to welcome all our panellists today. You are providing some great information for this very important study, and it's greatly appreciated.

Ms. Eyquem, before I came here this morning, I met with the group Insurance Brokers Association of Canada. We talked about climate change. They said it is having an impact through catastrophes right across the country, from fires to floods. There is, of course, the impact on the insurance industry. They have to react to these catastrophes, going forward, and to the impact on their businesses as well.

The Intact Centre has shared its support for the government's guidelines, but it has said there's more to be done to operationalize solutions and to move away from management by disaster. Can you please expand on this and share your views on how the federal government can improve in this regard?

[Joanna Eyquem]

In many cases, in terms of flood, wildfire and heat resilience, I think we already have the tools in the tool box to change things. It's a question of implementation. We've been doing a lot of work to provide those tools to residents and to businesses so that we get action on the ground. By accelerating action on the ground, that is how we reduce risk.

The national adaptation strategy is a great start, but the implementation of the actual actions on the ground is what really counts. We need to step up not only in how we're investing in the infrastructural solutions but also in how we're informing the public about their role in this whole-of-society approach to adaptation.

The private sector also needs to play a role. For example, I know IBAC is training. It has a training program on flood resilience so that it can tell its clients what the flood resilience measures are.

I think everybody is in this together, but we do need to invest in different levels: public, business, private sector, and governments as well.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you very much.

I know, for example, in Nova Scotia right now, with the fires impacting many of the residents in Upper Tantallon, Hammonds Plains and so on—including my son and daughter—there are a lot of questions on operationalizing things, on forest management practices, and on how we should be designing subdivisions with some attention to future fire possibilities and putting firebreak mechanisms in place. That's extremely important.

Can you explain how large and small communities—rural communities I guess you'd call them—are facing the issues of climate change and addressing their infrastructure needs differently? How can the federal government take this into account and provide more equitable access to funding in the future in terms of how we deal with that?

[Joanna Eyquem]

I think many different communities are facing different risks. There isn't a kind of blanket approach we can apply that will address all communities equally. Some are facing forest fires and some are facing coastal erosion. I think we understand what the problems are.

In terms of access to funding, I think the funding has been provided to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for adaptation. I think that could be a key way of assisting municipalities, particularly smaller municipalities, through that mechanism. Similarly, we can adapt the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which is already established, to make it more accessible. Make the application process more simplified so it is accessible to less resourced communities.

Make sure that it also addresses the natural infrastructure solutions, which are often less costly. They may not be defined projects but actually could be a management approach. For example, the sustainable management of riparian areas can really help us with flood risk upstream of a flooded community. Adapt that so that we have all of the tools represented in the tool box.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rogers.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Are we done?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

We are, indeed.

Sorry, the clerk has pointed out that you have seven seconds.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

I wanted to speak to Mr. Lee. I'll take the seven seconds.

Mr. Lee, in terms of the codes you talked about, how does the current coding system apply to new infrastructure versus existing infrastructure?

[Kevin Lee]

The building code really applies to buildings, not so much to the infrastructure. That's engineering.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you. That was very good use of your seven seconds, Mr. Rogers. Well done, sir.

Next, we have Mr. Dalton.

Mr. Dalton, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.