Madam Speaker, it has been a very reassuring evening in the House of Commons.
The people in my communities in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon are in the midst of a very difficult year, which is bringing home the impacts of climate change in ways none of us thought about even a short time ago.
On June 29, Canada's heat record was shattered as temperatures soared to 49.6°C, marking the hottest day in our nation's history, a record that was broken on three consecutive days. The following day, a fire was sparked and spread so rapidly that residents had a mere 15 minutes to vacate their properties as the town was consumed. With over 83,000 hectares destroyed, 90% of the village was levelled.
At COP26, the Prime Minister referred to the village in the past tense, saying that there was a town called Lytton. Residents who heard the speech, including Chief Patrick Michell of Kanaka Bar, were quick to point out that Lytton is far from gone. While structures were ruined, the spirit was not. Respectfully, the Prime Minister did acknowledge this evening that people are still living in Lytton, and I thank him.
The community is eager to return home and restore the neighbourhoods they know and love. Over four months later, residents remain displaced throughout the province, and they need to see some action. Compounded by the recent floods and landslides, Lytton's evacuation order has been in place since June, and there is no end in sight. Critical infrastructure, including Highway No. 1 near Jackass Summit, Tank Hill and Highway No. 8, and water and wastewater systems need to be restored to accommodate the return of residents and contractors.
Vitally, the volunteer Lytton fire department needs a new fire hall and equipment to ensure it is fully operational during the building process. Local businesses were already suffering from the adverse impacts of COVID-19 when the fire hit. Uninsured and under-insured business owners are grappling with the loss of their storefronts and inventory, and many who required pandemic supports such as CEBA will be unable to pay it back by year end.
The business community is calling for low- and zero-interest loans through Pacific Economic Development Canada to help services become operational as soon as possible. Lytton First Nation and the Village of Lytton have expressed a desire to work together and may submit joint funding proposals. Surrounding first nations, such as Siska, Nicomen, Kanaka Bar and others, are also dependent on the critical infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt, including the only surgical hospital in the region.
Being a small and remote community, Lytton does not have access to the administrative and financial resources available to larger communities able to complete onerous application processes. Furthermore, the village lost all crucial documentation and backup servers in the fire, making it near impossible to complete some of these applications.
As the destruction of this wildfire is so extensive and necessary recovery efforts exceed the usual scope, I have requested that special funding through the Treasury Board Secretariat management reserve be delivered expeditiously. The BC Wildfire Service said that this was one of the worst fires it had ever seen as it tore through critical infrastructure, downing telecommunications, BC Hydro, the RCMP detachment, the fire hall, the hospital and the village amenities. Thankfully, the school was saved.
Residents had minutes to flee, as I mentioned, with not much more than the clothes on their backs and without any warning of which direction was safe to travel out of the rural community. Many ended up in Merritt, which has now been evacuated for a second time.
Imagine that: being evacuated from their home for one natural disaster and then being evacuated from another for another disaster. Imagine the toll that would take on anyone's mental health. I call upon the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions to make mental health supports available to my constituents.
Heartbreakingly, as we all know, this grappling with the loss of property and livelihood does not stop with Lytton. On Sunday, November 14, a never-before-seen storm swept through British Columbia. While it took some in the Ottawa press gallery a little longer than it should have to catch on, the devastating impacts on B.C. and to my constituents are now widely known.
While we have seen the shocking pictures, it can be hard to grasp the impacts on regular people without a direct connection. That brings me to my cousin, Christine. She is about the same age as me. She is pregnant. She and her husband Richard were flooded out of their home. They are chicken farmers and they also own a small business doing welding work on dairy farms. They lost 20,000 birds and they lost their home, but sometimes it is the little things that really impact people. My cousin put on our family Facebook group that they had just received a bonus from one of their feed suppliers, and they had stocked up their freezer for the Christmas season. Sometimes the little things, like losing a freezer full of food, put people over the edge.
There will be a time for a full analysis of what could have been done faster or better, and I know that work is already under way. However, more rain is on the way, and additional help will be needed to rebuild the critical infrastructure connecting the Lower Mainland to the rest of Canada.
As it stands, our highways have been severely impacted and in some places completely destroyed. Most of these roads and their damaged sections are either within or connect through Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon. The Trans-Canada Highway between Hope and Spences Bridge has been washed out. Highway 3 is open between Hope and Princeton, but as of late Tuesday, a single lane was open in each direction only for essential travel. The Coquihalla Highway, which my riding borders, is closed with severe washouts, including where a mudslide took out a large section 11 kilometres south of the Great Bear Snowshed. There are no detours, and experts say it could be weeks before crews can even begin some of these repairs. We all know as British Columbians that doing road construction on the Coquihalla in the winter is next to impossible.
Highway 99 between between Lillooet and Pemberton was previously closed due to a landslide and is now open for essential travel. As some of my colleagues have mentioned tonight, sadly, this is where four people lost their lives. The search is ongoing for a fifth individual who is also presumed deceased. My prayers are with their families and friends, and especially with the little girl who lost her parents.
Highway 8, which connects Merritt to Spences Bridge, is closed. The provincial transportation minister reports that 18 segments of the highway were damaged, including four bridges. Steven Rice, the local TNRD area director, is doing yeoman's work attempting to get the word out, highlighting just how little attention rural areas such as his get. In Mr. Rice's estimation, it will be years before residents can return home, if ever.
In the Lower Mainland, only essential travel is permitted on Highway 1 between Popkum and Hope, and the highway is closed altogether through a large section in Abbotsford. Highway 7 from Mission to Hope is restricted to essential travel only, and a large section of Highway 11 between Mission and Abbotsford remains closed for the foreseeable future. Needless to say, highway repair is going to take a significant amount of time and effort.
On rail transportation and one positive note, when we review the state of the affected railways I have been so encouraged by the speed with which CN and CP have moved to repair their damaged lines and their efforts to restart the supply chain and get goods moving. They have also played a critical role in supplying otherwise cut off remote communities, including many indigenous communities, with the supplies necessary to weather this disaster. Railways have always been critical to our economy, and with the devastating washout on B.C.'s major highways, their services only increase in necessity, especially when it comes to animal feed and the food security issues we are facing in the Fraser Valley.
I have received, like many members in the House tonight, a significant amount of feedback from constituents on the ground about what needs to be addressed right now and especially before our next extreme weather event. One email from Harm Baars, a local dairy farmer who was instrumental in moving a lot of the cattle out from Sumas Prairie, has called for less push-back from regional authorities governed by liability concerns.
Farmers are going to do everything they can to save their livelihoods, and officials need to give them the space to do so. Ideally, authorities will work with the affected locals. Landowners are more than willing to help. Emergency crews get into areas they often do not have the equipment for or know, but that farmers do. This is a shortcoming of federal emergency preparedness that should be reviewed.
Canadian Forces equipment and personnel cannot be effective when they are stuck on the other side of the Rockies coming from Edmonton or have to fly in from Quebec to service British Columbia. The absence of CFB Chilliwack is being felt, and these events have highlighted that the federal and provincial governments must invest more in preparations for future disasters, because there will be more climate-change-related disasters in British Columbia, and we need more federal investments on this front.
There should also be an improved warning system. It would have been possible for farmers to move more cattle, but they were not able to because they did not get enough warning. This led to the forced euthanasia of many dairy cattle on farms in the eastern part of Sumas Prairie. B.C.'s Alert Ready system has not been utilized at all this year, despite a record number of natural disasters. This is a critical Canada-wide platform, and the federal government needs to work with the province of B.C. to make sure that B.C. has the tools it needs.
Additionally, as we saw during the wildfire season, our indigenous communities are once again being left out of the emergency communications loop. It has been reported that First Nations' Emergency Services Society was not contacted by until Tuesday, November 16. Cook's Ferry Indian Band, among many others, never received a call to evacuate. The disconnect between Emergency Management B.C. and B.C.'s first nations continues to put lives at risk and must be addressed.
This afternoon, I spoke with Lytton first nations councillor Jason Robertson, who is also a firefighter and an all around amazing guy and leader. He says that the responsibility is tossed from one table to another without resolution. They do not know where to go.
I raised this issue with the previous minister of indigenous services, and I now call on his successor to please correct this and work with emergency services in B.C. and the first nations in B.C. to improve emergency management and to give more authority to our local first nations. They often understand the land much better than we do. They know the wind patterns, and they know the river flows. They live right by it, and we do not. Let us let them do the work that we know they are capable of doing.
Turning to infrastructure, immediately building improved and climate resilient infrastructure is vital. The upcoming federal budget must contain significant funds to address these urgent needs in British Columbia for the sake of our economy, national security and public safety. As we saw through the rapid work of Abbotsford city staff and volunteers who sandbagged the Barrowtown pump stations, seconds count when it comes to the repairs in the face of extreme whether.
Many of our dike and pump station infrastructure was built before and during the 1950s. Embarrassingly, this was before indigenous people could even vote in our country. The unacceptable outcome is that their safety and needs were and continue to be overlooked. It is a common fact discussed at a local forum I am a part of. Many of the first nation reserves do not even have the dike protection that communities like Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack have. That is not acceptable anymore.
A 2015 B.C. government study assessed a sample of 75 Lower Mainland dikes where they do exist and found that 71 per cent were vulnerable to failure. It rated the highest elevation of the key Sumas Lake reclamation dike in Abbotsford as “unacceptable” and stated that, “overtopping is expected during Nooksack River overflow”, which is exactly what just happened.
A 2020 report commissioned by the City of Abbotsford found that damage from a major flood could be as high as $960 million, with proposed dike solutions coming in between $29 million to $339 million. Unfortunately, that damage estimate is likely lower than what we are now seeing in the real world.
Local communities have been raising the alarm bells for years. It has been mentioned in this House tonight that just three weeks ago, I met with the mayor of Abbotsford, my colleague from Langley—Aldergrove and my colleague from Abbotsford, and the mayor of Abbotsford pressed upon us to bring the issue of dike infrastructure to the Parliament of Canada, and then we faced what we just faced.
Updated flood mapping is required so that we can better plan for future events and better prepare to rebound from catastrophes. We cannot address climate change if we do not apply all the models and discussions tonight to real world situations to the topography of our land. The ridings most affected in the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack-Hope and Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, are incredibly important agricultural areas and are essential for Canada's food security.
This disaster also brings up many points about insurance. A significant amount of the damage sustained will not be covered by insurance. Whether it falls under an “act of God” clause, is unaffordable, or it simply does not exist because flood insurance is in its infancy in Canada, the federal government must provide relief for those who now face unimaginable financial hurdles.
The findings of the federal task force examining a national residential flood insurance program for homeowners living in high-risk areas, expected next spring, cannot come soon enough. Again, the Prime Minister addressed this today, so I will be holding the Liberal government to account on ensuring it happens.
Another unpopular reality that has been avoided by federal and provincial governments for far too long is the need to dredge our rivers, especially the Fraser and the Sumas, as these past weeks have highlighted. It is possible to do this work outside of spawning season to safeguard our salmon and our environment.
During the forum that I mentioned earlier, many of the first nations leaders in my constituency were supportive of this work and might even undertake it themselves as an economic opportunity to improve salmon habitat and reduce the risk of flood on their lands.
The Fraser Valley is known globally for our high-quality berry production, but the industry has been hard hit on multiple fronts, such as the summer heat wave and heat dome, and labour shortages. I had a meeting with the BC Blueberry Council this week and it reported that 2,500 acres of blueberry fields were flooded and 1,000 acres remained underwater. These submerged plants will not survive and must be removed and replaced. The soil must also be remediated for toxicity.
Farmers are no longer able to position themselves to secure a loan in the aftermath of this flood devastation. It is my understanding that existing agricultural insurance programs, including the agristability program, do not account for natural disasters like floods, where farms are destroyed beyond the possibility of recovering in a following season.
For context, blueberry plants take five to six years to reach maturation and before crops are ready for commercial-scale harvest. Insurance compensation for one-season's worth of losses will not begin to match the actual loss. It is estimated that it will cost $32,000 to $37,000 per acre to restore these blueberry fields. We are facing a crisis like we never have seen before in B.C. Our country cannot afford to have one of our most productive agricultural areas wiped out. Federal assistance, as I have written the Minister of Agriculture this week, must come forward to assist in these vital areas.
As I come to a conclusion, I cannot thank enough the thousands of people all across my riding and across British Columbia and Canada who have come to aid and show their sympathy for my corner of this beautiful country. I thank them on behalf of everyone in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.
I am thankful that the government has worked so collaboratively with the opposition to address these concerns and that we were able to have this debate tonight.
I am thankful and reassured by some of the things I have heard tonight, that we will work together to ensure, hopefully in the next budget, that British Columbia will receive some money for climate change adaptation and mitigation in an area of our country where it is needed probably the most.
It has been a tough year for B.C. It has been a tough year for my riding. For my constituents, this is my first time speaking tonight. I am going to keep fighting for them. There is a lot to be done, but if we take that team Canada approach, we can meet and exceed the tasks ahead. I am very hopeful, and I am very encouraged by our discussions.
