BC Flood Strategy advisor 'unimpressed' by lack of funding to reduce risk

BC’s new flood strategy is not even a year old, but a prominent advisor to the plan worries the province has already shelved efforts to better protect riverside communities from floods.

Stó:lō Tribal Council President Tyrone McNeil recently wrote to Premier David Eby expressing “deep concerns” about a lack of action to implement the various actions that the new strategy says must be done to reduce flood risk in BC.

McNeil is the chair of a Lower Fraser Floodplains Coalition, a broad group representing a variety of First Nations, local governments, and flood experts. When the government rolled out its BC Flood Strategy last spring, McNeil was front and centre, appearing in a government video explaining the importance of the new 56-page plan. McNeil, who described his role in the plan as an advisor, touted the importance of protecting communities while preserving watersheds and ecosystems.

But now, he says he is “very unimpressed” by a lack of funding to actually undertake the work the strategy says must be done to better protect British Columbians.

In his letter, McNeil wrote that he and his colleagues have seen “little to no steps to move this important work forward” and warned the government about putting the strategy “on the shelf.”

The letter was sent in late February, but included this week in the agenda for the District of Kent’s council meeting.

You can read the full letter here.

A summary for the strategy emphasizes its grand scale and scope, saying it “aims to future-proof the Province’s ability to respond to flood emergencies, ensure infrastructure resilience, preserve land and water for future generations, prioritize cobenefits and ecosystem services, and enhance public safety.” It laid out a road map for flood mitigation work until 2035.

Among the 20-plus actions it identified, the strategy declared the need to conduct a province-wide flood risk assessment, create a provincial floodplain mapping program, increase research capacity, strengthen dike rules, enhance forestry practices, update a variety of plans and laws, and invest more money in measures in flood-prevention infrastructure and property.

But McNeil suggests momentum has evaporated after just a year. He writes that the Lower Fraser Floodplains Coalition can’t implement the strategy on their own and had hoped that Eby would have prioritized implementation in the mandate letters handed to ministers in November.

The flood strategy was only mentioned in the mandate letter for Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Kelly Greene as an example of necessary “cross-ministry co-ordination” to enhance resilience. Neither the flood strategy nor flood management in general was included in the mandate letter for Randene Neil, the province’s new Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. Neil’s ministry led work on the flood strategy and has general responsibility for implementing its recommended actions.

In his letter to Eby, McNeil writes that he understands that tariffs and trade uncertainties have caused the government to shift its focus. But he wrote that it would be dangerous to forget about flood risks, pointing to the multi-billion-dollar cost of events like the 2021 floods.

“Rather than putting the Flood Strategy on the shelf, now is exactly the time, and the opportunity, to ensure that planning and investments are made strategically and are preparing our communities well for the future,” he wrote.

McNeil said the government should immediately fully fund the implementation of the strategy, and that $6 billion should be allocated in the next budget to support floodplain planning work in the Lower Mainland.

In a brief interview with The Current Wednesday, McNeil said he was “very unimpressed” with the provincial lack of funding to implement the strategy. He suggested that the province’s own ministries might be confused. McNeil said he has counted 22 different emergency management initiatives by the province, of which the flood strategy is one.

Jason Thistlethwaite, an emergency planning expert and professor at the University of Waterloo, has noted that it’s common for governments to lose enthusiasm when high-minded disaster prevention talks start to require on-the-ground action and spending.

“It’s not abnormal for flood management to get de-prioritized relative to other issues,” he wrote in an email to The Current. “Most governments rarely make it past the strategy stage where they produce a flashy report identifying a number of aspirational actions that are rarely implemented.”

Reducing flood risks brings few political benefits, Thistlethwaite notes.

“Voters are much more likely to support an investment in a library or arena than digging up your street for six months to expand the capacity of your sewer system,” he said.

Governments don’t get credit for floods that don’t happen because of previous mitigation work. And in part because of that, many flood prevention plans end up sitting on shelves, rather than leading to actions that might significantly reduce the risks faced by residents.

There is some work related to the flood strategy taking place. The government has created four short documents about how it might implement three of the two dozen actions suggested in the strategy. It took feedback on the documents over the last four months of 2024 and officials are now spending the start of 2025 drafting a report based on comments.

The work includes the creation of guidelines for “nature-based” flood mitigation infrastructure, and the development of “wise practices” that can foster collaboration between First Nations and local governments. The province is also considering how it might allow communities to make decisions related to managed retreat, whereby residents in flood-prone areas might be proactively encouraged or required to move to less vulnerable areas.