How a Spiderman meme explains Canada's disaster-prevention failures

You can’t stop a flood with internal memos and good intentions.

Having learned important lessons from the 2021 Sumas Prairie disaster, the federal government kickstarted work on a series of projects to reduce damage from future calamities. But three years later, the feds still have little to show for their talk, leaving experts like University of Waterloo professor Jason Thistlethwaite as exasperated as ever.

Shortly after the Sumas Prairie flood, The Current talked to Thistlethwaite, an expert on disaster prevention and risk management policies, about how the federal government could better protect flood-prone communities. You can read that story here.

Thistlethwaite said at the time the feds could provide citizens with better information about flood risks, fund more risk mitigation infrastructure projects, create a national insurance program, and assume more leadership when it comes to preventing future climate-related disasters.

Three years later, the federal government has begun much of that work. Ottawa has funded flood-mapping programs that are aimed at delivering accurate information on risks to governments and the public, increased funding for flood-prevention infrastructure, and worked to create a nationwide flood insurance program.

In a new interview with The Current, Thistlethwaite gave the feds credit for spending more money than previous governments to reduce Canadians’ vulnerability to climate disasters.

But with the calendar turning to 2025, he said all that work still hasn’t done much to actually protect anyone.

“All of those things have been started, but nothing public has really come out about them—and now that we’re prorogued, who knows what’s going to happen,” Thistlethwaite told The Current on Jan. 9, shortly after Parliament was prorogued, potentially setting up a spring federal election..

“This government has spoken a big game around this, and absolutely spent money on some of these things—more money than any [previous] government in my time,” he said. “But we really haven’t seen much in terms of tangible policy that you can point to saying ‘OK, so here’s how the rules are going to change.’”

One of the cornerstones of the federal governments’ disaster preparedness work is the creation of a national flood insurance program, which the government started work on more than four years ago. Such a program would allow the federal government to insure properties that private insurers won’t touch. Canada is currently the only G7 company without such a program.

Federal insurance wouldn’t necessarily be cheap for property owners—the program’s revenues would still need to largely cover payouts—but the possibility of acquiring insurance would allow more people to qualify for mortgages. There would be a “means test” to let low-income Canadians get discounted insurance. The program could also serve as a model for wildfire insurance, and has been endorsed by the Canadian private insurance industry.

(Private insurance companies would serve as an intermediary for such transactions, similar to the way insurance brokers sell ICBC car insurance.)

Last spring, Ottawa pledged to complete work on the program the following year, prompting the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) to applaud the federal government, saying the program was “the single most important step Canada can take to better protect homeowners.”

But the Liberals’ enthusiasm for the program appears to have waned over the course of the year.

The same Fall Economic Statement that triggered the December resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland lacked funding to implement a national flood insurance program. That led the Insurance Bureau of Canada to issue a blistering press release, declaring that the government had “once again failed to invest in climate adaptation and resilience measures that are needed to keep Canadians safe.”

Thistlethwaite described the tone of the release as “nasty”—at least in comparison with typical press releases from the insurance lobbying group.

“I’ve never seen IBC be that mean.”

In an interview with The Current, IBC climate change national director Jason Clark was diplomatic, but also clear that the organization wasn’t happy with the federal government’s lack of commitment.

“We’re significantly disappointed to not see greater progress considering the years that the property and casualty industry has spent working with the government to advance this,” Clark said. He said the government’s current turmoil means there is less hope that a spring budget will arrive with money to “stand up” the program.

https://www.ibc.ca/news-insights/news/trudeau-government-fails-to-protect-canadians-from-floods-wildfires

Standing up the program would mean creating the corporate entity that will manage both the program and the insurance products high-risk property owners would be able to purchase. A CEO must be hired and given a budget to bring on people to create the new institution.

As it stands, the program may not be created before the next federal election, leaving its fate to the whims of a new Prime Minister.

When asked about the IBC’s relationship with the Conservatives, Clark said his organization has been in contact with all other parties during the ongoing minority Parliament and that he hoped any new government would also pursue the creation of a national flood insurance program.

He said he wasn’t aware of any firm position the Conservatives have taken on the matter.

“I would say we’re cautiously optimistic that we can work with any incoming government on the issue,” he said.

The Current emailed Fraser Valley Conservative MPs Ed Fast and Brad Vis about their party’s stance on the program but did not receive a reply.

Thistlethwaite said a federal insurance program could have been “transformative” and that he shares IBC’s frustration.

“It’s like ‘C’mon!” Thistlethwaite said (after using more profane language). “This thing has been years in the making. I remember meeting in 2017 with [former public safety minister] Ralph Goodale and saying: ‘Flood insurance, maps, those are the easy things you could do.”

Eight years and multiple disasters later, fhe flood insurance program is in limbo and the mapping project, although ongoing, has yet to actually produce many publicly available documents.

“They’re almost too afraid to release maps because they don’t want them to be politicized,” Thistlethwaite said. (The worry would be that maps could reveal that some municipalities are green-lighting the construction of homes in high-risk areas.) “It’s like we’re afraid to treat Canadians as adults with this information, whereas every other country in the world doesn’t have a problem with it.”

‘The front cover would be the Spiderman meme’

The more Thistlethwaite spoke, the more he found reasons for frustration.

Three years ago, he told The Current the federal government should assume more jurisdictional (and financial) responsibility for protecting communities from disasters. But even as Ottawa has made tentative steps towards creating new risk reduction policies, Thistlethwaite still sees an unwillingness to fully commit to disaster management.

“On the one hand, you can argue that their efforts to increase funding and change these policies represented an attempt to take more responsibility,” he said. “But reading between the lines, I think what they’re saying when they reject [disaster-prevention] funding for places like Merritt or Abbotsford, they’re saying ‘This is a provincial problem, you deal with it.’ I think there is still a downloading of responsibility.”

The provinces, meanwhile, have also tended to prioritize funding for projects that create clear political wins—like transportation projects—over disaster-prevention work. Until very recently, BC insisted that it was up to municipalities to mitigate flood risk.

And even when there is a consensus that something should be done, he said that instead of taking responsibility, Canada’s three levels of government all tend to blame each other for not doing enough to mitigate the next disaster.

“If I were to write a book about this stuff, the front cover would be the Spiderman meme of [the governments] all pointing at each other.”

But Thistlethwaite noted that delaying disaster-prevention work doesn’t actually save money in the long run.

“The [return on investment] per dollar is anywhere between $6 to $12 on funding mitigation,” Thistlethwaite said—in other words, a dollar spent on preparing for a disaster can save up to $12 down the road.

“The problem in Canada is that we’re addicted to recovery. We wait for the disaster to happen and then worry about it, rebuild in more or less the same spots, and hope it doesn’t happen again.”