Four years after flooding disaster, Sumas Prairie protections ignored by parties

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Less than four years after one of Canada’s most devastating natural disasters, none of the country’s federal parties have promised to spend money to prevent another Sumas Prairie flood.

Local candidates say they’ll advocate for infrastructure that could address the regular flooding of the Nooksack River into Canada. But none could promise that their party would act.

That is consistent with each party’s platform, none of which suggest investing money in Sumas Prairie flood management would be a priority—or even on the radar of a future government.

Over the last three weeks, The Current has interviewed seven candidates, and asked each of them about what they or their party would do to address the future safety of Sumas Prairie.

Although all said they would back infrastructure that could reduce the impact of a future Nooksack River flood, none could guarantee any action would take place if they or their party is elected.

That’s not altogether unusual. Parties often leave specifics vague when it comes to infrastructure projects. Usually they promise to spend money to address specified priorities across the country. When the matter reflects a priority, the promise might be accompanied with the amount a party plans to spend.

The Liberals

The Liberals have followed the standard playbook for disaster-mitigation promises, pledging in their platform to “provide disaster mitigation and recovery funding where infrastructure that connects Canada is under threat.”

That promise could feasibly apply to the Sumas Prairie region, where Highway 1 and the CN rail lines form key connections for goods making their way across Canada. (You can read our story on the impacts of the flood on rail traffic here.)

But the pledge doesn’t represent a change from current policy—the federal government already provides disaster mitigation and recovery funding. And the party’s costing plan—the money it says it will spend to meet its platform commitments—only includes a one-time top-up of $500 million to the national Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.

That won’t be enough to protect Abbotsford from the Nooksack River. Although $500 million sounds like a lot, it won’t be enough to cover even one-third of the cost of protecting Sumas Prairie.

Just last year, the Liberal government denied the City of Abbotsford’s request for $1.8 billion for flood mitigation works. The government also showed little interest in calling in the International Joint Commission, a body that mediates water-related issues along the US-Canada border.

The platform also suggests prioritizing the creation of natural infrastructure, including wetlands. A plan to better protect Sumas Prairie from Nooksack River flooding could include the use of restored riparian areas. Some have also suggested allowing Sumas Lake to return, but the cost of that would also be in the billions of dollars and the platform provides no pledge of new money. Instead, the platform says “the government will use a mix of conservation funding, climate change adaptation funding, and leverage public-private infrastructure investments to invest in nature that protects communities.”

The Conservatives

The other party with a chance of forming power, the Conservative Party, has been even quieter on the topic.

Its platform doesn’t mention any efforts a Conservative government would make to prevent or mitigate future natural disasters. The platform’s costing component provides even less reason to hope the government would be more willing to spend money on Sumas Prairie flood prevention. The platform details the costs for each of its promises, and uses those figures to project a future deficit under a Conservative government. There is no sign of any plan to spend money on disaster mitigation on Sumas Prairie.

Just as with the Liberals, the Conservatives could feasibly choose to allocate existing money slated each year through the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund. But the scale of work on Sumas Prairie would eat up nearly all the budget for that entire fund, which is meant to address vital disaster-mitigation work across all of Canada. (The fund’s budget works out to about $315 million annually.)

The other parties

Like that of the Conservatives, the NDP’s platform does not mention any plan to better fund disaster-mitigation infrastructure across Canada. Its costing document lays out dozens of new spending proposals, but none relate to disaster mitigation. Any money to protect Sumas Prairie would either need to come from existing funding sources or be the result of an entirely new policy.

The Green Party, on the other hand, does pledge in its platform to “build stronger infrastructure to protect drinking water and prevent floods.” It does not, however, state how much money a hypothetical Green government would spend to fulfill that commitment.

The disaster

The 2021 flood that inundated the area was one of Canada’s most-expensive natural disasters. Although it didn’t kill anyone, the flood killed thousands of animals, damaged some of BC’s most valuable cropland, ravaged hundreds of homes, forced thousands to flee, and shut down Canada’s busiest highway for more than a week.

The flood was the result of the Nooksack River overtopping its banks near Everson, Wash., about 12 kilometres southwest of Abbotsford. The Nooksack drains the slopes of Mt. Baker, one of the world’s snowiest mountains, and normally flows through northern Washington. But during flood events, large amounts of water can spill north into the Sumas River basin, heading towards the Fraser River. Before it gets there, it enters the former Sumas Lake bed, which sits below sea level. It is kept dry by Barrowtown Pump Station, along with a series of dikes—two of which failed in 2021.

(You can read more in our stories on the history of Sumas Lake and the Nooksack River.)

The Nooksack River has flooded into Canada multiple times, including in 1990, when it inundated the western half of Sumas Prairie and shut down Highway 1. But although Canadian officials sought to collaborate with their American counterparts to prevent future floods, nothing was done. (It is in the Americans’ interest to allow water to flow north to Canada, rather than remaining in the US where it would aggravate flood damages.)

In the wake of the 2021 flood, federal officials including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to take action to prevent future disasters. The City of Abbotsford undertook a process to design a new set of dikes that could mitigate future flooding. The city’s proposal would include the construction of a new pump station to move water out of the prairie toward the Fraser River. But the projected cost is staggering—$1.8 billion just for the most essential components—and last year the federal government turned down Abbotsford’s request for funding.

The lack of work doesn’t just have the potential to leave Sumas Prairie vulnerable to a future flood. It may also hold up construction on a widened Highway 1 between Chilliwack and Abbotsford. The provincial government has pledged to widen the congested stretch of highway just past the bridge over the Vedder Canal. But given 2021’s flooding, any project will need to be constructed in tandem with flood improvement works. Without a plan for funneling water from the United States to a pump station, a widened highway won’t be built.

The Liberal candidates

Perhaps unsurprisingly, every local candidate is enthusiastic about reducing Sumas Prairie’s vulnerability to flooding, even as they equivocate about their party’s own lack of commitment to the subject.

Fraser Valley Liberal candidates John Aldag (Langley Township—Fraser Heights) and Kevin Gillies (Abbotsford—South Langley) pledged to advocate for flood mitigation work if they are elected. But both were vague about why voters should expect a party that had rejected funding for mitigation measures to step up to the plate in the coming years.

Gillies, whose riding includes Sumas Prairie, said the Liberals would be more inclined to support the project if the riding was represented by a Liberal Member of Parliament. He said the local MP would have “the ear of government,” but admitted he was raw and didn’t explain what exactly he would do to convince his party to fund mitigation works.

Aldag, meanwhile, was a Liberal MP between 2021 and the spring of 2024, but displayed an unfamiliarity with the issue.

“I don't know why the application for assistance was denied in Abbotsford, because it is so needed,” Aldag said. “I don't know if it was you know that the local Members of Parliament weren't able to adequately or effectively work with our government to make the case on why this was such an important project.”

When it was pointed out that Aldag himself was the nearest Liberal MP, he suggested the topic was outside of his main domain.

“My riding was Cloverdale—Langley City and my area was not affected by the floods,” he said. “I did have discussions about the importance of this to our region, because I had a piece of the Township, and the eastern part of the Township was very vulnerable from that side of that flooding incident.”

Aldag, who is now running to represent a larger riding that includes much of Langley Township, said he would be more involved in such discussions in the future. (Aldag’s new riding would not be directly impacted by any future flood; but like all Lower Mainland ridings, a Nooksack flood that shut down Highway 1 would have ramifications across the region.)

The Conservative candidate

Longtime Conservative MP Brad Vis said he would make the issue a priority as a Member of Parliament.

“I'm committed to getting that funding for Abbotsford as a local MP,” he told The Current. “That is the top responsibility for anyone representing Abbotsford to advocate for those specific funds.”

Vis stressed the importance of Highway 1 and the Sumas Border crossing to international trade, and the prairie’s role in food security.

But he also acknowledged that his party and its leadership hasn’t yet indicated it would address the matter.

“There's no specific commitment made by the Conservative Party, but as the local MP, I am going to hold any government accountable on this key issue,” he said.

Asked what, exactly, he would do, Vis continued: “I need to make a strong case, as the local Member of Parliament, that this is important for food security and the overall economy of British Columbia, I need to work with everyone in the province, like when I talked to you five or six years ago, and I said, I'm going to work with everyone on Highway 1.”

Vis cited funding allocated to the repairs to Coquihalla and Highway 1 as evidence of his ability to convince government to spend money on such projects.

“I can't predict the future,” he said. “All I can do is what's in my control and that is to make sure that this is top of mind for the officials, the deputy ministers going up into cabinet, that they don't ignore the significance of the Fraser Valley for Canada's trade and BC food production.”

The independent candidate

Mike de Jong, who is running in the Abbotsford—South Langley riding after being rebuffed by the Conservatives, made a similar case, saying that he would strongly advocate for flood protections if elected.

“The Nooksack river is going to flood again, there is no question about that, and we need to be taking the steps necessary,” he said. In addition to infrastructure work, de Jong said the federal government needs to refer the matter to the International Joint Commission.

“People need to think back to what happened several decades ago when the Red River flooded across the border and the devastating impact that had in the area around Winnipeg,” he said. “This is every bit as critical. It was the IJC that mapped out the appropriate work, very expensive work, by the way that needed to be conducted to prevent that from happening again.”

De Jong has said he supports the election of a Conservative government. Asked if he would put conditions on any future agreement to join a Conservative caucus, he said: “First, we'll see if the invitation is made, and that's not something I have any control over, so it's difficult to think about hypotheticals.”

The other candidates

With the exception of the local People’s Party candidate, the Fraser Valley’s other candidates also repeated the need to invest in flood-mitigation projects.

Chilliwack—Hope NDP candidate Teri Westerby said his party would prioritize spending money on projects that would prevent future costly disasters.

“My understanding of the way NDP operates is that if a community needs something—especially in the way of prevention of further disaster and mitigation of extraordinary damage that costs way more to clean up than it does to prevent, we are going to make wise and strategic investments into communities when and where people are asking for and when and where they need it,” he said. (The NDP’s Abbotsford—South Langley candidate didn’t participate in an interview.)

Abbotsford—South Langley Green Party candidate Melissa Snazell said Sumas Prairie needs to be protected and, like de Jong, spoke of the need for talks with the Americans. “We need to have a cross-border, an international coalition, to discuss it, because the river doesn't know borders they and we have to have both sides of the border on the same page, discussing how we take care of it, how we move forward with the infrastructure to make sure we don't have flooding, but at the same time making sure that the fish and the ecology around the river is safe.”

Asked how one does that if the Americans don’t want to reduce the water coming to Canada, Snazell stressed the need for diplomacy.

“We need to really be diplomatic and talk to them and have our science behind us… and just sort of talk straight up,” she said. “It's not politics, it's real life, and we need to get this done.”

The challenge is that the matter is political: a local official once admitted to The Current that stopping the water flowing into Canada is “not politically feasible” because of the potential impacts on American communities.

But memories are short—not just in Abbotsford but among some locals.

Asked about flooding on Sumas Prairie, Aeriol Alderking, the People’s Party of Canada candidate for Abbotsford—South Langley, blamed “weather modification” for the 2021 atmospheric river, while saying major floods in the Fraser Valley aren’t normally a recurring problem.

November atmospheric rivers, of course, have regularly caused major floods on the Nooksack River. In 2020, the border community of Sumas, Wash., was inundated by a large flood that spared Abbotsford. And the 1990 event, of course, shut down Highway 1 and triggered cross-border talks that eventually dissolved with governmental disinterest.

Immediately after the monumental 2021 flood, politicians across Canada spoke of the need to avoid a future flood in one of BC’s most vulnerable—and most complex—watersheds. Less than four years later, the 2025 election campaign suggests that the disaster has receded into a vague memory for politicians beyond the region.

There are new emergencies and crises to deal with. Avoiding future disasters is difficult and complex. Forgetting them turns out to be much easier.

You can find the full interviews for each candidate here: John Aldag (Liberal) | Aeriol Alderking (PPC) | Mike de Jong (Independent) | Kevin Gillies (Liberal) | Melissa Snazell (Green) | Brad Vis (Conservative) | Teri Westerby (NDP)