It’s been five years since an atmospheric river dropped a month’s worth of rain on Princeton, British Columbia, in a matter of days. But even with a herculean recovery and rebuilding effort, the impacts of those 2021 floods still mar the landscape. 

Hills are scarred by landslides, and buildings are abandoned. Sun-bleached logs sit far from the river as a reminder of how far the water spread. Then, there’s the old train bridge. 

Part of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, a 500-kilometre abandoned rail line turned multi-use trail between Hope and Midway, B.C., the bridge was one of more than 60 locations where the 2021 floods washed out the trail. About 20 metres of steel, concrete and timber on its eastern end were swept away by the surging waters. Today, the Tulameen River flows beneath the gap between Princeton and what’s left, with a faded, graffiti-covered “trail closed” sign standing on the shore. 

For years, many Princeton locals were hopeful the bridge and trail would be rebuilt. But in early February, they learned the province was planning to not only scrap the bridge, but to decommission the entire 67-kilometre stretch of trail connecting Princeton to the Coquihalla Highway. 

In an announcement, the province said repairing that segment “would cost an estimated $60 million,” while “the cost of decommissioning the damaged Princeton section is estimated at $20 million.”

“The decision to decommission a section of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail near Princeton exemplifies the harsh realities of climate-impacted management,” the Ministry of Environment and Parks explained. 

The Tulameen River now flows underneath a section of the damaged bridge that once linked Princeton to the Kettle Valley Rail Trail. Nearly 20 metres of steel, concrete and timber were swept away during a 2021 atmospheric river that dumped a month’s worth of rain on the area in a handful of days. Photos: Government of British Columbia

It’s a decision that’s left locals and outsiders who care about the Trans Canada Trail reeling. 

At more than 29,000 kilometres, the Trans Canada Trail is the longest multi-use trail network on the planet. In 2017, it was officially “connected” across the entire country, making it possible to traverse Canada by a combination of foot and paddling trails. The decommissioning of the Kettle Valley segment will be the first permanent break in that connection. That’s a big part of why Stacey Dakin, the Trans Canada Trail’s chief program officer, thinks there has been concern about this decision outside of Princeton.

“With the Trans Canada Trail, there’s a sense of national pride and unity,” Dakin says. “We’ve heard more and more that people are connecting to each other just because they’re on the trail.

To Dakin, the Kettle Valley decision was “shocking.” But it reflects the growing risk that climate change poses to trails across the country, as jurisdictions must weigh the cost of repairs against the likelihood of future disasters.

More than just a trail

For Princeton mayor Spencer Coyne, the town at the confluence of the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers has always been home. A member of the Upper Similkameen Indian Band, he remembers when trains still ran on the Kettle Valley line.

“There was a dirt bike and bicycle trail beside the tracks,” he says. “We would ride our bikes out to Tulameen and go swimming in the summer. It’s just a part of who we are.”

Coyne, who was first elected in 2018, decided to run for mayor after a massive 2017 wildfire opened his eyes to just how vulnerable Princeton was to climate change.

The decommissioning of the 67-kilometre segment of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail linking Princeton to the Coquihalla Highway would be the first section break in the Trans Canada Trail, the longest multi-use trail network in the world.

“We’ve been in a state of emergency every single year since,” Coyne explains. “The trail is kind of a microcosm.”

The decommissioning decision stunned Coyne. Especially given all of the work the community was doing to rebuild and recover after the 2021 floods.

“[I was] super disappointed in the way that unrolled … It took a bunch of people by surprise.”

One of those people is Todd Davidson, manager of the Princeton Museum.

“When the news about decommissioning the Kettle Valley Rail Trail first came out, we were all kind of surprised and shocked,” he says.

He describes the trail as a tourist draw, with visitors using it for day trips and multi-day expeditions. In winter, he says, locals relied on it as a snowmobile route to get supplies from town. He also thinks the trail should be preserved for historical reasons, as the remnants of a rail line that moved minerals, timber and people between the coast and the Interior for nearly a century.

It’s a history that still lives in people like Tom Reichert. He worked on the line for the decade before it was shut down in 1989. Today, he and his wife, Kelly, own Reichert Sales & Service, an off-road vehicle shop in Tulameen. “The closure has definitely had an impact on our business,” he says. “It’s impacted both sales and service.”

Tom Reichert and his wife Kelly say their off-road vehicle business, Reichert Sales & Service, has been affected by the Kettle Valley trail closure. They worry what its closure will mean for the Princeton community. A sign sharing information about an online petition to re-open the trail hangs on the shop’s front door.

They’ve also shut down an off-road vehicle rental program they estimate brought in around $30,000 a year before the floods. 

But beyond the business impact, the Reicherts worry what losing the trail will mean for the community. They remember when the trail was busy with hikers, cyclists and all-terrain vehicle users. It’s a big part of why they’ve gotten involved in efforts to oppose decommissioning. Now, there’s a large sign on the front door of Reichert Sales & Service promoting a “Save the KVR” Facebook group and a petition that, as of writing, has more than 12,000 signatures.

The Reicherts, Coyne and Davidson all point out that many of those petition signers have never even been to Princeton, but care because the Kettle Valley is part of the Trans Canada Trail.

Managed retreat

Most of the time, the Vedder River is a calm, azure blue ribbon that flows from Chilliwack into the Fraser River. But when it rises, it transforms into a raging torrent, a pale brown rush of water that inundates the forest and ravages the trails that run along its banks.

“We had three 50-year storms within four months, back to back to back,” Drew Pilling says. “Which really took a toll on our system.”

Pilling, the senior parks and trails operations technician for the City of Chilliwack, is talking about three atmospheric rivers that hit Chilliwack between December 2025 and March 2026, with each one damaging the same stretch of the Vedder Rotary Loop Trail.

“It’s quite a cost,” says Pilling. “It’s a lot of gravel that comes back in, it’s a lot of machine time, a lot of man-hours.” 

This wasn’t the first time this trail had washed away. The same 2021 storm that ripped through the Kettle Valley trail also ravaged the Vedder Rotary Loop Trail. And although Chilliwack has so far been willing to bear the cost of repairs, Pilling thinks there may come a point where, year after year, flooding and trail repair become an issue.

“That’s for sure gonna be a topic of conversation with the council and the mayor,” he says. “Depending on their decisions, it might change the nature of the trails.” 

Drew Pilling, the senior parks and trails operations for the City of Chilliwack, believes trail upkeep may become an issue for high flood-risk cities like Chilliwack.

This changing nature is top of mind for Thomas Schoen. The chief executive officer of First Journey Trails, Schoen has been building trails across British Columbia since 1998. But it wasn’t until 2017, when a cross-country mountain bike trail he helped build connecting Williams Lake First Nation to the local trail network burned in a wildfire, that the situation really hit him.

“It was a multi-year project,” Schoen says. “We started by training Indigenous trail builders and trail maintenance crews. It was a really successful project.” 

For a few years, the trail’s popularity grew, with both locals and visitors from further afield. Then it was engulfed by a wildfire that Schoen says “absolutely destroyed that trail.” 

He and others tried to rebuild it, but the landscape was fundamentally different.

“You had tens of thousands of burnt, standing dead trees along this open trail corridor,” he explains. “The amount of tree falls on this trail was, and still is, so significant that it’s almost impossible with volunteer efforts to keep this trail open.”

Losing that trail was “extremely emotional” for Schoen, and changed the way he thinks about trails and climate change. 

“Some trails can’t be revived,” he says. “Some trails, we just don’t have the manpower or the financial power to rebuild them or open them back up again.”

Climate policy experts might categorize Schoen’s comments and the province’s decision to abandon the Kettle Valley trail as “managed retreat.” 

It’s a strategy for dealing with climate change impacts that a provincial planning document describes as the “strategic relocation of people and structures out of harm’s way, often accompanied by ecological restoration and a permanent change in land use.”

But when done properly, it’s a strategy developed with communities, not for them. 

Managed retreat is a planning strategy that involves strategically removing communities from areas at high risk of climate-related emergencies. For cities near water, it can mean neglecting to repair infrastructure like trails that are prone to flooding.

“These decisions cannot just be made by the government or by one ministry,” Schoen says. “[They] need to be made in partnerships between many different groups … First Nations at the table with trail user clubs.” 

Hundreds of thousands of kilometres of trails

For Ryan Stuart, community engagement lead with the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC, the biggest issue with the Kettle Valley trail decision was the voices that were left out. 

“Where was the conversation beforehand?” he asks. Conversations that he argues are even more important given the growing challenge of maintaining trails in a changing climate. 

And the province has a lot of trails to maintain. According to the province’s 2013 trail strategy, the province has at least 30,000 kilometres of formally recognized trails and “hundreds of thousands of kilometres” of informal trails.

And while the strategy didn’t discuss climate change, a 2020 progress report on it listed an “increase in climate-related events such as wildfires and flooding, which can damage the trail systems,” as a top challenge. It’s a sentiment echoed by another 2025 report by Climate Data Canada exploring how climate change impacts trails across the country. 

Stuart worries that the cost and effort issues are particularly challenging due to long-standing issues with trail funding in the province.  

Among applications to the Outdoor Recreation Fund of BC, a $10-million, multi-year grant to support trail building and maintenance overseen by the Outdoor Recreation Council, he says “lots of the funding requests are for rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure from fires or floods.” 

Damage caused by fire and floods is an increasing urgent reality for many communities in B.C. The cost and effort to rebuild after these disasters are high and represent a barrier to full recovery.

And the fund just isn’t big enough to support everything. Earlier this year, the council described the fund as “heavily oversubscribed” and able to “support only about 15 per cent of grant requests.” 

And it’s not like the province isn’t aware of the challenges.

“Many of British Columbia’s provincial parks, recreation sites and trails are experiencing a climate-driven transformation,” the Ministry of Environment and Parks wrote in a statement to The Narwhal.“As extreme weather events like the 2021 and 2024 atmospheric rivers become more frequent, the province is navigating a difficult balance between preserving historic recreation opportunities and ensuring long-term environmental and fiscal sustainability.”

Stuart understands “the provincial government is in tough financial shape and needs to look at everything,” but thinks there still needs to be more transparency in how decisions are being made. He points out that the government spent millions rebuilding both the Berg Lake Trail in Mount Robson Provincial Park and the Juan de Fuca Trail on Vancouver Island, while abandoning the Kettle Valley.  

“I’ve heard members of the Outdoor Recreation Council ask, ‘How was that decision made?’ ” he says.

The ministry didn’t directly answer questions about those decisions. Instead, they called Berg Lake “a blueprint for ‘building back better.’ ”

“Following catastrophic weather damage, the trail’s multi-phase reopening has a climate resilience focus,” the ministry statement explained. That focus involved moving trails out of vulnerable flood-plains, relocating bridges to places better able to “withstand heavy flow,” and hardening tent pads. 

They also said the Juan de Fuca trail would need some of “these same resilient engineering strategies.”

‘No new trails’

How the Kettle Valley decision was made also frustrates people in Princeton.

“What they want to do here is just throw in the towel,” Todd Davidson says. “We feel really quite ignored.” 

It’s a sentiment that Coyne understands all too well.

“The fact that the three … main municipalities that were impacted in 2021 didn’t get a lick of funding from the province or from the [federal government] speaks volumes,” he says, referring to Abbotsford and Merritt, which like Princeton were denied support from the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.

He sees the Kettle Valley decision as a “mirror image of what we’re trying to deal with” around broader flood recovery and climate adaptation. And while he understands the idea of managed retreat, he questions how it’s being applied.

“Ultimately, would we like to look at putting the river back to a more natural state? Of course, but nobody wants to pay for it,” he says. In 2022, Coyne applied for $55 million in federal funding to support a new diking plan for the town. Two years later, that application was rejected.

“Nobody’s coming to help us with that,” he says.

Princeton residents and community leaders feel frustrated by the lack of funding and support the province provided for the city after the 2021 flooding. They see the decomissioning of the Kettle Valley trail as an extension of the neglect. “What they want to do here is just throw in the towel,” Todd Davidson, manager of the Princeton Museum, says. “We feel really quite ignored.” 

That lack of funding also worries Pilling. While Chilliwack was able to access some funding to rebuild after 2021, he’s not sure this latest round of trail work will qualify. 

“A lot of that funding is for infrastructure that is deemed necessary,” he says. And while trail advocates will argue that trails are necessary, providing benefits for physical and mental health, serving as travel corridors and, in some cases, being used for wildfire resilience, Pilling thinks most of the costs of trail repairs will “end up on the city’s bill.” 

For Coyne, this comes with an added sting. While he’s been fighting to try to reverse the decommissioning decision, he’s also been in meetings about marketing Princeton’s outdoor recreation. 

“We have a branch of the province actively marketing this entire trail network, and we have other departments that are cutting the funding and cutting the feet out from under them,” he says.

The province released its Tourism Sector Action Plan in March. The plan promised to grow B.C.’s outdoor recreation economy, which it claimed “generates approximately $17 billion annually in participation-based revenue, contributing $4.8 billion to provincial GDP.”But the strategy didn’t include any new funding for trails or recreation infrastructure. That’s a problem not just because of the new challenges posed by climate change, but also because of the province’s long-standing maintenance backlog.

In 2015, BC Parks estimated they had “approximately $700 million of investment in infrastructure that requires maintenance.” The province hasn’t updated this number since it was released, but the ministry did say they have further invested “approximately $200 million in campground expansions, accessibility upgrades and improvements to trails, parking and facilities since 2017.”

For Schoen, this calls for a radical rethink of how we approach trail building.“My philosophy is no new trails, period,” he says. “It’s unbelievable how much money we need for trail maintenance, and that money simply isn’t there.”

An uncertain future for the Kettle Valley

When it comes to the future of the Kettle Valley trail, Coyne is torn. He understands the threat that climate change poses to the region, but he also knows how important the trail is to his community. That’s why he keeps fighting for it, and after multiple meetings with the province, he’s starting to see a path forward.

“We’re not going to get everything we’re asking for, we’re not going to get a total rebuild of the trail,” he says.

But in early April, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen passed a motion supporting a new regional trails strategy. 

What the province will say is yet to be seen, but Coyne feels clear on one thing: if the community wants to keep the trail, the onus will be on them to make it happen.

“At the end of the day, if local government or regional government isn’t willing to shoulder this burden, then your trail is probably going to go away,” he says. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Climate change is making extreme weather events, like rain-heavy atmospheric rivers, more frequent and more intense.
• Human activities — like developing wetlands and logging — have also increased flood risks in many parts of B.C.
• The B.C. government has yet to fund the implementation of a flood strategy developed in 2024.
• As extreme weather events like atmospheric rivers happen more often, investing in flood mitigation and resilience measures can help reduce their impacts.

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This week, atmospheric rivers are expected to dump as much as 250 millimetres of rain on parts of B.C.’s coast. The deluge has prompted flood watch and high streamflow advisories across the Central and South Coast as well as Vancouver Island. On March 17, an evacuation order was issued for part of the tiny community of Martin Falls, near Bella Coola. 

These are some of the first flood warnings of the year, but they likely won’t be the last. Climate change is making extreme weather events, like rain-heavy atmospheric rivers, more frequent and more intense. While parts of B.C. have been dealing with drought conditions for years, the province has also experienced multiple atmospheric river events since November 2021, when a series of storms caused extensive flooding. The 2021 floods were one of the most costly weather-related disasters in B.C.’s history with billions in damage to infrastructure, homes and businesses.

In the years since, B.C. has taken some steps to improve flood resilience and preparedness across the province, including developing a province-wide flood strategy in 2024. But this year’s budget lacked funding to implement that strategy. 

“The B.C. government should prioritize funding for the strategy moving forward to better protect residents in the future,” Aaron Sutherland with the Insurance Bureau of Canada said in a statement issued in December 2025, after an atmospheric river once again walloped the Lower Mainland.

“Investing in community resilience and damage prevention is always more cost-effective than paying to rebuild year after year following every disaster.”

Here’s what you need to know about flood risks and response in B.C.

What is an atmospheric river?

An atmospheric river is a band of warm, moisture-laden air many hundreds of kilometres long and hundreds of kilometres wide that borders a large cyclonic low-pressure system.

Atmospheric rivers form as condensed water vapour flows from the ocean onto land. Image: NOAA

Think of it like a fire hose stretching across the sky.

Atmospheric rivers can drive record-breaking rainfall by dumping a large volume of precipitation over an extended period of time.

What’s B.C. doing — or not doing — about increased flood risk?

In the wake of the 2021 floods — which left five people and hundreds of thousands of livestock dead — the provincial government developed a new flood strategy. It committed to improve flood risk mapping, invest in new infrastructure, restore wetlands and other ecosystems to reduce flood risks and invest in community-led initiatives to relocate people from particularly risky areas.

However, the provincial government has yet to commit funding to make the strategy a reality. Meanwhile, in October 2024, another atmospheric river struck the Lower Mainland, killing five people. 

“It’s a great policy, but it’s troublesome that there’s no resources to actually implement it,” Tyrone McNeil, president and Tribal Chief of the Stó:lō Tribal Council and chair of the Emergency Planning Secretariat, told The Narwhal in December.

This year’s budget, unveiled in February, did not earmark any funding for the flood strategy. 

Why are flood warnings on the rise?

Broadly, there are two major reasons why floods are becoming more common.First, climate change. Warm air can hold more moisture, so when temperatures rise, heavy rainfall events become more likely and more intense. More rain — especially in short periods of time — can result in more flooding.

Human activities are also contributing to flood risk. Decades of converting wetland areas — and even entire lakes — into farmland have reduced the capacity of local ecosystems to absorb and divert rainfall. 

Logging has also taken a toll. Younes Alila, a professor of forest hydrology at the University of British Columbia, is focused on the impact of clear-cut logging on watersheds. Alila’s research in the Kettle River watershed connects extensive logging activity — two-thirds of the watershed has been harvested in the last 30 years — with severe flooding, like the devastating 2018 floods in Grand Forks that displaced more than 100 families.

“What is happening in the Kettle River basin is typical of what has been happening and will continue to happen for decades in other drainages across all of B.C.,” Alila told a crowd at the global premiere of the documentary Trouble in the Headwaters in Victoria in June 2025.

What else could be done?

Developing better modelling to understand the risks of heavy rainstorms could help identify the most at-risk flood areas, McNeil says. He also points to hundreds of kilometres of historically fish-bearing streams through the Fraser Valley and the Lower Mainland that have been cut off from the Fraser River by railways, roads and dikes. Reconnecting these waterways could mitigate flood risks.

Allowing part of Sumas Prairie — which was created when Sumas Lake, known as Semá:th Xhotsa, was drained and converted to agricultural land in 1924 — to return to being a lake could help reduce flooding risks in the Lower Mainland and support wildlife.

Similar programs to restore ecosystems across the province could also help. But as floods — as well as fires and other natural disasters linked to climate change — continue to cause damage to communities, considering where or whether to rebuild is becoming an increasingly urgent question.

Managed retreat — the planned relocation of people and buildings away from risk-prone areas — is already a reality in some parts of B.C. and in Canada. Following extensive flooding in 2018, 100 homes in Grand Forks were deemed too flood-prone to be livable. The homes were bought by the town, demolished in 2022 and replaced by infrastructure aimed at protecting neighbouring homes from the effects of future floods.

In the coming decades, more communities are likely to face tough choices about whether to rebuild after a disaster or choose managed retreat instead.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Quebec National Assembly member Sylvie D’Amours bears no ill will toward the person who fired a pellet gun at her constituency office windows in October 2024, peppering them with small dents. She wasn’t there when the incident occurred, and she doesn’t think the person responsible meant to harm anyone. 

“It seemed like it was just an act of mischief — a way of saying, ‘I’m shocked and I’m showing you my anger.’ It wasn’t personal,” the elected official for the riding of Mirabel told The Narwhal in French.

D’Amours suspects the incident had something to do with early versions of the province’s new flood maps, which had just been released by the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, a regional planning organization for the Greater Montreal Area. The maps were in a preliminary report that announced 15,508 buildings in Greater Montreal — including nearly 20,000 homes, representing close to $10 billion in property value — would now fall within the province’s newly drawn flood zones. Across the province, The Canadian Press reported, as many as 77,000 homes could be included within the new flood zones.

The weeks following lent themselves to her theory of what prompted the pellets. D’Amours, whose riding encompasses multiple suburbs along Montreal’s North Shore, said she began facing a flurry of hostility over the flood maps: threats on social media, angry phone calls, even a confrontation at the grocery store. Many were angry at how the government was going about modernizing the maps and upset at how the maps might affect their home values. The situation was serious enough that she closed her office out of concern for her safety and that of her employees.

Several Montreal neighbourhoods have experienced major flood events in recent years, including Île Bizard, seen here. Updated flood maps for Quebec are in the works, and they are expected to show an increased number of homes in floodplains. Photo: Paul Chiasson / The Canadian Press

What should have been a technical exercise in Quebec quickly became a political flashpoint, one playing out across the country. 

As provinces and municipalities amend decades-old flood maps and strengthen flood preparedness measures in the face of inclement climate change, a vocal minority of homeowners are pushing back. Some argue governments have failed to properly consult local communities and overlooked personal, on-the-ground mitigation measures. Others say their elected officials are focusing too much on penalizing property owners instead of initiatives that would reduce flood risk. But most express concern about their home values and insurance costs: last year, insurance company Desjardins announced it would no longer offer mortgages in Quebec’s high-risk flood zones.

The result has been a country-wide string of reversals and delays in flood-risk planning. On Nov. 17, 2025, the town of Summerside, P.E.I., rejected a bylaw that would have designated more of the city as a floodplain after residents warned it could hurt property values. Last year, Nova Scotia’s government scrapped robust flooding-related legislation that had already secured all-party support following consultations with concerned homeowners. In Calgary, a neighbourhood association argued in November that government-funded infrastructure upgrades, not development restrictions, should be the city’s first line of protection. And as B.C.’s Fraser Valley coped with another atmospheric river in December, dairy farmers, Indigenous leaders and the Insurance Bureau of Canada all criticized the province’s failure to fulfil flood mitigation promises made after similar catastrophic floods in 2021. 

B.C.’s failure to fund flood response ‘troublesome’ as atmospheric river strikes again  

Kate Sherren, director of Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies, said the task of updating flood maps is technically complicated, given the uncertainties of climate change, as well as politically fraught.

“I’m not an engineer, but I certainly wouldn’t like to have to come up with a really reliable flood-risk map,” she said. “It’s very difficult, but we kind of have to try, right?”

Canada is ‘20 years behind’ on flood planning

Daniel Henstra, co-lead of the University of Waterloo’s Climate Risk Research Group, said flooding remains the dominant climate risk across Canada.

According to Public Safety Canada, 80 per cent of Canadian cities are located on floodplains — including major cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Fredericton. In 2020, the federal agency estimated that 1.5 million households, or 10 per cent of all households in Canada, were highly exposed to flooding.

And yet, Henstra said, “We’re probably 20 years behind other countries on this.”

Canada was the last G7 country to introduce residential insurance coverage for overland flooding because existing flood maps were so outdated. It remains the only G7 country without national, publicly available flood maps — a problem the federal government is trying to fix. A 2020 University of Waterloo survey of 2,500 people in Canada living in designated flood-risk areas found only six per cent knew they were at risk.

That lack of experience with flood maps — combined with the lack of action from governments — contributes to homeowners being upset when maps are updated, Henstra said. 

“[Homeowners] are not used to it, and therefore they don’t necessarily trust the process,” Henstra said. “They already have very low awareness of their own flood risk when new maps suddenly appear and declare that their neighborhood is at high risk. It stands to reason that they would worry about their property value when they go to sell their house.” 

He emphasized that flood maps are important to public safety, but also economic stability: when risk is disclosed upfront, he said research shows property values typically dip by two to six per cent, often temporarily. But after a major flood, values can collapse, insurers pull out and governments face pressure to rebuild homes in the same high-risk locations.

“That doesn’t preserve wealth. It just transfers the cost of inaction onto future homeowners and taxpayers,” Henstra said. By contrast, risk disclosure allows buyers, sellers, lenders, realtors and insurers, “to plan appropriately” and invest in protection and resilience at both the property and community level.

Opposition to new flood maps in Quebec cites lack of government education and care

D’Amours thinks many Montreal residents panicked because they assumed the draft maps the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal published were final and about to be adopted by the Quebec government. In fact, the maps were only preliminary, with final maps expected to be published progressively as they are approved, starting in March 2026.

But Marie-Claude Nolin understood the maps weren’t final. Yet the recently retired education worker from the Montreal suburb of Vaudreuil-Dorion became a co-founder of the advocacy group Regroupement des citoyens riverains du Québec, or the Quebec Shoreline Residents’ Association. The group launched a petition urging the provincial government to pause the rollout of new flood-risk maps until residents better understand how the changes will affect them and what they perceive to be errors are addressed.

Nolin said too many residents have yet to even see the preliminary maps. She said residents have told her they initially dismissed invitations from the municipalities to attend public consultations: “Several people … thought, ‘I live so far from the water, this must be a mistake.’ ”

A resident of Laval, Que., keeps his eyes on the floodwaters around his home in spring 2019. Later that year, a fall storm across Eastern Canada caused an estimated $189 million in insured damages in Quebec alone. Photo: Ryan Remiorz / The Canadian Press

Fellow organizer Pier-Luc Cauchon, a construction project manager in Île Bizard — just off the coast of the Island of Montreal — said he doesn’t understand the methodology behind the new zones. At a public meeting in 2024, Cauchon said the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal’s chief engineer had told him the province had added extra “risk coefficients” on top of the usual international standards for flood recurrence, using the worst-case scenario for projected high-water levels. When Cauchon asked for the calculations, none were provided, he said.

Another of Nolin and Cauchon’s objections is that the current system has no specific point of contact for airing concerns, which makes contesting the maps difficult. Cauchon says he’s heard cases of people being able to get modifications after persistent lobbying but “The average citizen who doesn’t have the time can’t get it changed. There’s injustice in that.”

Nolin and Cauchon eventually received a total of 2,395 signatures on their petition. They say they haven’t heard back from the province. 

Both the Communauté métropolitaine and Quebec’s Environment Ministry defended their consultation process in emails to The Narwhal. 

Jennifer Guthrie, a communications consultant for the Communauté métropolitaine, said the additional “risk coefficients” account for “climate-change uncertainty” across all rivers and waterways, as well as the risk of “compromised management of dams and reservoirs” that help mitigate flooding on rivers such as the Ottawa and St. Lawrence. 

Louis Potvin, a spokesperson for Quebec’s Environment Ministry, said the flood mapping is based on internationally recognized scientific principles developed through consultations with academic, municipal, governmental and private-sector experts. Potvin said the methodology was set out in a new provincial guide published in June 2025, which is nearly a year after the Communauté métropolitaine’s initial consultations.

Potvin did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about why the province has not formally replied to the petition or whether the government plans to engage directly with its signatories. He acknowledged the preliminary maps have raised concerns and said residents can submit questions through an online form that the ministry responds to systematically. He added that a mechanism to request revisions will be clarified once the final maps are officially released.

In the meantime, Nolin says people they know are already being affected. “We’ve had new homeowners say they’ve seen insurance costs double,” she said in French.

This, too, is a problem Canada could have anticipated. A federal promise to offer insurance support in highest-risk flood areas has been languishing for years.

The problem with exemptions

Nolin insists her group’s goal is not to deny the increased flood risks brought on by climate change, but simply to be better consulted on determining who is at risk. 

Alain Bourque, executive director of Ouranos, a climate-focused research consortium that collaborated with the Quebec government on the new flood maps, doesn’t deny governments can stumble in consultations and fail to show empathy for those affected. 

However, he said, exemptions can help set the stage for costly disasters. He highlights as examples the 2017 and 2019 floods in Montreal. Catastrophe Indices and Quantification, a firm that tracks and tallies insured losses from natural disasters, estimated that the Halloween storm that hit Eastern Canada in 2019 caused $189 million in insured damages in Quebec alone. More recently, the firm estimated Hurricane Debby in 2024 caused close to $2.5 billion in insured flooding-related damages in Quebec.

Bourque said impacts were so severe “because [the government] was too relaxed on regulation — you pile up value here, you develop the economy there and then it gets seriously damaged and wiped out. And everyone expects the government to pay the bill at the end of the day.”

Will a $1-billion flooding bill finally make the GTA take stormwater seriously?

And one homeowner’s actions, including attempts to get exempted, inevitably affects neighbours. Take Cauchon’s argument that Montreal’s maps should take into account individual flood-proofing measures — such as elevated foundations — when assigning a risk level. Sherren, from Dalhousie, said a rush to lift single homes could increase flooding risk for next door neighbours that now live at the bottom of a slope.

That’s why in Truro, N.S., she said, development is still allowed in some high-risk areas, but with a key condition: builders can’t truck in new soil to raise homes and must instead use what’s already on the property. The logic is that any ground they raise is offset by a lower area elsewhere on the lot—leaving floodwaters somewhere to go, rather than pushing the risk onto neighbouring properties. 

Neighbourliness is the same reason why Toronto has stopped allowing most homeowners to pave over their yards for parking: if hard surfaces prevent water from soaking into the ground, it diverts to the gutter and eventually a storm drain, which increases flood risks elsewhere.

A vocal minority can delay or prevent public education about true flood risk

Sherren has studied public attitudes toward flood mapping in Nova Scotia. She has found most respondents favour the idea, viewing flood-risk information as useful whether they’re buying or renting a home. But opinions shifted when people were asked to consider potential impact on property values: a minority of respondents argued flood-risk maps should be private and accessible only to the property owner, not the broader public.

“But even a very small minority of unhappy people — particularly if they have money, if they have power — can come in and cause entire mapping programs to be kind of withdrawn, because the political will isn’t strong enough to hold when these people get angry,” she said.

In February 2024, the Conservative government of Nova Scotia announced it was scrapping the Coastal Protection Act, despite it undergoing three rounds of public consultation and passing in 2019 with all-party support.

Intense thunderstorms dumped record amounts of rain across a wide swath of Nova Scotia in 2023, causing flash flooding, power outages and washouts, such as at this rail line near Truro. Photo: Darren Calabrese / The Canadian Press

Documents obtained by CBC through access-to-information laws show that, in the years when the act had stalled, most public submissions to Environment Minister Tim Halman supported the legislation. Only a small number of property owners and real-estate interests warned of lower land values or limited redevelopment. Yet Halman pointed to those concerns when announcing another round of “targeted” consultations. 

Had it taken effect, the act would have “outlined exactly how and where people can build in a way that protects them from rising seas,” CBC reported. Instead, the government released an online mapping tool that shows the “worst-case scenario for coastal properties in the year 2100 based on current sea-level projections,” letting citizens make an “informed decision” about their property.

But Sherren said the tool’s narrow focus on the coastline doesn’t account for storm surges, coastal topography or even the buffering effects of tidal wetlands. It also omits the potential for rain-driven flooding.

She believes the decision to scrap the act blindsided more than a few municipalities, which might have held off developing their own rules, assuming the province’s framework was imminent. “It put them five or 10 years behind,” Sherren said.

Canadians were promised a national flood insurance program 6 years ago. Will Carney actually deliver?

Concerns that Quebec’s new flooding regulations will affect home prices have drawn serious political support: two provincial politicians have publicly endorsed Nolin and Cauchon’s petition. A coalition of 26 Quebec mayors have also released an open letter arguing for the need to accommodate homeowners’ concerns. 

“We believe that the government proposal submitted for consultation can be improved by modifications that will minimize the impact on property values and reduce the uncertainty that citizens have to deal with,” the coalition wrote in French. 

The letter did not specify how the province should achieve that balance. The Canadian Climate Institute said the mayors’ statement amounted to “political pressure” to weaken the proposed framework, arguing that updated and accessible flood-risk maps do not significantly affect access to insurance or mortgages.

Eight months after announcing its first preliminary maps, Quebec officials downgraded the number of homes that would fall in the newly-designated flood zones from 77,000 to 35,000. Officials also emphasized no one would be forced to leave their homes under the new management plan. But the rules would bar new construction in the highest-risk areas and prohibit rebuilding if houses in those zones are destroyed by flooding.

Henstra said flood mapping is more effective when framed as “shared problem solving,” rather than something being done to people. Flood risk in Canada, he adds, is also highly concentrated: roughly 10 per cent of homes account for more than 90 per cent of losses. 

“If we know where those areas are, and that is all transparent,” he said, “we can stop spraying money around the country on disaster mitigation and focus our scarce resources.”

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Heavy rainstorms are once again causing flooding in the Fraser Valley region east of Vancouver this week, prompting evacuation orders, highway closures and renewed criticism that the provincial government has failed to adequately prepare.

As of the morning of Dec. 11, about 400 properties were under evacuation order, with another 1,800 under evacuation alert.

The flooding was triggered by a series of atmospheric rivers that pummelled Washington state and southwestern B.C. with heavy rains. While the rain has temporarily slowed, more is expected to hit the region in the days to come. 

Atmospheric rivers — the same weather phenomenon that drove catastrophic flooding in B.C. in 2021 — are expected to become bigger and more frequent due to climate change, increasing the risks of major floods.

In the wake of the 2021 disaster — which left five people and hundreds of thousands of livestock dead — the provincial government developed a new flood strategy. It committed to improve flood risk mapping, invest in new infrastructure, restore wetlands and other ecosystems to reduce flood risks and invest in community-led initiatives to relocate people from particularly risky areas.

Central Fraser Valley Search and Rescue responded as flood waters inundated areas of Abbotsford, B.C., on Dec. 11. While Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Kelly Greene said lessons learned in 2021 were being implemented during this flood event, some warn the province still hasn’t made enough investments in flood mitigation. Photo: Ethan Cairns / The Canadian Press

But with Fraser Valley communities once again inundated with water, some question the government’s commitment to address flood risks.

Tyrone McNeil, president and Tribal Chief of the Stó:lō Tribal Council and chair of the Emergency Planning Secretariat, said B.C. has been too slow to act.

“They’re just not doing enough on resilience,” he said in an interview Thursday, noting the province has yet to invest in the new flood strategy.

“It’s a great policy, but it’s troublesome that there’s no resources to actually implement it,” he said.

In September, B.C. municipalities were told there was no new funding available for the flood strategy due to a growing provincial deficit. Though many municipalities have proposed projects to mitigate flood risks, representatives say they require funding from higher levels of government to implement them. 

“I get that the province is crying poor right now,” McNeil added. “But there’s got to be a way they can find funds for these proactive activities that keep people dry.”

Dozens of farms with livestock faced evacuation orders

As of Thursday morning, 66 farms with livestock were under evacuation order, with another 99 under evacuation alert, Agriculture and Food Minister Lana Popham said during a flood briefing.

While the water levels are not as high as they were during the 2021 floods, Casey Pruim, board chair of the BC Dairy association said, “It’s still drastic and has a huge impact on the families.”

Pruim, who is also a dairy farmer, is not directly impacted by the current floods. But he is concerned about a lack of investment in flood protection.

He said communication with the Ministry of Agriculture and emergency operations has improved relative to the 2021 floods.

“What, more importantly, has absolutely not improved is the level of investment in flood mitigation,” he said.

“It’s definitely concerning and for our friends who are living in the Sumas Prairie, it’s devastating,” he said. “I don’t think you can put into words the impact it has on these families.”

During the flood briefing Thursday, Popham said she had been in direct contact with farmers.

Buildings on Jem Farms flooded near the Sumas border crossing in Abbotsford, B.C., on Dec. 11, in the wake of another severe atmospheric river. As of Dec. 11, 66 farms with livestock were under evacuation order in B.C. Photo: Ethan Cairns / The Canadian Press

“I can tell you that the theme of a lot of those calls has been that, yeah, they’re pretty worried but they feel more prepared and so I think that’s going to be really helpful as we watch the next 12 hours play out,” she said.

Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Kelly Greene warned Thursday that “we are not yet through this emergency.”

She said the ministry was holding regular coordination calls with at-risk communities and was continuing to deploy sandbags, tiger dams (large tubes that can be filled with water to form a flood barrier) and other flood defence assets to protect properties and livestock. At the same time, geotechnical experts were on the ground to assess risks across the region.

Aaron Sutherland, vice-president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, called these latest floods a “wake up call.”

The bureau estimates insured damages from the 2021 floods reached $675 million, making it, at the time, “the most costly severe weather event in the province’s history.” Non-insured losses from 2021 flooding were estimated to range from $1.5 to $4.7 billion, according to research from Vancity and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Sutherland noted there hasn’t been a major flood event in the Fraser Valley since 2021 and he worries that may have lulled folks into a “false sense of security.”

“What we’re seeing in Abbotsford here, once again, is a reminder that we need to be increasing our investment to better protect our communities and particularly in those high-risk areas,” he said.

While the insurance industry in Canada does offer home insurance with flood protection, it’s only available to 90 to 95 per cent of British Columbians, Sutherland said. And, the five to 10 per cent of people who can’t access it are those living at highest risk of floods, he explained.

Canadians were promised a national flood insurance program 6 years ago. Will Carney actually deliver?

What that means is the people directly affected by the current flood situation likely don’t have insurance for it, he said. Instead, they’ll be reliant on government disaster assistance.

“Government is going to be paying for it one way or the other,” he said. It’s “much better to pay for it on the front end by building that resilience than pay for it year after year after year through disaster assistance and other government programs to pay for the recovery.”

As severe storms grow more frequent, some call for managed retreat in flood-prone areas

While climate change is driving more intense rainstorms, flooding has also become a significant risk in the Fraser Valley due to colonization and ongoing development. 

In 1924, Semá:th Xhotsa, or Sumas Lake, was drained and converted to agricultural land, which is now known as Sumas Prairie and is among the most fertile farmland in B.C. The lake, which supported salmon and sturgeon, as well as food and medicinal plants, had served as a natural flood mitigator, absorbing freshet, or heavy rains and snow-melt, from the Fraser River. A shadow of the lake returned in the 2021 floods, reopening the sensitive question of managed retreat and the possibility of allowing a portion of the lake to return to both reduce the risks of flooding and support wildlife.

Since the disaster four years ago, Semá:th First Nation, Leq’a-mel First Nation, Máthxwi First Nation, the cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack and the province signed a collaborative framework for flood mitigation in the Sumas River watershed.

In an interview with The Narwhal last year, Murray Ned, executive director of the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance and an advisor to Semá:th First Nation, warned that with communities grappling with so many other urgent issues, preparations for the next flood too often fall by the wayside.

Tyrone McNeil, president and Tribal Chief of the Stó:lō Tribal Council and chair of the Emergency Planning Secretariat, warned B.C. hasn’t done enough to build flood resilience. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Narwhal

McNeil said there are key steps the province should be taking to build flood resilience. Developing better modelling to understand the risks of heavy rainstorms, for instance, would help identify the most at-risk flood areas. There are also hundreds of kilometres of historically fish-bearing streams through the Fraser Valley and the Lower Mainland that have been cut off from the Fraser River by railways, roads and dikes, McNeil said.

“Those are the same waterways that are going to be trying to carry this rainwater off the mountain sides, off the valley floor into the river, but they can’t make it,” he said. “My concern there is that farmers’ fields remain flooded a lot longer than they need to, lower-lying roadways are covered because the surface water can’t shed into the Fraser.”

Some of those waterways should be reopened and reconnected to the Fraser River, he said, not only to help clear out flood waters, but also to restore ecosystems.

— With files from Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood and Michelle Cyca

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In early September 2025, as wildfires cast a pall of smoke across parts of B.C., Forests Minister Ravi Parmar was asked about a study from the University of British Columbia which found clear-cut logging can make catastrophic floods larger and much more likely.

“The clear-cut logging that I think people would assume is leading to that is 1950s-style harvesting,” Parmar said. “I don’t think that’s happening in British Columbia anymore. We lead with world-class silviculture practices.”

That statement might come as a surprise to some who have seen recent photos of logged areas of Vancouver Island’s Walbran Valley, which show once-dense forests cut down to nothing. 

This cutblock in the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island was logged in August 2025. Photo: Mike Graeme / The Narwhal

The minister’s comments came as a shock to Younes Alila, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Forest Resources Management and the lead author of the study Parmar was asked about.

“It sounds like he’s living on another planet, certainly not in British Columbia,” Alila, who has spent 30 years researching the way logging impacts watersheds, told The Narwhal.

The B.C. government’s forestry website defines clear-cutting as a type of logging that involves cutting entire stands of trees. This can happen all at once across an area earmarked for permitted logging — known as a cutblock in the industry — or piece by piece, a process known as strip cutting.

Sometimes, small stands of trees are spared — called clear-cutting with reserves — and B.C. also has rules to protect so-called special trees, the biggest and oldest specimens of certain species, including cedar, maple, fir and spruce.

Video: L. Manuel Baechlin / The Narwhal

When The Narwhal asked Parmar to clarify his claim that clear-cutting is an outdated forestry practice, the minister did not clarify. Instead, he said logging practices today involve more care than in the 1950s.

“I’m very comfortable with where we are in British Columbia in terms of the steps that are taken before a permit is submitted,” Parmar said.

B.C.’s current forestry practices balance environmental considerations and the needs of the provincial forestry industry, according to Parmar.

Alila disagrees.“The clearcutting continues as we speak,” he told The Narwhal.

Younes Alila, a hydrologist in the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry, has been researching the effects of clear-cut logging on watersheds across the province. Photo: Daniel J. Pierce / The Narwhal

‘These are not hypothetical clear-cut logging scenarios’: forestry professor 

Alila isn’t the only one raising eyebrows at Parmar’s statement. Tegan Hansen, senior forests campaigner with Stand.earth, called the minister’s claim “incredibly disappointing.”

“Clear-cutting happens in every part of B.C., from the Skeena to Vancouver Island to the Kootenays,” she told The Narwhal. “I think it’s an incredibly damaging statement.”

When a section of forest is clear-cut, it’s not just the trees that disappear, Hansen said. The understory also dies, including the ferns and shrubs and lichens and mosses that once grew from the forest floor up to the canopy.

“I’ve walked in clearcuts that were logged a few months ago in the summer, and the ground has started to bleach and all of that life is dead, and the logs have been removed, and the earth is churned up from the machinery,” she said.

Stripping trees from the land can have dire consequences. Alila’s research has shown that forest canopies help regulate the water cycle, slowing snow melt in the spring, which can help prevent sudden floods. Tree roots also help stabilize the soil and contribute to moisture retention, reducing the likelihood of drought.

“These are not hypothetical clear-cut logging scenarios,” Alila said of his study subjects. “These are actual cutblocks and actual, real watersheds in actual British Columbia.”

Old clear-cutting practices were ‘pure exploitation’: B.C. government

Mike Morris, a former BC Liberal MLA who represented the forestry-dependent Prince George-Mackenzie riding from 2013 to 2024, is an avid outdoorsman. He’s been hiking, hunting and trapping in northern B.C. forests since the 1960s — before clear-cutting became a widespread practice. Now, he’s regularly reminded of the scale at which local forests are being logged.

“It’s a shocking thing to see when you stand there and you can look around and for miles on either side of you, nothing but clearcuts,” he said, describing a 3,000-hectare clearcut that borders his trapline in northern B.C.

“It’s surrounded by a number of other clearcuts that equate to about 30,000 hectares in size over the last 25 years.”

Forty years ago, clear-cutting was by far the dominant type of logging taking place across B.C., according to data supplied by the Forests Ministry. In 2023, only 17 per cent of the area logged in B.C.’s southern Interior was clear-cut, according to the ministry, while eight per cent of coastal and northern cutblocks were clear-cut.

Forty years ago, clearcutting was by far the dominant type of logging taking place across B.C. Today, clearcutting with reserves is the most common logging practice. Photos: Desiree Wallace / Stand.earth

Clear-cutting with reserves is now the dominant practice, according to the ministry’s data. Ninety per cent of logged areas in the northern Interior were clear-cut with reserves; 74 per cent in the southern Interior and 47 per cent on the coast.

“Leaving a few trees here and there doesn’t change the practice,” Stand.earth’s Hansen said. “Ecologically, from the perspective of that forest, of all the life that relies on the forest, there’s no difference.”

Clear-cut logging remains “a viable and appropriate approach to sustainable forest management,” according to a statement from the Forests Ministry. While logging in the 1950s focused on getting as much timber out of B.C. forests as possible, a statement from the ministry said modern clear-cut logging accounts for ecological impacts at each specific cutblock.

The B.C. government’s online introduction to forestry practices says the way clear-cutting used to be done — a system known as “clearout” logging — “has given clear-cutting a bad name for some time.”

Unlike the “pure exploitation” of clearout logging, the modern clearcut system “manages a stand for the long term,” the document states.

In some parts of B.C., only small patches of forests remain between cutblocks. Photo: Mike Graeme / The Narwhal

Why is B.C. still clear-cut logging?

Morris believes that pressure from the forest industry coupled with B.C.’s increasingly uncomfortable financial situation has left the provincial government with little appetite to reform forestry, despite mounting evidence of the serious impacts of intensive logging.

“I find government maintains the status quo more often than not, just because it’s the easiest path to take,” he said. “But at what cost? At the cost of more lives, at the cost of more infrastructure damage that the taxpayers will have to bear?”

He’s particularly worried about the connection between losing tree canopies and natural disasters. “It’s causing landslides, it’s causing drought and it’s causing increased wildfire risk. To me, that is a clear and present danger that any minister should be aware of.”

Despite mounting evidence that clear-cutting increases the risk of costly disasters, clear-cutting remains a dominant logging practice in B.C. Photo: Mike Graeme / The Narwhal

Alila believes B.C.’s lack of action to curb clear-cutting comes down to dollars.

“Clear-cut logging is the cheapest way to cut the wood,” he said. “There are many other logging practices that are more eco-friendly. There are [a] wide variety of silvicultural practices that would have way less effects on hydrology and on wildlife, on biodiversity, but we keep resisting going there, unfortunately, because it’s the cheapest way.”

Even if B.C. were to abandon clear-cutting tomorrow, its effects could linger for a century before forests regain their capacity to moderate the water cycle and stabilize the soil.

“We’re going to be living with the effect of the clear-cut logging all over B.C. for decades to come,” Alila told The Narwhal.

Updated Nov. 20, 2025, at 11:49 a.m. PT: This article was updated to reflect the fact that Mike Morris served as an MLA from 2013 to 2024.

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Last week, countries across the Caribbean were hit by Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in Atlantic history. The storm brought flooding to a number of islands in the region and devastated Jamaica, with at least 32 people dead and parts of the country still “underwater” as of October 28, according to officials.

As climate change makes storms more frequent and intense, the brunt of the devastation is borne by countries in the Global South, or lower-income countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East. These regions experience a disproportionate share of the impacts of climate change — including rising temperatures, droughts, floods and storms — despite having much smaller carbon footprints than wealthier nations, like Canada. Researchers predict climate change will impact 143 million people in the Global South by 2050. 

For those in Canada’s immigrant diasporas watching the destruction of their homelands from afar, Melissa is just the latest natural disaster bringing together two disparate concerns: money and climate change. In 2017, $5.2 billion was sent outside of Canada by residents originally from countries designated as eligible for “official development assistance,” according to Statistics Canada. These funds were mostly used for living and medical expenses, with the largest share going to Southeast Asia and Oceania. Transfers to Jamaica that year totalled $96 million. 

The international remittance company JN Money sees about 8,000 to 10,000 transactions from Canada to Jamaica every month, according to Claude Thompson, a Toronto-based regional manager. In the wake of Melissa, Thompson says he expects to see transactions temporarily jump by 10 per cent. But as of Oct. 30, many affected areas in Jamaica were still without electricity, leaving them with no way to receive money. 

Despite Canada’s persistent wage gap between immigrants and residents born here, many still send aid in spite of the cost-of-living squeeze. “I don’t think that anyone is thinking so much about the cost [of sending aid],” Didan Wedderburn, lead of the Newfoundland and Labrador chapter of the Jamaican Canadian Association, says. “We haven’t gotten to the stage of thinking, is this worth the cost? Even if we might typically compare figures when we’re not in crisis.”

After disasters, communities step in when governments fail

For immigrants living in Canada, sending money to their home countries isn’t just about financial support. Remittances are “also signs of love and kinship and affection and obligation,” York University professor Ethel Tungohan explains. 

A Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, Tungohan says one reason immigrants send funds during climate disasters is because they “acknowledge failed state responses to the immediate needs that climate-ravaged communities are facing.”  

Much of that help is sent directly to family members as remittances, rather than in donations to disaster response organizations on the ground. “There’s a lot of distrust when it comes to horrible institutional channels,” Tungohan says. “People worry about the professionalization of aid organizations and are most likely to trust people they know and have vetted.” 

After Typhoon Haiyan, which claimed over 6,000 lives in the Philippines in 2013, Tungohan says scammers targeting that diaspora were rampant. And after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, millions of people around the world donated half a billion dollars to the American Red Cross  — money that NPR and ProPublica later reported went largely to poorly managed projects with unverified claims of success.   

The reported number and amount of remittances from Canada is likely an underestimate, Tungohan says, because many migrants use informal money-sending channels, such as the Philippines-based app GCash. “Because of state failure, there are people who are skeptical that the remittances they send actually go to the intended recipients,” she says. 

Hurricane Melissa highlights inequities facing Caribbean workers in Canada

Every year, tens of thousands of agricultural workers come here on seasonal permits and in 2020, about 12 per cent were from the Caribbean. Many head home for the winter around now — but this year, Jamaicans and other Caribbean nationals are unsure if they have homes to return to. 

Thousands of seasonal farm workers come to Canada from the Caribbean and Latin America every year. In a letter to the federal government, an advocacy group said Hurricane Melissa shows Canada should make their Employment Insurance contributions easier to count on in times of need. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

On Nov. 3, the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Workers sent an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney about flaws in the federal Employment Insurance program, drawing attention to the fact that migrant workers pay into the program, but are rarely able to access it in times of financial uncertainty like now. 

“This is not an act of charity. It’s a call to ensure migrant agricultural workers are able to access their entitlements to Employment Insurance in their time of need,” the letter reads. The group argues that powerful countries like Canada have long benefited from an extractive relationship with countries like Jamaica — echoing the United Nations, which has said wealthier countries should pay for climate adaptation in places that they’ve long exploited for labour and resources.

The diaspora is also stepping up to support their motherlands. Sylvanus Thompson, the disaster relief coordinator at the Jamaican Canadian Association, says his organization is working with Mississauga-based Atlas Cargo, which is offering to ship donated supplies to the island for free. 

As climate change makes natural disasters like hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms more destructive, Thompson says organizations like his have been looking for ways to send aid right away when there’s a crisis, rather than having to fundraise first. The association has long discussed a general disaster relief fund, but no concrete action has taken place yet. 

‘They care about their plants and not us’: for migrant farmworkers in Ontario, COVID-19 made a bad situation worse

“We find that persons are more likely to respond in times of disaster,” he says. “But we won’t give up on [starting the fund]: it’s important to do that so we always have something to draw on.” The association is hosting a relief concert in Toronto this Thursday. 

Marcus Pereira, the founder of Reclaim Rebuild Eg West, agrees. “We can’t wait for disaster to strike, we should be redistributing these resources year-round when we know that these problems are occurring,” Pereira says. 

Pereira, whose family is from Grenada, says sending barrels full of supplies is a longstanding part of Caribbean immigrant culture. When Hurricane Beryl swept through the region last year and impacted Grenada, “the Jamaicans came through for us,” he says. “It’s a diaspora-wide effort to help those in need.” 

His youth-led advocacy group is dedicated to fighting gentrification and preserving the cultural heritage of Toronto’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood. Now, it’s running a campaign to collect monetary and in-kind donations in collaboration with the Jamaican Canadian Association.

“It feels like almost every year, there’s going to be a hurricane ripping through so we need to be ahead of the curve,” Pereira says. “It’s our doing in North America that is currently impacting the Global South. They’re paying for our emissions and our poor environmental practices, so it’s only right for us to get ahead of the game.”

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The B.C. government greenlit a watershed security strategy it co-developed with First Nations more than a year ago, according to an internal government document obtained by The Narwhal. But the province has failed to release the strategy despite repeated calls from First Nations partners to do so.

“I can’t tell you how deeply frustrating it is for me,” Xtli’li’ye Lydia Hwitsum, co-chair of the First Nations Water Caucus which co-developed the strategy, said in an interview. “We had done such good work.”

The BC NDP promised to develop a watershed security strategy during the 2020 election campaign. In early 2023, the province announced a $100-million endowment for a watershed security fund and launched public consultations through an intentions paper for the strategy. The paper outlined goals to strengthen local and Indigenous governance of watersheds, to build watershed knowledge and take a holistic approach to watershed management and ecosystem protection.

When drought grips a river, as it did xʔəl̓ilwətaʔɬ, the Indian River, two years ago, the consequences can be severe. Ecosystems, communities, farms, ranches and businesses all depend on access to fresh water. Photo: Jennifer Gauthier / The Narwhal

Cabinet approved the final strategy in early 2024, according to a December 2024 briefing document prepared for Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Minister Randene Neill, which The Narwhal obtained through a freedom of information request. 

A ministry spokesperson said its release was paused as the province built an implementation plan and worked to secure additional funding, but offered no timeline for when the strategy would be public. 

Aaron Hill, executive director of the conservation charity Watershed Watch Salmon Society, said “it’s very disappointing” the strategy hasn’t been released. 

“My impression of what happened is that the government got cold feet leading up to the last election and decided to put it on ice,” he said. “And that’s where it remains.”

Both Hwitsum and Hill said plans to release the watershed strategy seemed to stall amid public backlash to the government’s proposed changes to the Land Act, which would have brought the legislation in line with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. 

“When it came to our strategy, they just couldn’t get the courage together to do it,” said Hwitsum, a former chief of the Cowichan Tribes.

The ministry did not directly address these concerns in its response to The Narwhal’s questions.

Logging, urban development, climate change threaten watersheds across B.C.

In the meantime, watersheds across B.C. are under threat. Decades of clear-cut logging dramatically changed watersheds stretching from the coast through the Interior, Younes Alila, a hydrologist with the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry, told The Narwhal.

“We continue to lose our forest cover in B.C. at a very alarming rate,” he said. The result is a heightened risk of floods, drought and landslides, which threaten fish and other aquatic life, alongside the communities, farms and businesses that rely on access to clean water. 

Climate change compounds those threats, particularly in watersheds transformed by extensive urban and industrial development in ways that make them less resilient to extreme weather events. 

Younes Alila, a hydrologist in the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry, says B.C. should overhaul its forestry policies to safeguard watersheds. Photo: Daniel J. Pierce / The Narwhal

Just two years ago, pink salmon were left stranded and struggling for oxygen as water levels in xʔəl̓ilwətaʔɬ, the Indian River, dropped to dangerous lows amid an unrelenting drought. Two years before that, extreme rainstorms battered the province leading to widespread flooding and deadly landslides. 

“The situation is really scary,” Alila said, adding there’s “no doubt” a watershed security strategy is needed. Alongside investment in watershed restoration, he said the province needs to overhaul its forestry and water management policies to address the root causes that leave watersheds across the province in such a vulnerable state.

A more holistic approach is needed now, Hwitsum said, one that is co-developed with First Nations and places Indigenous Knowledge at the forefront. 

That the strategy the First Nations Water Caucus co-developed with the B.C. government has been set aside is “hugely deflating,” she said.

“We worked really hard for that and we were ready to hold that strategy up and say look, here’s a framework,” she said. 

UBC professor Younes Alila warns extensive clear-cut logging has dramatically changed the hydrology of watersheds across B.C., increasing the risk of drought and flooding. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The water ministry spokesperson said “the province agrees that more needs to be done to support watershed security and face the scale of the water challenges in B.C.” 

Alongside exploring options to bolster the water security fund, the spokesperson noted the government is working across ministries to reform water permitting, support farmers affected by drought and invest in community water conservation projects and critical infrastructure, including flood defences.

“The province is focused on supporting watershed security alongside First Nations, local governments, stakeholders, industry and the public,” the spokesperson said.

B.C. urged to raise industry water rates to bolster watershed security fund

As the First Nations Water Caucus continues to push for the strategy to be released, Hwitsum said the group is also looking at options to grow the watershed security fund.

The fund, which is currently co-managed by the Real Estate Foundation of BC and the First Nations Water Caucus, supports a range of projects focused on ecosystem health, reconciliation, climate resilience and sustainable economies. 

Earnings from the $100-million endowment are meant to provide annual funding for grants to support projects across B.C. But applications already exceed what it can afford to support while protecting the initial investment. In its first intake round in the spring of 2024, for instance, the fund received 131 applications requesting a total of $33.8 million in funding, but was only able to fund 26 projects totalling $5 million.  

Aaron Hill, the executive director of Watershed Society, says B.C. should increase industrial water rates to bolster the watershed security fund. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

In the December briefing document prepared for Minister Neill, government officials warned the fund “must grow to meet the scale of water challenges facing B.C.”

The water ministry spokesperson said the province has asked the federal government to contribute funds and is exploring other options including increasing government revenue to fund water priorities.

Hill sees a clear path forward: the province could increase the payments industrial users are required to pay for water.

“Quebec is a great model for this,” he said. It recently raised rates for companies that use water, but don’t store it, from $2.50 to $35 per million litres.

Currently, the B.C. government charges commercial water users — including mining, oil and gas and bottled water companies — $2.25 in rent for every million litres of fresh water they take. “We’re practically giving it away to large industrial users,” Hill said. 

“This is a huge province with these massive watersheds and all kinds of threats and issues that this fund is positioned to address,” he said. “It just needs more money.”

Editor’s note: The Real Estate Foundation of BC has financially supported work by The Narwhal. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

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The threat of flooding may seem far away during the hot, dry days of summer, but millions of Canadians live in homes that could be threatened by floodwaters in just a few months. 

Frequent flooding means more insurance claims, which drive up insurance premiums, especially for high-risk homes. Since 2013, flooding has resulted in about $850 million in insured losses every year. About 10 per cent of Canadian households now face such a high risk of flooding they can’t get flood insurance to protect their homes and belongings, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

“As a result of this increased risk that’s being driven by climate change … we’re seeing that some insurers are reducing their coverage or their exposure in certain regions,” Craig Stewart, the bureau’s vice president of climate change and federal issues, told The Narwhal.

When insurance companies stop offering coverage to high-risk areas, governments are left to fill the gap with programs like disaster financial assistance, which support rebuilding efforts in Canadian communities hit by disasters.

But doling out cash in the wake of a recurrent risk like flooding can be a bit like slapping a Band-Aid on a leak: it may offer short-term relief but it doesn’t address the factors creating the risk in the first place, things like location, construction and community infrastructure.

Ryan Ness, director of adaptation with the Canadian Climate Institute, said in an interview that disaster relief also doesn’t incentivize communities or individuals to reduce their risk. “There’s just an assumption that you’ll be covered if something goes wrong and you don’t have to take any action to reduce the likelihood that you will be flooded and experience a lot of damage,” he told The Narwhal.

A national flood insurance program, first floated by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2019, could offer a more proactive response to flood-prone Canadian communities. Basically, public funding would be dedicated to lowering insurance premiums for high-risk homes to help more Canadians get coverage. But progress has been slow. The 2023 federal budget dedicated $31.7 million over three years to kickstart the program with Public Safety Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation leading the effort. A consultation period on the program’s possible parameters ended just before the 2025 federal election was called. 

A well-designed program would incentivize both homeowners and communities to take steps to lower the risk of future floods, Ness said.

“Say, for example, the premiums are lower if you install a backflow valve or if your community invests in dykes — you can send price signals with insurance that encourage people and communities to do things to reduce the risk,” he said. 

Ness and Stewart agree Canada’s national flood insurance program has to be paired with investments in flood mitigation and protection. If it isn’t, flood risks are likely to continue increasing and could eventually push premiums past the point of affordability once again.

“We need to be thinking about the future and prioritizing adaptation while we’re developing a flood insurance program,” Stewart said.

“Any sort of insurance scheme will be unsustainable unless it’s viewed as a stop gap, if you will, while municipal and provincial governments invest to reduce the risk.”

B.C. minister says she hasn’t heard much from Ottawa about progress on the program this year

Trudeau’s proposed flood insurance program is still a ways from becoming a reality. Since it was first announced, Canadian communities have suffered a number of catastrophic floods, including a billion-dollar Toronto flood and two atmospheric rivers in B.C. that caused massive damage to communities in the Fraser Valley as well as several tragic deaths. 

On the campaign trail this April, the federal Liberal Party pledged $450 million over five years for a national flood insurance program with a launch date of April 2026. But Public Safety Canada, the federal department leading the program’s development, would not confirm the April 2026 timeline.

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, a department spokesperson said work to develop a national flood insurance program is ongoing.

“More information on the timeline for the program will be shared as it becomes available,” the spokesperson wrote.

Kelly Greene, B.C.’s minister of emergency management and climate resilience, is eager to see the program move forward but said she hasn’t heard much from Ottawa on the issue since being appointed to her post in November 2024.

“My concerns right now are that the program appears to be stalled,” Greene said in an interview. “I haven’t really received a substantive update on any progress that’s been made.”

B.C. Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Kelly Greene is eager to hear more details about the federal government’s plans for a national flood insurance program. Photo: Province of B.C. / Flickr

Stewart has been advocating for the federal government to get moving on national flood insurance for years and remains hopeful about the program’s future.

“The program has certainly taken much longer to roll out than we had anticipated,” he said. “We are hopeful that the new Carney government will prioritize the program and get it over the finish line this year and we’re working as collaboratively as possible with them to make that happen.”

Greene wants to see Ottawa treat the program with urgency.

“We know that climate risk doesn’t go away, so I’m hoping for hearing back from the federal government in a timely way about details on how they see the program going forward so that we can provide feedback on that,” she told The Narwhal. 

Public flood insurance should be affordable and targeted: advocates

B.C. wants to ensure the program provides affordable insurance options for people living in flood-prone areas, Greene said, and doesn’t impose overly high costs on provincial governments.

“It’s really important that we’re targeting it where it is needed the most, but also not unduly burdening British Columbia or British Columbians with additional costs,” she said. 

Will a $1-billion flooding bill finally make the GTA take stormwater seriously?

Provinces will likely be required to contribute toward the national program in some way, Stewart said, such as providing funding for subsidized premiums or risk mitigation. While provincial governments might prefer Ottawa bear the brunt of the program’s costs, he believes provincial contributions should reflect the significant role provincial policies play in reducing or boosting risk.

“If provincial governments are going to increase the overall liability by adding housing in flood plains, for example, then they need to take ownership for subsidizing the insurance for those properties,” Stewart said.

Canada’s housing crisis does have the potential to exacerbate the risk of disasters, from floods to fires. A February 2025 report from the Canadian Climate Institute concluded unless precautions are taken to keep new homes from being built in high-risk zones, more than 540,000 homes could be built in flood-prone areas by 2030, adding up to $2 billion in extra damages every year. Even if precautions are taken, annual flood damage could increase by $340 million per year due to newly built homes, the report concluded.

In November 2021, communities across southwestern B.C., including Merritt, were hit by devastating flooding. Advocates say Canada’s national flood insurance program has to be paired with investments in flood mitigation and protection. If it isn’t, flood risks are likely to continue increasing and could eventually push premiums past the point of affordability once again. Photo: Province of B.C. / Flickr

One way to deter development in high-risk areas, Ness said, would be to make those homes ineligible for the national flood insurance program.

“Otherwise, you’ll send a message that if you build new homes in flood risk zones, the public insurance program will cover them,” he added. “An insurance program should only be intended to cover people that are already at risk.”

Asked about the role her ministry plays in ensuring B.C. communities are not building in risky areas, Greene said she plans to discuss potential building code changes with federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson during an upcoming meeting. 

“One of the things I want to talk about is … how we can look at building code as a way to build resilience into communities,” she said. 

We keep rebuilding after disasters, but should we?

Even with a national flood insurance program in place, Greene acknowledges that making sure high-risk B.C. communities are as protected as they can be from flooding will have to remain a high priority for the province. So far this year, the province has dedicated about $28 million to community-led projects aimed at mitigating climate-driven hazards. Greene also highlighted the more than $370 million her ministry has provided to flood-prone communities, including Merritt, Princeton and Abbotsford.

“Insurance alone is not the answer,” she said. “We know that and I think that that’s reflected in all of the work that we’ve been doing helping communities to reduce their risk across B.C., particularly on flood hazard. It’s a very devastating impact to communities. It affects infrastructure. It affects people’s ability to get employment. It affects everything.”

Updated Aug. 19, 1:45 p.m. PT: This article was updated to correct Kelly Greene’s title. She is the minister of emergency management and climate readiness.

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Trouble in the Headwaters, a powerful 25-minute documentary by filmmaker Daniel J. Pierce, explores the root causes behind the devastating 2018 floods in Grand Forks, B.C. More than 100 families were displaced and millions of dollars were spent on flood infrastructure — yet floods continue to threaten the region. So what’s going on?

The film — which you can watch in full below! — follows Dr. Younes Alila, a professor of forest hydrology at the University of British Columbia, as he investigates the upstream impacts of clear-cut logging in the Kettle River watershed. With compelling field footage and scientific insight, The Narwhal presents a documentary that reveals how loss of forest cover has triggered a cycle of flooding, landslides and drought — transforming the landscape and endangering communities downstream.

“What is happening in the Kettle River basin is typical of what has been happening and will continue to happen for decades in other drainages across all of B.C.,” Alila told a crowd at the film’s global premiere in Victoria on June 12. Clear-cut logging in the Kettle basin, like elsewhere in the province, is extensive: two-thirds of the watershed has been harvested in the last 30 years.

“I think of the 2021 atmospheric river: the flooding of Merritt, the flooding of Princeton, the landslide on the Duffey highway,” Pierce added. “If you sort of pull on the thread and you look upstream, it’s the same picture in all of these places. The big Chilcotin landslide from last summer — if you look upstream across the whole Chilcotin plateau: dramatic forest cover loss. So, yeah, this is such a bigger story than we had time to get into in this film.”

Carol Linnitt, co-founder of The Narwhal, left, led a discussion with filmmaker Daniel J. Pierce and researcher Younes Alila following the premiere screening of Trouble in the Headwaters on June 12. Photo: Kathryn Juricic / The Narwhal

Alila came to forest science in the 1990s as an outsider. From his experience in urban hydrology and as a professional engineer, he saw cracks in the way scientists have studied the impacts of clearcuts on floods.

Climate change is responsible for some of the increase in flooding. But decades of research by Alila and his peers suggests the role of industrial forestry is significant, and has long been underestimated and overlooked. He spent years investigating the problem with the existing methodologies and developing a new paradigm — one that actually accounts for how the cumulative effects of clearcutting are increasing the frequency of major flooding events in B.C.

His published findings, including a landmark 2009 paper, sparked heated debates in the pages of scientific journals. But Alila came to realize that convincing his peers was only part of the battle. After the 2021 atmospheric river that caused devastating floods in the Fraser Valley and elsewhere, he decided it was time to speak up — publicly.“I’m on a mission, and I’m advocating for what I think is the only defensible science that should guide management,” he said.

Alila sees hope in ongoing class-action lawsuits: people impacted by floods in Grand Forks, Chemainus and elsewhere in B.C. are suing governments and forestry companies, arguing that allowing overharvesting of trees contributed to the harm.

“I think we’re moving into an era of decades in B.C. where we’re going to see more and more of these legal actions against the forest industry and government,” Alila said.

As for Pierce, whose film was made possible with support from the Sitka Foundation and the Science Media Centre of Canada, he says he wants to see a massive investment in the health of forests across the country. “Right now, we’re spending untold billions of dollars, year after year, putting out wildfires and responding to floods and responding to these disasters — and the costs that are coming down the line are absolutely gargantuan,” he said.

If we put half that amount into restoring the ability of forests to reduce floods and mitigate wildfire risks, “not only would that pay dividends for generations to come, but we could put so many people to work in an effort like that,” Pierce said. “Workers need to see themselves in that story, and communities need to see themselves protected in that story.”

“Yes, it’s going to be a massive investment, but that investment will pay off, and it pales in comparison to what we’re going to be paying if we just keep doing the same thing that we’re doing now.”

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Last summer, southern Ontario was rocked by massive floods that led to more than $1 billion in damages.

It was the type of disaster that unfortunately could become increasingly familiar as the risk of flooding rises with climate change.

But there are solutions at hand. I caught up with Ontario reporter Fatima Syed — who “literally watched water come up through the drain” in the parking lot of her Mississauga residence — to learn about how we can better plan for a world with more severe weather events.

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Vancouver International Airport is at risk of flooding due to climate change, according to a new Senate of Canada report that looks at critical transportation infrastructure across the country to assess how it will fare in the changing climate.

Vancouver’s airport, Canada’s second busiest airport, sits on Sea Island in the Fraser River delta, surrounded by 22 kilometres of dikes to keep the river and sea water at bay. But with sea levels estimated to rise by at least one metre in the next 75 years and an anticipated increase in extreme precipitation and storm surges, the report says the island could be flooded.

“The state of the Vancouver Airport is Vancouver’s problem, it’s Richmond’s problem, but it’s also a problem for every person in Western Canada who drives through there — and it’s a really important freight airport, too,” senator Paula Simons, one of 10 members of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which wrote the report, told The Narwhal. 

“This isn’t just a question of your ability to go to Maui. It’s a question of how we get goods and services across the Pacific to Asian markets and how we bring our imports in.”

Simons was shocked to learn the bustling, economically vital airport is at risk.

“As an Edmontonian and a Westerner, I had no idea how vulnerable the Vancouver airport really was,” Simons said. “I was absolutely thunderstruck to realize how vulnerable it is because it’s built on an island. And it’s lovely, but it creates an inherent risk at a time when sea levels are rising.”

Making bridges, buildings, roads and airports better able to handle extreme weather events driven by climate change — often referred to as climate resilience — is an increasingly pressing concern, reflected in the report’s title: Urgent: Building Climate Resilience Across Canada’s Critical Transportation Infrastructure.

“It was too big to do all the infrastructure in all the country, so we chose five areas that we thought were a microcosm of different challenges,” Simons explained.

The committee’s review included two pieces of crucial transportation infrastructure in B.C.: Vancouver International Airport and the Port of Vancouver.

“Their locations make them susceptible to sea-level rise, storm surges and earthquakes that may significantly impact their operating capacity,” the report states. It recommends the federal government “immediately begin consultations on protecting [Vancouver International Airport’s] Sea Island location against storm surges and rising water levels.”

The Port of Vancouver is better positioned to withstand climate impacts than the Vancouver airport because it is built to withstand volatile ocean conditions, according to a new Senate of Canada report. Photo: Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press

The report also zeroes in on the ways melting permafrost is impacting transportation options in northern Canada and how severe weather and rising sea levels threaten the highways and rail lines that cross the Chignecto Isthmus connecting New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

“If there is a storm surge at a high tide, it could be a disaster,” Simons said about the low-lying strip of land in Atlantic Canada. “There’s the potential for Nova Scotia to become an island.”

On a brighter note, the report says climate change is extending the St. Lawrence Seaway’s shipping season — a trend that could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the volume of goods transported by ship rather than by truck. 

Vancouver airport to spend up to $80 million to raise dikes and upgrade pumps

The Vancouver airport authority is aware of the challenges climate change poses to the airport. Christoph Rufenacht, the vice-president of airport development and asset optimization, told the senate committee the airport  has “remained largely resilient to weather impacts thanks to careful planning and proactive investments.”

He also said the airport, also known as YVR, will continue to “aggressively invest in our local infrastructure,” over the next two to three years. “That includes increasing the height of our dikes and upgrading the eight pump stations on Sea Island to install new equipment with improved efficiency and capacity,” he said during his December 2023 committee appearance.

By the end of the decade, the airport anticipates spending up to $60 million to raise its dikes and as much as $25 million to upgrade pump stations, according to Rufenacht. 

“We feel very confident that the planning and infrastructure investment that we have now will serve us for those decades into the future,” he said.

Simons said it’s worth planning now for the more severe climate scenarios Canadians could face in the coming decades.

“I’m not saying that the Vancouver Airport is about to sink into the sea. I’m saying that we need to be preparing to make sure it doesn’t sink into the sea.”

Catastrophic flooding caused by an atmospheric river in November 2021 resulted in widespread damage to highways across B.C.’s Lower Mainland. The Port of Vancouver was unable to ship goods out of the Lower Mainland by truck for more than a week. Photo: B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure / Flickr

The report, released this week, says the Port of Vancouver is better positioned to withstand climate impacts than the airport because it is built to withstand volatile ocean conditions. But traffic to Canada’s largest port could still be impacted by flooding on the roads and highways that connect to its terminals. Following the November 2021 atmospheric river, damaged highways and bridges made it impossible for goods from the Vancouver port to be transported out of the Lower Mainland for more than a week, the report notes.

Jurisdictional issues could hamper urgent action to protect infrastructure: senator 

Coordinating the actions needed to protect Canada’s critical infrastructure from climate impacts may prove difficult, since it often involves jurisdictional overlap that can leave gaps in responsibility, Simons said.

“What really struck me in every part of this report is that people are working earnestly on their little bit of the problem, but nobody is looking at the whole elephant,” she said, adding, “Canada doesn’t do very well when it has to solve problems that are complicated by jurisdictional turf-guarding.”

B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation declined to answer questions from The Narwhal about the province’s involvement in climate resiliency efforts at Vancouver’s airport, saying the federal government is responsible for airports.

According to Rufenacht, any discussion about moving the airport would likely involve “Transport Canada, the provincial government, regional agencies, businesses and customers.” Neither the Vancouver Airport Authority or Transport Canada responded to requests for comment by publication time. 

Simons did get the opportunity to question Kaye Krishna, B.C.’s former deputy minister of transportation, during a senate hearing in December 2023. When the senator asked Krishna whether the ministry has done any planning for a potential new location for the airport, the deputy minister said, “That’s not something that we are currently engaged in.”

Krishna told Simons and other members of the senate committee the ministry works closely with the airport authority to ensure resilient road access to the airport. The province is also participating in an effort led by Transport Canada and Infrastructure Canada to map out critical hazards and risks to infrastructure, according to Krishna.

After studying the threat climate change poses to Canada’s infrastructure, Simons hopes to see more collaboration between all levels of government to address the threats immediately and in the long-term.

“None of this gets solved if only one order of government comes to the table,” she said.

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