Question Period Note: Federal, Provincial and Indigenous Committee on British Columbia Flood Recovery

Given the devastating flooding experienced in British Columbia in November 2021, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of a federal, provincial and indigenous committee in flood recovery.

• Throughout British Columbia and in other parts of the country, floods, landslides, wildfires, and extreme weather conditions are affecting the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Canadians. This Government recognizes that we must take strong action together to protect Canadians and build a better and more resilient future for everyone.

• In response, our Government has announced that together with the province of British Columbia, we will be establishing a committee of federal and provincial ministers who will work together and with Indigenous leadership to guide immediate and ongoing support to British Columbia.

• In addition to helping British Columbians address their immediate needs, this new Climate Disaster Resilience Committee will work to create and advance an integrated approach to inform how all Canadian communities can take strong and bold climate action to better prepare for, mitigate against, respond to and recover from these extreme weather events.

• This Committee will be designed to inform our approach to long term recovery efforts. As co-chair of this new committee, I will work closely with the Honorable Mike Farnworth, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General of British Columbia, on a swift recovery for British Columbia, while also working on a national approach to ensure that all Canadian communities can become more resilient to future disasters.

On November 26th, 2021, in response to devastating flooding sweeping across the Province of British Columbia and across other provinces, the Prime Minister of Canada and the Premier of British Columbia, John Horgan, announced the creation of a committee of federal and provincial ministers who will work together and with Indigenous leadership to guide immediate and ongoing support to British Columbia families, businesses, and communities affected by the extreme weather events.

The new committee’s goal is to ensure the people of British Columbia, including those in remote and Indigenous communities, have the immediate support and resources they need to deal with the flooding faced by the province, and will also collaborate on recovery and rebuilding efforts, including by providing support to the sectors that have been most impacted by the crisis. The committee will work to build back from these extreme weather events in a way that better protects British Columbians from future climate events, creates cleaner and healthier communities, and supports Canada’s efforts in reaching our climate goals and net-zero emissions targets.

This work builds on the collaborative efforts of the Federal, Provincial and Territorial (FPT) Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management, who in 2019 approved Canada’s first-ever FPT Emergency Management Strategy for Canada (EM Strategy), which establishes FPT priorities to strengthen the resilience of Canadian society by 2030. The EM Strategy seeks to guide FPT governments and their respective Emergency Management (EM) partners in carrying out priorities aimed at strengthening Canada’s ability to assess risks and to prevent/mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters.

The EM Strategy seeks to align the efforts of all Canadians, as well as to strengthen overall resilience through five priority areas of activity. These priority areas of activity were approved by FPT Ministers responsible for EM in May 2017:

1. Enhance whole-of-society collaboration and governance to strengthen resilience;
2. Improve understanding of disaster risks in all sectors of society;
3. Increase focus on whole-of-society disaster prevention and mitigation activities;
4. Enhance disaster response capacity and coordination and foster the development of new capabilities; and,
5. Strengthen recovery efforts by building back better to minimize the impacts of future disasters.

After approving the EM Strategy, FPT Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management directed the Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management (SOREM) to develop and advance a series of Action Plans to advance the implementation of the EM Strategy to 2030. SOREM represents the collection of FPT government organizations who lead emergency management efforts on behalf of their respective jurisdiction.

The Action Plan is intended to advance defined outcomes within the EM Strategy, and to develop the concrete steps that FPT governments, and respective EM Partners, intend to take to advance resilience to disasters within Canada. This series of Action Plans will begin with a 1-year plan in 2021-22 (due to COVID-19 delaying development), but will enter into a biennial cycle beginning in 2022-24.

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