Question Period Note: Mitigating Disaster Risks

Climate-change driven hazards are increasing in both frequency and costs and are a mounting risk to the safety and economic viability of Canadian businesses and communities.

Disaster mitigation measures aim to reduce impacts before emergencies occur, enhancing resilience and safety across society.

Climate-change hazards are increasingly impacting individual Canadians and the economy, and disaster risk management is the most effective means of reducing the costs and impacts of these events.

Canada’s Federal, Provincial and Territorial Emergency Management Strategy outlines a coordinated approach, focused on proactive measures, to prevent and mitigate the impacts of disasters before they occur.

The Government of Canada is committed to building resilience to natural hazards. This is why the Government of Canada launched the National Adaptation Strategy, aimed to support a shared vision for a resilient Canada.

As flooding is Canada’s costliest and most frequent natural hazard, the government is advancing initiatives to increase flood resilience across Canada.

These initiatives will ensure the Government of Canada is able to better support impacted people and communities and rebuild with greater resilience to future risk.

Emergency Management Strategy for Canada

In January 2019, Federal, Provincial and Territorial (FPT) Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management approved Canada’s first-ever FPT Emergency Management Strategy for Canada (EM Strategy).

Increasing the focus on whole-of-society disaster prevention and mitigation activities is one of the EM Strategy’s key priorities.

Flood Insurance

Several million homes in Canada are vulnerable to flooding, and typically, the most at-risk residential property owners cannot access adequate insurance to protect themselves.

This protection gap leaves many households financially vulnerable as they must rely on their own resources or limited post-disaster financial assistance from governments or not-for-profit groups to recover from flooding events.

A national flood insurance program would address this protection gap to help ensure that Canadians living in high-risk areas could access flood insurance that is affordable and adequate.

To date, the Government of Canada has conducted various engagements with provinces and territories (PT), industry practitioners, and implicated federal government departments on the design of the program.

Work to develop a national flood insurance program is ongoing.

Flood Mapping and Risk Awareness

Public Safety Canada (PS) collaborates with Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada to advance flood mapping.

PS’ Federally Identified Flood Risk Areas (FIFRA) was developed to help address gaps in Canada-wide flood information. The goal of the FIFRA datasets is to provide nationally consistent flood hazard information to supplement and complement other sources of flood hazard data, screen areas for further study and site specific analysis (i.e. as a screening tool), and help guide and target risk reduction efforts across Canada.

Using the information in the FIFRA datasets, PS will launch a Flood Risk Awareness Portal to provide Canadians with location-specific information on flood hazard and risk, accompanied by interactive maps to visualize the data. The portal will also connect users to guidance on ways to reduce the impacts of flooding on their homes and communities.

Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements

The Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAA) program provides financial assistance to PT governments for response and recovery costs from large-scale disasters caused by natural hazards.

The modernized DFAA provides more flexibility for the kinds of costs that can be covered, more efficient program administration, faster payments, and significantly improved data collection on disaster recovery to better inform future policy development.

Wildfires Mitigation Investments

Through Budget 2022, the Government of Canada committed to investing over $500 million to provide support to PTs and Indigenous communities in wildfire management.

Disaster Risk Reduction Data Strategy

An interdepartmental working group led by PS was convened in 2023 to produce a Disaster Risk Reduction Data Strategy. It will serve as the foundation for future work that enhances the federal government’s capabilities in the realm of data- and model-driven insights for assessing and taking actions to reduce disaster risks.

The work is at an advanced draft stage and is expected to be published in 2026.

Q1 — Flood mitigation

Flooding is the most frequent and costly natural hazard in Canada. This is why the Government of Canada is taking steps to prioritize flood resilience, prevention, and mitigation to ensure that Canadians are better protected and better able to recover from flood events. Key initiatives include:

Developing a low-cost flood insurance program;

Creating a Flood Risk Awareness Portal; and

Identifying high-risk flood areas and modernizing the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program.

These efforts are supported by Federal, Provincial, Territorial, and Indigenous partners, aligning with the Emergency Management Strategy for Canada.

Efforts are ongoing to develop a robust, scientific picture of natural hazard risk across Canada to motivate and support mitigation efforts.

Q2 — Flood insurance

Public Safety Canada has been working closely with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to develop a low-cost flood insurance program, aimed at protecting households at high risk of flooding and without access to adequate insurance.

This effort has included various engagements with provinces and territories, industry practitioners, and implicated federal government departments.

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.

Public Safety Canada will continue to work closely with provinces, territories, and industry experts towards future implementation of the program.

Q3 — Federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements in cases of flood

The Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program plays a critical role in supporting provinces and territories in the response to, and recovery from, large-scale disasters caused by natural hazards in Canada such as floods and wildfires.

The Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program prioritizes improved recovery outcomes, greater resilience, and reduced disaster risks to Canadians. It empowers provinces and territories to develop tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of their communities while providing increased and more flexible funding to reduce disaster risk.

Provinces and territories design and administer their own programs to assist individuals, small businesses, farms and municipalities, and may request federal financial assistance following a large-scale disaster caused by natural hazards. The federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements provides cost sharing of eligible provincial and territorial response and recovery expenditures under these provincial and territorial programs.

Q4 — Wildfires mitigation

The Government of Canada is committed to working with provinces, territories and whole-of-society partners to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfire events.

The modernized Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program covers costs for wildfires which directly threaten communities, also known as wildland urban interface fires.

Under the modernized program, response costs such as repairing, restoring and rebuilding uninsurable infrastructure, improvements to damaged infrastructure or new community or region-wide mitigation projects, costs related to recovery and resilience planning, and recovery supports like legal, financial, or mental health counselling can be cost shared under the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements to improve the resilience of communities that have suffered a disaster.

With this modernized program, mitigation funding is available for any eligible disaster type under the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements. Therefore, a province or territory that suffers a disaster stemming from a natural hazard, such as a wildfire, and is eligible for Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements funding, can use that to increase the resilience of the affected communities.