 | Saturday, November 27, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | B.C. should consider whether local autonomy is important for risk management | | |  | | | In the middle of a catastrophic flood with multiple deaths and damage that could exceed any natural disaster in Canadian history, it might seem insular and myopic of this newsletter to focus on the relationship between municipal, regional and provincial governments in southwest British Columbia.
However, if you ask risk management experts and read reports, it’s a crucial reason why we’re in this mess, and why we’ve written multiple articles about it this week.
The Lower Mainland is a complex region of mountains and valleys, rivers and inlets. More than 300,000 people live in areas at risk of flooding. Others live in areas at risk of mudslides.
Weather events are regional in nature: clouds don’t care where the border is between Vancouver and Burnaby or that there are five municipalities in the Tri-Cities.
But as we found out in the past months, nearly every part of flood management — from initial planning, to dike maintenance and upgrades, to first steps when flooding happens, to issuing emergency alerts — falls to individual municipalities. In the only major metropolitan region in Canada that is not amalgamated, this leaves decisions in the overlapping hands of 26 different municipalities. It’s important to note that this isn’t the result of any one actor: the federal government reduced funding for flood risk management decades ago, the province downloaded responsibility to municipalities in 2003/2004, and to this day many municipalities say they prefer the autonomy and flexibility that comes with getting to create their own strategy.
And we can see the results.
As Ebbwater Consulting wrote in a report just six months ago to the Fraser Basin Council, “The current model for flood risk governance in B.C. is broken,” with some of the biggest reasons being “roles and responsibilities are unclear” and “local government aspirations and provincial guidance are sometimes at odds with each other.”
As resilience scholar Lilia Yumagulova wrote in her UBC thesis after nearly seven years of research and more than 60 interviews, “Sub-regional self-organizing was seen as a necessity in the absence of leadership from the Mayors at the regional level. While ad-hoc event specific coordination would occur as needed, the mechanisms for building long-term general capacity to respond were absent.”
One could go on.
Municipal governments are nimble organizations that can respond to the local needs and political culture of a particular area.
As the provincial government promises a new flood strategy in 2022, one wonders whether the status quo on natural disaster management should prevail. | | |  | | | 1. Dikes | | | Delta needs more than $350 million in dike repairs. Pitt Meadows needs more than $100 million. Before the flooding last week, Abbotsford said it would require $450 million to upgrade dikes to provincial standards. In the past, this was often a story where municipalities would apply for funds, get some of what they needed (or nothing at all), and then there would be a new story with new estimates on costs a few years later. One wonders if things will change this time.
Read more in the Delta Optimist | | |  | | | 3. Other budgets | To focus only on Vancouver would be folly though, as other municipalities are also proposing higher increases this year: Kamloops is looking at a 4.9 per cent increase, Penticton at 5.7 per cent, Nanaimo at 5.9 per cent and the small island municipality of Lantzville is proposing a 21 per cent increase, the highest annual rate we’ve seen ... though whether it gets through council is TBD. Read more in the Nanaimo News Bulletin | | | | | |  | | | 5. Port Moody | The continued standstill in Port Moody development politics continued this week, as a proposed development across from a SkyTrain station seems unlikely given the current council dynamics and the current proposal from the developer. It’s not a new story, but it’s one that will likely become more heated as we continue in an election year. Read more in the TriCity News | | | | | |  | | | 6. North Vancouver | A constant political hot potato on the North Shore has been the fate of the Harry Jerome Rec Centre as the city looks to build a replacement and local residents and users of the facility were worried about losing use of their arena for years while a new one is built. The issue seems to have been resolved, as the municipality has announced the current building will remain while the new one is under construction. But that's due to the developer pulling out, and what it means for financing and timelines is an open question.
Read more | | | |  | | | 7. Wells | The small town saw its mayor resign last week, due to his employment with a mine in the area that’s in the middle of an environmental review. Then, three councillors resigned — one of whom wants to become mayor. Which leaves a single councillor still in office, who also considered quitting, but “decided it would not solve any of the district’s problems.” We have questions. Read more in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | Check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
