By Canadian Press

Liberals promise national flood insurance, disaster EI benefits

Sep 27, 2019 | 9:53 AM

The federal Liberals unveiled promises Wednesday to help homeowners prepare for damage from climate change with low-cost national flood insurance and zero-interest loans for green home renovations.

Leader Justin Trudeau was in the yard of a home in Delta, B.C., in greater Vancouver, to announce additional climate-change-related measures.

“We recognize that people are facing increased flooding because of the effects of extreme weather events and increased impacts of climate change,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau said helping people figure out whether or where to rebuild after a flood is a difficult conversation, so his mitigation plans will start with $150 million to complete flood mapping in every province and territory, to identify land that’s at greater risk of inundation.

He also promised a low-cost flood-insurance program, delivered via the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and a national plan to help homeowners move if they are at risks for repeated flooding.

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“We recognize first of all that many people can’t get insurance, flood insurance any more,” he said. “We know that the government does need to step up.”

Parts of eastern Ontario, western Quebec and New Brunswick were hit with major flooding for the second time in three years last spring, prompting a number of experts and governments to suggest climate change requires a rethink of disaster planning. Quebec Premier Francois Legault said earlier this year his government was capping flood compensation at a total of $100,000, but would offer people $200,000 in one-time help to move to less flood-prone areas.

For those who have suffered floods or forest fires that forced them from their homes, or left them unable to work, Trudeau said a re-elected Liberal government would create a national employment-insurance disaster-benefit program.

“If you’ve just been through a wildfire or a flood you should be focused on rebuilding your life, not on how to pay for the damage or how to pay the bills after time away from work,” Trudeau said.

Blair Feltmate, chair of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo, said Canadians have only been able to get any kind of overland flood insurance for the last five years and still only about one-third of the people eligible are buying it, despite the rising risk to homeowners of flooding in many communities.

“Flooding is the No. 1 risk and manifestation of climate change in the country,” he said. “Bigger storms, coming more frequently, of more magnitude, that’s the primary driver.”

He said there are, however, people living in communities designated as being at very high risk for flooding who cannot buy flood insurance because the premiums would be out of reach. That group, he suggests, includes between 500,000 and 800,000 households across the country.

That is the group that would benefit from Trudeau’s low-cost national flood insurance. Feltmate said that what he hasn’t seen in the Liberal announcement, or any others thus far, is a program to help people whose homes are in mid-level risk zones prevent the flood damage in the first place. That can include municipal projects like berms and holding channels or major national projects like the floodway in Winnipeg that diverts part of the Red River around the city rather than through it when the river is flooding.

“We now know what to do in communities that are medium to high risk,” he said. “We should be doing that rather than waiting for the big storms to come and putting out hundreds of thousands or millions of sandbags to hold that water.”

Trudeau was flanked in Delta by a number of B.C. Liberal candidates, including Carla Qualtrough, his public-services and procurement minister, in whose riding the announcement was made. B.C. is one of the biggest battlegrounds in the campaign, and in a minority-government situation could determine both who wins the most seats and who can hold the balance of power.

Trudeau also announced plans for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to provide interest-free loans of up to $40,000 for homeowners or landlords to make green renovations, ranging from new windows and furnaces to the addition of solar panels or geothermal-energy systems. The government would also support training programs for workers to do the renovations.

The Liberals claim the total cost of all the measures announced Wednesday would be $370 million starting in 2020-21, rising to $432 million by 2023-24, most of which would come from CMHC. The Liberals said about $70 million would come from general revenues in 2020-21 to pay for the training program and flood mapping, dropping to $20 million by 2023-24.

Trudeau finished his day in at a rally in Thunder Bay, Ont., where he delivered an energetic stump speech largely aimed at denouncing Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s cuts, which he said had raised class sizes in local schools and would result in fewer hospital beds.

Trudeau, who was introduced by incumbent Liberal Patty Hajdu, also promised the cheering crowd that a re-elected Liberal government would “close the gaps” to improve living conditions for Indigenous people by developing “distinction-based” health legislation tailored to individual communities, and investing in community infrastructure to plans to address issues such as housing, roads, schools, and high-speed internet.

Trudeau did not elaborate, and a Liberal spokesperson said more details would be provided later in the campaign, including how the federal responsibilities would be written into law.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2019.

Morgan Lowrie and Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press