By LEE HARDING.Flood damage around Abbotsford B.C. could have been avoided if provincial and federal governments had responded to the pleas of its mayor and city council for an improved dike system, and experts say other jurisdictions have similar issues..On December 1, evacuation orders were in effect for 350 homes in the Abbotsford area, with another 1,664 on alert. The flooding was predictable, as a 2015 engineering report said the levee system in the area was “unacceptable” and fell below provincial standards. .In December of 2019, another engineering report given to Abbotsford City Council showed it would cost $446 million investment to remove the existing dikes, improve the grounds beneath them, then rebuild the dikes. The amount was more than double the annual city budget and city council asked higher levels of government for help..That help never came. And in recent weeks Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said that solution is still needed..“I shouldn’t say this, my staff will get mad at me, but I can see that whole structure, that whole dike, having to be repaired — not repaired, rebuilt — to a higher standard,” Braun said..Abbotsford resident David Leis, a vice president at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, is familiar with the saga..“Municipal officials were very upset that they could not persuade the provincial and federal governments to invest,” Leis said in an interview with Western Standard..“If you went to the association of BC engineers or the BC association of local municipalities, I think that you’d see these constant messages, we need to invest in infrastructure. It’s almost like a broken record. As a former mayor, I know that record very well.”.Leis, a former mayor of Waterloo, Ont., said the issue extends far beyond BC..“Certainly in municipalities if you scan the country there’s ones that are in much better shape than others, but many of them are really in rough condition,” Leis said..“These are major infrastructure deficits and as a country we are grossly behind.”.An estimate by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said the nation’s infrastructure deficit could be as high as $570 billion. Marco Navarro-Genie, of the Haultain Institute, said that money will be hard to find..“The federal government committed to spending $180 billion in the next 12 years [on infrastructure]. And that doesn’t begin to cover it. So we’re talking mega money, and of course, a lot of the fiscal space that we had we just burned it through COVID, largely for no reason. So we’re in a bad way,” Navarro-Genie told Western Standard..“In the rest of the country, we have similar problems as well. So we need to catch up to maintain. And we need to get ahead.”.Navarro-Genie said the combination of a high cost and delayed benefit makes infrastructure investment less attractive to politicians..“They want to spend it on easy things, and they want to spend it on things that they can spin into the election cycle. And they want to spend it in the ridings where they’re going to get the most votes. This has been the perennial Canadian problem going back to the 1800s. By that measure, the top-level governments are playing politics and the lowest level government doesn’t really have the fiscal capacity to … do the big stuff.”.Navarro-Genie said regulations at all levels of government discourage the development of necessary projects. He would welcome an independent body arms-length from government to guide a proactive process..“We shouldn’t start building pipelines when we need them. We should start building pipelines before we need them so they’re ready exactly when we’re going to need them,” he said..Instead of facilitating a movement towards meeting infrastructure needs, some MPs, including Elizabeth May, have blamed the B.C. floods on climate change and called for an end to the fossil fuel industry. Leis disagrees..“Leadership by definition, is doing the right thing for the long-term,” Leis said..“Their job is to be prepared for this inevitable weather. The whole climate change thing is a is a big deflection from responsibility.”.Harding is a Western Standard correspondent based in Saskatchewan
By LEE HARDING.Flood damage around Abbotsford B.C. could have been avoided if provincial and federal governments had responded to the pleas of its mayor and city council for an improved dike system, and experts say other jurisdictions have similar issues..On December 1, evacuation orders were in effect for 350 homes in the Abbotsford area, with another 1,664 on alert. The flooding was predictable, as a 2015 engineering report said the levee system in the area was “unacceptable” and fell below provincial standards. .In December of 2019, another engineering report given to Abbotsford City Council showed it would cost $446 million investment to remove the existing dikes, improve the grounds beneath them, then rebuild the dikes. The amount was more than double the annual city budget and city council asked higher levels of government for help..That help never came. And in recent weeks Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said that solution is still needed..“I shouldn’t say this, my staff will get mad at me, but I can see that whole structure, that whole dike, having to be repaired — not repaired, rebuilt — to a higher standard,” Braun said..Abbotsford resident David Leis, a vice president at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, is familiar with the saga..“Municipal officials were very upset that they could not persuade the provincial and federal governments to invest,” Leis said in an interview with Western Standard..“If you went to the association of BC engineers or the BC association of local municipalities, I think that you’d see these constant messages, we need to invest in infrastructure. It’s almost like a broken record. As a former mayor, I know that record very well.”.Leis, a former mayor of Waterloo, Ont., said the issue extends far beyond BC..“Certainly in municipalities if you scan the country there’s ones that are in much better shape than others, but many of them are really in rough condition,” Leis said..“These are major infrastructure deficits and as a country we are grossly behind.”.An estimate by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said the nation’s infrastructure deficit could be as high as $570 billion. Marco Navarro-Genie, of the Haultain Institute, said that money will be hard to find..“The federal government committed to spending $180 billion in the next 12 years [on infrastructure]. And that doesn’t begin to cover it. So we’re talking mega money, and of course, a lot of the fiscal space that we had we just burned it through COVID, largely for no reason. So we’re in a bad way,” Navarro-Genie told Western Standard..“In the rest of the country, we have similar problems as well. So we need to catch up to maintain. And we need to get ahead.”.Navarro-Genie said the combination of a high cost and delayed benefit makes infrastructure investment less attractive to politicians..“They want to spend it on easy things, and they want to spend it on things that they can spin into the election cycle. And they want to spend it in the ridings where they’re going to get the most votes. This has been the perennial Canadian problem going back to the 1800s. By that measure, the top-level governments are playing politics and the lowest level government doesn’t really have the fiscal capacity to … do the big stuff.”.Navarro-Genie said regulations at all levels of government discourage the development of necessary projects. He would welcome an independent body arms-length from government to guide a proactive process..“We shouldn’t start building pipelines when we need them. We should start building pipelines before we need them so they’re ready exactly when we’re going to need them,” he said..Instead of facilitating a movement towards meeting infrastructure needs, some MPs, including Elizabeth May, have blamed the B.C. floods on climate change and called for an end to the fossil fuel industry. Leis disagrees..“Leadership by definition, is doing the right thing for the long-term,” Leis said..“Their job is to be prepared for this inevitable weather. The whole climate change thing is a is a big deflection from responsibility.”.Harding is a Western Standard correspondent based in Saskatchewan
