Heat, Floods, and Fires: Can Canadian cities cope with the extremes?

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Heat, Floods, and Fires: Can Canadian cities cope with the extremes?

CityTalk. August 8, 2024

Mary W Rowe Hi, everybody, it’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute. Thank you for joining us. I am here in Toronto today, which is the traditional territory of many First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. As people know, in the CUI constituency we continue to come to terms with the lack of equity that we see in urbanism generally, but also particularly how it affects the Indigenous communities and how much we continue to struggle with how do we actually honor, first of all, the truth that is in front of us, but also what does true reconciliation look like? And this topic is particularly important because so much of the challenge that’s happening viscerally in communities across the country disproportionately affects Indigenous people and Indigenous lands. So I’m sure that will be part of our conversation this morning, or today. So thank you for joining us on CityTalk. As you know we have a very lively chat. We hope you’ll join in, if you haven’t before, now’s your day. Sign up on chat and interact there. I know lots of people listen to CityTalk at the edge of their desk, but if you’re inclined to actually engage in the community that forms, you’ll find that in the chat people raise all sorts of questions and put all sorts of ideas in there. And we publish the chat, we publish this discussion also, and we make sure that we get the sort of key points and highlight those when we put them on Citytalkcanada.ca. We’ve had a run of CityTalks over the last several weeks. In the old days, when CityTalk was new, we did three a week … Believe it or not, I can’t quite believe we did. But that was early days, Covid … April, May, June of 2020. And so we had different, staggering … Different kinds of schedules over the years. But we’re back to doing it once every two weeks, although we added a few because of the particular prescience of this topic. So I’m going to invite our folks that are joining us to put their cameras on, and we’re going to have a conversation about something that I don’t think … Other than the Olympics which I think is a unifying topic that Canadians have been talking about for two weeks, I don’t think there’s really a topic more resonant than this one, that is affecting communities of every size, different kinds of challenges, and different kinds of remedies. And I think part of what we want to talk to you folks about is, well, first of all, what your experience has been of extreme weather. So you’re going to tell us a bit of your story about what you saw and what your role’s been. And so we’ll get that out of the way. And then I want to talk about what are the kinds of steps we all need to be taking to build the resilience of our communities. I remember in my working life there was a period when we really weren’t allowed to talk about climate change. People were not willing to admit that it wasn’t unstoppable, and they didn’t want to be giving ground to that. So we couldn’t talk about adaptation, for instance. We certainly weren’t talking about mitigation. But now we have to because it’s upon us and I feel a particular affinity with this issue because a lot of my thinking and learning around cities and communities was being in New Orleans after Katrina and watching what the impact was of an extreme weather event that was actually compounded by infrastructure failure. And so that legacy lives on there. And I spent five years trying to listen and learn and understand how we, in communities, can build our own resilience. So that’s what I’m interested, obviously, and continuing to be interested in now that it’s such a visceral reality for so many communities. Back then, it was sort of a one off. Now we see it everywhere and we’re seeing it around the world. So thank you for joining us. And I just want to acknowledge that we’ve got lots of folks on these podcasts who have had extraordinarily painful, traumatic events associated with this kind of loss. So we feel for the people in Jasper, for instance, who are the most recent, but there are constant examples of this, of people being displaced, losing their homes, losing their livelihoods, losing their belongings, losing their sense of attachment and belonging. And so I don’t want us to be insensitive to that. If people in the chat want to share some of their personal experience, please do. Because this is becoming an all too common experience that so many people are having to face. So I’m going to start if I can … Let’s do where shall we start first, let’s start in Toronto, a few blocks for me. Although, Jen, I know you’re in Halifax today, but you had a very recent vivid experience. And maybe you can describe to people, well … Tell people what Evergreen is and where it is, and then describe what happened to you. And it happened again I think … it happened 2 or 3 weeks ago, and then you had a little reprieve until you had a little revisit of it earlier this week. So let’s start with you, Jen Angel from Evergreen. Thanks for running CityTalk.

Jen Angel Thank you Mary, and it’s great to be here. As you said, I’m calling in from Kjipuktuk this afternoon, beautiful Halifax. Where, before Evergreen, I worked in public infrastructure at the water’s edge for close to two decades. And now at Evergreen, in a flood plain, still at the water’s edge, working in public infrastructure. And, you know … So I’m not an expert in climate change, or climate tech. But I think I’m developing some expertise, certainly experience, in what happens at the water’s edge. What is happening … The pace of change and also what isn’t working very well. So I would say the most recent experience, I think it’s my fourth 100 year storm in the past decade, was on July 16th when the Brickworks flooded. There was about four feet of water across the site, including inside buildings. The Brickworks is an example of how to do climate resilient infrastructure. There’s a number of site improvements, climate tech across the site, including many nature-based solutions designed to flood. And I will say that we learned a whole lot. Some of it worked exactly as it should. And much of it, we now know, needs to be improved to meet the moment we’re in.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. And just describe a little bit about what happened. I mean how much water do you take on? What are the impacts?

Jen Angel Yeah, so it was an unprecedented flood. The site is flooded before. The water came much more quickly, and to a much greater level than we have experienced before, as I said there was four feet of water. So imagine an outdoor … A large outdoor space, you know, up to your chest in water.

Mary W Rowe And I heard an anecdote from one of your staff that you had to move kids off a camp, very quickly right?

Jen Angel Yeah. The staff did an amazing job. We do have flood protocols in place, including an early warning system. And so the staff heeded … We were monitoring water levels all day. The staff heeded the call, and were able to safely evacuate more than 100 kids before the water reached any kind of dangerous point. But some staff were rescued by boat from the site. In a very short … In just a couple of hours … It was dry to very, very wet.

Mary W Rowe And just for the benefit of people that don’t necessarily know Evergreen, don’t know the Brickworks, don’t know the site. This is an inland site. This is not sea level rise, folks. This is storm water runoff. I’m assuming, because we had severe rainfall and the combined sewer outflow system is not able to absorb the rain. Is that fair enough, Jen? Is that the actual geological explanation of what happened?

Jen Angel Yeah. So we’re in the Don River Valley, so we’re adjacent to a large river. And as I said, it’s right in the floodplain. But I think importantly, owing to its location in the center of urban Toronto, and the impermeability of the city, which is, you know, an increasing issue. The water still comes and it has to go somewhere. And so it’s going where it can go. And in this case, a whole pile of it landed with us. Yeah.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. So just that concept of impermeability, I want to come back to that or whether or not we’re making cities and making spaces in cities that can be sponges so that you don’t get all of our water. Thanks for taking one for the team, Jen. But it is hard to have it concentrated, as you just suggested, in one space, as opposed to having multiple absorption spaces that can actually accommodate this. If I can go, let’s go … We’ll just swing, we’re going to swing between elements and we’re going to swing between different parts of the country. Mayor O’Connor, thank you for joining us. Lytton had an extraordinary experience. And it’s not the only one you’ve had. You’ve had many. So just tell people for the benefit … remember you have an audience here that are across Canada and the United States. Just fill people in on Lytton, where Lytton is and what the particular set of challenges are that you’ve been dealing with. Thanks.

Denise O’Connor Thank you Mary. Good morning. I’m here in the Village of Lytton, in the heart of the Nlaka’pamux territory. So as many of you know, in 2021, June 30th, we had a fire that started right, close to the village, and it came into the village and destroyed 90% of our buildings. It carried on and did similar damage … Well, yeah, to the First Nation, Lytton First Nation, which is our neighbor. So I did lose my home in that fire. We, you know, we literally ran for our lives that day. There was a forest fire going on up on the mountain above us. But that was not the cause of this fire. I was able to return to Lytton, here in this house I’m in right now, one of the homes that didn’t burn in November, three days before the atmospheric river hit and the atmospheric river happened and wiped out the highways to the north of us and to the south of us. And then the one highway, to Lillooet which would be the only highway that was open was … the slides would come and go all winter. And so, your title, Heat, Floods and Fires is just like … it’s made for our community. Before the June 30th fire, of course, we experienced the heat dome, right? We were the hottest temperatures recorded of 49.6 degrees, I think, for a couple of days before that. So, yeah, that’s my story. Yeah.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. Extraordinary. And the heat dome now is common parlance. But then it was … That’s three years ago. It was just being talked about. Now we all seem to know what a heat dome is. Kind of bizarre that we do, but there we are. How big is the town of Lytton? Or the village? Are you a village or are you a town? Which are you?

Denise O’Connor We are a village. We’re a very small village. I don’t know, the second smallest in the province or something. Before the fire, we were a population of just over 200 people. Saying that we were a service hub for 2000 or 3000 people living around the area. The First Nation Bands, the rural properties around … So, you know, we had the RCMP, the post office, the grocery store, the medical center. All of those were lost in the fire.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. I mean, as you say, a service hub. And of the 200 that were there before, what would you be now?

Denise O’Connor You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s 30 or 40 homes above the highway … I’m in one of them, that are here, and those people are … we’re all living here and the town’s just starting to be rebuilt now.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. And it’s three years later. Yeah. Okay. We’re going to keep going. Don’t forget, Kenda … I won’t forget you. We’ll come East in a sec, but we’re going to keep going with another mayor. So I appreciate mayors. I know you’re busy guys. And thank you for taking time off … NOT that our other participants aren’t busy. I know Jen and Kenda are busy too, but I do appreciate mayors coming off the beat here to be with us. Over to you Mayor Torgerson, talk to us a little bit about Valemont. Your experience is a bit more recent …

Owen Torgerson Well, it is and it isn’t. So we had a mix of both flood, fire, evacuations, etc.. So back in ’21, following the heat dome, Mount Robson Provincial Park, which is home to Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, experienced two 300 year flood events in two weeks. took out the Berg Lake Trail, which is world renowned for visitation. It accounts for 25% of our tourism economy. Valemont is BC, or British Columbia’s most northern resort municipality, of just over a thousand people. But we, amongst other resort municipalities, receive an incredible amount of visitation. And on the evening of July 23rd, we had a lot of visitation from Jasper National Park. About 16,000 people joined us in a matter of hours. And we tried to find every nook, cranny … Let’s put that in perspective. So, Kenda’s in Halifax. I think Jen is … you’re in Halifax this morning … 7 million people joined Halifax in a matter of hours.

Mary W Rowe Wow. You just have that stat on the tip of your tongue. That’s pretty good math there Mayor Torgerson.  Yeah, but the scale of it is what you’re suggesting.

Owen Torgerson I just wanted to put that into context.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, I get it. You’re like the Gander from Come From Away. You’re your own version of that. Suddenly this massive influx. How much notice did you have?

Owen Torgerson About four minutes.

Mary W Rowe Okay.

Owen Torgerson I had reached out to Mayor Ireland, knowing that the wildfire was getting closer to the to the municipality of Jasper. And he said, “we’re evacuating”. Oh, okay. Where? Highway 16. We’re the next town over and just south of Highway 16 as you come into BC. And so from about midnight through to noon the next day, we received evacuees. We activated our emergency operation center. We activated our emergency support services. So we had two ESS centers welcoming, directing, taking names, trying to find a nook and more crannies to put folks … 16 times our population.

Mary W Rowe And how did you mobilize those folks? How did that work out?

Owen Torgerson A lot of them. Basically. Well, we filtered just about everybody through our ESS centers, and then we were lucky enough … We are lucky enough to have some really incredible partners. So the regional district, Friends of Fort George, who operates the rec center here, opened their doors. So, you know, a hockey rink with showers and bathrooms and just a place for folks to take refuge. Our … One of the … Both churches of that are active right now opened their doors for clothing. I mean, folks were evacuating in 30 degree weather and then coming here for a couple of days, and it’s 12, 13, 14 degrees. So clothing was lacking. So, I mean, they were evacuating in shorts and flip flops and t shirts and then another church was kind enough to open their doors for food, clothing. The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 266 was cooking breakfast for 24 hours straight for folks. And our team here at the Village, really played a monster role in getting folks into shelters. A lot of folks, of course, had to sleep in their cars or trucks. The people of Valemont opened their doors to both friends, family and complete strangers. You know, tent city, 24 people sitting on a municipal lot in tents or under tarps. You know, motorhomes, if you were lucky to have one.

Mary W Rowe I mean, these, you know, these examples illustrate to us these extraordinary Herculean efforts that neighbors do and that people step in. And as you say, you get on the phone and before you know it … And they’re always so heartening how people respond. But we’re left back with, you know, are we building systems so that these kinds of emergencies don’t happen in the first place? I guess this is the conundrum, right? And I’m hoping we’ll get to that in a second. Kenda, let’s hear from you in terms of HRM and you’ve had a different experience of this, a couple of different challenges. And also, I just want to point out, well, you’ve had some winter challenges, so we can talk about that. But also, I’m just noticing Kathy Crow in the chat is reminding us that there are chronic crises. We’re talking about very dramatic events that suddenly add shocks, that put challenges on our resilience. But Kathy is making the point here that street nurses and people doing outreach on the ground have known for 15 years that severe heat was dehydrating homeless populations, that there weren’t adequate supports and cooling centers. And so we have chronic things that we’ve been aware of. So we’ve got the emergencies and we’ve got the chronic. And how do we actually get some focus on those things. Over to you Kenda. Welcome and nice to see you.

Kenda Mackenzie Thank you very much for having me. Yeah. So typically our issues are tied to the fall hurricane season. And so we normally get those hurricanes, tropical storms coming up the coast. We’re dodging one right now, a tropical storm, Debbie. It’s going a bit inland. So sorry, and good luck to Quebec and Ontario. But last year, to the point about the winter events – we saw in February 2023, a deep cold, which we’re not used to seeing. And even though a lot of our pipes and everything are five feet below the frost line, we had an influx of people’s water pipes freezing and bursting in their homes and not having water service. And in the past, in the winter, we’ve had freezing rain events or we’d have influx of snow and then get a rain event that the ditches and the storm systems couldn’t manage because they were full of snow. So we’ve had those different events in the winter, and 2023 was a significant year for us here, I think, in Halifax, because after the deep cold that we had in February, we had the wildfires, in Tantallon, in May and so that was … our watershed was at risk. It was in the vicinity, the watershed that supplied water to the municipality. Luckily, the winds changed and the fire moved away from our watershed, and we were fortunate with that. And then in July, we had the floods, on July 23rd, that we saw probably 250 miles of rain in a 24 hour period type thing. And going into that weekend, we were only forecasted for 80 mils of rain over the whole weekend. So I remember that morning, we were like, we can do this. This is not a big deal. By Friday night the story had changed and we had multiple driveway culverts washed out, roads were washed out and having to respond to that. And so it … and then we had a few tropical storms, in the fall. So with that flood, one of the things that we saw was the runoff getting into our watershed. And it changes the water quality. And then we have to adapt how we treat the water at the water treatment plants because of the runoff and the organics. So it’s been a … Last year was a challenging year. Our staff responded quite well, and were able to recover, but it’s shedding light on some of the things that we have to be more mindful of going forward.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, and there are just cascading impacts suddenly. Right. So it’s one thing and then it’s this, you know … it’s what about that. And how do we … and I go back to Jen’s first comment about … the water goes to the  place that will take it – in water’s case, and there are other examples of this, that the impact of a severe weather event is disproportionately experienced if the infrastructure isn’t constructed in certain a way for redundancy and so your quality does get affected because the storm water runoff goes right into it. Yeah. You know, if … We’re getting lots of interesting questions in the chat. Thanks folks, for posting those. And I also just want to point out that we have somebody coming in from Kerala and around the world these events, there’s more of a familiarity, I guess, because they’ve had more volatile weather conditions than we’ve had. And we used to just read about these things in the newspaper and watch them on television, but now they’re right on our doorsteps. So if you look at the season we’re in, there’s a question in the chat, which I’m just going to expand on … The question you’re saying, what’s the role of the federal government? I’m interested where you see the primary responsibility for this in terms of emergency preparedness. And ongoing resilience investments. Who wants to start? Does one of the mayors want to take that on? You guys have a limited tax base. I can’t imagine you’re going to take it on. Presumably you want somebody to help you.

Owen Torgerson This is … We have run into a jurisdictional contest of … We’re dealing with Parks Canada, the municipality of Jasper, the Government of Canada, Government of Alberta and the province of B.C.. Each with different ministries responsible for different things. So transportation, emergency management, wildfire response recovery. Recovery right now is key. Visitation to Valmont with Highway 16 closed through Jasper National Park is about 10% of normal. So having that business continuity case built and in place for when the federal government is able, they’ve already got the mechanisms in place for, say, business loan programs built through the pandemic. It’s just a matter of us building a business case to present to the federal government in terms of mitigation and adaptation for future events. It’s a conversation that we need to have daily. Yesterday was too late. Tomorrow we’ll lose it forever. And so that conversation needs to continue almost on a daily basis.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. I mean, as is typical after these things, there’s this massive blame game. “Oh, well, you know, why didn’t they detect this or what about …” We get caught in that jurisdictional nonsense, which is hard for people to tolerate because you just think, for crying out loud. And again, people that are lamenting homelessness, for instance, or the lack of housing. And again, the blame game happens there too. Jen, you’re in an interesting dilemma because you don’t own your land, right?

Jen Angel No. We have a leasehold interest in the land. It’s owned by the city of Toronto.

Mary W Rowe Right. So. So what is your sort of position on this when you’re a tenant, right, and whose responsibility is it, in your view, to create these kinds of protections that would make you able to rebound from this kind of thing?

Jen Angel I mean, honestly, I think from where I sit, it’s less about sort of where Evergreen sits in the land interest and more about sort of the challenge of infrastructure more broadly, like no order of government has all the answers or the capacity to solve it. And in a time of very scarce public budgets, we need to be approaching infrastructure with much more intention. We need solutions to work harder for more public policy objectives. And the infrastructure we used to build and continue to build is not fit for purpose anymore. So Evergreen’s approach has been, in particular, to advocate for and indeed build green infrastructure in cities, which can contribute to resilience in a way that’s much less costly most of the time than, you know, adapting old pipes or building gray infrastructure. And lastly, I’d say, you know, and it also can’t be project by project because rain doesn’t fall on one lot. It falls in a broad geographic area. And so you have a solution on one street and not one on the other. And they tend to be in equity deserving communities where there’s an absence of suitable infrastructure. And so the negative impact just flows next door. So there has to be an ecosystem approach both geographically and also cross-sectorally.

Mary W Rowe And interjurisdictionally …

Jen Angel Right. And interjurisdictionally. Yes.

Mary W Rowe Right. So that we’re making these investments and someone in the chat is suggesting that the Jasper fire, I’d heard this too, on a broadcast, that that the pine beetle infestation was making Jasper forests more vulnerable, and why didn’t the feds act earlier in this? And I think part of the dilemma that we have as citizens is how do we hold governments accountable if we don’t actually know? I’m interested, Denise, what your perspective has been on this in terms of how to anticipate and then rebound from something like this. Do you have a sense of how you’ve been able to put it together?

Denise O’Connor  Uh, no [laughter].

Mary W Rowe In a word. Yeah.

Denise O’Connor You know, you asked the question about the federal government and as Owen said the jurisdiction … You know, we’re provincial. But saying that in June of 22, the federal government came to Lytton, made this big media announcement … They had $77 million to help rebuild Lytton. And not a penny of that, that I know of, has been realized. Because they came in with programs that were inaccessible for our residents, for our businesses, for us. You know, for example, there was $6 million of that was for homeowners to build net zero and to build fire resilient, which is wonderful, except it’s a top up grant. So in other words, you build your house, you make a net zero, you apply then later, after you’ve already paid for it, and you are reimbursed. And insurance doesn’t do that. And the people of Lytton don’t have the savings to put into rebuilding that way. And so I’m not sure I know of anybody that’s even accessed that  program that is rebuilding. Right? And businesses, they only announced the program in January of this year of how to access, you know, some funds. And so I’ve heard some have applied and I don’t know of anybody that’s been awarded it yet. $64 million of that was for municipal buildings and … but inclusive buildings. So in other words, public buildings, not essential buildings, but that’s all right. And so we’re just in the process now of trying to access that. And again, they have to be built net zero and fire resilient, which is good.

Mary W Rowe But potentially more expensive or at least requiring more investment, which we don’t always have. I interested that the business continuity piece is coming out now and you’re two years out. How long ago was this? Three years. It’s taken them three …

Denise O’Connor Over three years. Yeah. But you know, to come out … announce the money. And I guess I’m pretty new at this politics game, right? So I don’t quite understand, but announced this two years ago and make it almost impossible to access.

Mary W Rowe Because it’s not tailor made for the kind of businesses and the size of community that you’re from. Kenda, what’s your perspective on this? You work for a municipality, but you work for a regional municipality. And the seat of the province is in Halifax. And you and Jen could probably compare notes on this … Jen, you would have experienced it when you were rebuilding the waterfront. The question is, whose obligation and responsibility is it to create these kinds of forms of infrastructure? What HRM’s approach been?

Kenda Mackenzie Yes. And so, just for clarification, we’re the regulated utility that provides service to the municipality. And so our funding sources are strictly through rates. And, and so, we have to collect … If we’re going to spend money on storm water infrastructure, it has to come from our rate base. But we do, where the municipality is our sole shareholder, work closely with the municipality on storm water initiatives, on emergency planning initiatives and those types of things. And so sometimes if there’s funding grants from the feds or from the province, we can’t access them directly as a utility, but we have to go to HRM and ask if there’s something that we’re eligible for to get that on our behalf, or we have to partner with them on some of these things. So, the availability of external funds isn’t always easy for us. But HRM … We’re working very closely with them on some initiatives on green infrastructure, storm water management strategies, fire prevention plans and those types of things.

Mary W Rowe I misspoke. You’re quite right. You’re the utility, but your sole shareholder is the municipality.

Kenda Mackenzie Correct.

Mary W Rowe Okay. And again, this is the question then … let’s say we need to harden our infrastructure in big, significant ways … that we need to take steps and invest and invest, invest at the end of this year, in December, CUI with a bunch of partners are doing a big conference on the state of our cities. And the issue this year we’re focusing on is infrastructure and all the deferred infrastructure investments we haven’t been making. What is the mechanism for us to be able to secure these resources? And I’m interested, Jen, if I could ask you, because you have held previous roles where you’ve been in government … and I’ll ask a related question, which is more to the role you’re currently occupying – Is there a way for us to be designing better and investing better in more resilient kinds of infrastructure? And if so, what are the steps to get us to that?

Jen Angel Yeah. So I think fundamentally it’s about recognizing that everybody has a role in it. So we still often do infrastructure in a very top down sort of way. And I saw a question in the chat about this too. And how do you avoid the gentrification that impacts that. Yeah, that may come with some of these adaptation interventions. So I deeply believe in the importance of engaging community, as well as other orders of government and the private sector. And there are many organizations, corporates, that want to invest in communities. It’s good for business, it’s good for talent attraction, and it’s also good corporate social responsibility. So there is a role for governance expertise and expertise and partnership to bring people together. The scale of the problem is an all hands on deck situation. And so I deeply believe that these old approaches to infrastructure are inadequate. I would also just point out, and I think its sort of been said in particular in Mayor Torgenson’s remarks, that that climate resilience also comes from community cohesion and social infrastructure – places where people can come together, platforms for different sectors to come together with community are equally important, just in process, as a way of building community connections and community resilience. So that when you are hit and you will be hit with some kind of climate event, you know who’s missing, you know who to go after and find to see if they’re okay. You know who to turn to if you’re not okay. And so I think that’s a dimension of climate resilience that’s often left out of the conversation and is part of why Evergreen is so focused on the promise of better public spaces – spaces that are resilient, that have nature-based solutions, you know, baked in, but also inclusive, that bring community together in common purpose.

Mary W Rowe I mean, again, I’m a big fan of this too. And because of my own eyes seeing the difference it made. And I know that you’re having Eric Klinenberg come and speak at your conference in the fall, who wrote a book, his PhD thesis from 1995 or something was on Chicago and how certain Chicago neighborhoods during their heatwave fared better because they were designed in such a way that people did know where people were, and they had those kinds of social connections. Whereas if you’re building neighborhoods where people don’t know, I’m assuming in the case of Valemont and Lytton, you’re small communities, so people know each other, right? And so they’re able to keep tabs on each other. When the Jasperites arrived, Owen, what was their level of awareness of what was going on or were people just in shock, pretty much?

Owen Torgerson It happened pretty quickly, Mary. So, your latter point … Shock. So getting out of Jasper … There’s only three ways out of the municipality. You know, Jasper National Park evacuated, as well as the municipality. And so it’s 10 p.m. Mountain Time. You’re told to get out.

Mary W Rowe And maybe you don’t speak English.

Owen Torgerson Perhaps not. And you are essentially escorted to Highway 16. It’s now extremely dark. As you head west, you don’t know where you’re going. You have no idea where you’re going. Yeah. You don’t know what you’re going to have when you get to where you don’t know where you’re going. And so … And then as you’re coming, you turn left or head south down Highway five for 18km to the Village of Valemount. It’s now starting to rain. We’re having lightning storms, and so you’re almost experiencing it again. And so you come into a very dark, remote … yet, we’re in the middle of everywhere. A village. It’s raining. There’s people everywhere, and then you’re filtered through an ESS center. Again, maybe you don’t speak English. We don’t have the capacity to have interpreters. And so we’re dealing with that issue as well. I mean, it just happened so quick. One point I do want to make, to Jen’s point on funding models. They’re incredibly flawed. They’re very contest based. And so if you as a municipality, original district or county, when you’re looking at these grants that are announced on a Thursday and you have to have it in by Monday, that’s got to change. And the perpetual increase of property taxation is just not sustainable for infrastructure and asset management. Let alone emergency management. And so that funding model – that needs to change, and change quickly. That where perhaps we garner a base of, say, the provincial sales tax, so 1% of the sales tax goes to, Denise in Lytton and comes to me in Valemont … whatever that looks like. But that has to change.

Mary W Rowe It’s interesting … I sometimes joke that CityTalk is all the same conversation, whether we’re talking about housing or we’re talking about newcomers or we’re talking about climate resilience. That it all boils down to this dilemma we have as Canadians, that we have a country that is organized vertically with a big, heavy duty federal government and then a bunch of provinces, and then eventually we get down to local communities. And by the time resources get to that local community, it’s really difficult to figure out how do they get distributed equitably, how do they get distributed in ways that suit the local particularities of the place … And also it just takes so bloody long. And so we’re always having this conversation about – we want ground up solutions, we want resources as close to the recipient of the service as we possibly can. And we end up always with this kind of logjam conversation. And I know … that’s not a very happy thing for the moderator to insert, but it’s … I just think it’s the reality that we deal with. It’s the reality of the Federation. And are there ways for us to do this better? And I’m interested actually, Kenda from your perspective, are there levers that a utility could be using? Could the utilities be more aggressively … Just like I want to say, could the insurers be more aggressively engaged? Is there a more robust role for utilities to play with their customers, with their clients.

Kenda Mackenzie Yeah. And that’s a good point, and a good question, because some of the things that we’re seeing in some of the question and feedback of some of the recent events, there’s a huge education piece, I think, that probably has to happen on what can the customers do differently? How can the customers be better prepared? But, for us to, you know, get in and put in hard infrastructure that’s going to take a bigger collaboration piece with the city. The city has more, I guess, levers to pull on what happens on private property, from a bylaw perspective. But there is a lot of things that are coming up in some of our emergency preparedness follow-up questions or, you know, after action events on how do we help people be more resilient themselves and better prepared for some of these events? Because they are going to keep coming.

Mary W Rowe You know, back to my early conundrum, when I said earlier in my career we couldn’t talk about preparing because people still wanted to believe we could stop climate change. But now we have to do both. We’ve got to be able to equip people for the emergency. Jen, you said it’s coming. You’re going to have one. You have to equip people, have social networks, have capacity to support people if you have to evacuate or if you have to hunker down, whatever it is. But at the same time, we need to be investing upfront so that we know how to cope with these things ahead of time. So I’m interested whether or not you folks, if you had, if you had a magic wand, what would you be saying? Let me pick one. What would you be saying to the federal government next year when they run an election? Where should climate resilience fit in the agenda, the federal agenda next year? First you Jen. Easy question. Just thought I’d throw you on.

Jen Angel Yeah, but again, I think it goes back to my earlier point, which I’m maybe not making in a compelling way. Like, we need to focus on infrastructure that can multi-solve. We need densities in dense cities and for them to be livable we need great public spaces. They can bring us together and build community including resilience in community. They can also manage storm water on site. They can support biodiversity. They can reduce urban heat island effect. So we know how to build stuff like that.

Mary W Rowe Jen, would you support decentralizing more of this and creating more … really getting resilience down to the ground at our community level. So a neighborhood level, that you have …

Jen Angel Yes, a hundred percent.

Mary W Rowe But you would push it right down. So the park that’s across the street from me needs to become a sponge. It needs to have different kinds of amenities. Even at that granule … I saw somebody raising a question about libraries. Could we all start to pull our eyes closer to the amenities that are around us and think what needs to happen to make them more …

Mary W Rowe To have more capacity to absorb heat, water, smoke? We hadn’t even talked about smoke, other kinds of social challenges. We just went through a pandemic. We’ve lived through it. Can we move it to that granular a scale?

Jen Angel I hope so, and I know municipalities and FCM, chief among them, I think CUI has also been having this conversation. You know that, as you’ve just said, if the money’s up here, it cascades, cities struggle  to manage the scale of the infrastructure problem before them. And yet they’re on the front lines. And so that’s sort of one order down or two orders down. But at a very hyper local community level – community knows best what community needs. That doesn’t mean they know how to engineer the park, but they know what the park … what gaps exist in their community, where they’re experiencing recurring issues, and they can help inform the right intervention to solve it. That that means, though, that the decisions can’t all be made from the tower, like there has to be …

Mary W Rowe So maybe we need … I love somebody in the chat just asked what’s a CUI? Thanks, Jen. CUI is us – we’re CUI? Just saying … Sorry we use the acronym a little bit more. But, do we need … I mean, let me try this, and I want to hear from our small town community folks, because so much of what you’re … you were suddenly faced with it at a small scale. You wrapped your arms around … you actually wrapped your arms around everybody. Some of us are in cities. 80% of Canadians live in cities of more than 5000 people. They can’t wrap their arms around it. So what can we learn about how locally driven our solutions need to be? Do we need neighborhood watch committees? Do we need mutual aid societies? Do we need … even beyond … the planners in the chat – help me out here. Do we need to go beyond secondary plans to community plans? How do we push this down so that it’s everybody’s problem ahead of time rather than after the fact? Kenda, you’re frowning at me, so I’m going to ask you to throw your …

Kenda Mackenzie And I’m pondering. I’m pondering because …

Mary W Rowe Pondering is welcome. You’ve got all these customers. You’ve got a way to get to people. You can put an insert in a bill, and suddenly a whole bunch of … Thousands of people read the damn thing, right? So tell me what levers do you think you might have?

Kenda Mackenzie Yeah, and I think there is aspects of that where we have to start looking at what solutions might be more localized because I’m reflecting on some of the challenges that we face with the flood. We had certain … Like half of the … Like a small subset of the municipality was severely impacted by this. And, you know, everything in their basements, their houses, were just devastated, ruined. They couldn’t get in and out of their driveways and then other parts of the municipality, our other customer base, they barely saw any rain. It was so localized, highly localized, in certain sections. And so I think.

Mary W Rowe And Jen, her experience was that …

Kenda Mackenzie Right. And so then you have, you know, there are probably solutions that could happen at that local scale, in the communities of Bedford and Sackville, for example, that would help mitigate future events or the impact of future floods. But it’s going to take a big concerted effort, a joint effort on doing some of those things. And, you know, there might be some hard decisions that have to be made on land use and where infrastructure should go and how big should it be. That was one of the biggest struggles for people. The biggest thing that we kept hearing was the storm water system failed. Well, the storm water system didn’t fail. It acted for what it was designed for. We didn’t have anything designed for something bigger.

Mary W Rowe Right. And so the dilemma is that whatever we designed for it, there’s going to be something bigger.

Kenda Mackenzie There’s going to do something bigger.

Mary W Rowe I’m just going to remind people in the chat, Melissa, this is to you, whoever Melissa is, that you’ve got to go to everyone, not just host and panelist. We’re happy to read your comment, but I want everybody to see it. So Melissa, re-enter your comment to everyone. In terms of, Owen and Denise, your experience at that, sort of, what I would call a micro scale, I don’t want you to think that for one second I’m minimizing it because you just said 8 million people moved to Halifax. So it’s a lot of people that, in your case, tumbled into Valemont. And in your case, Denise had to tumble out of Lytton.

Mary W Rowe But as you look at your experience, do you see lessons that you’re now going to implement in terms of the resilience of your own communities going forward? And tell me what the magic scale is? Maybe the scale is 200 people, you know, find 200 people that you’re in touch with and maintain that effort … First to you Owen, and then Denise.

Owen Torgerson So Valemont … the Village boundaries are just over five square kilometers, but our partnerships reach beyond just the boundaries of the municipality. We have a signed memorandum of understanding with Simpcw First Nation, of which we are in their Northern Territory. We have a risk assessment partnership with the University of Northern British Columbia …

Mary W Rowe That’s a good idea.

Owen Torgerson … With the Environment and Geomatics Department. And so we are looking at landslide risk, wildfire risk … 

Mary W Rowe Yah, you’ve got a gazillion …

Owen Torgerson … knowing that throughout the Valley those challenges are similar. So we … District of …  district of Clearwater, the Village of McBride, the Thompson Nicola Regional District, the Regional District Fraser-Fort George are all in it together because there’s the natural hazard and the pending disasters of climate change is not unique to any one of us.

Mary W Rowe No. And, you know, we could have I mean, we had that sort of list of pressures – water, fire, smoke. But we could have put water, fire, smoke, poverty, poor health … I mean, there’s a gazillion challenges pushing in on communities that affect our capacity, just as you were saying Jen, the social resilience, the social infrastructure that enables us to have this kind of resilience is the dilemma. Denise, when you look on that and you look at the … you can wrap your arms around the Village of Lytton, and tell us what we should be thinking about when we live in a … we might live in a community that’s got 400 Lyttons or, you know, even more.

Denise O’Connor Right. Yeah, yeah. You know, when the fire happened and we all went in opposite directions. We went all over the province, you know, to live or just find a safe place. The first thing we heard from our local government and from the province, even from the feds, I think, is that Lytton is going to be rebuilt to be a model community. We’re putting in a building code where we have to build to step five of the B.C., energy code. And it just infuriated all of the residents, all of those 200 people, who are saying, “what about us?” “Where do we fit into this?” You know, and it’s taken time. People are now rebuilding, you know, starting to rebuild. And now we’re at … Following the B.C. building code, which is step three of the energy code. But as a municipality now, we’re looking at – okay, so we have major water issues. We have to be planning for that. You know, we didn’t have the capacity in our reservoirs to deal with the fire when it happened, for example. Right. So we’re looking at those kinds of things. Our first nations, our neighboring First Nations are huge partners with us. We share a lot of … we share water, sewer … We share the community as a whole. We are right now working together with … We have a fire smart committee. Lytton First Nation, village and the regional district as well, TNRD. Because we recognize the need for that fuel management and the planning and, you know, around Fire Smart to keep all of our community safe, working together. Yeah. There is a lot of work to do. And we do have that opportunity, you know, we’re looking at our municipal properties and what are we going to do with them, where are our green space is going to be? Because we recognize we need that. Where are we going to start planting some trees so we have shade trees.

Mary W Rowe You have a remarkable sort of Phenix opportunity, literally, to reinvent, reimagine and reinvent this community, as you say. Put it to a standard that other people could look to and say, okay … Like you didn’t just build back better. You built back far better, right?

Denise O’Connor That’s right. And, you know, but right after the disaster was not the time to do that for the people. That’s right. But three years later …

Mary W Rowe I think people need to be aware of that. I saw that in New Orleans as two as well, it takes time … Things don’t, you’re not going to suddenly bounce right back. Jen, in terms of the Brickworks site and this is a civic site, a community site, as you say, you have at lease. Are there particular things that you think you’ll be able to do? Somebody in the chat has suggested that the redirection of the Don might help your flooding risk. I don’t know if that’s true. Are there other things? Are you getting planners and designers to help you think about how you could … I don’t know, what you could do to make the site more absorptive. Or are you going to come to all your neighbors and say, it’s your turn, you guys need to get more absorption going?

Jen Angel I mean, we’re hoping to use it as a platform to talk about the need for more sponge grounds across urban Toronto. But in terms of the site itself, already built in more things like, bio swales and greenways, elevated floors, like flood walls, you know, flood resistant materials on the walls. In addition to sponge grounds across the site. So a lot of that performed well. And as a result of sort of those technologies built in or nature-based solutions built in, we were able to host the farmers market sort of four days later and support the hundreds of small businesses that rely on the site. But there’s still a massive cleanup, and some of the areas didn’t perform as well as we would have hoped. Some just didn’t meet the scale and pace of the water that inundated the site. So there’s still, you know, more of that, more sponge grounds in more places, different improvements across the site that need to happen. And it will … It’s sort of a thing that’s never finished. You know, it’s sort of unfolding.

Mary W Rowe That’s how I feel about resilience. We’re always building it. It’s an ongoing process. And just when we think we’ve mastered … As was suggested, Kenda thought, “oh, I’ve dealt with the one thing. And then, oh, then there’s something else” you know, so it’s like an ongoing process. Well, if we take a step back and I would say I’m hopeful that there won’t be further disasters this summer, this season. But I bet you that’s unlikely. I bet we’re going to have a few more. And are we extracting the lessons that we need to extract? Are we making sure that the decision makers, I noticed in the chat, lots of people are saying, “what about those councils, municipal councils”? I noticed both the mayors neglected to talk much about their councils. Just saying. But I know that building the political consensus is tricky. Do we have a sense amongst all of us about what that message needs to be, that we need municipal leaders, provincial and federal leaders, and all of us to engage with. Owen, what would you say if you had if you had a limited amount of time? You’re on an elevator with an important person. What are you going to say?

Owen Torgerson I would ask that important person that when the federal government took over and purchased and constructed the Trans Mountain expansion pipelines, there was also the promise, verbally, of $500 million, for green tech, for green building, for green funding. My question is, where is it?

Mary W Rowe Where’s the money? Fair enough. I’ll say this just to be provocative, but I used to be concerned, I watched in New Orleans, where there was a period of time where we waited and waited and waited, thinking that the federal government was coming. And eventually one of the locals, I remember I was in a meeting and watched her say it said, “you know, the cavalry’s not coming. We’re going to have to figure this out ourselves”. And that’s the dilemma I think we’re facing here. Can we figure this out ourselves? Governments take a long time, particularly the Federal Government takes a long time. What do you think there, Denise? Is the cavalry coming … it took a long time.

Denise O’Connor I think we can figure it out and have the answers. But can we get the support for it … [where’s the money] … Because small communities need that. That’s right. And I would echo what Owen just said. You know, and how do you make that those grants, that committed money, more easily accessed?

Denise O’Connor The work we have to put in to access the money that’s been committed, it’s crazy.

Mary W Rowe We got to find a way to make money smaller. Or at least get it out in smaller increments more quickly. Kenda. And then Jen. And then we’re done.

Kenda Mackenzie Yeah, I think there’s opportunity because we know what we need. And if we’re prepared and we do a lot of the heavy lifting to have those plans, I say having the plans on the shelf ready to go in the event that there is federal money or provincial money made available for us, that we can act on that, but we have to start programing in some of these improvements and changes into our regular operating budgets. But it’s going to be costly and it’s hard because not everybody has a lot of spare money these days. And so  it’s asking the same people to pay for this.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. There’s only one taxpayer, as we all know. But there’s also something about building it right the first time or building it sensibly the first time. And I think part of my question always is, is this a role for conditionality, where the federal government and provincial governments make money available with certain conditions? We’re seeing that’s starting to happen. Just as you were suggesting, you’re rebuilding, Denise, it’s got to be to a certain standard. It’s going to challenge all of us. But I think, you know, it takes challenge to do the hard thing. Do the right thing. Last word to you, Jen.

Jen Angel No, I think I think I like that is the last word. Like it? Conditionality is critical. We need infrastructure to work harder to solve for more public policy objectives at the same time. The old way of building it does not meet the moment and it needs all hands. So how do you incentivize more players to make the scarce public funds go further? And also, we didn’t talk a lot about it today … and maybe that’s for another call, but engage with First Nations, with Indigenous communities who have been managing the land very, very well for a very long time. Including leading with nature based solutions. The gray infrastructure is not sufficient. We need to … The water’s coming. So it’s working with the land, not against it. And so there’s a shift that needs to happen in how we approach infrastructure.

Mary W Rowe Generally at whatever scale, and to make sure that we’re actually working as locally as we can. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, listen, there are, as Jen just said, so many topics that we could spin off here. We do have one coming up, actually, on nature based solutions, which will be either next week or in a couple of weeks. And all of these pieces of the puzzle. And I love that phrase, which you just repeated, Jen, that I’ve heard our friends at IKLY use … Multi-solving. It’s always got to be about multi-solving. So thank you for joining us and sharing your own very personal experience about what you’ve witnessed with your very own eyes and reminding us that it’s about community generosity, but it’s also about taking time, how long it takes for us to come to terms with whatever is happening, happened or is about to happen to us. And then also how much of a disconnect we have with where the money is and where the money is needed. So on that happy little optimistic note, set your foot outside, pay attention to what’s around you, look at the assets, think about what we have to do to make them more resilient. And thank you for joining us on CityTalk. Denise and Owen and Kendra and Jen, really great to have you on the broadcast. And we look forward to continuing. We always say “the conversation never ends is just the beginning”. Resilience is a life’s work. So thanks everybody for joining us.