Canada's 'last resort' recovery fund should make communities more disaster-resistant, critics say
Ottawa has spent nearly $8 billion on disaster recovery since 1970 — most of it in the past decade
In the wake of Canada's worst wildfire season on record, provincial and territorial governments are turning to the federal government for help with covering the costs of rebuilding.
The federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangement program (DFAA) is a decades-old cost-sharing program which helps fund disaster recovery. But with climate change making natural disasters more frequent, the government is looking to overhaul the program.
The program covers damage done to private homes that isn't covered under private insurance, along with damage to public buildings and infrastructure and evacuation costs. Ottawa provides the money but it's administered by provincial and territorial governments.
The federal government's share of payments issued under the DFAA is determined by a formula that sees it pay a larger portion as expenses increase. Ottawa bears no burden if the damage amounts to less than $3.61 per capita in the affected province. The federal government's share can rise as high as 90 per cent for events causing damage amounting to more than $18 per capita.
Since 1970, Ottawa has contributed nearly $8 billion to disaster recovery through the DFAA. According to Public Safety Canada, 73 per cent of that money was paid out in the last decade.
Ottawa provided more than $1 billion to B.C. to deal with the aftermath of the 2021 floods that displaced thousands of people and destroyed farmland in the province's Lower Mainland.
The federal government is also providing DFAA funding to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces to cope with the effects of post-tropical storm Fiona. A spokesperson for Public Safety Canada said those cost estimates are still being assessed.
Ralph Pentland, a retired federal public servant who worked on programs similar to the DFAA, said that unless Ottawa leverages the program to encourage the construction of more resilient infrastructure, it should expect to pay higher bills following future disasters.
"We could just go on and we could let these things increase and increase forever and we could have the federal government bail everybody out as a means of last resort, [but] that's going to be very expensive," he said.
Pentland's comments echo concerns flagged by an expert panel report on the DFAA written last year. The panel said the DFAA does little to discourage building in high-risk areas — particularly those prone to flooding.
"Municipalities may be disincentivized to provide adequate risk information to property owners or developers, especially for high-yield taxable properties such as those on waterfronts, because the financial responsibility for damages falls to the DFAA when insurance is not available," the panel's report reads.
"It's really a perverse incentive in a way," Pentland said. "Why do they bother building in the right place if somebody's going to come and bail them out?"
Residents are set to start returning to Yellowknife on Wednesday and attention will soon shift to assessing the damage caused by fires that forced thousands to flee the territorial capital weeks ago.
Trudeau says insurance will be harder to get
The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) says standard homeowner and tenant insurance policies cover damage caused by fires. But last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canadians likely will find it harder to get insurance in future due to climate change.
"We are facing a changing world right now, a changing climate," he said. "We've seen more and more intense weather events. Insurance is going to get more difficult for people to obtain."
Trudeau was speaking in B.C.'s Central Okanagan region — another area devastated by wildfires this summer.
Pentland said the DFAA acts as a sort of "free insurance" program to backstop what private insurers won't cover. He argued that the federal government needs to start leveraging the program to encourage more construction that can resist extreme weather events.
"The objective of any insurance program should be to leverage better management," he said.
Trudeau acknowledged that more thought needs to go into rebuilding in the wake of natural disasters.
"There are a lot of things we need to do to be thoughtful and careful as we rebuild," he said. The prime minister said more emphasis needs to be placed on forest management and building resilient communities that can mitigate wildfire damage.
Anne Kleffner, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Calgary, said recent disasters are forcing governments at all levels to rethink how they build infrastructure and where they let people build homes.
"This is kind of this watershed moment, where it's like everybody is waking up to the fact that we can't just try to repair and rebuild afterwards. We really have to build a more resilient sort of infrastructure," she said.
Public Safety Canada said the government is undergoing a review of the DFAA with the aim of modernizing the program. But the current parameters are expected to remain in place until March 2025.
Jason Thistlethwaite, a University of Waterloo professor with expertise in climate change adaptation and risk mitigation, said the government should accelerate its review process.
"It is frustrating that we're losing out on opportunities right now to take advantage of those [expert panel] recommendations by reforming the DFAA," he said.
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Thistlethwaite said Ottawa shouldn't wait for its review to be complete to start leveraging the program's funds to build more resilient infrastructure.
"This is a critical window when we could be rebuilding in ways that help prevent ... the same disasters from happening," he said.
Kleffner agreed that some urgency is called for but added the program's complexity means the government has to tread carefully.
"I think in principle sooner is definitely better. They want to get it right and ... you know how fast it is to change large institutional arrangements — it's not easy. So I think it's probably better to get it right and take the time than try to be too reactive," she said.
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