Extreme weather in Ottawa is on the rise. You might not like the solutions

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A tornado. A derecho. Floods, both of the spring-thaw variety and the heavy rainfall type. A pall of smoke from fires half a continent away. Heat waves. An ice storm or two.

Ottawa has seen its fair share of weather-related threats in recent years, as a warming climate has increased the number of serious events to have struck the capital.

The city is not alone. Across the country, governments, first responders, property managers, academics and more have seen the effects of increasingly dangerous weather. Dealing with threatening weather is a complex problem, which can sometimes conflict with other goals, like easing the housing crisis. And the solutions can sometimes be unpalatable to residents living in high-risk zones.

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This week, the capital will play host to a three-day Canada-wide convention on emergency preparedness and climate adaptation, starting Tuesday. It will be the first of its kind to bring together representatives from different parts of the disaster ecosystem. Some 3,000 attendees are expected at the event at the Shaw Centre. The conference also features a disaster expo, with products and services ranging from temporary dams to training programs. (The expo is open to the public free of charge on Wednesday and Thursday.)

One of the aims of the conference is to break down silos, said conference organizer Nick Samain, senior vice president of DMG Events.

“Different people do things in different ways,” he said. “It’s the first time we’re pulling them all together.”

Beth Gooding, the City of Ottawa’s director of public safety service, emergency and protective services, will be appearing on a panel on Canada’s national adaptation strategy, which sets out the blueprint for preparing and adapting to climate change, from infrastructure to species at risk.

Gooding appreciates that both emergency preparedness and climate adaptation will be on the agenda at the conference. “They are inexorably intertwined now,” she said.

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“I want to make sure I highlight the impacts on people. We have been going through a range of emergencies. We’re seeing warmer, wetter weather. We’re seeing urban flooding and more severe weather. For a municipality, it’s more than just statistics.”

Floods are a good example of a risk that can be mitigated. Some areas are flood-prone and there are ways to prevent or discourage people from living there.

Over 1.5 million Canadian homes are located in areas of high flood risk, according the Public Safety Canada. About 90 per cent of Canada’s $2.9-billion average annual flood damage is concentrated in about 10 per cent of homes that are the most at risk. Most of these 1.5 million homes are not insured against flooding because insurance companies can’t offer affordable coverage or because homeowners can’t pay high premiums.

In the past decade, floods across Canada have averaged almost $800 million in annual insured losses. Much more than that is uninsured. Canadians pay $3 out-of-pocket for every $1 in insured damage, according to a 2019 figure from the Insurance Bureau of Canada. In Quebec, Desjardins Group has announced it would no longer offer new mortgages in high-risk flood zones or provide flood insurance in those areas. 

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Gooding said she’s interested in broad discussions about property insurance, especially when people are either struggling to pay for insurance or can’t pay at all.

“What we’re seeing in Ottawa is that there are many homes that aren’t able to be insured,” she said.

Governments and the insurance industry are moving to shift the way people behave, to force them to pay attention to the risks associated with their decisions. One of these policies is “strategic relocation” — essentially buying out homeowners in flood-prone areas and either relocating or demolishing the homes.

After floods hit Gatineau in 2017 and 2019, Quebec dropped the limit for repair or rebuilding under its disaster compensation from $159,000 in 2017 to a $100,000 lifetime limit. Property owners on floodplains were eligible for a buyout up to a maximum payment of $200,000, plus $50,000 for land. As of 2019, more than 250 homes were demolished and 148 lots were transferred to the city of Gatineau.

Last week, an advisor to Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante told reporters that boroughs in the city will be able to pass their own bylaws to ban building new basement apartments, prompting criticism that such a move would reduce affordable housing options. 

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This points to the fact that municipalities can face a conflict between two priorities — reducing flood risk to residents and creating more housing. Businesses and households face unanticipated spending when disaster strikes. That can be a drag on the economy, while governments are forced to choose between raising taxes to maintain services, cutting services or taking on debt to pay, according to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute.

“By 2025, a 0.35 per cent increase in corporate and personal income taxes will be required to cover increased government spending of about $5 billion annually on climate damages, without eroding services,” the report predicts.

In the midst of a housing shortage when there’s pressure to build more homes faster, there must also be incentives for municipal governments to stop approving developments in high-risk areas, including those prone to wildfires, said Ryan Ness, adaptation director at the Canadian Climate Institute.

“Federal, provincial and municipal policies have to make sure that a minimum number of homes are built where they are vulnerable to flooding and wildfire, where they will become a long-term liability,” he said.

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The federal government announced that it would create a low-cost flood insurance program aimed at ensuring that families in high-risk areas can insurance at affordable rates in last year’s budget. Details have not been released.

Ness, who will be speaking at the conference, warns that a poorly designed low-cost insurance program could allow people who live in flood-prone areas to keep on living there.

“People who live in high-risk areas will be bankrupted or the costs will be passed on the taxpayer, where we all pay,” he said.

When communities are rebuilt after a disaster, they are not the same, said Carole Therrien, a Carleton University anthropologist who is researching how cultures and communities react and rebuild after a major disaster.

People sometimes move after a disaster. Sometimes they move back, she said.

“You can build a new house or a new bridge, but people move, there are new businesses, new power dynamics.”

And while there’s a lot of talk about “resilience.” sometimes that not enough, she said. “You can stomp on a plant and it will regrow, but it takes time to heal,” said Therrien, who is studying how multiple hurricanes have affected communities in the Caribbean and the role of women in rebuilding.

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There will likely be a buzz at the conference about a Canadian emergency management agency, similar to FEMA in the US, that would play a role in coordinating jurisdictions, said Therrien. Speaking to reporters in July, the federal minister responsible for emergency preparedness, Harjit Sajjan, didn’t rule out created such an agency.

Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa is developing partnerships.

After the derecho in May 2022 brought winds of almost 200 km/h and left almost 200,000 customers without power, the city developed an emergency food protocol for emergency responses in partnership with the Ottawa Food Bank. That protocol was rolled out after an ice storm hit the city in April 2023.

“We need of whole-of-society approach,” said Gooding. “But a lot of our strategies are government-only. I think getting people in the same space to talk to each other is a great opportunity. It will expose people to connections they won’t even know they’re making.”

Houses, roads and bridges can be rebuilt, but a disaster is never really over, said Therrien. Part of the solution is about “soft relationships.”

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“I want to bring about a level of awareness around emergency planning and the importance of community networks in rebuilding communities,” she said.

“Communities have interdependencies. When those are severed, there is no emergency agency that can fix it. It’s important to help get the community leadership back on its feet.”

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