Flood risk management in the Canadian prairie provinces: Defaulting towards flood resistance and recovery versus resilience

Figures & data

Table 1. Study participants by stakeholder group and location.

	Federal government	Provincial government	Municipal government	Other stakeholders^a	Total
Non-province specific	4	–	–	7	11
Alberta	–	2	5	1	8
Saskatchewan	–	2	1	4	7
Manitoba	–	5	2	1	8
Total	4	9	8	13	34

^a Academia, consultancy, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), private business.

Table 2. Flood risk management (FRM) policy instruments applicable in Canada’s prairie provinces by type, owner and approach.

				FRM approach supported
Policy instruments (n = 65)		Owner^a	Flood prevention	Flood defence	Flood mitigation	Flood prep. and response	Flood recovery
Strategies (n = 10)
	An Emergency Management Framework for Canada	F	x	x	x	x	x
	National Disaster Mitigation Strategy	F	x	x	x	x
	Resilience and Mitigation Framework for Alberta Floods	AB	x	x	x	x
	Land use framework	AB	x
	Water Security Agency 25-year plan	SK	x	x	x	x
	Manitoba Emergency Plan & Flood Annexe	MB				x	x
	Area Structure Plans (AB)	M	x
	Inter-municipal Development Plans (AB)	M	x
	Municipal Development Plans	M	x
	Emergency response plans	M				x
			8	4	4	6	2
Legislation (n = 14)
	Municipal Government Act	AB	x
	Water Act	AB	x	x	x
	Emergency Management Act	AB				x	x
	The Planning and Development Act	SK	x			x	x
	Provincial Drainage Regulations	SK		x	x
	Statement of Provincial Interests Regulations	SK	x
	Water Security Agency Act	SK	x	x	x
	The Emergency Planning Act	SK				x	x
	Designated Flood Areas Regulations	MB	x
	Dyking Authority Act	MB		x
	Emergency Measures Act	MB				x	x
	The Planning Act	MB	x
	Water Resources Administration Act	MB	x	x
	Land use bylaws	M	x
			9	5	3	4	4
Programme (n = 19)
	Build Canada Fund	F		x
	National Disaster Mitigation Program	F		x	x
	Growing Forward 2	F			x
	Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements	F				x	x
	Flood Hazard Identification Program	AB	x	x	x	x
	Provincial Mitigation Program	AB		x	x	x
	Agricultural Watershed Enhancement Program	AB			x
	Alberta Community Resilience Program	AB		x	x
	Erosion Control Program	AB		x			x
	Floodway Relocation Program	AB	x
	Watershed Resiliency and Restoration Program	AB		x
	Disaster Recovery Program	AB					x
	Emergency Flood Damage Reduction Program	SK				x
	Provincial Disaster Assistance Program	SK					x
	Erosion Control Assistance	SK		x	x
	Rural Water Control Assistance	SK		x	x
	Community Flood Protection Program	MB		x
	Disaster Financial Assistance (program)	MB					x
	Individual Flood Protection Program	MB		x
			2	11	8	4	5
Guidance and information (n = 22)
	National Building Codes	F	x
	National Flood Mapping Guidelines	F	x			x
	Risk-based land-use guidance	F	x
	Water Survey of Canada Flood Information	F				x
	Emergency preparedness guide	F				x
	FRM Guidelines for the Location of New Facilities	AB	x
	Guidelines on extreme flood analysis	AB	x			x
	Stormwater Management guidelines	AB		x	x
	Flood Choices for Albertans	AB	x
	Flood hazard map application	AB	x
	Alberta Municipal Recovery Toolkit	AB					x
	Personal and Family Preparedness	AB				x
	Nine steps for Emergency Plan Development	SK				x
	Flood Information	MB				x
	Flood Recovery	MB					x
	Preparing for a flood	MB				x
	Health and Safety	MB				x
	Evacuation	MB				x
	Managing Stress	MB					x
	Prepare	MB				x
	Recover	MB					x
	Respond	MB				x
			7	1	1	12	5
			Flood prevention	Flood defence	Flood mitigation	Flood prep. and response	Flood recovery
	Total number of documents: 65	Total	26	21	16	28	15
			40%	32%	25%	43%	23%

^a F = federal government; AB = Alberta government; SK = Saskatchewan government; MB = Manitoba government; M = municipal government.

Table 3. Perceived ownership of flood risk management (FRM) roles and responsibilities, reported by number of participants assigning the role or responsibility.

		Number of participants assigning the role to federal, provincial, municipal, or other stakeholder groups (total n = 34)^a
FRM roles and responsibilities identified by study participants	Total	Federal	Provincial	Municipal	Other
Developing, implementing and enforcing land use planning	23	0	6	17	0
Provision of funding for FRM mitigation, response and recovery	21	17	4	0	0
Implementation of FRM policies and actions	19	0	9	10	0
Assess flood hazards and risks, carry out flood mapping	17	5	9	3	0
Public and stakeholder education on flood risk	15	2	6	1	6^b
Support municipalities with technical expertise, flood fighting and other FRM resources	13	0	13	0	0
Coordinate policy and action across jurisdictional boundaries	12	9	2	0	1
Data collection and dissemination	12	7	5	0	0
Ensure emergency preparedness	12	0	1	11	0
Provide national guidance and standards	10	10	0	0	0
Research and development of practice, tools, alternatives or FRM-related science	10	7	1	1	1
Development of an FRM strategy	10	6	3	1	0
Flood forecasting	10	2	8	0	0
Oversight and enforcement of FRM policies and actions	9	5	4	0	0
Coordination of emergency response	9	0	9	0	0
Provide emergency support when required	5	5	0	0	0
Responsible for First Nations FRM	5	4	1	0	0
Administer federal funding programmes	5	0	5	0	0
Regulate drainage	5	0	2	3	0
Develop provincial guidance and standards	4	0	4	0	0
Coordination between levels of government, ministries or departments	3	0	2	1	0
Responsibility for major rivers	2	1	1	0	0
Water resource management	2	0	2	0	0
Support government to reduce the financial and human burden	2	0	0	0	2
Translate science for practical use	2	0	0	0	2
Support provinces and municipalities through a central resource of expertise	1	1	0	0	0
Watershed management within province	1	0	1	0	0
Coordination of evacuation of First Nations	1	0	0	0	1
Responsible drainage	1	0	0	0	1
Determine socially acceptable levels of risk	1	0	0	1	0

^a Bold formatting indicates most frequently identified key roles and responsibilities.

^b Most commonly associated with non-governmental stakeholders.

Table 4. Perspectives on the strengths and challenges of current flood risk management (FRM) roles and responsibilities.

Key strengths	Supporting statements from interviewees
Ability to manage and recover from flood events: • Emergency response is effective ○ Response and recovery is well funded. ○ Emergency preparedness is improving.	• We’ve always concentrated on response, and we do that really well. We have a clear emergency management procedure…. It identifies lead roles and responsibilities of all partners within the province • It’s a well-rehearsed cycle of processes each year in flood season. It’s all coordinated through a lead organisation which brings all the stakeholders together • Generally, when you get into an emergency, you know spending control is going to be lifted…haven’t had the experience where we’ve been limited in what we can do to protect life and safety by lack of financial resources • We have increased the activities that we undertake from a preparedness standpoint. Municipal emergency response plans are now a legal requirement and are now much more common in municipalities than they were 20 years ago • Provinces are providing guidance on response plan development, ensuring that municipalities are aware of roles and responsibilities and resources that are available
Commitments to collaborative action: • Collaborations between river basin organisations, watershed groups and conservation districts • Cost sharing of FRM project funding • Data sharing	• The watershed group incorporates planning and advice on a watershed-wide scale. It is a beneficial collaboration of municipal and provincial governments, conservation groups and other stakeholders. We can pool our technical and financial resources to plan on a more regional scale • Municipalities get a lot of support from the province; they really try to help us and push forward our projects and collaborate on our funding proposals. The province has a grant programme to support community and individual flood protection. Then there’s the disaster financial assistance programme • Government organisations do try to work together…. We [watershed organisation] have a contract with all of our partners which determine how we’ll handle the sharing of information and data • A lot of the data we get is shared more informally through professional contacts. I know some people in the provincial government who might have data I need; they know I might have data they need
Key challenges	Examples of statements from interviewees
Conflicts between policy goals and policy implementation: • Financial resources are biased towards response and recovery • Conflicts of interest exist between prevention of flood risk and economic development • Conflicts exist between regulatory regimes • Funding can be hard to access	• We [municipalities] see a lot of support for emergency relief after the fact, when we haven’t been able to get our hands on funding related to the prevention of flooding…we saw hundreds of millions of dollars in this area for emergency flood relief, but we feel that if we had seen a fraction of that to go towards prevention, the recovery costs would have been much smaller • Municipal governments are dependent on property taxes and thus have an incentive to allow development in flood-prone areas where often they can collect higher taxes • We [municipalities] are trying to mitigate for increased drainage in the neighbouring province, but because we have very restrictive regulations here, it is very difficult. We are trapped between a lack of regulation and inflexible regulations • A $20 million CAD event is what is needed to trigger disaster financial assistance federally. In a rural municipality, it’s easy to have significant damage that is under $20 million CAD • It can be hard to convince governments to invest in mitigation to address flood risk when there are obvious immediate needs in health care, and education
Inconsistent focus on FRM: • Uncertainty of financial support for mitigation • Policy cycles make long-term FRM planning difficult • Policy windows influence resources available for FRM policy and action	• We [the province] need to say that there’s going to be annual funding available to help improve flood protection levels or help in understanding that flood risk. But the NDMP is a 4-year programme. We don’t know what will be there after that • The time horizon over which policy is expected to make a difference is extremely important and it needs to also have time to unfold. But we are not good at planning in cycles that are longer than election cycles • When resources are only available after a flood, it becomes hard. What we end up doing is band-aid fixing issues when a disaster occurs, because that’s the funding that’s available to us – rather than working towards mitigation efforts, which is what we should be doing
Availability and coordination of resources: • FRM knowledge and expertise are too widely distributed to be used in the most effective manner • Existing tools for FRM are inadequate • Lack of data to support decisions, assess risks and enforce legislation • Data is not coordinated	• Human resources are spread over three provinces, three levels of government and many departments and organisations • Municipal authorities often don’t have a technical background and cutbacks in provincial and federal departments mean that the support for effective FRM isn’t there • Those of us working in FRM are split up and under-resourced and have a great deal of difficulty doing a good job, despite our best efforts • We have some unique geography. And while there are tools that are available out there, that are being exploited in other countries, we’re not sure how well we could use them or what their effectiveness would be in Canada • We need data on our hazards, the hydrology, meteorology, topography. We need the data of where are our elements at risk, people, property and infrastructure. But we don’t really have this • During a flood, we needed cadastral data and GIS datasets that were held by another department. Although they were willing to share it, they had to sanitise some of the data, such as people’s names and personal information, which took too long to organise • There is no leadership or coordination of data gathering. As a result, we end up with many groups saying, ‘Well, I’m going to have to start collecting my own data’, and then these data failed to get merged

NDMP = National Disaster Mitigation Program.