National Disaster Mitigation Program
Background
The National Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP) exists to fill a critical gap in Canada’s ability to effectively mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from flood-related events by building a body of knowledge on flood risks in Canada, and investing in foundational flood mitigation activities, including small-scale infrastructure and non-structural activities.
Funding to establish the NDMP was provided in Budget 2014, which earmarked $200M over five years starting in FY 2015-2016. This included $183M in Grants and Contributions funding for cost-shared projects with provinces and territories under four streams: Risk Assessments; Flood Mapping; Mitigation Planning; and Investments in Non-structural and Small Scale Structural Mitigation Projects (maximum $1.5M Public Safety Canada funding to Provinces and $2.25M to Territories under this final stream). The investment also included $17M in Operating and Maintenance funding to assist in building the foundation for future, informed, proactive prevention and mitigation by investing in the areas of risk, resilience, and return on investment tools; risk and resilience information repository; and public awareness and engagement activities.
Since the program’s inception, Public Safety Canada has approved 363 projects, for a total value of just over $94M in Grants and Contributions, across all program streams. The uptake has steadily increased year over year as well as the total requested federal funding, with most of it going towards flood mapping (38%) and small-scale infrastructure projects (47%). Approximately 240 projects are currently active under the program.
The NDMP will sunset on March 31, 2020.
Considerations
The NDMP serves to meet the insurance industry’s preconditions for establishing a residential overland flood insurance market in Canada. These conditions were reiterated in June 2019 by the Insurance Bureau of Canada as being essential to making residential flood insurance commercially viable in Canada:
- Accurate and up-to-date flood hazard mapping to allow all tiers of government and stakeholders to make risk informed decisions;
- Ongoing and adequate funding for mitigation investments in public and private infrastructure;
- Widespread awareness of flood risk and sound understanding by all stakeholders of the consequences of flood risk and the available tools; and
- Post disaster assistance for residential flooding that encourages investments in mitigation and strong disaster reduction behaviours.
In 2015, the insurance industry began offering residential overland flood insurance and is working to further strengthen its ability to increase the availability of insurance coverage. Prior to 2015, Canada was the only G7 country without residential flood insurance. Today, about
35% of households have such insurance; however, take-up varies regionally across the country, and those at high risk of flooding are generally considered to be uninsurable.
In addition to the NDMP, there is dedicated mitigation funding through Infrastructure Canada’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund. This is a national merit-based program that will invest $2B over 10 years to support large-scale infrastructure (over $20M), disaster mitigation and climate adaptation.
None of the disaster mitigation funding available through Infrastructure Canada supports non-structural disaster mitigation measures, such as risk assessment, hazard mapping, mitigation planning, public awareness or land-use planning and implementation.
Stakeholders have expressed concern that no plans have been announced to extend the NDMP beyond its sunset, which will leave a gap in dedicated federal grants and contributions related to small-scale structural and non-structural flood mitigation, as well as a gap in funding for flood mapping, federal activities supporting disaster mitigation research and policy development, and disaster mitigation public awareness. Limited funding for some non-structural mitigation measures such as public awareness was made available in Budget 2019. However, stakeholders are still signaling that there is a gap.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada has called on the federal government to continue to invest in initiatives that mitigate the future impacts of extreme weather and build resilience to its damaging effects. It has also called for a commitment to a national action plan on flooding.
Next Steps
The Department is considering options concerning the sunsetting of the NDMP, as well as the broader approaches for mitigation overall and managing disaster costs.
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