This excellent report from the Climate Resources Council and the pointed remarks of co-chair Colleen Giroux-Schmidt make plain that getting to grip with climate risk before the fact makes more sense than ad hoc clean up after the event.One thing apparently not in the report is the way climate resilience is to be organized. It was obvious in the case of the Fraser flood disaster that the lack of a regional flood management authority, response structure and funding was a big problem.
In B.C., the NDP government has decided to provide extraordinary protection to tenants, at the cost of landlords. The rates of “no fault” evictions are lower in Alberta and Saskatchewan , Ontario and other jurisdictions, for the simple reason that governments in those jurisdictions recognize that landlords actually have to be able to afford the properties that they are renting out, as well as make a modest return on their investment.
The government is setting many climate goals every year and spending billions of dollars trying to reach those goals, but none of those goals include “buy in” from the public. In 2022 in Victoria, with a rent increase cap of 1.5 per cent, renters faced up to a 34 per cent increase in rental costs .