OTTAWA — A year after flooding from successive “atmospheric rivers” cut highways and rail lines in the Fraser Valley, the federal government is holding up money for disaster-mitigation measures until it can organize announcements to tout the funding.

The delayed funds could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Raising defences against climate-related disasters is partly about protecting lives (the atmospheric-river disaster is believed to have killed five people and the earlier fires that swept through the Interior killed two), partly about protecting property from multibillion-dollar damage, and partly about reinforcing supply chains that keep Canadians working.

According to Infrastructure Canada, the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) is for “structural and natural infrastructure projects to increase the resilience of communities that are impacted by natural disasters triggered by climate change.”

Launched in 2018 and meant to last 10 years, the fund quickly burned through much of its $2-billion endowment on projects like strengthening coastal flooding protection south of Vancouver, improving highway culverts in New Brunswick and making Toronto’s “tree canopy and waterfront shoreline structures” more resilient against floods and storms.

A federal briefing document from early 2022 said the fund got $6 billion worth of applications for that first $2 billion in funding. In practice, the document said, the program has overwhelmingly been for anti-flood measures, with smaller outlays against storm and erosion damage (like that Hurricane Fiona caused in Atlantic Canada) and wildfires.

The Liberal government gave the fund a $1.375-billion boost in 2021 and invited applications from provincial and local governments, as well as public bodies like universities.

In an emergency House of Commons discussion of the B.C. flooding a year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested there will be more top-ups.

“We will continue to increase funding as we help communities and Canadians get through these difficult times,” he said. The Infrastructure Department was then beginning to pore over the new applications it received by the deadline of Oct. 15, 2021.

By last summer, according to documents The Logic obtained through an access-to-information request, the department was ready to put several large-scale projects—ones whose proponents were seeking at least $20 million in federal funding—on Infrastructure Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s desk.

“A decision is requested at your earliest convenience,” the department’s briefing note said, putting the last words in bold type. If LeBlanc approved them, it said, the department would inform the would-be recipients, secretly.

“As outlined in the [approval-in-principle] letters, the approval of the project must remain confidential until a joint project announcement has been completed,” the document said. “It is important to note that until projects have been announced, project proponents will be limited in moving forward with project implementation, such as proceeding with request for proposals and signing contracts.”

An assistant deputy minister, Gerard Peets, signed the note July 14; LeBlanc approved it and the list of projects a month later, on Aug. 15.

Much of the document was redacted before being released, including separate lists of projects that met the disaster fund’s criteria but “did not pass merit,” and ones that were deemed ineligible.

The unredacted portion includes mention of previous approval for a $214-million effort to clean up Iqaluit’s water supply. The government plucked that from the queue last spring, amid a crisis over fuel contamination not connected to climate change or natural disasters, though the Nunavut capital also has a longer-term water-shortage problem.

It also has a copy of a letter to Mayor Drew Dilkens of Windsor, Ont., promising just over $32.7 million in federal money for upgrades to that city’s sewage-treatment plant.

The three-page letter was dated Aug. 15 and has LeBlanc’s signature on it. On Aug. 31, Dilkens and Windsor MP Irek Kusmierczyk announced the federal funding.

If all the letters are three pages long, the redactions in the document released to The Logic suggest LeBlanc was presented with about nine additional large-scale projects to approve.

LeBlanc’s ministerial spokesperson Jean-Sébastien Comeau passed an inquiry about why more projects haven’t been announced to Infrastructure Canada’s communications department. 

“Departmental officials are working with proponents on future announcements,” spokesperson Zoltan Csepregi wrote in an email. He pointed to three recent announcements from the disaster-mitigation fund’s stream for smaller projects:

• $5.92 million for a stormwater pond in Selkirk, Man.
• $12 million for flood protection in Saint John, N.B.
• $21.7 million for separate flood-protection projects on First Nations on Vancouver Island

Counting one other funding announcement—a wildfire resilience program in the Northwest Territories given just under $20 million in April—the small-projects stream has promised less than $60 million out of its $670-million top-up.

The Windsor and Iqaluit projects account for about $246.7 million of the $705-million funding stream for large-scale projects pledged in the 2021 boost.

The department’s information page on the fund says a “second assessment period” for applications has been postponed but does not say why. Comeau and Csepregi did not address The Logic’s questions about that.

Csepregi also said that “under the DMAF program, once federal funding is approved for a project and all approval conditions are met, work can begin right away”—contrary to what Gerard Peets, the assistant deputy minister, warned LeBlanc. Csepregi didn’t respond to a follow-up email about the discrepancy.

That federal briefing document prepared last winter said municipal governments accounted for 73 per cent of the approved projects as of September 2021.

“There is an urgent need to rapidly scale up investment in disaster mitigation and climate resilient infrastructure for communities of all sizes,” the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) said in a September statement on climate adaptation. The disaster fund was one “proven delivery mechanism” for doing it quickly, the group said.

On Dec. 5, as the federation’s big-city mayors had a meeting with LeBlanc, the FCM declined to say whether the lack of spending through the fund has any effect on its members’ plans.