After the 2021 disaster, the B.C. government drafted a Flood Strategy. It was meant to guide the province toward safer, more climate-ready communities.

The BC Flood strategy is a roadmap for protecting communities, farms, and ecosystems from the growing impacts of climate change. It lays out clear, tangible actions: modernizing outdated flood infrastructure, updating provincial policies and floodplain mapping, supporting local and First Nations-led flood plans, and scaling up nature-based solutions that reduce risk while restoring ecosystems. But despite years of consultation and collaboration, the Strategy is sitting on a shelf without the funding or political leadership needed to bring it to life.

A well-written document with no actions behind it won’t save lives or safeguard salmon habitat. Today, that strategy sits on a shelf with no funding and no plans to implement. Every season of delay puts people, livelihoods, transport corridors, food security, and wild salmon at risk.

The good news is we don’t need to start from scratch. B.C. already knows how to reduce flood risks while restoring rivers. 

• Healthy wetlands and reconnected side channels absorb floodwaters and protect communities.
• Nature-based solutions defend homes and farmland while giving salmon the healthy rivers they need to thrive.
• Provincial leadership can support local governments and First Nations with the resources to build floodplain plans that work for them.

Just recently, Metro Vancouver councillors were told the sobering truth: there’s no new funding for the Flood Strategy. According to a recent article in The Province, B.C.’s ballooning deficit now sits at $11.6 billion, and communities have been left to compete for scraps through a broken system. Delta alone faces $3 billion in upgrades — yet officials say it’s “a gamble every year” whether projects will ever get off the ground.

Flood protection in B.C. is a patchwork. Local governments are technically responsible for owning and maintaining most dikes and flood infrastructure after the provincial government downloaded this responsibility onto local governments in 2003. But these same communities don’t have the tax base to cover multi-billion-dollar upgrades.

That means every project depends on one-off grants from the province or Ottawa — if and when an application gets approved. 

This piecemeal system fails everyone:

• Communities are forced to delay urgent projects because local governments can’t risk spending millions on design work without knowing funding will follow.
• The province avoids long-term commitments, instead swooping in after disasters to rebuild. But this isn’t future-proofing for a changing climate — it’s just redoing what already failed, leaving people vulnerable again.
• People and salmon pay the highest price when infrastructure fails and rivers burst their banks.

Floods don’t just wash away buildings — they threaten lives and livelihoods, cut off highways and rail lines, and disrupt the movement of goods that keep our economy running. They destroy farms and threaten our food security, while damaging wetlands, rivers, and the critical salmon habitat that defines life in B.C. Local governments have already begun mapping risks and identifying solutions, but without provincial leadership and funding, they can’t act. Major projects remain stalled, even though we know that investing in flood adaptation now is far cheaper — and far safer — than paying for recovery later.

Prevention saves money and lives. The 2021 floods alone caused billions in damages. Yet four years later, we are still sitting on a shelf-bound strategy. We have the solutions, but they need to be more than words in the BC Flood Strategy. They need to be actions, supported by stable, dedicated funding. It shouldn’t take another billion-dollar disaster, more homes destroyed, or more lives lost before action is taken. But unless our provincial government changes course, that’s the gamble we’re all being forced to take.

👉 Start today: add your voice to the call for action.