Feds and province form joint committee on B.C. natural disasters

The federal and provincial governments have agreed to set up a joint cabinet committee to address the urgent and longer term needs of British Columbia in the wake of devastating infrastructure damage.

The announcement came after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured the Fraser Valley, one of the most impacted areas of the province following the once-in-one-hundred-year rains and flooding.

At a joint news conference with B.C. Premier John Horgan Friday evening, Trudeau was asked about the need to rebuild for the stark realities of climate change that are bringing increasingly severe weather events.

“This is a new reality that responsible governments, particularly governments that strongly believe in the need to fight climate change with everything we have, know we can’t build for the world we had twenty years ago,” Trudeau said. “We need to build for the world we’re going to have twenty years from now.”

Trudeau suggested everything that was being rebuilt would be viewed through that lens.

Horgan said it was important to have a strong relationship with Ottawa now and in the coming years.

He highlighted how the province’s highways linking the vital port of Vancouver, through to the Interior and beyond, is crucial not just for B.C. but for the national interest.

“The Prime Minister and I talked about the Trans-Canada of old is not the Trans-Canada that British Columbians and Canadians understand. It's the Coquihalla,” he said. “We want to get it up and running for essential services and for freight and other goods to be moving back and forth, and that is a collaboration between our two orders of government.”

Horgan stressed the Canadian economy depends on getting goods in and out of the port of Vancouver.

The new joint cabinet committee will be co-chaired by federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair and Mike Farnworth, B.C.’s Public Safety Minister.

Trudeau also announced monies donated to the Red Cross to meet urgent needs of British Columbians displaced by the storms would be matched by both levels of government, meaning every dollar donated would be worth three.