'This is our problem now': climate change panellists discuss future floods

Government inaction was one of the concerns raised at CBC New Brunswick's Future Floods Forum Thursday night at Kinsella Auditorium on the St. Thomas University campus in Fredericton.

The forum, hosted by Terry Seguin and featuring local panellists, explored clear-cutting, the cost of climate change at the community level and what people can do to prepare for future floods.

One member of the audience said he doesn't think local government is doing enough to protect people in the community against flooding.

Nobody is there to help people who want to help themselves, he said.

"I don't know what it takes for people to understand that it's time to do something now," said the audience member. "And it's not only time to do something about the symptoms. It's time to do something about the root cause." He was met with applause.

Jeff Hoyt, the executive director of New Brunswick's climate secretariat, said on the preparedness side, the government has been working with the City of Fredericton to develop a climate change adaptation plan. The climate secretariat is a branch of the Department of Environment and Local Government.

Hoyt said 54 communities in the province have gone through climate change vulnerability assessments.

"That is really an important first step," Hoyt said, offering to meet with the audience member after the panel to hear his concerns.

"It is at the community level, maybe not at the level of the individual homeowner, but there's often lots of opportunities for engagement at the individual level within that planning exercise."

For the second year in a row, residents scrambled to build sandbag barriers around their homes, roads were closed and a section of the Trans Canada Highway was shut down. Some were also forced to leave their homes as floodwaters rose. Those who decided to stay were cut off from land and trapped inside for days, like Maugerville resident Paul Arthurs who spent 12 days stuck in his house during the flood this year.

The back-to-back severe flooding has also made some choose between spending thousands to flood-proof their homes or packing up and moving to dryer land. It's left homeowners and local government struggling to figure out how to best prepare for future floods.

Graeme Stewart Robertson, another panellist and the executive director of the Atlantic Coastal Action Program in Saint John, agreed governments need to educate people on where they can access resources about how to protect their communities against climate change related events, like flooding.

"We have to rethink how we operate as municipalities, as local service districts with respect to that," Stewart said. "Because we need to support not just landowners, but people who rent and are tenants and those who maybe cannot afford land, but that everyone has an action and a role to play as New Brunswickers."

Is flooding along the St. John River the new norm?

5 years ago

Duration 1:27

For two years in a row, floodwater reached historic levels along the lower St. John River system.

Louise Comeau, one of the five panellist and a research associate at the University of New Brunswick, said there's no political will to help mitigate climate change.

"We have for thirty years done very little to deal with this issue and we've had not just things happen in Canada, but things happen globally. The effects that we're seeing today are only going to accelerate over the next thirty years," Comeau said.

Comeau studies environmental education and communications, environmental ethics and the sociology of climate change, among other environment-related topics.

"This is our problem now."

But she said citizens need to put more pressure on governments to care about climate change.

"We all have a part to play and that part includes wherever you are on the political spectrum demanding action of politicians."

She also said there's always a pressure on government to minimize expenditures.

"We as taxpayers put pressure on governments and not spend money. We need to open the door and give permission for investments that have to be made," Comeau said.