While visiting the communities hit hardest by the recent flooding in Nova Scotia Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada needs to enhance its emergency supports as climate change makes natural disasters more frequent and more intense.

“The reality is we’re seeing this summer that climate change is real and impacting all of our lives,” Freeland said. “We need to continue working on our mitigation strategies to make us more resilient to the natural disasters that are happening more often and with more intensity,”

“We need to work on things like flood insurance, and we need to work on what our emergency responses to get us ready for the sad reality of climate change,”.

Freeland pointed to the relatively new ministerial role of Minister of Emergency Preparedness, which is now occupied by Minister Harjit S. Sajjan, as one way Canada is trying to better prepare itself.

“I’m looking forward to the work my colleague does on that file and know that he will be pushing for more emergency preparedness across the country,”.

Freeland was also critical of telecommunications companies as many Nova Scotians dealt with service outages at the height of the flooding leaving them unable to receive emergency alerts. “It’s one of the first things people have told me while here, it’s completely unacceptable that people can’t receive alerts, we have been pushing the telcos and CRTC to make improvements in this area, and we will continue to do so,”.

During her trip to Nova Scotia, Freeland visited the community of West Hants which experienced some of the worst flooding, which claimed the lives of three people who were trying to flee flash flooding.

One of the main bridges in Brooklyn, NS was washed out by the recent flooding. Photo: Evan Taylor

“It’s truly tragic what I’ve seen here but one thing that was not lost on me was the sense of community I see here, people helping other people when it’s most needed,”.