Bill C-241 Flood Drought Forecasting Act
C-241 An Act to Establish a National Strategy Respecting Flood and Drought Forecasting
Short Title: National Strategy on Flood and Drought Forecasting Act
Bill Type: Private Member’s Bill
Bill Sponsor: Tatiana Auguste (Terrebonne)
Status: Introduced — 1st Reading, September 22, 2025. This Bill hasn't passed yet.
How would YOU vote? Scroll down to vote and comment below.
WHO GAINS POWER
- The Minister of Environment gains authority to lead development of a national flood and drought forecasting strategy
- Four additional Ministers are pulled in as collaborators: Agriculture, Infrastructure, Natural Resources and Public Safety
- Government gains a formal mandate to consult provinces, municipalities, Indigenous governing bodies, universities, insurers and industry
WHO LOSES POWER
- Provinces currently run flood and drought forecasting independently with no federal coordination — this Bill changes that dynamic
- Provinces lose the ability to claim flood and drought forecasting is solely their jurisdiction — this Bill plants a federal flag, even if nothing is built yet
- ⚠️ Consultation is required but outcomes are not binding — provinces and Indigenous communities are consulted, not given veto or co-decision authority
WHO GAINS MONEY
- Canadian universities — explicitly named as stakeholders; positions them for federal contracts and research funding tied to the strategy
- Insurance industry — named twice as a key beneficiary of publicly funded flood-plain mapping data. That data directly drives how they price your premiums. Publicly funded research. Privately priced risk.
WHO LOSES MONEY
- Taxpayers fund the strategy development, the supercomputing infrastructure and two rounds of parliamentary reporting over seven years
THE CATCH
- This Bill creates a strategy — not a program, not a service, not a dollar of funding. Government has 2 years to write a report, then 5 more years to assess it. Nothing is built. Nothing is funded. Nothing is protected.
- ⚠️ This is accountability theatre dressed as climate action — a government can point to this Bill and say "we're acting on floods and droughts" while never coordinating a single province, never funding a single forecasting system and never protecting a single community. The receipts? Two reports. That's it.
- ⚠️No budget. No funding. No appropriation.— Not a single dollar is committed in this Bill. The entire legal obligation is two reports. The floods don't wait for reports.
- ⚠️ "Key stakeholders" is not defined in the Act — the Minister decides who qualifies
- ⚠️Taxpayers fund it — but may never see it— the Bill does not guarantee public access to the forecasting data it proposes to create. The Minister controls who qualifies as a "key stakeholder." Insurers are named. You are not.
- ⚠️ No enforcement mechanism — if the Minister misses the 2-year or 5-year reporting deadline, there is no consequence written in the Bill
- ⚠️The insurance industry's inclusion as a named beneficiary of flood-plain data is worth noting — that data has direct commercial value for risk pricing. Publicly funded research. Privately priced premiums.