Merritt’s mayor holds important meetings at FCM on flood recovery supports

Last week, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) held its annual conference, bringing together local governments from across the nation.

A group of five mayors, calling themselves the West Coast Corridor Resiliency Partnership, held important meetings with federal representatives from all political stripes, including NDP leader Avi Lewis, hoping to ensure their message wasn’t lost.

“I met with Tim Tierney, the incoming president of FCM. That’s an important meeting for us because he is the president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. They have a pretty strong say in what happens in Ottawa, in communities,” said Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz. “I had a good long meeting with him, let him know what our process was, which communities are involved, gave him the information. And one of the things I let him know is we are a group that is trying to form to help the federal government help all of us.”

Since the atmospheric river and flood in 2021, the City of Merritt has updated its flood map, placing around 1,200 homes into the flood plain. That has made getting overland flood insurance difficult, if not impossible for most of them.

“I met with Intact Insurance because right now in Merritt, 1,275 of us cannot get overland or flood insurance,” said Goetz. “We had good conversations on that. I let them know what it’s going to take to get these 1,200 people – I’m one of them – protected in the community. They are going to work with me and this group to come up with a plan on what we can do to get proper insurance for people who are in the flood zones.”