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Canada tries a forceful message for flood victims: Live someplace else
By Christopher Flavelle
GATINEAU, Quebec — Along the coast of the United States, people who lost homes to Hurricane Dorian are preparing to rebuild. But Canada — which has faced devastating flooding of its own — is testing a very different idea of disaster recovery: Forcing people to move.
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“Canadians are stubbornly beginning to reconsider the wisdom of building near flood-prone areas,” said Jason Thistlethwaite, a professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. “It’s taking government action to obligate people to make better decisions.”
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This year the federal government went further still, warning that homeowners nationwide would eventually be on their own. If people deliberately rebuild in danger zones, at some point “they are going to have to assume their own responsibility for the cost burden,” Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters in April. “You can’t repeatedly go back to the taxpayer and say, ‘Oh, it happened again.’”
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In forcing people off their property, Canada’s policymakers have an advantage over the United States. Canada’s constitution contains no explicit protection for private property like that in the United States, according to Jim Phillips, a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. While the government is unlikely to seize someone’s home without compensation, it faces fewer constraints.
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