Editorial
As the physical cleanup from the June 2013 floods in southern Alberta wraps up over the coming weeks, residents will no doubt be glad to put the disaster behind them and hope that nothing similar happens again for many, many years to come.
With billions and billions of dollars of damage done, including some fairly extensive road and bridge damage in West Central Alberta, the flood of 2013 has already gone down as one of the worst, if not the worst, natural disaster to ever hit this province.
And now that the cleanup is coming to an end, the process of determining whether the provincial government could or should have done more in the days and months leading up to the floods is now to be determined.
While pointing fingers and assigning blame was out of place in the immediate aftermath of the flooding, it is now a good time to get down to the business of making sure mistakes are identified – so that they can be prevented in the future.
Alberta's Auditor General has announced that an investigation into the flood will be conducted starting this month, with investigators looking at all aspects of the flood response, as well as mitigation preparedness work done before the flooding.
All parties, including the Redford Tories, have now publically expressed a desire to do what it takes to prevent or at least mitigate future flooding disasters.
With that in mind, and with Alberta taxpayers already on the hook for at least $1 billion in immediate flood relief, Albertans will expect those same parties to provide complete and open cooperation with the Auditor General's investigation.
The opposition New Democrats say they remain to be convinced that the Redford government did all it could to prevent the flooding damage that did occur.
“Albertans are rightly concerned with the government's failure to prepare for the massive floods we saw this summer,” said NDP Leader Brian Mason.
“The investigation from the Auditor General will hopefully provide some clarity about exactly what happened this spring and how we can best work to prevent this level of destruction in the future.”
Time will tell whether the government did or did not fail in its duty to properly and adequately prepare this province for the floods. And no doubt, an examination of this complexity will take many months to complete.
Albertans are prepared to wait for the findings of the Auditor General's investigation. At the same time, they will insist that things be brought into the open and that any thoughts of covering things up will be set aside here and now.
