Community fears for major flooding on Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario, as feds assess protection funding
CBC
An environmental group in Leamington, Ont. is sounding the alarm over Hillman Marsh and calling on the government to protect the Point Pelee peninsula against the threat of a rising Lake Erie.
Wayne King, founder of the Leamington Shoreline Association, says action is needed to prevent the possibility of destructive flooding in the southwestern Ontario community.
"There's 500 homes and businesses out there that would be underwater," he said.
Back in November, the municipality of Leamington submitted an application to Ottawa under the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) to help pay for an $18-million project to protect the area.
The money would go toward adding protection at the edge of the marsh, where a barrier beach had been sheltering the area from waves of Lake Erie until it was nearly destroyed in 2018, eventually leaving a large area open to the lake.
It would also be used to create some artificial islands, and strengthen the last line of defence between the marsh and the land: a clay berm.
"If this breaches, you've got 10, 12 feet of water in that farm land and inside those homes," King said as he stood on the berm on Tuesday.
While lake levels are slightly lower this year, they're cyclical, King said, and they are expected to rise as the climate changes.
Some work in the region was completed by Ducks Unlimited last year, funded through a $30-million provincial program.
Hilda MacDonald, the mayor of Leamington, said the $18-million price tag for the work the municipality wants to do is too steep for it to absorb.
"And yet on the reverse side, no one can afford not to do it because of not taking care of the danger in not taking care of the dike walls and the water crashing in on basically an earthen barrier," she said.
She said she hopes the upper levels of government understand the "frightening possibilities" if nothing is done.
A spokesperson for the province said it was aware of the situation in the area and the "safety of the public and the protection of our communities is our number one priority."
The DMAF is a federal program but costs are shared by the provincial and federal governments, the statement explained.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.
A congregation in Carman, Man., is coming to grips with the loss of their Anglican Lutheran church, a fixture in the community that was ravaged by a fire on Thursday.