The Manitoba Royal Commission on Flood Cost Benefit and the Origins of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Canada

Abstract

The importance of the royal commission for Canadian policy development has long been recognized. (1) Canadian political scientists since the 1960s have emphasized the role of the royal commission in federal policymaking, while the scanty scholarly literature on the history of royal commissions has focused on particular federal commissions that have dealt with broad national policy issues. Virtually the only provincial royal commission that has received much attention is Quebec's Tremblay Commission on constitutional problems of 1953. (2) As well as the assumption that more interesting and arguably more important commissions were at the federal level, the literature has also suggested that royal commissions dealing with disasters were somehow different from other inquiries, being less political and more technical in nature. (3) A careful examination of the 1956 Manitoba Royal Commission on Flood Cost Benefit, however, demonstrates that provincial commissions, including those dealing with disasters, could be bo th important and political in nature, as well as technically innovative. The Royal Commission on Flood Cost Benefit made recommendations that determined Manitoba's basic policy on flood mitigation to the present day. In many respects, of course, Manitoba has gone farther in terms of structural protection against flooding than any other jurisdiction in the world. The commission's report also represented, moreover, the first large-scale cost-benefit analysis ever done in Canada, and pioneered in introducing a new approach and methodology into planning and public policy. The 1950 Manitoba Flood In 1950, most of the population of the province of Manitoba, including the residents of the greater Winnipeg area, lived in the River Valley, many directly on its flood plain. Although the had flooded seriously on three occasions between 1826 and 1861, no further really disastrous inundations had occurred before 1950, although there were years of flood scares, including 1948. Despite the high water of 1948, neither the province nor the city moved aggressively to take preventative action against a serious flood threat. Thus the 1950 flood arrived in a singularly unprepared River Valley, almost totally lacking in the most elementary structural protection--such as dykes--and emergency planning measures. The result was the creation of a Red Sea almost as large as Lake Manitoba, the evacuation of 85,000 people from the valley and metropolitan area, and a damage bill of $50 million or more at 1950 values. (4) The federal government had initially disclaimed all responsibility for flooding in Manitoba, since the province in 1930 had assumed control over all natural resources within its boundaries, including water. Nevertheless, Ottawa was eventually forced to help out, especially financially. The Manitoba government of 1950 was headed by premier Douglas Lloyd Campbell (1895-1995). Born in Flee Island, Manitoba, Campbell was educated locally and at Brandon College. He ran successfully in 1922 as the United Farmers candidate for Lakeside in the Manitoba legislature, and remained in public office for more than forty-seven years. He was minister of agriculture under John Bracken 1936-43 and under Stuart Garson 1943-48. He succeeded Garson as premier late in 1948, leading a Liberal-Progressive coalition government with little opposition until shortly before his defeat by Duff Roblin's Conservatives in 1958. A fiscal conservative leading a rural-dominated government appealing to farmers, Campbell always balanced his budgets. Some observers thought him the tightest penny-pincher in the history of a relatively poor province. He was proud of the programs of rural electrification and highway improvement under his government. His response to the Manitoba Flood of 1950 was cautious and heavily criticized at t he time for its failure to act in advance of federal assistance and its unwillingness to insist on more support from Ottawa. …