Confronting Modern Disaster? British Columbia’s New Emergency and Disaster Management Act

British Columbia’s Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA) was enacted in the fall of 2023 on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst wildfire season on record. EDMA attempts to confront some of the most significant challenges of our time. It is BC’s first land-based legislation that seeks to align with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the first emergency legislation in Canada to implement the international Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and to incorporate climate change. Through four core questions at the heart of emergency governance, this legislative comment examines whether EDMA has managed to shed old assumptions about emergencies and their governance. We will see that, while EDMA contains some positive developments that reflect the scale and complexity of emergency and disaster governance in BC, it still clings to old assumptions about emergencies and emergency powers. Its straddling of old and new assumptions leaves many unanswered questions about what emergency management in BC will look like going forward.