Different people can have different opinions on these issues. Let me give arguments for various sides of the issues to help you decide how to answer this question.
On the one hand, we can say that people who own private property should pay for their own disaster preparations. The people who own property get all of the benefits from that property. Say, for example, that you own a hotel in a tsunami zone. You, and...
Different people can have different opinions on these issues. Let me give arguments for various sides of the issues to help you decide how to answer this question.
On the one hand, we can say that people who own private property should pay for their own disaster preparations. The people who own property get all of the benefits from that property. Say, for example, that you own a hotel in a tsunami zone. You, and not the government, are the one who reaps the profits from that hotel. Therefore, you should be the one who pays for the improvements to the hotel. You would not expect the government to help pay for your landscaping or your housekeeping, so why should the government help you prepare for disasters?
On the other hand, we can say that the government should help to pay for these preparations. The government benefits if there are hotels in tsunami zones or factories in earthquake zones. Additionally, preparations for these disasters can be too expensive for some property-owners to afford. If the government does not help to pay for these preparations, the economy could be harmed. Therefore, the government should pitch in and help.
With respect to your other question, you can clearly say the provincial governments should bear the entire burden of paying for their own preparations. Why should people in Manitoba pay for tsunami preparations when it is obvious that those preparations will not help them at all? The people who benefit from things should pay for them.
On the other hand, we can argue that the entire country benefits from disaster preparedness. If a disaster hits a major city, the whole national economy can be affected. A port that is destroyed by a tsunami can, of course, no longer function to import and export goods. The whole country benefits if it can prevent things like this from happening. Therefore, both the federal government and the provincial governments should help to pay for disaster preparations.
With these arguments in mind, what is your own answer?
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