To illustrate, here in NL we started our "Room for the Rivers" program after severe floods in the mid 90s. This has really paid off and you won't find anyone disagreeing with that in NL, not even our anti-science populists.

Extreme rainfall events in the past 2 years have proven that this "building with nature" approach (rather than building against nature) has really paid off. Similarly affected areas on our borders with Germany and Belgium suffered severe consequences, multiple deaths and >€40 billion in damages. In stark contrast the Netherlands, despite being downstream of all this (!), suffered virtually zero damages

Canalisation is the worst you can do from a flood control perspective. Common sense would be to delay runoff (vegetated slopes, high soil organic matter) and build buffers (wetlands, flood plains) to spread the discharge over a longer amount of time