Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Canada's Emergency and Disaster
Preparedness
Issue 2 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, May 31, 1999
The Subcommittee on Canada's Emergency and Disaster Preparedness of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 5:30 p.m. to examine Canada's disaster and emergency preparedness.
Senator Terry Stratton (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: We have with us today Environment Canada officials. I would ask Dr. McBean to introduce his colleague, and then to proceed with his presentation.
Please proceed, Dr. McBean.
Dr. Gordon A. McBean, Assistant Deputy Minister, Atmospheric Environment Service, Environment Canada: With me today is Mr. Denis Bourque, also with the Atmospheric Environment Service of Environment Canada.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the important issue of disasters and disaster preparedness. I should explain at the beginning that the Atmospheric Environment Service serves several functions in Environment Canada. We are the Canadian Weather Service. We are also the national ice forecasting service. We maintain Canada's responsibility at the federal level for monitoring water and stream flow levels in lakes and rivers in Canada. We also undertake all the scientific research on air issues such as weather forecasting, climate change, ozone depletion, urban smog, and those kind of things.
I will talk today primarily about the issue of disasters and disaster preparedness. I assure you that we in the Atmospheric Environment Service understand clearly the significance of disasters to Canadians. We have been helping Canadians reduce their risk from disasters for the past 138 years. The Canadian Weather Service was founded in 1871. This weather service was created following a major East Coast storm in the last century that resulted in disastrous losses to maritimers.
Weather affects our lives everyday. Not only are we concerned about the extreme event, such as the Eastern Canada ice storm, the Red River flood, the Saguenay flood, we are also concerned about the everyday life of Canadians and about reducing their risk of exposure to severe weather events or weather hazards. Our paramount objective is to ensure the safety of Canadians and the security of their property, and the social and economic fabric of this country depend on this.
Disasters require two elements: a weather hazard, and exposure to that hazard. We cannot control the weather; hence, we cannot eliminate the hazardous weather. Our focus, therefore, has been to reduce the risk of exposure of Canadian individuals and their property to these hazards by providing Canadians with warnings of pending events and information on how to protect themselves and their property. We do this with the Canadian Weather Warning System.
Each year in Canada, we issue approximately 14,000 warnings. In other words, there were approximately 40 warnings in effect in the last 24 hours somewhere in Canada. You may have heard some of them on the radio today in this area. These warnings are not to be taken lightly. The conditions forecast are those that are considered to be threatening to life and property, and it is expected that Canadians will act on these warnings to protect their own lives and to secure their property.
Yet, the impacts and costs of severe weather continue to increase. In the last 15 years, Canada's costliest natural disasters have all been weather-related: From tornadoes in Medicine Hat, Barrie and Edmonton, to hail stones in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, blizzards in B.C. and Ontario, the Red River and Saguenay floods, and the ice storm in Eastern Canada, we continue to be subjected to the impacts of these events.
These developing trends are not unique to Canada. They are happening worldwide. This year marks the end of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. As a member of the Canadian committee, I assure you that I am well aware of the worldwide nature of this development.
The climate change scenarios do not provide us any hope of relief in the future. Instead, the suggestions are exactly the opposite. We anticipate that there will be an increase in severity and frequency of severe weather events. This is a growing concern of the insurance industry worldwide and has resulted in the formation of the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction in Canada, a joint venture of the Canadian insurance industry and the University of Western Ontario. Under these circumstances, you may well ask whether the Canadian meteorological service will be able to continue to assist Canadians. Is it equipped to serve?
We have a system designed to identify significant weather. This system integrates observations from surface instruments over both land and our adjoining coastal regions, instruments launched on weather balloons all over Canada, and weather radars. We make extensive use of weather satellite information, most of which originates from other countries.
We have a system designed to forecast the likelihood of severe weather. At our Canadian Meteorological Centre in Dorval, with its supercomputer, and in 13 other forecast centres across Canada, we have trained personnel and researchers constantly monitoring the weather, overseeing developments and issuing warnings.
We have a system designed to deliver the messages to Canadians, by our own technologies or by media partners. We are now testing with media partners an all-channel weather alert system for homes with cable televisions.
We operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, with a system that we have designed to minimize the risk of downtime, if not eliminate it. The weather warning system was identified as one of the government-wide mission-critical systems for Y2K purposes. Our Dorval site is a designated national security site. Air traffic in Canada stops if we are not operational.
As an example of our planning and foresight, the Canadian Meteorological Centre in Dorval, which is our national communications hub for weather traffic and our major centre for weather forecasting in Canada, never skipped a beat during the ice storm. That was because of generators and procedures we had in place for power outages. This survival capability not only permitted assistance in the emergency response situation, but also prevented the rest of the country from grinding to a total halt as well.
Our system is designed to respond and assist during disasters, and we have the capability to provide special products and support to response operations and agencies as required. However, notwithstanding that, as with all other organizations these days, we have our pressure points. A recent review of our service clearly indicates that our infrastructure needs renewal, that our human resource base is ageing, and that the funding pressures are significant.
Our observations must cover all of Canada and the adjacent oceans, and we must exchange this weather data around the world because weather comes from all directions. In the world scene, we are a vast territory, sparsely populated for the most part. These circumstances result in a lower quality of observing capability than is considered adequate internationally. We are seeking ways, at least in part, to remedy this.
As with all capital facilities, our systems are technologically intensive and need updating or renewal. For example, new Doppler radar technology is being installed in Canada today, replacing ageing conventional post-war systems. We would like to implement this quickly, but our funding profile necessitates implementation over six years. I can show you a map later of how that will go in place.
We also must maintain our computer and communications capacity at leading edge in order to ensure that Canadians are well served. At a cost of approximately $160 million per year, or less than 2 cents per person per day, Canadians are getting a weather warning system that is a good deal for the tax dollar. However, we also know that the weather warning system is underfunded to meet current demands, and this status quo is not sustainable. We are pursuing avenues to address the situation.
Quality and timeliness of our products are paramount to us. We strive, as we have done in the past 138 years in Canada, to ensure the safety of Canadians and the security of their property through good warnings and forecasts. We intend to maintain this standard in the future, working with individual Canadians, agencies and levels of government to improve our preparedness for natural disasters and to reduce our vulnerability.
The Chairman: I believe all of us here have experienced some form of disaster at one time or another. While Canada reacts well to disasters, the members of this committee are concerned about preparedness. We feel that there are better routes to take to mitigate the problems.
We are very concerned about global warming. At a conference I attended in Toronto, someone from Environment Canada gave a forecast of where we are likely to be in the next 50 years with respect to global warming. That is an issue we would like to try to assess properly, as it relates to what we would recommend to the government with respect to mitigating problems in the future.
An excellent documentary on the Learning Channel talked about the melting of the Antarctic ice cap and about global warming. We are concerned about that.
Are you the appropriate people to ask where will we be in 50 years? The question is important. We are all familiar with our recent history -- the Saguenay and the Red River floods, and the Eastern Ontario ice storm. Are those incidents the result of a natural temperature cycle or events in the weather, or are they the result of global warming? What is happening? Perhaps you could respond to that.
Mr. McBean: First, we are the right people to ask the question of. As I said in my introductory comments, our organization is responsible for research on climate change as well as weather.
The evidence we have is that the frequency of extreme weather events will increase as our climate warms up, for a variety of reasons. As the climate becomes warmer there will be more moisture in our atmosphere, and the processes related to moisture are what drives most storms. A warmer climate will also lead to warmer ocean temperatures, and it is warm ocean temperatures that spawn hurricanes. If you look at the distribution of hurricanes that occur now, you will notice that they start predominantly in the equatorial regions. As the climate warms, the regions of warm water will expand further north and south and will lead to more intense storms at latitudes nearer to where we are, resulting in more hurricane-like storms in our region.
While I have not seen the particular documentary you mentioned, the question of sea level rise is of concern. Because of warming ocean temperatures, the sea level has risen in the past 100 years. We predict that it will rise by at least another half a metre by the end of the next century, and possibly as much as a metre. There is also the risk of an even more substantial sea level rise were the West Antarctic ice sheet to slip into the ocean and melt.
The Chairman: That is the one over land?
Mr. McBean: Yes.
The Chairman: That is the one of concern?
Mr. McBean: Yes. As I believe you are aware, the melting of ice that is already floating does not affect sea level. When ice that is on land melts, a rise in sea level occurs. Ice does not even have to melt; it just needs to sink into the ocean. As soon as it sinks into the ocean, water levels go up.
The latest judgment scientifically is that the sea level rise corresponding to a full catastrophic motion of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which would result in a six-metre sea level rise globally, is a fairly low possibility within the next 100 years. Nonetheless, there is a risk of that happening.
These are the kinds of things we need to address in our planning -- certainly, at least, the issue of a metre sea level rise. The concern is that if you take a metre of sea level rise and add to it an increasing number of strong weather events, where the winds push the water -- what we call a storm surge -- then you will see areas in many parts of Canada that, if not regularly under water, will be under water during storm events. We see those storm events even nowadays, with that increase sea level rise.
I have a diagram from the world's insurance companies. It shows the direct economic losses due to natural disasters around the world from the early 1960s to the first half of the 1990s.
During the 1990-94 five-year period, the total cost was U.S. $213 billion. In 1998 alone, the amount was over U.S. $90 billion, more than double the 90-94 average of U.S. $40 billion per year. This rise is partially because of increased exposure, in the way people have chosen to live, and other elements.
However, the insurance bureau's assessment is that this is not explainable by those factors, that you can only explain it if you have an increase in the strength and number of these natural disasters. Although these are all-natural disasters, including earthquakes, about 80 per cent of the costs are associated with weather-related disasters, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, draughts, et cetera.
If you look at the impact on people who are displaced, then the impact is greater. Approximately 90 per cent of the situations that affect humans is weather-related. It does not necessarily involve death but results in them having to leave their homes and undergo other hardships.
In Canada, the costs are not as smoothly visible because the events are more distributed. We must recognize that extreme events happen now and then. However, we estimate that the Eastern Canada ice storm cost approximately $2.5 billion. One single hailstorm in Calgary in 1996 caused $300 million in damages.
The question becomes: What could have been done about it? In the case of the hailstorm, an increased capacity of being able to forecast those kinds of events would have helped, since most of the damage was done to automobiles. People would have benefited from a warning; they could have taken action. They could have put their cars under bridges or other sought protection to reduce the losses.
We did a good job of predicting the Eastern Canadian ice storm. However, we could have done a better job and reduced the losses. Even if the losses could have been reduced by, say, 1 per cent, on $2.5 billion that is many dollars saved.
Our studies indicate that these kinds of events will be more common in the future. We are looking at an increased exposure and risk regarding these kinds of events.
The Chairman: There are those who say that there is such a thing as global warming, and those who say that there is no global warming, that what is occurring is a natural weather cycle. It could be argued that it is a natural weather cycle that occurs over a century, over two centuries, or every 40 years, whatever cycle you wish to pick. And of course, there are statistics for that. The fact that we are living closer to the more hazardous areas, as we get more densely populated, increases the amount of damage done.
Is there any basis to the argument that it is not global warming but rather a normal weather cycle? There must be cycles of wet periods; conversely, there must be cycles of dry period.
Why do you feel so certain that we are into global warming rather than just a weather cycle? Take for example, the mini Ice Age that supposedly occurred in the 1600s. Was that not a normal cycle of the globe?
Mr. McBean: Let me begin by saying that, prior to my present position, I was a professor of Atmospheric and Oceanographic Science at the University of British Columbia. For six years, I chaired the UN agencies Scientific Committee for Climate Research. I was responsible for implementing, through international coordination, new science programs on climate science from 1988 to 1994. Today, I continue to be very active in the science community on this issue. As you can see, I have a certain amount of background to speak on this topic.
Certainly, the contrarians have some valid reasons for raising concerns. However, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, as represented in the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC -- which was a fairly extensive international review process involving scientists from all over the world -- led to the conclusion that -- and I am paraphrasing the official wording here -- the balance of evidence suggests that there is human interference with the climate system as at present.
Although that statement has a number of qualifiers, the scientific community is even stronger of the view that, as we progress into the next century, these kinds of events will be seen.
Take, for example, the changes in temperature since the last Ice Age, the peek of which was approximately 20,000 years ago. At that time, Ottawa was covered by several kilometres of ice. The global temperature was 5 degrees Celsius colder than it is now.
Once we got out of that period, say, by 10,000 years ago, the evidence from looking at ice cores and tree rings is that the global temperature did not vary by more than a half degree Celsius. That held true even during the mini Ice Age and during the warming period around 1000 AD, when the Norse people came to Newfoundland. The global warming temperature changes were relatively small.
In the last 100 years, we have seen a global warming in excess of a half degree Celsius. At the same time, the amount of carbon dioxide, green house gas, in the atmosphere has increased by over 30 per cent.
It is projected that we will double the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by the years 2060 to 2080.The Kyoto protocol will delay that slightly but will not prevent the doubling of CO2. The temperature change corresponding to CO2 doubling globally is something in the order of 2 or 3 degrees Celsius.
In our latitudes, in northern Canada, we might expect a warming of two, three or four times the global average. We are already seeing warming in the Mackenzie Basin in excess of 1 degree Celsius. We are also seeing cooling or almost no change in the Labrador Sea area, for example. That is consistent with what our models are predicting at this point.
The Chairman: You raised another issue. From what I understand, glacial periods last approximately 25,000 years and interglacial periods last 10,000 years.
You say that 10,000 years ago the interglacial period started. If interglacial periods last 10,000 years, we are due for a change. I am given to understand that, when changing from one period to another, the changes do not occur over a long period of time; it is like the straw that breaks the camel's back. Events can be triggered such that you transit from one period to the other very quickly; is that correct?
Mr. McBean: In some sense that is true. The long period cycles between one glacial maximum and the previous glacial maximum is approximately 100,000 years. That is determined by the variations in the earth's orbit around the sun, and the wobble.
Our evidence comes from good information that was gathered by drilling into ice cores. We have been able to drill in Greenland, right from the top down through several kilometres to bedrock. As you pull out that core of ice, you can find little pockets of air. From that you can measure how much CO2 was in the atmosphere. By looking at the ratio of certain isotopes, you can figure out the temperature of that region of the planet at the time at which that ice was formed. You can also find dust particles and many other things.
One can reconstruct from the Vostok Ice Core in Antarctica and the Greenland core approximately 250,000 years of record. From other information, we have been able to go back millions of years. We consistently find this 100,000-year cycle.
The evidence is a little like a saw blade. It takes a long time to cool; however, it abruptly warms. Warming is more likely to occur going from a cold state to a warm state. That does not mean it is a straight line. It wiggles and wobbles as it goes down.
We know that as we were coming out of the last cold period, which was a maximum of 20,000 years ago, at approximately 12,000 years ago, there was a very dramatic cooling that took place in a very short period of time, perhaps only less than 100 years. We do not fully understand why that is. It appears to be related to the circulation in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
One concern, as we enter a warmer climate, is that you could push the system beyond the brink. The North Atlantic circulation, which transports heat from the equatorial regions to the high Atlantic, keeping Europe and Iceland warm, could be turned off. Models indicate that, if you push it too hard, it will not only turn off, but it will not recover when you readjust the CO2 in the atmosphere.
It appears that most of the biological system events that you can imagine would lead to an acceleration of the warming, rather than working the other way. Most of the dramatic events that one can hypothesize lead us to believe that, if any events occur within the next 200 years, they would more likely accelerate the warming rather than turning it off.
Senator Fraser: I heard you say that in the next 80 years greenhouse gases will double. This will lead to a rise in global temperatures of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. However, in our latitudes, the rise could be two, three or four times as much as that.
Is that what you said?
Mr. McBean: Yes.
Senator Fraser: Let us take the middle road. Let us say global temperatures rise 3 degrees and ours rise 9 degrees. What does that mean for Canada?
Mr. McBean: That would be a very significant event, resulting in a number of things. For example, if we make the assumption, which seems to be warranted, based on our understanding of tree species, most tree species have spent 5,000 to 10,000 years adjusting to the present climate. As you drive from James Bay to Florida, you will see different trees. That is climatically determined.
If you look at the distribution of the boreal forest in Canada at present -- and we know the history of its temperature and precipitation regime. If you ask what the climate will be in 2100, remap that and say there is a similar relationship as to where the boreal forest, in theory, should be, you will find that it will not be where it is now. There is a small piece in northern Quebec, around Ungava, and a small piece in the Northwest Territories. The climatic regime of where the boreal forest is now would be one more conducive in Eastern Canada, to deciduous type trees, and on the Canadian prairies, for grasslands.
The reality is that trees will not migrate to the new area. First, they do not migrate that quickly. Second, the soil in those regions would not sustain those kinds of trees, even if they had several hundred years to adjust.
Similarly, on the Prairies, as you move to grasslands, the climatic regime of the grasslands northwards is such that you cannot imagine growing wheat north of Prince Albert. The surface soil conditions, rock, et cetera, will not change.
What you will have is a boreal forest system where it is now that will be under stress. It will be in a climate regime not favourable to its growth. Its productivity will be reduced. It will be more susceptible to pests, wildfires and other incidents. It would be presumably much less productive.
The forest people have not been able to work through what that means, however, there would be great stress in the forest regimes and other vegetation systems.
In the present wheat-growing districts, our predictions are a much more frequent occurrence of droughts. The kinds of drying conditions we have seen in recent times would become more prevalent. Rather than the oddity, they would become a regular occurrence.
In some parts of Canada, the warming would presumably be of benefit. Not all the news is bad, but it is a very major change. Anytime there is major change without having thought through how to respond, in order to have proper strategies in place, the result is generally trouble.
Senator Fraser: Today is May 31. Record temperatures are being set in Montreal and Ottawa. If our average temperature is bumped up nine degrees, what does that mean for our peaks? Are we looking at massive heat waves of the nature they have in India, where temperatures climb to 45 degrees Celsius and hundreds of people die every year?
Mr. McBean: If you imagine an event in Ottawa that is quite abnormal, temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius, which may only happen 2 or 3 per cent of the time, if you shift the average temperature and consider the same statistical distribution, you could easily have that occurring 20 to 30 per cent of the time.
Not even changing our weather patterns but just a shift in the mean makes the likelihood of a particular warm event much higher than it is now. Yes, that is a concern.
Senator Fraser: Are we looking at desertification on the Prairies? Are we looking at badlands stretching across the southern half of the Prairies?
Mr. McBean: The most likely scenario is increased drying conditions. We expect more 1930s-type dust bowl conditions.
One can suggest trying to do more irrigation, but there will be increasing demands on whatever water is available. It will be under increasing pressure from a variety of uses, including natural human needs as well as the needs of industry. How much you decide to use for agriculture would be very major concern. That is an important political decision that needs to be made.
We are worried now about the present low water levels in the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Our predictions are that, by the latter part of the next century, the water level in the vicinity of Montreal will have dropped by almost a metre.
The Chairman: If we are warming up, are we not therefore also getting more precipitation as a result of the warming weather because of the evaporation that is occurring?
Mr. McBean: Globally, the average precipitation will go up. It tends to go up primarily in areas where we already have precipitation. If you are a West Coast native, as I am, you would expect to see more precipitation in British Columbia in wintertime.
From our model predictions, and these are only models, but well-tested models, in the Great Lakes Basin you would have not much change in precipitation but increased evaporation due to warmer conditions.
The Chairman: Similarly, on the Prairies?
Mr. McBean: That is right. The amount of available water on the Canadian Prairies is a very small residual from a large amount of precipitation and evaporation and the flow off the Rockies. You only need change it very subtlety in order to make major changes in the amount of available water.
Senator Fraser: This is fascinating, but I do not wish to use up everyone's time.
What is the curve on these temperature rises? Is it a curve, or is it a straight line?
Mr. McBean: It is a curve.
Senator Fraser: Do we have a little bit of time before it starts to get really bad?
Mr. McBean: It depends on your definition of "really bad."
Senator Fraser: People dying in the streets from heat would be one definition.
Mr. McBean: I am interested in the way the conversation is going into dealing with climate change, although I came to talk about weather events of today.
Senator Fraser: On my second round, I wish to talk about that.
Mr. McBean: The curve is, as we would say scientifically, concave upwards. It tends to go up. You see a delay of the warming of the planet after the rise in the greenhouse effect because of the oceans. The oceans act as a great moderator. By some process, if you were able to stop the rate of increase in greenhouse gases, which we hope eventually to do, we would continue to see a continuation of the warming process because the ocean is catching up, so to speak.
Senator Fraser: In terms of preparation and mitigation, we have perhaps a little bit of time to start acting. For example, on the Prairies, are there any agricultural or other practices that might tend to diminish the impact of warming?
Mr. McBean: I am sure there are. I am not an agricultural expert, but there are practices in agriculture that can work two ways.
There is a fair amount of effort in Agriculture Canada now on looking at how you can, by different soil practices, use the soils to actually absorb more carbon dioxide and contribute to reducing the rate of increase in greenhouse gases. Most of the soils on the Canadian Prairies, and I am not sure of the exact number, have lost half of the carbon they had at the turn of the century. By proper management, for example, in the way in which tillage is done, you can re-gather some of that carbon in the soil. That approach is being worked on.
There are other practices around management of crops. For example, in providing our weather service, by giving better weather forecasts we can help to minimize the amount of wastage. In other words, there is no need to irrigate the day before it rains. That is probably being done more than it should be. We need better weather forecasting, but we also need better public education programs for farmers so that they take better advantage of the information we give them. A combination of factors like that could significantly change things.
We do many things in Canadian society that do not take full advantage of the information we have available, and weather is one of them, I believe.
[Translation]
Senator Ferretti Barth: The climate warming that we presently know in Montreal has never really affected us before. Do these climate changes only affect Canada? Or are they a worldwide concern? Is your Department working in cooperation with Emergency Preparedness in order to share information and see what you can do together?
According to what you are saying, climate warming, increased evaporation, precipitations and drying conditions will result in disasters. Do you share your concerns with other departments? It is very important to know what the future holds. I believe that the earth is like a person telling us that enough is enough and that he or she will do as he wishes. As inhabitants of this planet, are we not responsible for that warming because of our technological development, our millions of vehicles, et cetera? It is not a natural warming process.
If I understood what you said, you also stated that the boreal forest might become a proper place to plant trees and so on. We will have to change our way of doing things. It is a moral concern for the youth coming head to head with the world as we know it. It was fine, but what do we do now?
As for the information and explanation you are giving us, is there a process to share those concerns with other departments that are also concerned about changes in the environment?
[English]
Mr. McBean: Let me respond. It is very much a global issue. The rising amounts of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere are due to contributions by all countries in the world. Some contribute more than others.
The Canadian contribution is approximately 2 per cent of the global annual amount of carbon dioxide, which is the main greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere. The United States contributes 25 per cent, China approximately 10 per cent.
There is a global discussion of this issue under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which Canada signed in 1992. Countries are to undertake actions to attempt to reduce the rate of human influence on the climate system.
The Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in December 1997, I believe. I was there. It was agreed in the Kyoto protocol that the developed countries would reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by approximately 5. to 6 per cent by 2010 relative to their 1990 levels. That means in this case that the European Union group of countries are to reduce by approximately 12 per cent, Canada by 6 per cent, and the U.S. by 7 per cent. Actually, the EU was 8 per cent in the end. Unfortunately, there is no commitment on behalf of the developing countries, like China and India and other major sources of pollution.
A carbon dioxide molecule put into the atmosphere will remain for 100 years. It takes 100 years to cycle carbon dioxide through the atmosphere.
Although a 6 per cent reduction is difficult for Canada, we are still pumping in 94 per cent. Based on the projected trends for China, India, Indonesia and other such countries, we expect the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere to more than double by the end of the next century.
There was a question about whether we are working with other government departments. The answer is yes, very much so. There is almost a growth industry in Ottawa of the number of committees dealing with climate change.
There is much work to be done to meet the Kyoto commitment of reducing emissions. There is a parallel activity for which I am the co-lead. It is called Science, Impacts and Adaptation. We are trying to refine our knowledge of the science and make better predictions. We try to use that science to predict, for Canada, the impacts the boreal forest and eco-systems at sea level. We then try to figure out adaptation strategies. Given a change, and knowing that it is essentially inevitable, we seek a proactive strategy to attempt to reduce the negative impacts of that any way we can.
This Science, Impacts and Adaptation team is co-chaired by me and one of my counterparts from Natural Resources Canada. The committee includes people from Industry Canada, Forestry, Fisheries and Oceans, and Agriculture. We certainly talk to people in the Department of National Defence emergency preparedness on this. We have a committee structure that we are putting into place.
[Translation]
Senator Ferretti Barth: In your opinion, can we assume that there will be population movements towards more prolific lands? Are we also predicting that water shortages in other countries will put a lot of pressure on Canada? You stated that water levels in the Montreal Harbour will be about one meter lower, which is approximately my height. Will there also be some population movements?
You say that some nations have asked us to sell them water. There is a worldwide need and some countries are thirsty. You said that even at home, water levels will go down. Water is an essential good, it is the first thing that we had at the beginning of times. Water is a big issue. What can you tell us about that?
[English]
Mr. McBean: Yes, I certainly agree with you. The issues of water have already resulted in many areas of conflict in the Middle East, parts of Africa and probably in North America, although not as such a violent conflict.
You mentioned the moral issue. It is one that we have not talked very much about in this debate. However, it relates to what I sometimes call the intergenerational and international equity question. Is it appropriate for people in highly developed countries to continue to emit greenhouse gases? The result for Canada will be very devastating. The impact on small island states is that they would disappear.
The nations of the world gathered for the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1990. Six heads of state spoke. The one I will always remember was the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, which is a small set of coral reefs in the central Pacific Ocean. He said that, with a sea level rise of one metre, his country would disappear. They are an endangered species. Is that fair?
How do we address an issue when people have their own present way of acting and their own desires? We are talking about an issue that in many peoples' minds is quite distant in time or geography.
Water has become very much an issue of the whole climate debate.
That is because, even though there will be more precipitation in many parts of the world, the distribution of the water will change. That by itself will likely change the whole sense of relationships based on certain water regimes, relationships that have developed over many years between countries. As those relationships change, many international questions of how to deal with the changes arise.
Environmental security issues or environmental refugee issues are definitely coming to the forefront. Some colleagues of mine at the University of Victoria are hosting the international project office for a project on global environmental change and human security. They are examining, from an academic point of view, how environmental changes -- climate change being one of the major ones -- impact on human security, leading to migrations. In some places, people try to migrate but cannot because there are now borders that did not exist, say, a thousand years ago or whenever such migrations occurred in the past. It is a very frightening issue.
[Translation]
Senator Ferretti Barth: Will water become another type of oil in the future? Are water resources as important as oil resources? The years ahead will be marked by major changes and serious environmental issues. I think, Mr. Deputy Minister, that we should prepare people because they should know what is going on. There is a need for public education, one step at a time. For instance, we should slowly get school children ready for that possibility. It is very important that people are aware of what is going on and know that there will be some change. You know, I usually like to water my garden, but you are now making me think twice about it.
[English]
Mr. McBean: Let me comment that we do have a number of public education outreach activities underway within the climate change activities federally. On Wednesday of this week, I am giving a talk on climate change science, as part of a climate change conference involving many people. I believe Minister Stewart and Minister Goodale, and possibly even the Prime Minister, will be participating in this event on Wednesday or Thursday.
We try to educate people. The organization for which I am responsible feels that it is its job to advise Canadians of atmospheric change that may happen in the next 10 minutes, when a tornado is looming, or in the next ten years, for an inter-seasonal kind of thing, or even in next century, for climate change. We try to think of ourselves as an organization that informs and warns Canadians about atmospheric change on those time scales, from today to the next hundred years. As yet, we are not as successful as we wish. We would like to do a better job of informing Canadians, getting their attention off their latest four-by-four, V8 automobile and on to the issues of urban smog, which comes from the same source. We have a smog alert in Montreal today.
[Translation]
There was one for the first time ever in Toronto at the end of last week.
[English]
It is an issue about which we try to warn. I was in Montreal this morning, and I live in Toronto, so I know both situations.
Senator Cook: I am a Newfoundlander, where it is quite common to say, "We are going to have weather." We are having wonderful weather. Did I hear you say that the temperature of the Labrador Sea has not changed?
Mr. McBean: What we have seen is a cooling in the Labrador Sea.
Senator Cook: We are not seeing the northern ice and the icebergs on the coast as often in the last two or three years as we did in the past. Our winters are not as severe.
I fly back and forth to Ottawa frequently, and de-icing of aircraft is becoming a regular occurrence. We always had fog, but the frequency of freezing rain is a big concern for me. I wish to link that to page 5 of your brief, where you talk about the funding profile over a six-year period. Will that time frame allow you to keep pace with what is happening with respect to climate change? Six years seems to be a long time to implement something that you see as necessary.
Mr. McBean: We have been doing research on freezing rain in Newfoundland and have discovered that the type of freezing rain or the icing type of rain events that occur in Newfoundland are different from what we typically see in Ontario. We are working with Transport Canada to determine how we may have to change some of the regulations for the aviation industry to address the fact that it seems that a certain kind of storm has more potential for severe icing because of the way the storms work. We do research with the National Research Council and with Transport Canada into weather-related aviation events. We are working on that issue.
As I mentioned, I will check into the iceberg situation.
Senator Cook: It seems that the northern ice that used to flow down in the spring of the year and lock in the bays and harbours for weeks on end just does not arrive any more.
Mr. McBean: Your question was on the funding profile. It is of concern to me. Our national infrastructure -- our whole weather-observing, telecommunications, computer-forecast system -- is a system of the order of $350 million of assets. We run an observing station in Alert, the most northern point of Canada. We have stations from coast to coast to coast, as we like to say. We have done a major review recently. The experts in technology tell us that we should be recycling that technology on at least a ten-year cycle, and preferably a seven-year or eight-year cycle. Even on a ten-year cycle, you need $35 million per year to reinvest in a $350 million dollar operation. The reality is that we have less than half of that.
Senator Cook: Six years seems to me to be a long time to try to keep pace with what is happening.
Mr. McBean: This will be our national Doppler radar system when it is in place. It will consist of 29 Doppler weather radars from coast to coast, but not to the third coast. We do what we can afford. We had three, prior to the start of this program. We have added two more this year, one in Regina and one in Quebec. There will be four more before the end of this calendar year. However, it will take us until 2003 to put in the full network, and that just covers the southern area, where most people live.
It does leave somewhat exposed people who live in other areas, although the severity of weather events in these regions is not the type detected with the Doppler radar weather system. We would very much like to implement this system more rapidly.
In this part of Canada, north of 55 degrees, we do not have many observations of our weather or our climate. We have a number of stations here and there, but they are all expensive to operate. We have 30 million people in our country, which is the second biggest country on the planet, and the cost per person of such an observation system is fairly substantial.
Presently, there are 31 stations in Canada where we launch balloons, which is the bread and butter of our system. They go up through the atmosphere twice a day. A station in the High Arctic can cost $1 million a year to operate. We just closed one because we could not afford to keep it going. When you are on a High Arctic island and no one else is there, you must pay for maintaining the runway and maintaining the camp.
However, at the Alert site, for example, which is our northern-most site where we do weather and carbon dioxide measurements, we rely heavily on the Department of National Defence. We can be there at not much cost because the Department of National Defence already has people stationed there. They maintain the infrastructure. With our other weather stations, though, and we have 31 balloon stations across Canada, we have to do the maintenance ourselves. China, on the other hand, has 124 stations for the same geographical areas, but of course Chinese labour costs are much less than ours.
Senator Cook: My home is in Newfoundland. Could you comment on the impact on climate change of oil and gas exploration? Do you see an ecological disaster coming?
My father took fish, but there are no fish now. Some people say it is because of global warming. Now we are mining the seabed. As an environmentalist, how do you feel about that?
Mr. McBean: The burning of the fossil fuel we get from various places under the seabed off Newfoundland results in the greenhouse gas emissions that eventually lead to climate warming.
I am not of the view that direct exploration, if done properly, results in disasters, but we are increasing the risks all the time. We know about spills or breakages of pipelines that have caused significant environmental damage.
In the case of the Hibernia oil drilling operations, we worked with the company that built the rig while they were building it and while they moved it to sea. We gave them special weather forecasts, for which they paid us. Now they have a private company providing them with that service. We did not get the contract.
Senator Cook: If the weather is bad, they can cap their wells.
Mr. McBean: Yes, that is the idea of the special weather forecast, regardless of who does it. Our job is to give them advance warning of a big iceberg or a severe weather event so they can take precautionary actions in terms of capping the wells before a disaster happens.
The Labrador Sea has been cool and relatively fresh for the last 10 years or more. Some scientists believe that is one of the reasons the North Atlantic cod are not recovering. The reason the sea is fresh and cold is not totally clear. It is hard to argue with any confidence that it is due to global warming, but it is not inconsistent with the kinds of things that might happen with global warming.
Senator Cook: The old fisherman on the wharf will tell you that it is due to Greenland's ice cap melting.
Mr. McBean: I doubt that.
The Chairman: I would like to get back to the mitigation issue, because that is why we are here.
If you were making recommendations to this committee on what Environment Canada could or should do to help mitigate these disasters, what would they be? You have already said that a Doppler whether implementation plan would be first and foremost. Could you recommend anything else that we should address?
Mr. McBean: I hate to say anything without sounding too self-serving, but that is my job.
The Chairman: That is allowed here.
Mr. McBean: We need a program of weather forecasting and public education to better inform Canadians so they know what to do when they hear a warning. We need to deliver those warnings in a better fashion than we are doing at present.
We must work with partners, because the actual delivery of weather information to Canadians is mostly done through the media. Generally, we have very good support from the media. We are working on a system to put weather alerts on the television screens of people with cable. We are working with The Weather Network on that technology and testing it in four places in Canada. We would like to be able to do more of that.
We would like to be able to make better observations with Doppler radar and the satellite facilities we use, which are primarily U.S. satellites. We would like to take better advantage of that. We do run Canada's largest supercomputing system in Montreal, but supercomputing costs are always going up. Moreover, the atmospheric program is under significant resource pressure to continue to do the job as well as we have done it in the past, and yet my program is 38 per cent smaller than it was five years ago with 900 fewer people, which is over a third of the staff.
The Chairman: Would it be appropriate for this committee to visit the Canadian Meteorological Centre in Dorval to help in our education or understanding of what you do? Do you believe it is sufficient to hear only from you?
I live in the Red River Valley, so I am used to floods. As I have said many times, I filled my first sand bag when I was 12, and I have filled many over the years. Our fairly strong concern is that we are into a cycle now where we could have a major flood every 17 years and an historic flood every 100 or 150 years. Going back in history in the Red River Valley, there were three major floods of an historic nature that occurred over a span of 35 years, two of which occurred within a span of nine years. The concern is that we are back into that kind of wet cycle.
The critical element above all is your weather forecasting. You are the expert, and if you are to help us understand what you do, it might be appropriate for us to visit your centre.
Mr. McBean: I would like you to visit our centre in Montreal.
The Atmospheric Environment Service is one of the few government agencies headquartered outside Ottawa. I live in Toronto, and our weather service has been there for 138 years; but Canada's major centre is not far from Dorval Airport. It is our national telecommunications hub and it controls the flow of data within Canada as it comes in from major trunk lines.
We receive 7,000 or so observations of weather every six hours from around the world. We get 700 from Canada and 7,000 from around the world. We process that information into a three-dimensional image of the world. We do forecasts for every place in the world. When the Canadian military wanted to fly to Nicaragua, we gave them the Nicaraguan weather forecasts. We run the Canadian Forces weather service as a subsection of AES. When the forces go to Bosnia, for example, we provide the forecasts for that area.
We create a global three-dimensional map of the weather around the world. We then use our computer to predict what the weather will be five days ahead, or 10 days ahead, and once a month we give a 90-day seasonal forecast. The point is that we have that computer facility there.
We have a dedicated staff of meteorologists who monitor the weather systems. They provide guidance to our forecast offices across the country, from Gander, Halifax, Fredericton, Rimouski, Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Kelowna and Vancouver. We used to have 56 more, but we closed them a few years ago.
Montreal is also where most of our weather prediction research is done. It could be a very fascinating visit. My staff would very much appreciate it. Weather is not normally seen as a politically sexy topic. If senators were interested enough to come and visit, that would be a boost in morale for my organization.
The Chairman: We are indeed moving into global warming. These events are becoming more prevalent. What can we do?
The critical element here is educating the people so that they understand what is coming down the track without creating a high level of concern. However, what you have forecasted to us of what will happen is rather dramatic. I have grandchildren and I am concerned about them. We certainly owe it to future generations to bring awareness levels up.
Is there anything in your broad experience or from your depth of knowledge that might assist in the education of people so that they can better understand what may happen in the future?
Mr. McBean: We do have a number of programs under way in which we are trying to do that. We are working with The Weather Network to develop some video clips of scientific material that they are quite keen on running.
There must be a mix of things. There is a great deal of emphasis on trying to address the issue of our emissions. That is appropriate; however, the Canadian emissions are only 2 per cent in the global total. Probably in not too many years it will be 1 per cent.
Canadians need to understand that they are making an impact. We are making an impact today on the urban smog situation. Montreal and Toronto have had smog alerts. That is due to things happening right now in the communities in which people live. From talking to my neighbours I sense that I can have more impact on them by getting them to think about the urban smog problem now rather than trying to convince them to take action on climate change in the next century.
On the climate change issue, my belief is that Canada will do very well in terms of meeting the Kyoto and other commitments. It is a result of the impact of developing country emissions that we are in for an inevitable climate change of the magnitude that we have spoken about. We need to be educating people on that other side of what we call adaptation: What are the things that make sense politically and socially? We need to better observe our present climate and understand it so that we can to make our predictions with better confidence. We need to reduce the number of doubting Thomases and contrarians who say that our predictions are not quite right. We need to improve that capability of predicting both today's and the next century's weather.
As we can improve that scientific capacity, we will make inroads to addressing people who take the ostrich approach, saying that it is an issue, but it will go away if they ignore it long enough.
This is a continuing issue in which you people can play a significant role. It is part of the process of educating Canadians about their impact on the environment.
Senator Fraser: Could you furnish us with a one-paragraph explanation of what Doppler radar is and why it is better?
Mr. McBean: Basically, weather radar tells us that there is a rain drop there. Doppler weather radar tells us how it is moving and it gives us the wind. That is critical.
Senator Fraser: You said in your statement that a combination of circumstances -- the job you must do and the money you have available to do it -- results in a lower quality of observing capabilities that are considered inadequate internationally. How far off are we from what would be considered adequate internationally? That is the real question.
Mr. McBean: I cannot give you numbers right off the top of my head, but, essentially, in the northern half of our country, we do not meet the international standards set by the World Meteorological Organization in terms of the number of balloon observations and the number of surface observations. By their standards, we do not have enough data to tell us what the present climate is. I must check the numbers. It would be a significant number of more observations.
Senator Fraser: If you could provide us with a table setting out that data, it would be instructive.
Are there some severe weather events that Canadians are more likely to face more of than others? Should we be, for example, more worried about more ice storms than about more hurricanes moving north? If we had to set a priority for natural disasters in order to plan and mitigate, is there a range?
Mr. McBean: At this point, it is hard to say to that level. All indications are that there will be more of all of those kinds of things. The ice storm occurred because we had a relatively warmer situation, near freezing, but just below freezing, and that is when you get more moisture. Those kinds of events will happen as we get a warmer climate. It will seem likely to happen more often.
Our climate models unfortunately still do not have the level of sophistication that would give you the necessary detail to make that judgment. We are working on it, but there are a few years of research and work yet to be done.
Senator Fraser: It is fairly important work when people are trying to plan.
Your storm warning system will obviously be increasingly important in this context. You talked about working with partners on cable TV. Surely the people who most need the warning are not sitting in their basements watching televisions. Have you ever considered something like the NOAA weather radio system in the States?
Mr. McBean: We do have a weather radio system.
Senator Fraser: I did not know that. How many people listen to it, and how often can you upgrade forecasts?
Mr. McBean: Our weather radio system is similar to that of the NOAA. It requires the person to buy a $50 radio set from Radio Shack or wherever. It sends out an automatic signal to tell you if there is a weather warning in place. We have found, generally speaking, that most Canadians do not use it. The number of people using it is relatively small, and the cost of maintaining that system is very large. We are actually looking at whether we can continue to maintain that weather warning system.
We can provide you with a map of the locations that are covered by our radio system. We have again partnered with others using towers and transmitters. The weather alert system does exist in Canada. However, the number of people who receive the information is unfortunately still rather small.
Senator Fraser: Do you have any estimates on what proportion of the population who need that information get it that way?
Mr. McBean: Not off the top of my head, but we will look into it. We know roughly how many weather radios are out there. The marine community or recreational communities are major users of that service. Some media use it.
Senator Fraser: What about farmers?
Mr. McBean: Yes, farmers use it.
We have gone into the cost-recovery areas. In order to offset reduced budgets, we now sell specialized weather services, something called I-met. On the prairies, if you are a farmer and are running a combine system, you can have in the cockpit of that machinery a computer system connected by Internet to one of our sites. We will send directly into your laptop inside your combine special forecast warnings on where the storm is going. For a fee, you can have that kind of service.
Senator Fraser: When you know that there is a serious storm coming, what do you do? How do you get the word out? Not that many people have special radios, but there are short-waves. What do you do? Can you override, for example, local radio programming, or must you rely on the goodwill of the radio station to interrupt?
Mr. McBean: We must rely on the goodwill of the radio and television broadcast industry. The difficulty is that, increasingly, radio stations, in particular in small communities, do not actually have anyone there. They are automated. They are fed programming from somewhere else, and it just runs.
We used to have 56 staffed offices across the country, in places like Peterborough, Windsor, Brandon, and such communities. We closed all of those. Part of the job of that staff was to develop links with the media and links with emergency preparedness operations.
In some areas, we have volunteer networks that will then use their own radio systems, ham radio operators, and telephone networks to get the word around.
We work closely with all the emergency preparedness groups. For example, we have a fax system that automatically sends a fax with the warning information to emergency preparedness offices. However, because of the way in which technology is changing, you must be readjusting these things, and we cannot control how that information gets out.
Senator Fraser: Or how fast.
Mr. McBean: Yes. If it does not get out quickly, there is no point. Honestly, I think that is the weakest part of our system. We do not have the old air-raid sirens that were a part of my youth in Vancouver. They were not used for weather purposes but because of the Cold War. We had to run to the basement when they sounded. For some reason or another, we disbanded that function, whereas in some part of the United States they still have warning sirens that alert people.
It has always been a problem to communicate to people who do not have a weather radio or have no other means. We have beeper systems now for people who, for a small fee, can be hard-wired in or electrically wired in. We will send them a special tailored warning. However, that misses the general population, the bulk of Canadians who may be exposed to a tornado and do not know about it.
Senator Fraser: How much warning time do you get for something like a tornado or the Calgary hail storm?
Mr. McBean: With a tornado, the time period is relatively short, 10 minutes maybe. We try to give a sequence of advisories. We will say that hazardous weather seems to be approaching, and we will try to reflect that in the words of the forecasts. It is only when we actually have confirmation of a tornado, when the Doppler weather radar actually sees a tornado starting to form in the clouds, by seeing the winds patterns, that we give out an alert. If your false alarm ratio gets high, people start ignoring you. You must have a balance. We do not actually predict all tornadoes. We get 80 to 90 per cent of our forecasts right in the case of rain or temperatures, but when you get into an extreme event like a tornado, the probability of error gets significantly higher. We try to get that balance between not too many alarms.
They have completely covered the United States with the Doppler weather radar system. They have 126 Doppler weather radars. They began installation in the 1980s, and I believe that, as of a year ago, they are all in place. They have been able to increase the alert time for a tornado warning from 8 to 10 minutes to closer to 20 minutes. I will check those numbers, because that is from my memory. For a hailstorm, you probably have a better chance of giving a longer warning because it is not quite such an extreme event. We can see its development earlier in the cloud patterns and they can be timed. You can pick up a hailstorm with radar or satellite imagery or surface observations and follow it because it moves across the landscape. In contrast, tornadoes come and blast the area and then they are gone and another one pops out over here. Hailstorms are bigger cloud complexes.
Senator Fraser: You gave good warning about the great eastern ice storm.
Mr. McBean: Yes; I believe we did a good job.
Senator Fraser: In terms of time, at the beginning I do not know how clear it was to everyone that we were facing a major disaster. However, that may have been a conscious decision. You can see something like a hurricane coming for days.
Mr. McBean: Yes, the actual path of a hurricane is difficult to predict. You can see it coming but to know that it will pass through New Brunswick as opposed to Nova Scotia or that it will miss both and clip Hibernia as it goes by is still part of the uncertainty in our prediction systems.
Senator Fraser: Where do your greatest needs lie? Is it in getting the information out to the public faster and more broadly or is it in acquiring the information in the first place?
Mr. McBean: The observing system part is the more expensive part and it is where we need to put our resources. "Getting it out to the public" involves a mixture of dollars and public persuasion and, in some cases, perhaps some regulatory help from the CRTC to put pressure on the media that this is an obligation rather than a voluntary thing.
Senator Cook: Looking at the long term and looking at education, for example, for my grandchildren, would you advocate curriculum-based learning for children at the elementary school level? Should we be moving toward education and be part of the curriculum?
Mr. McBean: I have two grandchildren myself and I am conscious of the next generation. Yes, there could be an increase in our educational programs for young children, although it is part of their curriculum now. When I was a university professor, I found one of the most interesting things was the volunteer work I did as a scientist in the schools. I would meet with the children in Grades 3 and 4. In many ways, that was rewarding because they are so excited and interested. When I met with the teenagers in Grades 11 and 12, however, I found it less satisfying because their interest and receptivity was notably lacking.
One of the serious issues facing our organization is finding the next generation of meteorologists. The number of students going into physics -- and, we are all basically engineers or physicists by first-degree training -- is no higher now, and perhaps it is smaller, than it was 30 years ago. We have been trying to recruit new meteorologists but the universities are not producing many of them any more.
Senator Cook: A child at the elementary school age is most inquisitive. I hear much about recycling and the environment from students in Grade 4. That is the age demographic that we need to concentrate on rather than those students who are in Grades 11 and 12.
Mr. McBean: I agree. Certainly, in the past we have worked where we could within the educational system, both through our national program and through staff, as individuals and volunteers.
Senator Fraser: You said that your budget has been cut by 38 per cent?
Mr. McBean: Yes.
Senator Fraser: Has that bottomed out?
Mr. McBean: Yes.
Senator Fraser: Do you have forward projections?
Mr. McBean: We are at present in the process of working with Treasury Board to see if there are sources of funds that will allow us to continue into the future.
Senator Fraser: If you do not get all the money you would like to have, what avenues are open to you? You have talked about partnerships. Could you expand on that?
Mr. McBean: The partnership side would be on the delivery of services. That does not help us much with the observing side. We are already very much in partnership with the academic community. We have distributed our scientific capacity. Part of my organization includes scientists who are at the University of Victoria, UBC, Memorial, Dalhousie, McGill, the University of Toronto and at several places in between. We work well with the academic community.
If we do not have additional resources to invest in the infrastructure, then I must find money elsewhere in the program. I am not looking forward to that option.
Senator Fraser: Both Senator Cook and I were struck by your comment that you lost the forecasting contract for the offshore in the Labrador Sea. Who are your competitors and why do you not have a monopoly?
Mr. McBean: There are several small companies in Canada, mostly in Atlantic Canada, and there is one in Toronto. They are small companies of six, seven or eight people who can do very specialized work and do it reasonably well. However, the reality is that weather is very much an international activity. The weather services of the United Kingdom, Germany and New Zealand are now marketing services around the world in order to meet their budgetary objectives. There are also several large U.S. companies. If you look in the newspaper, as I did this morning, the map in it said "Weather by AccuWeather."
Senator Fraser: Do the newspaper weather maps not come from you?
Mr. McBean: Some of them do. We used to have the contract for The Globe and Mail but we lost it to Nature Media. I meet with the president fairly often. We have a good working relationship. A company like AccuWeather, which is based in State College, Pennsylvania, forecasts all around the world. I do not have a problem with them forecasting; I have a problem with them using all our information and never giving us any credit. Basically, they cannot forecast for anywhere in Canada unless they have our observations, our radar data and our numerical model output. They just take what we provide them and say that it is a forecast from AccuWeather. They make money.
Senator Fraser: Do they pay you?
Mr. McBean: No.
Senator Fraser: How do they get your stuff?
Mr. McBean: We have international agreements. In order to make a forecast for Canada, we must have weather observations from all around the world. We pull in data from the United States and the rest of the world. In return, we send them all our data.
In the United States, it is government policy that any information held by the U.S. government is given free to any company that wants it. AccuWeather can get all our information for nothing through the U.S. weather service and use it to compete with us and with other companies in Canada.
I never thought, as a professor of atmospheric science, that I would get into economic and trade issues but this is very much a prominent issue. I just came back from the World Meteorological Organization congress in Geneva where 158 countries discussed these issues. We spent more time on trade of data and intellectual property than we did on the scientific issues of weather.
Senator Fraser: You have almost the classic Canadian scenario here. Private enterprise, possibly foreign, possibly local, sees a way to make a buck by concentrating on the populous markets. Yet while it occupies that field, you cannot go into commercial activity in an area like metropolitan Toronto. Toronto will already be lost to AccuWeather.
Mr. McBean: That is potentially so, yes. We have lost some cities. I believe Winnipeg as a city contracted to AccuWeather at one point but I do not believe that is true anymore.
Senator Fraser: It complicates your lives as you try to figure out how to build.
Mr. McBean: There is a loss of revenue but, more important, there is a loss of understanding by Canadian citizens of what their government is doing for them. I listen to CBC in Toronto as I drive to and from work. For the past five years I have never heard them say that their weather is brought by Environment Canada. CBC Ottawa does make that reference.
Senator Fraser: In Montreal they sometimes credit Environment Canada in Dorval.
Mr. McBean: Our relationship with the media is important. We do not have a consistent pattern, which makes it very difficult when you try to justify a national program. Committee members here have not said this to me, but some members of the government in power or on parliamentary committees have asked why we do not simply put more ads on our television channel. We do not own a television channel. They think we own The Weather Network, but we do not.
This is part of the whole question of credit and attribution. This system is fundamentally an activity for the public good for which the Government of Canada, in one way or another, should get credit. Yet it gets very little visibility for the job it does. Even at reduced funding levels, we are still doing a very good job. We are trying very hard.
Senator Fraser: I agree that, as the chair said earlier, you may find yourselves becoming sexy as weather is evermore with us.
The Chairman: We appreciate your appearance and your invitation to attend at Dorval. I am sure we will be there. Good luck on your budget.
Senators, before we adjourn, there are two conferences coming up. One is on June 18 in Red Deer, Alberta, regarding hail. Second, there is a world conference on disaster management in Hamilton, Ontario, from June 20 to 23. It is a very popular topic. June 22 and 23 will deal with floods and hurricanes. The other days will cover other disasters, such as riots. I am informing you of my intention to attend if possible.
Senator Fraser: From what I have seen, we would all benefit from being there. However, we do not know the Senate timetable for that week, although we may know more in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The committee adjourned.