THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, December 12, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day with videoconference at 9 a.m. [ET] to study emerging issues related to the committee’s mandate.
Senator Paul J. Massicotte(Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good morning, honourable senators. My name is Paul J. Massicotte. I’m a senator from Quebec and I’m the chair of the committee.
Today, we are holding a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
I would ask my colleagues on the committee to introduce themselves, starting on my right.
Senator Youance: Suze Youance from Quebec.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Anderson: Margaret Dawn Anderson, Northwest Territories.
Senator Fridhandler: Daryl Fridhandler, Alberta.
Senator D. M. Wells: David Wells, Newfoundland and Labrador.
[Translation]
Senator Galvez: Rosa Galvez from Quebec.
Senator Verner: Josée Verner from Quebec.
The Chair: Today, scientists and government officials will present us with a scientific briefing on extreme weather in Canada that will cover the following: climate change and the evolution of extreme events, examples of extreme events, how we issue warnings and the implications for stakeholders, such as banks, insurance companies and others.
From Environment and Climate Change Canada, we welcome Doris Fortin, Director General, Policy, Planning and Partnerships Directorate, Meteorological Service of Canada; Sébastien Chouinard, Acting Executive Director, National Programs and Business Development, via videoconference, and Greg Flato, Director, Climate Research, via videoconference.
I extend our welcome to you, and thank you for accepting our invitation.
Because this is a scientific briefing, today’s meeting will unfold differently than usual. Thirty minutes have been set aside for your presentation, which will be followed by a question and answer period. The floor is yours, Mr. Flato.
[English]
Greg Flato, Director, Climate Research, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Thank you very much.
I would like to begin by giving a bit of background. The global climate is changing. We have been observing that change for a long time, and we understand why it’s changing. Its changing primarily due to human-caused emissions and greenhouse gases, predominantly, carbon dioxide. That’s the reason it’s well understood, and that temperature change that you see in the figure on the lower left is the global mean surface air temperature change from 1850 to the present. There are several lines there from different institutions who make these kinds of estimates of the global temperature. They are all very consistent with one another. There’s variability as the temperature goes up and down year to year, but over time, over the last 170 years or so, you can see this inexorable rise in temperature. We’re currently about 1.1 or 1.2 degrees above what we refer to as “the pre-industrial period,” but it’s actually the average from the period of 1850 to 1900.
The warming is not uniform over the planet; it’s larger over high latitudes and larger over land than it is over ocean. Even in smaller regions, it’s not uniform. The figure on the right illustrates the period from 1948 to 2020. A segment of that figure is the global increase in temperature shown in red. The trend line is shown as the straight lines, and the trend line for Canada is shown as the blue line. Canada is warming at roughly double the rate of the global average. Canada has warmed by something like two degrees over that period.
If you look at the Canadian Arctic shown in the grey line, it has warmed by something like 3 degrees relative to the pre‑industrial period.
The next slide shows that information in map form. The map on the upper right shows that trend across Canada from 1948 to 2023. The yellow to orange colours indicates larger trends, as shown in the scale below, which is given in degrees per decade. You can see that the warming is not uniform over Canada. In fact, it’s largest over the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and least over the Maritime areas. It’s not uniform.
If we look at the figures at the bottom, they represent results from climate model projections of future climate change under different greenhouse gases and other emission scenarios: under a low emission scenario on the left and a high emission scenario on the right. We see there that, again, the trend is not uniform over Canada, but rather, it is larger in Northern Canada than it is in Southern Canada. Under a high emission scenario, where global temperatures reach something like five degrees by the end of this century, the Canadian Arctic would be at somewhere over 10 degrees of warming.
The next slide shows that climate change is not just about temperature. As the temperature increases, many other things change in lockstep with it. Precipitation changes, the amount of combined shear, the sea level is changing, and many other things are changing along with the temperature. I’m now showing one figure, which is snow, which is presented in terms of snow-water equivalent. It is the amount of water that would be the equivalent of the snow that’s on the ground, and we are already observing that snow is declining over Southern Canada particularly. The brown areas indicate a decreasing trend in snow amount, and that will continue in the future as the climate warms, unsurprisingly.
The annual maximum amount of snow on the ground each year is an important indicator of how much water is available subsequently in the summer for things like agriculture, hydropower, urban water supply and so on. That’s another important quantity directly associated with the changing climate.
The combination of these things — warming, changes in precipitation patters, changes in the snow amount, increased soil dryness in the summer, et cetera — can all lead to additional effects like increased incidence of high wildfire risk. In 2023 we saw an extreme wildfire year that was much more intense than any that had been observed in the past, and we can do analyses to ask the question: How much more extreme was that wildfire year than it would have been if the climate had not been changing as a result of human activities? The result of that analysis was that the length of the fire season that we experienced in 2023 was increased by a factor of five compared to pre-industrial conditions. So it was made five times more likely by the changing climate that we have observed.
That’s an example of something that we call “extreme event analysis.”
If we go to slide six, this is described in a bit more detail. Now, this is a little bit more technical here, but the main point is that as the climate changes, it’s not just the mean values, the changing average temperature, the changing average precipitation, those kinds of things that are important. In fact, much more important is the change in extreme events, the likelihood, magnitude or intensity of those extreme events, that’s what causes damage, and causes impacts that we have to adapt to and respond to.
We can do this analysis along the lines of what I just described for different kinds of extremes, and over the past year we have deployed a new system that we have developed at Environment and Climate Change Canada, called a rapid extreme event attribution system. And what this system does is, using computer models, we compare the likelihood of an event that we see, like a heat wave, and we ask the question, how likely is that event now under the current climate that has been affected by changing climate? Additionally, how likely would that event have been in the pre-industrial climate before any activities that have changed the climate?
That leads to two different probability distribution functions, the things that you see on the right, those typical bell curves that you see when you’re grading high school students’ marks.
Without the human contribution to climate, we would get something that looks like that blue curve. With the human contribution to climate change where the climate is warmer, we get something that looks like that red curve. That curve has shifted over, which means the average has gone up, but interestingly, or more importantly, all of the other statistics associated with that have gone up. So the likelihood of an extreme event above a certain threshold, shown by that dotted line, gets much larger in a warm climate than it does in a cold climate.
So we can do that now almost immediately after an event occurs, within a few days of an event occurring. I’ll show some examples of that in the next couple of slides. But the reason that that’s important is right after an event, in this case a heat wave that occurs, we can describe and quantify how much climate change has increased the likelihood of such an event. And that helps us inform adaptation and rebuilding of infrastructure, because when infrastructure is damaged by an extreme event, a roadway, a bridge, a culvert, those kinds of things, it has to be rebuilt, but it has to be rebuilt in a way that’s resilient to the climate that it will experience in the future under a different climate than the climate of the past, which is the way that design has always been done.
We’ve been working with the National Research Council of Canada to put information into the national building codes and highway codes to allow for that. It also allows us to better communicate what the impact, the implications of a changing climate are.
The next slide, slide 7, shows the result of that analysis that we did over the past summer using this rapid even attribution system. And we’ve divided the country into 17 regions. In each region we look at the hottest heat wave that occurred during the summer of 2024, and colour code it in terms of how much more likely it was made by climate change than it would have been if the climate had not been changing, so comparing the climate we have with the climate of the pre-industrial era.
The colour coding is such that where it’s yellow, more likely, means that it’s at least twice as likely as it would have been. The orange, much more likely, means it’s at least two to ten times more likely, and the reddish colour means far more likely, which means at least 10 times more likely. You see that the heat waves, the hottest heat waves that we experienced in Northern Canada, were at least ten times more likely to have occurred under the current climate than they would have under the unperturbed pre-industrial climate.
The next slide, slide 8, is just a summary of that, so those 17 regions we discussed on the previous slide. Thirty-seven heat waves were analyzed this past year, four were found to be far more likely, 28 much more likely, five more likely and none were found to be less likely, as you would expect. The longest event was in a place whose name I can’t pronounce, and I don’t want to insult anyone by trying to pronounce it and pronounce it poorly, but it was in the eastern Arctic, and that event actually lasted for 25 days between September and October. The hottest absolute event was average over all of Alberta for July was 31.5 degrees, and the hottest extreme event in terms of its anomaly, that is the difference between a normal day and the heat wave day, was in Inuvik in August where it was 13 degrees warmer than average, or hotter than average.
So now I’m going to pass it on to my colleague, Ms. Fortin, to talk about some of the implications of this. Thank you.
Doris Fortin, Director General, Policy, Planning and Partnerships Directorate, Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada: As Mr. Flato mentioned, and as I hope you realize, weather and weather extremes are one way we experience climate change on a day‑to‑day basis. On slide 9 you can see a number of events that have been remarkable in the past, they’re a small sample and I’ll talk about a few of them. I think we all know them in some way, either because we’ve experienced them directly, or because family members or communities have experienced them.
For example, in July, a combination of extreme heat, little rainfall and lightning sparked wildfires in the west. The iconic town of Jasper, Alberta, was ravaged by a wildfire that resulted in the destruction of 30% of its structures. The fire was incredibly fast burning, and Parks Canada has estimated that the wind from the fire reached between 150 and 180 kilometres an hour. And there’s some evidence that there might have been a very rare phenomenon that happened at the same time as the fire, which is called a fire tornado; that’s still under investigation. So our extreme events are creating their own sort of extreme.
For Jasper, the estimates are that the fire caused over $882 million in insured loss. That’s just insured loss, it does not include any of the infrastructure that belongs to Parks Canada that was lost, or other social economic costs, and I’ll come back to that in a moment. Of course, tragically a firefighter lost their life during that fire.
Also last summer, and Mr. Flato just mentioned that a moment ago, there was a multi-day heat wave that struck Canada’s north. The temperatures in Inuvik reached 34.8 degrees on August 7. Mr. Flato mentioned, I think if I recall correctly, it was 13 degrees Celsius above average normal. Because it was constant daylight the nighttime temperature barely dropped, so this had significant impact on the community. Many other communities in Canada’s north experienced similar temperatures.
Weather extremes are not limited to heat. We also saw sporadic, heavy rainfall in 2024, with devastating impacts, for example, in southern Ontario where roads, basements and subway stations were flooded across London, Hamilton, Burlington and Toronto. By July 16 the ground was so saturated that when there was a further downpour in the greater Toronto area we saw incredible flash flooding, chaos, and an estimated damage reaching close to 950 million just for that one event.
These kinds of events will continue to happen. Climate models project that by the end of the century an extreme rainfall event that now occurs every 20 years or so in Canada could happen every five years, and the amount of rain is also going to be higher.
There was a recent report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Insurance Bureau of Canada that estimated that avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, at the municipal level, would require investments in the order of $5.3 billion per year, shared between the different levels of governments.
[Translation]
On slide number 10, the costs associated with extreme weather events are increasing as these events become more frequent and more intense. According to CatIQ estimates, last summer four catastrophic events resulted in insured damage worth $7 billion. That’s twice as much as the total in 2023. What’s more, 2024 is shaping up to be the costliest year on record in Canada, with insured losses of over $8 billion.
However, insured losses represent only part of the total cost of extreme severe weather events. They also result in mounting economic losses, social disruption, environmental damage, adverse health effects and loss of life. Many reports indicate that First Nations, Inuit and Métis people are disproportionately impacted by climate change, as their lives and livelihoods are tied to land, water and ice.
Impacts typically include observed changes in wildlife, species immigration, changing water levels, increased intensity and frequency of forest fires, changing sea ice conditions, impacts on health and well-being, effects on natural and built infrastructure and much more.
[English]
On slide 11 you’ll see that we predict that temperatures will continue to be elevated in Canada in the near future. On the left you’re seeing an average temperature prediction over five years — from 2024 to 2028 — and that’s one type of product that tells us that temperatures will be elevated. On the right you see a different kind of product where we look from a seasonal perspective what the temperature will look like. So you have the seasonal outlook that Environment and Climate Change Canada has produced for average temperatures in Canada for the period of December 2024 to 2025, which is the winter, basically. You can see, with colours ranging from yellow to red — red represents the greatest difference — that we’ll see more elevated temperatures over this period than what we’ve seen as a normal temperature in the past.
We use these tools — with the seasonal outlooks on the right — quite a bit with the emergency management and emergency preparedness community. We provide these seasonal outlooks to the Government Operations Centre at Public Safety Canada, as well as other partners, including provincial and territorial counterparts together with emergency management organizations and public health authorities. These products help public authorities to support planning, preparedness and response to extreme weather events.
On slide 12, as the climate continues to warm, people and communities will continue to experience disruptions to their way of life and livelihoods. This is a very busy slide, but I’ll give you a few highlights.
We know that the impacts of climate change are already here. I’ve pointed to some severe weather events and Mr. Flato showed how a recent heat wave was made more likely by the changing climate. Even if we were to stop all carbon emissions tomorrow, we would continue to feel the impact of climate change that has happened for several years to come, and these impacts are not abstract, as I’ve already alluded to. Climate change knows no borders and doesn’t discriminate based on geography, income, ethnicity or any other criteria; we’re all affected. Here at home, higher temperatures have already had a profound impact on our lives, health, communities, economy and safety.
For example, poor air quality from pollution and wildfire have come with a significant price tag, directly affecting people’s health and have caused deaths. Just last year, Canada experienced 870 poor air-quality days in different locations across the country, between April 1 and September 30, with the majority due to wildfire smoke.
Canada’s North has changed. It rains in areas that have never seen rain before, and the ice is changing. This impacts Indigenous communities, traditional ways of life and opens up a number of challenges with respect to security, the economy and sovereignty. This is happening at the same time as the interest and risks in the North grow as a result of geopolitical and economic activities.
As I’ve mentioned, First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities will continue to be affected by severe weather events, and these also intersect with many other crises that they face. Farmers in Canada have had to manage with less rain and less snow to support the proper irrigation of their land and crops, and that’s particularly the case in the Prairies. Floods, extreme heat and storms will continue to augment in frequency and intensity, putting Canadian lives and infrastructure at risk. Government and public authorities will continue to see increasing demands for emergency preparedness, response, rescue and recovery, and Canada’s productivity will be impacted, as many — if not most — economic sectors are weather dependent in one way or another.
[Translation]
In this context, it is more important than ever to be able to predict weather conditions and weather events in order to reduce the impacts on lives and livelihoods. We know that early warnings save lives. Numerous studies have shown that for every dollar invested in weather and climate services, there is a return of up to $22 generated in the wider economy.
We must continue to improve our models to be able to predict for the longer term and adopt new approaches and technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which are evolving extremely rapidly in the field of weather forecasting.
We need to think about the information that Canadians, public authorities, communities and others need to make decisions about their lives and livelihoods. We also need to think about many different time scales: from real time to larger predictions, by season, by year and beyond.
The effects of weather and severe weather events can accumulate over time, space and, of course, intersect with other socio-economic conditions and vulnerabilities.
This is why we need to collaborate across sectors, actors and administrations to provide risk-based information and take action.
[English]
The Government of Canada released its first National Adaptation Strategy. The strategy outlines a shared path to a more climate-resilient Canada through adaptation solutions that can better prepare us for the more frequent, severe and unprecedented disasters that we are already facing.
To achieve the strategy’s goal, we need whole-of-society collaboration and action. Local, regional and sectoral adaptation plans are in place in many parts of the country, and they set priority and advance action on the highest risks and unique circumstances.
On slide 14, you can see a screenshot of web services that are provided by Environment and Climate Change Canada and many partners through the Canadian Centre for Climate Services.
[Translation]
To foster a climate-resilient society, Canadians must have access to robust climate projections, especially those related to extreme weather events. For example, future climate conditions must be explicitly taken into account in the design and planning of infrastructure, both new and structures being repaired or rebuilt, as Greg mentioned earlier. These future climate conditions must be included in order to assess the risks and vulnerabilities associated with climate change that can be predicted.
The mission of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Canadian Centre for Climate Services is to provide Canadians with the information and support they need to factor climate change into their decisions.
The centre is based on a user-driven approach and provides access to high-resolution climate data through the ClimateData.ca website, which you see here. This collaborative portal provides Canada-wide climate data, including future climate model projections and historical data.
[English]
Last but not least, to conclude with slide 15, the international scientific community is unanimous, and the signals are clear: Our climate has warmed. We see the effect of it. It will continue to become warmer. Severe weather events or conditions that were once rare will be more frequently observed now and into the future. Public authorities will continue to be put to the test, having to provide life-saving services and response to extreme weather events. The economic impact will be vast across all sectors of our economy, from insurance premiums, to transportation costs and risk to infrastructure. I will conclude with that.
Health care costs will rise as well as a result of direct health impacts and efforts to adapt our health care infrastructure to climate change.
No sector will be spared. Every component of our society will be impacted and come under pressure with a higher price tag for the cost of living and changes that we will have to endure on a day-to-day basis.
I’ll stop here. Thank you.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator D. M. Wells: Thank you, Mr. Flato and Ms. Fortin, for your presentations. They were really interesting.
I want to get a baseline for my questions. Mr. Flato, you mentioned the pre-industrial era. Can you tell me the years of the era that you were referencing just so I can understand whether pre-industrial is twentieth century?
Mr. Flato: When we talk about pre-industrial, we use that as a shorthand for the period 1850 to 1900. We recognize that there was industrial activity before 1850, but most of the observations that we have for things like temperature really become sufficiently large-scale that we can make estimates from 1850 onward. We use the period of 1850 to 1900 as a proxy for the pre-industrial period that led up to that.
Senator D. M. Wells: Thanks for that. I want to go into building codes and civic infrastructure codes. If there were an extreme weather event which involved rain, is the problem that there is a lot of rain or is the problem that human activity hasn’t addressed the possible increase in rain falls or snow or storms?
If we get 20 centimetres of rain in the interior of Quebec in the forest, it has, obviously, less effect than 20 centimetres of rain in downtown Toronto or downtown St. John’s. Is part of the issue not keeping the codes up with the weather events that are coming or that exist?
Mr. Flato: Yes, it’s a combination of both. It’s a combination of there being more exposure to extreme events and the fact that the extreme events are becoming more frequent.
From a design perspective, extreme events have always happened. We have always had extreme precipitation and heat waves. Take a storm sewer system as an example. When you design a storm sewer system, you accept that you can’t design that storm sewer system to be 100% resilient. There is always going to be some extreme event that will cause it to be overcharged and some flooding will occur, but you design to a certain risk level where the occurrence of the failure of the storm drainage system will be maybe once in 20 years, or something like that. You accept that there is a cost associated with that.
Now, as the likelihood of extreme events increases, as the climate warms and the warmer atmosphere can hold more water which then comes down in rain, those extreme events become more frequent. So the system that was designed in the past to only fail once every 20 years is now likely to fail once every five years or every two years, or something like that. Therefore, the cost that you had assumed that you would be able to tolerate is now being overwhelmed.
In the future, when you have to replace infrastructure like that, you now have to design it for the likelihood of extremes that will occur over the next 50 years — the life cycle of that infrastructure — rather than the extremes that had occurred over the last 50 years. That’s the kind of information we provide to the national building code so that they can design infrastructure that is resilient to the climate that will come as opposed to the climate that we have experienced in the past.
Senator D. M. Wells: Thanks for that. I have so many more questions, so I will go on round two. But I have one more question for now.
How does the Canadian Centre for Climate Services help Canadians, governments or companies in their activities? Do you provide advice that eventually leads to building code or civic infrastructure code changes? What actually happens other than the provision of information?
Mr. Flato: In terms of the national building codes and the national highway codes, we work directly with the National Research Council of Canada, which has the mandate to oversee the development of codes and standards, and there are the codes committees that are established under that. Those committees, which have a provincial equivalent in each province, sit down and decide what information they need, and then we develop information that supports the changes in the building codes.
The building codes are updated every five years. The building code is just being updated, there is a 2025 version being released shortly. That is the first one that has information in it to allow designers to take into account future climate information when designing infrastructure. We work together with the building code committees and the National Research Council of Canada to develop the information that goes to them.
Designers then have access to information that they can use to make designs and have design criteria for future infrastructure. That’s how it works. It’s basically built into the building codes now.
[Translation]
Senator Youance: My question follows those of Senator Wells. I’m a civil engineer and I think I’m going to give up my profession. Senator Wells was saying that, in the case of infrastructure — if we think about new construction, we’ll be able to integrate everything — we’re faced with road or bridge structures and dams that are undersized. On the other hand, when we calculate snow loads for buildings, according to the 2015 or 2020 code, we currently have load increases. In engineering, we’re in the process of recommending that building managers reinforce their structures to support more snow, but in fact, there will be less snow. It’s a puzzle we’ll have to solve. What do engineers have to do? We’re practically making recommendations contrary to what you’ve just presented.
[English]
Mr. Flato: It is the case that different kinds of extremes are changing in different ways. We talked about heat extremes, and they are increasing in frequency as the climate warms. The total accumulated amount of snow is decreasing as the climate warms. In many cases, the amount of precipitation is increasing across most of Canada; the amount of precipitation in a particular event is increasing.
Two things can happen at the same time. You can have more intense precipitation events, but the cumulative precipitation over the year, and in particular the cumulative amount of snow, is declining. We see that, particularly in higher latitudes, where more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, and that leads to different impacts on infrastructure.
It is a bit of an internal difficulty that you have depending on the time of year, you can have more intense precipitation events, but at other points of the year, like in the summertime, the amount of snow accumulated during the winter has melted earlier and is no longer available to provide soil moisture and flow into rivers. The two things are internally consistent, but they depend on the season and on the quantity you’re looking at.
Senator Fridhandler: Thank you for your presentation. I would like to understand, as typical of all climate change matters, they don’t occur solely over Canada. I’m wondering what analysis you have done in terms of similar latitudes globally. Is this comparatively similar, or are you seeing differences and a uniqueness of events occurring in Canada?
Ms. Fortin: Mr. Flato, do you want to start on climate and I can speak a bit to some extremes?
Mr. Flato: Sure. It is the case that if you look at the changes in climate the changes are not uniform, as I mentioned, but they do have a kind of latitudinal structure. The changes that we experience in Canada are very similar to the changes that are being experienced over Northern Europe, Northern Eurasia. Across the north those changes are quite similar. Canada is not unique in that. The kinds of changes that we are seeing here, we are also seeing in Alaska, in Eurasia, in Northern Europe, so it’s kind of consistent across the North. I don’t know if that answers the question.
Senator Fridhandler: It does, but a follow-up question would be, do your monitoring systems and coordination in what’s occurring on climate change, at any period of time, involve cooperation with other jurisdictions so that you can have greater predictability on movement?
Mr. Flato: Maybe I can go to Ms. Fortin to talk a little bit about the World Meteorological Organization and how that is the body that coordinates observations worldwide, that then feed into our analysis.
Ms. Fortin: So what Mr. Flato has said is true. Under the United Nations there is an organization called the World Meteorological Organization that includes 150-some members; Canada is a member. It brings together all the weather services, the hydrometeorological prediction services of these 150 different countries. We share observations.
By using observations from around the globe, we are able to predict conditions further out into the future. That coordination, and that collaboration, and cooperation is essential for us to be able to make predictions that are beyond two or three days. We need to have that data that comes around.
The World Meteorological Organization also coordinates different research activities, different technological testing and things like that, that allow us to constantly learn new things and bring improvement into our systems. It also publishes different big reports that speak a little bit to the question you had, which is, what are different countries experiencing in terms of changes and extreme weather events on their own territory, for example? So Canada is part of that.
Senator Fridhandler: I want to turn back to slide 10 where we show dollar values of costs associated with severe weather events. One thing that jumped out at me is there are a couple of peaks through the period from the mid-90s to present, but it’s not adjusted for inflation.
When I look at $8.1 billion in 2024 and I wonder what $2.9 billion in 1994 is, I think that some of these peaks are actually perhaps equivalent, or some earlier peaks are in fact more extreme than $8.1 billion when adjusted. Just so we have a better understanding of that.
Ms. Fortin: This data is from CatIQ. And I actually don’t know and it’s not written on the slide. I’d have to come back to you to know if it’s adjusted for inflation. But I do know that Public Safety maintains a database of events that have occurred in Canada, and I know that one is inflation adjusted.
Senator Fridhandler: I think it’s more important for an understanding on that slide.
Ms. Fortin: Yes. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for your presentations.
I want to come back to two points. I want to come back to sewer systems in cities, because this is one of the places where we see the most visible impact of torrential rains. You seem to be saying that sewers aren’t made for extreme events, but isn’t it rather because our entire sewer system is too old and broken in places? We know what’s going on underneath. We don’t always know — only when it bursts. Isn’t that the problem? You talk about climate, but beyond observations and repairs, do you have any data on what is being done, for example, on sewage systems in big cities to limit the damage? I was in two places with rivers this summer. In Germany and France, absolutely extraordinary sewage systems have been built to try and limit these phenomena. Where are we in Canada where, if I understand correctly, climate change is three times worse than elsewhere?
The Chair: To whom is the question addressed?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Who can answer that? Maybe you can’t answer it. I’m just trying to make a leap between theory and practice.
Ms. Fortin: I’m not in a position to answer that question. We can discuss it with other people who could answer it and get back to you.
[English]
Mr. Flato, I don’t know if you have any info on that specifically.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Bad question. Okay. I should stick to climate.
The Chair: Why don’t we leave it at that.
[Translation]
If possible, could you send us the answer in writing via your expert? That would be appreciated.
Senator Galvez: First of all, thank you very much, because it was a very good presentation that covered a lot of things. It was very informative.
[English]
It raises awareness among us.
Ms. Fortin, you said that extreme weather events express impact on society in different ways, one is the destruction of infrastructure. And to answer the question of my colleague is combined effects. Of course infrastructure in Europe is much older than in Canada, but Canada has a lot more water than Europe. And snow is turning to water, that really complicates things.
My question is about the cost. The cost shown in your graphic is already corrected for inflation, and we can see that it’s exponentially increasing. But this is only one third of the cost. I see it in the National Finance Committee, and we talk to Public Safety and to RCMP and they all are asking for funds. In total I think it’s about one third of the total. So costs are increasing.
It impacts municipalities, it impacts insurance. We know that insurance is leaving some regions. I understand the recommendations to the building codes, that’s fantastic. I’m happy to see, been pushing for that, fantastic. But what about the costs? Does Canada have the money to keep going like this at hits of $3 billion, $4 billion per year? Where are we going to get the money?
Ms. Fortin: Maybe I’ll confirm to the senator who asked the question earlier of the graphic on slide 10, the graphic is adjusted to 2023 dollars. So it’s tiny, I couldn’t even see it when I looked quickly after you asked the question, but my colleague Mr. Flato sent me a text and Senator Galvez just confirmed it. There’s one tiny little thing on the slide that says it’s adjusted to 2023 dollars.
You’re quite right, Senator Galvez, these costs are just insured losses. There is a system that exists there that they’re able to basically report and quantify them. And we often use them as a way to show the increasing impacts of severe weather. What we haven’t quantified quite as well is other costs, because they’re more diffuse. They affect many different components, and some of them are harder to quantify. For example, how do you quantify the health impacts on a community of severe weather events? I’m not aware if it’s one third or not. I would definitely defer to my Public Safety Canada colleagues there and others.
We also know that the cost of the federal disaster assistance programs that gives some reimbursement to the provinces to pay for some of the damages is increasing and becoming unaffordable very quickly. That’s quite true.
Your question about whether or not Canada can continue like this, part of the answer is that Canada will continue to experience these kinds of events. The impacts will be there. It’s a question that I certainly don’t have an answer for.
Senator Galvez: A couple of weeks ago, I was in a meeting with NATO. Researchers were talking about how extreme weather events also impact security. This is also another preoccupation. My question was, can we adapt forever?
This year, we reach 1.5 degrees. That was the goal for 2050, and we are here. So that means that things are going to deteriorate faster and faster. I’m worried about social unrest, litigation and fights, because in Canada, most of our cities are along water. One thing that you mentioned was rising water levels. Do you look at these things socially and how this will impact that? I know that litigation is increasing, too. I mentioned insurance. How do we prepare for this?
Ms. Fortin: Our role at Environment and Climate Change Canada does not include looking directly at the question you have asked. We can project. My colleague, Greg Flato, can speak to that much better than I can.
As part of looking toward the climate of the future, we are, for example, looking at the rise in sea levels. We can project what that is going to mean in continental areas. I’ll turn to Mr. Flato on this. But this is not part of what we do at Environment and Climate Change Canada necessarily, measuring the social costs. We would have to do research, and there are many reports on that.
Senator Galvez: For example, we went to Prince Edward Island and the mayor of one of the cities took us to the shores. There were very nice big houses, and he said that half of their land was already under water, but that nobody wanted to talk about it and they were still paying the taxes for the whole land, because they didn’t want it to affect the price of their housing.
You’re saying that you don’t look at these things. What happens is that we look at things in silos. We have to, as you mentioned it, you have to do horizontal and transversal.
We will start a study on this. What could be your recommendations for this committee to do a very in-depth, careful study?
Ms. Fortin: It’s a fantastic question. One of the things that I want to say, and you mentioned, is that we can’t keep adapting forever. The climate has changed, we have adapted to some extent, and we need to continue to adapt. The fact that this is going to continue to change is an argument for trying to reduce and stop greenhouse gas emission. As you said, we can’t look at things in a singular way. We have to have efforts that focus on mitigation. We have to have efforts that focus on adaptation.
In terms of your study, it’s an amazing question that you’re asking, and one that will provide much-needed answers, especially if you go into that area of horizontality. I do think it’s needed more and more.
I come from a world where we predict conditions into the future. We’re moving to predicting more and more impacts, but I think these impacts are going to get more complex and more difficult to look at, as well as things adding up on one another or different vulnerabilities playing off of different events.
Senator Galvez: Thank you so much. If you can prepare some recommendations for us, keeping in mind our committee is called Energy, Natural Resources and Environment. We should be looking at these three things horizontally. Thank you so much.
Senator Anderson: Thank you to the witnesses. You both spoke about the unprecedented heat in the northern part of Canada. Ms. Fortin, you stated the information is shared with Public Safety Canada, provincial, territorial and public authority for planning, preparedness and response. I’m from Tuktoyaktuk and represent the Northwest Territories. I see and experience the changes from rising waters, melting permafrost, loss of land, fires, lower water levels and warming temperatures.
The responsibility is largely falling on municipal and Indigenous governments to navigate, advocate and address climate-related issues through both territorial and federal governments. This has not been an easy feat. Our office has and continues to work with communities in the North, and we are directly in contact with many of those communities that are directly affected. Weather in Tuktoyaktuk, where we are losing a metre of land a year, warming temperatures, loss of permafrost or Norman Wells, which has been hugely impacted by low water levels in the Mackenzie River.
Can you elaborate on how or if this information is directly shared with local communities and Indigenous governments? This question is for Ms. Fortin, because she spoke directly to that.
Ms. Fortin: I am aware that the information is shared with provincial and territorial organizations. I do not know how or if that is shared with local or Indigenous governments.
I have another colleague on the line, Sébastien Chouinard, who works with the Government Operations Centre. I’m also not aware of how the Government Operations Centre and Public Safety Canada share information beyond — it’s kind of a chain of information, unfortunately. I don’t know the answer to your question.
[Translation]
Sébastien Chouinard, Acting Executive Director, National Programs and Business Development, Environment and Climate Change Canada: There are communications with Public Safety Canada’s Government Operations Centre (GOC). It’s a little more complicated to know how this information is transferred from Public Safety Canada to the department that deals with Indigenous affairs. I don’t have that information, but usually they’re at the same table when we’re discussing forest fires or the impacts of different weather systems that can affect these communities; these people are at the table and we share the information with them. I couldn’t tell you how it’s shared with more local institutions. I’m not involved in that mechanism.
The Chair: Mr. Chouinard, could you confirm this information and send us your response in writing?
Mr. Chouinard: Yes, absolutely.
The Chair: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Anderson: I want to clarify that I’m not speaking about any key overarching department or CIRNAC, I am speaking directly about communities. Increasingly, these communities themselves, the mayors and the people who live in these communities, are the ones who are advocating for themselves and trying to increasingly navigate a very challenging territorial, provincial or federal system. They do not have the means, nor do they have the information, except they have lived experience and what they are experiencing today. Could you please give us in writing if this information is shared with them, or how it can be shared with them? Thank you.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentations. My first question is that you keep bringing up the insured damages. What about when you combine the uninsured? How do extreme weather events affect critical infrastructure such as transportation, energy and health care systems in the First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities? Especially with the inter‑jurisdictional issue that we have always had that the feds and the province refuse to work together to work out the problems that are coming out.
With Senator Wells’s question, the existing infrastructure is terrible, and now they’re going to be heaped with even more.
Would these groups who do the building codes be outside the National Research Council Canada? I have worked in the North for about 40 years and I’ve seen that the nursing stations built a long time ago are still in good shape, but the newer ones are already falling apart. It’s the same thing with the schools and with the houses.
With the permafrost, it’s getting more difficult to land at the airports, especially at the ones that are isolated. What the province wants to do is offload the airports to the First Nations.
It’s the same question that Senator Anderson is posing. The gaps exist, and they will continue to be magnified. We’re tired of bringing this to the table and never having answers or resolutions.
The Chair: Who can best answer the question on your behalf?
Ms. Fortin, do you want to answer that?
Ms. Fortin: I’ll start with the easy part of the question.
You said I mentioned insured damages but not a number for uninsured damages, and that’s because that number does not exist.
Senator McCallum: Those would be the poorer people that cannot afford insurance, right?
Ms. Fortin: It’s that, yes, but it’s also things that we don’t insure.
For example, if a bridge breaks because of a washout, or if a road breaks because of a washout, that’s not included in insured loss. That’s not something that we insure.
Senator McCallum: Where is it included? Where is this considered?
Ms. Fortin: Well, it’s just not insured, and I don’t know that it’s quantified, basically.
It’s the same thing for how do you quantify the impact on a community that is being evacuated from where they live for a number of weeks because of a wildfire where they are? That’s also difficult.
That’s what I mean when I talk about non-insured loss, because we know the costs are much bigger than that. I’m not aware of a source that quantifies them.
In terms of impacts on critical infrastructure, including for First Nations, Métis and Inuit, you’ve mentioned some of them already. With the changes in permafrost, the roads are being damaged, and it’s difficult to land at airports — as you said — and ice roads are very impacted by climate change as well.
I don’t know that I can speak to the nursing stations and the building codes, however.
I lost the train of the question, unfortunately.
I know that Natural Resources Canada did an excellent report recently, along with Indigenous leaders and Indigenous communities, that speaks to the impacts of climate change on Indigenous communities and the solution that communities can bring to the climate change problem.
That’s definitely something that I can send you a reference to, and that might be helpful with your study.
The Chair: If you could send it to us, we’ll circulate it among ourselves. That would be very good information to have.
Ms. Fortin: Yes.
The Chair: Before I go to second round, I have to make a comment on the building codes. I see all these new office buildings and condos going up with a lot of glazing. There seems to be a disconnect between what is necessary and what is getting done. I won’t comment further, because I have my colleagues to mention that.
You made reference to the fact that if you stop polluting, even if you remedy it, you used words to the effect that there won’t be any impact for several years. I’m surprised it’s several years. I thought it would be a hard 200 years. Because the CO2 impact, it’s easy to pollute, but it stays up there for a long time, except by things a bit faster than CO2.
You used the words “several years.” Is that really the case? Is it only several years, not 200 years?
Ms. Fortin: No, I think it’s decades. That was a poor choice of words on my part. Greg Flato is much better suited to speak to this than I am. I had “decades” in my note, and I don’t know why instead of reading “decades,” I said, “several years.”
The Chair: Does anybody else want to comment on that?
Mr. Flato: I can comment a bit. You are absolutely correct that carbon dioxide has a very long lifetime in the atmosphere. In fact, it’s measured in centuries.
If we were to attain net-zero emissions globally, that would halt warming, and temperatures would stabilize, but they would stabilize at essentially the level we have attained. They would persist like that for decades and centuries, in fact. It’s a very long time scale on which that temperature is — it is essentially irreversible on human time scales.
Reaching net zero stops the warming but it doesn’t reverse the warming. It basically stabilizes temperatures at the level you attain when you reach net zero.
When we do future climate projections, we look at many different scenarios of emissions, high-emission scenarios, low‑emission scenarios and intermediate-emission scenarios, and we ask the question: How much will the climate change? It is the low-emission pathways that allow stabilization at low temperatures, which then have the effect of reducing the ongoing changes in extreme events and other damaging circumstances.
It is the case that if we don’t stop climate change, then those impacts will continue to get worse and worse; whereas, if we reach net zero and stabilize climate, the impacts will be large, but they will be stabilized at the level commensurate with the temperature we stabilize at.
The Chair: Obviously, it’s a lot of bad news. We’re having difficulty accepting that, and it’s bad news for a long, long time.
Having said that, there must be some benefits to it somewhat? I’m from Montreal. I see wineries coming up in the Eastern Townships and the suburbs of Montreal. There must be other advantages. Some people appreciate the warmth as opposed to our cold.
What would those be? What are the advantages, if there are any, from climate change?
Mr. Flato: As you mentioned, there are some advantages in terms of different kinds of agriculture that could be undertaken.
I grew up in Alberta on a farm. When I was a kid, where we lived, we only grew barley. That was the only thing that could be grown where we were, but now people are growing other crops like peas and things that were never grown then.
I don’t know whether they’re more economically valuable than other crops, but it does open opportunities for new crops to be grown.
I don’t have a catalogue off the top of my head of the various other positive implications there may be, but the consensus among those who study the impacts of climate change is that the negative consequences far outweigh the positive consequences.
The Chair: In the United States we’re seeing lawsuits rising, and even the oil and gas companies are being sued — look at Shell and so on — relative to their responsibility to climate change.
Is there a risk of that occurring in Canada? When you see what’s happening in the North here where they’re suffering immensely from climate change, yet they contributed nothing, or insignificantly, to climate change. Is there a significant risk that maybe people will try to make those responsible pay for some of the climate change consequences?
Mr. Flato: I don’t know if Ms. wants to weigh in on this, but I know, speaking for myself as a climate scientist, I’m certainly not a lawyer and don’t really have anything to contribute regarding the extent to which there are legal implications here.
The Chair: Ms. Fortin, can you comment?
Ms. Fortin: Sorry, the same thing. I do believe that there are some court actions, at least in Canada, where people are trying to take action in that area. I’ve read that in media. I don’t have a legal background either, so I will not pronounce myself further on this.
The Chair: Second round, Senator Wells.
Senator D. M. Wells: Just on that point, because I do know a little bit about it, unlike the cigarette industry, for instance, where studies had been withheld, and therefore liability attached, in the oil and gas sector, my understanding is they follow the rules and regulations generated by the regulators.
Mr. Flato, the question that Senator Fridhandler asked was about other northern climates, emissions and climate change that may be happening, or may be happening because I don’t know what’s happening. But, for instance, in a country like Russia, which is a similar size to Canada, and an oil producer far bigger than Canada, are they suffering the same climate-related effects that Canada is experiencing? To what degree is climate change geographically bounded by the activities within a jurisdiction, or is it more global than that?
Mr. Flato: It is much more global than that. As I mentioned in responding to a previous question, carbon dioxide particularly, which is the main driver of warming, is well mixed in the atmosphere because it has such a long lifetime in the atmosphere. A molecule of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere today remains for centuries, so it gets well mixed throughout the atmosphere.
It doesn’t really matter whether you emit that carbon dioxide from Canada or Russia or Venezuela. It doesn’t make any difference. It all ends up in the atmosphere and causes changes that are global in nature; although those global changes are not uniform, as I mentioned in my presentation.
The changes that are being experienced in Russia are very similar to the changes that are being experienced in Canada and very similar to the changes being experienced in Scandinavia and other places. It doesn’t really depend on their economic activity or their oil and gas industry. It’s a consequence of the global emissions being experienced.
There are some effects which are more localized. For example, when you burn certain fuels and produce soot, black carbon that comes out of the exhaust of burning certain things like coal which has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere. It gets washed out by precipitation within a matter of days or weeks.
When that black soot lands on the snow, it lowers the reflectivity of the snow, allows more sunlight and solar radiation to be absorbed and melt the snow or ice. That has local effects, but that’s a pretty small effect compared to the effect of the large-scale, well-mixed greenhouse gases.
Senator D. M. Wells: Thank you for that. Canada contributes 1.4% of global emissions, and countries like China, India, the U.S. and Russia contribute almost 50%. Is this a lost cause? We see China increasing — which is from a Canadian government website. Their emissions have increased 87% since 2005. Are we on a treadmill here that is taking us backwards?
If Canada’s emissions are so low, and getting lower, how desperate is it if other countries aren’t doing what Canada is doing?
Mr. Flato: My background is in science, not in international climate policy, so I’m a bit reluctant to weigh in too much here. It would be better to bring in someone who has more expertise on that.
On a per capita basis, the situation is different, of course. It is the case that wherever you put emissions into the atmosphere, they all have an effect.
As international agreements, like those under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, those international agreements are aimed at having all countries contribute to mitigation action, adaptation planning and financing and so on. It is the responsibility of everyone to make an effort.
There is a counter-argument which is the tragedy of the commons argument; if everyone says unless the other person does something, we’re not going to do anything, and then no one does anything. There is that as a counter-argument.
But I’m really not an international climate policy person, so I don’t think I would want to weigh in any deeper than I already have.
Senator D. M. Wells: Thank you very much. Maybe we could look at another committee meeting.
[Translation]
Senator Youance: My question concerns the Canadian Centre for Climate Services. This centre assesses water quantities in Canada, which is very important when we’re talking about Quebec and Newfoundland. Today, billions of dollars worth of agreements will be signed. Is it a good idea to sign these agreements again? What would be your recommendations?
Ms. Fortin: I have no comment to make on that; I’ll have to refer you to other colleagues who are in a better position than I am to talk about these agreements.
Senator Youance: All right, thank you. So, you can come back to me with written answers.
I have a second question, and I also accept that you send us the answers in writing. There are some studies linking climate change to the occurrence of earthquakes. To what extent has the Canadian Centre for Climate Services analyzed this? Is there any real scientific basis for this? As I was saying, since you haven’t addressed this point, you can send us information about it in writing.
The Chair: Do you have any comments on this question, Ms. Fortin?
Ms. Fortin: Actually, I will yield the floor to my colleague Mr. Flato, because I don’t know enough about the subject.
[English]
Mr. Flato: I have not seen any evidence in the scientific literature making a compelling connection between climate change and earthquakes. I’m certain the Canadian Centre for Climate Services does not have any information on earthquakes. They focus strictly on climate-related information.
[Translation]
Senator Youance: Try to look at some other aspects too, not just earthquakes in general, but those caused by human activity. Would there be an increase in the frequency or strength of these earthquakes because of climate change?
The Chair: You can check and send us a written answer to this question. Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator McCallum: What barriers do First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities face in accessing timely and effective emergency alerts and evacuation orders? Some of the communities don’t have stable internet, so the website that you talked about, they’re unable to access it, and with the language barrier, it makes it more difficult for them.
Ms. Fortin: I agree. There are barriers to receiving the information. Currently our main ways of giving alerts are through either cellular phones, so you would need cellular reception, websites. There’s another mechanism called weather radio that is short frequency radio, I believe. At Environment and Climate Change Canada, we try to use a number of mechanisms to provide the alerts, but I do think there are challenges with remote communities in this area. Language is another one of them.
I’m aware of some work that we participated in a few years ago where a product — and I think it’s phone-based, like an app — was developed to give information about ice using a pictogram in the community’s languages as well. That’s one example. There might be other. But what you say is true, there are some barriers and challenges.
The Chair: Are there solutions to the barriers? You acknowledged the barriers, but are we making progress to resolve the barriers?
Ms. Fortin: For example, smart ice was one example. That’s one solution I’m aware of, but there may be more. I would have to come back to you on that. However, I would not say that it’s resolved.
[Translation]
Mr. Chouinard, are you aware of anything else?
Mr. Chouinard: With the advent of artificial intelligence, other mechanisms are being explored to cover more languages and different dialects to reach communities in the Far North. Already, tests are being carried out in the United States, and joint projects are being put forward to test these technologies to reach as many people as possible, based on the different languages and dialects used in both Canada and the U.S.
[English]
Senator McCallum: It hasn’t answered my question. It has been, “Yes, there are.” Can you recommend someone that could address this. If they do come, will they have the information you have and then they couldn’t answer saying, “You need someone else to answer this,” because a whole-of-government approach is required. It’s not only that; it’s provincial. I’m starting my eighth year in the Senate, and I still have not seen — it’s very discouraging. We need answers, especially now. Like Senator Wells, I’m not even sure what is happening here with climate change.
Ms. Fortin: I can certainly suggest references and colleagues to try to answer your question.
The Chair: We could invite them to be witnesses, in fact. That would probably be more useful.
Senator Galvez: My question is for Mr. Flato. I would like you to explain what attribution science is in the context of the original evaluations.
This committee studied the modernization of the Impact Assessment Act. At that time, we put a lot of emphasis on regional assessment. Attribution science is being used to find who is responsible for litigation, but attribution science can help to identify the regional vulnerabilities and, therefore, accelerate preparedness.
Can you comment on that?
Mr. Flato: The term “attribution” is used differently in different communities, and it may be that the term “attribution science” means different things in different communities. In the climate science community, attribution refers to being able to ask the question: To what extent has human-caused climate change altered some aspect of the climate, whether it’s the mean climate or the frequency of an extreme event? That’s what we mean by “attribution science.” It is looking at using statistical methods and climate models and being able to ask the question of whether something has changed, and whether some observed change that we see in the atmosphere or in the ocean can be attributed to human-caused climate change. That is what we mean by it.
We do that globally and regionally. In the slide I showed where we talk about heat wave attribution, we divided Canada up into 17 different regions to do that analysis. That’s what we mean by it, but I suspect that, in other communities and other areas of practice, they may use that term to mean something different. I’m just not aware of it, because this is the only field in which I work and have expertise in.
Senator McCallum: I wanted to ask a question on artificial intelligence. Are you using that now for weather prediction, or are you going to be using it?
Ms. Fortin: My colleague, Sébastien Chouinard, can speak to that. I know we are testing it, and there are many changes and progress happening in that field right now. There are many new players, but to speak about how we’re using at Environment and Climate Change Canada, I would have to turn to Sébastien.
Mr. Chouinard: Many countries are exploring the use of artificial intelligence. Canada is one of them. Right now, it’s not used per se in the program that provides Canadians with weather forecasts, but we’re exploring ways to introduce it into the numerical weather prediction system. That is the system that provides meteorologists with information to address and produce the forecast. Although we’re still at the early stage, it seems promising. However, we’re not at the stage yet where it can be put within the system.
[Translation]
We’re at the testing stage right now, and we have a strong desire, within the next few months or years, to be able to integrate it right into our systems to improve forecasting systems.
[English]
I don’t know if Mr. Flato has more to add.
Mr. Flato: No, I think you’ve covered it. I don’t have anything to add.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you very much to our three witnesses; we’re very grateful. We’ve learned a lot this morning, and we still have a lot to learn. Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your knowledge.
[English]
As you know, this is going to be at least a year, so my term is up as the president of your committee. Senator Galvez will be presiding over this committee for the next 12 months. Good luck and thank you very much. These are rambunctious people, but I’m sure you’ll do well and be able to control them.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for guiding us through at this time. We appreciate the work you have put in.
The Chair: Thank you very much, I’m not going to be going very far. I’ll be checking up and ensuring that everybody does their homework. Thank you very much. Until next time, happy holidays if I don’t see you.
(The committee adjourned.)