THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, March 2, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met by video conference this day at 6:30 p.m. [ET] to study the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation and communications sectors and the consequential impacts on their interdependencies.
Senator Leo Housakos (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, good evening. I’m Senator Leo Housakos from Quebec. I’m the chair of this committee. I would like to introduce the members of the committee who are participating in this meeting. We’re joined by the deputy chair, Senator Miville-Dechêne from Quebec; Senator Cormier from New Brunswick; Senator Clement from Ontario; Senator Dawson from Quebec; Senator Klyne from Saskatchewan; Senator Manning from Nova Scotia; Senator Galvez from Quebec; Senator Quinn from New Brunswick; Senator Simons from Alberta; and Senator Sorensen from Alberta.
[English]
We are meeting pursuant to the order of reference, which we adopted February 10, 2022, to study the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation and communications sector and consequential impacts on their interdependencies.
[Translation]
For our first panel on this study, we’re pleased to welcome Ryan Schwartz from Public Safety Canada.
[English]
Mr. Ryan Schwartz is the Acting Director General, Critical Infrastructure Directorate, National and Cyber Security Branch.
[Translation]
Welcome and thank you for joining our committee virtually.
[English]
We’ll begin with your opening remarks. As is customary, we will give you 10 to 15 minutes for your presentation, and then we’ll open it up to the floor for questions. Mr. Schwartz, you have the floor.
Ryan Schwartz, Acting Director General, Critical Infrastructure Directorate, National and Cyber Security Branch, Public Safety Canada: Good evening, everyone, madam deputy chair and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Government of Canada’s approach to critical infrastructure resilience. I’m pleased to be here.
I thought I would begin my remarks this evening by providing you with an overview of what critical infrastructure, or CI, as we refer to it, is and why it’s important, what guides our approach to CI resilience and how we work with our partners both domestically and internationally. I’ll follow that with remarks that summarize the changing CI threat and hazard landscape, then close by providing a brief overview of related federal initiatives are relevant to the scope of your study. My hope is that this presentation and subsequent discussion provide you with a scene setter on CI in Canada as you embark on your study of the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation and communications sectors, as well as the consequential impacts of their interdependencies.
In Canada, CI refers to the processes, systems, facilities, technologies, networks, assets and services that are essential to the health, safety, security or economic well-being of Canadians and the effective functioning of government. CI can be stand‑alone or interconnected and interdependent with other sectors, provinces, territories and national borders, namely the United States in our case. Disruptions of CI could result in catastrophic loss of life, adverse economic effects and significant harm to public confidence.
From the legislative perspective, we draw our authority to undertake work on CI from the 2007 Emergency Management Act, wherein the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is responsible for exercising national leadership to protect CI.
To support this legislative authority, in 2009, federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for emergency management approved the National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure and supporting action plans. The strategy established a collaborative federal-provincial-territorial and private sector approach to CI resilience that’s based on three strategic objectives: building partnerships, taking an all-hazards risk management approach, and the timely sharing and protection of information with partners. A number of action plans have served as de facto blueprints on how the strategy is implemented. For your awareness, the fourth iteration of our Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure was published on May 26, 2021, and covers the 2021–2023 time frame. I’ll talk about the strategy and action plan documents in turn.
First, the strategy set the direction for enhancing the resilience of CI against current and emerging hazards. It also established the classification of CI in Canada on the basis of 10 sectors: energy and utilities, finance, food, government, health, information and communication technologies, manufacturing, safety, transportation and water. These sectors are interconnected and interdependent, as I mentioned earlier. They neither exist nor function in isolation from one another.
The strategy also established sector networks and industry collaboration mechanisms, including the National Cross Sector Forum, or NCSF, which is a national-level consultation and outreach entity that brings together leaders from Canada’s 10 CI sectors to identify priorities and discuss cross-sector issues and initiatives to enhance the resilience of Canada’s vital assets and systems, recognizing that CI resilience is a shared responsibility.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about supply chain stability among other issues, Public Safety Canada created the Extended National Cross Sector Forum on COVID-19 to bring industry representatives together to discuss shared concerns and provide feedback to government. This group met weekly throughout 2020 and focused on priority issues such as personal protective equipment, testing, border closures, essential services and functions and vaccines. These meetings regularly saw hundreds of participants across Canada’s 10 CI sectors.
The National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure also established the Multi-Sector Network, or MSN, which consists of working-level public and private stakeholders at all levels, to share information, build cross-sector relationships and strengthen networks. We had an MSN meeting on February 2 focused on cybersecurity in CI sectors, which had 175 participants, and our most recent MSN was held yesterday. It was focused on drones and was attended by 140 people.
Public Safety Canada also convenes a federal-provincial-territorial CI working group and a lead federal department CI network. At this point, I’d like to take a moment to speak about roles and responsibilities in this space, including those of lead federal departments.
Public Safety Canada is responsible for leading the overall federal effort to strengthen the resilience of CI. In particular, we add value to public-private sector partnerships by bringing stakeholders together through the National Cross Sector Forum and other engagement mechanisms. Building on the strategy’s central themes of partnerships, information sharing and all-hazards risk management, sector networks were established for each of the 10 CI sectors. These sector networks are led by a responsible federal department, which line up as you would expect. For example, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada leads the food sector, Natural Resources Canada leads the energy and utilities sector, Transport Canada leads the transportation sector and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada leads the Information and Communications Technology sector.
It’s important to note that CI owners and operators bear the primary responsibility for protecting their assets and systems. They are also responsible for business continuity and emergency response planning and implementation, along with the provinces, territories, and municipalities within their respective jurisdictions, given that the majority of events, be they natural disasters, cybersecurity events or accidents, occur and are felt at the local level.
We also work with our international partners, including our allies in the Five Eyes, NATO, and the United States Department of Homeland Security via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, otherwise known as CISA.
Moving beyond the partnerships and policy aspects of our work to some specific initiatives in the realm of CI resilience, Public Safety Canada focuses its efforts in the areas of resilience assessments, CI impact and interdependency assessments, physical and cyber exercises, and the security of industrial control systems or the automated systems that manage and deliver essential services to Canadians, such as the water that flows through buildings to the operation of traffic lights.
I’ll share two examples of successful CI initiatives administered by Public Safety Canada. The first is the Regional Resilience Assessment Program, or RRAP, which undertakes all-hazards site assessments of facilities in all 10 CI sectors across Canada. The RRAP is a tangible, boots-on-the-ground way governments and industries work together to examine vulnerabilities and threats and to implement corrective measures. To date we’ve conducted hundreds of assessments at Canadian CI facilities, including electricity grids, government offices and major transit hubs.
I would note that our assessors will be in the field in the coming weeks, taking stock of the physical security and resilience of a number of water and wastewater treatment facilities around Winnipeg, at the Montreal-Mirabel International Airport and at Toronto’s CN Tower.
The second example I’d like to share is the Canadian Cyber Security Tool, which was launched in June 2020 in response to an increasing number of malicious cyberincidents targeting the health sector during the pandemic. This virtual self-assessment tool was developed by Public Safety Canada and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, a communications security establishment, and is specifically targeted for Canadian critical infrastructure owners and operators. The tool is a short survey that provides an overview of an organization’s operational resilience and cybersecurity posture, and it provides some comparative results with other organizations in its sector.
I raise cybersecurity given the ongoing convergence of physical and digital systems, which makes it more difficult to separate and isolate CI in order to protect it in the traditional or historical sense. Further, as threats increase, and the lines between traditional CI sectors become increasingly blurred, it becomes more difficult to identify single points of failure.
Malware and ransomware attacks have hit physical infrastructure such as pipelines, power plants, water treatment and manufacturing plants, and transportation and logistic systems. One example is the NotPetya malware which crippled logistics companies in June 2017, and that had ripple effects across key ports and other transportation nodes globally leading to billions of dollars in damages.
More recently, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack created fuel shortages and price increases across much of the eastern United States in May 2021.
These examples demonstrate the significance of cumulative impacts on CI. Floods, wildfires, combined with pandemics, cyber events and civil unrest are making it increasingly difficult to maintain, let alone enhance, CI resilience to ensure the continued, uninterrupted provision of essential services and functions.
Looking ahead to the future, Public Safety Canada has committed to working closely with provinces and territories, the federal community and the private sector to develop a new strategy and approach to critical infrastructure resilience. This is a deliverable in our 2021-23 Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure. This work is under way with the goal of developing a forward-facing strategy and approach to guide CI resilience efforts in a rapidly changing threat and risk environment.
This sets the stage for us to address some of the new challenges we are facing in the CI resilience space, including the impacts of a changing climate.
We are looking at our renewal process through the lens of four discrete, yet interrelated, drivers of change: one being the ongoing digitalization of systems and processes; the second, a growing number and diversity of security threats; third, economic prosperity vis-à-vis resilient CI as a competitive advantage; and, four, environmental risks.
Increasing environmental risks is exacerbated by a changing climate and is an issue that members of this committee are likely very well aware of.
I think I would only have to mention the experience of B.C. last year, a heat dome in June, wildfires in July and August and flooding and landslides in November with catastrophic consequences and impacts to CI and supply chains, both regionally and nationally.
We’ve also seen many examples in the last two years of pandemic-related distortions to supply and demand and, more recently, demonstrations that shut down key transportation infrastructure that had cascading impacts on CI, including the food and the manufacturing sectors on both sides of the Canada‑United States border.
CI has also become more dynamic than static, in large part because it is more integrated and connected than ever before given technological advances in the information, communications and technology sector, including faster data transfer and processing times. This may present new risks to CI resilience.
For example, fifth generation or 5G wireless capabilities will require a greater number and density of telecommunications infrastructure, which could be impacted by increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, ranging from heat to floods, to wind and snow and ice. This is significant because, like the energy and utilities sector, the information, communications and technology sectors provide services and functions that underpin all other CI sectors. They’re central to CI resilience.
I want to highlight the work on CI resilience that we do here in Canada in the federal government. It does not exist in isolation. It is complemented by a number of relevant federal research and policy initiatives. This includes targeted climate change adaptation programs in the areas of transportation and natural resources, as well as impacts and adaptation science assessments that summarize the current state of knowledge across sectors and regions of Canada.
In fact, the latest report in the Canada in a Changing Climate series, which is the report on the Health of Canadians in a Changing Climate, was published last month.
Further supporting and complementing CI resilience is the Emergency Management Strategy and related initiatives such as the National Risk Profile and the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements, which are also in place to address climate-related risks.
A national adaptation strategy is in development. Infrastructure Canada supports climate resilience infrastructure through the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund as well as the Climate-Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure Initiative that is led by the National Research Council Canada.
I raise these examples as recognition of the value of ensuring alignment with work that is already under way on climate change impacts and adaptation as this presents us with an opportunity to leverage research, analysis and engagement opportunities.
At the same time, efforts are under way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that we can limit the extent of climate change thereby allowing us to manage unavoidable impacts that will occur across society and the economy.
I hope my remarks this evening are helpful and that they provide the members of this committee with some background in the context of CI resilience in Canada.
If I may, I would offer a takeaway message as you begin your study: in CI we are dealing with complex systems; these systems have interdependencies, and these interdependencies can lead to cascading impacts and failures. On that note, I would conclude by noting that Public Safety Canada remains committed to working with the public and private sectors to enhance CI resilience, including actions that address the impacts of a changing climate.
Thank you very much for your time. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you so much, Mr. Schwartz.
Colleagues, those of you that want to ask a question, just raise your hands virtually and the clerk will inform me of senators on the floor as well. I will allow for a question and a supplementary question and, of course, the answers from Mr. Schwartz. That way, for the benefit of time, we can get all senators in. And, time permitting on the second round, senators that are interested to continue their line of questioning, just raise your hand and let me know.
Senator Dawson: Thank you, Mr. Schwartz. Honestly, you are our first witness and this will help us to frame and give a scope to what we have to study. It is a very large challenge that we have in looking at this study.
You brought it up at the beginning of your comments — and we’re Canada — the federal-provincial — this multi-level government approach. I don’t want to get into what happened in Ottawa a few weeks ago. But the fact that we have different levels of government creates different levels of challenge when you’re facing a crisis like a climate crisis.
I’d like you to expand on what you were talking about. How do you cooperate with the provinces and the cities? And I would have to include Canada-U.S. because climate change does not respect borders, as Senator Galvez has often said. Climate change is North American. It is worldwide.
How do you as an organization challenge the different levels of government?
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you very much for that question. It’s a very good one.
I would say off the top that we base our approach to CI resilience and working with others on the principles of collaboration. As I mentioned in my remarks, climate change adaptation or CI resilience, resilience in general, is a shared responsibility.
You’re absolutely right in the sense that there are many different jurisdictions that have different responsibilities which can make things complicated. Our approach has been very much one of cooperation and collaboration with as many partners as possible. The National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure is a federal-provincial-territorial document. It was signed off by ministers responsible for emergency management. We have good relationships with colleagues in the provinces and territories. There is some variation there with respect to the capacity of some jurisdictions over others, given the size of certain jurisdictions, whether large or small.
But we do have a number of engagement mechanisms that we employ in the critical infrastructure space. I mentioned the National Cross Sector Forum. There’s the Multi-Sector Network. We have an FPT, a federal-provincial-territorial working group for critical infrastructure. We try to reach as many partners as possible. The extent of our work is limited by our own internal capacity to address our partnerships’ function.
One thing I would say that is a bit of a gap is, you mentioned cities, municipalities. We’ve not had a lot of direct engagement with municipalities. For the past 10 to 12 years that our national strategy has been in place, I would say that’s been a gap in terms of our engagement and collaboration, recognizing that municipalities are, number one, on the front lines of climate change, and number two, vast owners and holders of critical infrastructure: energy, utilities, water infrastructure and so forth. That’s a gap that we’re trying to address through our renewed approach, working in collaboration with the provinces and territories.
On the Canada-U.S. side, as I said, we do have a good working relationship with the United States. In fact, I had a call today with our colleagues in the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, about cross-border infrastructure and the importance of that in the context of the North American Leaders’ Summit last year and some of the commitments coming out of there, so we’re regularly working with the U.S. Again, transportation and infrastructure facilitates a lot of trade. The flow of goods and services and of people across the border. In addition, there are all sorts of infrastructure that crosses the border, from pipelines to electricity systems. We definitely recognize that this is an important relationship for us. And we don’t only work with the United States on a bilateral basis. We’re also part of the Five Eyes with the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, and there’s a lot of collaborative work on CI resilience happening, from sharing lessons learned to learning from others about approaches that work. We do look to some of our other partner jurisdictions, including the U.S., with a bit of envy in terms of the initiatives they have in place for critical infrastructure resilience. I hope that helps, and I’m happy to answer a supplemental question if you wish.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for your fairly complex presentation, which included many components. I’ll ask you a very simple question. Are we ready? You said that there are 11 critical infrastructures. Have you assessed, in terms of figures and written information, the level of preparedness of each critical infrastructure? You said many things. For example, you said that it will be complicated to install 5G towers because of climate change. Aside from that, how prepared are we, particularly in terms of critical infrastructure? Do you have a chart with percentages to make things easier to understand? I know that it’s a somewhat simplistic question, but I’m asking it anyway.
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you for the question. I’ll respond in English if that’s fine with you. It’s probably simpler and I’ll give a clearer answer. Thank you again for your question.
[English]
That’s a very good question. I would say it’s not simple at all. The 10 critical infrastructure sectors that we have encompasses a lot of infrastructure across the country. Are we ready? I think not. I think that the scope of the challenge facing us from the perspective of climate change impact adaptation is a large one. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II report was just released yesterday, which has a series of dire warnings for countries all over the world, including Canada, related to water resources and other key sectors of our society and economy. It is definitely, I would say, one of the most significant challenges, if not the most significant challenge that we face.
I think what compounds the state of the issue in our country is that we are also dealing with, in addition to the impacts of climate change, a great deal of aging infrastructure, and that’s a problem. I know that Infrastructure Canada has a robust and comprehensive plan to invest in infrastructure, principally climate-resilient infrastructure, because I think a number of departments and agencies are of the view that if we’re going to be spending the money, we should be spending it properly and ensure that the infrastructure we build is resilient to the conditions that we can expect in the future, not the conditions we’ve come to be associated with in the past.
I can’t quantify at this point. We’ve not done a detailed analysis or assessment of the state of whether infrastructure is resilient or not. I know that Infrastructure Canada is undertaking a national infrastructure assessment. This is something that is just getting under way. This will be something that is very helpful for us as we look at ensuring that the infrastructure that we have in Canada, and the critical infrastructure we have in Canada, is ready for the impacts of climate change.
To summarize, I think there are some good programs and initiatives that have been put in place. I mentioned the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund. I think that’s a good start. There’s increasing recognition that climate change will create a significant challenge for us from an infrastructure perspective. A national adaptation strategy is in development. These are all good things that are happening across the government. Are we ready? I think there’s a lot of work to do to say that we’re ready, given the scope of the challenge.
Senator Galvez: Thank you, Mr. Schwartz, for your honesty, because I was going to ask a similar question. You said we are not ready. Yes, absolutely. We are very far from being ready.
One of the first extreme weather events took place in 1985; 1996 in Quebec. We had the inondations in Alberta and in Toronto. We had the fire in Fort McMurray. In November last year, we had the atmospheric river in B.C. If I asked you if all these places were ready, the answer absolutely is not.
You presented a very nice theoretical framework that, unfortunately, as we are seeing with each and every case, almost every year, it’s not working. Can you please tell me what exactly can we do? You say there are compounding issues. Our infrastructure is aging; it is interconnected, interdependent and interrelated. When one falls, many others fall. Can you please tell me when will we be ready and what exactly do we need to do? How do we increase resilience in our infrastructure?
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you very much, senator. I appreciate that question. You’re absolutely right. There’s been an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events. We’ve seen that across the country. The Insurance Bureau of Canada will say the curve is just going up.
When will we be ready, and what can we do? Both are very good questions. I’m not sure, to be honest, we’ll ever be fully ready. I think that we can do as much as we can to prepare ourselves through efforts to adapt or to adjust and become increasingly resilient. What we’ve seen with some of these events that are so overwhelming is that in some places there are limits to our adaptation and limits to our efforts to adjust. We may see ourselves making more transformational changes, such as building completely different types of infrastructure or building it in different places, for example. Perhaps, given coastal erosion as a result of sea-level rise, we will build further back and some of the language used in the international research community is “managed retreat” or “abandonment,” to use a more direct word.
I think the process of resilience is an ongoing one. I really believe that it’s a process of continuous improvement and continually adjusting to changes that are happening. I do think it’s clear from the science that the impacts will continue to get worse, which makes it preparing to a certain level of resilience — and I can talk about that in a second — it makes it very difficult to know how ready I need to be.
One way to do that is through building codes and standards. I mentioned the work that’s being led by the National Research Council. We can integrate climate change considerations and climate change impacts into building codes and standards by, for example, increasing the stringency for wind, ice or snow loads. That’s a really helpful thing to do. You would have seen the provinces of Quebec and Ontario do that after the ice storm in 1998. They made the pillars and the towers stronger.
I’m also a big believer in what we have long said in the world of climate-change adaptation of mainstreaming. Mainstreaming simply means normalizing or integrating considerations of climate change impacts and adaptation into our normal business and risk-management processes. In other words, every decision we make, every investment we make and every dollar we spend has to include some sort of consideration of how this will be affected by climate change in the future and how long this will last if we don’t build it stronger. If you’re not, as my mother always said, you’ll just be throwing good money after bad.
We need to mainstream across all of our decision-making areas and all of our risk management. I think there is recognition for that within the federal government in a number of departments and agencies. In 2011, the Federal Adaptation Policy Framework was released, which guided the federal government’s efforts to become climate resilient in the work that it does in terms of its programs, services and assets. A core principle of that was mainstreaming.
Another thing I think we can do is, as I said, ensuring that when we make these investments, we’re planning for the long term and we’re using information that tells us what climate could look like in the future. That would be climate scenarios, and looking at climate models and climate projections, and not just building infrastructure [Technical difficulties] data and historical patterns, because we know that’s changing.
It’s more of a forward-looking approach when we invest and build infrastructure rather than looking at, say, the “climate normals” of the past 30 years, which are not going to reflect the climate of the future.
So I would say that resilience and adaptation are iterative processes. They’re processes of continuous improvement that we will always be doing. When does that happen? I think we will always be doing that. As to exactly how we do that, there are some very tangible, concrete things we can do, such as building codes, mainstreaming and ensuring we’re making wise investments in the right places and at the right times. Thank you.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, Mr. Schwartz, for a very interesting presentation on a very complex subject. I can only begin to appreciate the multi-jurisdictional complications that would be present.
As a fundamental question, do we in the federal government have the primary departments that own most of the infrastructure — even if we go most of the infrastructure — do they have a requirement to do risk analysis on infrastructure and to provide that kind of analysis in terms of what they have in future planning to prevent, deal with or mitigate climate change impacts?
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you very much, Senator Quinn. I appreciate the question.
Yes. In terms of the federal departments and agencies that are the biggest asset owners or landowners, Public Services and Procurement Canada, comes to mind. The Department of National Defence also comes to mind, in terms of the sheer amount of infrastructure and land that it owns: pipelines, buildings, et cetera. Those departments and agencies will have their own business continuity plans and risk management plans. The question is whether they look out far enough. Typically, when we look on a risk horizon, those departmental risk exercises are shorter term rather than longer term.
I mentioned earlier in one of my earlier responses the Federal Adaptation Policy Framework, which really tries to drive home the fact that the federal government needs to be looking longer term as an institution. Unfortunately, in that context, at this point in time, there’s nothing mandatory that means we should be doing that. Having said that, I know the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat’s Centre for Greening Government is looking at some of those requirements and some of those initiatives that could make the federal government more resilient as an institution.
Aside from that, I would probably have to defer to other departments and agencies in terms of how they have managed their own asset portfolios, but from my experience, both in the critical infrastructure world and in the climate-change adaptation world, I have seen a shift in the recognition that climate change will bring impacts and costs to our own operations as an institution and that it needs to be addressed.
That’s perhaps a bit of an evasive answer, but that’s partly a function of the fact that I’m not aware of any mandatory requirements that they have to look at this; anything in the past has been voluntary. We’re aware of these issues from the perspective of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Centre for Greening Government.
Senator Quinn: Thanks for that answer. I didn’t find it evasive at all. There’s a snapshot of the reality in the world that you have to live in.
My follow-up question is this: What role does your department, Public Safety Canada, and Treasury Board have with respect to doing what you’re saying?
It’s great to hear the Treasury Board is looking at putting requirements in place. When I was kicking around, there was regulatory impact analysis. Is there a discussion of any sort that you’re aware of, or is Public Safety considering, pushing the idea of having climate-change impact statements in MCs, Memoranda to Cabinet, and in Treasury Board submissions so that it forces departments to really think about it?
Mr. Schwartz: That’s a great follow-up question. Those considerations would be part of the strategic environmental assessments that are part of the MC and the Treasury Board submission process.
Those could be better done, to be quite honest with you. My sense from working on those in the past is that they have largely, or to some extent, been checkboxes: yes, we did this; yes, we did this; yes, we do GBA+, Gender-Based Analysis Plus. Those are really important tools and levers for us to use to ensure that we are adequately considering the impacts of climate change and the impacts of the investments and the decisions we’re making on climate change itself vis-à-vis what our investments are doing to increase greenhouse gas emissions or otherwise. So yes, I think those are really good ways to do that. I’m not aware of anything outside of that at the moment, Senator Quinn, where Treasury Board would be considering that. That would have to be a follow-up question for them.
The other thing I thought of while you were asking your supplemental question — if I can go back to the first answer — is that within the Emergency Management Act, there is a — and I’m forgetting off the top of my head the exact article — but there is a requirement or a reference in there to ensuring that ministers are managing the risks of critical infrastructure within their areas of responsibility. So we do have a marker, as well, in the Emergency Management Act, whereby there is a reference to the management of risks to critical infrastructure. It’s ministers — plural — so this would apply across government.
However, going back to your previous question, the extent to which those risks are being looked at and managed really varies by department. I know that a number of departments and agencies have done their own climate-change risk assessments. Natural Resources Canada has done one. Environment and Climate Change has done one. Transport Canada was one of the first departments to do so; we’re talking 10 to 15 years ago or in that rough ballpark. But a number of departments and agencies have looked at risks to their assets and operations. In some cases, they have done this work themselves; in some cases, they’ve contracted it out to consultants to take a good look at their program activity architectures and go through every single item that the departments work on, whether it’s meteorological infrastructure or vehicle fleets, for example. They actually go through and say, “These are the risks to the department.”
There is a good case to be made for more to be done there, but certainly there have been some early movers that have really set the bar quite high in a positive way for demonstrating leadership in terms of climate-risk management.
Senator Klyne: Welcome, Mr. Schwartz. I want to thank you for your participation and your engagement with your answers.
I have a lot of questions, but I have two now. If there’s second round, I’ll ask to get on that as well.
You mentioned, and it’s quite obvious, that you’ve got quite a fleet of complex critical assets under your purview, and as far as critical infrastructure goes, as mentioned, it’s never been more dynamic than it is now, and that is largely due to the technological advances of information, communications and technology sectors. You mentioned or touched on cybersecurity. My first question is: Do you use blockchain-generated big data? We all know that the federal government has a lot of stakeholders that clamour for big data, and we’re working with a lot of old legacy IT there, and we need to make the shift to new legacy so we can deal with this big data. Just wondering on cybersecurity, if you are using blockchain-generated data.
Also, in the realm of cybersecurity and ICT security, is broadband internet under your purview? And do you look at that as a critical infrastructure? That’s one question.
Mr. Schwartz: Oh, that’s one question? Okay. Would you like me to answer now or wait?
Senator Klyne: Oh, no, go ahead.
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you for the question, Senator Klyne. We do not use blockchain at the moment. I am still wrapping my head around what that means and is. I always say to myself, “If someone tells me one more time it’s a digital ledger, I’m going to lose my mind.” Because I have a very hard time conceptualizing what it is. I mean, certainly, I’m aware of its capabilities as a transformational technology.
I’m not best placed to answer that. I would say that some of our colleagues in the National Security and Cyber Security Branch here at Public Safety would have a better handle on that, and that falls likely more in the realm of the National Cyber Security Strategy. But to answer your question, I’m not aware of anyone in the federal government using blockchain at this point in time in the context of critical infrastructure resilience.
Secondly, on broadband, broadband falls more under the — we would certainly consider it as critical infrastructure, as part of the ICT sector. Again, I think in that context it would fall under the realm of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED, just given the fact that ISED is the sector lead for ICT. And broadband is something that I think is, again, kind of transformational in terms of the connectivity and the transformation to digital services, which underpin a number of CI sectors.
Certainly, it’s not something that we are directly responsible for here at Public Safety. I think there is an element of funding for broadband that comes from the federal government, which there may be an element of Infrastructure Canada there, but also ISED, I think from my perspective, ISED would be the lead on broadband, in the context of critical infrastructure resilience. But yes, we would certainly consider it as critical infrastructure, especially given what we’ve seen in the last couple of years of pandemic and the movement to telework and the transition to online services.
Senator Klyne: Thank you. My second question kind of delves into or dovetails off an area that Senator Dawson and Senator Quinn were discussing, and that’s in the realm of the — I guess the FPT, federal‑provincial‑territorial, and municipalities, and more specifically — one of your comments was that you didn’t know if we’d ever be ready. And I know it’s very dynamic. It’s very fluid. It’s changing. We need a crystal ball to determine where this is all going. Things that we’re seeing that used to be once-in-a-century-type things, I think I read somewhere that by 2050 these will be annual occurrences, which used to be considered once-in-a-century issues.
My question is around this: In terms of us getting there, if I interpret what I read and what you’ve said, it will require a whole-of-nation effort here. And I’d have to think pre-2007, before the Emergency Measures Act came along, there was a lot of government-of-whole effort, and probably difficulties getting provinces and territories to the table, so you couldn’t collaborate on common measures. But now comes in 2009, the National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure, and you brought on board this National Cross Sector Forum, which I think probably allows you to approach that idea of a nation-of-the-whole effort.
Is that anything that is discussed in terms of — and when I say that, also wanting to bring in the municipalities, because so much infrastructure that auto drivers are paying taxes back to the federal government for, through fuel taxes, and the provinces get money sent back to them; we can’t exclude municipalities. And provinces always lay off all these things to them anyway.
But anyway, is there a whole-of-nation effort being contemplated? And can you do that through the National Cross Sector Forum?
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you for the follow-up question. I guess the first thing I would say is that yes, a whole-of-nation effort is required. I think just given the magnitude and the scope of the challenge with respect to climate change and how it will affect every sector and every aspect of society in every part of the country, I do think a whole-of-nation effort is required.
I have said both in the context of critical infrastructure resilience, but also in a climate change adaptation context, that climate resilience and adaptation is a shared responsibility. It’s too big of a problem for any single organization or entity to handle. And I go back to my comments at the outset, or one of my first responses, I would say, perhaps on the importance of collaboration.
I’ll try to work my way through your questions in sequence here. So yes, a whole-of-nation effort is required. I think the National Cross Sector Forum is a piece of the puzzle. I really see this as sort of a mosaic of initiatives, and there are a number of strategies out there that focus on resilience. I mentioned the Emergency Management Strategy. There’s the National Cyber Security Strategy. And there’s also the National Adaptation Strategy under development. I think all of these things are important.
I used to fantasize about sort of an über-strategy that would bring all these strategies together and make everything make sense. I don’t think that’s the world we’re in, particularly in the context of a federation with different authorities and priorities, and, quite frankly, geographic realities in different parts of the country.
So I see that there’s a real need for coordination, and that coordination can be quite helpful in stitching these various strategies, which are very complementary, together to address different pieces of the challenge, again, given the magnitude and scope of the challenge.
I think that, as I said, the National Cross Sector Forum is one mechanism through which we could do this. There are a number of others. There’s the Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. There’s the SOREM group, Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management. In the adaptation world, there’s an adaptation platform that’s co-chaired by Natural Resources Canada. The National Adaptation Strategy will set up governance mechanisms to deal with this.
To your point, though, I think to your question, I think that all has to make sense. It can’t be disparate and disconnected. In other words, we need to avoid duplication of effort and avoid working at cross purposes, so that’s the importance of coordination.
On collaboration with the provinces and territories in general, they are strong supporters, I would say, in the resilience space. They recognize the value of this. They recognize the need to participate in various federally led initiatives, whether that’s from a critical infrastructure perspective, an emergency management perspective, cybersecurity or climate change adaptation. So I’m very hopeful, and I have a very positive outlook for that FTP collaboration angle.
Again, I see this as almost like a network-of-networks model where the National Cross Sector Forum, the members go back and speak to their industry associations, and the word just sort of spreads, almost like word of mouth. That’s how these messages can be amplified, and that’s how the work that we need to do here can be better coordinated and contained.
I guess the last thing I would say, or maybe one last thing, is that resilience is a very hard concept to define and measure, and again, I think this is in part me answering a series of questions or other questions that have been asked tonight.
We don’t know what “ready” looks like in all cases because we don’t know how bad things are going to get. We have an idea. We know it’s going to be bad. We know climate change is going to be bad and impacts are going to be bad, but we don’t know exactly, well, how high the sea-level rise is going to be in this particular piece of coast where the coast is changing — it’s going up and down. That’s why they call it relative sea-level rise. It’s relative to the land.
And resilience is very hard to quantify. It’s not like measuring greenhouse gas reductions where you can effectively turn down the dial, and there’s a difference in what you polluted yesterday versus today and you can measure that.
My being more resilient than I was yesterday or more resilient to a stronger hurricane or a stronger rainstorm, that’s a very difficult thing to quantify. That’s something that everybody globally has struggled with in terms of measuring resilience. There have been expert panels set up. There have been efforts taken to come up with metrics, but it’s hard to even identify a goal or an objective. Do I want to be 50% more resilient than I was before? How resilient was I? Measuring our progress on resilience is one of the biggest challenges because it means something different to everybody. That’s a function of their adaptive capacity, their technological and financial abilities and the nature of the impacts that they are suffering from, I guess.
The last thing is to just touch on the point of municipalities. I totally agree with you — and this is I think a recognized gap in our current approach to critical infrastructure. We tend to work through the provinces and territories but we don’t drill down enough to individual municipalities. That’s something that we’re looking to change with the renewal of our strategy and the work that we will be undertaking to renew our approach to CI security and resilience over the next year and a half or two years.
My apologies for a long-winded response there, but I hope I answered each of your points.
Senator Klyne: Fantastic. Thank you so much. I guess I know what keeps you up at night now.
Senator Clement: Thank you, Mr. Schwartz. I want to lean into the last answers that you gave to the senators. I’m a former mayor, like my colleague Senator Sorensen. Cities are the first responders in every emergency in a climate crisis. That’s what they’re going to be, and I know that you’ve identified the gap, but I want to get to how we deal with that gap.
When the cruise ship passengers arrived in Cornwall at the beginning of the pandemic, they had to stay in Cornwall. It became a discussion between the federal government, province and municipality to figure out how to deal with this emergency. The first thing that went was communication. There was no communication between the three levels of government. What happens then is you get unrest in your community, and they are not looking to the federal government or the province; they are looking to the mayor and council and city staff.
Do your strategies and your plans factor in communication as a piece of critical infrastructure in terms of how you collaborate? Because that was the first thing that went. Don’t get me started on what happened in Ottawa a few weeks ago because you’re going to get a rant that’s going to last an hour. But what about communications? Is that part of your plan? How does that work exactly?
Mr. Schwartz: Again, it’s a very excellent question. Thank you for that. In different domains, critical infrastructure resilience being mine, the focus on municipalities to date has been a gap.
In other domains — which is related to the work that I do on infrastructure investments or climate change adaptation — municipalities, through various associations such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, FCM, they’ve been very active and vocal, recognizing that it’s difficult to represent thousands different members’ voices, depending on the nature of the issue. But FCM has been engaged.
It’s a very interesting question on communications. Certainly, we consider the technologies and the systems or the networks, the physical infrastructure that facilitate communication as critical, vis-à-vis the information, communications and technology sector, the ICT sector.
The communication itself, though, that’s a softer issue that is essential for ensuring that when the proverbial stuff hits the fan that we are connected to one another. That speaks to the importance of having good emergency management plans in place, good protocols and good governance mechanisms and systems, and there is no shortage of confusion when things happen, as you’ve raised a couple of really good examples.
I guess I hadn’t really thought of it in terms of the importance of communication itself in ensuring resilience, but certainly from my perspective, and getting back to the principles of coordination and collaboration, communication is inherent in that, so I would consider it a critical element of our work. We just don’t really designate it as such, if that makes sense, but certainly it’s an important element of emergency management in the case of first responders and what we see on a day-to-day basis in this country, and ensuring that event responses are coordinated, whether that’s the Government Operations Centre here at public safety or working with emergency operation centres in the provinces and territories.
I guess if I’m thinking about it, as I think through as I talk myself into it, I agree with you it’s essential, but we don’t designate it or call it critical in the current construct of critical infrastructure.
Senator Clement: I’m glad to hear that you will be consulting with municipalities as you move forward, because they’re going to tell you that communications needs to be formalized as critical infrastructure as well, but thank you for your answer.
Mr. Schwartz: Thank you. That’s a good point.
Senator Sorensen: This won’t be a question because I’m going to go down the same road. It’s very hard for past mayors not to take the fact that municipalities are gaps personally, and it’s been mentioned a couple of times, certainly by Senator Clement. When you make reference to wastewater treatment plants, bridges, roads, cybersecurity, fire, flood, it is the municipalities that are dealing with these things. As much as Alberta has had floods, it was High River, it was Calgary that were dealing with these things. It was Slave Lake. It was Fort McMurray. In B.C. this year, we learned about the communities that were so deeply impacted, so I just want to concur with Senator Clement.
There’s a lot to be learned from municipalities. In Alberta, we’re mandated to have a 100-year asset management plan, and municipalities understand exactly what their infrastructure looks like, when it needs to be replaced. They budget for it, whether it’s 10 years down the road or 25 years down the road. Municipalities are trying to do that with a climate action filter, and so I think there’s a lot to be learned from municipalities.
I know there’s a lot of us. The next thing is that people tend to go to the big cities, but sometimes it’s the smaller communities that suffer the most and really can be great case studies in this — certainly to use FCM, which is our national organization, and the provincial and territorial organizations. It’s important to understand that municipalities do appreciate being contacted directly, not as a child of the province, in instances like this.
I appreciate that the gap has been recognized. If you have any other comment, I’m happy to hear it, but I do know you have spoken of this a few times, but it was hard for me not to voice the same comment.
Mr. Schwartz: Understood. Again, just given the importance, it’s well worth raising again. I do appreciate those comments. I couldn’t agree more that municipalities are on the front lines of climate change.
A number of municipalities have developed, or are in the process of developing, climate change adaptation and resilience plans. One program that I really liked that came out of the 100 Resilient Cities initiative, I think it was, was the Chief Resilience Officers. I think having senior officials in municipalities responsible for all of the municipalities’ resilience efforts is a brilliant idea, so one single person or organization has a bird’s‑eye view on what needs to be done and can pull those different levers and pull those different parts of a municipality together to ensure that they are all rowing in the same direction. That’s really important.
There are a number of supports that the federal government can provide to municipalities in terms of information about climate change, climate projections, climate science. There is the Canadian Centre for Climate Services, which is available to support the needs of people who are doing exactly the sort of thing that you’re talking about.
How big do I have to plan this next culvert? Do I make this pipe 30 inches or 34 inches? These are the kind of practical, real-world, now problems that the municipalities, as the builders of cities, are facing.
Your point about case studies is a good one. The work that Natural Resources Canada does on science assessments for climate change impacts adaptation — that Canada in a Changing Climate series, and this goes back to reports that they’ve put out since the early 2000s. They’ve highlighted some of the leading initiatives that municipalities have put in place, looking at places like Halifax, Hamilton and some smaller places as well, including up in Northern Canada, who are dealing with significant impacts of thawing permafrost, which creates infrastructure challenges.
Lastly, I would say, noting the time, that I do take your point about the municipalities not being children of the province, because the reality we face is that it’s difficult — again, going back to the jurisdictional issues — sometimes it’s difficult to create those municipal contacts without offending certain jurisdictions in some places. I say that anecdotally, but that is a reality, as you likely will know.
I’ll close on that. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Mr. Schwartz, thank you very much for being before us. Your testimony here today and the exchange has highlighted the magnitude of the study that we have undertaken.
I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that I think you elicited a large number of very good questions and you provided a lot of thoughtful, intelligent and interesting responses. The bad news is that I suspect there will probably be an appetite to have you back before this committee at some point to continue the discussion. I thank you for getting us off to a very interesting start.
Colleagues, I think it was important to let the witness elaborate on his answers. I thought they were very helpful. Colleagues who did not get a chance on this round, I will maintain this list if you wish to ask questions in the second round.
Thank you very much, Mr. Schwartz.
Mr. Schwartz: My pleasure, and I’d be happy to come back in the future. Thank you.
The Chair: We are pleased to have with us now on this panel Megan Nichols, Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy; Kim Benjamin, Director General, Intermodal Surface, Security & Emergency Preparedness; Paul Sandhar-Cruz, Director General, Strategic Policy; Christian Dea, Director General, Transportation and Economic Analysis and Chief Economist; and Maxine Bilodeau, Director, Environmental Policy Framework and Integration. Welcome all. I imagine Ms. Nichols will begin with opening remarks — if you could keep that within 10 to 15 minutes — and then we’ll turn it over to my colleagues for the period of Q & A.
Ms. Nichols, you have the floor.
Megan Nichols, Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Transport Canada: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to address the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications as it launches its study on the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation sector.
This study is particularly timely given the report that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released this week, finding that health, lives and livelihoods, as well as property and critical infrastructure, are being increasingly affected by climate change.
I’m pleased to be here to provide an overview of what we know here at Transport Canada about how our changing climate is affecting Canada’s transportation systems and also to speak about some of the challenges and solutions to address these impacts. I’m very happy to be joined by a number of my colleagues. I wasn’t quite so brave as Mr. Schwartz to come on my own. I’ll also share some of the efforts that are under way at Transport Canada to help enhance the resilience of our transportation sector.
As you know, the transportation system is critical to the economic and social well-being of our country. Many factors can affect its smooth and safe operation and the movement of people and goods, including labour disruptions and shortages, congestion and bottlenecks, and the condition of our infrastructure.
As recent events on both coasts have demonstrated, climate change and increasingly frequent extreme weather events can also pose direct risks to the safety of transportation infrastructure across all modes — surface, air and marine — as well as to our supply chains and access to essential goods and services, which affects all Canadians.
Overall, Canada is warming at twice the global average, and in the North, this rate is up to three times faster. Extreme weather events, such as heat waves, high winds, wildfires and floods, are increasing in frequency and intensity. For the transportation sector, the ensuing disasters can lead to the destruction of infrastructure, supply chain disruptions and even loss of life.
However, slow-onset climate changes are also affecting our transportation systems. For example, sea-level rise can impact port and other transportation infrastructure and operations, and more unpredictable sea ice patterns in the Arctic can impact the safety and reliability of northern shipping and navigation.
Also in the North, road networks and airport runways are already affected by permafrost thaw, and warming winters are reducing the ice road season.
The 2019 Council of Canadian Academies report on Canada’s Top Climate Change Risks found that climate risks to Canada are most acute in six areas, three of which relate directly to transportation, specifically, physical infrastructure, coastal communities and northern communities.
I’ll briefly go over some of the key consequences of climate change impacts in the sector. First, the changing climate can pose safety risks to users of the transportation system, including passengers and operators. Safety hazards can result from infrastructure damage and premature failures, such as bridge or road washouts, equipment malfunctions, rail buckling or breaks and cracking of runways. Moreover, when remote communities’ transportation links are compromised, emergency response is also affected. The flooding and landslides in B.C. last fall provide a tragic example of this when a mudslide on Highway 99 caused five deaths.
Second, climate change impacts the mobility of goods and people, and this disproportionately affects northern, remote and vulnerable communities, where there are often few or no alternate transportation routes. In such communities, disruptions to limited transportation links can threaten socio-economic well-being and mental health, exacerbate precarious food and energy security, and cut off access to essential services. For example, changing sea ice patterns and reduced seasonality of winter roads are affecting Indigenous communities’ ability to practise traditional activities and putting intercommunity connections at risk. Similarly, in November 2021, flooding in Newfoundland and Labrador closed significant portions of the Trans-Canada Highway. Also, ferry services between Port aux Basques and North Sydney disrupted the movement of essential goods. And when the Churchill-Winnipeg rail corridor was washed out in June 2017, the community of Churchill was isolated for over a year while the damage was repaired.
Third, these examples speak directly to the need to ensure the fluidity and resiliency of our supply chains and trade corridors. These have already been under pressure on a number of fronts, including supply-and-demand shocks and labour shortages. This pressure has only been exacerbated by impacts from a changing climate. For example, in July, wildfires in British Columbia blocked Class 1 railways’ main rail line leading to the Port of Vancouver. Transport Canada estimates that tens of millions of dollars of goods a day normally pass through the impacted area. The damage to the rail lines had a cascading effect on the fluidity at the port, showing how interdependent our transportation system is and how a failure in one location can lead to larger system-wide impacts.
In addition to these important socio-economic impacts, the lack of climate resilience means ballooning infrastructure costs and increased repair, operating and maintenance costs over the long run. In many cases, these funding pressures fall on the federal purse when there’s a need to tap into disaster-recovery funding.
A recent report from the Canadian Climate Institute notes that the combined losses per weather-related disaster have risen from an average of $8.3 million per event in the 1970s to an average of $112 million per event between 2010 and 2019. This is an astonishing increase.
Climate-change adaptation is a form of risk management, where preventative measures and planning can help avoid higher costs over the long term.
Another Council of Canadian Academies’ recent report provides compelling savings for each dollar spent on mitigation measures. For example, highway bridge design modifications yield a benefit-cost ratio of 9 to 1. Another report estimates that repaving roads using asphalt mixes and base materials that will withstand the climate two or three decades into the future can reduce costs by over 90%.
For the transportation sector, adaptation is a fundamentally complex problem that requires collaboration across modes and systems, and it’s a shared responsibility. The sector involves a broad range of asset owners and operators, including all levels of government, industry and Indigenous communities. This complexity and the reality of our vast and varied geography makes it challenging to advance adaptation action in a way that addresses all the interdependencies in our system.
Moreover, asset owners and operators have different levels of knowledge and capacity to identify and address their climate risks, and even though investing in climate-resilient infrastructure saves money in the long run, it can sometimes be a challenge to make the case to spend more up front.
As a transportation asset owner and operator, and with a mandate to promote a transportation system in Canada that is safe, secure, efficient and environmentally responsible, Transport Canada plays a key role in supporting adaptation efforts. This includes convening stakeholders and jurisdictions. As recently announced by the Council of Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety just last week, Transport Canada will be leading the establishment of a new federal-provincial-territorial working group on climate-change adaptation in the transportation sector.
Climate data is another identified need in the sector. Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Canadian Centre for Climate Services is the authoritative federal source for credible, useful and timely climate information, data and tools. Recently, the centre released a transportation module that provides information and case studies on the use of climate data to help advance efforts for the Canadian transportation sector.
We also have a wide range of efforts under way to help prepare the sector for climate change and to address the challenges in a more concerted way. To date, Transport Canada has led two climate adaptation programs. The Northern Transportation Adaptation Initiative Program was created to increase capacity to adapt Northern transportation systems to climate change. It funded research and collaborative activities to enhance knowledge and identify solutions to improve transportation resilience in the North. Since 2011, it has supported over 100 projects that have led to new knowledge about how climate change is affecting transportation in the North, piloting innovative technologies and increasing capacity among Northerners to understand and manage climate change impacts.
Our second program, the Transportation Assets Risk Assessment Program, provides funding to assess the impacts of the changing climate on federally owned or managed transportation assets, such as bridges, ports and airports, and helps identify potential adaptation solutions. Over 50 such assessments have been conducted to date, including for the Confederation Bridge, the primary link between P.E.I. and mainland Canada.
Another critical program is Transport Canada’s $4.2 billion National Trade Corridors Fund, which supports infrastructure investments in airports, ports, railways and access roads. One of the core objectives of the program is to increase the resilience of the system to a changing climate. Proponents are required to consider the climate resilience of their proposals, and this is factored into project assessments.
In addition to these programs, in August, the Minister of Transport announced $100 million over five years to strengthen rail safety in Canada, especially in light of the impacts of climate change and severe weather on railway operations. This funding will be dedicated to activities that will enable Transport Canada to invest in railway oversight and undertake research and analysis to better identify climate risks and strategies.
I’d also briefly note, Mr. Chair, that public and private infrastructure owners are seeking new and innovative solutions to maintain high levels of safety. For example, Transport Canada has been collaborating with the National Research Council, the Canadian Space Agency, the U.K. and other partners to develop a new satellite-based early-warning tool that identifies unexpected structural behaviours or movements in bridges to help infrastructure authorities to better predict and take action to mitigate climate impacts.
In addition to our domestic action, we recognize the opportunities presented by sharing knowledge, expertise and best practices among international transportation policy-makers and practitioners. Transport Canada is currently leading, or co‑leading, as the role of vice‑chair of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Group of Experts on Assessment of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation for Inland Transport.
Finally, we are actively supporting the development of Canada’s first national adaptation strategy that was announced last year and is planned for completion this coming fall. Led by Environment and Climate Change Canada, this strategy will provide for a national approach to climate adaptation efforts and an opportunity to align our efforts with provinces, territories, municipalities and stakeholders.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, Transport Canada looks forward to continuing to work with our partners and stakeholders to increase resilience in the sector.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We will go to questions.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much, Ms. Nichols. That was an outstanding presentation, although a somewhat depressing one.
I’m curious. It is one thing for the federal government and for Transport Canada to manage the assets that it controls. One of the problems, though, is that some of our major transportation assets, our rail lines, are in private hands.
I spoke to some of the major rail players after the flooding disasters in British Columbia, and I asked them about building back a more resilient infrastructure. They said to me that it would cost so much to do that that it was cheaper for them to just spot-fix incidents when they happened.
When you talk about private-public partnerships and you talk about that 9-to-1 benefit-cost ratio, what needs to happen to make sure that privately owned essential public infrastructure is cared for properly? Because while it may cost a rail company more in the short term to fix a line, the cost of having that rail line down for days, weeks and months are borne by the entire economy, not just by the company that owns that rail line.
Ms. Nichols: Thank you very much. This is a very important point, and it again speaks to the complexity in the sector, the interdependencies and the fact that multiple stakeholders need to work together to address these challenges.
I would say a few things. First of all, the cost-benefit of these investments is a very important point. Organizations need to make educated decisions about how much to invest, at what time, and when in the life cycle of their infrastructure. Transport Canada tries to provide information to help guide those decisions by supporting efforts such as risk assessments, as well as identifying potential solutions. We also play the role of convenor in terms of bringing together different operators and owners of infrastructure, realizing that the decisions of one operator will often have compounding effects on other parts of the supply chain.
We have been working with the railways to look at ways of making their infrastructure more resilient, and I did mention the fund that our minister announced back in August to help to identify more effective ways that we can also provide monitoring and oversight of these assets and work together with railways. Another challenge that the railways face is the impact of extreme heat and cold on their operations. There’s certainly a recognition that the efficiencies are directly related to the climate.
Another key element is providing technological solutions and tools, which is something that the federal government can do, to help to identify and develop solutions that will be more cost-effective and make more sense for private owners to invest in a more holistic way in those solutions, rather than just the spot-fixes that you mentioned.
Last, I would say another key role for us is making sure that asset owners have the data that they need to make the right decisions. This is an area where, for a long time, there was a lack of adequate data to help make the case for these upfront investments. But as this data becomes more readily available, it’s able to better inform the decisions of the infrastructure and asset holders for them to be able to make the case to their boards and financial decision makers. I do think that’s a key part of the puzzle as well.
Senator Simons: There are many more things I’d like to ask, but mindful of what happened in the last round, I will pass the baton to Senator Cormier.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Thank you, Ms. Nichols.
First, I can see that both you and the previous witness are talking about a complicated system involving many partners, interdependence among the various partners, and different levels of knowledge depending on the partner. My question concerns three aspects. It’s about understanding Transport Canada’s role in coordinating efforts to address climate change issues. It’s also about trying to ensure that the level of knowledge among the various partners is high enough to enable them to work together with full knowledge of the issues.
Lastly, I want to know more about the level of support for research, since it was noted earlier that climate change is happening quickly.
I’m from the Atlantic region. We hear a great deal, for example, about coastal erosion, the impact of erosion and climate change on ports, and the challenges for ferries, which are common in my region. How can Transport Canada, in an ecosystem of this nature, address the three aspects that I referred to?
Ms. Nichols: Thank you. I’ll start answering the questions and I’ll ask my colleague, Ms. Bilodeau, to answer them as well.
[English]
In terms of coordination, Transport Canada absolutely has a key role in the coordination. As I mentioned, just last week we announced the creation of a new federal-provincial-territorial working group from departments of transport from across the country that will look at identifying vulnerabilities in the transportation sector where we have a shared role in addressing these, sharing best practices and lessons learned and looking at where we need to work together more effectively to ensure that our system as a whole is working well.
I would also mention again the National Adaptation Strategy that Environment and Climate Change Canada is leading. This is meant to be a national strategy that will be developed in conjunction with provinces, territories and other stakeholders. I think it represents a huge step forward in how we will be collaborating across all sectors, with all infrastructure owners and operators in a way that makes sense, where we are defining shared goals and objectives, as well as shared actions.
I would say that in terms of infrastructure, the National Adaptation Strategy has already started to identify some potential goals and objectives, such as identifying an investment framework to guide investment decisions across all of the different owners and operators, looking at technical standards that will guide decision making, looking at a regulatory framework and also being clear on roles and responsibilities. I think this shows there’s a definite need to have more coordination and that this is beginning.
In terms of the level of knowledge and understanding of how to address the risks, that is certainly where a lot of Transport Canada’s efforts have focused so far with the two funding programs that I spoke about. To date, a lot of our efforts have been on risk assessment — helping infrastructure owners and operators understand how do you assess the climate risks to your infrastructure? What are the elements of a strong risk assessment? And how do you actually put it into action? This is a very complex undertaking and there’s been lots of good work done to share how to do this in a way that’s effective and can guide decision making.
On the third point about supporting research, this is also an area where Transport Canada has invested quite significantly in supporting a number of research studies jointly with other departments, as well as ones that we have undertaken ourselves. On that point, I’ll turn to Maxine Bilodeau and ask her to add a little bit more.
Maxine Bilodeau, Director, Environmental Policy Framework and Integration, Transport Canada: To briefly add to what Megan mentioned in terms of Transport Canada’s adaptation programming, we have been able to focus on the issue of collaboration and research, less about the infrastructure investments, but looking at that collaboration piece. Under the Northern Transportation Adaptation Initiative, for example, one of the key elements of that quite small program was a well-nurtured network of experts that brought together federal, territorial, provincial, industry, academics and practitioners to share information and to work together to identify where the gaps might be. That helped inform our research under the program to target those areas where we were hearing there was a need. Likewise, under our transportation assets risk assessment initiative, while quite focused on risk assessments for individual assets, one of the approaches that we took was to have a workshop where we brought all the owners and asset operators together in a room to talk about their experience undertaking those climate risk assessments and being able to share their best practices.
What we found is that each assessment will be different. Each asset owner will need to think about what climate variables make the most sense for them to look at. What is the scope of what they want to achieve with the risk assessment? What we’ve also found is that the results of those assessments is really a first step. Often what they do is inform asset owners about where they may need to do a little more homework. What deeper dive needs to be done? What’s a particular vulnerability? It’s not necessarily a straight line between having a climate assessment and then knowing what you’re going to do from an infrastructure investment planning lens.
We are very much aware of the need for that collaboration and looking forward from a policy standpoint on what the department can do to keep working with our stakeholders in that area.
Senator Cormier: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Galvez: Thank you, Ms. Nichols.
[English]
As we were discussing with the previous speaker, we know that every single province and territory in Canada has been hit by extreme weather events, and I think that in every case highways have been destroyed or failed or partially moved, carried away by erosion, by rain, et cetera. Because they are the arteries where all our goods and, as you said, people move, they have to be reconstructed almost immediately, very fast.
When you are reconstructing, and especially with this happening in the coastal areas and in the Arctic, are you reconstructing exactly as it was or are you taking into consideration all the factors that you have mentioned about the resilience, the adaptation, the prediction and the new modelling? I’m saying this because what I’m reading in the newspaper is that you are just reconstructing it in the same place under the same conditions so that next time when this event happens again we won’t be in a better situation. Can you please tell me what’s going on with the reconstructions? Thank you.
Ms. Nichols: Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. I would say that certainly when a disaster such as some of the ones we’ve seen recently hits, there’s obviously a need to respond very quickly, to make sure that those key arteries are restored as quickly as possible.
Highways, for the most part, are under provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government does not own very large portions of the national highway system. We are responsible for a few that run through national parks, but by and large those are the responsibility of the provinces.
I do think that many provinces are looking very closely at this issue and many of them do have their own adaptation plans and protocols that guide how they do new buildings of infrastructure projects, as well as restorations and upgrades.
A lot of this does speak to the need for strong codes and standards that will guide the quality of infrastructure, and this is an area that we are working with the National Research Council and the standards codes of Canada to look at whether there are opportunities to, again, work more closely with provinces, territories, municipalities to strengthen codes and standards and make sure that they are built into contracting so that when, for example, a province or a municipality or the federal government puts out a contract for some kind of repair or a new build, that those are done to a high standard and not just to a minimum standard.
This is, again, a great example of an area where, with the new National Adaptation Strategy — the new working group that we’ve just struck with provinces and territories — we can talk more about codes and standards and have a strength in them and make those strengthened standards a mainstream part of how we look after our infrastructure.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, Madam Nichols. Very interesting presentation indeed. I guess I’m just coming down to a fundamental question. Transport Canada has infrastructure across the country, big communities, small communities, rural areas, you name it. Does the department have a requirement for not only its own assets but for those that are managed on behalf of the government, be it airports, ports, what have you, for risk management analysis to be done so that it can be somewhat informing our transportation department and sector about what those critical assets are? Is there something that’s done and coordinated through the departmental headquarters?
Ms. Nichols: Thank you very much for that question. Transport Canada, indeed we do own a number of important assets ourselves. We are responsible for about 17 land-based airports, 30 public port facilities, as well as some ferry terminals, airport hangars. So we ourselves are an important asset owner.
As the previous witness mentioned, Mr. Schwartz, we do have an adaptation plan. Our second one was just recently finalized, which guides some of our corporate objectives and goals in how we manage our own infrastructure in a climate-resilient way, and a lot of this is about mainstreaming climate resilience into all of our operations in the way that we manage our assets. It’s part of our corporate risk profile. We look at when we need to upgrade and invest in our assets. This type of consideration factors into how we score potential projects and funding.
This is something that certainly is top of mind for us, and we’ve been able to do risk assessments of many of our own assets, so we certainly strive to be a leader in this area. It does align with the government’s Greening Government Strategy, which requires government departments to have a better knowledge of their own climate risks and develop strategies to identify and address those.
Senator Quinn: It’s really the interaction that Transport does with so many stakeholders and whatnot. Is there a stakeholder or an administration, province or a city, is there a particular element that stands out for you that you could say: This is an entity that this committee should talk to that would help inform us in terms of what is seen as a best practice?
Ms. Nichols: I think, Mr. Chair, there are many best practices and exemplary partners out there, so it would be hard to single out just one, but I think we would be happy to perhaps provide you with a list following the committee meeting, if that list would be of interest to the committee.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our guests. I want to focus on the fifty‑sixth parallel and north and the degrading condition of transportation north of the fifty‑sixth parallel. And in that regard, I want to discuss the crucial role that plays. I understand that just immediately north of the fifty‑sixth parallel, the highway system and road network would still be relatively robust, but the further north you go, that transportation’s infrastructure characteristics worsen and are degrading and almost non-existent as far as roads go, particularly in Nunavut where communities are more dependent on air and marine transportation for supplies and travel. Throughout that whole region north of the fifty‑sixth parallel, pick-ups, air and marine transportation still remain a critical method of transporting supplies, medicine and people to rural remote regions. I have to think that the transportation issues north of the 56 are concerned and viewed as comparatively a gap widening when you look south of the 56.
In terms of the importance of that infrastructure, in terms of moving people and goods and creating economic opportunities across the vast region — not to mention it’s the source for getting to professional appointments and the medicines and so on and so forth — what are we doing to ensure that it doesn’t degrade further and the gap doesn’t widen further between north and south? That’s one question in terms of a Canadian is a Canadian even north of 56 and should enjoy the same infrastructure as in the south. In terms of making sure the gap closes, the other question I have to ask is this: Is it in your purview to concern yourselves with charging stations as the pickups go from diesel to electric?
Ms. Nichols: Thank you. I can maybe quickly answer the second question first.
Transport Canada does have a role in increasing the uptake of zero-emission vehicles across the country. We are responsible for helping to establish sales targets, and we also manage a purchase incentive program.
In terms of charging infrastructure, that is led by Natural Resources Canada, so it falls more under their purview. But, of course, we do work very closely, recognizing that the availability of charging stations is important to drive consumer uptake of those vehicles as well.
Moving on to the first question in terms of the gap in the North and the particular needs there, we certainly recognize that the impacts of climate change are felt much more acutely in the North. For example, we’re seeing that higher temperatures are resulting in damage to roads and runways built over permafrost, and we’re seeing the shortening winter road seasons, which I mentioned earlier. We’re also seeing coastal erosion, changing water levels and less predictable sea ice conditions that are affecting marine access. These impacts are certainly affecting the efficiency, safety and resiliency of northern transportation and thus the ability of northerners to maximize social and economic development.
In terms of what types of measures are being taken and how we’re responding to this, there is an Arctic Transportation Policy Framework that Transport Canada is responsible for, which I’ll ask my colleague Paul Sandhar-Cruz to speak about in a moment.
As we also mentioned earlier, we do have the Northern Transportation Adaptation Initiative, and it has done some work to increase capacity of northerners to address their climate risks. It has funded about 100 projects since it began, and that has included research, for example, that informed the relocation of runway infrastructure in Iqaluit given permafrost thaw risks. It also helped to inform the relocation of infrastructure in Tuktoyaktuk given coastal erosion risks.
We’ve done analysis that pointed to locations of potential high ship-ice interaction that could inform navigation oversight and monitoring practices. We’ve also funded some permafrost-related case studies that showed how thermosiphons could help to keep the ground cool and reduce permafrost thaw and thus keep the infrastructure stable for a longer period of time. So quite a number of different initiatives that have provided important findings for types of technologies that can help to mitigate the impacts.
I’ll turn it over to my colleague Paul to speak about the Arctic Transportation Policy Framework and also about the National Trade Corridors Fund, where we’ve recently issued a northern call, specifically for the North.
Paul Sandhar-Cruz, Director General, Strategic Policy, Transport Canada: Thank you. To supplement what Megan was saying, as part of the government work on the Arctic Transportation Policy Framework, we’re looking at transportation-specific policy, recognizing the impacts of climate change on the North. We’ve dedicated a large portion of the National Trade Corridors Fund for projects in the North, earmarking over $1 billion.
Through the targeted calls for proposals, we have already initiated a number of projects to help with the resiliency of particular infrastructure, and we would be happy to share specific examples with the committee if you would like, emphasizing the point that we know there are particular challenges with permafrost, tundra, runways and keeping supply chains and critical supplies going. That’s why we’re looking at a targeted strategy for the North on transportation, coupled with real investments under the National Trade Corridors Fund.
Senator Klyne: Thank you both very much.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a slightly different question. When we started this study, clearly we wanted to look at the impact of climate change on critical transportation and communications infrastructure. Conversely, we’re wondering how the transportation sector and Transport Canada are reducing their impact on climate change. As you can see, the issue goes both ways.
Does this correlation exist? Are you the ones responsible, at the same time, for ensuring that the transportation sector is protected, but also for helping to reduce pollution so that we can all survive global warming?
Ms. Nichols: Thank you for your question. I think that today, we weren’t necessarily prepared to answer this question. However, I can confirm that we have a responsibility, at Transport Canada, to reduce the transportation sector’s impact on climate change.
[English]
We are responsible for a number of key initiatives to help reduce GHG emissions from the sector. I mentioned earlier the on-road sector, which contributes the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions: 85% come from the on-road sector — passenger cars, medium and heavy-duty vehicles.
One key initiative we have is the Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles Program, which has helped to increase zero-emission vehicle uptake across the country. Our minister announced with other ministers last June a target of 100% zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035, and that the government would be making that target mandatory. That work is currently under way.
We recognize that passenger cars are only part of the on-road issue. We also recognize that there is a lot of work to do to reduce emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles as well. Efforts are at a much earlier place with that particular mode of transportation. However, the government’s new strengthened climate plan, which was released about a year ago, did commit to working with stakeholders to identify ways to reduce emissions and to increase supply and demand of zero-emission vehicles in the medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sector as well. That is something that we are actively following up on.
In terms of other modes of transportation — marine, aviation, rail — they represent a smaller percentage of the transportation sector’s emissions. But given the government’s ambitious climate change objectives to reduce emissions by between 40 and 45% by 2030 and to achieve net zero by 2050, we need to look at what we can do in all modes of transportation.
We already have a number of initiatives under way in those other modes. For example, in the air sector, we have a voluntary action plan in place with industry that’s committed to improving the energy efficiency of the sector. We also recently implemented an international obligation to limit emissions from international flights to 2019 levels. Canada is part of that international agreement, and we’ve introduced domestic regulations to bring it into effect.
On the marine side, we’re working closely with stakeholders on potential initiatives. At COP26 in Glasgow, in November, Canada signed on to the Clydebank Declaration, which is a voluntary commitment to establish green shipping corridors between countries and even domestically, and so that’s a commitment that we are pursuing.
We also have a voluntary action plan with our rail sector as well and are looking at pathways to decarbonize our rail sector with them.
So there is a lot of different work under way. Transportation is the number two source of GHG emissions after oil and gas. So there is a lot of work to do. There are many challenges in the transportation sector. It’s very expensive to turn over fleets to these new technologies. In some cases, the technologies are still under development.
The other key thing is alternative fuels. Certainly, we have electrification as an option for passenger vehicles and for short‑haul in the medium heavy‑duty vehicle space. But we need access to more alternative fuels to make really deep reductions in long-haul freight, whether it’s hydrogen, biofuels or other types of zero-carbon fuels. It’s going to take an effort across the economy and across other sectors as well to position us to make those deep reductions.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you have some kind of a document or a list? This is very interesting. You’ve touched upon many topics. Does it exist, this type of document, on all the initiatives done in transport to try to reduce pollution?
Ms. Nichols: I think one good source would be the strengthened climate plan. It has an inventory of what’s been achieved to date as well as the government’s commitments moving forward for the transportation sector.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’m sorry for taking time, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: As deputy chair I allow you to exercise your privileges.
Senator Simons: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for taking a second question from me.
I had a meeting this morning with the Canadian Airports Council. The airport operators are very concerned, of course, about the hit to their finances that the years of the pandemic have presented to them.
It’s an odd circumstance, because airport authorities are their own creatures and they are responsible for funding airport improvements. They have to be the ones that levy the fees and things. They are looking for much more federal support going forward. As you’re speaking to us, I worry about the added stress that preparing for climate resiliency presents to them.
You’ve spoken primarily about the northern airports that have to deal with erosion. I’m thinking about the Prince Rupert Airport, which is on an island, or even the Toronto Pearson Airport, which is right by a lake and subject to increasing storm conditions.
Where will the support come from to make sure that our airports, which are so critical to our transportation networks in this country, are able to prepare themselves for the challenges ahead?
Ms. Nichols: Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.
I would say that the government, I think, has demonstrated quite a lot of support for airports over the last couple of years, recognizing the challenges that they have faced during the pandemic.
Also, through our Transportation Assets Risk Assessment Program — one of the programs mentioned earlier — we have funded numerous climate risk assessments for airports so that they are better able to understand their climate risks. So certainly lots of infrastructure and assessment support is there, and also sharing tools.
I think part of the answer to the question also lies in the importance of asset owners and operators seeing the importance and value of making these investments. So while they are important from a resilience perspective, it’s also about making sure that the business case is also clear, and recognizing that sometimes even though that upfront investment might be more costly, that it is going to save money in the long term and also bring co-benefits around safety and, perhaps, economic well‑being and that kind of thing. So that’s a really important part as well.
I’m inspired by seeing some of our airports, like YVR, for example; in their master plan for 2037, they’ve identified some of the measures they need to take to make sure they are protected against climate risks.
I certainly recognize in the question that not all airports are at the same level of prosperity or sophistication and that they do need support. I think that’s what we’ve provided through our Assets Risk Assessment Program, as well as through our infrastructure funding programs.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: My question comes on the heels of Senator Miville-Dechêne’s question about how infrastructure affects climate change.
I recently met with the Canadian Ferry Association, which explained that ferries need significant investments to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. The association is deeply focused on modernizing its infrastructure. As I said, in my region, major ferries run to different provinces.
Do you have any data on the specific impact of ferries on climate change? Does Transport Canada have a funding plan to support the modernization of this method of transportation?
Ms. Nichols: Thank you for the question.
[English]
I would say that I don’t have at my fingertips right now information on the exact contribution to climate change from the Traversiers. I do know that that information is available. I believe Environment and Climate Change Canada has a breakdown of the emissions from the marine sector and how they are broken down across the different types of vessels. That’s something that we could certainly follow up on.
In terms of funding for this transformation for the marine sector, again, certainly it’s very costly to look at this type of fleet turnover. Even retrofits to make vessels more efficient can also be very, very expensive.
In terms of financing, at this time Transport Canada does have some research development demonstration funding, small amounts of funding, that can help to do pilot projects to look at ways of making these vessels more efficient. At this point, that’s the source that we’re restricted to. It’s something that we’re certainly examining in terms of the commitments in the strengthened climate plan. There are commitments to look at reducing emissions further from the marine sector.
I would also mention the government’s commitment to developing a Blue Economy Strategy, I think is another initiative under way where I know that the industry was certainly very clear that there is a need for more to be done to reduce emissions from the marine sector.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Thank you for your presentation and for answering our questions.
[English]
The Chair: Ms. Nichols, thank you, to you and your team, for taking the time to come before us tonight. As you know, this is the first meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications in launching this comprehensive study. You’ve given us a lot of information to think about. We appreciate the quality and the degree of the answers.
In terms of my colleagues, a number of questions may have arisen from this exchange. Our capable clerk and our analyst will forward some of our questions to the department as well, subsequent to this meeting. We will reach out to you and rely on you for ongoing discussions and exchanges. I thank you so much.
(The committee adjourned.)