Evidence of meeting #102 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forecasting.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We will resume.
Ms. Pauzé and Mr. Mazier, thank you for assuming the responsibilities of the chair, and congratulations for the way you handled the discussion and exchanges.
We will now begin the second hour of this meeting, during which we will hear from four groups of witnesses.
To begin with, we will hear from Wanda McFayden, executive director, Assiniboine River Basin Initiative, who has the floor for five minutes.
Wanda McFadyen Executive Director, Assiniboine River Basin Initiative
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members, and thank you. It is an honour to speak to you today about Bill C-317.
As we all know, water respects no boundaries, be it in time of floods or of drought, so it's critically important that different water authorities across the country come together to share standardized data and be able to share that in a timely manner with stakeholders who work on the landscape and rely on that data.
I want to speak to two flood events that happened within our basin in recent years: the flood of 2011, which was a once-in-300-years event, and the one of 2014, which was a once-in-500-years event. These two floods were catastrophic in nature. In one instance, one community saw 11,000 residents evacuated from their homes and 4,000 homes and businesses impacted.
The mental health impacts to communities in times of flood are astronomical and go on for years and years. The flood of 2014 saw communities as well as rural residents marooned without supplies for days on end. Floods also impact infrastructure, farmland, businesses, etc., so we need to look at and work collaboratively on those across the country. As we've heard from Dr. Pomeroy, insurance is also impacted, which is a huge piece of the puzzle for those on the landscape.
The flip side, of course, is drought. We are starting to experience that at unprecedented levels. The difference between a drought and a flood is that droughts can go on for many months or years, while floods tend to have a shorter impact but wreak havoc on infrastructure for years to come in its replacement. I think it's very important that we look at that.
Both of these impact mental health, the economic well-being of the communities, the environment, the landscape and all the creatures that inhabit those landscapes. When I say “communities”, I'm referring to all communities: first nations, rural residents, urban residents, etc. Also, they cross international boundaries, as we heard earlier. We have to be respectful of the fact that water does flow across rural boundaries.
On behalf of our organization, I would strongly encourage the committee to work towards the development of a true national strategy that would enable all jurisdictions to share data in a standardized and understandable format to prepare for and react to floods and droughts. In working across those jurisdictional boundaries, they must recognize that those boundaries are municipal and provincial, as well as international. Communication, co-operation and coordination are all common goals that will lead to the success of this program, if it's to roll out.
You must invest in working with us, the grassroots stakeholders. Groups like ours, the indigenous communities on the landscape and the agriculture and conservation groups all hold a wealth of knowledge and have developed a network and a trust on the landscape with those impacted. In many instances, they are the first responders on the landscape, working with local residents, be it in times of flood or in times of drought.
Also, work towards creating resiliency, whereby all stakeholders have the ability and tools before them to adapt to change, not only to achieve environmental sustainability but to remain viable on the economic side of things for themselves and for the well-being of their communities. As well, the goals must also realize that research and adaptation of best management practices, and the utilization of tools that may assist in the process that is developed, are key to its success.
Transparent processes are a must. You must include transparent communication and information exchange in order to lead to the success of the programs.
Also, we must never forget the golden rule of water: Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.
I'm very pleased to present you with this information today, and I'm quite willing to answer any questions. We're very pleased to see this strategy move forward and would encourage those of you around the table not to forget about us, the grassroots individuals who can help this become a success across Canada.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you, Ms. McFadyen.
We'll go now to the Citizens' Climate Lobby. I believe Ms. Lindman will be speaking.
Will you be sharing your time with Ms. Orlando? Who will be starting?
Caterina Lindman Retired Actuary, Citizens' Climate Lobby
Cathy Orlando will be starting, and we'll be sharing our time.
Cathy Orlando National Director, Citizens' Climate Lobby
Thank you for the privilege of speaking with you today.
My name is Cathy Orlando. I work as the director of programs at Citizens' Climate International and am a director of Citizens' Climate Lobby Canada.
I live in Sudbury, Ontario. I've been concerned about the climate crisis my whole adult life. My father-in-law was Dr. Sukhdev P. Mathur. He was an IPCC scientist for the first report in 1990.
I support volunteers in over 100 ridings in Canada and over 50 countries around the world in their noble efforts to bring evidence-based climate solutions to their governments and fellow citizens.
Caterina is one of them.
Please go ahead, Caterina.
Retired Actuary, Citizens' Climate Lobby
Hi, I'm Caterina Lindman and I'm—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Excuse me, Ms. Lindman. I hate to interrupt.
With this hybrid format, we have to ensure that the sound quality is appropriate for the interpreters so as not to damage their hearing.
Unfortunately, I'm told that, maybe for connection reasons, they won't be able to interpret your remarks. I'm sure you've submitted them in writing, but that won't take away from the entire time the Citizens' Climate Lobby has.
I'm sorry about that, Ms. Lindman. It's just a health and safety issue. We tried to resolve the matter, but we couldn't technically do that.
Ms. Orlando, would you like to continue?
National Director, Citizens' Climate Lobby
Yes, I will.
Caterina is a retired actuary. She has been concerned about climate change for about 30 years.
As an actuary, she joined actuarial committees studying climate change and sustainability. She chaired the committee that created the Actuaries Climate Index in about 2013. The Actuaries Climate Index measures the frequency of climate extremes and shows that these extremes are increasing at an unprecedented rate. She did whatever she could to lower her household emissions, and she wanted to help Canada enact effective climate policies. Thus, she joined Citizens' Climate Lobby in 2013.
Citizens' Climate Lobby is a non-partisan advocacy organization dedicated to promoting effective climate policies. We began in 2010 in Canada.
We have two stories here about precipitation and drought.
In the winter of 2018-19 in Sudbury, Ontario, I experienced record precipitation. Ice built up on the roof of my house. Professionals could not remove it. On the first warm day in spring, in late March 2019, the ice on the front of the roof melted faster than at the back of the house. The roof collapsed internally. Walls pulled away from each other. My house was condemned and we were forced to evacuate. We lived in a hotel for over six months. The entire upper floor had to be reinforced and the roof replaced. We had special insurance and all our costs were covered. Three other houses on our street experienced similar internal structural failures, but not nearly as catastrophic. They are facing huge bills to fix their roofs and houses. I live on a street with just 16 houses.
Last summer, Caterina's son, who lives in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, had to evacuate for three weeks due to forest fires, which were generally unheard of that far north. Since there is only one road out of Yellowknife, he had to drive towards the fire to get south and away from it.
A large contributing factor to the forest fires was climate-related drought. Droughts not only impact farmers and crops; they contribute to forest fires as well. Right now, Canada is experiencing widespread drought ahead of a wildfire season after experiencing a devastating one last year.
Here are some numbers. In Canada in 2023, the insured losses were $3.1 billion. Both economic and insured losses, with the fingerprints of climate change all over them, have increased dramatically over 20 years. Worldwide economic losses of $380 billion U.S. are three times more than the amount of insured losses of $118 billion U.S. In Canada, the economic losses were much more than $3 billion. They were perhaps around $9 billion, if we were to extrapolate.
We have submitted a much longer version of this presentation.
Lastly, we appreciate that Canada is developing a national strategy for drought and flood forecasting.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you very much. We have your written submission as well, so the analysts will be able to pore over that.
We'll go now to Mr. Sandford, who has been with us before during this study. He is the senior government relations liaison for global climate emergency response at the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
Go ahead, Mr. Sandford. You have five minutes.
Robert Sandford Senior Government Relations Liaison, Global Climate Emergency Response, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health
Please allow me to begin by extending the very best wishes of the United Nations to all.
I would like, in the time that I have, to put the question of whether Canada needs a national flood and drought prediction strategy into a global context.
On the global scale, because we waited so long to act on the threat, climate heating has gotten away from us. What scientists and governments must do now is chase after it with the hope of catching up and getting ahead of it.
Our current global situation takes us beyond the first stage of climate change impacts, that of more frequent and intense extreme weather events and changes in global precipitation patterns, to the second stage of climate impacts, which impact national security, increase intra- and interstate conflicts, and creates the spectre of an explosion in involuntary human migration that is already resulting in a rapid rise in climate refugees, for which the world is unprepared. Welcome to the future.
If humanity fails to rein in emissions quickly and tightly enough, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that one half to three quarters of the human population could routinely be exposed to life-threatening heat and humidity.
Food production systems will be severely undermined. Increased heat, stress, drought, soil degradation, destruction of crops by disease and insects, and extreme events could render about one-third of currently suitable cropland unsuitable for farming by 2100. Multiple bread basket crop failures, spanning several world regions at once, would become routine. The number of people at high risk of hunger, malnutrition, and diet-related mortality would grow by as much as 80 million. That would be famine writ large.
By later this century, it is projected that as many as 3.5 billion people could be compelled to migrate out of their region, nation, or continent by flooding, storms, fires, extreme heat and humidity.
You will remember that Europe nearly came apart when it was overwhelmed by refugees from the Syrian civil war. We are already having trouble in Canada aligning immigration policy with our own domestic housing and expanded infrastructure deficits. We now see that we have our own climate refugees. By some estimates, as many as 200,000 Canadians were evacuated or displaced by wildfires or floods in 2023 alone, some permanently. We are already beginning to see what scientists predicted some time ago.
If we do not act immediately on the climate threat, we might find ourselves in a situation where we cannot keep up with the frequency of climate-related disasters. As these events multiply, we will not be able to recover from one before the arrival of the next. Look at the heat wave, wildfires, and floods in 2021 and again in 2023 in British Columbia, and the heat wave, permafrost thaw, hydrological drought, and recurring wildfire evacuations in the Northwest Territories in 2023. These kinds of compound events are already occurring in the same places here with little or no relief in between. As we have seen elsewhere, recurring climate disasters of this frequency can bankrupt whole nations, and they are going to keep happening.
As already noted, what is also being missed is the mental health impacts of recurring disasters. Psychologists predict that if we don’t get ahead of the climate threat, the mental health effects of global climate breakdown will outweigh the direct physical effects on us by a factor of perhaps 40:1. Again, for this, we are unprepared.
In closing, I repeat that we are in the midst of a national climate emergency. Canada, in my view, needs a national flood, drought, and wildfire prediction strategy. Without a strategy of this kind, a great many people could needlessly die or be displaced and unnecessarily traumatized, and parts of the country would be impoverished.
One would think that governments that ignore this pending reality would do so at their own peril.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you, Mr. Sanford.
To conclude the testimony, we have Laura Reinsborough and Larissa Holman, from Ottawa Riverkeeper.
Go ahead, Ms. Reinsborough.
Laura Reinsborough Riverkeeper and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Riverkeeper
Thank you so much for having us here today.
Mr. Sandford painted a global picture, and I'll bring you very local now to the Ottawa River watershed. Here we are. Whenever your service brings you to the national capital region, you are directly depending on the Ottawa River and its tributaries for your survival. It's our drinking water today as well, so cheers!
I'll be presenting along with my colleague, Larissa Holman, director of science and policy. You recently met her, as she presented at the freshwater study as well.
We were just invited a few days ago to present, and the timing is impeccable. We have prepared a flow-changes report on the Ottawa River watershed using federal data that has existed for years but has never before been analyzed through a watershed lens. So, to truly look at the data for what is happening in the Ottawa River watershed.... The results are eye-opening.
This Ottawa River watershed is vast, with a surface area of more than twice that of the province of New Brunswick. It provides drinking water for you and two million people. The flow of the Ottawa River can be so great that it can exceed that of all of the Great Lakes combined. It has been given the moniker “the sixth great lake” as a result.
We have a mighty river flowing through our nation's capital.
I'll speak about our experiences with the floods of 2017 and 2019 that have informed our comments today. It is also important to note that this mighty river is also affected by drought, so we need to take into consideration that even our mightiest of rivers are impacted by both floods and droughts.
Just two weeks from now we'll be releasing our first watershed report card, and we've analyzed 14 different indicators. Changes in flow is one of them, as I mentioned. Despite the availability of flow data through the water survey of Canada, our watershed report card is the first report that has conducted analysis on the data trends for both flooding and periods of low flow at a watershed scale. The jurisdictions within this watershed are very complex. The river itself becomes a border between Ontario and Quebec.
When the Ottawa River experienced extensive flooding in both 2017 and 2019—many of you will remember that—it caused extensive damage to infrastructure, property and people's homes. Both the Ontario and Quebec governments attempted to address the flooding in different ways, thereby working separately to confront an issue that cannot be solved one side of the river at a time. We see a need in this context, like with many other watersheds, where political jurisdictions need to be coordinated in order to ensure that the response is effective. This applies to predictions and forecasting as well.
We looked specifically at Bill C-317 and have a few recommendations to put forward.
Larissa Holman Director, Science and Policy, Ottawa Riverkeeper
Specifically, with regard to subclause 3(3), we'd like to make the following recommendations.
Ottawa Riverkeeper recommends that, in paragraph 3(3)(a), when considering “the application of novel technologies in forecasting floods and droughts”, it is critical to consider the impact on aquatic ecosystems and how to ensure that riverine environments are not adversely affected. An example of this is that, during the summer, there are recreational levels held back behind some dams and in head ponds. Below those dams, we see examples of low-water events that persist for extended periods of time. This has a very strong impact on ecological health and an impact on ecosystems as a whole.
Riverkeeper and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Riverkeeper
I'll look at paragraph 3(3)(b). We recommend that you consider how expertise developed in regions can be shared to ensure that all watersheds are able to build the capacity to undertake activities at a local or regional level. This echoes some of what Ms. McFadyen was speaking about, that there is local knowledge and local context that can add value and confirm results from predictions made on a larger scale.
Here in Ontario, conservation authorities in the southern part of the Ottawa River watershed have developed excellent flood-mapping capabilities, as well as flood and drought forecasting—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I'm sorry to have to cut you off, but we're at five minutes. However, we have it in writing.
We'll try to do one round of questions. We're running a bit late.
We'll start with Mr. Deltell for six minutes.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Congratulations to those participating by videoconference for their testimony.
Ladies from Ottawa Riverkeeper, welcome to our home, which is also your home. I'd like to talk to you about what happened in 2017 and 2019. Most of us were MPs at the time and therefore remember it very clearly. I crossed the river every day, since my apartment was in Gatineau. All of us were affected by that.
What did those experiences teach you about relations between the two provinces, since, as you said, the Ottawa River is a shared jurisdiction between the two? What could be done now that would easily fit into the bill we're studying?
Riverkeeper and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Riverkeeper
Thank you, Mr. Deltell.
I will use that to continue my point on this.
What we see is that in Ontario, conservation authorities have excellent flood mapping. However, they are not comprehensive for covering all of the province of Ontario, so similar work can be recreated in the areas where there are not conservation authorities.
On the Quebec side of the Ottawa River watershed, there have been errors made in the forecasting, and that has had impacts on a number of property owners in particular. The data that is made available and the analysis done for flood mapping need to be confirmed with local knowledge and local context in order to ensure that there is accuracy, because there are considerable implications when errors are made.
Director, Science and Policy, Ottawa Riverkeeper
If I could just jump in as well, another piece there is that after the 2019 floods, the Ontario government did a report on the flooding in both the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence River and found that there were a number of different reasons why there were such enormous floods in that time. It had a lot to do with the snowpack and the rain events.
However, one of the things that could be greatly improved upon was communication between the two rivers, and that was something that was highlighted for the Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board. It's been moving forward and improving its communications, but there is always room for improvement in how this data gets down to municipalities and people at the local level.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
When you talk about communication, is that communication between two provinces or municipalities, or from the jurisdictions to the people?
Director, Science and Policy, Ottawa Riverkeeper
I mean both. Both of them can be improved greatly.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
With the experiences of 2017 and 2019, have we seen progress, or has nothing changed since then?
Director, Science and Policy, Ottawa Riverkeeper
There have been a lot of improvements from the Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board in the communications it's putting forward. There was another heavy flow event in 2023, and there was much improved communication at that time.
I think there has also been an awareness that's risen for the municipalities of their responsibilities to let residents know what is happening. This is because many people were caught off guard in 2017, and then the duration of the 2019 floods was just so extensive that there clearly needed to be more support provided at the local level.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
We're talking a lot about the local level and talking about provinces. What can the federal government do?
Riverkeeper and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Riverkeeper
What can...?