Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
Greetings to the committee members.
I'm speaking to you from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and noting that, across the country, flood and drought damages have risen dramatically and are expected to rise further as extreme weather and water events due to climate change, coupled with our growing communities and increased economy, are putting us in greater risk. Flood plains are growing, and droughts are intensifying. This is impacting many communities, industries and farms across the country. Even the Maritimes had a severe drought last year.
Our flood and drought forecasting prediction in Canada follows a historical piecemeal approach. There's a federal system developed top-down using a weather forecasting approach that is not widely shared, but some of the provinces have access to it. Each province and territory—13 of them—have developed their own systems, and none of these are interoperable. It's a fragmented approach, which has meant slow uptake of new technology and limited uptake of the more sophisticated federal system. There is a wide desire and need for common modelling frameworks, common approaches and coordinated forecasting systems.
In 2013, the floods in Canmore, Alberta—and I was there—occurred before the provincial forecast occurred, and there was tremendous damage in that community. Later in High River, again, the floods occurred before the prediction of floods. The evacuation was not orderly, and people died.
At that point, I decided that we had to have something change in this country.
Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of these massive flooding and drought events associated with wildfires in the north, with drought across the Prairies, the Maritimes and southern Ontario and Quebec, and with floods that have hit every province and territory every spring. We have come to expect it now, but we need to know where they are.
A federal-provincial co-operative system could better ensure that the limited resources and techniques we have available in Canada can most effectively support operational forecasting and prediction from co-operative, co-developed systems. My recommendation is to move towards a more coherent flood and drought forecasting and prediction framework for Canada.
This can be done by developing a national flood and drought forecasting framework to coordinate local, regional and international efforts and to enable the operationalization of state-of-the-art science and technological advances in water forecasting prediction. This should be co-developed with provinces, territories, universities, communities and first nations to be mindful of local realities and to build credibility and trust.
The national framework will need to articulate accountability and the responsibility of individuals in the flood and drought early warning chain. As well, the national framework should encourage forecasters and decision-makers to have access to a wider variety of Canadian data products while clearly communicating the authoritative forecast and its predictive uncertainty.
A community of practice is needed to facilitate co-operation amongst operational forecasters, government agencies, industry, academia and international experts. Then we will need creative outreach campaigns to build societal resilience to floods and droughts through improved communication and public engagement.
Recently, universities in Canada and federal government agencies designed a coherent approach to flood forecasting that could respect local hydrological realities while ensuring that state-of-the-art flood forecasting science and technology are made available to all decision-makers and stakeholders across the country, but federal leadership is required to implement this approach, convened with the provinces and territories, to create a truly national, co-operative flood water forecasting and prediction system.
I strongly commend Bill C-241 as a timely mechanism for gathering and coordinating our national capabilities for flood and drought forecasting. Possibly, it could be convened under the leadership of the Canada Water Agency in collaboration with Environment Canada and other agencies.
Better water predictions will improve water security, reduce flood damages, make our communities safer, improve crop yields, grow our hydroelectricity revenues and provide for better ecosystem conservation.
We face a future where others are looking at our water.
The Canadian public demands improved warnings of extreme events, and our industry and agriculture are competing in a more data-driven world. We have increasing damages from extreme water events, which can cripple our prosperity and destroy our environment and communities. Using science-informed predictions, we can support the growth of Canada's economy, society and environment. We need to implement a visionary strategy such as is contained in this bill as quickly as possible and support it as fully as possible.
Thank you.
