Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a presentation, and I am really speaking to the brief we've submitted.
The Canadian Climate Forum is a non-governmental organization dedicated to accelerating the uptake and use of knowledge about Canada's weather and climate systems as they are now and as they will be in the future. This is for the benefit of our economic and social societies and structures, and also, as I said, for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, because the climate, our weather, will affect them now and through the course of their lives. We've seen in very recent events the impact, for example, of Hurricane Sandy just three weeks ago on people, children, and the elderly in the United States. These kinds of events have huge economic and social implications—$50 billion is the estimate so far for Hurricane Sandy.
We've had those kinds of events in Canada. The Canadian insurance corporations collectively note that in 2011 they spent $1.7 billion in payouts to compensate people for climate-related disasters involving wind, rain, and water. In the early part of this past decade, the cost of the droughts on the Canadian prairies to the grain growers and other parts of our agriculture community was in excess of $5 billion. The Montreal ice storm cost us over $5 billion when it happened.
We need to know about these events, how they are happening, how they are changing in the future, and in that way be able to provide more information for Canadians and more information for the economic parts of Canada's economy. The estimate is that the Canadian weather-dependent industries exceed, on an annual basis, over $100 billion a year in activities. When you think of Canada as a natural resource-based economy, we are really based on our weather and climate.
I've spent all of my professional life studying weather and climate, and I know how the trees, the nature conservancies, and those kinds of things depend on where the climate is and how it is, and how the weather affects them.
Smog is another issue. The Canadian Medical Association has estimated literally billions of dollars—the last numbers I saw—huge amounts...a $250 billion cost by 2030, in terms of the smog effects on the health of Canadians, including our veterans, who have gone through a long part of their life. It will affect mostly the elderly and the young.
So we need to know about these kinds of things. Research has told us generally what to expect. It can provide us with better information in the future. We just need to continue to support that kind of information.
There was a question earlier from one of the distinguished members of this committee about carbon emissions from forests. The Canadian Carbon Program, previously supported by research funds, actually provided those numbers, and if I'd known that was going to be a question, I would have given you the answer, but I can't off the top of my head. But we know through research pretty well how much does come in and out of our natural forest ecosystems in Canada.
As I said, we need to have a continued involvement in this issue. As a recommendation from the Canadian Climate Forum, I will call for a policy focus on the potential impacts of weather, our day-to-day stuff and how it is changing, which is what we call climate, as developed within key sectors: the economic development of the Arctic, for example; the energy sector—the need to adapt to weather and climate to reduce these impacts. There are benefits of a changing climate. The agricultural community, for example, needs to know what crop is going to grow next year. By knowing that, we can advise them.
I've worked with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture through many meetings over the last decade, working with them on how we can better pick the crops that will grow most effectively 10 years from now as opposed to 10 years ago. So we need that solid and sustained investment in new knowledge, key facilities, and knowledge workers, training the population through the Council of Ontario Universities, which was here before, but also the universities from coast to coast to coast in Canada, including the high Arctic.
We need to be able to use this information in ways that are effective, and in that way information networks will be very important.
In recognition of the Canadian scientific brainpower as an asset and a commodity, and its importance, we should be working to foster partnerships, skills development, competitiveness, and international partnerships. The Canadian Climate Forum would be happy to assist and play a role in these kinds of activities.
Thank you.