Madam Speaker, it is my honour today to speak to the private member's bill, Bill C-241, an act to establish a national strategy respecting flood and drought forecasting, put forward by the MP for Terrebonne.
As always, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the people of La Prairie—Atateken.
Bill C-241 proposes the development of a national strategy to ensure that partners and stakeholders have access to the information they need to forecast floods and droughts.
Canadians are on the front lines of climate change. They are increasingly experiencing its devastating impacts in the form of extreme weather events such as heat waves, drought, wildfires, heavy rainfall, floods and powerful storms from coast to coast to coast. Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in Canada. In the past decade, floods cost nearly $800 million per year on average in insured losses. Similarly, droughts affect the economic viability of water-dependent sectors such as agriculture and lead to increased risk of destructive, costly wildfires.
Across Canada, 2025 was a significant drought year, with dry conditions deepening and spreading across much of the country. The lack of rainfall and the intense heat helped drive one of Canada's worst wildfire seasons on record, especially in the Prairies and British Columbia. In Manitoba and other provinces, farmers faced parched fields and stressed crops, as prolonged dryness threatened yields and strained water supplies. As the bill states, damages caused by flood and drought have risen in Canada and are expected to rise further due to extreme weather and water events related to climate change.
Access to comprehensive, high-quality data and information is essential to support water quantity forecasting, particularly as more and more Canadians are exposed to extreme weather and water events. A national strategy on drought and flood forecasting would ensure that Canadians can better respond to severe weather events and reduce the impact of climate change by accessing information required to make, in some cases, life-saving decisions.
The Government of Canada is already carrying out key activities in relation to flood and drought forecasting. For example, National Hydrological Services, under Environment and Climate Change's Meteorological Service of Canada, is the federal authority responsible for the collection, interpretation and dissemination of standardized water quantity data and information in Canada. The service administers a national hydrometric program by way of a collaborative cost-sharing partnership with provinces and territories.
Through this partnership, National Hydrological Services operates 2,300 water quantity monitoring stations on lakes and rivers across Canada. This represents 77% of the national program, with the remainder being operated by provincial and territorial partners. The data provided by this network of monitoring stations is made publicly available on the web in near real time. This provides an integrated view of surface water in Canada to all governments, as well as the academic and scientific communities, industry and the Canadian public, to support flood and drought forecasting, water management and emergency response across the country.
These hydrometric data, along with weather and other environmental data and analysis products generated using Environment and Climate Change weather and environmental modelling and high-performance computing systems, are essential to provincial and territorial forecasting programs. The data are also used to feed hydrologic prediction models that generate water quantity information and flow predictions products. These are shared with provincial and territorial governments to support them in their responsibilities related to hydrologic forecasting, transboundary water-sharing agreements and water regulation planning.
In budget 2025, the government proposes to invest $2.7 billion over nine years to modernize the Meteorological Service of Canada's high-performance computing capacity. This system runs the model required to produce accurate weather forecasts, alerts, warnings and climate projections, as well as the Meteorological Service's environmental data reanalyses and hydrologic prediction models.
Timely and accurate weather prediction is essential to key sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, transport and marine shipping, and helps Canadians make decisions to protect against adverse impacts of extreme weather, such as flooding. While flood forecasting and warnings are the responsibility of provinces and territories, Environment and Climate Change Canada works daily with provinces and territories to provide integrated briefings on weather-related conditions that may cause a threat to Canadians. Moreover, federal government departments and agencies work together in delivering critical services to Canadians in relation to flood and drought forecasting.
For example, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the department responsible for drought monitoring, uses Environment and Climate Change Canada's weather forecasts to issue drought forecasts. Natural Resources Canada leads flood mapping efforts to provide Canadians with critical information about their flood risks. The department also produces critical geospatial data used to urgently create maps and other near real-time data that are shared with Public Safety Canada and responders during ice jams or floods. Public Safety Canada plays a central role in coordinating the flood management efforts of federal departments and agencies during emergencies.
Despite all of the federal programs and initiatives, we know that flood and drought forecasting could be better coordinated across the country. An effective national strategy would build on programs that work well, such as those at Environment and Climate Change Canada. It would also identify ways to address existing gaps. We are already aware of some of them. These gaps include the lack of public awareness of flood risk data, the lack of information to identify and mitigate flood risks, and the potential lack of intergovernmental coordination on flood and drought forecasting.
Within five years of the strategy being tabled, the minister responsible must table a report on the strategy's effectiveness. This work will be done in collaboration with other relevant departments and in consultation with the provinces, municipalities, indigenous governing bodies, experts and stakeholders.
The global climate is changing and will continue to change, and Canada will be no exception. Extreme weather events will continue to occur, resulting in growing costs for our society. The need for a national strategy for flood and drought forecasting has never been greater.
That is why I am proud to say that the government supports Bill C-241. Although we support the bill, some provisions will need to be amended. We will encourage the committee to carefully review the provisions of the bill to ensure that the strategy does not duplicate measures that are already in place and to make the bill more effective in achieving its objectives. Nevertheless, I am very pleased to announce that the government will support Bill C-241.