The federal government has voiced its approval for the report recently issued by the expert panel of the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), which has called for Canada to “proactively prepare” for climate change-related disasters instead of merely responding to them.
CCA’s report noted that Canada has become increasingly susceptible to severe weather, due to climate change making such weather more frequent and extreme. The report concluded that to better mitigate the impact of these weather events, a combination of disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation practices is crucial to reducing disaster exposure and vulnerability.
That report also highlighted that most governments continue to underinvest in risk reduction, and that much work needs to be done when it comes to sharing climate data with policymakers and the public to allow them to better understand the risks of weather events.
Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair and Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault have issued a statement in response to CCA’s report, and thanked the expert panel for their assessment of Canada’s disaster resilience.
“We welcome and support the core findings of the Council's report, including that climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction need to be better integrated,” the official statement said. “The Government of Canada is committing to stronger knowledge sharing and collaboration practices, and greater collaboration between our organizations - including in the fields of climate change and emergency management.”
Both Blair and Guilbeault have also indicated that they are ensuring that Canadians “have access the information they need to make informed decisions, and to reduce their disaster risk.”
In their statement, the officials also outlined that the federal government is “already engaged in the process of improving [its] collaboration and integration” across its various departments, adding that it is currently pursuing several climate change resiliency measures. These measures include engaging with provincial, territorial and municipal governments, Indigenous Peoples, the emergency management community, and other key partners and stakeholders to develop Canada's first-ever National Adaptation Strategy; developing a National Risk profile; advancing flood hazard mapping in high-risk areas; and providing funding for infrastructure projects through the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.
“This work is interconnected, and as we begin to finalize the National Adaptation Strategy and implement key components of the Emergency Management Strategy, we remain committed to transparency and to making the data that informs our strategic direction available to everyone,” the officials said in their statement. “We will continue to help Canadians whose jobs and lives are affected when disasters strike, help communities deal with the realities of increased climate-related risks and disasters, and ultimately, increase our resiliency to the impacts of climate change.”
