Good afternoon.

First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address the committee. This work is very important, so thank you for the work you do on this.

I'm going to cover three points. They largely draw on some of the actions in this report, which is the advice from the resilient natural and built infrastructure committee, which supported the national adaptation strategy and which I was lucky enough to sit on.

The development of Canada’s national adaptation strategy, and the allocation of additional funding to adaptation, is a very positive step forward. However, climate adaptation is often framed as an environmental issue. The department that is taking forward the national adaptation strategy is Environment and Climate Change Canada. In reality, the impacts of climate change are largely financial and health-related. For example, considering catastrophic insured losses, we have reached a situation where we have $2 billion in insured losses in a normal year, and that's just what's insured. What is not insured is estimated to be three to fours times that amount.

In terms of health, 619 people lost their lives in the western heat dome in 2021, lives that could have been saved through adaptation, not to mention the mental health and growing anxiety that people feel about climate change. As we speak, Nova Scotia is burning. Our health is literally on fire.

It is time that climate adaptation was seen for what it really is—our key financial and health challenge.

When we look at government departments mandated to deliver action on climate adaptation, the urgency to act is not apparent. In total, 15 departments have mandated actions, with no coordination or accountability in a centralized manner. It is notable that the Department of Finance does not have any explicit actions related to climate adaptation beyond financial disclosures.

What has resulted is a severe lack of investment in adaptation on the ground. The “National Risk Profile” report recently confirmed that Canada is not prepared for floods or wildfires to come, let alone extreme heat.

This adaptation funding gap was underlined in a recent op-ed in The Globe and Mail by Charles Brindamour, the CEO of Intact Financial Corporation, and Blair Feltmate of the Intact Centre. The United States is out-investing Canada in adaptation by some three to four times per capita. With a return on investment of three to eight dollars, just including avoided damages, the economic advantages to the U.S. are clear. The op-ed calls for an additional $10 billion to the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, and $1 billion to the greener homes initiative to help Canada catch up.

The good news is that we can achieve multiple objectives through adaptation, making life better and safer. The federal government has already established green infrastructure programs to accelerate emissions reduction, and we can use these same mechanisms to serve dual duty to adapt infrastructure. For example, regarding residential buildings, the greener homes initiative could readily be expanded to include resilience. Indeed, there are several win-win measures. For example, upgrading insulation, airtightness and glazing can really help with energy efficiency, but this also helps with extreme heat resilience.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank can play a similar role. It already has a green infrastructure program, which looks at investing in energy efficiency upgrades for public buildings. This program could also be expanded to include flood, wildfire and heat resilience measures, as well as investing in natural infrastructure. It just makes no sense to separate different shades of green. Climate adaptation, mitigation and nature-positive solutions should all be dealt with in tandem.

This brings me to my third point, which is mainstreaming natural infrastructure solutions in Canada.

How we define infrastructure in Canada has already changed, with leadership being shown by the federal government on both the national and international scale. The national adaptation strategy and the forthcoming national infrastructure assessment will both address natural infrastructure. Statistics Canada is also preparing national natural capital accounts, formally recognizing the financial value of services provided to people by nature.

The Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework further highlights the need to restore and enhance contributions delivered by natural infrastructure like flood protection, heat control, carbon storage, and much more. We now need to take natural infrastructure solutions from novel to normal.

Key actions to achieve this include reviewing every new infrastructure project through a climate and nature-positive lens; making natural infrastructure the default solution, including for adaptation, with hybrid or grey infrastructure solutions being used when required; funding mainstreaming of natural asset valuations and management by local governments in Canada according to the guidance of the report entitled “Getting Nature on the Balance Sheet”; and agreeing with the provinces on strategic actions through adaptation and infrastructure planning at the watershed scale and at the regional coastal scale.

Nature is our frontline ally to tackle climate change. A shift from grey to green will help make our dollars multi-task, achieving climate adaptation, climate mitigation and nature-positive solutions.

Thank you very much.

Transcript

Discussions (0)