Please allow me to begin by extending the very best wishes of the United Nations to all.

I would like, in the time that I have, to put the question of whether Canada needs a national flood and drought prediction strategy into a global context.

On the global scale, because we waited so long to act on the threat, climate heating has gotten away from us. What scientists and governments must do now is chase after it with the hope of catching up and getting ahead of it.

Our current global situation takes us beyond the first stage of climate change impacts, that of more frequent and intense extreme weather events and changes in global precipitation patterns, to the second stage of climate impacts, which impact national security, increase intra- and interstate conflicts, and creates the spectre of an explosion in involuntary human migration that is already resulting in a rapid rise in climate refugees, for which the world is unprepared. Welcome to the future.

If humanity fails to rein in emissions quickly and tightly enough, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that one half to three quarters of the human population could routinely be exposed to life-threatening heat and humidity.

Food production systems will be severely undermined. Increased heat, stress, drought, soil degradation, destruction of crops by disease and insects, and extreme events could render about one-third of currently suitable cropland unsuitable for farming by 2100. Multiple bread basket crop failures, spanning several world regions at once, would become routine. The number of people at high risk of hunger, malnutrition, and diet-related mortality would grow by as much as 80 million. That would be famine writ large.

By later this century, it is projected that as many as 3.5 billion people could be compelled to migrate out of their region, nation, or continent by flooding, storms, fires, extreme heat and humidity.

You will remember that Europe nearly came apart when it was overwhelmed by refugees from the Syrian civil war. We are already having trouble in Canada aligning immigration policy with our own domestic housing and expanded infrastructure deficits. We now see that we have our own climate refugees. By some estimates, as many as 200,000 Canadians were evacuated or displaced by wildfires or floods in 2023 alone, some permanently. We are already beginning to see what scientists predicted some time ago.

If we do not act immediately on the climate threat, we might find ourselves in a situation where we cannot keep up with the frequency of climate-related disasters. As these events multiply, we will not be able to recover from one before the arrival of the next. Look at the heat wave, wildfires, and floods in 2021 and again in 2023 in British Columbia, and the heat wave, permafrost thaw, hydrological drought, and recurring wildfire evacuations in the Northwest Territories in 2023. These kinds of compound events are already occurring in the same places here with little or no relief in between. As we have seen elsewhere, recurring climate disasters of this frequency can bankrupt whole nations, and they are going to keep happening.

As already noted, what is also being missed is the mental health impacts of recurring disasters. Psychologists predict that if we don’t get ahead of the climate threat, the mental health effects of global climate breakdown will outweigh the direct physical effects on us by a factor of perhaps 40:1. Again, for this, we are unprepared.

In closing, I repeat that we are in the midst of a national climate emergency. Canada, in my view, needs a national flood, drought, and wildfire prediction strategy. Without a strategy of this kind, a great many people could needlessly die or be displaced and unnecessarily traumatized, and parts of the country would be impoverished.

One would think that governments that ignore this pending reality would do so at their own peril.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

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