Canada Releases National Issues Report on Climate Change Adaptation
A Brief Foreword by Niagara At Large reporter and publisher Doug Draper
Posted June 29th, 2021 on Niagara At Large
Maybe you heard that this past Monday, June 27, the community of Lytton in British Columbia suffered the highest temperatures ever recorded in Canadian history.
That record was set at scorching 47.9 degrees Celsius or 118 degrees Fahrenheit, if you will. Do you want to risk a heat stroke through that?
The hellish heat wave now frying communities across western Canada and the United States is literally threatening people’s lives, placing an enormous and very costly strain on energy services and other infrastructure, and raising their risks of even more devastating wildfires.
Regions of the mid-western United States and Canada are also now experiencing severe droughts that could ravage crop-growing lands and drive up costs at the grocery store even further for all of us at a time when many are struggling to recover economically from more than 14 months of pandemic.
In the last decade or so in Niagara, Ontario we have had what were considered once-in-a-hundred year wind storms, ice storms and floods that now, every more frequently, do untold damage to property and to shorelines. No wonder the cost of our property insurance has jumped so high.
Notice how more conservative politicians and member of the business community are never ready to point the gargantuan costs these climate change assaults on our communities and pocket books as they continue trying to fill us full of B.S. that plans for cutting climate-ravaging carbon emissions will cost too much.
Indeed, , we continue to have far too many individuals in business and in federal, provincial and municipal office who make decisions as if they haven’t a clue about the relationship between all of this costly carnage and the way we either work or fail to work to protect our natural environment.
Niagara Falls, Ontario Mayor Jim Diodati, more interested in pushing through a development plan in Thundering Waters Forest than he is in saving that area’s provincially significant wetlands in the Niagara River watershed. This is one of the municipal politicians in Niagara who needs to be fired by voters in the 2022 municipal elections.
We have municipal politicians right here in Niagara who would rather open doors for more developers to plowing through woodlands, wetlands and watershed than to support a new Official Plan, now being debated at the regional government level, that embraces the strongest measures possible (Option 3C in that plan) for protecting and preserving what is left of our natural heritage for present and future generations.
In the 16 months leading up to the next municipal elections, Niagara At Large will be joining other individuals and groups in identifying those politicians who are out of step with the challenges we face in the 21st century and recommending that they be fired from office on election day.
Any municipal politician in Niagara not in favour of Option 3C – the higher level of rules for protecting our natural environment that must be included in a new Official Plan for our Region – needs to go.
They should have no further place to do the bidding of their development industry cronies in our children’s future.
In the meantime, please read the following important report from Natural Resources Canada.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
Now Here is A Report from From: Natural Resources Canada
Communities across the country are experiencing the impacts of climate change, from extreme events such as wildfires, flooding and heat waves to rising sea levels, melting ice and permafrost, highlighting the need for adaptation action to reduce costs and build resilience.
The Honourable Seamus O’Regan Jr., Minister of Natural Resources, and the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, announced the release (this June 28th) of Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues Report, a national perspective on how climate change is impacting our environment, economy and many aspects of our daily lives — and how we are adapting to these impacts.
The report provides Canadians with a comprehensive synthesis of knowledge of climate change impacts, as well as examples of adaptation efforts underway to address them, and provides a foundation to inform decision-making and measures as we develop Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy.
Key findings show that Canadian communities of all sizes are experiencing the impacts of climate change on their infrastructure, health, culture and economies, threatening Canada’s ecosystems and the vital services they provide, including access to freshwater. As these impacts will persist and intensify over time, urgent action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase resilience to climate change through adaptation.
The report is part of Canada in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action, a collaborative national assessment process led by Natural Resources Canada, which forms the foundation for the ambitious action we need to take as we develop Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy.
In developing this report, Natural Resources Canada engaged experts from academic, government and non‑governmental organizations as authors to assess and synthesize knowledge from peer‑reviewed literature, government reports and Indigenous knowledge.
Alongside the report, Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Canadian Centre for Climate Services also launched the Map of Adaptation Actions, an interactive, online searchable map of climate change adaptation case studies from Canada, to increase access to useful information and resources supporting adaptation action.
Increasing climate action and the resilience of communities to the impacts of climate change is a top priority for the government. Canada has put in place a strengthened climate plan, A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy, with 64 key measures to exceed our climate targets. Natural Resources Canada, together with Environment and Climate Change Canada, Public Safety Canada and Infrastructure Canada, is developing a National Adaptation Strategy that will be used to help protect Canadians across the country from extreme weather and emerging climate risk.
Through Budget 2021, Canada has invested in resiliency and adaptation efforts across government, including: $1.4 billion over 12 years for the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund; $63.8 million over three years to complete flood maps in high-risk areas; $100.6 million over five years to enhance wildfire preparedness in Canada’s National Parks;, and; $28.7 million over five years to increase mapping of areas in Northern Canada at risk of wildfires.
The government continues to work with provinces, territories, municipalities, Indigenous organizations and communities, and other stakeholders to increase Canada’s resilience to a changing climate.
Quotes
“Climate change is happening now, and the impacts will only intensify. We need to know how to adapt to protect our communities and our economy. The National Issues Report helps us prepare, respond and build a more resilient Canada.”- Seamus O’Regan Jr., Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources
“The National Issues Report is a stark reminder that Canadians are already feeling the effects of climate change through more extreme weather events like wildfires, floods and droughts. The cost of damages from these events is also rising, which is why the Government of Canada is currently developing a National Adaptation Strategy, guided and informed by the best available science. The Strategy is an important part of our plan to make communities cleaner, safer and more resilient for future generations.” – Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change
“Climate change is having profound impacts on communities of all sizes, with floods, forest fires, drought and thawing permafrost becoming more frequent, and these impacts are felt disproportionately. Working with Canadians, using the best available data and guided by best practices in infrastructure adaptation and planning, we can help ensure resiliency in our communities.” – Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Infrastructure and Communities
Associated links
Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues Report
Canadian Centre for Climate Services
Canada in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action
Canada’s Strengthened Climate Plan: Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy
NIAGARA AT LARGE Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Following The Bernie Sanders Quote Below.
Niagara At Large 
Nothing will happen until all the political talk turns to actual action and until CEOs stop putting profit ahead of climate and environment. If we could harness wind energy from all the speeches and promises we’d have a good start.
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Whenever extreme weather hits, greatly elevated electricity consumption creates concerns. Maybe it’s time every structure independently harvested solar energy as an emergency power storage system. There already are fossil-fuel-powered generator systems that engage once the regular electric-grid flow gets cut off, so why not use clean solar energy instead of the very old school and carbon intensive means?
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For all the Regional Politicians that vote for anything other then 3C I hope they realize there will be consequences next year……………………
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There has been discouragingly insufficient political courage and will to properly act upon the cause-and-effect of manmade global warming and climate change. There still prevails a do-little-or-nothing policy among the world’s top leaders, a number of whom remain more or less steered by big fossil fuel interests.
To me, general human existence has for too long been analogous to a cafeteria lineup consisting of diversely societally represented people, all adamantly arguing over which identifiable person should be at the front and, conversely, at the back of the line. Many of them further fight over to whom amongst them should go the last piece of quality pie and how much they should have to pay for it — all the while the interstellar spaceship on which they’re all permanently confined, owned and operated by (besides the wealthiest passengers) the fossil fuel industry, is on fire and toxifying at locations not normally investigated.
‘Liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ (etcetera) are overly preoccupied with criticizing one another for their politics and beliefs thus diverting attention away from the greatest polluters’ moral and ethical corruption, where it should and needs to be sharply focused.
But I still see some hope for spaceship Earth and therefor humankind due to environmentally conscious and active children, especially those who are approaching/reaching voting age. In contrast, the dinosaur electorate who have been voting into high office consecutive mass-pollution promoting or complicit/complacent governments for decades are gradually dying off thus making way for far more healthy-planet-thus-people minded voters.
P.S. I believe it was, ironically, then-president George W. Bush Jr.’s vice-president and big-oil-firm man Dick Cheney who somehow managed, via PR manipulation professionals, to get the more euphemistic terminology “climate change” into mainstream utilization, in place of the rightfully more alarming “global warming”. “Climate change” does (at least to me) sound like a deliberate, concocted euphemism.
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