Canada needs to move quickly on a national adaptation strategy to ensure that the current push to build housing and other infrastructure properly takes into account the changing climate and threats from extreme weather.
That was the key message from parliamentarians and experts who convened at a morning session sponsored by the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation in Ottawa last Tuesday.
Provinces and municipalities are granting permits to build housing on vulnerable flood plains, despite the clear climate risks.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is investing billions of dollars to upgrade the country’s infrastructure, including ports, pipelines, transmission lines and housing. But his government is under-funding efforts to ensure that it is climate-proof and that existing infrastructure and communities are more resilient, experts in climate adaptation say.
“We all know we’re not going to adapt our way out of the climate crisis,” said Senator Mary Coyle, who is co-chair of the Senators for Climate Solutions group. More needs to be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, she added. “But what are we going to do right now with these risks that are upon us? The impact of climate change is not up for debate. Extreme weather is a reality; flooding is the most expensive result of this climate crisis, and fire is closely behind.”
Coyle said all levels of government have to work together and with the private sector to increase investment on resilience. “And we have to ramp those [efforts] up if we want to bend the curve [of rising costs] that we’re looking at here.”
The federal government released an adaptation strategy in 2023 that acknowledged the urgency of action and need for greater spending. But speakers last week said it lacks the funding and leadership necessary to drive action with provinces, municipalities and the private sector.
Communities shoulder the burden
Municipalities are bearing the brunt of the climate impacts and they’re having trouble keeping up with the costs and protecting their citizens, said Carole Saab, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Extreme weather has become “an operational reality,” Saab said, not just something communities have to prepare for. Local and Indigenous governments are managing evacuations, protecting drinking water systems, opening emergency shelters and so on, she said.
The federation represents more than 2,000 municipalities thare are home to90% of Canadians. Dealing with climate impacts is now a major preoccupation regardless of their size or location across the country, Saab said. “Communities certainly understand the risks that are in their faces every day, and they are ready to act. The challenge is the scale and pace of what they’re facing is accelerating faster than existing systems and funding levels were designed to handle.”
The federation is urging Carney to allocate $2 billion annually to build resilience, although Saab acknowledged that’s not nearly enough to meet the need. Communities need long-term funding, willing partners and incentives to encourage investment.
Liberal MP Shannon Miedema is chair of the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, which will release its own report on adaptation soon.
Prior to getting elected last year, the Halifax MP had worked on the city’s climate plan, including adaptation efforts. “When it comes to adaptation, we need all our partners . . . to really be collaborating and working together on how this works,” Miedema said. “The lessons I took away from working at the city is that you don’t get very far if you don’t bring everybody with you.”
Invest now to save later
Between 1984 and 2008, the annual average for insured losses from extreme weather was $300 million to $400 million, according to data shared by Kathryn Bakos, the Intact Centre’s managing director for resilience and finance. From 2009 to 2025, that annual average ballooned to $2.9 billion. The worst single year by far was 2024, with $9.2 billion in insured losses from disasters like the Jasper fire and flooding in Toronto and across southern Ontario and in Quebec.
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Those losses include only insured property. The Intact Centre calculates that for every $1 of insured losses, there are $3 to $4 in uninsured losses to governments, businesses and individuals. The researchers have also begun tracking health impacts on affected people, noting increases in prescriptions, counselling services and lost work time that accompany major flooding or fires in the community.
Spending on resilience pays dividends across the economy, Bakos said. And investing now will avoid more expensive fixes as climate impacts get more severe, as they are widely predicted to do.
Don’t build on floodplains
Intact has a list of cost-effective measures for flood- and fire-proofing that run from simple maintenance around the home to more costly renovations to complex upgrades at the community level. One key recommendation to prevent catastrophic flooding: do not build on current or future river or coastal floodplains. In their rush to build affordable housing, provinces and municipalities are ignoring those risks. It makes no sense to solve one problem while exacerbating another one, Saab said.
Intact Centre head Blair Feltmate said governments, insurers and mortgage providers need to do more to ensure that property owners are aware of the information and the value of resilience. Incentives are needed to encourage people to make the necessary investments. That could include tax breaks and subsidies but also training of real estate brokers and mortgage companies to ensure that adaptation upgrades are included in the value of a home or building.
Feltmate called for a “national home flood and wildfire preparedness campaign” to increase the country’s resilience in the face of rising climate impacts.
Shawn McCarthy is an Ottawa-based writer.
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