Climate change in Canada

Remote communities including all of Nunavut and much of the Northwest Territories produce most of their electricity from diesel generators, at high economic and environmental cost.

[18] Canada is a large country with a low population density, so transportation – often in cold weather when fuel efficiency drops – is a big part of the economy.

While the previous sentence might be technically correct in part, all seasons show increased precipitation in Canada, especially in the Winter, Spring, and Fall months.

A "general lack of a detectable trend signal", meaning no overall change in extreme, short-duration rainfall patterns was observed in the single station analysis.

[31] The extreme weather events of greatest concern in Canada include heavy rain and snow falls, heat waves, and drought.

They are linked to flooding and landslides, water shortages, forest fires, reduced air quality, as well as costs related to damage to property and infrastructure, business disruptions, and increased illness and mortality.

According to an 2015 study, the number of fire spread days in Canada, as a result of climate change, would increase by 35-400% by 2050, with coastal and temperate forests being most affected areas in terms of proportion.

[32] Coastal flooding is expected to increase in many areas of Canada due to global sea-level rise and local land subsidence or uplift.

[44] In 2016, Northern Alberta witnessed the effects of climate change in a dramatic manner when a "perfect storm" of El Niño and global warming contributed to the Fort McMurray wildfire, which led to the evacuation of the oil-producing town at the heart of the tar sands industry.

[69] As of September 2024[update], eight of Canada's 10 costliest natural disasters have occurred since 2013, though this does not account for the 2024 floods in Toronto and Montreal, nor a massive hailstorm in Calgary.

[72] In 2009, Canada's two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec, became wary of federal policies shifting the burden of greenhouse reductions on them in order to give Alberta and Saskatchewan more room to further develop their oil sands reserves.

[73] In 2010 Graham Saul, who represented the Climate Action Network Canada (CAN) – a coalition of 60 non-governmental organisations – commented on the 40-page CAN report "Troubling Evidence"[74] which claimed that,[75] Canada's climate researchers are being muzzled, their funding slashed, research stations closed, findings ignored and advice on the critical issue of the century unsought by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government.In 2011 the Kyoto Accord was abandoned.

By 2014 award-winning American/Canadian limnologist, David Schindler, argued that Harper's administration had put "economic development ahead of all other policy objectives", in particular the environment.

They want politics to reflect economics 100 per cent – economics being only what you can sell, not what you can save.In its 2015 election platform, Justin Trudeau promised to tackle climate change, notably by phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, attending the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, developing a North American clean energy and environmental agreement with the United States and Mexico, and creating a $2 Billion Low Carbon Economy Trust.

The federal minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, Catherine McKenna states that carbon taxes has been shown to be the most economical way of reducing emissions.

[81] In April 2019, Environment commissioner Julie Gelfand described the country's lack of progress in reducing emissions as "disturbing" and noted that it was on track to miss its climate change targets.

[82] The report states that coastal flooding is expected to increase in many areas due to global sea-level rise and local land subsidence or uplift.

Following on a motion by prime minister Justin Trudeau, on June 12, 2019, the House of Commons voted to declare a national climate emergency.

[86] In December 2020 the government of Justin Trudeau introduced a bill that will require the country to reach zero emission by 2050 (Climate Change Action Plan 2001).

Although Canada committed itself to a 6% reduction below the 1990 levels for the 2008–2012 as a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the country did not implement a plan to reduce greenhouse gasses emissions.

It requires "large final emitters", defined as facilities emitting more than 100,000 t CO2eq per year, to comply with an emission intensity reduction which increases over time and caps at 12% in 2015, 15% in 2016 and 20% in 2017.

Benefits of an intensity-based system include the fact that during economic recessions, the carbon intensity reduction will remain equally as stringent and challenging, while hard caps tend to become easily met, irrelevant and do not work to reduce emissions.

In January 2013, a discussion paper was posted on the Environmental Registry seeking input on the development of a greenhouse gas emissions reduction program for industry.

[127][128][129] Other criticisms levelled by Mike Schreiner of the Green Party of Ontario include cuts to the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks as well as making unspecified changes to the Endangered Species Act.

[136] On November 23, 2009, the Quebec government pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below the 1990 base year level by 2020, a goal similar to that adopted by the European Union.

[145] In a 2021 survey, Nanos Research found that 30% of Canadians reported that climate change was their top worry, 2nd place behind inflation (36%) and ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic (29%).

[146] Canadians think the threat posed by climate change is higher than their United States counterparts do, but slightly below the median opinion of other nations included in a Pew Research Center survey in 2018.

[148] Rates of acceptance (belief) for ongoing climate change are highest in British Columbia and Quebec, and lowest in the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

[153] During the Harper government (2006-2015), Canadian media, mostly notably the CBC, made little effort to balance the claims of global warming deniers with voices from science.

[154] Within various provincial and language media outlets, there are varying levels of articulation regarding scientific consensus and the focus on ecological dimensions of climate change.