The strategy comes with a host of new targets, but no new money, to prepare Canada for the dangers and damages of a warming world.

This article was written by Alex Ballingall and was published in the Toronto Star on June 27, 2023.

KAMLOOPS, B.C.—With record wildfires raging across the country, the federal government is giving itself a host of new goals — but, for now, no new money — to prepare for the dangers and damages of the climate crisis. But questions remain about how the government, which has already been slow to deliver pledged spending on several climate-related programs, will fulfil its declared intentions to protect Canada from the harsh realities of a warming world.

Unveiled Tuesday in Vancouver, the government’s new National Adaptation Strategy includes targets like eliminating all deaths from extreme heat waves by 2040, and halting and reversing the destruction of Canadian nature within the next seven years.

It also says the federal government will craft new rules to insert climate considerations in codes for buildings and highways by 2026, include climate resilience factors in all new federal infrastructure programs by next year, draft hundreds of new high-risk flood maps by 2028, and aim to create 15 new urban national parks by 2030.

Speaking in a province that has been hammered by atmospheric rivers that have washed out highways, a deadly heat dome that killed more than 600 people and a wildfire that torched the Interior-B.C. town of Lytton two years ago, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said there is no doubt the impacts of climate change will continue for decades to come.

“We all recognize that Canada is not ready to face the impacts of climate change. And that strategy is our response to that,” Guilbeault said.

“We know we have a lot of work to do ahead of us to ensure that we are better prepared.”

Many details of how to accomplish the strategy’s goals will be determined in the coming months, as the federal government sits down with provinces and territories to tailor climate adaptation plans specific to each of their regions and needs.

A senior government official, who briefed journalists about the strategy on condition they are not named, said there is general “buy-in” from the provinces to craft those plans. “The fact that we all are witnessing what is happening in the country right now,” the official said, referring to this year’s huge wildfires, “I don’t think anyone is denying that we need to work together.”