Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco's audits say there are deficits in Ottawa's approach to environmental and sustainable development challenges.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Inconsistent planning, insufficient data and a lack of concrete actions are among the problems plaguing some of Canada’s key environmental efforts and strategies, a series of independent audits has found.
In three reports issued Tuesday, Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry DeMarco examined the federal government’s progress on climate adaptation, species protection and facilitating sustainable use of ocean resources. A fourth report from Mr. DeMarco considers why the government has largely failed to deliver on its sustainable development goals over the past three decades.
The reports found deficits in the way Ottawa has approached its environmental and sustainable development challenges, which have hindered the government’s objectives.
The audits come as Prime Minister Mark Carney is seeking to fast-track infrastructure projects, including those designed to improve Canada’s competitiveness in the energy and resource sectors. Without more robust and better-informed federal actions on environmental matters, such projects could come at a cost.
“In order to make decisions that don’t have unforeseen consequences or that don’t mortgage the future, it’s important to have a good information base,” Mr. DeMarco told The Globe and Mail.
First established in 1995, the commissioner’s role falls under Canada’s Office of the Auditor-General. Successive commissioners have repeatedly prodded the government to enact and then stand by policies that relate to the country’s natural assets. The long-running dynamic formed the backdrop to several of the findings in the commissioner’s latest release.
For example, a previous commissioner first recommended that Canada create a national climate-adaptation strategy nearly 20 years ago, something the federal government accomplished in 2023. (In comparison, Germany has done it four times.)
Calling the strategy “an important first step,” Mr. DeMarco said that urgent attention is still required for it to produce meaningful action.
His report found that the strategy does not adequately prioritize different climate-change risks in Canada nor create a process for it to be updated. In areas related to human health, the strategy also omitted some risks, such as the spread of Lyme disease, and did not propose dedicated actions to address others, including the effects of wildfire smoke.
Blair Feltmate, who heads the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation and who provided input to the report, said he did not agree that climate risks are not prioritized in the national adaptation strategy. Rather, he said, the strategy "zeroed in on preparedness for flooding and wildfire, which are Canada’s two most financially costly perils, and extreme heat, the most lethal peril."
Dr. Feltmate said he partially agreed with the commissioner that no economic analysis was done to assign adaptation resources. And while the commissioner’s reports typically do not propose new policy actions, Dr. Feltmate said that the federal government should consider creating a chief resiliency officer to lead the adaptation strategy going forward and to “prepare Canada for extreme weather that will otherwise prove unaffordable.”
A separate report on critical habitat was the latest and final instalment in the commissioner’s look at how Canada lists and protects its most threatened wildlife species.
Previously, that examination has found bottlenecks and other problems at virtually every stage in the process.
The identification of critical habitat is a step that occurs after a species has already been listed and the government must, by law, develop a recovery strategy for the species and an action plan.
Based on a sampling of 47 species, the latest report found that government departments charged with protecting those species had only identified critical habitat for about one-third of them. There are also significant gaps in monitoring areas where species at risk are known to exist.
The resulting information deficit means that natural spaces that are crucial to sustaining various species in Canada could be eliminated before their significance is known or fully appreciated.
“What this report is really highlighting is even with policy in place, even with the law in place, we’re not actually doing much of what we said we were going to do,” said Karen Hodges, a professor of conservation biology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
She said the report underscored the need to reframe the national conversation around species, and to get past arguments that weigh nature against profits rather than considering the economic and societal benefits of growth within the context of environment and sustainability.
Mr. DeMarco echoed the same point when discussing the report on integrated oceans management. Without adequate knowledge and planning of marine environments, he said, it will be difficult to make wise decisions about the placement of offshore wind generators or shipping corridors, for example.
He added that while Canada may be paying a price for not having been more proactive with environmental protection and planning in the past, that should not be a rationale for delaying action now.
“We could cry over spilled milk because we haven’t done it yet,” he said. “But we might as well accelerate the efforts to fill in these gaps in our knowledge and increase the chances of making better and more informed decisions when these projects do get proposed in the coming years.”