The aftermath of the Bald Range wildfire along Garnet Valley Road in Summerland, B.C., on Aug. 24.Aaron Hemens/The Globe and Mail
Ryan Ness is the director of adaptation research at the Canadian Climate Institute.
Weeks of stifling, toxic smoke. Harrowing escapes from wildfires. Devastating floods. Deadly heat.
This wasn’t just a one-off summer of terrible climate-related headlines: Climate change is now disrupting every Canadian season, and new research suggests weather-related disasters will only get worse. Not just for the rest of our lives, but for our children’s lifetimes too.
But just how bad it gets, and how well we’re prepared for what’s ahead, is within our control.
Developed by government and academic scientists and reviewed by 120 independent experts, the 2026 federal assessment of Canada’s changing climate includes two findings that should ring the loudest alarm bells and underpin every decision Canadian governments make moving forward.
First: Canada can no longer avoid a hotter climate, and must prepare now for decades of more extreme and damaging weather.
Whatever the world does about emissions going forward, the report finds that Canada will be nearly 3 C warmer, on average, over the next two decades, compared to pre-industrial times.
And even if the world achieves net zero emissions, Canada will be about 3.5 C hotter when warming levels off, around 2100.
A few degrees may not sound like much. But here’s what it means: Western Canada loses more than three-quarters of its glaciers. The hottest days of the year are even more debilitating. Almost 50 per cent more land burned by wildfire each year. Increasingly frequent extreme rainfall events.
Second: without stronger action to cut global emissions, Canada faces 5 C of average warming relative to 1850-1900 by 2100, and decades more heating after that. On our current path, the glaciers almost entirely disappear, permanently changing iconic landscapes and ecosystems, reducing crucial water resources for downstream communities, and affecting electricity generation, tourism and other industries.
Severe droughts hit the Prairies three to five times each decade.
In the North, winter warming tops 10 C. Homes and critical infrastructure are destabilized as permafrost thaws, and the Arctic Ocean ice melts completely most summers.
These projections are based on physics, not fate. Canada can and must prepare for the impacts of warming we can no longer avoid, while acting urgently to prevent any further warming.
As glaciers melt near mountains, risks multiply and Canada isn’t prepared, scientists warn
Limiting warming in Canada to 3.5 degrees would still bring unprecedented heat, storms and wildfires that will devastate communities and inflict major damages throughout the economy. But it’s a future we can plan for. A Canada that’s 5 degrees hotter heading into the next century is not.
Our first priority should be to limit the damage of that 3.5-degree future before disasters hit. That requires shoring up bridges, roads and hospitals, protecting millions of homes at risk from flooding, wildfire and other extreme weather and shifting new development away from high-risk zones.
The other critical line of defence is reducing emissions. Adaptation has its limits, and accelerating the global energy transition and reducing emissions is the only long-term path to avoiding the uncontrollable devastation that we’re on track for today.
The economics reward moving early. Prevention saves billions in damages a year, and every dollar spent on adaptation now avoids up to $15 in losses. And Canada has proven the economy can grow while emissions drop.
But there’s heavy lifting ahead.
A recent progress report on Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy provides no evidence that Canadians are actually safer, and acknowledges that the government has fallen behind on many climate adaptation objectives, while funding for many existing programs has expired or is soon to run out.
Canada’s emissions trajectory is moving the wrong way, and recent federal policy shifts have put us off the path to net zero while undermining our standing to urge our global peers to follow through on their climate commitments.
What’s needed on adaptation is focus: prioritizing the most threatening climate risks, funding responses at the scale those risks require and measuring the results of those investments.
On emissions, the need is for swifter action and stronger nerve: keep and expand policies that cut emissions, while ramping up investment in clean power countrywide. Ottawa cannot achieve this alone; all governments have important roles to play, but the federal government sets the pace nationally, and that pace is too slow. Significant climate warming and damage in Canada is inescapable, but the worst outcomes are not. Canadian governments now have a clear account of the range of climate threats ahead. How they act on that information will decide which future we – and our children – inherit.