People make their way along the Rideau Canal in Ottawa in December, 2022.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Environment and Climate Change Canada has quietly disbanded the team behind the country’s upgraded weather radar network and disconnected some radio programming, changes that critics say could affect storm forecasting and emergency communications.
Experts and advocates are warning that the ECCC’s reductions to weather-related services could hamper Canada’s ability to track, forecast and warn the public about severe weather events.
In 2016, the federal government invested $180-million to install 33 weather radars across the country; installation concluded in 2024.
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ECCC’s radar research team was “reorganized out of existence,” earlier this year said David Sills, deputy director of the Canadian Severe Storms Lab and director of Western University’s Northern Tornadoes Project. He also worked with ECCC for two decades as a severe weather scientist before moving to Western.
When asked about the disbandment, ECCC spokesperson Brandon Clim said in an e-mailed statement that while changes have been made to areas of applied research for the radar technology, the department will keep working to maintain the existing radar network.
“The Department will continue to deliver the scientific and technical expertise required to maintain the current radar network and preserve its essential functionalities and leverage radar observations to improve weather forecasts,” Mr. Clim wrote.
In explaining the changes, Mr. Clim referenced ECCC’s contribution to the Comprehensive Expenditure Review, which is a government-wide effort to find $60-billion in internal savings over five years, announced in the fall budget.
Dr. David Sills at the Amit Chakma Engineering Building at Western University in London, Ont.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
Dr. Sills said that while the department will continue to have staff dedicated to radar maintenance, there will no longer be a team focused on advancing the technology.
“As far as improving what’s there and making sure that the network is reaching its full potential and stays on the leading edge of radar science ... that part is gone,” he said.
These radars are used to track severe weather events such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and provide meteorologists with more precise and timely weather warnings.
The research team’s work helped severe weather forecasters get better data, Dr. Sills said.
There is evidence that certain types of severe storms are getting worse, he said, adding that “climate change is a big concern.”
As these issues progress with time, “you don’t want to be reducing the science,” he said.
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According to a Northern Tornadoes Project performance assessment report, ECCC established a target lead time of 10 minutes for 60 per cent of tornadoes to ensure citizens have enough time to take protective action.
Ten minutes is not a lot of time for a forecaster to make a determination, get a warning distributed to the public, and for the public to subsequently take action, Dr. Sills said. Even so, using data from 2023 to 2024, the project found that target was met only 20.7 per cent of the time.
Adam Skinner, the founder and director of Instant Weather – which provides rapid alerts about incoming storms and severe weather – said that without a team to iterate, test and deploy updates, he worries improvements to the radars cannot be made.
Mr. Skinner said “it’s very frustrating” to have some of the “world-leading experts in radar research” shuffled into different positions within ECCC.
“It’s like buying a Ferrari and then just firing your mechanic,” he said.
Advocates and radio operators are also raising public safety concerns after ECCC permanently disconnected two weather radio programs on March 16.
ECCC shuttered its Weatheradio network after a five-decade run, as well as Hello Weather, which provided toll-free phone weather forecasts since 2021.
Mr. Clim wrote that the aging technology that Weatheradio relied on was increasingly difficult to maintain and was no longer cost-effective. Its operational costs were approximately $4-million per year. Canadians can access reliable weather updates from many channels, including the WeatherCAN app, he added.
Weatheradio delivered severe storm warnings and worked independently of cell towers. It was especially reliable in remote and rural areas with little service and was used by boaters, campers and farmers for critical weather updates.
“Canada is made up of a lot of rural areas ... and what the weather radio system provided was radio communications in a lot of areas where there was no cell coverage at all,” said Allan Boyd, president of Radio Amateurs of Canada.
Mr. Boyd served as an Ontario Provincial Police officer for 35 years and spent lots of time deployed in very remote areas where his cell phone was not useful. “But I always carried a portable Weatheradio with me,” he said.
These radios are critical when internet and cellular networks fail, Mr. Boyd said, pointing to the Rogers outage in 2022 and recent Bell disruptions.
The radios remained operational during internet disruptions and weather emergencies, he said.
Dr. Sills said ECCC has made good investments in modelling technologies, but that he finds it hard to see the logic in making investments to improve parts of a system while making cuts in other places.
“They’re cutting things that affect public safety like Weatheradio and also radar science ... there should be a lot of investment in anything that’s related to public safety.”