On 7 March 2023, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities (the Committee) agreed to undertake a study on the resilience of Canadian communities to climate change. During this study, a wide range of witnesses, including municipal governments, non-governmental organizations and Indigenous leaders, described the impacts that climate change is having on infrastructure and on the lives of residents. Much of the discussion focused on the resilience of water infrastructure, such as wastewater treatment infrastructure, dikes, and ice bridges, and on the importance of having functioning telecommunications networks during extreme weather events.

Some witnesses also stressed the need to improve the Government of Canada’s understanding of climate risks in Canada and to factor these risks into long-term infrastructure planning. Some asked the Government of Canada to take both Indigenous and Western knowledge into account when identifying ways of adapting infrastructure to climate change. Many witnesses pointed out that, in Canada, climate governance must be shared among the various orders of government, requiring co-operation from several stakeholders, including the private sector and the public.

Stressing the limited financial capacity of municipalities, witnesses urged the Government of Canada to invest more in infrastructure resilience, and some called for funding to be based on risk, not on population. Several witnesses highlighted barriers to access federal infrastructure programs that impede mitigation and reconstruction efforts - whether it was the application funding timelines, the narrow criteria attached to funding, or the complexity of the application process.

Some witnesses called for greater investment in natural infrastructure as another way to improve the resilience of Canadian communities. Also discussed were building resilience and modernization of the National Building Code to factor in changing climate risks. Witnesses also highlighted the need to tackle the housing shortage, housing affordability and the construction trades shortage. Lastly, some witnesses argued that funding programs should not encourage rebuilding in high-risk areas following a disaster.

Many witnesses agreed that the Government of Canada needs to better fund disaster mitigation efforts to strengthen a proactive approach when it comes to investments in resilient infrastructure. On this point, it was argued that amounts allocated to protect infrastructure should be considered an investment rather than a cost.[1] For example, if more proactive mitigation investments had been made to address vulnerabilities in high flood risk areas, many impacts would have been prevented and saved millions, if not billions in damage.