LETTER FROM MONTREAL
Known for its grandiose landscapes, from the majestic Rocky Mountains in British Columbia to the tranquility of the 500,000 lakes dotting the forests of Quebec, Canada is often associated with what nature can offer of immutable and eternal beauty. “Instagrammable” images that attract tourists from all over the world, but which burden a darker reality: its northern location places the country on the front line in the face of climate change. Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and even up to three times faster for the Arctic territory to the north.
In just a few seasons, extreme weather events have shown the country’s vulnerability. Submersion of the coasts of the Atlantic provinces caused by the passage of post-tropical storm Fiona on September 24, heat dome with records of over 47°C in Vancouver in the summer of 2021, followed by devastating fires, then, a few months later, extraordinary floods in southern British Columbia. Every ” disaster “both the federal government and the provincial authorities have split emergency financial aid.
However, the multiplication of these aids promises to be, in the years to come, a barrel of the Danaides. A few weeks before COP27, currently in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt) and where the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has not planned to go, the Climate Institute of Canada, an independent body, produced a report evaluating this that climate change was costing the country’s economy and the pocketbooks of its people, and what it could cost them tomorrow if no policy “proactive adaptation” was not conducted.
An extremely high financial cost
Entitled “Damage control”, the study details the bill for the damage caused by these climate changes based on several hypotheses of reduction (or not) of greenhouse gas emissions at the global level in the coming years. Whatever scenario is chosen, “Canada never comes out a winner”, asserts Dave Sawyer, chief economist at the Institute.
Climate damage is already amputating national wealth, say the authors of the study. As proof among others, the historic fire that ravaged the oil city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 2016, cost 4 billion dollars (2.92 billion euros) in direct damage, which took add another 7 billion to account for damage to the environment and natural resources, loss of output from the city’s oil and gas industry, or lost tax revenue. By 2025, climate damage is expected to cost Canada $25 billion, or half the fruits of expected GDP growth; at the end of the century, it is 865 billion dollars that could come annually to burden the public finances.
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