Canada’s latest climate adaptation strategy specifies key targets and goals that commentators said were lacking in the first draft, and it comes with an updated action plan that has new investments for flooding, freshwater, supply chains, and security.

The new National Adaptation Strategy (NAS) is “a big step forward” towards creating climate resilient infrastructure, communities, economies, and workplaces, but there are still some gaps that need to be addressed, Betsy Agar, director for the Pembina Institute’s buildings program, told The Energy Mix.

The NAS was first released in November 2022 to collect comments from provinces, territories, and national Indigenous organizations. At the time, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities said it signalled meaningful progress toward climate mitigation and adaptation, pointing to its strong funding for municipal governments.

But the strategy was also criticized for being insufficient to address the projected costs of climate change, and for having only broad aims without any specific targets.

The new NAS reaffirms a commitment to its broader goals, and to some specific targets like eliminating all deaths due to heat waves by 2040 and establishing 15 new national urban parks by 2030, reports CBC News.

The plan also commits the federal government and its partners to incorporating “additional climate change resiliency considerations” into the three Canadian building codes—the National Building Code, the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code, and the Canadian Electrical Code.

The NAS is meant to provide a roadmap for “whole-of-society action on adaptation” and is organized around five interconnected systems that are most impacted by climate change: disaster resilience, health and well-being, nature and biodiversity, infrastructure and economy, and workers. The government sees the set of short-, medium-, and long-term goals for each system as a transformative step since the version released in November.

“I think that is probably one of the most fundamental changes that has been included into the national adaptation strategy from where we started,” Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault told a media briefing in Vancouver on June 27.

In the time since the 2022 draft was released, there has also been new funding in the 2023 budget, including a series of investments to address flood risks through national low-cost flood insurance and an online flood portal, and related investments that will help achieve adaptation co-benefits.

The NAS’ accompanying Canada Adaptation Action Plan, which now has 73 actions, compared to 68 in November 2022, outlines the federal contribution to achieving adaptation goals. Apart from the new funds for flooding, it has been updated to include new federal investments and initiatives related to freshwater, supply chains, and security,  says Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

The updated strategy comes as Canada faces mounting pressures from climate change impacts, including the worst wildfire season on record, drought, and extreme heat. Damages from these impacts are expected to reach C$15.4 billion by 2030, Ottawa says. A 2022 report from the Canadian Climate Institute found that climate change threatens households with $25 billion in losses, with individual and low-income households likely to take the greatest hit.

At the briefing, Guilbeault said while Canada is not ready to address these disasters, the strategy is a step towards better preparing for future events. When asked how the strategy would help low-income Canadians, many of them renters, he said Ottawa is working with provincial and territorial governments to establish safe spaces that would be available to all Canadians as a short-term solution. The longer term goal is to “ensure that all of our building stocks will be able to withstand impacts of climate change, such as heat waves.”

Protecting communities from climate impacts was touted as a major NAS goal, but the strategy, while acknowledging the impact climate change has on buildings and communities, “doesn’t provide tangible solutions to ensure that existing homes and buildings can be updated to protect occupants from extreme weather,” Agar said.

The strategy succeeds in including several elements to support community resilience, like improving early warning systems for extreme weather and establishing cooling centres to protect those without cooling at home. But residents who can’t get access to the centres may still be at risk, Agar said. She pointed to British Columbia’s 2021 heat dome—when more than 600 people died in their homes and places of care from heat-related conditions—as a possible outcome of failing to fill gaps in the strategy for vulnerable and at-risk community members.

“What is a person with limited mobility supposed to do with an advance warning if they cannot get to a cooling centre or do not feel safe going to a cooling centre?” Agar asked, noting that the outcomes could be even worse if poor air quality, like that caused by wildfires, compounds the heat issue by making it unsafe to open windows.

Fortifying the strategy to ensure that people have access to upgraded, climate-resilient housing would allow them to take action on advance warnings for a heat wave without going to a cooling centre or leaving their home, Agar said.

“Buildings form the core of our communities and by protecting our existing buildings, we also protect the communities that depend on them.”