The impacts of climate change in Canada are now largely irreversible, and average temperatures will rise at least 3.5 C by the end of the century even if the world reaches net-zero emissions by 2075, Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a report published Thursday.
The report is the second the department has produced examining changes to Canada’s climate and was written by nearly two dozen government and climate science experts, The Canadian Press reported. It projects that even under the net-zero-by-2075 scenario, the area burned annually by wildfires in Canada will increase by nearly 50 per cent and glaciers in Western Canada will lose more than three-quarters of their mass.
Under the climate policies currently in place around the world, rather than the net-zero scenario, the report projects average temperatures in Canada rising five degrees by 2100, with a 50 per cent chance that winter temperatures across much of Nunavut climb by more than 10 C. Droughts and flash floods will become both more frequent and more severe as temperatures rise, the report says.
“That’s a lot of climate change that we have to adapt to and we’re not ready for it,” Ryan Ness, adaptation research director at the Canadian Climate Institute, told The Canadian Press. Ness said the gap between the report’s projections and the level of action governments are taking was the document’s most surprising feature, and that adaptation work should include retrofitting homes with more fire-resistant material and building firebreaks and flood walls around communities.
The scale of that gap is measurable, and it is the part of Thursday’s findings that has drawn the least attention. Responding to the report, the office of Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said Ottawa has committed more than $2.1 billion to implement the National Adaptation Strategy and support related activities — a cumulative commitment across the strategy rather than an annual one. Set against it are the loss estimates published by Ness’s own organization. The Canadian Climate Institute’s Damage Control research projects that climate impacts will cut $35 billion from Canada’s real GDP annually by 2030, with annual losses climbing toward $100 billion and roughly half a million jobs by 2055. The same research finds every dollar spent on adaptation returns $13 to $15 in avoided direct and economy-wide costs, and that proactive adaptation cuts total climate costs roughly in half.
Federal auditors have already flagged problems with delivery. In a report last year on the National Adaptation Strategy, environment commissioner Jerry DeMarco concluded the strategy was not effectively designed and did not prioritize Canada’s climate change risks, and that departments relied instead on existing priorities and consultations. DeMarco cited the short-term health impacts of wildfire smoke, estimated to cost between $410 million and $1.8 billion annually between 2013 and 2018, and a rise in Lyme disease cases from 144 in 2009 to 2,525 in 2022. A federal progress report on the strategy released last month said hundreds of new flood-mapping projects are underway, while acknowledging that 94 per cent of people living in high-risk areas do not know their home is susceptible to flooding.
The report lands as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government moves away from several of the climate measures it inherited. Carney eliminated the consumer carbon price in March 2025, on his first day in office, and agreed in May to changes to the industrial carbon pricing system with Alberta that carry ramifications for every other province and territory. His government is also moving to repeal the electric vehicle sales mandate and to cancel the oil and gas emissions cap, and has delayed new methane regulations in Alberta. Carney has said federal climate policy under former prime minister Justin Trudeau was too expensive and divisive and “not sustainable over the long term.”
Dabrusin’s office said the government remains committed to reaching net-zero by 2050. “Our government is moving with urgency to fight climate change, while working together to build the energy security, industrial capacity, and strategic autonomy that will define this century for Canada,” said Chris Zhou, the minister’s director of communications.
Julia Levin, associate director of national climate at Environmental Defence, said the findings should be read as a warning rather than a forecast. “This report should be a call to action. What the future looks like for our children depends on the policy choices being made today,” she told The Canadian Press. “The worst impacts of climate change are far from inevitable.”
With reporting from The Canadian Press (Nick Murray). Cost and adaptation-return figures from the Canadian Climate Institute’s Damage Control research.
