When southwestern British Columbia was hit with the historic 2021 atmospheric river, the Port of Vancouver’s operations ground to a halt, stalling billions of dollars in trade for a week.
And that’s only the beginning of the upheaval extreme weather and climate change will wreak on our infrastructure and economy.
Canada is not ready to deal with the damage climate change will inflict on transportation hubs that safeguard our supply chains, warns a Senate committee report.
Climate change and extreme weather threatens critical transportation infrastructure — like major railroads, ports, roads and airports — that are essential to peoples’ lives and vital for billions of dollars of trade.
Over two years, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications studied the threat of climate change and published its report detailing the threats posed by floods, forest fires, landslides, storms, melting permafrost and more at four key transportation hubs.
“Climate change is happening and it’s only going to get worse,” Senator Leo Housakos, chair of the Senate committee said in a written statement.
“Canada is in no way ready for what is to come.”
Senators looked at four case studies, covering regions across the country. The examples are just a small sampling of the physical and economic destruction climate change may wreak on Canada’s transportation corridors and supply chains.
A single railway and road, slightly above sea level, connects Nova Scotia to the rest of mainland Canada.
“Climate change is happening and it’s only going to get worse,” said Senator Leo Housakos, chair of the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. “Canada is in no way ready for what is to come,” warning of risk to trade and transport
As climate change fuels a rising sea level and violent storms, the railway and road are in danger of washing away, putting at risk residents and the transportation of $35 billion per year in goods and services. The Trans-Canada Highway and Canadian National rail line transport goods to and from the Port of Halifax, so any disruption would have cascading impacts on the other Atlantic provinces and, to a lesser extent, the rest of Canada. Most of the propane used for home heating in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is trucked from Ontario and must pass through this section of highway.
If the dikes — originally installed in the 1600s — around the landbridge fail, at least 25 per cent of the town of Amherst would be flooded, Mayor David Kogon told the committee.
Much of the land protected by the dikes is actually below sea level, so “if this area were to flood, the water would not recede; it would be permanent, with major consequences,” Kogan said.
The Port of Vancouver is a massive economic hub, enabling the trade of more than $300 billion in goods annually. Those goods have to be transported to and from the port by road and rail, which are susceptible to extreme weather events like the infamous atmospheric river that rocked southwestern British Columbia in November 2021.
The torrential rain caused flooding and landslides that blocked, damaged or washed out countless sections of road. This cut off access to the Port of Vancouver and “completely paralyzed British Columbia’s supply chain for over a week,” Senators wrote in their report.
Each day the port operations stalled represented a staggering $840 million in cargo, Ronan Chester, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s director of climate action, told the committee in December 2023. Because bridges and rail lines were also impacted, aviation was the only mode of transportation that remained fully operational, but the Vancouver airport is equally, if not more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
A system of dikes protects the land surrounding Vancouver International Airport — the second busiest airport in the country — but sea-levels in the Vancouver area projected to rise more than one metre by the end of the century, combined with more extreme weather and intense rain, will likely cause more severe flooding, according to the committee’s research.
Canada’s North is particularly vulnerable to the increasing impacts of climate change, the senate report stressed.
The Arctic is warming at three times the global rate (according to federal data from 2019), and that in turn is causing permafrost to thaw. This frozen layer of soil supports most of the existing infrastructure in Canada’s North, and as it warms, it destabilizes all sorts of infrastructure, including airport runways.
In the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut, there are far fewer infrastructure and transportation options: these territories comprise about 40 per cent of Canada’s land mass but only one per cent of the population. Many communities don’t have all-weather roads and are only accessible by plane year round.
Increasingly frequent extreme weather events and strong, violent winds are impeding small aircraft operations that serve communities like Grise Fiord and Kimmirut in Nunavut, the report noted. An average of 175 weather-related flights are cancelled each month, Aaron Speer, vice president of Flight Operations for Canadian North, told Senators during the study.
Many remote communities are only accessible by plane, or rely on ice roads. Ice roads represent 35 per cent of the Northwest Territories’ highway system, but the season when they are stable enough to drive on is shrinking as the Arctic warms, driven primarily by humans burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
With such limited roads and methods of transport, what little is available is critical but easily threatened. Wildfires have disrupted CN railroads supplying the North with essentials, and the risk of more frequent and intense fires will only increase with climate change.
The Port of Montreal is the largest container port in Eastern Canada, Its activities generate 10 per cent of Quebec’s GDP and 3.5 per cent of Canada’s.
Warmer temperatures caused by climate change are expected to make the shipping season longer, which would be a boon for the industry, but it’s not all positive, according to the committee.
Professor Brian Slack at Concordia University cautioned warmer temperatures and low water levels will likely pose a challenge around the Port of Montreal in the future.
And, while warmer temperatures equal less ice and more freedom to move cargo through the St. Lawrence, reduced ice cover speeds up shoreline erosion, Jacob Stolle, professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, told the committee. Erosion is no joke — it increases flood risk and threatens highways built beside the St. Lawrence. Extreme storms and rainfall can dramatically speed up erosion, as seen in Prince Edward Island.
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
