Lenses and readings

The baseline is read through each steward’s lens, then once as a whole. Each lens is a projection of reviewed findings, not a separate argument.

11 min read0 figures6 tables37 notesNR-COUNTRY-CAN-2026-BASELINE

Contents

6.1Three lenses

One edition, read by each steward. The lens of this site comes first.

GRF · KEY M

Public Meaning

For most Canadians risk arrives as a smoke-filled summer, a flooded basement or a higher premium. The baseline asks that these be read as one system, so that public debate is about the couplings, and about who carries the uninsured share.

HLT-008 · CLI-010 · FIN-003

GCRI · KEY T

Technical Truth

The evidence supports a coupled reading of Canadian risk. Losses are rising in trend and driven by frequency across perils; electricity, food and health share a dependence on water and heat. The evidence is strongest for losses and emissions, and weakest for digital and cross-system dependencies.

FIN-002 · FIN-003 · ENE-005 · SYS-012

GRA · KEY F

Capital Meaning

Readiness implications only. A persistent protection gap, climate-risk supervision for federally regulated institutions²⁵ and scenario practice already piloted with the central bank²⁴ show where finance-readiness evidence will be needed. Nothing here is advice, a rating or an approval.

FIN-002 · FIN-003 · TRD-011

NEXUS

Synthesis

Canada’s baseline is strong in observation and thin in tested cross-system capability. The 2027 programme should build the dependency graph first, test the western compound pathway, and measure the protection gap where it lands.

SYS-012 · A-01 · A-03

6.2Global Risks Forum reading: editorial essays

Four signed essays by the Reports editorial team set out the positions this edition takes. They are interpretation, labelled as such; the evidence they draw on is in the findings register.

For decades Canadian disaster risk was told through single catastrophes, 1998, 2013, 2016. The record since 2016 reads differently. Losses have nearly tripled by decade, and 2025 showed that a year without one dominant event can still be one of the busiest on record. Planning for the largest event is no longer enough: systems must absorb many medium events in close succession, often in different provinces in the same season.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 01

Frequency is the new severity

A grid that is about 60% hydro is low-carbon and drought-exposed at once. Dry years cut output, raise imports and shrink export revenue just as heat raises demand. As electrification grows and data centres add load, water becomes a binding constraint on the energy transition. Reservoir storage, snowpack and inflow belong on the energy dashboard as much as on the water one.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 02

Water is Canada’s energy question

Wildfire smoke now reaches millions of people far from any fire, for weeks at a time. It arrives in the same months as heat and in the same cities whose emergency departments are already stretched. Treating fire as a forestry problem and smoke as an air-quality advisory understates the coupling; this edition treats the fire season as a public-health season with its own surge planning.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 03

Smoke is a health-system event

When insurance covers about half of catastrophe losses, the other half does not disappear. It lands on households, small firms, municipalities, provinces and federal disaster assistance, often years later, and without a dedicated line in any budget. Measuring where the uninsured share lands, by peril and province, is the first step towards deciding who should carry it.

EDITORIAL ESSAY · 04

The protection gap is a fiscal question

6.3GCRI reading: the model card

GCRI’s reading of this edition is its model card: what the national model is, what it computes and where it stops. It is printed in full in Annex A, with the methods it belongs to. Annex A, methodology

6.4Global Risks Alliance reading: q1 2027 readiness pack

The registers that open the first operational quarter. At baseline each is initialised from this edition.

Table 6.1Q1 2027 readiness pack
Item	Register	State at baseline	First Q1 2027 entry
E1	National risk state delta	baseline set by this edition	changes against the baseline
E2	WEFH+B state delta	five system readings set	indicator updates and freshness
E3	Agenda and Portfolio movement	eight agenda items · seven proposed objects	admission decisions
E4	NWG delivery register	no groups yet	first monthly outputs
E5	NNC capability register	membership opens in Q1 2027	first contributions
E6	NLC questions and challenges	none yet	first challenge log
E7	Foundry technical state	environment prepared	first sealed cut
E8	Publication candidates	twelve findings carried forward	PUBLISH · HOLD dispositions
E9	Universe readiness	one candidate mission	admission and role spine
E10	Correction register	none	first correction cycle

Publication dispositions

Publish
Hold
Needs evidence
Restricted
Superseded

6.5Nexus Standards reading: standards and regulatory watch

Instruments that shape the systems in this edition, by status on the retrieval date. The edition assesses no one’s compliance.

IN FORCE
ADOPTED
SUBMITTED
UNDER REVIEW
PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY

Table 6.2Standards and regulatory watch
Instrument	Body	Scope	Status	Relevance
Paris Agreement · 2030 NDC, 40–45% below 2005	UNFCCC · Canada	international · national	IN FORCE	emissions gap¹
2035 NDC, 45–50% below 2005⁴⁸	Canada	national	SUBMITTED 2025	emissions pathway
Kunming-Montreal Framework, Decision 15/4¹³	CBD	international	ADOPTED 2022	30% by 2030
Sendai Framework 2015–2030⁴⁵	UNDRR	international	ADOPTED 2015	disaster risk reduction
Guideline B-15: Climate Risk Management²⁵	OSFI	federally regulated institutions	IN FORCE · PHASED	finance readiness
CSDS 1 and CSDS 2⁴⁷	CSSB	national	PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY	disclosure
Telecom Regulatory Policy 2017-91³⁶	CRTC	national	IN FORCE	public alerting
National Building Code of Canada 2020⁴⁶	NRC	model code	ADOPTED BY PROVINCES	building resilience
CUSMA joint review, Article 34.7³⁵	CUSMA parties	trilateral	REVIEW 2026	trade channel

Changed since 2024

Canada submitted a 2035 target of 45–50% below 2005⁴⁸
The CSSB published the first Canadian sustainability disclosure standards⁴⁷
OSFI’s climate-risk guideline entered its phased implementation²⁵

To watch in 2027

The outcome of the CUSMA joint review³⁵
The design of a national flood insurance arrangement²²
The April 2027 National Inventory Report and its revisions¹

6.6Risk Academy reading: literature and evidence review, science and assessments

The review behind this edition covers peer-reviewed science, national and international assessments and the institutional reports that bind its findings. Full systematic reviews begin in Q1 2027 for each agenda item.

Review protocol

Question: What does the published evidence establish about Canada’s coupled water, energy, food, health and biodiversity risks?
Sources searched: peer-reviewed literature; national and international assessments; federal and provincial releases; industry loss data
Window: releases available at evidence close, 30 September 2026
Selection: sources that bind or contextualise a finding in this edition
Next step: systematic reviews for agenda items A-01 to A-05 in Q1 2027

Table 6.3Peer-reviewed science and assessments
Reference	Type	Year	Role	Used for
Zscheischler et al.³⁹	journal article	2018	framework	compound-event reading
Jain et al.⁴⁰	journal article	2024	supports	2023 fire-season drivers
Flannigan et al.⁴²	journal article	2009	context	fire–climate trend
Buldyrev et al.⁴³	journal article	2010	framework	cascade logic of the matrix
Lee and Romero (eds.)²⁶	assessment	2023	context	global forcing
Bush and Lemmen (eds.)⁵	assessment	2019	supports	warming rate
Warren and Lulham (eds.)⁴¹	assessment	2021	supports	national issues
Berry and Schnitter (eds.)¹⁸	assessment	2022	supports	heat and smoke health
McElwee et al. (eds.)⁴⁴	assessment	2024	context	nexus interlinkages

Table 6.4Institutional reports
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
National Risk Profile¹⁶	Public Safety Canada	2023	supports	capability ladder
National Adaptation Strategy¹⁷	ECCC	2023	supports	adaptation rung
Damage Control¹⁹	Canadian Climate Institute	2022	context	cost of impacts
Flood insurance task force²²	Public Safety Canada	2022	supports	protection gap
Supply Chain Task Force²³	Transport Canada	2022	supports	corridor fragility
Climate scenario pilot²⁴	Bank of Canada · OSFI	2022	context	capital lens

Table 6.5Industry and loss data
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
Annual catastrophe summary²	CatIQ	2026	supports	insured losses
Societal loss estimates³	ICLR	2026	supports	uninsured share
Severe-weather losses⁴	IBC	2026	supports	decade totals
Calgary hailstorm²⁹	IBC	2025	supports	event scale
Fort McMurray wildfire³⁷	IBC	2017	supports	event scale

Table 6.6Standards, regulation and national official sources
Reference	Issuer	Year	Role	Used for
Guideline B-15²⁵	OSFI	2023	context	finance supervision
Public alerting policy³⁶	CRTC	2017	supports	early-warning rung
National Inventory Report¹	ECCC	2026	supports	emissions
Environmental indicators⁷³⁸	ECCC	2024–26	supports	conservation, intensity
Population and crops¹¹²⁰	Statistics Canada	2021–25	supports	profile, drought
Health expenditure²¹	CIHI	2024	supports	health profile
Forests and wildfire¹⁰³¹	NRCan	2024	supports	fire season, forests

Where the evidence agrees

Insured losses are rising in trend, driven by frequency across perils²⁴
Canada is warming at about twice the global rate⁵⁴¹
Heat and smoke are first-order health hazards⁶¹⁸

Where it is unsettled

How much of each event’s loss is attributable to climate change
How uninsured losses are estimated, and how public-infrastructure losses are counted
How often multi-year drought will recur in the West at each warming level

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

25Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (ed.), Guideline B-15: Climate Risk Management. OSFI, Ottawa, 2023.back
24Bank of Canada and Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (eds.), Using Scenario Analysis to Assess Climate Transition Risk: Final Report of the BoC–OSFI Climate Scenario Analysis Pilot. Ottawa, 2022.back
1Environment and Climate Change Canada (ed.), National Inventory Report 1990–2024: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada. Canada’s submission to the UNFCCC, 2026 edition. ECCC, Gatineau, April 2026.back
48Government of Canada (ed.), Canada’s 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement. Submission to the UNFCCC, 2025.back
13Convention on Biological Diversity (ed.), Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Decision 15/4. CBD Secretariat, Montreal, 2022.back
45UNDRR (ed.), Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. UNDRR, Geneva, 2015.back
47Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (ed.), Canadian Sustainability Disclosure Standards CSDS 1 and CSDS 2. CSSB, Toronto, December 2024.back
36Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (ed.), Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2017-91: Implementation of the National Public Alerting System by wireless service providers. CRTC, Ottawa, 2017.back
46National Research Council Canada (ed.), National Building Code of Canada 2020. NRC, Ottawa, 2022.back
35Global Affairs Canada (ed.), “Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA): joint review.” GAC, Ottawa, retrieved 2026-09-30.back
22Public Safety Canada (ed.), Adapting to Rising Flood Risk: An Analysis of Insurance Solutions for Canada. Report of the Task Force on Flood Insurance and Relocation. Ottawa, 2022.back
39J. Zscheischler, S. Westra, B. J. J. M. van den Hurk et al., “Future climate risk from compound events,” Nature Climate Change, vol. 8, pp. 469–477, 2018.back
40P. Jain, Q. E. Barber, S. W. Taylor et al., “Drivers and impacts of the record-breaking 2023 wildfire season in Canada,” Nature Communications, vol. 15, art. 6764, 2024.back
42M. D. Flannigan, M. A. Krawchuk, W. J. de Groot, B. M. Wotton and L. M. Gowman, “Implications of changing climate for global wildland fire,” International Journal of Wildland Fire, vol. 18, pp. 483–507, 2009.back
43S. V. Buldyrev, R. Parshani, G. Paul, H. E. Stanley and S. Havlin, “Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks,” Nature, vol. 464, pp. 1025–1028, 2010.back
26H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.), Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC. IPCC, Geneva, 2023.back
5E. Bush and D. S. Lemmen (eds.), Canada’s Changing Climate Report. Government of Canada, Ottawa, 2019.back
41F. J. Warren and N. Lulham (eds.), Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues Report. Government of Canada, Ottawa, 2021.back
18P. Berry and R. Schnitter (eds.), Health of Canadians in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action. Government of Canada, Ottawa, 2022.back
44P. D. McElwee, P. A. Harrison, T. L. van Huysen et al. (eds.), Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health. IPBES secretariat, Bonn, 2024. doi:10.5281/zenodo.13850054. doi:10.5281/zenodo.13850054 back
16Public Safety Canada (ed.), National Risk Profile: A national emergency preparedness and awareness tool, first public report. Government of Canada, Ottawa, 2023.back
17Environment and Climate Change Canada (ed.), Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy: Building Resilient Communities and a Strong Economy. ECCC, Gatineau, 2023.back
19Canadian Climate Institute (ed.), Damage Control: Reducing the Costs of Climate Impacts in Canada. CCI, Ottawa, 2022.back
23Transport Canada (ed.), Action. Collaboration. Transformation. Final report of the National Supply Chain Task Force. Ottawa, 2022.back
2CatIQ (ed.), Canadian insured losses from catastrophic events: 2025 annual summary. Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc., Toronto, January 2026.back
3Institute for Catastrophe Loss Reduction (ed.), Societal losses from catastrophic events in Canada: 2025 estimates. ICLR, Toronto, 2026.back
4Insurance Bureau of Canada (ed.), “Severe weather-related insured losses in Canada exceed $2.4 billion in 2025.” IBC, Toronto, January 2026.back
29Insurance Bureau of Canada (ed.), “Insured losses from Calgary hailstorm reach $3.25 billion.” IBC, Toronto, February 2025.back
37Insurance Bureau of Canada (ed.), “Northern Alberta wildfire costliest insured natural disaster in Canadian history.” IBC, Toronto, January 2017.back
7Environment and Climate Change Canada (ed.), Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: Canada’s conserved areas. ECCC, Gatineau, 2024.back
38Environment and Climate Change Canada (ed.), Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: Greenhouse gas emissions. ECCC, Gatineau, 2026.back
11Statistics Canada (ed.), “Canada’s population estimates, first quarter 2025.” The Daily, Ottawa, March 2025.back
20Statistics Canada (ed.), “Production of principal field crops, November 2021.” The Daily, Ottawa, December 2021.back
21Canadian Institute for Health Information (ed.), National Health Expenditure Trends, 2024. CIHI, Ottawa, 2024.back
10Natural Resources Canada (ed.), Canada’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season. Canadian Forest Service, Ottawa, 2024.back
31Natural Resources Canada (ed.), The State of Canada’s Forests: Annual Report 2024. Canadian Forest Service, Ottawa, 2024.back
6BC Coroners Service (ed.), Extreme Heat and Human Mortality: A Review of Heat-Related Deaths in B.C. in Summer 2021. Government of British Columbia, Victoria, 2022.back

Cite this chapter

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Chapter 6: Lenses and readings. In Canada Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: The State of Canada’s Interdependent Systems (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-COUNTRY-CAN-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report