Globe Climate: Water scarcity in Western Canada

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, the environment and resources in Canada.

This weekend I had a friend visit from Vancouver. We walked the streets of Toronto, and he marvelled at the freshness of the air and the greenery of the valleys and the parks. And this made me realize that Canada is not quite what it used to be.

The parks, beaches and backyards of Vancouver – a city surrounded by temperate rainforest – are brown. The grass is parched. The air is thick with smoke from some 400 wildfires raging across the province, and my friend doesn’t feel he’s felt proper rain – the kind that soaks to the bone – in weeks.

This week in The Globe and Mail, we reported on the fallout from this switch of fate: Justine Hunter detailed the consequences of a drought in Western Canada, Ivan Semeniuk traced the source of the Jasper wildfire, and we ran a story about how extreme weather affects Canada’s food-supply chain.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Help may come from unlikely sources, such as Canada’s humble beaver, now perhaps our key to keeping streams flowing and the taps running.

- Kate

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. Was the Jasper wildfire fueled by a storm it created? Investigators race to understand a growing threat
2. Carbon capture startup Deep Sky, founded by Hopper CEO, breaks ground on Alberta pilot facility
3. Toronto advocacy group pushes for maximum temperature bylaw for tenants living without air conditioning
4. Paris mayor says Seine River clean-up will be lasting legacy of Olympics, though questions about water quality remain
5. Potential tariffs on Chinese EV imports welcomed by GM Canada as BYD looks to enter market
6. After the flood: The fate of those cars trapped near Toronto’s Don River
7. The Narwhal: These Ontario farmers are losing the land they own to industry. But that’s all anyone will tell them

A deeper dive

Years of drought in Alberta and B.C. pushing freshwater supply into uncharted territory

“As Western Canada enters a third year of drought, it is becoming clear that the security of the region’s freshwater supply is in peril, and that the systems in place to manage water responsibly have not adapted to the current climate challenges,” wrote The Globe’s Justine Hunter on Wednesday.

In blunt terms, Western Canadians are increasingly having to adapt to a life where demand for fresh water will vastly outweigh supply.

The transition to a water-scarce lifestyle is already under way for a number of towns in the region. Consider Merritt, a community of 7,000 a few hours from Vancouver. The town relies on groundwater from natural aquifers. The water is drawn up to wells, but the wells are not refilling as quickly as they used to. The costs of underground surveying means city managers cannot calculate exactly how little water is left; they can only know there is less than before.

Merritt isn’t alone. Before the start of the summer, Alberta had 25 water shortage advisories. Simultaneously, almost 20 per cent of B.C. landmass was categorized as drought level 4 or 5, where adverse impacts are likely or almost certain.

“The transition from water abundance to scarcity can occur within a human generation, allowing little time for society to adapt,” said Roland Hall, a professor at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Biology.

Yet adaption must happen, officials say. This starts with treating water differently. Less “all-you-can-eat buffet” and more focus on water as the scarce resource it is quickly becoming. First steps include permanent water meters or putting a price on water usage (a policy that has worked in California).

Restoring watersheds is a longer-term solution and can be accomplished with the help of Canada’s humble beaver, whose dams trap and slow water, allowing it to replenish groundwater. Work is under way to bring the beaver, once hunted to near extinction, home. Only time will tell if they’ll accept the invitation.

“Hopefully they’ll like it and stick around,” said biologist Tom Willms. “But they have their own minds.”

What else you missed

• From farm to table: How extreme weather affects prices along Canada’s food supply chain
• Hundreds of firefighters deployed as out-of-control wildfire rages on fringes of Athens
• Ultrafine particles linked to 1,100 deaths per year in Montreal, Toronto: study
• Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is down to lowest level since 2016, government says

Opinion and analysis

Ali Bhagat: Wildfires foreshadow the looming crisis of internal displacement

Seirian Sumner: How I learned to stop worrying and love the wasp – and why you should, too

Nik Nanos: Are Canadians willing to help the transition to a greener, cleaner world?

Green Investing: Welcomed Tariffs

The federal government might impose tariffs on Chinese electric-vehicle imports, a move that is being welcomed by the Canadian head of General Motors.

Canada’s auto sector faces “unfair competition” from China’s state-led policy of overcapacity and wide-ranging non-market policies and practices, said the federal government after a 30-day consultation in which officials debated whether to follow the U.S. and EU lead on Chinese imports.

“An unfair playing field can be quite detrimental, and it’s only right that the government look at these issues and consider all of the facts,” said Kristian Aquilina, the president of General Motors Canada.

• Meet the man using shareholder activism to hold Canada’s biggest companies accountable for climate pledges
• Gold Fields to buy Canadian miner Osisko in $2.16-billion cash deal

The Climate Exchange

Check out our new digital hub where you can ask your most pressing questions about climate change. It’s a place where we hope to help by answering your questions, big and small, about the continuing changes and challenges around climate change. Along the way, we’ll aim to highlight the people, communities and companies working toward climate solutions and innovations.

For the record: While RBC supports the initiative financially, the company has no say in what questions get asked or how The Globe answers them.

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Guides and Explainers

• Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
• We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP28 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
• We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable, and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills – Little Steps to Big Change.

Catch up on Globe Climate

• What does a Team Canada meteorologist do?
• In the wake of Jasper’s wildfire
• Suspense builds around water quality in the Seine
• Ice is clogging the Northwest Passage

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