Canada 2026
Executive summary

Executive summary

The edition on a few pages: the abstract, the key messages, the headline finding and what each steward reads in it.

5 min read1 figure0 tables18 notesNR-COUNTRY-CAN-2026-BASELINE

Contents

S.1Abstract

Canada enters 2027 with electricity that is largely non-emitting, an oil and gas sector that still produced 30% of national emissions in 2024, a freshwater endowment that is vast in total but thin where people live, and a hazard regime in which wildfire, hail, flood and ice storms now set the pace of losses. National emissions were 685 Mt CO₂e in 2024, 10.3% below 2005 and almost unchanged on 2023¹. Insured catastrophe losses reached a record C$9.1 billion in 2024, then C$2.4 billion in 2025, a year with 17 declared catastrophes². This Baseline Edition fixes the reference state for Canada’s water, energy, food, health and biodiversity systems, maps the dependencies through which shocks travel between them, and sets the questions the first operational edition will answer with Foundry evidence in Q1 2027. It ranks nothing and decides nothing. It establishes where the evidence stands, what remains uncertain and what to watch.

S.2Key messages

The eight questions this edition answers, each with its status and source.

685 Mt CO₂e in 2024, 10.3% below 2005, and 227–265 Mt above the 2030 target range.¹
Where do emissions stand?Reported
Insured severe-weather losses rose from C$14 billion (2006–2015) to C$37 billion (2016–2025); 2024 set the record at C$9.1 billion.²⁴
Are disaster losses rising?Reported
Insurance has covered about 54% of societal catastrophe losses over 43 years; households, businesses and governments carry the rest.³
Who bears the losses?Reported
Heat, drought and fire together, through hydro supply, heat and smoke health loads, crop yields and rail operations.⁶¹⁰²⁰
Which hazard couples the most systems?Inferred
About 60% of generation is hydro, so a multi-year drought is an energy-security risk, not only a water one.⁹
How dependent is electricity on water?Inferred
13.7% of land and 14.7% of marine territory conserved in 2023, against 30% by 2030.⁷¹³
Where is the nature gap?Reported
Trade with the United States, which takes about three-quarters of goods exports; the 2026 CUSMA joint review sets the 2027 path.¹²³⁵
What is the main economic shock channel?Inferred
The Western Canada compound pathway: heat and drought through hydro, smoke and rail into health and food logistics. SCN-CAN-HDF-01
What will Q1 2027 test first?Expert input

S.3Headline finding

ReportedEQL 3NRF-COUNTRY-CAN-2026-BASELINE-FIN-003

Insurance has covered about 54% of societal catastrophe losses in Canada over 43 years; in 2025, C$1.0 billion of C$3.4 billion in societal losses was uninsured.

Figure S.1Societal catastrophe losses, 2025 (C$ billion)

Item	Bar, scaled to the largest value	Value
Insured		2.4
Uninsured		1.0

Sources: CatIQ²; ICLR³.

Where cover is thin, overland flood in high-risk areas, wildfire at the urban edge, and much public infrastructure, losses move onto household balance sheets and into public budgets through disaster assistance. A rising loss trend with a steady uninsured share means a rising absolute burden on both³²².

S.4At a glance

41.5million

population, 2025¹¹

8.79million km²

land area³²

≈9%

of the world’s forests³¹

≈83%

electricity from non-emitting sources⁹

≈⅓

of world potash output³⁰

12.4% GDP

health spending, 2024²¹

S.5What each steward reads in it

GCRI · KEY T

Technical Truth

The evidence supports a coupled reading of Canadian risk.

GRF · KEY M

Public Meaning

For most Canadians risk arrives as a smoke-filled summer, a flooded basement or a higher premium.

GRA · KEY F

Capital Meaning

Readiness implications only. A persistent protection gap, climate-risk supervision for federally regulated institutions and scenario practice already piloted with the central bank show where finance-readiness evidence will be needed.

NEXUS

Synthesis

Canada’s baseline is strong in observation and thin in tested cross-system capability.

S.6What this edition is, and is not

What this edition is

A baseline: the state of Canada’s water, energy, food, health and biodiversity systems in 2026, the dependencies that connect them, the risks that travel through them and the capabilities that hold them. It sets out the questions the operational series will answer.

What it is not

Not a national risk assessment, an official warning or a rating. It decides nothing about any institution or asset. Competent authorities keep every mandate they hold, and national ownership of the series is unaffected.

What comes next

Q1 2027 opens the operational series with a sealed Foundry evidence cut. Each later edition reports what changed against this baseline, new observations, source revisions, method changes, scenario updates and corrections.

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

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
2CatIQ (ed.), Canadian insured losses from catastrophic events: 2025 annual summary. Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc., Toronto, January 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
3Institute for Catastrophe Loss Reduction (ed.), Societal losses from catastrophic events in Canada: 2025 estimates. ICLR, Toronto, 2026.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
10Natural Resources Canada (ed.), Canada’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season. Canadian Forest Service, Ottawa, 2024.back
20Statistics Canada (ed.), “Production of principal field crops, November 2021.” The Daily, Ottawa, December 2021.back
9Natural Resources Canada (ed.), Energy Fact Book 2024–2025. NRCan, Ottawa, 2024.back
7Environment and Climate Change Canada (ed.), Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: Canada’s conserved areas. ECCC, Gatineau, 2024.back
13Convention on Biological Diversity (ed.), Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Decision 15/4. CBD Secretariat, Montreal, 2022.back
12Statistics Canada (ed.), “Canadian international merchandise trade: annual review 2024.” The Daily, Ottawa, 2025.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
11Statistics Canada (ed.), “Canada’s population estimates, first quarter 2025.” The Daily, Ottawa, March 2025.back
32Statistics Canada (ed.), Census of Population, 2021. Statistics Canada, Ottawa, 2022.back
31Natural Resources Canada (ed.), The State of Canada’s Forests: Annual Report 2024. Canadian Forest Service, Ottawa, 2024.back
30U.S. Geological Survey (ed.), Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025. USGS, Reston, VA, 2025.back
21Canadian Institute for Health Information (ed.), National Health Expenditure Trends, 2024. CIHI, Ottawa, 2024.back

Cite this summary

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Executive summary: Executive summary. 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