The impacts of climate change, once viewed as consequences for future generations, are now a present-day reality. Increasingly severe and frequent natural disasters and climate hazards are already having devastating impacts across the world and the costs of these impacts often fall on local governments.

Earlier this year, historically intense fires blazed through a drought-stricken Los Angeles, leading to 70,000 relocations and over $350 million in damage to public infrastructure. According to an official City Administrative Officer Report, dated January 21, 2025, the damage to municipal public infrastructure included nearly $76 million in damage to water and power-related works, $48 million in damage to sanitation infrastructure and $156 million in damage to recreation and parks. This is not to mention the enormous non-economic losses, such as the deaths, destruction of nature and loss of culture that also resulted from these fires.

Climate change adaptation and related resilience-building in local communities is essential to counteract some of this devastation. Adaptation is defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) as any “process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects.”[1] Successful adaptation does not mean that the negative impacts of climate change will not occur, only that they will be less severe than would have been experienced had no adaptation occurred.

Given that each municipality and community have to contend with their unique geographies and specific climate change issues, there is no single approach to climate change adaptation. Adaptation efforts must be community-based and tailored to local needs. They can include anything from engineering solutions (e.g. installing cooling solutions in buildings that are vulnerable to overheating), to nature-based solutions (e.g. conserving and expanding headwaters, wetlands, forests and areas of natural cover to reduce flood risk), to innovative funding mechanisms (e.g. tax and levy structures). To this end, Canadian municipalities have begun to leverage the legal and policy tools at their disposal to mitigate and adapt to worsening climate change.

A recent panel discussion on climate change adaptation and resilience at Gowling WLG's 2024 Environmental Law Year in Review conference explored the impacts already being faced by Canadian municipalities, as well as their plans to address these impacts.

Climate effects in Canadian municipalities

Canadian municipalities are already facing a range of climate-related risks across the country from wildfires, flooding, sea level rise, and extreme heat.

For example, the City of Toronto is experiencing worsening climate impacts. The City faces increased flooding, intense storms, and extreme heat, which all contribute to more power outages, as well as extensive damage to property, infrastructure, and natural environments across the City. In July 2024, nearly 10 cm of rain fell onto Toronto in just three hours, overwhelming the city’s infrastructure, ravine system, and flooding many homes and businesses. It was reported that early estimates of the costs associated with this one-day flash flood would be $1 billion in insurable losses, with the total costs likely being several times higher.

Rural and northern cities are particularly vulnerable. These communities tend to be highly sensitive to climate-related disruptions to their infrastructure due to their size and locations, while also having fewer resources to respond to such challenges.[2]

As an example, every year, the impacts of permafrost thaw across Canada’s three northern territories causes increasing damage to household and community infrastructure, imposing unforeseen costs on residents and local governments.[3] According to a recent study prepared by the Northwest Territories Association of Communities, thawing permafrost causes approximately $51 million worth of damage to public infrastructure in the Northwest Territories on annual basis. These types of costs put enormous pressures on local governments across the country.

Innovative legal mechanisms available to municipalities

Faced with these pressures, municipal governments across Canada have shown leadership on climate change by enacting a range of innovative, municipal legal mechanisms. These mechanisms include the enactment of ambitious targets and building standards, municipal tax structures and levies, as well as other mitigation and adaptation-related policies. A mix of these mechanisms often feature and work together within municipal climate action plans

The City of Toronto, for example, has adopted one of the most ambitious strategies in North America to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions in Toronto to net zero by 2024. The City’s TransformTO Climate Action Strategy and Resilience Strategy identify goals and actions to help Toronto “survive, adapt and thrive” in the face of climate change and other shocks that may face the City. The strategy combines innovative mitigation measures (such as the passing of a novel carbon accountability bylaw and the development of building performance standards) with enhancements to the resilience of city infrastructure and buildings to extreme weather.

The innovative use of municipal legal mechanisms is also apparent in the City of Halifax’s plan to achieve a net-zero economy by 2050. As part of the “HalifACT” strategy, the City established its “climate action tax” to implement the strategic initiatives of HalifACT and “to leverage climate action funding from the private sector, federal and provincial governments, providing the necessary investment for the success of HalifACT in the years to come.” Using the money generated from this creative tax structure, HalifACT aims to increase the resilience of existing buildings and infrastructure and strengthen emergency preparedness across the city. The City has also made commitments to conduct high-level risks assessments for utilities, transportation, water, health facilities and telecom within the City; install zero-emission back-up power in critical infrastructure; develop inspection procedures for high-risk infrastructure to identify resulting damage; and to develop or update codes and design standards or new municipal and private infrastructure.

Municipal climate levies can also be a powerful tool available to municipal governments in Canada. The City of Peterborough, for example, created a Climate Change Reserve, which receives $426,400 annually through a 0.25% all-inclusive tax rate to its residents. The reserve is used to fund climate action projects and programs in the City, but also offers the City contingency funding to respond to climate emergencies if and when they arise.

Municipalities can also use their land use planning powers to prepare for climate impacts. The City of North Vancouver adopted a Hazard Land Development Permit Area as part of its 2014 Official Community Plan that requires landowners within the 200-year flood plain to obtain a permit before proceeding with any alteration. These requirements can be a cost-effective tool to help direct development away from flood plains.

Outstanding challenges

Capacity-building across Canadian municipalities remains a challenge. There are significant inequities in the resources that municipalities have to adapt to climate change.

For example, municipalities across Canada do not all use the same technology to monitor and understand climate impacts in their boundaries. This affects the ability of Canadian municipalities to respond to climate disruptions in a timely manner. It also poses difficulties for collaboration across municipalities to address climate-related challenges together.

To this end, better data monitoring and data sharing between governments would help residents and operators working in government be better equipped to respond to climate-related disruptions and to ultimately tailor their climate solutions to their cities’ specific needs.

To improve adaptive capacity across Canada, municipalities will also require significant investment to protect their residents—and the infrastructure that those residents depend on—from the devastating effects of climate change. While municipal funding mechanisms, such as those detailed above, will offer municipalities the ability to respond more easily to climate emergencies, increased investment from other levels of government, as well as private sector sources, is necessary in the long-term to address the rising adaptation needs of Canadian municipalities.[4]

Gowling WLG is here to help

The Gowling WLG’s environmental law team has the requisite expertise to assist municipalities and communities in harnessing the legal tools available to them to mitigate and adapt to climate change based on their specific needs and geographies.


[1] IPCC, “Summary for policymakers: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects” (Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014), p. 5. See also Sarah Walker et al. "Defining and conceptualizing equity and justice in climate adaptation” (2024) 87 Global Environmental Change, citing Eric Chu et al, “Unlocking the potential for transformative climate adaptation in cities” (2019) Background Paper prepared for the Global Commission on Adaptation, Washington DC and Rotterdam; Linda Shi & Susanne Moser, “Transformative climate adaptation in the United States: Trends and prospects” (2021) 372:6549 Science.

[2] See Kelly Vodden & Ashley Cunsolo, “Rural and Remote Communities” in Chapter 3 in Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues Report, (Government of Canada, 2021): online. See also Dylan Clerk et al., "Due Noth: Facing the Costs of Climate Change for Northern Infrastructure" (Canadian Climate Institute, 2022).

[3] The Firelight Group, “The Impacts of Permafrost Thaw on Northern Indigenous Communities” (Firelight Research Inc., 2022) (for a discussion about impacts in Nunavut).

[4] A 2020 report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Insurance Bureau of Canada estimated that avoiding the worst impacts of climate change at the municipal level will cost an estimated $5.3 billion per year, or equivalent to 0.26% of Canada's GDP.