Recent federal budget cuts impacting Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) could weaken the department’s capacity to track life-threatening geohazards, such as wildfires and floods, warn researchers and union leaders.
The cuts reached NRCan earlier this month, when over 200 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) who work at NRCan received notices warning they may lose their jobs. The pending workforce reduction is a part of a larger plan to eliminate another 30,000 federal public service workers over the next three years, according to a press release from PSAC.
When asked how the cuts will impact Canadians, NRCan said “There are no immediate layoffs nor are there any increased security or safety risks to the environment or Canadians because of these actions.”
But now at stake are several vital programs and positions including the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation and Remote Sensing (CCMEO), which tracks wildfires, floods, landslides, and other geohazards, as well as Canada’s forest pathologist positions, which help detect and fight deadly forest diseases.
According to a press release from Sean O’Reilly, the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the cuts will “decimate” CCMEO and bring the total number of Canada’s forest pathologists to just four.
“The federal government’s decision to cut critical research programs and scientific positions at NRCan poses serious and avoidable risks to safety and security across the country,” says O’Reilly. “These are highly dedicated public service professionals whose forecasting and analysis play a critical role in ensuring Canadians are not put in harm’s way. Eliminating them makes Canadians less safe.”
Ben DeVries, an associate professor at the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Guelph says CCMEO being “decimated” is concerning because it diminishes our ability to prepare for disasters, such as floods.
“It’s impossible for me to know, at a granular level, exactly what’s going to happen, […] but I think one of the big threats right now is just the uncertainty,” says DeVries. “This leaves us pretty vulnerable simply because we don’t really know what these risks are. We know that floods are going to increase in magnitude, we know that they’re going to increase in frequency. What we won’t know is where and when.”
DeVries explains that while flood response is handled at the provincial level, flood hazard mapping is provided by the federal CCMEO program. “Simply stated, the provinces probably lack the capacity to really be able to do this work at scale,” he says. “These cuts can actually really hamper the ability of local and provincial actors in responding to and understanding where flood hazards may increase.”
The NRCan cuts are also said to impact the department’s ability to track wildfires through CCMEO — a situation that DeVries says could be exacerbated by layoffs of forest pathologists. This is because the threats these scientists study and mitigate include diseases and invasive species that damage forest ecosystems. “That kind of alteration of forest ecosystems can, in turn, make these forests more susceptible to things like wildfires,” he says.
With the ever-looming and worsening threat of climate change and even more dramatic cuts to similar U.S. programs added into the mix, DeVries says we could be headed down a dark path.
“We’re entering into a potential perfect storm here, where we’re facing increased climate threats, threats to things like forest ecosystems and water systems,” says DeVries. “And as these threats are increasing, we’re seeing drastic cutbacks to U.S. research agencies and Canadian agencies. I really do think we’re shooting ourselves in the foot here, and that in the long-term, this is going to cost us quite a lot more than what we’re saving in the short-term.”
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