Opening Statement to News Conference—Climate Change in Yukon

Climate Change in YukonOpening Statement to News Conference

Casey Thomas, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada—5 December 2017

Good morning. I am pleased to be in Whitehorse today to discuss our audit on climate change, which we submitted to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly this morning. With me are my colleagues Ivar Upitis and Ruth Sullivan.

Research shows that climate change is happening faster in the North than anywhere else in Canada. Yukon is experiencing significant changes, which are affecting its land, wildlife, and people. These changes can damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and traditional ways of life.

In 2016, many legislative audit offices across Canada decided to look at the issue of climate change and developed similar audit approaches and questions to examine climate change action within their governments. As part of this initiative, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada decided to do federal and territorial climate change audits.

In this audit, we looked at the Government of Yukon’s efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We noted that the government had created a climate change strategy and made 70 commitments to respond to climate change. These were good first steps in providing leadership and direction.

However, the commitments were not ranked in a particular order, and most did not have milestones or completion dates, which would make it difficult to measure progress.

The Climate Change Secretariat also prepared two reports on the government’s progress on its climate change commitments, but these reports were not clear or consistent. For example, the reporting on the government’s 70 formal climate change commitments was mixed in with reporting on other climate change activities. This made it difficult to follow progress on the commitments themselves.

One of our most concerning findings was that the departments of Environment; Energy, Mines and Resources; and Community Services had gathered and produced information on adapting to climate change but had taken little concrete action.

For instance, the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources assessed how climate change was affecting Yukon’s trees, but it failed to implement the measures that were recommended in the assessment. In another instance, the Department of Community Services produced information to help communities understand whether they were at risk for forest fires and floods, but they did not produce this information for all communities.

Although gathering information is an important step, it is not enough. The benefits of the information can be fully realized only when it is used to take concrete action.

We also concluded that the four departments that we looked at had not done enough to meet the government’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Either the departments did not meet many of the government’s 12 targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or they were unable to measure their progress against those targets.

The departments need to turn their commitments into concrete action to successfully adapt to the impacts of climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This concludes my opening statement. I am happy to answer any questions on our audit you may have.