Climate change could cost Ontario billions as planet heats up: watchdog

Ontario’s financial watchdog is repeating warnings that the province’s roads, hospitals and other infrastructure are vulnerable to the high costs of climate change if significant changes are not made.

The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) released a report Wednesday outlining how the province could need to spend billions of dollars more every year as the effects of climate change bite.

Infrastructure in Ontario ranges from buildings like hospitals to highways, bridges or sewage pipes.

In a situation where the province does not begin to proactively plan and build for the extreme weather events likely to become more common with climate change, the watchdog estimates infrastructure could cost an extra $4.1 billion per year.

Proactive planning and adaptation, however, could save more than a billion dollars and leave the annual costs of climate change on infrastructure closer to $3 billion, the report said.

The report is based on a scenario where the global temperatures rise to around 2.3 C higher than pre-industrial averages.

The FAO estimated that infrastructure costs will rise around $2 billion per year for every degree the temperature rises above a 0.5 C baseline increase for the rest of the century.

Climate change will also bring more intense heat and rainfall but fewer freeze-thaw cycles, the FAO report predicts.

The situation is complicated by the fact the province itself owns less than 30 per cent of the infrastructure in Ontario and therefore isn’t directly in charge of spending to maintain the various infrastructure across the province.

While Queen’s Park is responsible for some buildings and transportation, it is municipal governments that take care of the majority of infrastructure in the province.

Municipal governments in Ontario manage more than $500 billion worth of infrastructure. It includes buildings, transportation and wastewater pipes and processing plants.

Towns and cities pay to maintain their own infrastructure using property taxes, local revenue and money from both the federal and provincial governments.

The Ontario NDP said the province is not doing enough to prepare for the costs of climate change.

“The cost of doing nothing is billions of dollars higher than the cost of proactively investing in our public infrastructure for climate adaptation,” the NDP’s climate action critic Peter Tabuns said.

The report is the latest in a string of FAO studies estimating the cost of climate change on roads, buildings and pipes in Ontario.