In 1996, faced with a major public finance crisis, Lucien Bouchard launched the Summit on the Economy and Employment. It brought together the main economic, union and social players of the day to find solutions. The initiative will have led, among other things, to the implementation of the Working Group on the social economy.
Now is the time to do the same with climate change.
While the tragic events of the past few days in Charlevoix and several regions in Quebec painfully remind us of the scale of the climate crisis, the Association of Consulting Engineering Firms of Quebec is calling for the same audacity and the same tour de force to limit the climate change and counter its increasingly devastating effects, while maintaining economic strength to reduce the inequalities it causes.
Quebec engineering, with its great capacity for innovation, is part of the solution.
A national summit on adaptation to climate change would bring together Quebec engineering stakeholders and federate this technical force with municipalities as well as with professionals in health, land use planning, public safety and other spheres. relevant. Its mandate would be to assess the risk to the infrastructures and to propose adaptation and transformation solutions.
Resilience
The need for this resilience is relentless. According to a study commissioned by the Union des municipalités du Québec, carried out by Ouranos and WSP, “it would cost more than two billion dollars per year for Quebec municipalities […] only to adapt their infrastructures and make them more resilient to climatic hazards […] “. It is therefore essential and urgent to act. In our view, this action requires a summit aimed at the resilience of the Quebec territory.
The themes to be addressed could be numerous, but the capacity and resilience of infrastructures appears to be essential. Extreme weather events will drive the design and construction of more resilient infrastructure, which should be based on up-to-date climate modelling. Research on the development of green infrastructures must be accentuated, and the solutions integrated from the design stage.
The regulatory review must also be part of the discussions. Adapting infrastructures is one thing, but it is not enough. There is a need for better coordination and improved building codes and standards and regulations, in particular to take into account the most up-to-date climate data so that our roads, buildings and underground infrastructure are able to to cope with the consequences of climate change.
There is no doubt: the scale of the crisis calls for the collaboration of all stakeholders. A summit devoted to adaptation to climate change would make it possible to coordinate a rapid reaction to the urgency of the situation. Together, for a resilient Quebec.