A person wears a mask as they cycle through Majors Hill park in Ottawa on Friday, in June, as wildfire smoke from Manitoba hangs over the National Capital region.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
A new global health report suggests that every year from 2020 to 2024 about 1,400 deaths in Canada were associated with wildfire smoke pollution as climate change takes an increasing toll on the country’s health.
The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, compiled by more than 100 experts worldwide, is considered one of the most comprehensive looks at the subject.
Between 2020 and 2024, the report found the wildfire smoke pollution in Canada had increased on average by 172 per cent compared to what it had been between 2003 and 2012.
Other key findings included that people in Canada last year were exposed to about six days of heat waves that would not have been expected to happen without the influence of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels.
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The report’s findings suggest heat exposure last year resulted in the loss of more than 40 million potential labour hours, 136 per cent more than average in the 1990s.
That’s an estimated $1.4-billion in lost income.
The construction sector accounted for almost two-thirds of those lost hours in 2024.
The report comes ahead of a major United Nations conference on climate change next month in Brazil and a meeting among G7 environment and energy ministers later this week in Toronto.
The world is heading toward a “potentially catastrophic” level of global warming despite decades of scientific warnings, the report says.
Paradoxically, it says, some world leaders are disregarding scientific evidence on health and climate change in favour of short-sighted economic and political interests. “Fossil fuel giants” are taking advantage of that reduced political pressure to pause, delay or retract their climate commitments, the report suggests, at the same time as banks have expanded their lending to the sector, threatening “not only public health but also national economies.”
“With the threats to people’s lives and health growing, delivering a health-protective, equitable, and just transition requires all hands on deck. There is no time left for further delay,” the report says.
The report suggests access to affordable, off-grid, renewable electricity is “essential to tackle the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions and reduce climate risk.”
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Yet globally, around one billion people are served by health-care facilities that lack reliable power supplies and the vast majority of households in the least developed countries use polluting and unreliable fuels to meet energy needs, underlining the “deeply unequal” access to clean energy.
The report says delaying the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is costing lives, but it also highlights how transitions in other sectors, such as food and agricultural, could come with some major climate and health benefits.
The report suggests that in 2022, 39 per cent of emissions associated with Canada’s consumption of agricultural products were associated with red meat and dairy. The same year, the report estimates about 16,000 deaths were linked to excessive consumption of the same two things, as well as processed meat.
