As Canadians, we are affected by weather and environmental conditions such as tornadoes, winter storms, floods, hurricanes, droughts, smog, variable lake levels, extremes in temperature and precipitation, aircraft turbulence, sea ice conditions, and road icing. These conditions can affect our health and safety, property, businesses, the economy, and the environment. The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC), the core service supporting the Weather and Environmental Predictions (WEP) Business Line, operates 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, to forecast weather and environmental conditions from coast to coast to coast at the local, regional, national and international levels.

Environment Canada's Meteorological Service works to reduce risks to Canadians from weather-related and environmental hazards by providing warnings of hazardous and severe weather and by supporting other government departments and agencies in their decision-making. The Service's work also helps weather-sensitive industries, such as transportation, energy, fisheries, forestry and tourism, to improve productivity and competitiveness, as well as assisting them to make their operations environmentally sustainable. The Meteorological Service of Canada also provides the federal government with essential scientific information to support the development of effective policies on key issues such as clean air, clean water and water management, and climate change.

Weather and Environmental Predictions Business Line Help Canadians adapt to their environment in ways that safeguard their health, safety and security, optimize economic activity and enhance enviromental quality
Key Results:
Reduce impact of Weather and related Hazards			Adaptation to Enviromental changes
Priorities
Focusing on high impact Weather and related Hazards	Transformation of the Meteorological Service of Canada	Improving the Quality of Forecasts	Informing Policy Through Science

4.3.1 The Transformation of the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) enables both of WEPs Key Results

Priority: Transformation of the Metereological Service of Canada (MSC)

In March 2003, the Environment Minister announced the investment of $75 million over 5 years and $5 million per year ongoing thereafter in order enable the Meteorological Service of Canada to better meet the needs of Canadians. With this new funding, Canadians will see improvements in the accuracy and timeliness of day-to-day forecasts, longer-term forecasting and in the prediction of extreme weather events. The new funding will be used to transform, strengthen and revitalize the Meteorological Service of Canada operations. It will also be used to ensure that Canadians have continuing and sustainable access to quality weather and climate information to safeguard their health, safety and security, as well as their social and economic well being.

What is the issue?

A cornerstone of government is to reduce social and economic vulnerability by providing federal services for the safety and security of Canadians. Moreover, Canadians want those services kept modern and adaptive to changing economic and social need. In the more than 130 years since the Meteorological Service of Canada was created, the ravages of time coupled with rapid advances in science and technology have caused parts of the Meteorological Service of Canada's monitoring infrastructure to rust out or become obsolete, putting the integrity of observed data at risk. In some cases, the monitoring infrastructure requires the remediation of older monitoring sites to meet present environmental standards.

In addition, the Service is faced with the reality of an aging scientific workforce. The departure of staff through retirements and other actions presents a significant risk to the organization in terms of lost knowledge and expertise. Without proper succession planning and human resource management, there may be a gradual loss of professional and technical skills if new and remaining staff do not have sufficient training to take on the duties performed by this group. The Meteorological Service of Canada needs a broad-based solution to manage the threat posed by infrastructure and human-resource challenges, and to maintain the integrity of Canada's weather and water service. The new funding is urgently required to modernize Meteorological Service of Canada operations and to lay the foundation for ongoing sustainability and service enhancements.

What are we doing about it?

The Weather and Environmental Predictions (WEP) Business Line began undertaking a full review of its funding resource allocations in fiscal year 1999-2000. This exercise entailed a complete review of existing budget allocations within the organization and of the results that were or should be targeted with these resources. The March 2003 transformation funds target key issues that need to be addressed in order to ensure that the planned 2004-2005 full budget reallocation can successfully deliver its intended improved service, sustainability, and results focus for this year and beyond.

With the new funding, the Meteorological Service of Canada began consolidating its fourteen forecast operations into five Storm Prediction Centres (SPC) in order to optimize operational efficiency. New National Research Laboratories, funded through internal reallocation, will be co-located with the consolidated forecasting operations in the Storm Prediction Centres. Co-location will enable more effective transfer of knowledge between the scientific research and forecast operations functions. The efficiencies obtained through consolidation are expected to help produce better forecasting and warning services for Canadians by enabling forecasters to focus on severe weather while automating more routine functions. Consolidation measures will lay essential foundations for future initiatives that will fulfill the Meteorological Service of Canada's longer-term vision to support: greater protection of the health, safety and security of Canadians; more efficient and effective federal weather-related operations; and greater innovation and competitiveness of weather-sensitive sectors and emerging meteorological industries.

In addition, new National Service Offices will be created to focus on key stakeholders such as the marine community and media organizations, and on weather-sensitive industries such as forestry, transportation and agriculture. With a critical mass of expertise in the newly created production, research and service centres, there will be more opportunities for research and development, enhanced use of existing technologies such as satellite, aircraft and radar equipment, strengthened collaboration with universities and other public or private sector partners, and improvements in client service and public education and outreach in addition to the core improved forecast and warning quality. To ensure that the Meteorological Service of Canada maintains the expertise it requires in the future, efforts will be directed to the active recruitment and training of new scientists, meteorologists, and technicians to replace staff lost through retirement.

For the next four years the Meteorological Service of Canada will be re-positioning the organization as per the Minister's announcement on March 13, 2003. The Meteorological Service of Canada transformation will involve the following five main components:

• Meteorological Service of Canada Forecast Operations Restructuring and Refocusing - consolidate public, marine and severe weather forecasting operations from 14 centres across the country to 5 larger centres.
  
  

• Creating National Service Offices, Increased Outreach and Strengthened Partnerships - dedicate more resources to partnerships with, and services for, key stakeholders and clients, in particular the media, emergency responders, private meteorological service providers and weather sensitive industries
  
  

• Monitoring Networks Life Cycle Management - integrate new and more innovative technologies into existing monitoring networks to enhance observing capacity.
  
  

• Refocusing Research and Development - create 5 new national laboratories that will: increase the research and development, and training capacity in regional offices; and enhance technology transfer within the Department and with clients.
  
  

• Key Employee Skill Sets and Recruitment - commitments to ensure that the Meteorological Service of Canada continues to be a good employer throughout the significant changes related to Transformation.
  
  

Transformation and renewal are fundamental to most of these initiatives, whether they are renewal of the Meteorological Service of Canada 's human resource capital or the modernization of hardware and software infrastructure. This transformation is a major undertaking for the Meteorological Service of Canada and it is proceeding in concert with ongoing operations and research and development activities. This transformation and the associated 2004-2005 Weather and Environmental Predictions (WEP) budget reallocation are key enabling initiatives that will ensure that the Meteorological Service of Canada is well positioned to effectively and efficiently deliver on its two key results.

What are the key management challenges at risk?

The March 2003 new funding and plans for Transformation will enable better delivery by the Meteorological Service of Canada of the two key WEP Business Line results.

This said, in view of the fact that the infrastructure life-cycle management has been neglected for too many years, there is some risk that this investment will be insufficient to address the 'bow-wave' of investment that would be required to catch up to the existing investment needed to address the monitoring rust-out issue. This challenge will be managed through more analysis throughout this 5-year initiative, as well as pursuing possible new funding and monitoring opportunities such as the internationally driven Global Earth Observation (GEO) initiative.

Implementing significant changes while maintaining ongoing activities carries with it the obvious risks of ensuring uninterrupted and continued 24/7 service while relocating complex operations. Furthermore, in view of the critical need to ensure service in the worst of severe weather and emergency situations, contingency plans for the 5 versus 14 centre new operational model are also being addressed.

There are clear impacts and the usual discomfort for staff as the Meteorological Service of Canada goes through relocation of some of its activities and through changes associated with budget reallocations and refocusing of activities. Effective and regular communication and HR support and training will be required to ensure that employees have the necessary information and skills to meet the personal and work challenges ahead.

As public and client expectations increase, there is the risk of not seeing the full results of transformation for several years since it will take time to create new offices and infrastructure and to build human capital. Furthermore, there is the challenge of maintaining positive relations with partners as the Meteorological Service of Canada rationalizes its monitoring networks. Regular consultation with these partners and stakeholders, as well as the development of strategic communication events that highlight early results will be critical in managing these risks over the first few years of this 5-year initiative.

The Meteorological Service of Canada is actively working to address these risks through its close management and tracking of Transformation activities and results.

4.3.2 Key Result: Reduced impact of Weather and related Hazards

Key Result: Adaptation to Environmental Changes

4.3.2 Key Result: Reduced impact of Weather and related Hazards

Reduced impact of weather and related hazards on security, health, safety and the economy

Priority: Focusing on high impact Weather and related Hazards

What is the issue?

The long-term goal of the Meteorological Service of Canada is to improve Canadians' capacity to adapt to, anticipate, mitigate, withstand, and recover from high-impact weather events and related hazards to help ensure healthy communities where threats from environmental hazards are minimized.

The risks to health, safety, property and the economy from naturally occurring environmental hazards, such as ice storms, floods, hurricanes, drought, and wind, are increasing. Canadians are becoming more vulnerable to high-impact weather and related hazards because of migration patterns to more vulnerable areas such as flood plains, growing urban density, aging infrastructure and the creation of complex but vulnerable production and delivery systems. Other environmental hazards, such as poor air quality, may be produced or intensified by human activity. As well, property and economic losses due to environmental hazards have increased dramatically in recent years. In 1998, Canada spent $3 billion to repair damage from high impact weather and related hazards. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, disaster recovery payments (from insurance companies and taxpayers) doubled every five years throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This trend is expected to increase in the new century.

What are we doing about it?

Government, industry and universities have joined forces to ensure that Canada maintains a high level of expertise in the area of high-impact weather and climate. For example, the Meteorological Service of Canada continues to support the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS), established in 2000 to fund university-based research in climate and atmospheric sciences.

Media and private sector companies, such as Pelmorex (the parent company of The Weather Network and Météomédia), are key partners in getting warnings and forecasts out to Canadians. They also assist in disseminating information on how Canadians can protect themselves and their property from environmental hazards.

To further the benefits derived from warnings, Environment Canada continues to explore innovative ways to deliver weather warnings and information to Canadians in time for them to take action to protect themselves and their property. Technologies, such as cell phones, personal data assistants, laptop computers, the Internet, and digital radios, offer a variety of future opportunities. These include crawler messages that scroll across television screens to warn viewers of severe weather and technologies that interrupt automated radio broadcasts during weather-warning situations. This will create an opportunity for new partnerships with broadcasters and cable and telecommunications companies.

Water continues to be a growing priority in Canada and the Meteorological Service of Canada plays a key role in monitoring, understanding, and predicting the impacts upon Canada's water resources. The Meteorological Service of Canada, through its research and prediction programs and the Water Survey of Canada, works closely with provincial and other partners to ensure that knowledge of current and forecast conditions of rain, snow and ice are available so that critical drought and flood hazard impacts can be mitigated.

In partnership with others, Environment Canada wants to improve the capacity to anticipate, mitigate, withstand, and recover from high-impact events and related hazards by improving lead time, accuracy, utility and satisfaction with warnings. To achieve this goal, the following broad strategies are being pursued:

• Monitoring approaches and technology that will increase the likelihood of early detection of severe weather and its precursors.
  
  

• Improving warning production and dissemination capability through production modernization.
  
  

• Targeting atmospheric, hydrometeorology and ice science activities and associated predictive modeling capacity.
  
  

• Improving support to emergency preparedness and response for citizens and first responders, including capacity to address atmospheric security threats.
  
  

What are the key management challenges at risk?

The importance of weather and environmental services is increasing as Canadians become more vulnerable to changing weather and environmental conditions. The challenge to Environment Canada is to improve the timeframes within which environmental hazards and issues such as climate change and environmental health are addressed to allow Canadians and government the time to anticipate, prevent, withstand or adapt to such conditions more effectively.

Overall, the Meteorological Service of Canada must continue on its path of continuous improvement through focused renewal and reallocation to this priority. It must continue to leverage its contributions with those of key partners and must seek innovative ways of delivering these vital warning services to Canadians.

4.3.3 Key Result: Adaptation to Environmental Changes

Adaptation to day-to-day and longer-term changes in atmospheric, hydrological and ice conditions

Priority: Improving the quality of forecasts from Days to Seasons

What is the issue?

Citizens, weather-sensitive industries and institutions in Canada depend on the availability of information from the Meteorological Service of Canada to make daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal decisions related to their plans, their quality of life, their health and their economic welfare. The Meteorological Service of Canada leverages its very large investment in monitoring and predictive capacity targeted at safety and security considerations to provide the required information to answer to this immense need.

The need is growing as we advance in this information age because decisions are increasingly optimized as economic and timeliness pressures push for more forewarning and precision in forecasts in order to gain a competitive edge or simply to meet the demands of daily life. Information users are also becoming more sophisticated and they are demanding full access to raw data, to live data and to extensive archives in order to customize the use of this information or to make some of the assessments of future states themselves or with private sector meteorological service providers. Computer and telecommunication technological capability changes have enabled this trend.

Climate variability, air quality, water level, precipitation and general weather forecasts are increasingly important to agriculture, shipping, construction, media, health, environmental conservation, forestry, recreation and the public. These sectors seek increased predictive capacities on the short and long term weather, climate and environmental conditions, and improved ability to predict the presence and levels of threats in air and water. Statistics indicate that even the average Canadian citizen is more programmed - actively engaged during specific times or days in planned work or leisure activities - than in the past and is hence less adaptable to changing environmental or weather circumstances and therefore seeking more assurances as plans are made. All of these demands exert pressure on the Meteorological Service of Canada's limited resources but they also excite its willingness to serve and the need for continuous service improvement.

What are we doing about it?

The Meteorological Service of Canada supports forecast and data dissemination systems, actively builds client relations, seeks to work with the private sector to develop new markets, and has dedicated public outreach staff whose responsibility it is to catalyze the use and ensure the effectiveness of Meteorological Service of Canada information for our stakeholders. Efficient distribution of weather products and services is one key to reducing risk by optimizing the lead-time for decision-makers. We distribute products directly on the Web, on our own network of radio transmitters and advanced telephone technologies for automated or live access to forecast information. We also rely heavily on the media for mass distribution of our forecasts. Last year, we received approximately 40 million phone calls from the public for weather and environmental information and had 100 million visitors to the Weather Office Web site. Most of our services are provided to the public at no charge, but we also serve those requiring specialized information on a cost recovered basis where services are not available from the marketplace.

The Meteorological Service of Canada provides the monitoring, production and service delivery infrastructure to produce weather, air quality, extended range and seasonal forecasts. This service continues to be refined and improved as the technological, scientific and demand drivers permit. The Meteorological Service of Canada has clearly committed, through its recent reallocation exercise and through additional ongoing funds secured for these purposes within the March 2003 announcement, to undertake action in the following key areas.

• Improving accuracy of and access to short-term forecasts for citizens, weather-sensitive industries and institutions.
  
  

• Improving access to all of its real-time and archived data holdings and to ensuring a high level of quality control of this information.
  
  

• Improving the accuracy and use of extended range and seasonal forecasts for weather sensitive industries and institutions.
  
  

• Increasing its support to information users with an expanded outreach program.
  
  

What are the key management challenges and risks?

The increasing demands from the public and specialized clients for high quality, timely information will continue to exert pressure on the Meteorological Service of Canada's limited financial and human resources, from a science and service delivery perspective. New technology such as ensemble prediction (generation of probabilistic forecasts), has the potential for higher quality short and longer term forecasts, but will require greater effort and investment in education and outreach with the public and weather-sensitive sectors to ensure the new products are interpreted and used appropriately.

With every scientific or technical improvement, client expectations increase accordingly, whether for longer time scales (seasons), higher geographic resolution, higher accuracy, or greater access to data to use for their own purposes. The Meteorological Service of Canada will need to continue to ensure that client needs can be met, whether by working with the private meteorological sector in Canada to increase overall capacity, augmenting service delivery options as budgets and technology permits, and improving data accessibility and quality for all these growing demands.

Priority: Informing Policy through Science

What is the issue?

The Meteorological Service of Canada's research and development activities continue to be vital for the health and safety of the public and for informed policy formulation by the Canadian federal, provincial, and local governments and other stakeholders. Climate change is showing real signs of effect on our lives, our environment and our economy. It is only through assessment of climate change scenarios, at the global, national and local levels that adaptation actions can be initiated by individuals, governments and industries.

In general, scientific assessment of the status of environmental stressors and progress in mitigating the impact of these on our society is a critical function that enables decisions related to current and future directions and actions by governments and others. This is clearly urgent for the climate change issue but also it continues to be critical for other priorities such as clean air and clean and available water among others.

What are we doing about it?

The Meteorological Service of Canada conducts research to ensure that Environment Canada has a solid scientific base on which to build policies and strategies that safeguard our environment and protect human health. We also support initiatives such as Biosphere Implications of CO2 Policy (BIOCAP), a not-for-profit organization that has been working with industry and producer groups, government and non-governmental organizations as well as the national research community and university funding agencies to promote and encourage university-based research aimed at:

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (especially N2O and CH4) from biological sources including agriculture, landfill sites and wetlands;
• Removing atmospheric carbon (C) through enhancing biosphere carbon sinks in agriculture, forestry and wetlands;
• Replacing existing energy sources with biomass and biological systems that will provide a sustainable and renewable source of energy, chemicals and materials.

The Meteorological Service of Canada conducts research in a wide variety of areas related to the priority issues of the Department including the following key areas:

• Climate and climate change, air quality and associated predictive modeling capacity.
  
  

• Climate change impacts and adaptations.
  
  

• Science assessment, advice and communication.
  
  

What are the key management challenges at risk?

The ultimate key to the success of Environment Canada's research and development lies in securing a long-term funding base for research efforts where results are observed only in the longer term. Funding for some research activities may be at risk to due to sunsetting of programs, so efforts are required to ensure continued support for vital science activities. The recent implementation of a strategic plan for the Meteorological Service of Canada's Research and Development activities is an important step in achieving this objective.

In addition, attracting, developing and retaining talented scientists is a critical challenge faced by the Department, given competitors who can often offer attractive positions more rapidly to candidates. This is particularly important given the large numbers of retirements expected over the next five years. Additional challenges face the Meteorological Service of Canada as it develops plans to address recommendations made by the external peer review and financial resources are allocated to these priorities.