TORONTO – Nearly one in four Canadians has been directly affected by extreme weather events in the past twelve months, according to a new survey conducted online by Leger among 1,529 Canadians between June 13 and 15: according to the research, 23 per cent of Canadians interviewed said they had been personally affected by extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, wildfires and tornadoes in the past 12 months.
Among those who said they had been affected by extreme weather events, nearly two-thirds said they had been forced to stay indoors due to concerns about air quality (65 per cent), while 39 per cent reported experiencing emotional distress. Twenty-seven per cent of those who reported experiencing extreme weather events said they had to postpone travel plans, while one in fifth had suffered property damage (20 per cent). Eight per cent were forced to evacuate due to flooding, and seven per cent due to fires. The survey comes amid a wildfire season where more than 2,000 fires have already been documented in Canada this year, burning nearly 40,000 square kilometres of land; about three-quarters of the total burned area is in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The percentage of Canadians who say they have been affected by extreme weather events is actually down from the 35% Leger reported when it asked the same question in August 2024, a year after Canada’s worst wildfire season in 2023 when the flames hit nearly every province and thick smoke blanketed cities across Canada for days and, in some cases, weeks.
The research also addresses concerns about the immediate future, while Environment and Climate Change Canada’s modeling is suggesting that temperatures will be about a degree or two above normal across the country through August. Indeed, Leger’s survey suggests that nearly two-thirds of Canadians are concerned about hot summers and heatwaves. That two-thirds becomes 74% of respondents in British Columbia: Natural Resources Canada predicts, not surprisingly, a risk of extreme fires in southern British Columbia in July. The number of Canadians worried about a hot summer has decreased since the August 2024 survey, which found that 70% of respondents were worried about summer heat.
According to Leger Executive Vice President Andrew Enns, the survey conducted just before the start of summer is intended to provide a baseline for studying how recent events are affecting Canadians’ perceptions of climate. “And then we can have this conversation and really say, ‘OK, yes, there is a temporal impact’ and factor that into our analysis of these things” Enns said, adding that the institute is planning another survey for later this summer
Returning to the results, the percentage of Canadians who said they were concerned about climate change fell to 59% from 63% in the August 2024 survey, while exactly half of Canadians surveyed said there is still time to reverse the consequences of climate change, an increase of two percentage points from August 2024.
To download/read the original full survey, click here: Extreme-weather-events_June-16th
In the pic above, the cover picture of Leger’s research (https://leger360.com/attitudes-towards-extreme-weather-events/)
