As the ninth-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, Canada has a multifaceted part to play in reconciling our global crisis. This country has a responsibility to step up and dramatically prevent emissions - to be a greater leader in the clean energy movement, which includes taking subsidies out of the fossil fuel industry and directing this to green infrastructure. There is also another essential step: for the damage Canada has caused, there needs to be provisions made to existing refugee regulations in regards to accepting climate refugees. These individuals are often from countries who have contributed the least to the climate crisis, like Kiribati, but now have to abandon their roots - the site of their history, families, cultures, and languages, because of this crisis caused by industrialized nations. As Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party stated last year, “By geography, we’re one of the biggest countries in the world, by population one of the smaller. We have an obligation; we’ve been one of the biggest polluters."
A 2010 report by the federal government, entitled Climate Change and Forced Migration: Canada's Role, deduced that "best estimates suggest that hundreds of millions of people could be on the move in the coming decades due to the impacts of climate change. Canada has an opportunity now to plan an orderly and effective response to the coming crisis."
Despite arriving at this knowledge, there is still no plan, and this has to do with the definitions surrounding the word “refugee” and the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which doesn't recognize climate threats as a cause for a person fleeing from their country. This convention states a refugee as “someone who has crossed an international border owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” This parameter does not include climate change, which has become an increasingly driving factor of war and disputes that cause persecution - from droughts to resource scarcity. In order to be considered for resettlement in Canada, people need to be a Convention refugee as stated in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This leaves a protection gap for millions of people are in a vulnerable position due to climate change and related issues: the International Organization of Migration (IOM) predicting that there could be as many as 200 million Climate Refugees by 2050.
According to CBC, “in 2018, Canada was one of 167 countries that signed the UN's Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which sets out that participating countries need to ‘identify, develop and strengthen solutions for migrants compelled to leave their countries of origin due to slow-onset natural disasters, the adverse effects of climate change.’” However, like many UN agreements, this is not legally binding.
As we attempt to structure a society that’s safer for the future of all people, we need provisions made to international and national refugee regulations that are legally binding. With this, we also need policies to protect domestic climate migrants, which we’re already seeing as people in wildfire hotspots, like Alberta, are forced to flee from their homes to livable locations within the nation. We all need to write to our Members of Parliament and demand this - use this post as a template for this email, and ask them for provisions in refugee law to include a comprehensive definition of climate refugees. We also need to urge our MP’s and other political leaders to end subsidies to fossil fuels and invest in a just recovery by funding clean energy - so that we can prevent more people from forced migration due to climate change in the first place.
