Introduction
The United States and Canada have long enjoyed one of the closest bilateral relationships in the world. They are each other’s biggest trading partners and share both an electrical grid and the world’s longest border, which, given the long-standing amity between the countries, is only partially defended by civilian law enforcement. And yet, just two months into Trump’s second term, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared, “The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.” Mr. Carney is right: the United States of January 20, 2025, is gone.
This is not just because of President Trump’s priorities, which are extreme in their own right, but more importantly because of the way his Administration has gone about their execution. Decimating the civil service, dismantling (in some cases, illegally) whole government departments, and discontinuing scientific research make these changes difficult and time-consuming to undo and thereby have the potential to become permanent. Civil servants, as the executors of government policy, serve as the rudder for the ship of state: without them, whoever occupies the White House next will have a hard time changing course.
This has especially grave implications for work on climate change, which has been hit hard via the Administration’s attack on the sciences. The United States had enjoyed global primacy in climate research owing to the sheer number of funded positions; that leadership position is now vacant. This matters deeply for Canadian national security – both the safety of its people, and the readiness of its armed forces. Canada should aspire to fill America’s shoes if for no other reason than its security depends on it.
What America’s draconian approach to climate science means for Canada
Much that has been lost since January cannot be easily replaced. If the first Trump Administration had pruned back climate change work, the second Administration is ripping it out by the root. Since January, the Administration has pulled staff and funding from the nation’s primary climate science organizations, like the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), on which scientists around the world depend, and NOAA’s “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Database,” a critical tool for researchers of all types to understand the cost of natural disasters. The Administration’s proposed FY2026 budget included a 55% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, a similar cut to the National Science Foundation that targeted climate science, and an almost 25% cut to NASA—the largest ever proposed—that includes a $1.16 billion decrement of its earth science program that funds climate-monitoring satellites.
America’s retreat from global leadership on the climate crisis is a significant strategic blunder, but the destruction of data and science creates an immediate and urgent tactical and operational gap. As one Canadian geographer and scholar put it, “The US government is the world’s biggest publisher. People from around the world turn to it as a source of information.” Until those who make that information are rehired – or painstakingly recreated – many countries, especially Canada, will be flying blind. Canada has relied on US climate science and data for years. Flood forecasters in Manitoba, for example, use NOAA data given that 85% of the Red River Basin is in US territory. One meteorologist in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Eddie Sheerr, uses NOAA data and modeling “literally every day,” and it was NOAA data that convinced Sheerr, in 2022, to call the mayor of a small city in Newfoundland to urge him to issue an evacuation order before Hurricane Fiona made landfall. That call saved lives. Now, with the 2025 hurricane season ramping up, Canadian meteorologists don’t have the same access to data that Sheerr did.
Scientific collaboration, too, is another lifesaving tool now lying on the cutting-room floor. Meteorologists at the US National Weather Service’s office in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and the Office of Environment and Climate Change Canada have a history of collaboration on generating warnings for blizzards, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. But in February of this year, the Trump Administration ordered NOAA to ask permission first before working with their Canadian colleagues. Without American climate data and the scientists to collaborate with, the accuracy of Canadian weather forecasts will decrease, the risks to Canadian lives and livelihoods will increase, and the frequency with which the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will have to help Canadians in crisis will accelerate.
The 86,000-strong CAF must keep the second-largest country in the world safe from a multitude of threats, deploy abroad, and respond to natural disasters. When one of those three missions grows, it stresses the CAF’s ability to execute the other two. 2023 provides an example. In that year, the CAF deployed to Latvia to bolster deterrence in Europe via Operation Reassurance, maintained forward presence in the Indo-Pacific via Operation HORIZON, and stress-tested their operational resilience alongside allies and partners in the Canadian Arctic via Operation Nanook. At the same time, the CAF also had to deal with Canada’s “worst fire season in 30 years,” which required the CAF to send more than “2100 members to six provinces and territories for more than four months to assist.”
It is indisputable that the military will be called upon to assist more people more frequently as the climate worsens. Domestic disaster relief missions, conducted via Operation LENTUS, have increased dramatically—from eight over two decades (1990-2010) to five in a single year (2022). The question is, how will the CAF’s other missions suffer as a result? “Our North, Strong and Free,” Canada’s defence policy update published last year, calls on Canada to “Lead and/or contribute forces to NATO” and “lead and/or contribute to international peace operations,” and climate change is rightly listed as one of the accelerants that “exacerbate security challenges for societies in fragile regions that can ill afford them.” But given the degree to which the United States has retreated from NATO and the United Nations combined with the growing demand for CAF support after domestic disasters, will Canada be stretched too thin to step up?
Four steps forward, no steps back
Canada’s latest defence policy update is notable for many reasons, chief among them being that it commits the Canadian government to quadrennial reviews of its security and defence policy. Given this increased tempo, now is the time to anticipate drafting the next round—and were its southern neighbor governed by an administration whose own policies fell within historical norms, this task would be fairly straightforward. Accounting for both the norm-breaking bent of the Trump Administration and the yawning gap in climate science data, however, makes the task more complicated: Canada must find a way to do much more with much less. There are four complementary ways it could move forward.
Recognize and proactively manage the worsening recruitment and retention crisis
Ottawa’s commitment to “lead and/or contribute” to NATO and international peace operations must square with the Canadian military’s lived experience of getting continuously pulled into domestic disaster relief missions. Left unaddressed, troop burnout may increase, readiness levels decrease, and retention could take a significant hit, which will have a knock-on effect on the military’s recruitment goals. To avoid this fate, Ottawa must place its armed forces further down the list of disaster relief organizations by supplanting them with trained, equipped, and capable civilian organizations able to provide similar assistance. Organizations like Team Rubicon-Canada and the Canadian Disaster Response Organization are among the groups that could be grown to suit the need, not just financially, but also through incentives to Canadian citizens to grow their volunteer ranks. Such organizations may not fit all requirements, but responses from the military must get meaningfully closer to the point of last resort.
Fill the climate data gap through international cooperation
Climate change data needs to be easily understood and translated, both in a linguistic and in a policymaking sense, for it to be useful for multiple nations. Everything from the models used to the parameters and time scales chosen needs to be transparent so that it generates sound policy decisions and fosters good communication. This can be a challenge, one that the G20 has tried to address through its Data Gaps Initiative. Canada should lead the charge on strengthening international cooperation on climate data, including its interpretation and creation, through cost-sharing on new satellites (perhaps via public-private partnerships) and AI-enabled technology to accelerate the processing of data-rich information. Canada should work with the provinces to make sure their requirements inform the design and delivery of life-saving meteorological information to accelerate taking proactive steps to stay safe. This is especially urgent for Canada’s Arctic provinces whose 150,000 citizens inhabit a region warming four times faster than the global average. Monitoring their safety will be significantly harder now that the Trump Administration has cut a number of Arctic science databases and projects, such as the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation that provided data to the world for free.
Build a climate-literate defence industrial base
Canada’s defence policy update makes a commitment to generate “ready, resilient, and relevant Canadian Armed Forces” and increase defence spending to 1.76% of GDP by 2029. Whereas this had been within striking distance of the 2% target formerly expected of the NATO alliance at the time that policy update was written, this year’s NATO Summit in June increased that target to 5% comprised of a 3.5% core military spending and 1.5% for infrastructure and supporting investments. Prime Minister Carney made it clear at the Summit that Canada is committed to meeting that target, especially the 1.5% component, and NATO has ten years to do so. However, whether Canada can make climate-informed budget decisions – and include climate change investments within that 1.5% – remains to be seen. Spain had argued in favor of counting climate change mitigation spending as within bounds but failed to persuade the alliance. In Canada’s case, the money it apportions towards defence, which would be $150 billion per year if it meets the 5% target, will go to waste if it procures equipment that can’t operate in hotter or less salty conditions. Canada must ensure the kit purchased – and the infrastructure built – through this budget increase will serve its armed forces for many decades to come, which in turn means ensuring the defence industrial base and those who partner with them understand how to make climate-informed decisions, like knowing how much the operating environment will change over the next few decades. Factoring that information into design schematics will buttress the readiness of Canada’s armed forces.
Increase Canada’s climate talent pool through national investment
Finally, Canada must continue to invest in science across the education continuum to generate a robust pipeline of homegrown talent able to produce and analyze climate change data and research into the future. True, Canada would have to double its expenditure on science to meet the same level as the United States, but with one-eighth the population, Canada can arguably get by with less. Simply getting more Canadian teenagers interested in climate science might increase the rate of postsecondary graduates with a relevant degree which, as of 2022, under 6% of Canadians possessed. Providing them with education, training, and a pathway towards a career is the most effective way to ensure the United States does not become a single point of failure again.
Conclusion
Thanks to an increasing number and worsening severity of natural disasters, the Canadian armed forces stand to be stretched thinner, responding to more climate-worsened disasters domestically while backfilling the gap of American forces abroad. While subsequent defence strategies will need to account for this readiness drain, subsequent national policies will also need to account for the lack of American-provided climate data, so that Canada will not have to do more with less warning and poorer intelligence than before. Considering the Trump Administration’s cuts to US education, it will take decades to regrow and rehire the talent required for the United States to once again lead the world in climate science research. In the meantime, someone will need to step into the breach. It can, and should, be Canada.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
Caroline Baxter is the Director of the Converging Risks Lab at the Council on Strategic Risks. Prior to this position, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training in which capacity she served as the principal senior authority on the development of DoD policy relating to the cognitive and physical preparations required by the Joint Force. Baxter holds a B.A. with honors in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and an M.A. in International Security Policy from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
