PART 5

CROSS BORDER TOOLS AND STRATEGIES

Presentation by Georges Beauchemin

at the Climate Change Workshop

May 28, 2003

BIOGRAPHY

G

eorges Beauchemin has been a public servant with the province of Québec for 25 years.  He began his

career in 1977 as an urban planner with the Ministère des affaires municipales.  He is very familiar

with the issues and the impacts of climate change.  In 1996, as the assistant secretary for the Conseil

executif, Georges served as the inter-departmental coordinator for the reconstruction and the economic recovery

of the Saguenay flood disaster area.  In 1999, he was given the task of responding to the ice storm that hit

eastern Ontario and western Québec and, in 2000, he was called upon to respond to the avalanche in the Inuit

village of Kangiqsualujjuaq, Québec.  Georges is currently the director general of municipal affairs in the

Québec Department of Public Security.  He is also the chair of Ouranos, a consortium created in 2002 by the

province of Québec, Hydro-Québec, and the Meteorological Service of Canada to promote the acquisition of

expertise to advance the understanding of regional climate change and of its environmental, social, and eco-

nomic impacts.  The consortium brings together government ministries, universities, associations, foundations,

and other organizations in order to develop the expertise and the strategies necessary to mitigate the impacts of

climate change.   Georges’ presentation looks at climate change from a client or user perspective and, as such,

provides insight for the organization of governance structures to address the issue.  For information about

Ouranos, see:  http://www.ouranos.ca .

INTRODUCTION

When I received the invitation to address this workshop, I was perplexed.  The invitation asked me to do a

presentation on extreme events.  However, upon reflection, I concluded that the climate change adaptation issue

-- this story line -- is not event based.  Climate change is an extreme situation which we are facing and must

focus on.  In reading all the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports and other climate

change reports, I found that most of the adaptation issues that we have to deal with relate one way or another to

water, that water is the common denominator.

In August 2002, Montréal city officials who manage the potable water intake for the city called Ouranos in a

panic.  The Montréal water system is old and outdated, and it leaks.  The official figure is that around 30 to 40%

of the water is lost to the ground.  But the panic was not about this issue.  Rather, the water level in the St.

Lawrence River was so low that they could not get the bulk of the water into the plant, and the emergency pipe

was inoperable.  The officials responsible for Montréal’s infrastructure debated whether to advance an emer-

gency water intake project or to repair the leaky pipes.  Finally, they decided to do neither.  With the water level

in the St. Lawrence today, we would probably need precipitation 200% above normal during the coming months

just to avoid this happening again.  Before, they had to instruct Canada Packers and others to close down.  And

it will happen again.

RISKS

Climate change is not a question of in the future -- it is already there.  One of the basic ideas in the white paper

(in Part 3) is risk.  Consider information that has become available since IPCC’s latest report, such as this report

by the Hadley Climate Centre.  Scientists are telling stakeholders like myself what we read in Figure 1.  There

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