As geopolitical risks rise and Canada moves to meet NATO’s five per cent defence and security commitment, national readiness is being redefined. Yet the domestic infrastructure that enables “readiness, resilience, and reach” at home remains one of the country’s underappreciated security vulnerabilities.

Canada’s vulnerability was made clear last year when British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, one of Canada’s largest economic hubs, was temporarily cut off from the rest of the country. The impacts extended far beyond the water’s edge. The real failure was the loss of connection. When key transportation corridors failed, reach across the region collapsed: freight slowed, fuel and repair crews were delayed, and essential services were disrupted far beyond the flood zone. This was not an isolated disruption, but a breakdown of the infrastructure that holds the country together.

2025 was not the first time connective infrastructure failures escalated from a regional emergency into a national economic and security disruption. In November 2021, the Lower Mainland also experienced flooding, road and rail outages, and was temporarily isolated. National supply chains were disrupted for weeks as goods, fuel and essential supplies struggled to move in and out of the region, costing more than $3 billion in trade and lost productivity.

Failures in critical infrastructure increasingly produce national consequences, regardless of their source. In 2023, wildfires forced prolonged closures of major transportation routes in multiple provinces, constraining emergency response and delaying the movement of goods, fuel and personnel. Even outside climate disasters, the 2022 Rogers network outage demonstrated how the failure of a single critical system can cascade across banking, emergency services, transportation and communications nationwide. Different triggers, different regions, but the same underlying pattern and need for coordinated response.

Infrastructure damage costs Canada billions each year in repair and replacement alone. But decision makers responsible for economic security, health-care delivery and public safety are increasingly aware of how quickly localized failures escalate into widespread service loss. Cascading disruptions drive emergency spending, suppress economic activity and strain health and public safety systems — costs that are harder to predict, harder to control and far more expensive to manage after the fact.

 An in-depth analysis and complimentary video just published by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) examines these risks across British Columbia’s transportation, energy and communications systems and reaches a clear conclusion: when critical infrastructure systems fail together, the consequences quickly escalate and exceed the mandates of any single owner or regulator. This PICS report provides a roadmap for how to unpack the issues and prepare within the B.C. context with larger lessons for the country.

Infrastructure disruptions today should be a warning regarding the storms that federal and provincial decision makers will face tomorrow. Canada plans and regulates infrastructure as discrete assets, but under stress these systems behave as interdependent networks. When infrastructure fails, operational capacity degrades quickly and across sectors, which can quickly become a threat to the security and safety of citizens and the country. Closing that gap means governing for continuity under stress, not just efficiency in normal conditions.

Ottawa has begun to recognize the strategic vulnerability of interconnected digital systems. Recent legislation, including Bill C-8, expands federal authority to designate and oversee vital cyber systems and to coordinate information across national security agencies. That shift reflects a growing understanding that information and communications technology underpins economic stability and defence operations. But other forms of critical infrastructure, such as roads, remain largely outside a national continuity framework and have significant implications for essential services ranging from hospitals and data centres to ports and military bases. When those systems fail, it threatens resilience and security across the country.

By strengthening regional and national critical infrastructure to withstand a changing climate, we can simultaneously strengthen sovereignty and security, writes Dylan Clark

During the Cold War, Canada understood infrastructure as a collection of assets to be protected — power plants, ports, dams — and focused on guarding those critical nodes. Today, vulnerability lies less in individual facilities than in their interconnectedness — the corridors and networks that sustain services under stress — and the dependencies that can disable them. In this volatile age, readiness and domestic reach can no longer be separated. They must be planned and governed as a single strategic system. 

Canada would benefit from working closer with provinces and territories to build shared situational awareness of infrastructure interdependencies and cascading risk across sectors and regions. Ottawa and regional governments should also embed service continuity requirements into major infrastructure and capital investments, making resilience a condition of readiness rather than a secondary objective.

By strengthening regional and national critical infrastructure to withstand a changing climate, we can simultaneously strengthen sovereignty and security. Building that resilience requires a sustained focus on continuity of service, clearer cross-jurisdictional coordination and a renewed commitment to public investment in systems that underpin economic stability and public safety.

Dylan Clark is the director of research mobilization with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. 

© National Observer