The Current - Canada’s “exceptional” drought from coast to coast to coast

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Across Canada, 71 per cent of the country is abnormally dry or experiencing moderate to severe drought, according to the Canadian Drought Monitor. That includes places like Sunnyside, Newfoundland and Labrador, where the taps ran dry earlier this month. And in Nova Scotia, Farmer Amy Hill in Nova Scotia shares how the dry conditions are straining her farm. John Pomeroy, Director of the Global Water Futures program at the University of Saskatchewan, explains what’s driving these conditions and what Canada must do to prepare for a hotter, drier future.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. People turned down their taps, and there was no water. We kind of knew the water was going to go. We warned residents. They knew that the water levels were very low at the reservoir. And then, of course, there was a little bit of a panic throughout the town. Roger Snook is the mayor of Sunnyside, Newfoundland, and Labrador. The small town of just over 400 people ran

out of water last week. It's one of many communities on Canada's east coast facing severe drought conditions this summer. Towns like Sunnyside rely on reservoirs for their water to drink, cook, bathe, and flush toilets. Throughout August, Sunnyside's reservoir has been slowly drying up because of extreme heat and lack of rain. And last week, the taps ran dry, prompting the town to declare a state of emergency. Sarah Tickner is a resident and she owns a bed and breakfast. The water was shut off, I think for just three days. Our whole concern was Sunnyside is a town full of seniors. At the start, council was giving out a case of bottled water to everybody, but I couldn't stress enough, like how can a senior left in their home manage on just bottled water? Like, we can go and

get buckets of water for whatever we have to do because we're physically able. But the seniors, it was a complete state of emergency. The water is running again, but Sunnyside is still under strict water conservation requirements, and Sarah's worried this could happen again. We are still in the mode of thinking this could happen again because now the taps are back on, they've tapped into another pond, but is that going to run out because it's been so dry?

And I would say for the future, this is how we're going to be. We plan on purchasing more totes, more barrels, and in case of emergency, we're set up. We will have collected rainwater over the winter spring time. And that's all we can do because we can't function like this. The Canadian drought monitor says 71% of the country is abnormally dry or experiencing moderate to severe drought. In a moment, we'll hear more about why that is

and what, if anything, can be done? But first, these conditions are hitting the country's farms hard. Amy Hill is a farmer in Cooksbrook, Nova Scotia, about an hour north of Halifax, and much of that province is abnormally dry. Hello, Amy. Hi. We heard about what's been happening in Newfoundland.

Tell me about what you've been experiencing on your farm this summer. Yeah, I mean, the last couple of summers have been getting definitely increasingly drier. But this year, our farm well, so we have a well for our household, and then we have a well that operates our livestock watering and our irrigation for the gardens. And it ran dry in June and has not had water in it

other than trucked in water that we've been buying weekly. It hasn't filled back up on its own since then. So we've had deliveries of $250 worth of water delivery, every Thursday since June. Ah, so your costs are going up. Tell me, we can dig into that, but tell me what is it that you farm? So on our farm, we're on a small acreage, but we do pastured, hogs, poultry for eggs and meat, and then I also have a market garden.

And your animals, obviously, you're shipping in the water at great expense, but how is this impacting the livestock? Yeah, it's impacted them in a couple of ways. We don't just have a drought. We've also had incredibly hot temperatures week over week through the summer. And so that puts a stress on the livestock as well. So the livestock are drinking probably twice as much water as they usually would. That takes more time for us to be going out, checking waters, refilling where it, what needs to be refilled.

And the pigs themselves haven't been able to dig down and get any wallows. So we've had to be using some water also just to create a wallow for them, which is the way that a hog is able to cool its body down. They don't sweat, so they need to get in the mud and use that to cool their body temperature. So we've had to use that, but then on top of that, they're stressed. So they're eating less, they're growing slower. And for a production farm for meat, that's also a negative. It sounds like you've had to change your operations day to day because of this.

Can you tell me more about that? yeah we've definitely been spending a lot more time running water to places making sure that you know we can refill the poultry's waters up there on big barrel waters but typically we only have to monitor them in the mornings but I've been going back and checking in in the afternoon we've had to move our hogs as much as possible to areas that have a lot more trees in order for them to get shade to cool down. And then again, trucking water over to the woods to dump in for them. So it's just taken a lot more man hours for that.

And then we also have the garden spaces, which we're running irrigation more than we usually would. And at the same time, not actually enough. I'm under irrigating my crops because I am trucking in water every week. And so I have to monitor how much water I use and then how often the trucks can actually come to us. to refill. How much of a financial hit is this for you? It's definitely going to be a hit to us this year. Not only do we have our crops underproducing and currently our livestock is definitely not growing as fast as they typically would. Our poultry aren't laying as many eggs as they usually would because again they are heat stressed. And then we also pulled all of our crops for the fall.

So I didn't do any fall planting. We decided to scrap those because the ground is so dry. I just don't think I can get a good germination at this point. What are you hearing from your neighborhood farmers in the area? I'm hearing about the same thing from everyone. A lot of crops are underproducing. It's taking forever for them to set fruit or to ripen that fruit. They're getting a lot less off of it. Some people are still hoping to try to do a fall crop. Hopefully we start getting some rain. But everyone everywhere is saying the livestock are drinking a lot more. They're eating a lot less. It's harder to move them to good spots and the gardens are all underproducing.

So we all know we're going to take a big hit. It sounds like you've got your hands full just dealing with the changes that have been imposed on you by this drought and this heat. But are you able to make plans for the future? And what are you thinking about the future? Yeah, I think farmers are probably just hopelessly optimistic all the time. Even when we're frustrated. I'm looking around trying to plan for next year, though. I'm looking at the crops like, who is performing okay.

Okay, those are maybe the ones that I want to focus more on next year. And we have plans of putting in a new well this fall, hopefully. And we're trying to find the wettest spot in our property that might be able to actually maintain our water supply so that next year we're not running into these issues quite so much. How much stress are you feeling you and your family as you cope with this situation? Yeah, it's a lot of stress. I mean, farming is a stressful job.

Anybody who's done it knows it's incredibly stressful. We're at the mercy of the weather. But when we're having such big swings like this, you know, the heavy rains of 2023 that we're flooding a lot of fields and now this drought, it's just an added level of stress where sometimes you sit there and you're like, I don't actually know what the next move is. And that's a scary thing to not be able to just pivot. to sit there and say, I don't know what I need to put in place for this to not happen again

or for this to be something that's sustainable. I hear you. And I appreciate you telling us about this. It's important. And thank you for your time this morning. Good luck to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Amy Hill is a farmer in Nova Scotia. She joins us from her family farm in Cooksbrook about an hour north of Halifax. We are gathered here today to celebrate. life's big milestones. Do you promise to stand together through home purchases, auto upgrades, and surprise dents and dings? We do.

To embrace life's big moments for any adorable co-drivers down the road. We do. Then with the caring support of Desjardin insurance, I pronounce you covered for home, auto, and flexible life insurance. For life's big milestones,

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On now exclusively at ROM. Tickets at ROM.ca. Well, more than 70% of the country is dealing with abnormally dry conditions. John Pomeroy is the director of the Global Water Futures Program at the University of Saskatchewan. It is the largest freshwater research program in the world. John Pomeroy, hello. Hello. Well, we just heard a pretty stark picture of what an individual farmer is dealing with in one part of the country. How bad is the situation across the country?

right now? Well, it's exceptional. Canada, for the second time in recent history, has a coast-to-coast-to-coast drought. There are drought areas out in British Columbia, through the northern forests through Alberta, Saskatchewan, then dropping further south in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, through the Maritimes, to Newfoundland, and also in northern Canada in Yukon and parts of the Northwest Territories. So it's an exceptional nation. wide phenomena right now, except for a small region of southwestern, Saskatchewan, and eastern in Alberta, which ironically is usually where droughts hit, but it's been very wet lately. So it's the scope and the scale that are making it exceptional this year?

Yes, there is a severe long-term drought over much of that area. Of course, we have the second highest wildfire year in history already, and those wildfires are the conditions for them are caused by drought. So that's an indicator of the extent of the drought through the Boreal Forest. But the conditions in eastern Canada are really surprising because it's not an area that normally gets severe droughts and it's some of the models, soil, moisture, levels in the Maritimes, in particular are less than 40% of normal.

So exactly as the farmers have described on your show. And we also heard the farmers say that, you know, farmers are used to adjusting and adapting to whatever the weather throws at them. They're very connected to the land and the environment in a way that most Canadians probably don't even think about. And yet they're struggling to cope. How much harder is it that this isn't, according to the models, expected to be just a one-off bad year? well that's that's the problem and and that's why we have to make use of this drought as a learning exercise because droughts of this nature are becoming and going to become much more severe longer in duration and more extensive in area and also the wet periods in between will become in some cases particularly

in the eastern Canada much wetter and so farmers and people managing local water supply for communities need to prepare and manage this, which means making sure you're storing more water, either above ground or below ground, that you have plan A, B, C, D, or conditions getting drier in different ways to grow things. And also it would mean that governments will have to step in sometimes to support people through conditions that are just impossible otherwise to manage.

Well, we started with the voice of an individual, farmer coping, and she talked about how she hears it right across the community. Can you explain a little bit how this will go beyond just farmers and individual communities but affect almost every Canadian if these models are correct? Yes. The big push that we're seeing right now is due to the rapid increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. CO2 concentrations have just passed 425 parts per million.

In the early 60s, there were around 320 parts per million, and in the 1800s below 200. So we've changed how the atmosphere operates. It holds in more heat, and that intensifies the hydrological cycle. It means many of our storms become more intense and severe and widespread, but in between the storms, the way of higher temperatures, longer periods without precipitation. And this is something Canadians are not used to.

We developed most of our infrastructure in the 20th century when we had a much more amenable climate. So everywhere from big cities to small communities, water storage is going to be more important water treatment of sewage into water supplies, whether it be less dilution, will be crucial. We're seeing impacts on our Great Lakes with shorter ice cover,

causing more shoreline erosion and increased in algae blooms. Our western snowpacks and glaciers in the mountains are declining rapidly. We're seeing the final deglaciation of Western Canada. And this is going to change how droughts are managed because glaciers and high mountain snowpacks are drought regulators. They mount fastest in the hottest, driest conditions, and we're losing that. So this changes water management across the board from our reliance on hydroelectricity, which is impacted by drought to the impacts of wildfires,

to the viability of our groundwater supplies and many lakes that we rely on. It also impacts fisheries, and ultimately, the mountain glaciers means rising sea levels, so our coastal communities will be further impacted by sea level rise. So this is a fundamental disaster affecting the country in every way possible. It is a stark picture that you paint, and many Canadians may have a hard time getting their head around it,

given that Canada is famous for its fresh water supply. This is not a country that has ever had to consider desert-like conditions in our future. Yes, I was just presenting on some of this at an international seminar on planetary emergencies and some of the comments for, wow, if Canada is having trouble with this, what hope is there for the rest of the world? And there's a bit of that feeling out there. but it just shows, we've got 20% of the world's freshwater storage. If we're having trouble managing, you know, imagine how terrible it is elsewhere.

But it is, this does mean we have to up our game. We have to move to improved water management schemes across the country, taking to account the greater variability. We have to change our engineering infrastructures to account for these and to keep our water supplies sustainable through the future. And we have to make sure we have equitable access to water. It's not something we had to consider too much, but we already know it because of issues with drinking water quality in indigenous communities, but it's going to become more of a rural versus urban situation as well, and other complexities will arise over time. Yeah, I mean, I can't help but think about even possible security issues in the future if this is a global phenomenon.

But let me ask you, can we prepare for this? Can we adjust and adapt? We can improve our adaptation to this tremendously from what we're doing. We tend to manage water provincially across the country, but we have many river basins which cross provincial boundaries. We can start moving to the gold standard, which is integrated river basin management on some of those transboundary basins. Also, I think we need more federal activity and leadership on freshwater, particularly to help the small. smaller provinces, the territories, others that are struggling with these issues. And this can be everywhere, everything from agricultural water management to planning of forecasting floods and droughts, which we don't do federally in this country, but we could

do more of. And but also with the engineering capabilities for infrastructure design. These are massive nation-building activities that we should be considering at this time. Well, we hear from Canada's Prime Minister that Canada is in a new phase of nation-building. How strongly would you urge that this kind of national approach to this crisis be put on the federal agenda? Well, Canada, as a modern nation, and even traditionally as many indigenous nations, was built on water. On our transportation by canoes or reliance on fish and water species such as beaver, modern Canada needs to meet sustainable development goals for water, which we're not doing. And because we have still tremendous freshwater resources, we have an opportunity to do this

when many countries have no chance. And that would give us a tremendous advantage in this world. And I think it should be a higher priority for Canada. I don't want to leave it on too stark a note, but I do want to ask you finally how optimistic you are that we can approach this and deal with this in time. Well, we are going to see some very significant impacts this century. We're currently on very unfortunate trajectories with respect to climate change, and many large countries are not meeting their goals for reducing greenhouse.

gas emissions, including us. And so we're going to sort of enter the storm here, such as it is, and we have to be ready for that. That said, I think we can make this much better through proper scientific approaches to water management, and then hopefully over time get climate change under control. But we've got centuries of natural disasters from this to deal with, unfortunately. Well, John Pomeroy, it was good to hear your expertise this morning. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you.

John Pomeroy is the director of the Global Freshwater Futures Program at the University of Saskatchewan. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.