For years, climate change planning lived in long-range strategy documents — important, but rarely urgent. That’s changed. Extreme weather losses and insurance payouts have climbed sharply across Canada over the past several years, and organizations like the Canadian Climate Institute have climate-proofing infrastructure now costs a fraction of repairing it after the fact. For land, resource, and infrastructure owners, planning for climate change budget conversations.
The shift shows up in how the work gets done, too. A generation ago, a “climate assessment” might have been handed off to a single environmental consultant working in isolation. Today, the effective version of that work pulls together environmental scientists, geotechnical and hydrotechnical engineers, and GIS specialists working from the same data set — because a culvert redesign, a floodplain map, and a species baseline survey are really the same project viewed from three angles.
There’s also real money moving to support this shift. In August 2026, the federal government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities announced $34.2 million for 141 local climate adaptation projects through the Green Municipal Fund — on top of ongoing programs supporting climate-ready plans and processes. The funding is there for communities and organizations that show up with a credible plan; the harder part is building that plan well enough to compete for it, and having the technical bench to execute if you win.
This is the gap PRI’s environmental and engineering team. We’re not a firm that hands you a report and walks away; our people come from the field, and our environmental, geotechnical, hydrotechnical, forestry, and GIS teams work side by side, often alongside Indigenous partners and local knowledge holders, on the same projects. That integration is what turns a climate risk assessment into a plan someone can actually build, fund, and defend to a council or a board.
Over the next few issues, we’re spotlighting how this plays out across specific sectors — starting below with our Community Planning for Climate Change Program, a closer look at environmental assessment in the mining industry, and why more municipalities are upsizing culverts, bridges, and dams before the next storm forces the issue. If any of it sounds like a conversation your organization needs to have, we’d like to be part of it.
Contact Our Team
We would love to hear more about you and the project that you have in mind.
“We find solutions that other consultants don’t see.”
Melony Catana, AScT
Practice Lead, Environmental Services
melony.catana@priengineering.com