Resilience Peer Network (RSPN)

Travis Moore from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), provided an overview of the "Resilient Residential Retrofit" (R^3) research program to enhance climate resilience of existing residential buildings through retrofits. 

The R^3 program aims to: 

• Identify and de-risk retrofit strategies, with a focus on accessibility and affordability 
• Prioritize climate adaptation retrofit measures, especially in multi-hazard scenarios 
• Integrate climate-resilience into guidance, codes, and standards 

The areas of focus for R^3 include wildfire, wildfire some, extreme heat, flooding, extreme wind, and permafrost melt. 

A systematic approach is needed as most buildings may only get one opportunity for a major retrofit where resilience and GHG emissions reduction can be optimized. 

The NRC presented a systematic framework for assessing climate resilience retrofits, that includes: 

• Understanding the hazards, building/occupant vulnerabilities 
• Planning and evaluating adaptation measures, considering cost and decarbonization 
• Implementing the retrofits 
• Monitoring performance over time and documenting lessons learned 

Through this framework, complementary retrofit measures can be identified and evaluated for multi-hazard scenarios, eg. Increased airtightness and air filtration to address overheating and wildfire smoke. 

The NRC is interested in partnering on demonstration projects to further develop and apply this framework. 

Presentation slides 

The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) has an aging, low-income building stock and faces climate hazards, including wildfire, flood, drought, extreme heat, extreme cold, and other sever weather events. 

The RDKB HomeSmart program offers free personalized guidance to residents, connecting them with contractors and energy advisors, and helping navigate rebates and loans. Resiliency considerations are integrated into the retrofit process, assessing hazard risks and outlining resilience benefits to align the retrofit strategy to address energy efficiency, wildfire, and extreme weather events. 

Since its launch in January 2024, the program has supported 260+ residents across the region to improve the energy efficiency and resilience of their homes and continues to explore further integration of resilience into retrofit programs and incentives. 

Presentation slides 

RDKB HomeSmart guide 

The City of Maple Ridge recently adopted their first climate action plan, Resilient Future 2050, which incorporates a low-carbon resilience approach. 

The Plan has 5 bold moves, focusing on actions directly within the municipality’s sphere of control and influence, including: 

• detailed mapping of extreme heat vulnerability, identifying high-risk neighborhoods, and prioritizing extreme heat management initiatives 
• advocating to the Province to incorporate resilience measures such as “right to cool” 
• incorporating a climate-ready, low-carbon resilience lens into City decision-making 
• establishing standards for new and retrofit municipal projects to encourage lower-carbon design and technologies 
• implementing Zero Carbon Step Code 
• developing a building retrofit strategy with associated targets for municipal and private retrofits that prioritizes extreme heat management, while also considering wildfire and flood resilience 
• identifying training needs and developing targeted training programs  
• developing a Green Building Renovation guide for more climate-ready homes and MURBs 
• preparing for energy benchmarking and building performance standards 
• identifying local suppliers/installers of high efficiency heat pump systems and renewable systems (e.g. Solar) 
• building community awareness of, and access to, retrofit resources and related funding opportunities

Presentation slides 

The Province was aiming to incorporate Alterations to Existing Buildings Code requirements into the BC Building Code by this Fall, but that has been pushed back to Spring 2026. The delay is due to the national code development process and code language not being finalized yet. 

The focus remains on providing clearer, prescriptive guidance on energy efficiency upgrades when building components are replaced. 

The Province is not currently looking to go beyond the national code requirements to incorporate broader resilience measures but may consider early adoption if the national code addresses that in the future. 

Ecotrust Canada is a charity focused on energy and housing issues in rural, remote and Indigenous communities. Their work incorporates an equity and justice lens, and aims to integrate climate mitigation and adaptation, increasing household and community resilience. 

In particular, Ecotrust is advocating for policies to address heat safety and thermal comfort in existing rental housing, including "Right to cool" approaches to allow renters to install cooling/ventilation upgrades, and published a Thermal Safety policy backgrounder exploring local government tools to support thermal safety in existing buildings. 

Ecotrust is seeking support on their letter to the BC government, advocating for thermal safety: Letter Safe Temperatures in Rental Housing 2025 - Google Docs 

Please sign on by September 19th, 2025. 

• What are some climate hazards in your community/ region? 
• Extreme heat, wildfires and smoke, air quality, drought, extreme rainfall, sea level rise, flooding 
• What resiliency measures/ policies/ programs are you (planning on) implementing in your community? 
• Many communities are prioritizing cooling strategies, including cooling centres and misting stations, FireSmart, and retrofit programs to keep residents safe. 
• What opportunities are there to support your community to implement climate resilient retrofits? 
• Retrofit programs are seen as a gateway to resilience. Resilience is seen as a higher public priority than climate action alone, and co-benefits of energy retrofits can be leveraged for resilience. 
• Stronger marketing and community engagement is needed. 
• What support do you need? 
• Spaces (such as the Peer Network) to share updates and learnings; stronger links between climate action and resilience; consistent, proactive messaging; policy alignment; improve awareness and marketing of retrofit/ resilience programs. 

Next RPN meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 11th, 10am-12pm PT. Please register here.  

• Who you are, where you live, what you do 
• What’s something you achieved over the summer that you’re proud of? Can be work-related or not. 

Fraser Basin Council (FBC) is a 30-year-old non-profit focused on sustainability in BC. Key priorities include resilient communities, climate action, and healthy watersheds.  FBC established the Nechako Watershed Roundtable a decade ago to protect and improve the 27,000 sq km Nechako River watershed. It includes various governments, First Nations, and other partners. 

Fraser Basin Council: www.fraserbasin.bc.ca 

Nechako Watershed Roundtable: www.nechakowatershed.ca  

Dr. Dery introduced the Integrated Watershed Research Group (IWRG) at UNBC, which has been been studying the Nechako watershed for over a decade to understand the local impacts of climate change. Weather stations and 32 water temperature monitoring locations throughout the watershed have documented dramatic spikes in water temperatures during the 2021 heat dome and significant recent drought. 

Mr. Salewski introduced NEWSS as a community group working on salmon and sturgeon recovery in the Nechako Valley. Their work includes lake monitoring, collaborating with farmers/ranchers to monitor and restore streams on private agricultural lands, implementing “man-made” beaver dams to help rehydrate streams and restore habitat, and tagging and monitoring salmon fry to track migration and survival while also studying historical salmon populations with UNBC, First Nations, and government agencies. This work is especially critical in a time of drought. 

• Nechako Watershed Roundtable: funding, history, and current priorities (Kim)  
• Climate Monitoring and Research in the Nechako Watershed (Stephen)  
• Local action and water stewardship (Wayne)  

What would you say is the #1 water-related issue or priority in Northern BC? 

Drought: about 40% of responses 

Governance, or that water is a low priority for governments: about 30% of responses 

Water quality and health: about 25% of responses  

This two-day bus tour back in June brought participants to solar projects in four communities: 

Saulteau First Nations – community-wide residential solar program, 90% of homes now have solar 

Hudson's Hope – the largest municipal solar project in BC, saving close to $500k to date 

Fort St. John museum – installed solar to offset electricity costs and reinvest savings in staff and programming 

Mackenzie – using solar to help power a community arena and share heat throughout the facility 

Case studies, a summary webpage, and a video are all accessible from www.communityenergy.ca/northeast-bc-solar-projects-2025 

Funding support was provided by BC Hydro, Gott Energy, and Northern Development Initiative Trust 

Showcase of zero-emission fleet vehicles   

• Prince George, Oct 15: www.communityenergy.ca/event/fleet-forward-northern-bc-showcasing-zero-emission-fleet-vehicles 

Upcoming training in Northern BC on high-performance home-building 

• See sessions titled “From Plans to Performance”: www.communityenergy.ca/events 

New Resilience Peer Network funded by FCM and the Government of Canada. We’ll be exploring more points of intersection between NorthCAN and this new network.  

• Resilience Peer Network website: www.communityenergy.ca/rspn

What topics/themes would you like to see covered during NorthCAN meetings in 2026? 

Please email rvanadrichem@communityenergy.ca with suggestions. 

• This is a relaunch of the Resilience Peer Network, which will now be offering a variety of sessions including quarterly peer meetings, deep dives, and lunch & learns. 
• The goal is to provide a space for learning, connecting, and sharing among network members to meet their needs around advancing climate adaptation. 
• Each session will aim to co-create a resource that highlights key themes, insights, and resources discussed. 
• Equity and reconciliation considerations will be integrated throughout the work. 
• Participants are encouraged to actively contribute, ask questions, and share their experiences and challenges. 
• The meeting will start with community guidelines to set the tone for an inclusive and respectful discussion. 
• Introduction to the Kōrero AI Land Acknowledgement helper on native-land.ca  

• Disasters are not "natural"—they result from collective decisions about how and where we build, and the systems we establish and maintain. 
• Disasters affect people unequally due to underlying social, environmental, and built environment factors. 
• Risk is dynamic and changes over time, even for individuals. 
• The term “vulnerable populations” can be problematic—it’s important to recognize people's existing capacities and adopt an equity-centered approach that addresses systemic inequalities. 
• To address systemic risk, three main principles were proposed: 
• Avoid creating new risk. 
• Reduce existing risk. 
• Manage residual risk. 
• Emphasized the value of experimentation and the importance of being willing to “fail forward.” 
• Discussed the balance between confronting severe climate risks and recognizing community strengths and adaptive capacity. 
• Suggested that risk assessments should consider both immediate and slow-onset risks. 
• Highlighted the importance of grounding risk assessments in community values and risk tolerance. 
• Stressed the need to act with “enough” information instead of waiting for complete data, to avoid decision-making paralysis. 
• Discussed how to communicate the importance of experimentation and “failing forward” to leadership—suggesting the use of co-benefits and a call for brave leadership. 
• Underlined the need to integrate emergency management and climate adaptation efforts throughout organizations, avoiding silos. 
• Overall, emphasized that climate risks and disasters are systemic and complex, requiring integrated, collaborative, and innovative approaches. 

Ruth Midgley, Community Energy Association 

The activity was based on the GMF Climate Ready Communities Framework, which outlines three key pillars for climate adaptation: 

1. People, Partnerships, and Governance 

• This pillar focuses on building internal human and financial resources, as well as external collaboration with neighboring communities, Indigenous groups, regional governments, and community organizations. 
• It also involves getting council/leadership commitment and raising awareness/engagement internally and with the broader community. 

2. Risk and Adaptation Planning 

• This involves conducting climate risk and vulnerability assessments to identify key impacts and risks. 
• It then leads to the development of a climate adaptation plan, which can be integrated into existing plans or be a standalone document. 

3. Implementation and Integration 

• This final pillar is about actually putting the adaptation plan into action across the organization. 
• It includes monitoring, reviewing, and iterating on the plan over time. 

Participants were asked to first reflect on where their community/ organization currently sits on this adaptation pathway. They were encouraged to use sticky notes to mark their progress, and add context if needed. 

The next step was for the regional breakout groups to brainstorm 1-3 key goals or actions they want to focus on in the next 2-3 years to advance their adaptation work. This could involve anything from building partnerships, to conducting a risk assessment, to starting implementation of specific projects. 

The participants shared several insights from placing themselves on the adaptation pathway framework: 

• Many felt they were still in the early stages, with a lot of work to do across the different milestones. There was a sense of having resource and capacity constraints to really make progress. 
• Some were surprised to realize that emergency management and disaster risk reduction teams need to be integrated into the climate adaptation work, not siloed. There was a recognition that climate adaptation can't be the responsibility of just one department. 
• Participants expressed uncertainty about having all the necessary information and data to fully assess where they are. They would need to consult with others across their organization and community to get a more complete picture. 
• There was a common theme around the challenges of coordination - both internally across departments, and externally with partners and stakeholders. Integrating climate adaptation throughout an organization is difficult work. 
• Overall, the participants seemed to feel they were still in the early stages of their adaptation journey, with significant work ahead to build the necessary resources, relationships and processes. But there was also an acknowledgement that this will be an ongoing, iterative process without a clear endpoint. 

The groups were asked to identify what knowledge gaps, relationships, or other supports they would need in order to achieve those near-term goals. This feedback is intended to help shape the Resilience Peer Network's future programming and resources. 

A few common themes emerged from the group debrief: 

Goals and Actions: 

• Improving data and information sharing - both accessing better climate data/projections as well as sharing knowledge and best practices across communities 
• Integrating climate adaptation into official plans and policies (e.g. Official Community Plans, Emergency Plans) 
• Building cross-departmental and cross-organizational collaboration and alignment on adaptation 
• Increasing community engagement and public education around climate risks and preparedness 

Knowledge Gaps and Relationships: 

• Need for more technical expertise and guidance on conducting climate risk/vulnerability assessments and developing adaptation plans 
• Desire to learn from and connect with other communities facing similar challenges 
• Requirement for stronger relationships and partnerships with Indigenous communities and community organizations 
• Lack of internal capacity and resources to dedicate to adaptation planning and implementation 

Participants expressed that having structured opportunities like the Resilience Peer Network to share learnings, access training, and build relationships would be very valuable in helping them make progress on their adaptation goals. 

Amanda Broad is the Manager for Disaster Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Policy and Practice at the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness (EMCR) in British Columbia. 

She provided an overview of some of the key resources and initiatives the ministry has been working on to support communities with disaster and climate risk: 

Climate Ready BC Website 

• This is intended to be a one-stop shop for disaster and climate risk information, with new resources added monthly. 
• It includes a resource catalog, hazard-specific portals (e.g. microzonation, landslides), and a calendar of relevant events. 
• The ministry is also doing a major UX refresh of the website to improve accessibility and usability. 

Guidance Documents 

• The Ministry of Health has released a "Risk to Resilience" report on the health impacts of climate change. 
• They've also put out new guidance documents for local governments and First Nations on integrating health and climate considerations. 
• EMCR is also soon releasing a best practices guide on extreme heat mapping, as well as a landslide mapping guidance document. 

Funding Programs 

• The Emergency Preparedness Fund and Disaster Resilience and Innovation Fund are open for applications. 
• EMCR is also working on new requirements for local governments and the province around disaster and climate risk assessments, as part of the new Emergency and Disaster Management Act. 

Indigenous Knowledge and Equity 

• EMCR is developing fact sheets on incorporating Indigenous knowledge and addressing intersectional disadvantage into risk assessments. 
• They've also funded research through the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and the Social Planning and Research Council of BC on these topics. 

Amanda emphasized that EMCR is working hard to consolidate resources, provide guidance, and support funding to help communities across BC build their disaster and climate resilience. She encouraged participants to stay tuned for upcoming opportunities and resources. 

Dave Aharonian is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Climate Action Secretariat.  

Dave provided some additional context and updates from the Climate Action Secretariat (CAS) perspective: 

Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA) Requirements 

• Dave confirmed that the regulations for the new EDMA requirements for local authorities are still in development by EMCR. 
• The latest information is that the regulations may be released by the end of this calendar year. 
• However, Dave emphasized that local governments don't need to start working on these requirements yet, as guidance will be provided when the regulations are finalized. 

Provincial Disaster and Climate Risk Assessment 

• Dave noted that the provincial-level risk assessment update has been completed and will be released soon. 
• The next phase is regional-level assessments, which CAS and EMCR are still working to figure out the approach for. 
• Dave said there likely won't be much progress on the regional assessments this calendar year, as the focus has been on finishing the provincial report first. 
• However, these regional assessments are intended to help feed into and support local-level risk assessments down the road. 

Best Practices Guidebook 

• Dave highlighted that CAS has been working with Pinna Consulting to develop a "Best Practices Guidebook on Climate Action" for local governments and modern treaty nations in BC. 
• This guidebook is intended to provide guidance beyond just how to use the Local Government Climate Action Program (LGCAP) funding, but more broadly on getting started with climate action. 
• The guidebook will cover both mitigation and adaptation/resilience, with those elements integrated throughout. 
• Dave expects the guidebook to be released in about a month's time. 

Dave acknowledged the feedback that communities need more capacity to actually implement climate action, rather than just more resources. But he believes this guidebook can still be a helpful addition to the suite of supports available. 

CoNext is a program that aims to provide training and support to help small, rural, and remote communities in British Columbia advance their climate adaptation and resilience planning. 

The core of the program is a 5-session adaptation training series that runs from September through January. Erica noted this is particularly targeted at communities that are in the earlier stages of climate adaptation work, or those where the expertise is concentrated in just one or two people. 

The key objectives of the CoNext program are: 

1. Provide an orientation to the landscape of climate adaptation resources and tools available. Erica acknowledged there are many resources out there, so CoNext aims to help curate and connect participants with the most relevant ones. 
2. Build adaptation planning capacity within a team. CoNext requires applicants to apply as a team of at least 3 people, which can include a mix of folks from within the organization as well as external partners like neighboring communities or First Nations. 
3. Offer customized facilitation and support. Each community team is paired with a dedicated facilitator who can help them navigate the training content and connect with appropriate resources. 

The training curriculum covers topics like understanding climate impacts, conducting risk assessments, adaptation planning, working with climate data, and communicating adaptation priorities. 

Erica emphasized the importance of this team-based, customized approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all training. The goal is to build durable, cross-organizational capacity within the participating communities. 

The CoNext program will be opening its next expression of interest process next week, with a deadline of July 11th. Erica encouraged interested communities to reach out if they have any questions about assembling their team or the application process. 

Ruth explained that in addition to the regular Resilience Peer Network meetings, the program will be offering two types of more intensive learning cohorts: 

Planning Cohorts: 

• These cohorts will be focused on helping communities work through the planning and assessment stages of adaptation. 
• Potential topics could include: 
• Assessing current state and building a roadmap forward 
• Guidance on conducting a climate risk and vulnerability assessment 
• Regional planning exercises (e.g. at a watershed scale) 
• Change management and organizational integration of adaptation 

Action Cohorts: 

• For communities that have progressed past the planning stage, these cohorts will support implementation and action. 
• Examples could include: 
• Co-creating a regional vision or project with other communities 
• Developing monitoring and progress tracking frameworks 
• Diving deep into specific project areas (e.g. urban forests for climate resilience) 

The key goals of these cohorts are to: 

• Provide more intensive, hands-on support and expert guidance 
• Enable peer-to-peer learning and collaboration between communities facing similar challenges 
• Help communities make tangible progress on their adaptation priorities 

Participants will have the option to join solo or bring a team from their organization/community. The time commitment would be around 4-6 sessions over 4-6 months, with coaching and support in between. 

Ruth emphasized that the cohorts will be designed based on the specific needs and interests expressed by the participating communities. An expression of interest form will be released in the next few days for communities to indicate their areas of focus and challenges. 

The cohorts are intended to complement the broader Resilience Peer Network programming, providing a more tailored and intensive learning experience for those communities ready to dive deeper into adaptation planning and implementation. 

• Why Emergency Management and Climate Resiliency has emerged as a ministry
• How government agencies work together
• Sendai framework
• Regulations & EDMA

• Local government role
• Risk assessments - scale and framework
• ClimateReadyBC.ca
• Climate Grief