On August 28 the Climate Risks for Coastal Transportation Infrastructure Community of Practice (CRCTI CoP) hosted a webinar titled “Canada's Top Climate Change risks” presented by Dr. L. John Leggat, former Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence and Paul Kovacs, Executive Director of ICLR and Adjunct Research Professor, Economics, Western University. Both served on the Expert Panel on Climate Change Risks and Adaptation Potential, Council of Canadian Academies (CCA). The webinar summarized the recently published Canada’s Top Climate Change Risks report. In the report, the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) identified 12 major areas of risk, including: coastal communities, physical infrastructure and fisheries. The CCA convened a multidisciplinary panel of experts with backgrounds in economics, human health, earth sciences, social sciences, and climate change adaptation and risk assessment. An additional 17 experts contributed their knowledge and insights at an expert workshop. The report’s findings emerged from the judgement, experience, and expertise of the workshop participants and Expert Panel members, informed by published evidence. Presenter bios: Dr. L. John Leggat, former Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence Dr. Leggat graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with first-class honours in Mechanical Engineering and received his MSc and PhD from University of British Columbia in 1976. In 1989, Dr. Leggat was appointed Director General of Research and Development Operations at the National Defence Headquarters and in 1993 became Director General of the Defence Research Establishment in Ottawa, Ontario. He was appointed Chief of Research and Development for DND in 1997 and became the driving force and founding CEO of Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). During his career, Dr. Leggat has served on about 30 scientific advisory committees and boards and received numerous awards and honours. He was the Canadian representative for the NATO Research and Technology Organization for many years and led the team that wrote the current NATO Research and Technology Strategy. Paul Kovacs, Adjunct Research Professor, Economics, Western University Paul Kovacs is founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. Since 1996 Paul has been a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading forum for the study of climate issues. He is Canada’s leading authority on insurance and climate change and has been a contributing author to numerous international and Canadian reports on reducing the risk of loss from earthquakes, flood and severe wind. For more than thirty-five years Paul has been a popular commentator on insurance, disaster safety and economic policy. He has written more than 200 publications and articles and he is a passionate champion for insurance, disaster resilience and adaptation to climate extremes.

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