Canadians are feeling the effects of climate change to a greater degree and facing more serious consequences than federal scientists projected less than a decade ago.

That’s the message in a comprehensive federal report released on Thursday. It details how climate change is physically transforming the country and how those trends are likely to become more pronounced in the future, from floods, wildfires and heat waves to vanishing glaciers and permafrost.

A striking feature of the report is the high degree of certainty that ties so many diverse effects to fossil-fuel emissions as the primary driver of climate change.

“Warming temperatures have driven wide-ranging, interconnected, and sustained changes across Canada,” the report notes unequivocally in one of its headline statements.

Running nearly 1,500 pages, Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026 is the country’s definitive statement on the physical state of the climate. Only the second such document ever issued by the federal government, it is the product of more than 100 experts working over a three-year period.

But unlike its predecessor, whose release in 2019 was widely publicized and accompanied by minister-led press conferences and technical briefings to help the public grasp its implications, the second edition was quietly posted onl