Speech

Check Against Delivery

It’s a pleasure to be here today on the grounds of the University of Toronto, a few blocks away from where the very first weather office began operations. I am also happy to be joined by David Grimes, Assistant Deputy Minister of the Meteorological Service of Canada, who was recently elected as President of the World Meteorology Organization. Congratulations David!

Canada’s Meteorological Service is one of our nation’s longest-running government institutions, and has been a key building block of this country. 140 years ago, the Government of Canada, under Sir John A MacDonald, gave George Kingston, a meteorology professor here at the university, a five thousand dollar grant to establish a national meteorological office in Toronto, and to create a national network of weather observing stations. And so, the Dominion Meteorological Service at 315 Bloor Street was born, when Canada was just 5 years old.

It’s not surprising that a meteorological service was high on the list of priorities for our new country. Weather affects everything from the food we eat and the clothes we wear, to the way we build our homes, the way we travel, the way we work and the way we play. Since 1871, Meteorological Service of Canada has been the authoritative source for weather, climate and water resource information across the country, providing Canadians with essential information about past, current and future weather conditions.

This is no simple task. Canada’s weather may be the most diverse on earth, with blizzards, hurricanes, tornados, hail, ice storms, thunderstorms, and 100 degrees of temperature between our cold spells and our heat waves. And, as we’ve seen too often this year, we also have spring rains and thaws that can create severe flooding. Canadians understand the impact of weather on all of us.  

As the official source of weather warnings in Canada, Environment Canada’s Meteorological Service focuses a great deal of attention on forecasting severe weather. Our top priority is to provide Canadians with information to keep people and property out of harm’s way.

We provide extensive information to the media, who are key partners in keeping Canadians well informed about weather. We provide Canadians with weather information through Weatheradio, and through automated telephone answering devices. We also serve over one-million users a day with their local weather conditions and warnings on our website, weatheroffice.gc.ca, and through the website’s Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

In keeping with this level of service and technological adaption, today we’re proud to introduce our newest service for Canadians—a mobile Weatheroffice website for smartphone users. With improved “fingertip” access to our comprehensive Weatheroffice website’s most popular features such as the city pages with current weather conditions, forecasts, alerts, and radar images, Canadians can stay weather aware, and weather prepared. The addition of this service will help make vital information accessible to Canadians no matter where they are.

Along with all this great technology, we also do so much more than provide the warnings and the daily weather forecasts that are most familiar to Canadians. Our organization includes the Water Survey of Canada, which collects, interprets, and disseminates standardized water resource data in Canada. Every single major water supply system, hydro electrical generation facility, and irrigation project in the country has been designed, built and operated using the products and services of the Meteorological Service’s Water Survey.

We are also home to the Canadian Ice Service, the leading authority on information about sea, lake and river ice, and icebergs in Canada's navigable waters. This is vital to keeping Canadians safe on our waterways, and supporting industries such as marine transportation, commercial fishing, offshore resource development, tourism and recreation.

We rely on sound science to fulfill our responsibilities. Our scientists have played a key role in the development of new technologies, for example, the Brewer spectrophotometer, a device that measures solar radiation and ozone in the ultraviolet (UV) region of the spectrum. Our scientists also helped to create the Ultraviolet (UV) Index and developed the world’s first Air Quality Health Index—now available in every Canadian province.

None of our work would be possible without the daily, dedicated, professional efforts of the meteorologists, climatologists, engineers, scientists, researchers, technicians and other staff that have worked for the Meteorological Service of Canada since 1871. During that time, we have also benefitted from the committed efforts of thousands of volunteer climate observers and weather watchers. While we may no longer receive volunteer weather reports from a mailman in a horse-drawn coach, we now have about 2500 volunteer climate observers who email us information at the touch of a button. We even receive images from Canadians on their smartphones.

We continue to grow and change with the times, using our resources as efficiently as possible, looking for the latest methods of providing Canadians with the current information about weather. For example, at last year’s 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, we field tested computer-generated forecasts that may accurately predict weather on a single city street. We also led an international research project on the science of short-term forecasts, or “now-casts” that may ultimately improve forecasting of high-impact weather. And, as we have just announced, we have just launched the mobile Weatheroffice site in order to provide our services to any Canadian, any time, and anywhere they choose to access it. These efforts are helping us build towards the science of the future—one that will help keep Canadians informed.

We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? In the early days settlers had to go to the train station to get their weather forecasts by a colour coded system—red, yellow or green. Now, all you have to do is take a smartphone out of your pocket and you are given instant access to weather information wherever and whenever you want it.

Let me just close by saying, for 140 years now, the Meteorological Service of Canada has been working hard to provide Canadians with the best possible weather, water and climate information so that they can make good choices, and good decisions. Canadians trust us to give them the information they need to protect lives, to protect property, to make good decisions for their families and their businesses. They trust us because of the daily, dedicated efforts of the meteorologists, technicians, climatologists, engineers, scientists, researchers and other staff that have worked since 1871 for the Meteorological Service of Canada.

I’m proud to be here today to celebrate 140 years of faithful service in honouring that trust. I congratulate the Meteorological Service of Canada on this impressive achievement, and look forward to many more successful years of service to come.

Thank you.