Spring is a lovely time of the year in Canada. Trees are budding, golf courses are opening, flowers are being planted, kids are getting restless in school anticipating the summer holidays.

Unfortunately, more and more, the spring also ushers in risks to towns and cities from weather-related problems. Increasingly, those are exacerbated by climate change.

The wildfires last year that swept across much of northern and western Canada were devastating.

As The Economist magazine noted in a recent article, "The smoke from [the fires in Canada] reached Baltimore, Barcelona, Berlin and beyond The fires pumped 1,800 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent into the atmosphere, dwarfing Canada's total emissions in 2022 of 708 megatonnes."

They are staggering statistics.

Residents in other parts of our country are gearing up for the annual tornado and hurricane seasons. Flooding is an annual problem in many northern and western parts of our nation.

Cities such as Kelowna, BC are now taking action. They are implementing a variety of mitigation measures. They are working with homeowners to take action around their own properties, everything from gravel instead of wood mulch, replacing wooden fences, and pruning trees.

There is a very practical aspect to this kind of preventative action: home insurance. As Canadians who own condos in Florida and residents in fire-prone communities such as Fort McMurray and many others are discovering, it is getting more difficult and more expensive to buy insurance for one's home.

The Florida insurance industry is an indescribable mess, fueled by incompetent state legislators and rising oceans. Canadian snowbirds are reeling.

Back home, more homeowners are worrying about the availability of insurance, let alone the cost. Can they even get home insurance if they live in areas that are prone to disaster? Fires? Floods?

Enter our federal government. Ottawa is now offering a $530 million fund to help municipalities adapt to climate change. It seems, well, let's be polite, a modest amount when one studies the breadth of the risks to municipalities.

FCM will run the program. Municipalities will have to apply and compete. The maximum grant available is $1 million.

Again, a modest amount in the face of the climate change challenges facing our cities, especially when one recalls the 2020 report by the Insurance Bureau of Canada and FCM: to avert the most severe impacts of climate change, municipalities will have to spend $5.3 billion a year.