The June 2017 report, Costs of Pollution in Canada: Measuring the impacts on families, businesses and governments reviews and synthesizes existing studies to produce the most comprehensive assessment of pollution and its costs in Canada to date. Some quick facts: the cost of climate change-related heat waves in Canada is estimated to have been $1.6 billion in 2015; Smog alone cost Canadians $36 billion in 2015. But the report also provides detailed estimates, organized in three categories: 1. Direct Welfare Costs: (Harm to health and well-being such as lower enjoyment of life, sickness and premature death); 2. Direct Income Costs – (Direct out of pocket expenses for families (e.g. medications for asthma), businesses (e.g. increased maintenance costs for buildings) and governments (remediation of polluted sites); and 3. Wealth impacts.
Direct Welfare Costs of pollution, the most studied and understood, are estimated as at least $39 billion in 2015, or about $4,300 for a family of four. The Direct Income Costs that could be measured amounted to $3.3 billion in 2015, but the study cautions that this many important costs could not be measured, and full impacts on income were likely in the tens of billions of dollars. In this category, the study estimates Lost Labour Outputs, using a metric derived from the 2016 OECD study, The Economic Consequences of Outdoor Air Pollution. The OECD estimates outdoor air pollution to cost 0.1% of national GDP, which, when applied to Canada’s 2015 GDP of approximately $1,986 billion, implies a costs of about $2 billion in lost labour output alone. And finally, Wealth impacts, or costs on value of assets , are said to be the least understood of pollution costs, about which, “We simply do not know how much pollution costs us in terms of lost wealth”.
Costs of Pollution in Canada: Measuring the impacts on families, businesses and governments was prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), with funding from the Ivey Foundation; the full report is available in English- only. Summaries are in English and French.Short videos were derived in cooperation with the Conference Board of Canada to focus on key topics: e.g. extreme weather, contaminated sites, and smog .
