‘Hiding from the heat’: Half of Canada faces drought

Empty golf courses. Streets that should echo with the sounds of children. Patio chairs without anyone in them.

Canada’s summers are changing.

Louise Brownlee remembers growing up in Montreal without air conditioning, enjoying her blissful summers outside.

These days, she finds herself “hiding inside more”.

“I feel fortunate to have air conditioning now…but it’s not just the heat, it’s the storms. They’ve gotten more powerful. You feel like Mother Nature is mad at you,” Brownlee tells The Pointer.

The co-chair of Ontario-based grassroots environment group Grand(m)others Act To Save The Planet (GASP) is one of thousands across the province whose start to the summer wasn’t filled with the quintessentially Canadian outdoor pastimes.

Climate change, she says, has made everything more intense—“hotter, wilder, windier.”

“We had warm summers, sure, but now there’s more energy in the storms…For me, the big difference is in the winter,” she notes, lamenting the disappearing cold season in many parts of the country.

For Brownlee and many others, the most concerning transformation is in Canada’s vast farmland, where crops, pastures and livelihoods are directly impacted by relentless heat, extreme weather and drought.

Warmer summers and milder winters are allowing pests and disease to reach previously immune farms. Erratic spring and fall temperatures continue to harm fruit blossoms.

The final two weeks of June saw Environment Canada issue heat warnings, with temperatures rising between 30 and 36 degrees Celsius and humidex values reaching 40 to 46. These extreme heat days threaten crop yields, livestock health, and the viability of poultry, red meat, dairy and egg production. 

By the end of May, more than half of Canada was classified as either abnormally dry or in moderate to extreme drought, according to a recent Canadian Drought Report by the federal ministry of agriculture and agri-Food. That includes 53 percent of Canada’s agricultural land.

In May alone, drought conditions worsened across large portions of the country. Northwestern Ontario, northern British Columbia, central Saskatchewan, central Manitoba, northern Quebec and parts of the Northwest Territories all saw major declines in rainfall. Combine that with already-low water levels, rising temperatures and higher demand for water, and you get a dangerous mix: worsening drought, shrinking crops and surging wildfire risk.

Some of the worst-hit regions are central Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where extreme drought has taken hold.

“Exceptionally low spring precipitation, above normal temperatures and drying conditions have resulted in poor soil moisture, poor pasture and crop conditions and well above normal wildfire activity,” the report, released Wednesday, highlights.

In Ontario, the picture is split. In the northwest part of the province, dry weather and wildfire activity have led to worsening drought, with pockets of “severe drought” developing. Southern Ontario, in contrast, saw heavy rainfall that helped restore moisture levels, though in some areas, it also brought localized flooding.

As of late May, 38 percent of the Central Region, which includes Ontario and Quebec, was classified as abnormally dry or in moderate to severe drought with one percent of the region’s agricultural land directly impacted. 

This isn’t just a Canadian crisis. 

Drought is tightening its grip globally, with some of the most widespread and damaging events in recorded history occurring over the past two years, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023–2025 report.

Between 2023 and 2024, El Niño intensified drought conditions across agricultural lands, ecosystems, and urban areas, especially in regions already vulnerable due to heat, population pressures, and fragile infrastructure.

The impact falls hardest on vulnerable groups: women, children, the elderly, the chronically ill, subsistence farmers, and agropastoralists.

As of late May, 38 percent of the Central Region, which includes Ontario and Quebec, was classified as abnormally dry

In drought-stricken Zimbabwe, classrooms are growing quieter. During the 2023–2024 season, poverty forced many children out of school, some to work, others into early marriage, or to care for siblings while parents searched for income. Even the cost of a $25 uniform in rural Mudzi became out of reach. For teen girls, a lack of sanitation during menstruation added another barrier. 

It’s a familiar pattern: the last major El Niño, in 2015–2016, saw 45,000 children leave school, thousands more than usual, as climate hardship pushed education out of reach.

In Ethiopia, drought also fueled a heartbreaking rise in forced child marriages, which more than doubled in the hardest-hit regions during this period. Though outlawed, such marriages are sometimes seen by desperate families as a survival strategy, offering dowries and reducing the burden of feeding a child.

Drought also brings deadly health risks: cholera outbreaks, acute malnutrition, dehydration, and exposure to polluted water. In many cases, people are forced to leave their homes in search of water, food, and work.

“This is not a dry spell,” U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) director and report co-author, Dr. Mark Svoboda, warned. “This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I’ve ever seen.” 

Svoboda underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on.

The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Living Planet Report 2024 warns that global wildlife populations declined by an average of 73 percent between 1970 and 2020, pushing many species toward extinction, a crisis now being accelerated by worsening drought conditions.

The next five years are critical. Experts warn that the decisions made by 2030 will determine whether we can prevent irreversible ecological damage and begin to live in balance with nature.

“Nature is issuing a distress call. The linked crises of nature loss and climate change are pushing wildlife and ecosystems beyond their limits, with dangerous global tipping points threatening to damage Earth’s life-support systems and destabilize societies,” Kirsten Schuijt, director general of WWF International, said.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that a drought episode today carries an economic cost at least twice as high as in 2000, with a 35 percent to 110 percent increase projected by 2035.

“Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks,” co-author of the report, Dr. Cody Knutson, noted. “No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse.”

In Canada, agriculture forms the backbone of the national food system. Farms, nurseries, and greenhouses produce the food Canadians rely on, contributing over $31.7 billion to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employing more than 247,000 people in primary agriculture alone. This production fuels the broader agri-food system which in 2023 supported 2.3 million jobs, and generated $150 billion in GDP.

But this vital system is under growing threat from rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events which are already challenging food production across the country.

“As climate change wreaks havoc on our food systems, supply chains, and economies, food prices go up. As a result, issues like food insecurity become increasingly apparent. Rising food prices and economic instability mean that many Canadian households are unable to afford food,” a report by Ontario Farmland Trust warns.

Peel Region, home to some of the most productive agricultural land in Canada, is not immune to the growing pressures of climate change. 

Peel Region, known for its highly productive farmland, 62 percent of which was once classified as prime, has increasingly become vulnerable to the impacts of drought and extreme weather. 

A report prepared by Ontario Climate Consortium highlighted between 2006 and 2011, the number of farms in the region declined by 8.5 percent, with major drops in dairy, beef, and greenhouse production. 

As drought conditions worsen across Ontario, even this prime farmland faces growing challenges, threatening local food production and long-term food security.

Are these changes making Ontarians afraid of what’s to come?

“Oh absolutely,” GASP co-chair Louise Brownlee said, voicing her growing alarm over Ontario’s continued support for fossil fuels and natural gas, and pointing to the broader climate rollback in the U.S., where president Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” threatens to erase hard-won climate gains and unleash 7 billion extra tonnes of emissions by 2030.

“I’ve got two little granddaughters, and I worry very much for their future…temperatures are rising, CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels are going up, oceans are warming; it’s frightening. But we can’t just sit back. You have to act. Use your voice. And at the end of the day, you want to be able to tell your grandchildren, you did your best, you did what you could,” Brownlee said.

The UNCCD report calls for urgent action through investments in better drought early-warning systems, nature-based solutions like watershed restoration, resilient infrastructure, gender-sensitive support, and global cooperation to protect shared water sources.

“Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with few resources. We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity,” NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher, Kelly Helm Smith, said.

“The nations of the world have the resources and the knowledge to prevent a lot of suffering…The question is, do we have the will?”

Anushka Yadav is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at The Pointer.