Resilience Plan: Essential for Municipalities Across Québec

A resilience plan is a key tool for protecting your infrastructure, public services and at-risk populations. Have you drafted yours?

In the past few years, municipalities across Québec have faced an ever-increasing number of extreme climate events such as flooding, forest fires, heatwaves and winter storms.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, insured damage related to natural disasters across the country exceeds $2 billion per year and this amount is set to increase.

For municipalities, this leads to increased pressure not only on local infrastructure and finances, but also with regard to extended responsibility towards citizens.

Resilience has become a requirement

The Ministère de la Sécurité publique (MSP) has taken a decisive step. As of fall 2025, a new regulatory framework will require municipalities to integrate climate resilience into their municipal emergency management plans.

At the same time, the 2030 Plan for a Green Economy (PGE) will introduce new accountability requirements. In other words, resilience is no longer a choice, but rather a requirement.

Why is the focus on resilience rather than adaptation?

While climate plans primarily target emissions reduction and sectoral adaptation, a resilience plan takes an integrated approach that encompasses emergency management, risk management and land-use planning.

The objective is to reduce systemic vulnerabilities by protecting both essential infrastructure, public services and at-risk populations.

What are the key stages of a resilience plan?

The experience acquired by municipalities and RCMs in recent years has shown the importance of a structured approach that also involves the following.

1. A vulnerability diagnosis that identifies priority climate risks (flooding, heatwaves, forest fires, etc.) and analyzes populations, assets and critical services.
2. A critical analysis of existing plans that pinpoints strengths, gaps and redundancies in current climate and emergency management plans.
3. Drafting an integrated resilience plan that defines concrete prevention, protection and adaptation measures and a clear timeframe.
4. Governance and appropriation workshops attended by senior management, technical teams and elected officials to ensure collective appropriation and interdepartmental consistency.
5. Strategic alignment to ensure that local actions meet government expectations (2030 PGE, MSP) and maximize access to financing programs such as Accélérer la transition climatique locale (ATCL).

An essential shift

Resilience is not simply a theoretical approach. It aims to reduce human, economic and environmental risks.

Municipalities that quickly equip themselves with a clear plan improve their budget predictability, social acceptability and access to subsidies.

Most importantly, municipalities demonstrate to their citizens that they are effectively performing their role of territorial safety and sustainable development custodians.