Environment Canada mum on why weather radar cut out during big storm

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Want to ask Environment and Climate Change Canada about the weather? You may have a seven-month wait — and still not get an answer.

That’s what happened when this newspaper inquired about the floods that hit Ottawa on Aug. 10, 2023, after 38 millimetres of rain fell in a single stormy afternoon.

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From late morning into mid-evening that day, radar coverage of that storm kept cutting out. Streets and homes were flooded, but members of the public trying to look at Environment Canada’s radar map kept getting the message “Radar unavailable … please try again later.”

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This newspaper followed up with an access to information request asking the federal department for any recent information on the radar’s reliability, and also asking: were there any comments from the public? Access to information law is the formal means by which members of the public are supposed to be able to obtain information from the federal government.

In mid-September, the department wrote that it needed 30 more days to answer.

Since then, nothing.

One of the flooded areas was River Ward, where Coun. Riley Brockington lives. He says city officials saw extreme weather coming and braced for it — making sure that drains were cleared of leaves or debris, and people were warned.

“I chair the emergency preparedness committee, so I’m a lot more cognizant of getting people ready, getting people aware, getting information out, warning people about any type of storm that is coming and could have impact, just to be prepared and ready,” he said.

He’s puzzled by the lack of response from Environment Canada. The department is the top agency for weather information, he says. “Environment Canada is like the Bible, and if people rely on their radar or other feeds for sources of information … then that has to be maintained.”

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Brockington understands that technical glitches do happen, “but the fact that they haven’t replied and provided information is a head-scratcher.”

Jim Turk, who runs the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, blames weak access to information laws.

“The lack of response by Environment Canada to your two simple and straight-forward requests for what should be readily available information are yet more examples of Canada’s deeply flawed access-to-information system,” he wrote in an email.

“Democracy depends on the public being able to know what its governments, government departments and agencies do. But all too frequently, our laws that are to ensure openness are so weak that they instead enable government secrecy.”

Environment Canada said this week that it will process our request “in conjunction with our current workload and priorities.”

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