Nova ScotiaEleven Nova Scotia municipalities are among 70 across the country that will share $5.2 million in funding announced Friday by the federal government for climate adaptation initiatives.Town of Pictou to use money to hire staffer to help advance climate action plansOlivia Piercey · CBC News · Posted: Aug 22, 2025 5:13 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours agoJulie Dabrusin, federal minister of environment and climate change, is flanked by Halifax-area MPs Braedon Clark and Shannon Miedema at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth for Friday’s announcement. Dabrusin said the funds will help municipalities upgrade infrastructure to be more resilient to climate disasters. (Rob Killorn/CBC)Eleven Nova Scotia municipalities are among 70 across the country that will share $5.2 million in funding announced Friday by the federal government for climate adaptation initiatives.Julie Dabrusin, minister of environment and climate change, said Friday morning at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth that the funding will help municipalities prepare themselves for the effects of climate change.”Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It’s here, it’s accelerating and it’s impacting communities across the country,” Dabrusin said.Kyle Slaunwhite, chief administrative officer for the Town of Pictou, said the town will use funding it’s receiving to hire someone to help advance their climate action plans in partnership with the Municipality of Pictou County.”As a small municipality, we actually don’t have the resources to have a full-time climate change person,” said Slaunwhite.”Instead of having this done off the side of people’s desk, this now becomes a full-time person with the background in climate change or environmental sciences that can really provide that expertise we’ve been lacking all along.”Slaunwhite said the town is hoping to fill the position by the end of September.The federal government partnered with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to offer the funding as part of a Green Municipal Fund initiative.Brittany Merrifield, a federation board member and mayor of the Grand Bay-Westfield municipality in New Brunswick, said $2.8 million of the federal funding will go to 43 municipalities in Atlantic Canada.In Kentville, N.S., it will support the creation of a climate risk database, public workshops and climate adaptation plans, she said.Sabine Dietz with CLIMAtlantic said at Friday’s announcement that she hopes municipalities in Nova Scotia use funding to protect coastlines from the impacts of climate change. (Michael Gorman/CBC)Things like backup generators, storm-water management or dike construction are a few examples of what the funding could support, Dabrusin said.”It really respects community leadership in deciding what is the right thing that their community needs,” the minister said. “A community in the middle of Saskatchewan is probably facing a very different form of what a natural disaster from climate change looks like [than] a coastal community here in Nova Scotia.”The Nova Scotia municipalities receiving funding are: County of Antigonish, $70,000. Municipality of Argyle, $70,000. Cape Breton Regional Municipality, $104,550. Municipality of the County of Inverness, $70,000. Municipality of the County of Richmond, $70,000. Municipality of Victoria County, $70,000. Municipality of the District of Yarmouth, $70,000. Town of Yarmouth, $70,000. Town of Kentville, $70,000. Town of Shelburne, $70,000. Town of Pictou, $70,000.
11 N.S. municipalities to share in federal funding for climate projects
