Climate Migration: Is Canada Ready?

When it comes to understanding immigration law and policy, Zaidi is one of Canada’s leading scholars, after a 15-year legal career that’s taken him around the world and seen him work in fields including immigration, refugees and contracts.

On Oct. 25, Zaidi will be the keynote speaker for Saturday Morning at the Law School, part of Alumni All-Access 2025. The topic will be climate migration, which he and other experts predict will become an increasing concern in the coming years.  

Zaidi wants Canada to be prepared. “We have our moments of being a knee-jerk society,” he says. “Sometimes, we’re reacting to things that have already happened instead of anticipating what’s coming and it's like: what have you been doing this whole time?”

Zaidi’s aim with his presentation is to get policymakers and the public proactively thinking about Canada’s approach to climate migration. “There are other countries that are way ahead of us in this area,” he says. “But we still have a chance to get a leg up on these issues.” 

Climate migration: a storm on the horizon

When most Canadians think about international migration, they probably imagine immigrants seeking economic opportunities or refugees fleeing from escalating conflicts. Many Canadians, or their parents or grandparents, came from abroad to settle here. But climate migration is a relatively new concept. 

“It’s the interaction of two major subjects: climate change and immigration, and the two have actually been inseparable for many generations,” says Zaidi. “We just haven’t seen them that way until now.” 

Zaidi — whose book Immigration in Canada: Basics of Migration covers the history of Canadian immigration — says environmental factors have always influenced where people chose to live. But, as climate change produces increasingly extreme environmental effects — from wildfires and desertification to flooding — that influence is coming to the fore.  

“This isn’t just a situation where you're just coming to a new country to look for a better life economically,” says Zaidi. He describes it as more akin to being a refugee; for example, Pacific islanders whose homes are threatened by rising waters, or Mexican farmers whose drought-stricken lands can no longer produce crops. 

And the problem from a legal standpoint? While we may call people displaced in this way “climate refugees,” Canada, and most other countries in the world, don’t actually have any laws that treat them as such. Unlike those fleeing war or political persecution, there is no special designation for those escaping climate-related pressures — even though the World Bank estimates that over 200 million people could face climate displacement by 2050. 

Not only does this lack of a formal designation make humanitarian migration harder, it wastes time and resources as government agencies try to navigate immigration claims that aren’t clear-cut.  

“If you've got policies that are ambiguous or inconsistently applied, you're opening yourself up for more appeals and contestation internally,” Zaidi says. 

Zaidi wants to see Canada change this by formally establishing laws, policies and evaluation criteria for climate-refugee claims.  

“It’s not just the humanitarian side. We are going to need immigration in Canada for the foreseeable future due to our low birth rate,” he says. Canada, like many countries in Europe and Asia, has a comparatively low fertility rate at 1.26 babies born to each woman — well below the 2.1 needed for population equilibrium. “We’re not replacing our population through births, so we need immigration in some form to keep the numbers stable and secure the economy.” 

Examples of success from the other side of the world

Zaidi knows it’s possible to create effective climate-migration laws because other countries have already done it.  

“In Australia and New Zealand, they’re receiving a lot of immigration applications from people in surrounding island communities who are dealing with sea-level rise and frequent flooding,” he says. “And, for that reason, these countries have created measures for climate migration.”

These climate-migration laws take several forms. “It starts with policy,” Zaidi says. “New Zealand and Australia have policies to classify someone as a climate migrant when they apply to immigrate. The justification is because they’ve lost their land, they’re unable to grow crops anymore, and so on. There’s an understanding that it’s not just people running away from their countries at will; there’s a very good, often life-threatening reason why they’re moving.”

Statutes codifying the legal proceedings between nations represent another key initiative.  

“New Zealand and Australia have begun introducing statutes in their legislatures that address climate migration squarely,” Zaidi notes. “And that's because those countries like New Zealand and Australia have actual agreements with the Pacific Island nations that surround them. This includes things like a defined pathway to citizenship for people forced to relocate by climate change.”

Tuvalu — a small island nation midway between Hawaii and Australia — is an excellent example of statutory support for climate migration. Australia welcomes hundreds of migrants from Tuvalu each year, with the goal of eventually transferring the entire population.

Of course, Zaidi acknowledges the significant differences when comparing Canada to Australia and New Zealand. “While the geopolitics and the climates may be different, the pressures of climate change, and the need for appropriate laws, are the same,” he says. “These countries have been first-movers in this space, and we as Canadas can learn from their successes, as well as improving where they’ve stumbled.” 

It's happening inside Canada, too

While Zaidi’s work is primarily focused on the international challenges of climate migration, he’s quick to note that we can also see it playing out within Canada’s own borders.

“Here in Calgary, I recently met a fellow from Lytton, B.C., which of course was almost completely burnt down in 2021. And rather than rebuilding and living in the same area with the risk of it happening again, he chose to come here and start over instead,” says Zaidi. “That’s a form of climate migration, albeit one within our own borders.”

While migration within Canada doesn’t involve navigating complex international laws, Zaidi notes that there are nonetheless legal steps that can make things easier for people who choose to relocate within Canada.

“Say you’re a lawyer in one province, and you relocate to another. You’d have to pass the bar exam in that province,” he says, adding it’s the same for other regulated professions like teachers, engineer, and some tradespeople, accounting for up to 20 per cent of the workforce. “But increasingly we’re seeing something that’s quite amazing, and that’s where provinces are allowing what’s called ‘reciprocity,’” Zaidi says. “This means admitting people to work in their job in a different province, without needing to recertify.”

Zaidi notes that this reciprocity approach breaks down interprovincial barriers to migration and offers a form of protection for Canadians internally displaced by climate factors. 

Cherishing the freedom to move

Ultimately, whether it’s migration between countries or inside their borders, Zaidi says it all comes down to mobility.  

“Section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms deals with mobility rights. Every Canadian has the right to relocate within Canada, to leave the country, or to return,” he says. “Part of our freedom of living in a democratic society is that we have the choice to move wherever we want.”

Many take mobility for granted, but Zaidi emphasizes how important it is for self-determination. “It’s a right that underpins many others,” he says. “With mobility, you can pursue whatever education you want, whatever career you want, live in the neighbourhood you want and so on.  

“Mobility is key to the development of a city like Calgary. If you look at pictures of downtown Calgary in 1968, there’s almost nothing there. I show people that on purpose; I tell them this is what the city is now, that's what it looked like back then. And the growth of Calgary is all about mobility.”

There’s a parallel here. After travelling and working around the world, Zaidi is back in his hometown of Calgary where he’s teaching new students at his alma mater.  

“Mentorship is such an important part of being an alumnus,” he says. “After all this time in law, I want to give back to the profession. This is such a good way to do that.”

Despite the challenges on the horizon with climate migration, Zaidi has high hopes for the next generation of lawyers.  

His No. 1 piece of advice for his students? “If you haven’t travelled, go travel. Don’t take your rights of mobility for granted.

“There are many people in the world who unfortunately don’t enjoy those same rights. Go and see Canada and other countries. Because that's when you see your rights at work.”

Kamaal Zaidi’s presentation on these important issues will take place on Saturday, October 25. Alumni and community members can register in-person or online.