As Hurricane Fiona bears down on Nova Scotia, the Port of Halifax is all but shutting down.

“We have taken steps to keep people safe and minimize risk during this anticipated severe weather event,” spokesperson Lane Farguson told The Logic.

A port that ordinarily sees about a dozen ships arrive or depart every day has barred cruise ships and is clearing all its berths, forbidding vessel movements and removing barges this afternoon. The port authority isn’t offering any certainty about when its operations might resume.

Marine traffic trackers show ships in the Atlantic veering away from Fiona and its expected path, clearing an expanse of ocean from south of Bermuda to Newfoundland.

This is just one of many effects from a storm that could make landfall with record intensity in Nova Scotia, after knocking out most of the power and water in Puerto Rico (where up to eight people died) and hammering islands across the Caribbean. 

Climate change means more intense storms, with higher winds and heavier rain, leading to more catastrophic weather like hurricanes on the coasts and last year’s heat dome and atmospheric rivers in British Columbia. But as we reported today, it also means a general worsening of conditions that enable trade and production—ice storms instead of dry-cold winters, fog on rivers with unpredictable water levels, heat that demands trains slow down on warped rails.

The Logic’s Broken Links series shows how Canada has been slow to prepare for a future that’s already all but locked in. Similarly, we’ve been slow to approve expansions of jam-packed port facilities—a new container terminal in Vancouver has been in the works for nearly a decade—and to deal with the worsening shortages of truckers, railroaders and stevedores. The COVID-19 pandemic’s disruptions to global supply chains have taken a toll on companies big and small.

There are opportunities. The shift to electric vehicles is reshaping the auto industry and Canada could benefit. Domestic suppliers are more in demand, at least as backups to sources of materials and supplies half a world away. Logistics companies that help industries move from “just in time” efficiency to “just in case” resilience are in demand.

But we have a great deal of work to do just to shore up our current capabilities, and we’re going to have to do it under increasing pressure from a world that won’t wait.