Question Period Note: Supercomputer/High Performance Computing (HPC)

Supercomputer/High Performance Computing (HPC)

• The Government of Canada is ensuring that weather forecasts are high quality and reliable. The Government uses state-of-the-art information technology to operate our water, weather and climate services.

• Environment and Climate Change Canada uses a High Performance Computing solution run by Shared Services Canada. It provides mission-critical weather services and enhanced research capability.

• The Government renewed the contract for the High Performance Computing infrastructure in 2017 for a duration of eight and a half years with a private vendor.

• The High Performance Computing solution provides modern, secure technology and computing capacity. It produces more accurate and timely weather forecasts and warnings to protect the health and safety of Canadians. It also allows Environment and Climate Change Canada to conduct world-class scientific research to improve weather and environmental forecasts and warnings.

• In 2018, ECCC completed a seamless switchover to the next generation of supercomputers to improve weather forecasting services in partnership with Shared Services Canada. ECCC is using the supercomputer to improve the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts and weather warnings.

• The mission-critical HPC production environment serves as the workhorse of the weather and environmental monitoring and forecasting system – supporting weather, air quality, water, climate change as well as sea and lake ice predictions and warnings over various time scales.

• HPC serves as the platform for assimilating a massive amount of meteorological data on a daily basis, which is necessary to support ECCC’s mandate and responsibilities.

• The Government of Canada’s dedicated weather service supercomputing infrastructure is also essential to support many government-wide mission critical functions, including (but not limited to):

o Supporting the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness’ mandate to develop “a comprehensive action plan that allows Canada to better predict, prepare for, and respond to weather-related emergencies and natural disasters”;

o Supporting the Department of National Defense and Canadian Coast Guard operations in support of sovereignty at home and abroad;

o Essential weather services to NAV CANADA in support of safe aviation operations (including the provision of warnings to aviation operations when volcanic ash is released into the atmosphere);

o Support for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for information required to sustain and secure the food supply;

o Support to Global Affairs Canada and International Trade for nuclear test ban treaty enforcement;

o Support to Health Canada for alerts of poor air quality, information on the spread of nuclear radiation, and air borne disease vectors; and

o Forecasts to Public Safety Canada to support responses to environmental emergencies.

Question Period notes as provided by the Department to the Minister’s Office