[en] Canada's natural environment and built infrastructure are affected significantly by extreme weather events, with repercussions such as economic losses. The purpose of this presentation was to research whether these losses are due to greater societal vulnerability or climatic extremes or both, and to determine whether engineering design codes and standards need to be changed to ensure that infrastructure, such as dams, can withstand future climatic extremes. Environment Canada maintains long term climate and water observing networks and uses climate data in the development of building codes and engineering design standards and practices. Because of the variable nature of precipitation, the range of spatial scales, climate system influences and the importance of local topography on precipitation occurrence and amount, analyzing historical trends and making future projections for precipitation, particularly extremes, are challenging. This presentation discussed historical climate trends and future projections with reference to changes temperature, precipitation and precipitation extremes. In addition, extreme weather events and recent trends were discussed together with human influence on trends and projections. The presentation demonstrated how the climate in Canada has varied during the period of instrumental records. Future predictions for precipitation extremes were developed using climate models and statistical downscaling. The presentation also highlighted atmospheric hazards information under development for emergency preparedness and disaster management planning. It was concluded that future climate changes are inevitable and will likely affect the frequency of heavy precipitation events. 14 refs., 1 tab., 19 figs