Dr L. John Leggat

Dr L. John Leggat will chair the newly appointed Expert Panel on Prioritizing Climate Change Risks for the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA). Leggat, a former assistant deputy minister, science and technology, of the Department of National Defence (DND) will share his leadership experience with a multisectoral and multidisciplinary panel composed of experts in the natural sciences, social sciences, health sciences, engineering, government and policy, and economics and industry. The project will be undertaken by the CCA under commission by the Treasury Board Secretariat. The main challenge of Leggat’s team is to search for answers to this core assessment question: What are the top climate change risks facing both Canada and the federal government, and their relative significance, and which have the most potential to be minimized by adaptation measures? The project’s final report will be released in 2019. Leggat graduated with first-class honours in Mechanical Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1971. Focusing on aeroacoustics, he received his M.Sc. from the Univ of British Columbia in 1973 and his PhD in 1976. While serving as defence scientist at the DND, Leggat became an adjunct professor in engineering physics and mechanical engineering at the Technical Univ of Nova Scotia, now part of Dalhousie Univ. He served in about 30 scientific advisory committees and boards, and became the Canadian representative for the NATO Research and Technology Organization for many years.