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Last year, the Auditor-General of Ottawa presented an audit of the City's implementation of its Climate Change Master Plan, issuing seven recommendations. Today, City staff presented a response to the first two of these recommendations, providing clarity on the community's role in climate and a prioritization framework for the Climate Capital Fund.
We studied staff's response and delegated at the Committee meeting. The proposed approach is largely good; staff commit to focusing on adaptation, mitigation, and community. They also propose making impact the measure of success.
Please read our delegation below, or watch it here.
Our Executive Director William van Geest addresses Council's Environment and Climate Change Committee on staff's response to the CCMP audit.
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Thank you for the opportunity to address you.
There are several encouraging high-level commitments in this report:
- Staff’s recommended three core priorities—namely, climate adaptation, climate mitigation, and community partnerships: each of these is a critical aspect of climate action
- Council’s “unanimous support for the City to play a role in community climate action”: given that community emissions are 96 percent of our total emissions, this is essential
- The Climate team’s pledged “leadership role in embedding climate considerations into departmental planning and operations” and “continued collaboration across the organization”: this properly addresses climate change’s cross-cutting nature
- Council’s wish to “collaborate more closely with the private sector, non-profits, and community organizations”: there are numerous organizations and groups across the city who would be eager to collaborate, and the City takes advantage of only a small proportion of the latent interest
As high-level principles, these are all laudable, as is the emphasis on flexibility, given frequently changing conditions, as well as the promise for “greenhouse gas emissions dashboard” and a “department-led working group.” The plan to “enhance public awareness of existing climate programs” seems good, although it would be helpful to have the data on uptake: what’s current uptake, and what impact will this “increased visibility and access” have?
We’re also curious about the plan for “updates…to the Energy Evolution model”: will the “department-led working group” and community at large play a role in crafting this? And what of the CCMP refresh: what’s the process and timeline for this?
My remaining comments deal with the prioritization framework.
First of all, I want to observe the strangeness of this exercise. Staff were asked to develop through extensive research and consultation to create a prioritization framework for $6 million, the CCMP Capital Fund. To what other City expenditure of this size do we apply this level of scrutiny?
To the framework itself, we’re glad to read about the emphasis on impact. This seems basically uncontroversial, if not obvious. Indeed, what possibly was the guiding priority formerly? The report refers to “deprioritized” actions, but doesn’t name these. What are they, and what’s the case for the deprioritization of each? Particularly of interest are what the report calls “more aggressive policy measures that may not yet align with community readiness for behavior change”—of interest because aggressiveness is precisely what’s needed to meet our targets, as the GHG Inventory clearly demonstrates.
We’re also wondering about measuring impact. With mitigation, this is relatively straightforward: the amount of emissions eliminated. But how will impact be measured with resilience?
Moreover, some potential contradictions arise. For one thing, the report calls for “a more streamlined approach,” focusing on “areas the City directly controls.” At the same time, however, the CCMP update acknowledges that efforts to reduce emissions “require sustained collaboration and action among residents, businesses, utilities, and various levels of government, but collectively set the stage for accelerated community-wide GHG emissions reductions.” Even the audit response itself acknowledges that “the municipality cannot achieve [its emissions reduction targets] on its own.” Yes, let’s take all available steps within municipal jurisdiction; but by staff’s own correct admission, we can’t limit our efforts to this.
Relatedly, the “streamlined” approach seems to call for quick results. On one hand, this is understandable: we’re in a climate emergency, after all. But the CCMP update again acknowledges that the impacts of our community mitigation efforts “will take time to materialize.” We need to take action immediately, but also to leave the door open to impact being felt in the long term.
Similarly, “leading by example.” What’s the impact of such leadership? Inspiring Ottawans to their own actions? The connection is unclear. And likewise the focus on “fewer projects.” How will this increase impact? Particularly in a city as diverse as Ottawa, and with a problem as cross-cutting as climate change, this is unclear.
To close, we look forward to the implementation of these plans, particularly the priorities of mitigation, resiliency, and community involvement, and we support the pursuit of impact, but in a holistic, thoughtful way that meets the climate emergency.
Thank you.
