This week, Ottawa City's Environment and Climate Change Committee received the annual update report from City staff on progress under the Climate Change Master Plan, the ambitious strategy for climate change mitigation and adaptation work needed in the Nation's Capital.
Below you can find the delegation given by Ecology Ottawa's Climate Change Campaign Organizer, Cheryl Randall, on that report.
But staggeringly, public delegations were made in that meeting by a COHORT of well organized, strategic climate deniers, starting with Tom Harris of the Heartland Institute, the US conservative think tank. Those delegations were well organized, with representatives from a range of people with seemingly respectable backgrounds, covering a range of different perspectives all designed to create doubt about the need for climate action, the same tactic that the tobacco industry used to sow doubt about the negative health impacts of smoking from the 1970s. We must be on our guard. Climate action delay now is a form of climate denial.
It is so important that we take stock of our climate progress as a municipality, and I am genuinely grateful to staff in the Climate Change and Resiliency team for the honesty and transparency of this report in highlighting the many areas where we are not yet on track. I would like to comment on 6 points raised in the update report.
First of all, applying a climate lens for the first time to new capital requests in the 2023 budget is such a critical step forward for the City in terms of climate. Of course, that climate lens still needs some “fine-tuning”: the screening tool needs to be revised to clearly identify capital budget allocations that will increase emissions and lock-in future fossil fuel infrastructure use. But we are glad to have a starting point.
Secondly, having climate in the 2023 budget as a line item to fund climate work, rather than relying on off-budget Hydro Ottawa surpluses (when they occur), is so important. Of course there is a huge gap between the $5m annual capital commitment agreed in this year’s budget and the $687m called for annually for mitigation under Energy Evolution and I note the $760 million of external funding that City staff secured over the last 1.5 years; within that funding, having campaigned for electric buses for so long at Ecology Ottawa, we are of course thrilled to see this now becoming a reality. We know that with more funding, specifically this itemized, predictable funding now in our City Budget, the City can leverage more provincial and federal funding, as well as build capacity through city staff and it is our hope that this will reduce many of the delays currently listed as attributable to lack of staff capacity.
Thirdly, at Ecology Ottawa we are big believers in the potential of the Climate Change Master Plan and Energy Evolution to help us meet our climate targets. It is an ambitious strategy with hard targets in line with IPCC science. But poorly funded plans, or ones where improvements are not being actioned, will fail to protect our future in Ottawa. If the city makes ambitious climate investments, it will see *billions* of dollars in return on investment and with climate change the cost of action is dwarfed by the long-term costs of inaction. The Energy Evolution document clearly sets out the specific return on investment that we can expect to see. Looking at the status of Energy Evolution projects, a devastatingly small number of items are on track, whilst Ottawa residents experience the effects of living in a climate emergency. We simply must do better!
Fourth, Key Performance Indicators have not been defined in MANY of the strategies and plans supporting the Climate Change Master Plan. In any form of planning, we must ask ourselves what we are aiming for, how we will know in 5 and 10 years that we are moving in the right direction. It is vitally important that targets, indicators, metrics and monitoring are embedded into all of the policies under the Climate Change Master Plan. We are therefore very pleased to see that staff will continue to develop performance indicators and a dashboard for the City’s website. We would push that this is done as rapidly as possible, with truly meaningful metrics for monitoring our progress in terms of both mitigation and adaptation.
Fifth, it is disappointing not to have an annual GHG emissions report, a year and a half after the last update in October 2021. We are of course anticipating that post-pandemic emissions will rise, and it is important to know by how much as quickly as possible. Releasing the results for 2021 and 2022 following the completion of the third party methodology review later this year must be prioritized with the urgency that it deserves. These key data are essential in propelling action.
Finally, we heard that embodied carbon is outside the scope of Council’s current emissions targets and reporting. This means that new sprawling developments, etc. simply don't count in the emissions total currently. Yet we know that in infrastructure projects such as highway widenings, over 75% of a project’s total carbon footprint result from embodied carbon. We are therefore so glad to see the recommendation from staff to explore the feasibility of including embodied carbon in the methodology for GHG emissions accounting. Along these lines, we also strongly support the note that staff will review project management processes to embed climate considerations earlier in the development process, so that projects do not experience carbon lock-in and are not exposed to increased climate risks.
Ottawa’s plan to reach net-zero through the Climate Change Master Plan and Energy Evolution would make Ottawa a national leader - if properly funded and implemented, with strong leadership from senior management.
Ecology Ottawa delegated at City Council’s Finance and Corporate Services Committee on March 5 as the Committee reviewed its Corporate Sponsorship and Advertising policy. We called on the Committee to prohibit fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship in City facilities in this policy.
A group of fifteen organizations, including Ecology Ottawa, is calling on Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Ottawa City Council to end fossil fuel promotion in City facilities.
On March 5, the City’s Finance and Corporate Services Committee meets to discuss the City’s Corporate Sponsorship and Advertising policy. Currently, fossil-fuel companies are allowed to advertise in City facilities like arenas, parks, and City publications.
This week we released a report into the many benefits of transitioning our school bus fleet away from diesel to electric. We are so excited to share this with you - read our electric school bus report here.
This week we joined Alan Neal's All in a Day program on CBC Radio to discuss why our school buses must go green. Hear the interview here.
A member of the Peoples Official Plan, Citizen Climate Counsel (C3), has launched a 2022 Climate Progress Account report assessing the City of Ottawa’s progress on implementing its climate priorities and agenda. C3 tracked all of the City of Ottawa’s 159 milestones outlined in their various climate plans: Climate Change Master Plan, Energy Evolution and other city documents. C3 then reviewed city council and committee meeting minutes, staff reports and more to track the city’s progress on these milestones. This evaluation clearly demonstrated that the city of Ottawa is not on track to achieve its climate targets.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Members of the People's Official Plan (POP) alliance answer the question, Will this Official Plan do the job?
As the representative urban face of Canada in a changing world, Ottawa has a responsibility to be involved in current international events. The National Capital region in particular must demonstrate flexibility in adapting infrastructures, programs and policies to answer challenges that issue from far beyond municipal, provincial and federal borders.
The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reinforces the urgent need to cut our emissions in the fight to limit global warming.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: People’s Official Plan coalition responds to the revised Official Plan: a ‘City of Canyons and Towers’ or a ‘City of Neighbourhoods’?
Ecology Ottawa is part of the Urban Climate Alliance, a network of four Ontario-based municipal environmental organizations working to take climate action at the city level. Other members include Environment Hamilton, the Citizens Environment Alliance and Toronto Environmental Alliance.
We know that cities are critical to climate action. Drawing from our collective experience, the Urban Climate Alliance prepared this handbook to help other cities tackle climate accountability.
Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day. And when it does, Ecology Ottawa hopes the runoff is properly managed for the sake of Ottawans and the environment.
Pour le français, cliquez ici.
35 hrs/week starting between May 20 - June 3 for a period of 8 weeks.
Do you live in the Ottawa area?
Are you interested in environmental issues?
Do you want to work for Ottawa’s leading grassroots environmental organization?
Ecology Ottawa is looking for a Community Organizer to join a dynamic team for an eight-week position. Reporting to the Communications & Events Organizer, the Community Organizer will be responsible for coordinating the volunteer component of Ecology Ottawa’s new National Capital Environmental Youth Program.
Pour le français, cliquez ici.
35 hrs/week starting between May 20 - June 3 for a period of 8 weeks.
Do you live in the Ottawa area?
Are you interested in environmental issues?
Do you want to work for Ottawa’s leading grassroots environmental organization?
Ecology Ottawa is looking for a Community Organizer to join a dynamic team for an eight-week position funded by Canada Summer Jobs. The overall goal of the Community Organizer is to enhance environmental protection at the local level in Ottawa through volunteer engagement and public education.