Year End Climate Meetings Review

Smoke over The City of Calgary

Date Published: January 15, 2021

An update on my 2020 Climate Meetings with City Department Heads

Nearly a year ago (though, let’s be honest, after the year we’ve had it feels much longer!) I announced that I would be meeting with all City of Calgary Department Heads to talk about climate change. I wanted to hear how these directors planned to meet, or exceed, the climate targets outlined in the Climate Resiliency Strategy, which was unanimously approved in June 2018.

I scheduled these meetings, beginning in January 2020, because I feel a tremendous sense of obligation to future generations. I want to leave this world better than I found it, and I know I need to do everything I can to advance the climate conversation here in Calgary. Up to this point, there hadn’t been much accountability for the targets outlined in the Climate Resiliency Strategy and I knew several departments were lagging behind.

Before the one-on-one-meetings occurred, I asked senior managers, “Have you read the climate strategy?” Responses varied wildly from department to department. In some departments, no senior managers had read this 2018 document. It was clear to me that not everyone at the city was on the same page.

Climate change is the most defining issue of our times. I’ve had more than a dozen meetings with Department Directors and General Managers this year (with more scheduled in 2021) and I’ve certainly learned a lot.

I can say with confidence that the conversation across most City departments about climate has changed in the wake of these meetings. At the most recent City budget deliberations in November, every department that presented to Council mentioned climate and the benefits of incorporating climate into service delivery and decision-making. This has never happened before and is certainly worth celebrating. Since I began hosting these meetings, the city’s climate team has been overwhelmed with questions and requests from specific departments for advice/guidance on how their department can do better, which is very encouraging.

I’ve written detailed blog posts from every meeting, which can be found here. No two meetings have been alike. Some departments think that because their department is not explicitly mentioned in the Climate Strategy, it is not their role to think proactively about how their department could do better. I disagree. I believe it falls on everyone at the city to be thinking about climate change. Not only is combatting climate change the right thing to do, it also makes good economic sense. City staff are starting to understand there are social and economic benefits of integrating a climate lens into everything they do. This is a first and important step.

As I reflect on the Climate Meetings we’ve had this year, and think about what’s ahead in 2021, I wanted to leave you with five fun facts/discoveries I’ve learned while hosting these meetings:

1. Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) uses a Disaster Risk Reduction framework based on the United Nations’ Sendai Framework. This framework shifts the focus of emergency management from the traditional model of ‘incident response’ to reducing disaster risk by strengthening governance, investing in resilience, and enhancing preparedness to better respond to, and recover from, disasters. It is a proactive model with a significant focus on Climate Change Adaptation, because climate change acts as a risk multiplier for numerous environmental hazards.
2. Calgary Parks is working with Environmental and Safety Management on recognizing Calgary’s natural infrastructure as key assets to manage for resilience and climate adaptation. These assets perform key ecosystem services, such as water filtration, climate regulation, habitat resilience, and human health and well-being.
3. The City has created a multi-purpose truck, enhanced seasonal leasing, and expanded employee car sharing. To reduce emissions, the city’s Fleet Services department is evaluating alternative fuel options, applying for grants to support green initiatives, and reviewing the fleet acquisition process to help us test new technologies as they become available in the market.
4. The new Prairie Sky Cemetery opening in 2021 will have a green burial program.
5. Blue, black and green cart programs work together to divert waste from landfills. The Green Cart program alone has resulted in an annual net decrease in GHGs of 20,000 tonnes of C02 equivalent.

I hope you have learned something from this news nugget, or while reading my blogs on these meetings. It’s worth also noting that I had an opportunity to participate in a course for elected officials regarding climate leadership. In this course, I learned a lot about how we compare to other Canadian municipalities with respect to climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. I discovered that in a lot of ways, as a City, we are still in the exploratory phase, and not yet measuring or benchmarking our climate targets as outlined in the strategy. I collected and shared this information with our leaders in City Administration.

This year, I have also been participating as a member of the Climate Caucus: a nation-wide organization that includes more than 300 councillors, mayors, and regional directors, with membership growing at a fast rate. Elected leaders are from rural areas, townships, Indigenous communities, and cities of all sizes. The Caucus has several working groups that explore how municipalities can reduce GHG emissions in several areas including infrastructure and waste management just to name a couple. The mandate of the Climate Caucus is to bring civic leaders together to share ideas and strategies. We don’t require “made in Calgary” solutions. We can learn from each other.

For the next year, I will continue meeting with City leadership to talk about climate and continue reporting back to citizens and our local climate leaders. It is clear that this is a pressing issue to many Calgarians. I will continue to push for Calgary to meet out climate targets.