Vaughan joins 31 Canadian municipalities declaring ‘global climate emergency’

Extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change have resulted in increased insured losses

Yorkregion.com
June 13, 2019
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Vaughan has recently joined a growing list of cities across the world, including 31 municipalities in Canada, that have declared or officially acknowledged the existence of a global climate emergency.

Ottawa in April warned that Canada is warming at twice the global rate.

This has led the City of Vaughan on June 5 to announce a “non-official” emergency plan on climate change.

“The City recognizes that climate change on its own does not constitute an event that necessitates the activation of the City’s Emergency Response Plan,” it said, “but climate change can be associated with a natural emergency such as severe storms, flooding, tornadoes, and high winds that cause imminent harm to persons and property.”

The City explained that the declaration is issued only in “principle,” citing the need to take urgent action to safeguard the environment.

Among the steps the City has outlined: To “continue” receiving some of its plans on mitigating climate change and most importantly to “seek council approval of Green Directions Vaughan by Q4 2019.”

Other steps include updating the Municipal Energy Plan through an approved capital project “with the aim to identify strategies to reduce per capita GHG emissions from the 2013 level of 5 tonnes tCO2e per person to between 2 to 3 tonnes tCO2e per person by 2030.”

In addition, to “report back to council by Q2 2020 with results of the study on the use of Local Improvement Charges to enable energy efficiency retrofits in private buildings as a key action to reduce energy use, save money, and reduce GHG emissions.”

Extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change have resulted in increased insured losses, reaching $2 billion across Canada in 2018, of which $1.3 billion is attributed to events in Ontario.