City of Toronto loses expert in climate-change impact

Thestar.com
August 19, 2019
David Rider

Amid rising concern over flooding and other climate threats, the city has lost its first “chief resilience officer,” who was tasked with helping protect Toronto from the worst impacts.

Elliott Cappell was appointed with some fanfare in 2017 thanks to funding from the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) strategy. He quietly left city hall in June as the New York-based foundation started transitioning the multi-pronged, global initiative to a new plan.

Cappell served two years as originally announced, authoring the city’s first resiliency strategy with ways to reduce the growing impacts of flooding, intense heat and other catastrophic events. But in a LinkedIn article published Aug. 1, he called the winding down of 100RC “an acute shock.”

“In a short time there has been a substantial change in how cities act and think, and it’s very impressive how much was achieved ,,” he wrote. “That 100RC was successful and is relevant makes today feel like a brutal, bruising failure.”

Cappell suggested problems with the $160-million initiative, including different governance models that saw him report to the city manager while his New York counterpart reported to that city’s much more powerful mayor. But he said in an interview Friday he left city hall satisfied.

“I feel that I left the city on good terms, that the strategy was well received. I feel good about what we accomplished,” said Cappell, who has returned to consulting work that has seen him advise clients including the World Bank and United Nations.

“To my knowledge, the city is moving ahead with the strategy so I feel good.”

City staff say his work getting the new strategy implemented will be continued by Amy Buitenhuis, who worked with Cappell as resilience lead in city manager Chris Murray’s office. Starting next year, she’ll report to a deputy city manager.

Cappell was hired amid criticism of city council from some environmentalists when, during historic flooding of the Toronto islands, politicians voted to not implement a stormwater management fee proposed by city staff after years of study.

Councillor Mike Layton said the city has made some strides since then, including the Transform TO plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Cappell’s plan to mitigating climate impacts, but Toronto is far from a global leader in dealing with the rapidly changing climate.

“I’m happy we got this (100RC) grant and did this work,” he said, “but I think we could have got more done than the (resiliency) plan , I’m not sure we’re moving at the pace people expect of us.”

Cappell’s departure follows other exits this year of Michael Kolm, Toronto’s first chief transformation officer, who was tasked with helping digitize and modernize city services, and chief information officer Rob Meikle.

City staff said Friday that Cappell will not be replaced as chief resilience officer and the two other roles will be collapsed into a new “chief technology officer” position. Toronto is also hiring a chief information security officer following concerns about the risk of cyber attack.

The Rockefeller Foundation told the Star it is continuing the successful work of the 100RC network and is “pleased that over 80 per cent of cities in the network have recognized the value created by their Chief Resilience Officer appointments and have continued to fund those positions.”