Residents say Toronto's climate action plan must consider impact on low income people

City seeking to reduce emissions by 80 per cent in 2050

Cbc.ca
August 9, 2019

Any actions that the city of Toronto takes to meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets must consider the impact on low-income residents, a public meeting in Scarborough heard on Thursday night.

City officials took Toronto's new climate action plan to the Scarborough Civic Centre to collect ideas from residents and they heard not only that residents are interested in doing their part, but also that solutions must take low-income people into account. About 100 people attended the meeting.

Coun. Jennifer McKelvie, who represents Ward 25, Scarborough-Rouge Park, said residents are helping to determine the next steps for TransformTO, the city's climate action plan unanimously approved by council in July 2017. The plan contains a series of goals and strategies to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions.

"Climate change won't be felt equally by everybody," McKelvie said.

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"It's important that we have a range of opinions that are in the room, talking about what the impacts of climate change will mean to them, but also how they can act personally toward combating climate change."

McKelvie said each resident has a role to play to mitigate climate change, whether it is riding a bicycle to work, or taking public transit as much as possible, or driving an electric vehicle instead of a gas-powered car, but each resident has a different socioeconomic status.

"If you live in an apartment building in Toronto, it's hot. It's hot in the summer. You might not have air conditioning. You're going to feel that differently than a homeowner. For homeowners, for example, they may feel climate change as flooding impacts in their basement."

The city's newly formed TransformTO reference panel on climate action was on hand to hear from residents. The panel is made up 30 randomly selected residents who volunteered to help come up with priorities for climate action in Toronto. McKelvie called it a "citizen jury."

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Linda Swanston, program manager of policy and research in the city's environment and energy division, said the city is aware that it needs all residents to play a part if Toronto is going to "achieve the transformational changes" it needs in its buildings, transportation and waste collection systems.

"That's not something the city government can do alone. It's absolutely something that's going to require action of every resident, every business owner in this city, all kinds of different folks," Swanston said.

"As we try to think about the key priorities for the next few years to 2023, we need the collective wisdom of Torontonians to help us understand, not only where the biggest climate action opportunities are, but also where the biggest benefits to them may be in those climate actions," Swanston added.

Financial cost of being green needs to be fair, resident says
For Mike Mattos, a member of the Mount Dennis Community Association, solutions to reducing climate change must be realistic, take into account day-to-day realities and acknowledge that people having different incomes.

"I have very serious concerns that, at present, the way we raise the funds that we distribute, we ask the lowest income people in Toronto to pay the same levy as the highest income people," he said.

"And we do this on TTC fares, or garbage cans," Mattos said. "We have to have a tax collection scheme that makes everybody feel that they are benefiting."

Ideas from residents will be incorporated into a short-term implementation plan that will form part of the city's TransformTO climate action strategy. The plan will be presented to council in early 2020.

Toronto's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, based on 1990 levels, are 30 per cent by 2020, 65 per cent by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050.