Saanich councillors agree: climate action is as much a local imperative as it is a global one. Earlier this week, Saanich council endorsed an update to the terms of reference to its climate plan. Rebecca Newlove, Saanich’s manager of sustainability presented a target update on the plan which initially was written in 2020.

Its proposed actions were developed around a five-year time frame, which Newlove aknowledgded has since been altered significantly by recent whammies of devastating extreme heat, wildfire and flooding events.

Since 2020, she said, “We began to see and experience climate changes, and that's ever more the case nowadays where it's almost a daily occurrence across the globe, and frontline news.”

If Saanich is to reach its climate targets, more focus will be required on adapting to these events and other climate hazards projected to worsen in coming years. The updated summary report suggests many of the 2020 targets in Saanich’s climate plan were overly general and were based on outdated climate risk assessments. 

An updated plan with new targets will be developed over the next 18 months in collaboration with regional partners. It’s the hope that these targets will deliver on the Saanich council’s commitment to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, One Planet Living Principles and UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. In order to support municipalities in reaching those goals, the province has disbursed nearly $72 million in Local Government Climate Action Program (LGCAP) funding as an upfront payment to support community over the next three years. 

Some key objectives for the updated plan are:

• Identify the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) actions required to achieve the updated targets
• Generate an updated community and corporate climate risk assessment
• Establish community-wide and sectoral consumption-based emissions targets 

In their comments in support of the terms of reference as well as their concerns for them, councillors spoke to a number of related issues, including tree canopy protection, housing density, active transportation and population growth. Coun. Zac DeVries expressed concern on immigration’s impact on climate. 

“In a global sense, growth in population is the result of family size decisions and then when we look at each of our individual jurisdictions, you add into that a layer of immigration and migration, depending on where you are.” 

Those comments were rejected by Coun. Teale Phelps Bondaroff, who said it was unfair to blame people who “come to our beautiful island for the problems that we have and I fundamentally reject that.” 

Phelps Bondaroff said he’s glad Saanich is “looking at building compact, walkable, complete communities as a solution to climate problems.” 

He said he’s particularly happy with efforts toward planning for more compact living. “You wouldn't have such high emissions from transportation and housing if you had dense walkable communities where the things that people needed were close by,” Phelps Bondaroff said.

Ultimately, said Newlove, “we want to get to net zero regardless of that population within Saanich, so that we're all living in a sustainable net-zero lifestyle.” 

Coun. Karen Harper offered a historical take on the issue of lifestyle when she referred to the 70-year-old post-Second World War legacy of the development of single-family housing to accommodate returning soldiers which resulted in urban sprawl and a car-centric society.

“Saanich is far flung and still car-dependent,” Harper said.

Here's the part about work needing to be done

In her overall assessment of where Saanich is with respect to its climate results, Newlove was blunt: “We’re not on track.” 

Since 2020, Saanich has achieved what some councillors felt was a disappointing 16% reduction in GHG emissions. It has seen a 27% reduction in transportation-related emissions since it established a 2017 baseline. Newlove blames a lack of funding and fiscal constraints for some of the shortfall. She attributes more positive reduction efforts, particularly in transportation emissions, to recent (COVID-related) work from home policy and Saanich’s active transportation efforts. 

Part of the overall failure, Newlove said, directly relates to the growing use of LNG as a home-heating and fuel source, despite efforts to educate on the impacts of that fossil fuel.

“We do want to include water and air quality and embodied emissions this time ‘round, updating climate-smart actions, modelling those that will ensure they meet our targets," she said. “And key here is enhancing public awareness and addressing misinformation and climate change.” 

Bring in a consultant

Newlove also indicated the municipality has moved forward with a request for a consultant for the its greenhouse gas modelling elements and new climate risk assessment.

Mayor Dean Murdock wondered why Saanich didn’t have an actual climate budget or a framework around climate action that would help the council understand the cost of actions and inactions reflected in a budget. 

Maybe Victoria has some tips

Newlove suggested Saanich could soon look to work being done by Victoria’s city council, which is finalizing a report on the cost of doing nothing and failing to invest from a climate resiliency perspective, based on a Local Governments for Sustainability Canada (ICLEI) adaptability resource. That report will outline the resulting costs that a community will experience in terms of the damages resulting from those climate hazards in the future.