Ottawa takes first step with climate emergency declaration, bold action must follow

By Brent Patterson, Rable.ca, April 29, 2019

On April 24, Ottawa City Council voted in favour of an eight-point motion to declare a climate emergency.

The National Post reports, "The capital city is one of a growing number of Canadian municipalities that have adopted similar declarations, including Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax and Kingston."

(...)Extinction Rebellion, an international grassroots climate justice group, argues that governments must declare climate and ecological emergencies, and work with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change. The Ottawa motion lacks language about communicating the urgency for change to the federal and provincial governments, as well as to city residents.

The group also demands that governments act immediately to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025. Ottawa's motion only calls for the city to adopt a target of a 45 per cent reduction in 2010 levels by 2030.

BONOKOSKI: Progressive plaudits abound as Ottawa declares climate emergency

By Mark Bonokoski, Toronto Sun, April 27, 2019

Our nation’s capital, always in search of the latest in political progressivism, has now joined the sky-is-dying crowd by having its city council officially declare Ottawa to be in a climate emergency.

This is in the nick of time, of course, but not because of the serious flooding currently ravaging the region, but because our country’s climate conscience Environment Minister Catherine McKenna keeps telling us that the planet has only 12 years left to sustain life.

(...)In Ontario, the successive Liberal governments of McGuinty and Wynne bragged about how they had at least saved their own province by shutting down all coal-fired power generation, tossing $2 billion down the toilet to cancel two gas-fired power plants, and spending multi-billions more on green-energy projects backed by influential friends who saw renewable energy as their licence to print money.

And they weren’t far wrong. Lots of former backroom types got rich, but it wasn’t the beleaguered taxpayer, because it was he who found himself having to choose between feeding his family or heating his home, and not how he was going to count all the money rolling in.

Rising water could cut off Ottawa water purification plant

By Matthew Kupfer, CBC News Ottawa, April 26, 2019

City officials say access to a major water treatment plant in west Ottawa is at risk from the rising Ottawa River.

Cassels Street is the only road to the Britannia Water Purification Plant, and the military will be making sure it remains accessible, said city manager Steve Kanellakos.

"There's a section of that road that, if it becomes flooded, prevents us from bringing in the chemicals required to treat the water," Kanellakos said at Friday afternoon's update on the flood threat.

"We don't have the ability to stockpile enough chemicals in our [Britannia] water filtration plant to deal with the next three weeks, should we lose that road."

Boswell: Let's get OC Transpo working for its passengers again

By Sam Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2019

I’ve taken OC Transpo my entire life; my family didn’t have a car for much of my childhood and my husband and I still don’t have a car now. I’m an avid transit user and I remember what Ottawa’s transit system looked like when it worked.

I remember when you could look at a paper schedule and bet on a bus arriving within a few minutes of that time. I bused to junior high, high school, university and a whole range of jobs and I was rarely late because the buses were mostly (mostly!) on time. I grew up just east of Vanier and we made fun of the rowdy ‘Ole #2 (“The Zoo”), of course, but we rarely talked about really late or completely missing-in-action buses. OC Transpo didn’t just stop running when it snowed. Fares were reasonable. We sometimes got bus bunching but not three or four buses in a row.

Selley: Trudeau's carbon-intensive vacations send a curious message to Canadians

By Chris Selley, Ottawa Citizen, April 26, 2019

Robert Kokonis, president of the aviation consultancy AirTrav, told the Financial Post this week that by 2030, a family of four could “easily” be paying $600 in carbon tax for a flight from Toronto to Vancouver. That’s based on predictions and best guesses as to where the tax rate goes and how it applies after 2022, when the federal government’s current plans top out at $50 per tonne; but even at $50, Kokonis claimed that family will likely be paying $120 extra just to fly from Ottawa to Toronto and back.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer retweeted the interview on Friday afternoon, weaponizing it for partisan effect. “Imagine you’ve saved enough to finally go on that family vacation, or that you have to fly home from Vancouver to Fredericton to take care of your mom,” he suggested. Now imagine that costing $600 more. Justin Trudeau is making your life more expensive.”

Today's letters: Preserving the environment, nature, heritage (but not tax forms or time change)

By Sherry Nigro, Ray Pierce and Faith Schneider, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, April 27, 2019

A fee that will hurt the environment

Re: Tories may allow developers to pay fee in lieu of endangered species actions, April 19.

After a months-long public consultation, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment announced changes to the Endangered Species Act that reflect more input from land developers than from conservation experts. The changes create workarounds to circumvent existing environmental protection measures. My heart sinks: What will this look like locally?

Let’s say condo developers eye the million-dollar views of the Ottawa River from Petrie Island, an east-end recreation area currently owned by the city. The cash-strapped municipality could be tempted to sell the flood-prone wetlands, and a fee to the newly created Species at Risk Conservation Trust would absolve all parties from any responsibility for environmental harm.

(...)Ottawa climate change is serious

Re: Letter, Local skier sees no ‘climate emergency,’ April 20.

I don’t begrudge the letter-writer’s joy in the length of this past winter’s ski season. It was a big hit with my family as well. But I recommend he look past the tip of his skis in the off-season, at what decades of data collection and research are now telling us about Ottawa’s changing climate.

He might start at climateatlas.ca, “… an interactive tool for citizens, researchers, businesses, and community and political leaders to learn about climate change in Canada.” It contains details on climate projections for all of Canada’s metropolitan areas.

(...)Time is not on our side with climate change

Your “Letters of the Day” space last Saturday featured a photo of the crowd that turned out urging the City of Ottawa to declare a climate emergency. I was surprised to also see the letter from a reader who dismissed climate change because he so enjoyed skiing in all the snow this past winter.

A recent article in Scientific American speaks of climate change being about the long-term trends. The reality is the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Program to provide an objective source of scientific information to the nations of the world, has released its latest Assessment Report. It is categorical in its conclusion: Climate change is real and human activities are the main cause. Time is not on our side.

Egan: Ottawa and climate anxiety ... Seasons change but the stress won't let up

By Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen, April 27, 2019

There was a gruff-sounding man on the radio this morning — built like a “linebacker,” he said — who broke down mid-interview from the stress of dealing with Ottawa River flooding, his home under siege for days now, his life upside down.

For three nights, he said, sleep couldn’t be found.

A couple of hours later, an exhausted city councillor choked up while speaking to a reporter, steps from where dozens of volunteers were filling sandbags in Constance Bay, grains of sand in a sack trying to hold back an advancing sea. Our smallness — really, it is to weep.

On Wednesday, Ottawa city council declared a “climate emergency” in general. On Thursday, Mayor Jim Watson sounded a louder trumpet about our particular state of inundation. On Friday, warnings of broad evacuations.

(...)The tornadoes that ripped through Dunrobin, meanwhile, were 217 days ago, the worst in a century. On a bitterly cold January afternoon, we had the calamity of the OC Transpo bus crash, probably ice-related.

“Climate anxiety” does not feel like an airy concept anymore. In Ottawa, in April 2019, it feels real, something that wakes you up in the morning, tucks you in at night, snaps you awake in the dark.

Spring melt, rains spawn floods in Ottawa, Montreal

By CNN, KXLY Spokane, April 26, 2019

(CNN) - Canadians already deluged by floodwaters in recent days braced for more rain over the weekend as federal and local authorities marshaled resources to help beleaguered residents.

Ottawa and Montreal are on alert as downpours are forecast. Eastern Ontario and western Quebec along the Ottawa River as well as other parts of those provinces have been particularly hit hard by rising waters caused by rain and rapid snow melt.

(...)Ontario Premier Doug Ford was touring Ottawa on Friday, with Canadian media quoting him pointing to climate change as a reason why eastern Ontario is facing heavy flooding for the second time in three years.

(...)Goodale also touched on climate change in his press briefing, saying, "These wild cycles from storms and floods to droughts and wildfires -- that is a very serious national problem; it is a public safety problem, and we all have to work conscientiously together.

"I think we all have to learn the lessons of climate change. The impacts here are powerful and dangerous and damaging, and this is one of the most obvious manifestations of a changing climate. (We have) more unstable weather conditions where you can get precipitation that dumps about a year's worth of moisture in a day or two, and then it all floods and causes enormous damage to private property as well as public infrastructure as well as the economy."

City should up its road-painting game, report finds

By Matthew Kupfer, CBC News Ottawa, April 25, 2019

It's time for the city to spend millions of dollars to upgrade the equipment it uses to paint lines and other markers on roads, according to a staff report.

The report outlines the need for new equipment to use a more permanent thermoplastic paint, to dry road surfaces to allow for work on rainy days, and scour off outdated markings.

The city currently has one truck to paint 5,500 kilometres of road and 6,500 intersections every year, the report adds.

(...)The city has been using an environmentally friendly, low-volatile organic compound paint since the federal government passed regulations in 2012. That paint doesn't last a full year on Ottawa's roads.

The report recommends using more durable paint on major arterial and collector roads for centre lines and lane markings. Other markings and minor streets would not get the more permanent paint.

Ottawa's top LRT planner stepping down

By CBC News Ottawa, April 25, 2019

Chris Swail, the senior city staffer who has overseen the planning of Ottawa's $4.66-billion Stage 2 LRT project, is stepping down.

As director of O-Train planning, Swail has spent the last four years shaping the expansion project.

As the public face of the project, he's also been in the hot seat recently.

The contracts for the project include a $1.6-billion deal with SNC-Lavalin that's now under investigation by the city's auditor general over questions about how the company won the bid without meeting certain technical requirements.

The cost of the project also ballooned, rising more than $1 billion from original estimates.

Swail was also involved in the $2.1-billion Stage 1 LRT project from Tunney's Pasture to Blair station, which has missed several deadlines and is yet to open to the public.

Ottawa River now predicted to rise 50 cm over 2017 levels

By Andrew Foote, CBC News Ottawa, April 26, 2019

The Ottawa River could rise 50 centimetres above peak levels seen during the devastating flooding of May 2017, officials now warn.

Under the worst-case scenario, record-high water levels could be reached in some areas by the middle of next week, according to the latest forecast.

The updated prediction is based on data from the Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board (ORRPB), which controls reservoir levels along the length of the river basin. It comes less than 24 hours after Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency based on a prediction of levels rising 11 centimetres over the 2017 peak.

Cohen: Canada's environmentalists, feminists must stop demanding political perfection

By Andrew Cohen, Ottawa Citizen, April 23, 2019

When Voltaire wrote that perfection is the enemy of the good, he was surely speaking of Rachel Notley and the environmentalists. Or Justin Trudeau and the feminists.

Of course he was, even in 1770. Two hundred and fifty years ago, you see, Voltaire could predict the political future of Canada, even as he dismissed it as “a few acres of snow.”

But perfection is what critics demand. In Alberta, the environmentalists went after the New Democrats who imposed a carbon tax, promised to phase out coal and wanted to expand a pipeline broadly supported by Indigenous Peoples.

As Tristin Hopper writes in The National Post, this brought lawsuits, street protests and threats from the government of British Columbia. And what did that yield? Why, the defeat of the New Democrats and the election of the Conservatives, who will repeal said carbon tax.

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