By Cillian O'Brien, CTV News, December 22, 2019
TORONTO -- Kim Kardashian revealed this week that she doesn’t use traditional wrapping paper for her Christmas gifts.
In a recent Instagram story, the reality TV superstar explained that her family uses a cloth wrapping for their presents instead.
“Each year every family member picks a color and vibe so we know who the gifts are from. This year we chose creamy velvet,” Kardashian wrote.
By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, December 23, 2019
A fresh decade means fresh ideas. Beginning today, Brigitte Pellerin features some of the local people who are innovating – some in small ways, some in big ones, some in community-focused enterprises. Today: Aaron Thornell describes the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative.
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Not every quixotic battle has to involve tilting at windmills. Striving for visionary ideals can mean regular folks banding together to tackle a common enemy. In this case, fighting climate change by investing in small-scale, sustainable, community-owned renewable energy projects.
Cervantes’ most famous character would have liked the work done by the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative. Founded in 2010, OREC gives people in Eastern Ontario the opportunity to invest in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote the democratization of energy production – and grow their nest eggs.
The City of Ottawa declared a climate emergency in April 2019, and the Ontario government plans to reduce our emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, a target in line with federal commitments. But how can we, regular folks with modest resources, do our part for the climate without feeling like Sancho Panza’s travelling companion?
By Jon Willing, Ottawa Sun, December 17, 2019
With the environment committee’s endorsement of draft targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions produced by the City of Ottawa, council’s job might now be to convince people that the municipality is serious about climate change.
The committee on Tuesday voted unanimously in favour of a draft climate change master plan.
The proposed emissions targets for the city government are based on a 2012 baseline count. The targets are a 30-per-cent reduction by 2025, 50-per-cent reduction by 2030 and 100-per-cent reduction by 2040.
(...)Ecology Ottawa’s Robb Barnes said the organization likes the city’s proposed emission targets and its intention for regular reporting, but Ecology Ottawa is concerned about a lack of progress on community emissions and the city’s slow pace of advancing energy evolution projects. Barnes, while flagging the cost of building new roads, urged the city to avoid expanding the urban boundary in the next official plan.
By Kate Porter, CBC News Ottawa, December 17, 2019
Environmental advocates are urging city councillors to show some "spine" as they usher Ottawa toward a cleaner, greener future.
At its meeting Tuesday, the city's committee on environmental protection, water and waste management endorsed tough new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a new climate change master plan.
"The work laid out in this plan is enormous, but is in keeping with the enormous scale of work to be done," Sharon Coward, executive director of EnviroCentre, told councillors.(...)"We've come a long way," said Robb Barnes of Ecology Ottawa, who believes the road map is directly linked to the declaration of a climate emergency in April.
By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, December 9, 2019
Much of a public meeting Monday on the City of Ottawa’s next official plan was just as much about improving roads and public transit in the suburban areas as it was about rewriting the planning bible for the city as a whole.
The pitch to councillors, especially from Ottawa’s southern and western communities, was improve “suburban mobility.”
The city’s next official plan will chart the city’s growth between 2021 and 2046.
(...)The most controversial part of a new official plan often involves the urban boundary and reconciling the need for building new homes and keeping homes affordable with the threat of increasing urban sprawl and boosting reliance on cars for transportation.
(...)Paul Johanis, chair of the Greenspace Alliance of Canada’s Capital, said the city should exhaust all options for intensification before considering to expand the urban boundary. The Greenspace Alliance has held its own consultations and “nowhere did we hear any support for urban expansion,” he said.
Ontario’s Environment Minister has cancelled a $200-million wind farm south of Ottawa — one almost fully constructed — because the giant turbines pose a threat to nearby bat populations.
In a Dec. 4 letter, Minister Jeff Yurek said he’s revoking the approval given to the Nation Rise Wind Farm, which has already erected a number of the 29 planned turbines in a rural area near the villages of Crysler and Finch in the Township of North Stormont.
The surprising decision comes about seven months after construction began on the 100-megawatt project, proposed by EDP Renewables, a subsidiary of a multinational with North American headquarters in Texas.
Yurek wrote to Margaret Benke, an appellant and leading critic of Nation Rise, that he was concerned about the effect of 200-metre high turbines on colonies of Hoary bats and Big and Little Brown bats, the latter being listed on Ontario’s Species at Risk list.
By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, December 10, 2019
Canadians’ views on energy and climate changes aren’t as polarized as we may think, says a new poll, leaving hope that while our opinions are “fragmented,” we have room to work things out.
Take the hot-button topic of building pipelines, says political scientist Monica Gattinger. Her research group’s new survey found that while opinions are split, there aren’t huge numbers of “views that are hardened at either end of the spectrum.”
Instead she says there are “differences of opinion that might be a little more evenly distributed.
“That actually gives me some hope in terms of people’s views’ being more malleable, more open to compromise.”
By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, December 10, 2019
The City of Ottawa is proposing a sweeping climate plan to bring greenhouse emissions down to zero, still chasing a goal that Ottawa councils have been promising to reach for 30 years.
The draft Climate Change Master Plan proposes measures cutting across all city operations from planning new development to managing transportation to preserving wetlands.
It foresees a broad trend of people abandoning private cars in favour of transit and cycling, while investing heavily in renovating their homes and businesses.
And it proposes to end all net emissions from municipal sources by 2040, and from everyone else in Ottawa by 2050. The city currently emits about six million tonnes of greenhouses gases from all sources per year and the trend in recent years is nearly flat.
The draft plan goes to the environment committee on Dec. 17.
By Judy Trinh, Ottawa Magazine, December 9, 2019
A photo of an internal computer cancellation report reveals the pressure behind the scenes at OC Transpo to keep buses on schedule as the city tries to cope with driver shortages.
The photo obtained by Ottawa Magazine shows a computer screen that reveals 60 OC Transpo trip cancellations during the afternoon rush hour of Friday, November 29 that were not made public. These cancellations between 2 p.m. and 6:15 p.m occurred as thousands of transit users waited for buses to get home.
The cancellations were not posted on OC Transpo’s website or its social media accounts.
John Manconi, the city’s general manager of transportation services, has said OC Transpo is transparent and posts the trips that are cancelled on its website and on social media — but he had to backpedal on that statement after being shown the internal cancellation report.
By Kimberly Molina, CBC News Ottawa, December 9, 2019
Ottawa's proposed tree protection bylaw strengthens rules protecting urban trees and halting deforestation by imposing harsh penalties for breaking them.
The new bylaw — which will go before the environment committee for approval next Tuesday, Dec. 17 — would blend two bylaws that currently deal with trees on municipal land and private property.
"This can't come soon enough. We've already lost so many trees in Ottawa, particularly in the urban areas," said Coun. Shawn Menard, vice-chair of the committee.By CBC News, December 6, 2019
The Ford government's advertising campaign attacking the federal Liberals' carbon pricing system cost Ontario taxpayers $4 million, says the province's auditor general.
The television ad showed nickels spilling out of a gas pump, a heating vent and a man's wallet, accompanied by a voice saying, "The federal government is charging you a carbon tax."
The ads began airing in the spring but at the time, the government declined to state their cost. In her new annual report on government advertising, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk reveals the $4 million price tag and criticizes the ad campaign as partisan.
By Patrick Ryan Jones, CBC News Ottawa, December 6, 2019
A disparate group of business executives and civil society organizations penned a letter to Canada's political leaders this week, calling on them to lead efforts to tackle climate change and speed up the transition to a greener economy.
"Building a low carbon, high performance economy is a vital environmental responsibility," the letter says. "It is also a major economic opportunity for all sectors and regions of the country."
The 26 signatories in Wednesday's letter to the prime minister and premiers include seemingly-strange bedfellows: executives from an oil company, a bank, an environmental conservation NGO, a venture capital fund, Indigenous groups and a labour union, among others.