It isn’t too late for Vancouver City Council to reverse its recent, hasty decision to reopen the door for fossil fuel hook-ups in new buildings, two expert authors argue in side-by-side Vancouver Sun op eds.
“Some members of Vancouver council say that builders cannot afford to build good low-carbon buildings,” writes former Toronto mayor David Miller, now managing director of C40 Cities. “They have it backwards—we cannot afford not to.”
“As the first municipality in Canada to reverse a bylaw to build clean energy into new homes, Vancouver is no longer a climate leader,” agrees Vancouver family physician Dr. Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “It’s a climate laggard.”
Vancouver Council and Mayor Ken Sim faced intense criticism in late July after voting 6-5 to rescind restrictions on gas heating in new homes that had been in effect since 2020.The bylaw amendment “restores the option for new home construction to use natural gas for heating and hot water,” the Sun reported at the time, even after Sustainability Manager Brad Badelt warned the decision “will move us back” on climate targets the city was already on track to miss.
Miller calls that decision “a serious misjudgment,” adding that “the slim majority of council who voted for this were clearly influenced by the lobbying of fossil fuel interests—so much so that their comments mirrored industry talking points.” The mayor and five councillors who backed the amendment are also “out of touch with the facts about cities and their ability to act to help the world avoid climate breakdown,” he added.
While the local fossil lobby tried to position gas as an affordable option, “good alternatives already exist. Highly energy efficient, net-zero or even net-positive (generating more clean energy on site than is used to heat and cool the building) buildings can be built today,” and “new technologies are inexpensive.”
Moreover, Canadians “have seen the cost of the climate crisis over the last two weeks,” Miller writes, from epic flooding in Toronto to a devastating wildfire in Jasper, Alberta.
“While the financial and emotional costs are being paid by the residents and business of Jasper, it’s the fossil fuel companies who are really responsible,” he says.
Lem traces a similar sense of betrayal in an op ed published on the same day as Miller’s. “As Valemount was opening its homes to thousands of evacuees fleeing the Jasper wildfires, Vancouver was slamming the door on climate progress,” she writes. “Barely three years after a heat dome killed 117 people in Vancouver alone, this ambush of our public right to weigh in on municipal policy, and our right to a healthy environment, betrays our civic values and health.”
Lem recalls the months of consultation in 2020 that led to the council vote in favour of zero-emission heating and hot water new housing. After pressure from the gas lobby prompted city staff to suggest a one-year delay in implementing the measure, public pushback “bolstered councillors’ initial resolve to keep polluting fossil fuels out of new homes.”
That local win contrasted with a decision last month that was “introduced on the fly,” according to Councillor Pete Fry, with the deciding vote cast after Sim joined the meeting virtually during his vacation.
“There was no opportunity for the public or industry experts to intervene,” Lem says. “Real-time engagement, which would have made it politically challenging to adopt the motion, was cut off. This is not how decision-makers tasked with representing their constituents should behave.”
Lem adds that trust in public institutions to act in citizens’ interests is a determinant of health. “Research tells us more than half of youth globally report mental health concerns including sadness, anxiety, anger, and helplessness due to climate change, and three-quarters say ‘the future is frightening’,” she writes. “What youth find most distressing, however, are not the actual effects of climate change, but their belief that adults and government are not doing enough to tackle them. Unfortunately, this vote appears to prove them right.”
It’s a particularly bad look for a community that could once take pride in its standing as a climate leader. “While city staff work on implementing this about-face into its climate response and prepare to report back by November, we must be ready to mobilize against it for our health and a livable future,” Lem says. “This fall, our voices will not be silenced.”
