With just two weeks left in the federal election campaign, mayors and elected officials across the country are expressing worry that talk of the economy is overshadowing concerns over climate change.
In the Montreal area, memories of back-to-back snowstorms in February that dumped more than 70 cm of snow on the region snow in four days are still fresh. The last time the city got so much snow in such a short time was in the 1890s, according to Environment Canada.
Other extreme weather events, such as floods in Montreal last summer and the fires that burned the city of Jasper, Alta., to the ground, are pushing public and private sector municipal authorities in Canada to speak out.
On Monday, the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM), a regional body that coordinates services for the Greater Montreal Area, outlined its priorities to all the federal parties. The call includes a request to focus more on energy transition rather than on building more pipelines.
“If we don’t take care of the climate crisis right now, there will be financial problems sooner than later,” CMM director of government relations Maël Bureau-Blouin told Global News.
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That request follows an an open letter, signed by more than 200 mayors and elected municipal officials from coast to coast to coast, outlining five priorities to address the climate crisis and the economy.
The list includes building a national clean electric grid as well as a national high-speed rail network, constructing two million non-market energy-efficient homes, providing help to retrofit homes to make them more energy-efficient and creating a climate disaster fund.
“We just needed to remind the federal candidates that, you know, climate change is real and it will occur even with the tariff war,” said Mont-Saint-Hilaire mayor Marc-André Guertin, one of the signatories.
Some political watchers, like Tari Ajadi, an assistant professor of political science at McGill, say it’s no surprise that municipal officials are speaking up.
“It’s municipalities that have to deal with the flooding like we saw here in the Greater Montreal Area over the last couple years. It’s municipalities that have to deal with fires,” he reasoned.
But exclusive Ipsos polling for Global News shows that climate change is only the 11th most important issue for voters in this campaign. In the 2019 election it was number two.
Getting the public and politicians to focus more on climate change could be hard, experts admit, given anxiety over the economy. Charles-Édouard Têtu of Équiterre cautions, however, that lack of climate policies will make life even more expensive.
“Canadians need to be reminded that climate change already does affect them on a daily basis,” he pointed out.
“We think of heat waves, we think of forest fires, we think of droughts.”
He and the municipal officials hope voters and politicians get the message.
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