But eventually the giants, like General Motors, failed to fully keep their word. Just like today, promises made have not been kept. Notably, Stellantis still has not fulfilled its commitment to communities, workers and government to retool its Brampton plant.

Now, faced with threats from our neighbour to the south, we are, again, in a moment where our advanced manufacturing automobile industry is hemorrhaging jobs and at significant risk, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s controversial ads notwithstanding. Just like in 2008, Ottawa and the provinces need strong pressure to protect the jobs of today and develop the jobs of the future.

Multiplying threats

Mayors and councillors across Canada are also ringing the alarm bells for another reason. Not only are good jobs at risk: the very towns and cities in which we work and live are, too.

This summer our country was quite literally on fire from coast to coast to coast. More than 200 communities were affected by wildfires, not to mention flooding, air quality alerts, drought and extreme heat. The premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan both declared states of emergency.

Science shows that changes to our climate are driving this new reality we now face every spring and summer, that these changes are primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and that the world must cut fossil fuel use nearly in half by 2030 to prevent catastrophe. This is possible only if Canada does its part.

That’s why – on the eve of the federal budget, when Carney is expected to release his so-called climate competitiveness strategy – we are calling for the government to invest in true nation-building, job-creating projects, not more pipelines and fossil fuel subsidies.

Building a competitive economy

As local leaders representing more than 10 million Canadians, we are calling for projects that would link communities across Canada with clean electrical power and modern high-speed rail; build affordable, energy-efficient homes, including heat pumps; and support communities to withstand and recover from climate disasters.

These are the building blocks of a competitive and resilient economy. They are the building blocks of safe and prosperous communities.

Why wouldn’t Carney, a climate expert, be prepared to take bold action to ensure that Canada is “climate competitive”? The answer, in part, lies with who the government is listening to. Oil and gas lobbyists have been received at more than 600 meetings since January, including 50 meetings with Energy Minister Tim Hodgson alone since the April election – an average of two a week.

READ MORE OF OUR WILDFIRE COVERAGE

Canadian groups call for dramatic increase to wildfire defence funding

Emerging research reveals stark health threats from wildfire smoke

The fight against wildfires is getting increasingly high-tech

That the government is meeting so often with proponents of old technologies, which are proven to cause irreversible harm, is all the more startling given the reality our communities are facing. The impacts of climate destabilization are widespread and devastating, from Jasper’s clean-up costs and massive home-insurance increases in Yellowknife to estimates of insured damages from the Flin Flon and La Ronde wildfire complexes reaching $300 million and counting. Without urgent action, Canada is on track for $100 billion per year in climate damages by 2050.

A double standard

Further, communities such as Jasper, Alberta, have been asked to repay part of the response costs to the disastrous wildfire that burned a third of the town – a clawback that will be devastating to its recovery.

Compare this to the fossil fuel majors that made $35 billion in profits in 2022 alone while significantly contributing to inflation across the country. Why should the government continue to subsidize foreign companies to profit while residents in Jasper are asked to repay disaster support?

In fairness, the federal government is expected to take serious and applaudable steps in the budget to address methane emissions. Such measures could even see Canada as a world leader in reducing methane emissions.

However, these steps will not be enough to secure Canada’s economic future or meet emission-reduction targets needed to keep our communities safe from summer after summer of life-threatening wildfires, oppressive smoke, damaging floods and evacuations.

No wonder a recent Leger poll shows that a majority of Canadians are worried about the changes in our climate, especially in Quebec, where Carney also drew much of the support that secured his victory this spring.

Mayors and councillors are worried, too. And they understand the pressures this government faces, especially in light of U.S. protectionism and industrial competition. As Carney recently reminded us, the geopolitical landscape has been forever transformed.

That’s why at this moment of existential economic crisis, Canada must invest in projects that create the jobs of the future and truly build this nation, not help burn it down.

David Miller is the co-chair of Elbows Up for Climate, a coalition of more than 250 mayors and councillors working to ensure that Canada prioritizes climate action and economic sovereignty; a former mayor of Toronto; former chair of the Ontario Auto Mayors; and the current managing director of the C40 Centre.

The post To save our economy, Canada must choose projects that are truly nation-building – not nation-burning appeared first on Corporate Knights.

We have all lost a wonderful friend, father and husband, and we miss him dearly.

John was a thoughtful and accomplished man, who lived at least nine separate careers – and that’s just last year.

He was an unusual, but highly effective politician. Unusual in the sense that John, although with deep liberal values, never developed a partisan edge. I quickly learned this when we first became friends, early in both of our political careers, when we worked together to restore funding for purpose-built daycare centres in schools that the newly elected Ontario conservative government had cut.

As federal minister of state for infrastructure and communities, John was charged with crafting the New Deal for Cities, an election commitment for significant federal – city funding made by then-prime minister Paul Martin. As mayor of Toronto, I worked closely with John. Creating this New Deal for Cities was much more difficult than it sounds, for at least three reasons: first, no-one knew what it meant; second, there are only a few large cities in Canada – but many towns; and third, provincial governments – and the federal public service – viewed cities as a provincial matter.

Giving shape to a good idea in this context was not an easy task – but one to which John was ideally suited because he listened, built consensus – and then had the ability to act and make change. While the argument that Canada was increasingly an urban nation that could not succeed economically, socially, or environmentally without its cities succeeding was undoubtably correct, it took all of John’s skills to change minds stuck in Canadian constitutional conventions.

John, again, demonstrated his strategic and practical guidance throughout all the hard work it took for us to get Canada-wide municipal support and the New Deal (consisting of a share of the gas tax and specialized programmes for large cities and smaller towns respectively) passed into law.

His work to get broad consensus paid off and the gas tax funding still flows today, benefitting millions of urban residents, despite the election of a cost cutting conservative government a few years later. As an example of its importance, in Toronto’s case, the billions of dollars of funding were used for investments in public transit and within three years TTC ridership was at its highest levels ever.

We can see his influence in Canada’s work on climate change. John has always been passionate about the natural environment, including his love for wilderness canoeing. John personally ensured that cities and towns had to have climate plans to be eligible for funding nearly 20 years ago, at a time that climate change was only emerging as an issue for local governments.

John was the climate czar for the Ontario government under Kathleen Wynne. That work led him to realize that we needed to model very local climate impacts – at the neighbourhood or factory level – to help governments, institutions and businesses develop adaptation plans. Undeterred when the election brought in a new government that had no interest in addressing climate change, John resigned, but went ahead anyway, with no mandate, no support and no money. All he had was his energy, wisdom and charm.

His approach was to find the right partners – climate scientists, economists, engineers, and more – and bring them together. He told me with some excitement – and astonishment – “David, the University of Toronto has all the world leading experts we need but they don’t even talk to each other!”

They soon did. John pulled together the university’s experts and had them hired to advise a large power plant about the risks it faced due to localized climate impacts.

At the same time, in his capacity as a fellow at Massey College, he mentored young professionals using IT in the climate area. For example, he helped guide Pharos, a company that helps infrastructure and natural resource businesses access climate, weather, and satellite data so they can quantify their physical climate risk.

In this, he was very forward looking. And looking back over so many of his accomplishments, the same is always true: they were very forwarding looking indeed.

One of his mentees, Bardia Monavari, wrote his own thoughts about John’s passing. They perfectly express what so many of us are feeling about John, and with Bardia’s permission I would like to leave you with his words:

Over the last six years, John was a life mentor to me, a career and business advisor, a squash partner, a walking and lunch companion.

But above all, he was my friend.

And I will spend the rest of my life trying to espouse the simple yet profound philosophy of John: be kind, be curious, and always find the humor and joy in our world.

Thank you, John. For everything.

The post Remembering John Godfrey, a rare breed of politician without a partisan edge appeared first on Corporate Knights.