The Climate Budget webinar series features municipalities that are advancing or have adopted climate budgets, focusing on how these budgets are tracked, managed, and drive decision-making.
In this session, the City of Edmonton share their approach to a municipal climate budget, including critical steps from the planning and development phase.
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Incorporating a Natural Asset Inventory into municipal asset management helps municipalities recognize and protect the essential services that natural systems provide, while reducing long-term costs and strengthening overall service reliability.
In this webinar, Patrick Wong, Senior Natural Heritage Planner at City of Markham shared the findings and recommendations of Markham’s Natural Assets Inventory and Evaluation Study. The session will highlight key components of the natural asset inventory—including asset valuation, condition, and levels of service—and provide an overview of how these assets contribute to municipal climate resilience and municipal service delivery.
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Discussion involved CAC roundtable updates, focused on 2026 projects and priorities.
The Climate Budget series showcases municipal approaches to climate budgeting, answering key questions related to staff engagement during development, generating buy-in, and overall budget effectiveness.
In this first session, the City of Vancouver shared their approach, including key steps throughout development and implementation.
Many Ontario municipalities have declared climate emergencies, set net-zero targets, and are implementing their Climate Action Plans. But beyond the efforts of climate and energy staff, how can organizations build climate literacy and momentum across all departments? In this webinar, Mark Pajot, Advisor in the Office of Climate Change and Energy Management (OCCEM) at Peel Region, shared how OCCEM developed and is rolling out its climate training program for staff, including key challenges and lessons learned.
In June 2025, Ontario released the province’s Integrated Energy Plan (IEP), which is intended to outline the actions needed to prepare for the anticipated growth of Ontario’s electricity system and bring together planning for electricity, natural gas, hydrogen, and other fuels into a single coordinated plan.
Last year, a draft version of the IEP was published for public comment. The CAC provided feedback during this process, and upon reviewing the final version of the plan, we’ve identified areas of both alignment and misalignment between the CAC’s recommendations and the actions outlined in the final IEP. This workshop provided an overview of these points of alignment and misalignment and included a discussion about next steps.
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The carbon offset market represents an opportunity for municipalities and conservation authorities, either through purchasing offsets as a tool to achieve GHG reduction targets, selling offsets as a tool to diversify revenue streams, or both. At least as many challenges exist with the market though, including the cost of participation and concerns about transparency and accountability. This webinar introduced carbon offsets from organizations who have started exploring this option, through both formal market approaches and less formal intra-organizational approaches.
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For a copy of the slide deck, please contact cap@climateactionpartnership.ca
Mississauga is investigating the development of a hydrogen hub. The hub is designed to engage project partners and local businesses to build awareness and education about hydrogen. The City of Mississauga engaged Deloitte to assess the feasibility of establishing a hydrogen hub, with funding from Natural Resources Canada. The assessment aimed to: (1) understand the hydrogen opportunity in Mississauga and the surrounding region, focusing on infrastructure and market potential, (2) position Mississauga competitively to attract investment and support for hydrogen initiatives, and (3) develop actionable steps to operationalize the hydrogen hub and address key challenges. In this webinar, City of Mississauga staff shared the results of the analysis.
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For a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
Southern Ontario faces growing flood risks that require evidence-based approaches to develop equitable flood information systems that adequately consider vulnerable and at-risk populations. This workshop sought to take stock of current flood data and information capabilities across our region, identifying gaps, pressing requirements, and key challenges. We will draw on leading international frameworks to examine how these might inform practitioners in Southern Ontario, as we develop this framework for an equitable flood data information system. Together, we explored what equitable flood information systems could look like and how to collaboratively create them, recognizing that current evidence-based approaches may inadvertently overlook at-risk populations. Attendees engaged in structured breakout discussions to develop a collaborative vision for more equitable flood data and information systems that serve both long-term adaptation planning and broader community resilience goals.
City of Toronto and City of Ottawa have each adopted a tree equity approach to address the unequal distribution of urban canopy in their cities. Both cities are working to identify and prioritize areas of tree inequity, focusing tree planting efforts where they are needed most. In this session, staff from City of Toronto and City of Ottawa answered your questions regarding their approaches and the challenges so far.
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This workshop provided an overview of the impact of frequent heat events on health and equity in our communities. We explored the roles played by local governments in addressing heat events, introduced CAP’s Heat Adaptation Project, and provided an overview of North America’s maximum temperature bylaws. Participants heard from the Canadian Environmental Law Association on municipal authority to implement a maximum temperature bylaw, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and City of Toronto.
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If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
The Town of Pelham has completed a Municipal Natural Asset Management Plan (MNAMP) to enhance its understanding, evaluation, and management of natural assets. This project, supported by a grant from the Greenbelt Foundation and in partnership with the Natural Asset Initiative, identified and inventoried over 4,000 natural assets. The project assessed the current condition of these assets, the services they provide, and estimated their value at approximately $600,000,000, primarily in stormwater management services.
In this webinar, Michelle Molnar, Technical Director with Natural Assets Initiative, provided an overview of natural asset management. Shannon Larocque, Manager of Planning, and Samantha Witkowski, Environmental Coordinator from the Town of Pelham, discussed the development process of the MNAMP and presented key recommendations for managing the Town’s natural assets moving forward.
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If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
In this webinar, Andrea McDowell from City of Hamilton presented on the City’s Public Works department climate lens, sharing insights into the development and implementation of the lens, and how it helps to ensure climate change considerations are integrated into decision-making.
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If you would like a copy of the slide deck, or would like to access a recording of this webinar, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
As municipalities recognize the need for sustainable and inclusive growth, integrating climate and equity lenses is becoming essential. In this webinar, Sara MacRae, Manager of Climate & Energy at Dufferin County, shared how the County is applying an Equity and Climate Lens to shape its operations and decision-making processes.
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Natural assets -such as wetlands, rivers, and forests- are increasingly recognized as infrastructure that provides financially valuable ecosystem services to Canadian communities. Integrating these assets into financial reporting can help local governments demonstrate effective management of these valuable services. The new Intact Centre guide Getting Nature into Financial Reporting, developed for Standards Council of Canada, with KPMG LPP, the Natural Assets Initiative and over 120 contributors, outlines metrics that can be reported as part of a stepwise approach to more complete natural asset reporting, no matter where your community is starting from. In this webinar, Joanna Eyquem, Managing Director of Climate-Resilient Infrastructure, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, discussed the step-by-step guide to disclosures and City of Calgary presented on their efforts to integrate natural asset-related disclosures into financial reporting.
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If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
As Canada experiences more extreme rainfall, the risk of flooding increases, highlighting the growing need for innovative stormwater management solutions. Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) constructed a smart blue roof in 2023 with commissioning and initial operations beginning in Spring -Summer, 2024. CVC’s smart blue roof was the first in Canada to be built in compliance with the Canadian Standards Association’s standard for Rainwater Harvesting Systems (CSA B805-18). The smart blue roof uses modulating control valves directed by a programable logic controller (PLC) to open and close, allowing rainfall to be stored, reused or evaporated into the atmosphere. When these valves are closed, approximately 60 m3 (60,000L) can be stored on CVC’s rooftop for flood control. When opened, water drains from the roof into the building’s 5,000 L rainwater harvesting cistern to be used for non-potable uses like flushing of office toilets. The presentation provided an overview of the planning, design, construction, commissioning, initial performance, challenges encountered, and lessons learned to date.
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To address the challenges of heavy rainfall, water quality and climate adaptation, the City of Vancouver has developed the St. George Rainway, a green rainwater infrastructure project that reimagines the street to enhance community, nature and mobility. In this webinar, representatives from the City of Vancouver shared insights into the development and implementation of the St. George Rainway, and the ongoing efforts to monitor and maintain its effectiveness for long-term success.
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If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
The Oak Bay Coolkit program is a joint initiative between the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry and the District of Oak Bay and is intended to mobilize individual and neighbourhood climate action through participation in a series of fun and interactive engagement activities, beginning with neighbourhood conversations, to local asset and climate vulnerability mapping, carbon footprint calculators, household and block sustainability ratings, visioning exercises and developing localized climate action plans. Chris Hyde-Lay, Manager of Park Services with the District of Oak Bay, provided an overview of the initiative, including lessons learned and project outcomes.
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Over the past 40 years, flood damage costs in Québec have surged due to population and property growth in flood-prone areas, compounded by extreme weather events. These costs are primarily covered by provincial and federal programs, with limited private insurance involvement. Current cost-sharing mechanisms, however, create moral hazard by not incentivizing municipalities or residents to reduce risk. In this webinar, Bernard Deschamps, author of Flooding: Toward a Municipal Contribution to Economic Risk Sharing shared the reports proposed economic contribution mechanism for municipalities that distributes the cost of damage to residential buildings more equitably, and key findings from his research and consultation with municipal staff within Québec.
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If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org
Kyle Bassett from Climate Neutral presented on the results of the Climate Action Working Group which brought together a group of Ontario municipalities to use the tools developed by Climate Neutral to support and empower municipalities of all sizes to provide municipal councils and decision makers with data intelligence. The tool can be used to create greenhouse gas inventories, develop climate action plans, and track progress.
If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org