Next Steps
- Identify who in your municipality is in charge of the Model Franchise Agreement, learn more about the history, and build your understanding of the process of updating the Franchise Agreement for your municipality.
- Engage with the Property Tax department to find out if property taxes are being collected on fossil fuel pipelines and infrastructure in your municipality. Explore the potential of collecting property taxes from fossil fuel pipelines if not already being collected with your Tax department. What does your tax department think about that? It would be good to learn how this does (or can) work in a two tiered system (how does this work when it is mostly the lower tier that collects taxes and then provides the Region their portion of the tax they are owed.
- Engage with your Property Tax department to explore the possibility of adding a climate levy if the municipality is collecting property taxes on fossil fuel pipelines and infrastructure. It appears that a climate levy cannot be applied to specific tax classes and needs to be applied across the tax base, but still would be good to ask your property tax contact about the flexibility on how a municipality could possibly apply a climate levy.
- Engage with your Public Works department to explore the costs associated with pipelines regarding road rehabilitation issues and the risk of stranded assets infrastructure abandonment. They may not know or calculate this, but if you can ask them if there would be any way to calculate those costs in their opinion, that would still be helpful.
- Licensing: Identify who in your municipality you can engage with to ask questions related to licensing certain classes (ex. gas station, car dealerships, ride hailing etc). There is the possibility to attach a license fee to entities to recoup costs from climate damage (this may be a source or revenue to offset adaptation costs more than mitigation efforts, but we would like to learn more re the rules for licensing).
Resources Shared
- Work that Reconnects
- Robin Wall Kimmerer – Gifts of the Land
- Outrage and Optimism
- We are the Great Turning
- Ontario Climate Caucus OEB Support Resolutions Tracking
- Durham Region Staff Report on the OEB Decision re: Enbridge pipelines
- Narwhal articles on Enbridge Decision: Ontario worried about ‘substantial’ costs to Enbridge Gas in deciding to overrule energy board; Enbridge tells staff to vote against more thorough emissions reporting
- Law Times: Ontario Superior Court upholds Energy Board’s authority over natural gas franchise dispute
- Hamilton to seek feasibility of pipeline tax hike idea brought forth by environment delegates
- City of Toronto Resolution RE: Requiring Fair Payment from For Profit Gas Utilities for Use of City Property
If you would like a copy of the slide deck, please contact us at cap@cleanairpartnership.org