Kamloops City Council defunded the Community Climate Action Plan. What does this mean for Kamloopsians?

Kamloopsains consume about 11 per cent more greenhouse gases (GHG) than the average British Columbian, largely driven by factors like sprawl and reliance on fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, natural gas heating and landfill waste. To tackle the issue, the city adopted an award-winning Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP), setting clear goals for the future. However, earlier thist year, Kamloops city council reduced the plan’s funding, questioning how those goals could be achieved on time. 

“While we try to reduce emissions to reduce the severity of climate change, we also need to actively adapt for it, because it’s here,” City of Kamloops’s climate and sustainability manager Glen Cheetham tells The Wren. 

Organizations like Transition Kamloops, which has advocated for better practices to reduce climate change, have also spoken up about the importance of the CCAP and its various goals. 

The Wren took a deep dive into the plan to learn more about how it impacts Kamloopsians.

How did Kamloops become a leader on climate change?

The City of Kamloops signed the B.C. Climate Action Charter in 2007 — a voluntary agreement between the B.C. government, the Union of BC Municipalities and each local government signatory to take action on climate change.

The commitments include creating more energy-efficient communities, making city buildings carbon neutral and measuring and reporting on the community’s GHGs. 

In 2019, Kamloops city council adopted a resolution stating the city has a strategic goal for reducing community GHGs to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the temperature set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to mitigate catastrophic impacts, like large-scale species extinctions, multi-metre sea-level rise and extreme weather events. 

The CCAP was developed between 2019 and 2021 through a series of community engagement sessions with the public, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc an advisory group and city council. It was adopted in June 2021 with the goal to reduce community emissions 80 per cent by 2050.

Local economic development and business groups were part of the CCAP advisory, and an economic analysis was undertaken to provide insight into employment creation opportunities that could result from climate action.

“Everybody accepted that if we do nothing, we will bear the consequences,” former mayor Ken Christian said in a video about the climate plan when the city was nominated for a Climate and Energy Action Award.

The plan has eight focus areas, or “Big Moves,” including low-carbon development, car-light community, zero-emissions transportation, zero-carbon homes and buildings, zero-waste/circular economy, renewable energy, municipal climate leadership and healthy urban ecosystem.

How did the city backtrack on climate action?

To ensure the city could implement changes, like building new transit shelters or extreme heat response programs, a Climate Action Levy was established in 2021. For 10 years, the city would add 0.35 per cent to annual civic taxation to provide reliable funding for climate action and preparedness. 

But in the spring of 2024, Kamloops city council voted to cut the 2024 climate levy budget in half — from 0.35 per cent to 0.175 per cent — leading hundreds of local residents to petition in protest.

The city cut the levy to lower the 2024 taxation requirement by about $220,000, shifting away from actions like reducing GHG emissions from civic facilities toward lower-cost changes like investments in active transportation. 

Funding for the plan will be brought back to council for discussion during the 2025 budgeting process, according to the city, and concerned residents continue to pressure council to maintain the original climate levy.

“This region’s vulnerability to climate-related harm – fire, flood and freeze-thaw cycles – to infrastructure and tourism assets … should make it clear that this is not the time to be backing off on investing in climate action,” Nancy Flood of the Kamloops Naturalist Club said in an open letter to the city at the time of the change, in February 2024.

More community calls for action have come from various organizations, including Transition Kamloops, a non-profit organization focused on increasing local resilience and self sufficiency. 

“[Transition Kamloops] was really saddened to see council walk away from their previous commitments to increase the climate action levy,” volunteer Gisela Ruckert tells The Wren. “Kamloops is just a tiny grain of sand in the big picture, but it’s as important as any other piece. It requires all levels of government and all communities, and even all individuals to do their share.”

“I’m hoping that this year council will choose to reinstate the funding to the planned levels,” she added. “It’s a slippery slope once you decide that this is an expense that is nice to have rather than an essential critical expenditure.”

What made the Community Climate Action Plan special?

The CCAP was developed with a lot of consideration of how the Kamloops community works, according to Cheetham. The city analyzed where the majority of gas emissions in the community come from and established a strategic goal to target those emissions. 

Data collected from internal and external sources such as BC Hydro, Fortis BC, ICBC, BC Transit and Statistics Canada allowed the city to determine which sectors had the highest gas emission, with transportation topping the list at 66 per cent, followed by buildings and water heating at 29 per cent and solid waste at five per cent. 

The goal was to make the plan accessible to the public to help folks understand the local context of climate action in Kamloops. On top of the eight Big Moves, the plan includes 24 strategies and 66 actions.

If all those goals are achieved, Kamloops could reduce its GHG emissions 30 per cent by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050, aligning with provincial, national and international goals, Cheetham says. 

“Some key elements of the plan is the recognition that we all have a part to play,” he says. “No single government can achieve the emissions reductions we were targeting to keep global warming within check on their own. We tried to find ways to align those with so that our climate priorities complement our community priorities.”

Aspects of the plan also improve daily life for those living in Kamloops, such as better buildings and public transportation. 

“More efficient buildings are more comfortable, they’re cheaper to heat. All of these things are beneficial, even if you take climate completely out of the equation, it’s a better way of living.” Ruckert says.

But one of the major things the CCAP offers is a road map for navigating the changing state of the world with climate change. 

“[The plan] provides some direction as to things we could do now,” Cheetham says. “The extreme heat response plan would be an example of a plan that came out of the general recommendations of the CCAP.”

Putting the Community Climate Action Plan into action

The plan includes an implementation section that provides clarity on how actions will be initiated especially by which city department or partner, Cheetham says. 

Because of this, the city has made progress on some goals. For example, the city has a focus on active transportation and recently received funding to assess the feasibility of a multi-use pathway along Shuswap Road connecting Sun Rivers to Sienna Ridge.

Other recent projects include infrastructure build-outs and policies for electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. After Jan. 1, 2023, building permit applications for new residential buildings have to comply with the EV charging infrastructure requirements adopted by the City of Kamloops. 

The city has also been working with the Canadian Home Builders Association Central Interior to help local industries navigate code changes for net-zero construction by 2032. 

Another recent program launched by the city is the retrofit assist program to help Kamloops households make energy-efficient updates. 

“For any residents considering doing renovations to their homes, this is a resource that will help them to plan, to establish a baseline and provide coaching along the way,” Cheetham says. “It also works with local contractors to make sure there’s a seamless experience as possible for homeowners looking to retrofit.”

Still, there are always more things the city could do that the plan does not include, Ruckert says. 

“We would love to see an urban growth boundary that will ensure that we don’t continue to sprawl outwards,” she suggests. “There’s environmental reasons for that but there’s also increasing evidence that as the city continues to expand outwards the cost of servicing it grows.” 

Step one, however, is refunding the CCAP.

“What we want is for our city to follow through on the plan — the commitments that have been made — so that means reinstating the funding and working towards those strategic focus areas.”