Barrett urges CBS to finish fifth and final green milestone

By Craig Westcott

CBS councillor-at-large Joshua Barrett is encouraging his colleagues to put a push on to make the town the first one in the province to reach the top milestone in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ effort to address climate change.
Barrett made the suggestion at the April 15 public council meeting.
“It’s been a while since I chatted about this topic, so I thought I’d bring it up again,” said Barrett. “All of us in the room are aware as a coastal community we face a number of challenges when it comes to climate change and I’m certainly happy that as a council we moved the needle forward on a number of initiatives. Certainly, I feel like every other week we’re chatting about our stormwater management plans and the impact that has on our land use planning. We’ve done a number of other activities. I’m sure many of us our proud of those things. I talk about this this evening because I believe that as a Town, we should return our attention to a program we were involved with some years ago. That’s the Partners for Climate Protection program.”
Barrett was referring to a national network of more than 450 towns and cities across Canada that have singed on to a five-step program to address climate change. The program is organized by the FCM to encourage local governments to develop action plans to deal with climate change in their areas. The program has five milestones including; creating a baseline inventory of emissions with a forecast of future emissions; setting reduction targets; developing an action plan; implementing the plan; and finally, monitoring progress and reporting on the results.
Participating municipalities are expected to move through the milestones within 10 years and report on their progress to the FCM every two years. The program was started some 30 years ago, with more than 60 per cent of Canadian municipalities having signed onto it.
“Folks might remember that in January 2022 Conception Bay South reached milestone four out of five, and I checked this morning and we’re still the only municipality (in Newfoundland) that has reached this milestone,” Barrett noted. “But we’re not done yet. we’re still four out of five, and I’m bringing this up this evening because I feel we’re in the home stretch, and I still believe Conception Bay South can still be the first municipality to reach milestone five of this program. All that we need to do is wrap up some of our reporting and demonstrate how our missions have changed since 2012. So, I know it’s been a couple of years since we looked at this, but I think we should dust this off and bring this to the finish line and be the first municipality in the province to complete this program.”
Among the things CBS did to complete the fourth milestone was install charging stations for electric vehicles, participate with College of the North Atlantic and Growler Energy to examine renewable energy ideas and their application, establish a community garden, prioritize energy efficiency in Town buildings, and develop a Climate Change Adaptation Plan.