MRC Pontiac is nearing the end of its work developing a climate action plan for the region that could be used as a guide to help local municipalities adapt to climate change.
The end product will offer municipalities strategies for both how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, as well as for to protect their residences from the impacts of climate change.
Kari Richardson, environment manager with the MRC, has been working with a consulting firm for over a year to develop this action plan. She says she expects it will be done by the end of 2025.
“[It’s] to improve [municipalities’] public security and safety policies, or change their regulations with regards to flood plains. I mean, obviously there’s provincial legislation for those things, but [it’s] just to, at the municipal level, be thinking about some of those things as well,” Richardson said.
This spring the consulting firm met with a small group of leaders from various local sectors to better understand priority areas of concern this plan should work to address.
Based on those workshops, it was determined that local infrastructure, transportation, renewable energy, waste management, civil security and emergency management, urban planning and green infrastructure, local economy and local food, and governance and mobilization were the key areas on which this action plan should focus.
The firm then developed a public survey, which closed last week, to better understand what tangible actions within those priority areas residents wanted to see included in a local climate adaptation plan, and there will be additional public consultations done before the plan is finalized.
“Our job is to be a support to the local municipalities, [and] help them help their residents,” Richardson said. “What is the technical support they need to make sure the public is safe, and to make sure their municipal infrastructures are maintained? That’s really what it’s about.”
Rural communities more vulnerable, report finds
A report published by the federal government in 2023 found Canadians living in rural and remote communities are more vulnerable to climate change and encounter more challenges when trying to adapt to mitigate its impacts.
The synthesis report, titled “Canada in a Changing Climate,” looks at research published since 2017 that offers insight into what impacts climate change is having on Canadians, and how governments are doing when it comes to adaptation.
“Compared with urban areas, rural and remote communities – including those located in northern Canada – experience higher risks to health, safety and well-being from critical infrastructure decline or failure,” the report found. “This is due to their geographic isolation, reliance on limited access points into and out of their communities, and limited access to services.”
The report also highlighted that rural economies, often dependent on industries such as agriculture and natural resource extraction, are more sensitive to a changing climate, “as they rely on favourable weather conditions and are vulnerable to extreme weather.”
The report emphasizes municipal governments are those that will be most effective in developing and implementing action plans to help protect residents from these threats.
It said that while many municipalities across the country have been developing adaptation plans, the implementation of these plans is slow, and even more so in rural communities.
One significant barrier to effective adaptation, according to the report, beyond a lack of financial resources, is a lack of human resources capacity, “often more evident in communities and organizations that are most vulnerable to climate change risks, including in rural, northern and Indigenous communities.”
Richardson said the MRC was given the green light to use some of a previous round of FRR funding from the province’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to hire consultants to develop this plan, and has been working with MRC Papineau and MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais to do so.
While each MRC will have its own plan that reflects the unique challenges on its territory, teaming up with neighbouring counties made the plans’ development more cost-efficient, according to Richardson.
She said because the MRC got moving on this work before the province had announced funding specifically for the purpose of developing plans like these, the MRC will be able to use the $1 million or so it has since received to support the implementation of the adaptation plan, which Richardson said is often the more costly work.
