Municipal leaders urge feds to focus on nation-building, not ‘nation-burning’

Sept. 30, 2025

About a year ago, a wildfire in Jasper prompted a mass exodus from the town. More than 25,000 residents evacuated from their alpine home before a third of its buildings burned. It’s a stark example of the reality most municipalities are grappling with across Canada — that more floods, fires and smoke are here, exacerbated by emissions they have little local control over.

That fire was on Jasper mayor Richard Ireland’s mind as he joined a coalition of over 250 municipal leaders calling on the federal government to invest in “nation-building, not nation-burning” infrastructure projects. Building off a central campaign promise, Prime Minister Mark Carney released the first of his major projects list earlier this month, which included an LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat, BC, which has been dubbed a “carbon bomb.”

“If Canada chooses to deal with the tariffs imposed by the US by creating a massive program to use fossil fuel, particularly gas and LNG — those are outside the constraint of cities, and it creates a huge problem,” said David Miller, former mayor of Toronto and co-chair of the campaign, in an interview with Canada’s National Observer.

The coalition (called Elbows Up for Climate), is laying out an alternative pathway: five projects they say the federal government should instead be funnelling its resources to. They include a national clean electric grid; a national high-speed rail network; at least two million new non-market energy-efficient homes; and a national strategy that addresses the impacts of, and response to, climate disasters. Last week, the coalition released a new analysis that found that at least 200 communities — and at least one in four Canadians — experienced climate-related impacts such as extreme heat or wildfire this past summer. 

While municipalities have been pushing climate action to the forefront of their agendas for about a decade, a coalition this large addressing the federal government is a new step, said Daniel Henstra, a political science professor and co-lead of the Climate Risk Research Group at the University of Waterloo. He said it’s “refreshing to see an organization of municipal officials” pressing the highest level of government to support projects that would bolster the economy and address climate change impacts.

As the national projects list continues to trickle out, there is a window of opportunity for municipalities to “tie their priorities to the very clear objectives of the Carney government, which are building, economic development, less dependence on trade with the United States,” Henstra said. 

“These are not environmental projects … they are economic security projects, including insulating communities from both climate shocks and trade disputes.” 

​Municipalities can’t make the federal government come to the table, but they can present a business case and have key assets — namely, the land needed to host big projects, said Henstra. 

The coalition noted how Canada could pay for the major projects it asked for: it said stronger financial penalties on the fossil fuel industry are key, specifically a climate damages tax in the form of a royalty on fossil fuel production that could then be directed into a national resilience, response and recovery fund. Ending subsidies for that same industry —  which have amounted to at least $75 billion over the past five years — would free up needed funds, says the coalition, which also argues for the establishment of a climate project-focused public development bank.

Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, second left in blue, looks at what is left of his home of 67 years with federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness Harjit Sajjan, left to right, Premier Danielle Smith, and Minister of Forestry and Parks Todd Loewen in Jasper, Alta., on Friday, July 26, 2024. Wildfires encroaching into the townsite of Jasper forced an evacuation of the national park and have destroyed over 300 of the town’s approximately 1100 structures, mainly impacting residential areas. Photo by: Amber Bracken / The Canadian Press

While the campaign takes aim at the policies of the current government and is trying to catch the Liberals’ attention, it has been in the works since before that government was elected. At a City of Peterborough council meeting in April, Councillor Joy Lachica brought up her meeting with Miller and Plante as the Elbows Up for Climate campaign was just starting to take shape. 

Lachica, a co-signatory on the coalition’s open letter, spoke about how a national grid would lessen the need for gas generation, as the province of Ontario pushes for the expansion of gas-fired electricity.

“There is a galvanization of municipal leadership in Ontario, in Canada, where we are working towards a clean national electrical grid … then we wouldn’t need to have generators and fossil fuel gas to help us out if there’s a power outage,” Lachica said at the meeting.

Fresh from Climate Week in New York City, outgoing Montreal Mayor and campaign co-chair Valérie Plante, explains that the coalition was formed because, during the federal election campaign earlier this year, the environment and climate took a backseat. Municipal leaders decided to push back on the disconnect they saw in Ottawa as financial pressures from climate impacts on municipal governments continue to rise, she said. 

“Though we have a lot of ambition for different things, we are limited in our means,” she said, highlighting flooding as one pertinent climate impact that Montreal has grappled with. Though the city has worked to address increased flooding due to climate change through sponge parks, which are nature-based solutions that absorb excess water, it remains Canada’s priciest hazard, with average residential costs averaging $2.9 billion per year.

While there was a “particular ambiance” to this year’s Climate Week as its host country, the United States, rolls back climate ambition and slashes funding for vital climate research, Plante was energized by the continued ambition from her fellow municipal leaders to address climate change. 

She realized other countries are looking to Canada for leadership on municipal climate action.  

“It's all about sharing. It's not to brag. It's more to say those tools exist. We've done it, other cities can do it,” she said.

“Like we didn't wait for the federal government to ban plastic bags … I think it shows how pragmatic and down-to-earth and efficient cities can be if they feel supported by other levels of government. I'm just looking forward to having a road map to economic prosperity while involving environmental and social prosperity.”

[Top photo: Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante talks to reporters on the site of the planned Vertieres Metro station on the blue line of the Montreal subway during a media tour in Montreal on Sept. 9, 2025. Photo by: Christopher Katsarov / The Canadian Press]