Montreal Climate Summit 3rd Edition: Taking Proactive Action to Address the Climate Emergency

Now is not the time for half-measures due to the climate emergency, and the metropolis needs to accelerate the pace of its actions to achieve greater resilience without seeking social convenience in any case, believes the regional director of health of Montreal, Milen. Drouin, just days before the Montreal 2024 climate summit.

Milen Drouin, co-chair of the third summit, which will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday on the Grand Quai of Montreal's Old Port, believes the Montreal community needs to step on the accelerator. Reducing greenhouse gases, greening the city, promoting active transportation, combating climate change and protecting the most vulnerable; The list of challenges for Montreal is long and running out of time.

“I think we are at a stage where there are no half measures. Unpopular decisions may be made in this context. But I think we don't have time to wait until we have 100% social convenience,” says M.ⁱ Drouin.

In the 2010s, Montreal neighborhoods, including Le Plateau-Mont-Royal and Rosemont-La-Petit-Patri, committed to implementing traffic calming measures to stop traffic and counter “all” traffic. -car”, caused many protests. Some 15 years later, the removal of parking spaces is still a cause for concern, but active mobility-friendly measures have spread throughout the city. “Sometimes you have to make changes in these transitions,” Mylene Drouin believes. “It always needs precursors. There are areas where roads are being built. Now we need to move more quickly from experience to implementation of these experiences and their generalization. »

Why is the summit necessary?

Organized by the Montreal Climate Partnership, initiated by the Greater Montreal Foundation and the Trottier Family Foundation, the Montreal Climate Summit is designed to be a venue for meetings and discussions on tools to accelerate climate action. It will be attended by almost 900 participants from the business community, environmental groups, unions, the community sector and decision-makers, including the Mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, the federal Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Stephen Guilbeau and the Minister of Quebec. Environment, Benoit Charette.

The event also provides an opportunity to review commitments made at previous summits. During the first Summit in 2022, the City of Montreal announced its intention to no longer allow fossil fuel heating systems for new buildings starting in 2024. He also pushed his goal to see the entire estate a decade ahead, to 2040. renewable energy metropolis fund.

Less popular decisions may be made. But I don't think we have time to wait until we have 100% social acceptability.

And during last year's Summit, transportation, which will account for 42.7% of Quebec's greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, was at the center of discussions. Mayor Plante announced last year that the square in Old Montreal will become a “pedestrian kingdom” starting in the summer of 2024.

Apart from good intentions, have these summits produced any real results? Christian Savard, CEO of Vivre en ville and member of the Summit organizing committee, believes so. He cites the decarbonisation of buildings, a commitment by both the City of Montreal and several large property owners such as Ivanhoe Cambridge by 2022.

Since then, last December, Montreal passed its own regulation banning the installation of greenhouse gas-emitting equipment in new construction (applicable to small buildings starting in year 1).^e October 2024 and 1 for adults^e April 2025). On April 25, it was the turn of the Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM) to adopt similar capital rules for the 79 municipalities in the Montreal region that do not have such rules.

Christian Savard argues that public commitments from the private sector created a snowball effect and encouraged cities to push their regulations. ” (s'engager) fact makes people not drag their feet and honor their commitments. For CMM, it was faster than we thought. The next challenge, he recalls, however, will be decarbonizing existing buildings, which can be more difficult.

Private sector efforts

Private sector involvement in the fight against climate change is critical, says Anne-Marie Hubert, managing partner for Eastern Canada at EY and co-chair of the event. But he says there are several obstacles in Canada due to the tension between the different levels of government. “We lack ambition and lack coordination and cooperation to achieve our goals,” he said. We have enough federal-provincial disputes. (…) We should all have common goals. We will need money from the federal, provincial and private sectors. It is not true that tax revenue is enough. »

He said the summit, which starts on Tuesday, will allow participants to share experiences and demonstrate adaptation strategies that work. “We can no longer ignore climate change,” he says. At the summit, we won't change the world, but people there will agree on actions they can take. »

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