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Climate Town Hall Meeting

On August 18th, 2016 more than 300 concerned local citizens, students, business leaders, and government officials congregated at Kitchener City Hall on a warm summer evening to have their voices heard. The objective? To create a forum of discussion around climate policy and action, in response to the federal government’s call for citizen engagement.

Local environmental groups passionate about facilitating action in the community convened this event in order to encourage participation in commenting on the Federal Climate Action Plan. Responses collected from attendees were organized into the four “Working Group” categories that the federal government has broken into:

• How and Where to Reduce Emissions;
• Ideas for Clean Technology, Innovation and Jobs;
• Preparing for the Impacts of Climate Change; and
• Putting a Price on Carbon

The responses were organized in this way to match the formatting of the federal government. As a result of this diverse discourse, a document titled “It’s never too late to lead – Recommendations from the Waterloo Region Climate Policy Consultation” was created in order to organize the findings.

Attendees spoke to a wide variety of interests. With the responses being organized into the federal government working groups by the facilitators it is clear to see that an important topic on the minds of many was agriculture.

The next blog post will be centred around actions referenced in the Climate Consultation Report that link directly to programs or actions within the Region of Waterloo.