Faith & the Common Good…

Faith & the Common Good Comments on Bill 4, Cape and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018

On behalf of our network of 500+ diverse communities of faith in Ontario we are submitting this comment on Bill 4, The Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, for members' review.

Faith & the Common Good (www.faithcommongood.org) is a national, non-sectarian, charitable network dedicated to assisting religious congregations and spiritual groups of all backgrounds to take collective action to create sustainable communities. Despite our network’s differences in theology and culture, we are united in our belief that we have a shared responsibility to protect the earth for our children and grandchildren. We also understand that the longer the world delays the transition to a low carbon economy, the higher the destructive cost of climate impacts, with the vulnerable in our communities bearing a disproportionate burden.

Ontario’s communities of faith are stepping up to curb carbon and energy waste and help climate-vulnerable neighbours, but we need provincial government leadership to sustain this work.

-- 100+ religious communities from York, Halton, Peel, Hamilton and Toronto are working with us to improve the energy efficiency of their faith buildings. They see this work as a way to not only save energy and money, but as a way to role model their values around earth care to members of their congregations and the communities they serve.

-- We are working with dozens of faith communities in Brampton, Hamilton, Oakville, and Toronto, as part of Project Lighthouse, to increase community usage of faith buildings as a way to support neighbourhood-based resilience in the case of climate-induced, extreme weather emergencies.

-- The United Church of Canada has recently launched a “Faithful Footprints” grant program, which we are helping to administer, to support local congregations in Ontario and across the country to meet their climate commitments by funding faith building energy retrofits and renewable energy installations.

Ontario’s places of faith act as vital social safety nets in our communities. Strong provincial energy efficiency regulations, conservation incentive programs, and climate adaptation mandates provide direction and help ensure that faith communities can afford to continue to do their part to serve communities and protect the shared ecosystem that supports us all.

As we have heard this week from the International Panel on Climate Change, there is no time for any government to sit back and wait for others to act. Climate change is already having serious impacts on the lives of Ontarians. Solutions will emerge when governments provide strong leadership and a framework to enable all sectors of our society and economy to work together.

We concur with Ontario’s Clean Energy Alliance (of which we are a member) and the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario that your new climate action framework should at a minimum include:

1. Climate laws that:
-- Set long-term, science-based, mandatory climate targets to reduce carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 80% in 2050 in line with our Canada’s global fair share.
-- Legally obligate Ontario governments to steer a course to stay within these targets.

2. Climate policies that:
-- Adapt some sort of polluter-pay system which provides financial incentives to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and raises money to pay for solutions to mitigate against and adapt to climate impacts.
-- Strengthen regulations, like fuel and energy efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and buildings, to incentivise cleaner and less wasteful energy usage.
-- Provide regular, comprehensive, science-based reports of what climate destabilization will look like in Ontario and what it will cost Ontarians.

We look forward to learning how your government plans to support multi-sector climate action in Ontario and to work with you to care for our common home.