On Monday, June 30th, 2025, CAFES' Executive Director, Angela Keller-Herzog, spearheaded a rich feedback submission with the Peoples Official Plan Coalition (POP) to the City of Ottawa on the draft Climate Resiliency Strategy, known as Climate Ready Ottawa (CRO).
The City’s draft CRO provides a critical opportunity to reduce risk, protect health, and strengthen community wellbeing in the face of the climate crisis. The POP feedback document highlighted opportunities to make the CRO more actionable, inclusive, and community-informed. Our detailed feedback submission dove into several strategic outcomes surrounding flood preparation, extreme heat, the economy, resilient buildings, protecting drinking water, stormwater management, tree canopy, wetland conservation, parks, power outages, and more. We additionally addressed suggestions for implementation, best-practice benchmarks, and performance metrics.
Many of our comments, recommendations, and ideas were pulled from the CAFES Climate Resiliency Community Dialogues from 2023, in which we led 11 dialogue sessions with over 300 participants in collaboration with community groups and the City of Ottawa.
Ultimately, CAFES and POP commend the City for its leadership in climate resilience planning. We recognize this climate strategy builds on years of foundational work and cross-departmental collaboration and we look forward to seeing how our recommendations contribute to a more climate-ready Ottawa.
This item is expected to be coming to the October 21st, 2025 City Environment and Climate Change Committee (ECCC). Stayed tuned!
