A group of conservative Vancouver city councillors have reversed the city's pioneering pro-climate measures restricting the use of natural gas in new buildings. Implemented in 2020, the rules made Vancouver the first Canadian municipality to restrict gas for climate reasons and inspired dozens of other local governments to do the same.
In a dramatic Tuesday council meeting, four ABC party councillors voted to approve an amendment introduced unexpectedly by councillor Brian Montague. The amendment reverses city rules from 2020 that prohibit new buildings from using natural gas for heating and hot water. The amendments are not final and will require another vote this fall to be made into law.
Buildings are responsible for about 55 per cent of Vancouver's greenhouse gas emissions. City staff noted on Tuesday that even with the 2020 restrictions on natural gas use, the city is not on track to meet its 2030 climate goals.
The measure was opposed by the city's three progressive councillors and two ABC councillors who broke party ranks, forcing Mayor Ken Sim, who is holidaying in Europe, to be called into the meeting over Zoom to break the tie. A statement released by the mayor's office after the vote claims the changes will "make it easier to build the homes we need while improving affordability for Vancouverites" by "reducing project costs and timelines for home builders."
"You talk about heat domes, well, if you can't afford the electricity to cool your home, if you can't afford to pay your bills and you get cut off, I don't see – I just don't see the point," said Montague.
Fellow ABC councillor Lisa Dominato, who opposed the amendments, shot back, saying, "I don't think this is the time to roll back on our regulations, particularly as we see greenhouse gas emissions worsening and impacting our climate and biodiversity – and we are seeing the development sector adapting [to the regulations]."
Several analyses – including from B.C. Hydro, B.C. Housing and Clean Energy Canada – say installing electric heating systems like heat pumps in new buildings typically costs the same amount as using gas, or less.
This was pointed out to Vancouver councillors at the Tuesday night council meeting. City of Vancouver staff confirmed to councillors that building all-electric homes doesn't impact the cost of ownership. They also noted heating costs are comparable when using a heat pump compared to a gas furnace.
In introducing the amendments, Montague argued that B.C. does not have enough electricity to meet growing demand, noting that the province imported power last year due to drought conditions impacting hydroelectric reservoir levels. Data from Powerex, BC Hydro's electricity trading subsidiary, shows even in recent periods of high energy demand like the January 2024 cold snap, B.C. has exported power to the U.S.
Over the past five years, the province has been a net exporter of electricity, according to the province's recent plan outlining future energy sources. Most of power imported into B.C. comes from renewable sources, with the remainder purchased off a larger marketplace that includes both renewables and non-renewables, the document states.
Councillor Pete Fry, who voted against the amendments, slammed Montague's claims. Vancouver's plan to phase out gas is "leading the way — and the rest of the world is heading this way," he said. "To take it backwards really when we're on the cusp of delivering net carbon reductions and affordability is just a colossal misstep"
He was not alone. Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said given the rules have been in place for two years, "It makes absolutely no sense to reverse them." Restricting gas use in buildings for heating and hot water is "low-hanging fruit" when it comes to reducing Vancouver's emissions, she said.
"It was stunning, it was deeply disappointing and it is wild that something that was not on the agenda reversed decades of City of Vancouver climate policy and climate leadership," added Liz McDowell, senior campaign director at Stand.earth.
Mayor Sim and councillor Montague's arguments that the changes will improve affordability despite evidence to the contrary "feel really disingenuous" and echo talking points routinely used by FortisBC and other industry groups, she said. Canada's gas industry has for years been fighting rules to phase out natural gas, using everything from intense lobbying efforts to secretive online campaigns.
The vote has prompted increased scrutiny of links between the majority ABC party and the natural gas industry. In a Wednesday thread on X/Twitter, Mihai Cirstea, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia noted that Montague had a half-hour meeting in December with FortisBC lobbyist Gurpreet Vinning. Vinning is also listed as attending mayor Sim's inauguration, Cirstea noted.
"Montague does nothing – barely works, doesn't attend events, doesn't write motions, doesn't live in Vancouver – but suddenly found it a very high priority to make sure we can re-introduce gas heating in new builds," he wrote.
At least one of the councillors who voted for the amendments to reverse the city's ban, Mike Klassen, holds investments in Fortis, according to his financial disclosure records. ABC councillor Lisa Dominato also holds investments in gas utilities Fortis and Enbridge; however, she broke ranks with her party and voted against the amendments.
While Lem celebrated the move by Dominato and her ABC colleague Peter Meizner to vote against the amendments, she remained shocked that the debate to reverse years of climate progress was taking place at all.
"We know that heating buildings with natural gas in Vancouver contributes close to 60 per cent of our climate pollution, and we know that we need to slash those amounts significantly within the next few years in order to make sure we maintain a healthy and livable planet," she said. "It's just unbelievable. How this could have happened."
Editor's note: This story was updated on July 25, 2024 to clarify that three progressive councillors, not two, voted against the amendment.
Comments
ABC to me is Anybody But Conservatives.
So tired of the regressive policies of Conservatives.
How can we in Canada be collectively sleep walking backwards into the clutches of the fossil fuel industry?
Just wait and see what Pierre "Snake Oil Salesman" Poilievre does once in power. PP will take the country back 60 years. It is shameful given even the extreme wildfires, the Conservatives refuse to acknowledge climate change is real.
Anybody But Conservatives!
I thought the same about ABC, but since it's the name of a political party it reminds me of the UCP plans to introduce parties into municipal politics here despite municipal governments' objections.
It's just another example of the arbitrary and dictatorial high-handed style that is the current right wing's interpretation of what "winning" an election entitles them to. It's the UCP version of the "slow-moving coup" that Bill Maher has warned us of for years now fully manifesting in the GOP's appalling Project 2025.
But the whole thing is FINALLY going to be truly challenged by a female prosecutor leading the Democrats, a shot of NEW and genuine hope not seen since Obama, and the only thing that could restore America's tattered reputation as the world's leading democracy.
So the classic, "common sense" conservative narrative that a strong man/party (even with various token women ostensibly in charge) taking care of business is the ONLY REAL answer to the world's "poly-crises," despite them mostly being CREATED by such men, is about to take a major hit.
And only a woman/mother figure who also happens to be a force of nature will be able to fully out the willful bad-boy authoritarianism, tyranny, and utter destructiveness of the steadfastly regressive, racist and deeply misogynist right wing.
In that welcome scenario, I'm thinking sure, go ahead and bring your despicable, conservative "party politics" on board for the sake of clarity and all that because YOUR PARTY and your "brand" are finally about to face the kind of judgment that surpasses even the Supreme Court.
Don't get me wrong, given the available political possibilities in the United States, Harris is by far the less worse alternative. But only because the Republican alternative is so incredibly appalling. I'd agree that she offers the same sort of hope as Obama, but only in the sense that Obama offered . . . essentially nothing. His hope and change were false. Obama is a neoliberal free-trader who backs Wall Street against actual people, and has since the beginning of his presidency during the financial crisis when he memorably, and accurately, told a bunch of Wall Street powerbrokers, "I'm the only guy standing between you and the pitchforks." Right at the beginning there, he did do a stimulus program . . . but only because he saw that it was necessary to stop those pitchforks, and he did the absolute minimum he thought could preserve the status quo, and reserved bailouts for the big banks while letting ordinary people be fraudulently foreclosed on. He was the exemplar of smooth Democratic treachery. His gracious, graceful willingness to let ordinary people's lives erode helped the right create the surge of fear and anger that gave Trump the White House.
I was expecting Biden to be more of the same, and to some extent he was, but he did do a few actively and significantly good things. Functionally he was a better president than Obama. Harris . . . seems to me pretty empty, the sort to talk a vaguely half-decent game but deliver nothing, just like Obama. Maybe she'll surprise me like Biden did. If she is elected, which I hope she is.
If she does anything good, it won't be because she's a mother figure. I haven't seen any difference in the quality of political figures based on gender; Reagan was a man, but Thatcher was a woman; Trump is a man, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is a woman. And the single greatest political figure of the 21st century so far, who fought the hardest and offered the most real hope and indeed not just hope but agency, to the poorer classes, happened to be a man: Hugo Chavez.
Politics has become as binary as it was before World War II which conjures the big picture again where the most abiding feature, besides the stupidity, fear and greed that Einstein pointed out, has been men in charge.
But that bedrock foundation of modern human civilization has been challenged openly in the decades since and overall it has seemed to be percolating along apace with definite changes taking place and there's been tacit acceptance of the theory that women aren't actually that much different than men, that it's mainly socialization. Many now even imagine us to be "post-feminist," but the same assessment has been made about racism, and clearly, NEITHER are accurate. For example, domestic violence remains epidemic, the wild, ongoing contradiction consistently buried.
In truth, men becoming unseated is such a sea change, is SO seismic, the only way even the most modern, evolved men such as yourself can begin to understand it is in the context of what's happening with the LGBTQ phenomenon, but to be accurate, that whole movement needs to get in line behind women. As I've said before, we might not be in the catastrophic and existential mess with our climate that we're in now if we'd called it "FATHER Nature." But Mother Nature is deeply intuitive, and spot on as what nurtures us all.
So our binary politics (broadly) lining up with our two primary genders should explain the surge of hope, could potentially even offer actual resurrection for out species, but the good old battle of the sexes has become dormant for a reason.
Dodo politicians really have to smarten up and realize that when lobbyists - "influencers" - come knocking on your door, they have an agenda that looks like this - $$$. Check their 'facts', listen to the evidence and and get other points of view before making another dumb move. Burning more fossil fuels is not the answer. No, it's not cheaper than electric heat pumps. We have too worry about too much heat in our buildings, too - and that's where heat pumps win hands down every time. Come on guys, put your thinking caps on.
Sim knows. He's their guy. Not even so much bought and paid for (although he probably is) as just part of the same crowd, making money when they do, or assuming he will.
"Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed" - Albert Einstein. Sim has call these attributes which directs his thinking. Vancouverites have to decide what this decision is, stupidity? Fear? Greed? I say all three, since he is in the pocket of developers.