It’s a big step for the city, says Brad Badelt, climate policy manager with the City of Vancouver’s sustainability group, and an example of what other municipalities could do. “Learning from other cities in N-ZAP is going to be super helpful,” he says. “We’re interested to learn more about how other cities are approaching their climate budgets.” 

For its part, Edmonton has announced the creation of a new position within the municipal government: chief climate officer. It’s part of restructuring efforts to reallocate $240 million over four years to priority areas. 

“Changing the voices at the leadership table is changing how we budget and invest our city resources,” says Tomaras. Alongside augmenting leadership voices internally, the city is eager to learn from other municipalities with N-ZAP. “Looking at a wicked problem like climate change, it’s great to have friends there with you. It really gives us this opportunity to have brilliant minds from across Canadian cities looking at how we can advance solutions and work through complex problems together.”

As Canada’s most densely populated city, Toronto is focusing on its transportation sector, which accounts for 32.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030, Toronto hopes to have 30 per cent of registered vehicles be electric by increasing charging availability and addressing cost and convenience barriers.

But it’s not just mitigating climate change that the city is focusing on with N-ZAP, says Cecilia Fernandez, manager of the policy and research team in the environment and climate division. Increasingly, municipalities are also looking at climate-related risks and how future extreme weather events might factor into budgeting decisions. 

“It will have impacts on the reliability of infrastructure in the future,” she says, pointing to how severe flooding and heat waves in Toronto have impacted transit and road systems in recent years. Moreover, these events have had impacts on people who are precariously housed or who live in communities without adequate cooling systems. “When the rubber hits the road, we are the level of government that has to deal with those immediate impacts… I think from an action point of view, a lot of [municipalities] are very interested in working with one another and hearing about what others have done in the past and if that will be useful for our own cities.”

The first step in becoming a pilot city is taking a survey that aims to capture the current state of a municipality’s climate action. The project is targeting municipalities with populations greater than 10,000, but it’s not just large municipalities that are taking part in N-ZAP; smaller cities like Moncton, N.B., Revelstoke, B.C. and Barrie, Ont. are also on board. 

“The large and mid-sized communities are key to this, but so are the smaller ones,” says Clarke.  “My aim is to help enable those who are in positions to make a difference. The more we can do, the better it will be for future generations.”