Mayor John Tory and Deputy Mayor Pam McConnell will be part of a four-person delegation that will travel from Toronto to Paris next week for an international summit on climate change.
The group will arrive in the French capital early Thursday morning and will meet with the mayors of some of the world’s largest cities as part of a forum on how municipalities can play a role in the fight against climate change the next day.
During the summit, Mayor Tory will also attend a reception hosted by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and meet with French Ambassador to Canada Nicolas Chapuis, Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna as well as Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre.
The UN-hosted summit is bringing together more than 100 world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama, but Tory told reporters on Friday that he still believes cities have an important role to play.
“The truth of the matter is that most of the things that are going to make a real difference in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will actually end up being implemented by cities,” he said. “For example, if we are put in a position where we can build much more public transit than that is going to make us better able to get cars off the roads, which are the single biggest contributor to GHG emissions.”
Tory plans to push leaders for more money for transit, infrastructure
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP21, will run from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.
In a press released earlier on Friday, Tory said that his presence at the global summit should send a “strong signal that Toronto will once again be a voice” in the conversation on climate change.
That conversation, Tory told reporters, should include a real debate about how federal governments can contribute to the construction of new public transit and the retrofitting of derelict buildings.
“While the money is going to have to come from the other levels of government, the actual implementation of a lot of the measures that will help improve the environment and save energy and money have to be done locally,” he said.
Ford slams trip
While the costs of Tory’s trip to Paris will actually be covered by C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, in which Toronto is a member, at least one member of city council is raising questions about the necessity of the junket.
In a statement released on Friday morning, former mayor Rob Ford said the trip makes “little sense when a simple conference would do the job.”
“I do not understand why the mayors of three of Canada's largest cities feel it necessary to go to Paris to meet, to discuss convincing the new federal government of the importance in investing in our cities to help reduce environmental impact,” he wrote. “Would it not make more sense to have a conversation by phone? By video conference? Or at the very most, somewhere here in Canada?”
In addition to Tory and McConnell, the city’s delegation includes the mayor's Chief of Staff Christopher Eby and Director of Environment and Energy Jim Baxter.
C40 is paying the cost of Tory’s and Erby’s trip, however it is not immediately clear where the money for McConnell to attend is coming from.
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