MODL to Keep Climate Change as a Budget Priority After Heated Council Debate

It is no surprise, with an increasing number and intensity of extreme weather events in recent years, that climate change is a hot topic for the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg (MODL) Council. 

Lunenburg County was largely spared from the worst of extreme weather in 2024. Temperatures and precipitation were around normal level and we were spared from Hurricane Ernesto when during its approach it swept east out into the Atlantic.

The county, however, was deeply impacted by climate change in 2024. Residents experienced a spring drought that saw less than half of typical precipitation, with temperatures in the 30s. 

This dried out wells and produced frighteningly dry forest conditions. Residents were terrified as they watched wildfires devastate communities in Tantallon and Shelburne County, knowing that it could happen at any time in Lunenburg County.

The 2023 wildfires were followed by a record breaking extreme rain event of 260 and 320 millimeters, flooding basements, washing out a portion of Highway 10, forcing an evacuation of 300 residents on the RayPort Campground in Mahone Bay, and killing four people.

Luckily we were spared by Hurricane Lee, which proved weaker than expected and primarily hit New Brunswick.

It feels like each new year is a gamble over what kind of weather we will get, which leads the public to rightfully expect governments to have plans in place to prepare in case next year brings disaster.

Few expect, in demanding this kind of action, that municipalities would get stuck on the wording of how it should be included in the municipal budget.

Past MODL Action on Climate Change

Municipal climate action work, across Canada, began in earnest with the advent of the Gas Tax Fund (GFT). It was established in 2005 by the Government of Canada led by the Paul Martin Liberals.

It began as a one-time initiative that was planned to disperse $5 billion to provincial governments to administer to local communities over a five year period paid for from excise taxes collected on vehicle and heating fuels. 

The program is now a permanent fund called the Canada Community-Building Fund (CCBF), currently valued at $2.4 billion, increasing annually at the rate of inflation. It presently serves 3,700 communities who use the funding to pay for a wide range of infrastructure projects.

Climate action in MODL began in 2010 when the Dexter NDP Provincial Government, through Municipal Funding Agreements, required municipalities to establish an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) to access the Fund.

MODL staff and a private consulting firm called Elemental Sustainability were asked to make recommendations on how to implement the plan. 

Council created a temporary committee tasked with advising them on the establishment of a climate action plan. Council ratified the Municipal Climate Change Action Plan (MCCAP) in 2013, meant to guide municipal climate action for five-to-ten years.

MODL officially declared a climate emergency on October 22, 2019 and joined a Canada-wide network called Partners for Climate Protection (PCP). 

The network, co-founded in 1994 by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), provides expertise and resources for municipalities undertaking climate action. It includes 400 municipal governments across Canada.

The Municipality then set about strategizing how to respond to the climate emergency. They produced a baseline inventory (see page 3) of greenhouse gas emissions in the municipality in 2020.  

MODL formed a sustainability committee in 2021, composed of councillors, staff, and community members to identify and discuss potential options for climate action to be discussed in public sessions.

They engaged with the public between December 2021 and March 2022, which was conducted online through surveys and virtual meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

MODL compiled and analyzed the feedback into a What We Heard Report, which guided council decision over the development of the final plan.

The outcome of this process was a ten-year strategic plan called Local Climate Change Action Plan 2030 (LCCAP2030), which was officially adopted by Council in the Fall of 2022.

The LCCAP2030 continues to be the guiding MODL document directing climate action for the municipality.

It commits MODL to the common goal of limiting, “global temperature rise to 1.5°C” and makes a specific emissions reduction target of, “30% below 2019 baseline emissions level by 2030, 65% below 2019 levels by 2040, and achieve net-zero community emissions by 2050.”

It has, since its ratification, resulted in a variety of programs and initiatives, such as MODL’s Anti-Idling Policy, the purchase of electric vehicles, hosting of electric vehicle charging stations, development of a community solar garden, and support for Lunenburg County Wheels.

The municipality distributed 500 trees in 2023 and 1,000 trees in April of last year for residents to plant as part of the plan.

MODL, beyond its LCCAP initiatives, has also introduced its own Coastal Protection Plan in June of last year, after the Houston PC Provincial Government scrapped its province-wide plan.

Priorities and Lense, Just a Matter of Semantics?

Council, over the past two months, engaged in several heated-but-constructive debates around whether climate change ought to be included in the statement as a “strategic priority” or as a “lens”.

They have been under a time crunch to establish the budget since the new council had only assumed their roles months earlier following the Municipal election in October 2024.

The process began with a retreat led by a facilitator in December on Council’s priorities for the budget. 

Deputy-CAO Alex Dumaresq, at a January 21 Council Meeting, presented Council with a report (on pages 31 to 41) detailing a draft set of strategic priorities and lenses based on the council retreat. The intention of the report was to prepare a draft statement to circulate to the public for feedback. 

MODL Staff explained in the Staff Report (on pages 32 and 39) that strategic priorities identify specific project areas that will best achieve the municipality’s vision. Lenses, on the other hand, make sure a specific issue, like climate change, is considered in all projects.

The report included climate as a lens and not a priority. This would have been a departure from past budgets, which included a Climate Change Action Plan as a strategic priority.

Many councillors interpreted the distinction between strategic priority or a lens as an inconsequential matter of semantics. 

Early comments in Council debates asserted that it doesn’t matter how climate change shows up in the document as long as climate action receives funding in the final budget. 

Other assertions suggested that the terms are at least important communications tools to the public to express to the public that they think doing something about the climate emergency is really important.

The above definitions of priorities and lenses, however, contradict this understanding. 

Strategic priorities are clearly meant, by the provided definition, to include major new investment choices and keystone projects of the municipality. Lenses incorporate a topic into other imperatives of council, without any guarantee of new major investments or projects.

These differences, in other words, can in fact be used by Council in ways that have significant material impacts, and budgetary implications. 

For climate change to be considered a lens effectively means that it is unlikely that new major climate initiatives are to be expected.

It is therefore fair to interpret the choice to make climate change a lens as an act of downgrading the topic in terms of budgetary importance, regardless of what existing climate action projects are to be continued.

MODL, as later asserted by Mayor McLean-Wile, is indeed undertaking extensive climate action. It remains questionable, however, if climate was designated a lens and not a priority that the municipality will be able to meet its own emissions targets.

Climate Change Lens an “Artifact of the Way That We Conducted Strategic Planning”

Council accepted staff’s 2025 draft report on strategic budget priorities to serve as a starting point for public discussion.

Councillor Kacy Delong, however, raised some concerns at a January 21 Policy and Strategy Meeting suggesting that the removal of climate change as a strategic priority was a product of how the budget priority retreat was conducted.

Delong stated, 

I feel that it needs to be a priority even though it wasn’t identified as one, and I think that that’s as much an artifact of the way that we conducted strategic planning as much as anything else. It was a really tight time frame, lots of orientation, lots happening all at once and it really felt that way. Orientation was great but it also left me feeling a little disoriented. We mentioned climate change at the very end of our strategic planning as having been kind of noticed as an oversight that we hadn’t talked about it more and I don’t want to speak for others, but I think it was the sentiment at the time that it would be addressed in open session in order to ensure that this critical issue was not being overlooked.

The Barnacle spoke to Mayor McLean-While at a February 6 public consultation meeting where she was asked why climate change was not a bigger topic of discussion at the strategic planning retreat given the climate disasters experienced in recent years.

She agreed that the extent of extreme weather events were severe and required action, but stated that it didn’t really come up in group discussion around priorities.

The Mayor later reached out the Barnacle to clarify, 

The four strategic priorities were based on the discussion at the meeting and were agreed to at the end of the session. It was also discussed that climate could be one of the lenses we apply to our discussions. The intent of this initial discussion was to provide the basis for public discussion and budget planning by staff. Refinement of our priorities based on input from the public and a review by staff of our existing projects factors into this year’s budget process. The staff report that was presented to Council captured the recommended direction based on those high level discussions and the development of  lenses to evaluate priorities and projects. Using this approach allows for a more comprehensive cross-sectoral view of priorities and the related budget allocations. For example, using a climate change lens on park and recreation decisions allows for a nuanced discussion on how climate will impact park infrastructure, usage, safety, etc. I hope this provides some context for the approach we are taking in this year’s planning and budget process.

This statement is notably consistent with language she used at a New Germany Mayoral debate on October 7, 2024. Then candidate McLean-Wile, when asked about climate action, stated, “MODL has chosen to prioritize climate change. We need to keep on that lens.”

The Lunenburg Barnacle reached out to Councillors to get their perspective on how the topic of climate change was handled at the strategic planning committee:

Some councillors agreed with the Mayor’s statement.

Councillor Wendy Oickle stated that, “As the Major says it never really came up as a major priority or in group conversations. For me it was part of my thoughts and feelings to be applied as a lens to our present list of priorities. The climate will not be ignored.”

Councillor Martin Bell stated, “We reflected on quality of life in MODL, we knew we needed regional economic growth, our infrastructure needs now and in a few years. We agreed that communication of our thoughts had to be better.”

Councillor Chasidy Veinotte stated, “I am satisfied that I was able to capture in our ‘Strategic Priorities’ engagement session/retreat the priorities I heard from residents in my district. Although I was acclaimed, I still went door to door to hundreds of residents to check-in. There was a strong consensus on quality of life by way of parks and recreational opportunities and affordability regarding the tax rate. I also heard many positives in our activation of the Coastal Development regulations and our investment in Lunenburg County Wheels.”

Councillors Oickle, Bell, and Veinotte all suggested in their email responses that such questions ought to be directed to the mayor and not councillors.

Councillor Ben Brooks expressed contempt towards to topic of climate action altogether, “The amount that climate change was discussed was proportionately appropriate, following an election where the two term Mayor, (and her focus on climate, as well as other provincial and federal mandates) was soundly rejected by the constituents, signalling (to me) that our community does not want activist politicians, but representatives who reflect the needs and desires of our community.”

Councillor Alison Smith’s statement, echoed Councillor Delong’s critique of the strategic planning format. “There were a lot of small group discussions, so it’s hard to say how much discussion about climate was taking place,” she wrote. 

But she added, “One thing you should keep in mind is that that was our first conversation about priorities, not our last. I look forward to talking more about climate action in the context of the public consultation we’ve done.”

Public Engagement Demands Climate Change Be Listed as a Priority

Council, despite the concerns of Councillor Delong, accepted the draft report at a January 28 Council Meeting to proceed to public consultation.

The municipality circulated a survey to the public by email, newsletter, and social media asking residents for their thoughts on the proposed strategic priorities, which ran between February 1sth to the 10th. 

They also hosted an open house at the Cookville Best Western on February 6. This consultation, however, occurred during a snowstorm, which led MODL to push the time of the event back earlier in the evening.  

Several residents commented on MODL’s facebook post about the event that they were frustrated that they were not able to attend due to the storm and that the event would not be postponed to another date.

Municipal staff, at a February 18 Policy and Strategy committee meeting, presented Council with a report detailing what they heard from the public consultation. 

The report stated that there were 1,025 website visits and that 40 people attended the open house event. It indicated that the climate change option received the greatest number of supportive comments (22). 

Seven of these comments specifically wanted to see climate change included as a strategic priority, while two supported having it as a lens. 

The report indicated that the climate change option received the greatest number of supportive comments of any possible priority.

Staff, in response to this report, prepared an option where climate change could be added as a fifth strategic priority to consider at a February 18 Policy and Strategy Committee meeting. 

The Committee went through a heated-but-constructive debate considering the proposal of including climate change as a priority in response to public consultation. 

Councillor Delong, speaking to re-adopt climate change as a strategic priority, recounted, 

My six-year-old is growing up in a world that has changed much from the one that I grew up in. The other day I was pretending to be a tropical bird for him because… that’s what parents do. He ushered me into the shower stall in our house and told me that I was in a waterfall in a rainforest. And then I watched his face fall and he sat down on the floor and he told me that he just wishes that rainforests could go back to normal. So this is what I have been preparing myself for as a parent in the age of climate change. I told him that all we can do is work hard and find solutions in our own backyard and that he can help. That made him feel empowered and a bit better.

Councillors Smith, Burns, Reinhardt, Moore, and Oickle all spoke supporting the motion. Mayor McLean-Wile conceded that she was willing to accept it, stating once again that it doesn’t really matter what language is used as long as climate action is reflected in the final budget.

Councillor Oickle even presented a new acronym that she thought of to communicate the need for climate action: Resilience, Adaptation, Mitigation, Prepare (RAMP). She has since been asserting that Council needs to “RAMP up our action” on climate change.

Councilor Bell remained adamant that climate change must remain a lens and Councillor Brooks condemned the addition arguing that it is a provincial jurisdiction and that accepting such language would compromise the municipality’s ability to lower taxes.

Mayor McLean-Wile spoke indicating concession to the acceptance of climate action as a fifth strategic priority, 

Whether we set it as a priority and put it in our strategic priorities or whether we really show up in how we spend money will really show our residents whether it’s important or not. I think the discussion around the table has been more about how we communicate that message, because I think all of us here, regardless of what we got tabled, I think all of us feel a strong commitment to do something and do significant work in the area of climate change. So, I think what we really need to do is not get too… bent out of shape? Not a great expression, about whether it is a priority or a lens, but let’s really do the work when we come to budget and where we spend the money, because that is where it will really show it is a priority. And then we need to communicate to our residents because I think not having climate change show up in any of the wording around the strategic priorities as it was presented to the public, led them to believe we weren’t doing work in this area, when we have done significant work and have plans to do more significant work. So the messaging and the communicating, which we strongly committed to, will be the important piece here. So, I’m easy on this, I can put it as a strategic priority if people around the table feel that that will be important, but I think really, truly our commitment will come when we budget and plan for the projects we undertake over the next year, and the next few years.

Council accepted the five new strategic priority areas in a vote of ten-to-one, with Councillor Ben Brooks being the only opposing vote. The next step was to pass the committee recommendation on strategic priorities in the next regular Council Meeting and proceed with developing the budget.

The Battle for the Budget Priorities: A Final Showdown

Council met for a regular Council Meeting on February 25 to discuss a draft operating budget based on the agreed-upon priorities. The first order of business was to ratify the strategic priorities (pp. 80 to 88) recommended by the Policy and Strategy Committee.

Mayor McLean-Wile, however calling on Councillor Veinotte to temporarily assume the role of Chairperson, began discussion with a prepared statement asking council to reconsider the strategic priorities.

She re-asserted the original statement, suggesting that several climate-related items be redistributed under the four other priority areas. Climate, by her suggestion, would become a lens as originally conceived.

Mayor McLean-Wile stated, “Our failure as a council to communicate our strategic priorities for this term was not including transition documents outlining the ongoing work we would be supporting as a council. That document would have included the climate action plan developed by the previous council. Rather we recommended a climate change lens and it is clear now that in our public engagement that residents believed we dropped climate change from our work plan. This is not the case. There continues to be unanimous support for recognizing and acting upon climate change initiatives, both in mitigation and adaptation.”

The raised eyebrows and nervous tones around among Councillors suggests that this was an unexpected change of plans. 

Council, once again, went into a heated-but-respectful debate over adopting climate change action as a fifth strategic priority.

Several councillors expressed concern and confusion about revisiting the near-consensus decision of the Policy and Strategy Committee.

Councillor Smith contended,

I just want to put a bit of a finer point on this as a communications document. And I just want to speak to the …pauses… how discouraged people feel right now around climate and the environment. We just had someone come to public input and point out the pressure they put on us to support lifting bans for fracking and uranium mining people have said to us in public consultation we need to see climate as a priority, we debated that we discussed it and I felt that we decided we need to communicate that strongly and I do disagree when voices around this table said that we can’t make an impact. We can. I mean public transportation has a huge impact and we know that I would – I can’t speak for everyone around the table – but I’ pretty sure that everyone around the table supports that. But we need to communicate it clearly and I just feel very strongly that we need to give people reasons for hope these days. And this is a communications document and I don’t want to go back to the public and say, “oh just read the bullet points.” You know? We couldn’t make it a strategic priority because we were worried about spending, but it’s a lens. And it’s just the communications really muddled. I was really proud of our work last week in getting that the strategic priority and I think it speaks to some of the existential dread that people are feeling right now around climate. Can we do everything? No. But can we communicate clearly that that’s part of our work? Yes. I think we can do that.

Discussion indicated roughly the same positions among councillors on the matter, but this time the opposition vote was stronger.

Deputy CAO Dumaresq, clarified just prior to the final vote that the proposed statement also includes climate change as a lens.

Seven Councillors voted in favour of adopting the recommendation: 

• Councilor Burns
• Councilor DeLong
• Councilor Hubley
• Councilor Oickle
• Councilor Moore,
• Councilor Reinhardt
• Councilor Smith

Three Council-members voted against adopting the the recommendation:

• Mayor McLean-Wile
• Councilor Bell
• Councilor Brooks

The recommendation was therefore officially adopted and the budget development process then proceeded with climate action, once again, included as a strategic priority.

A Missed Opportunity for Climate Justice in the Face of Far-Right Creep

Notably absent from the final wording of the climate change strategic priority is mention of climate justice.

The final climate change action strategic priority specifically addresses: infrastructure investment, emissions of MODL operations and facilities, and food security. Council, however, could perhaps address climate justice by considering climate action in close proximity to the inclusivity component of the Quality of Life priority, which is fundamentally based on notions of social justice.

Climate justice has been advanced in global forums, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to argue that rich countries like Canada, or rich cities and provinces in Canada, have an historical responsibility to make climate reparations to communities worldwide who will be impacted and never benefited from industrial production.

It has also been used in a more local context. The Canadian Environmental Law Association or the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, for instance, have both asserted that climate action must be directed through a lens of social justice to produce effective policy and programming.

Despite the land acknowledgement stated at the beginning of every MODL council and committee meeting, not once was colonization and the settlement disruption of Mi’kmaq livelihoods and lifeways mentioned in discussion of climate action. Neither was there mention of the exploitation and immiseration of workers, especially migrant workers, in local industry and retail. No word on how to make climate action accessible to racialized residents of Lunenburg County, or addressing the near-exclusive whiteness of decision-makers.

Addressing these problems could inform the kind of climate action that is so urgently needed, which challenges the foundational economic and social structures that historically caused the climate emergency, and which hamper efforts at adaptation.

As usual, the needs of businesses and property owners were the centre of conversation, despite the noteworthy success of Councilor Smith to introduce stronger language around “inclusivity”  as a component of Quality of Life.

Discussion of class relations and poverty in the context of climate action almost came up in the final moments from Councillors Bell and Brooks. 

They concluded their final statements expressing the challenges that Council will face balancing climate action as a strategic priority with the proposal to give a property tax refund to low income property owners (stay tuned for more on this).

Many residents of Lunenburg County, including many low-income workers who own property struggle with poverty and debt, while Canada’s economic elites continue to accumulate record amounts of wealth.

But these Councillors ultimately miss the mark, like when Councillor Brooks advocated in facebook statements for cutting taxes and regulation on small and medium-sized businesses, who he considers to be “the lifeblood of our communities” and the only vehicle for regional economic development. 

Councillor Bell also spoke against prioritizing climate action by pointing to the outrage over electric vehicle purchases, presumably among the small contingent of local business owners who have attended public input sessions.

Most prominent among these advocates are Andrew Himmelman, who is a former MODL Council candidate, landlord, and owner of Ntyce Motor Sports and Blackjack Powerline & Tree Service. 

Himmelman stated at a February 4 Finance Committee Meeting, that “Last year I was laughed at and mocked by a few in this building–and some are still here today—because I continue to talk about the United Nations running this municipal government.”

This statement, of course, is an outlandish conspiracy theory that comes from far-right blogs and social media personalities. But it alludes to the creep of far-right discourses into local policy in Lunenburg County. A sentiment that one worries is entering the consciousness of some councillors.

Mayor McLean-Wile denied, when asked by the Barnacle at the February 7 public consultation meeting, clarified that far-right opposition to electric vehicles did not inform the decision to have climate change as a lens rather than a priority.

She did not, however, respond when the Barnacle reached out to ask if campaign donations from business and business-owners informed her decisions.

The lack of discussion, ultimately, around climate justice limits council’s ability to deliver climate action in a way that is most equitably financed, such as through components of municipal tax reform or raising revenues by other means from wealthiest residents and large businesses.

MODL, absent some initiative to address the underlying structural causes of the climate emergency, will find itself stuck in a bind trying to deliver climate action with decreasing revenues at a time when the Provincial Government seems intent on using its majority status to impose a program of fiscal austerity and market-focused reforms.

This could pressure municipalities to accept proposals from multinational energy-finance operations like SolarBank to swoop-in to lock residents into an extractive relationship of rentier green energy provision.

Such a direction would lead any resident to resent a clean energy transition.

Alternatively, the organization of a grassroots climate justice movement that can pressure governments into action is precisely the antidote needed to stem the rising tide of toxic hatred and paranoia that has come to grip politics.

Hopefully, the absence of an explicit goal for social justice in MODL’s program for climate action does not worsen the social conditions that fuel the moral panic of a growing far-right movement that increasingly points to poverty—albeit in bad faith—as both a recruitment tool and a reason to abandon climate action.

More On This to Come

By the time this edition of the Barnacle is in print, Council will have met on February 27, March 4, March 6, and March 11 to hear public input and discuss various aspects of the draft budget.

Residents have an opportunity to share a five minute statement on the draft budget at a regular Council meeting on April 1 at 9:00 am, which will be followed by further council deliberation.

The final review and approval of the budget takes place on April 8. 

Dr. Christy Kelly-Bisson is an agrarian political economist and garlic farmer living in Sulieweykitk (New Germany), Lunenburg County. You can follow them on Bluesky at @garlicbreath644.bsky.social