A Love Letter to Niagara-on-the-Lake

Dear Residents of Niagara-on-the-Lake,

This is a love letter — to you, to our idyllic town, to our remarkable planet, and to future generations.

This has been a summer to remember, but for alarming reasons — extreme heat, air quality alerts due to Ontario wildfires, and flash flooding.

This is perhaps an unprecedented summer — the summer we have all been directly impacted by climate change.

We can choose to forget — and go blindly forward. Only to be reminded next summer, and quite possibly, more extremely so.

OR, we can choose to take CONCRETE and immediate ACTION.

Human beings have the capacity to accomplish phenomenal things.

Look at what we did during the pandemic. There was an EMERGENCY, and we immediately addressed it. We looked it in the eye and TOOK RADICAL, CONCRETE ACTION because it was a life-and-death situation.

Well, the climate crisis is currently proving itself to also be a life-and-death situation.

There is an upcoming election in October.

Just today, I looked at all the candidates' platforms, and only TWO mention the word “environmental”!

This strikes me as wildly out of touch and incredibly inadequate in light of what we have just experienced as a community.

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Quoting from NOTL candidates' platforms:

Mayoral candidates:

Erwin Wiens — one of his platform priorities is “Agriculture — protect & support.”

Andrea Kaiser — from her website:
“Protect our heritage and agricultural lands.”
“Preserve green space.”
“Protect residents' quality of life.”

Vaughn Goettler — from his website:
“Protecting the natural landscape.”

Council candidates:

Sandra O'Connor — newspaper article: One of (my) priorities is ensuring the environmental lens is applied to every issue.”

Weston Miller — “Bring common sense environmental leadership to every municipal decision.”

Andrew Niven — “Protect our history while preparing for the future.”

Steve McGuiness — from an article: “… with climate change we have more severe storms that our infrastructure wasn’t built for.”

Gary Burroughs — “Protect the Greenbelt.”

Maria Mavridis — “Stormwater management and infrastructure planning.”

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Does this not strike you as woefully insufficient?

I propose that we, as a community, need to demand more.

I propose that we ask ALL candidates to make climate action a real part of this election conversation. That they each conscientiously and courageously outline what they are prepared to do for our community in light of this rapidly accelerating issue.

We need to ask them:

What is your plan? What action will you take — concretely — during your term? How are you proposing to lead during this crisis?

We are navigating a summer that has given us a very real glimpse of what climate change means for our community.

Let’s meet this moment and ask our representatives to do the same.

For ourselves. For our community. And for future generations.

Please join me in asking ALL of our candidates to do more.

Sincerely,

Tara Rosling