The Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign (OCEC) s a non-partisan campaign promoting awareness on the climate crisis and environmental issues. We empower citizens and urge political leaders to drive the urgent transformational changes needed to secure the present and the future of all Ontarians. The campaign is based on our 12-point Climate Action Plan, which has 232 signatory groups and 294 signatory individuals. To join OCEC, sign on as a group or sign on as an individual.

Nurses and other health providers stand first in line in response to a climate and ecological emergency that threatens the health and life of humans and all other species sustained by our planet.

In the midst of a pandemic and an unprecedented nursing human resources crisis, nurses must also contend with climate-induced burdens of illness, injury and disease. Temperature extremes induce heart attacks, heat stroke and hypothermia. Extreme weather events such as heat domes, droughts, fires, floods, atmospheric rivers, and hurricanes impact on affected populations. Longer term climate impacts such as rising sea levels, coastal erosion, permafrost melting, population displacement, food insecurity, and loss of habitats magnify global health challenges. And, vector-borne diseases like Lyme disease and West Nile virus spread more widely due to milder winters.

This crisis is creating enormous pressures on health and other social services and risks our very survival. A glimpse into the future points to the need for action now. The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) applauds legislation like the proposed Bill 14, the No Time to Waste Act, which calls for “a strategic action plan that aims to ensure that Ontario’s public health and health care systems are prepared for the health risks caused by the impacts of the climate crisis.”

We also continue to demand science-driven action from decision-makers, politicians and all governments. Canada must meet its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – goals which require a decisive move beyond the legacy industry of fossil fuels. RNAO has joined the World Health Organization and hundreds of health organizations around the world, calling for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to protect the lives of current and future generations.

We are mindful that the health burdens imposed by the climate emergency are not equally shared. Those who are most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change are often those who have contributed the least to it. Social equity and justice stand at the core of a sustainable future.

RNAO is committed to a just transition so that the costs and benefits of any response to the emergency be equitably shared. We have created a central place for the climate emergency in our work. As with the pandemic emergency, we require urgent and sustained action from international, national and sub-national levels of government to mitigate a looming climate catastrophe. Together we are strong”.

Dr. Doris Grinspun, RN, MSN, PhD, LLD(hon), Dr(hc), FAAN, FCAN, O.ONT., Chief Executive Officer, RNAO
Matthew Kellway, Director of Nursing and Health Policy, RNAO
Kim Jarvi, Senior Economist, RNAO

Health Canada estimates that above-background air pollution, including air pollution from human sources in North America, contributes to 15,300 premature deaths per year in Canada. This includes an estimated 6,600 premature deaths in Ontario…National morbidity or nonfatal health outcomes include 2.7 million asthma symptom days and 35 million acute respiratory symptom days per year, with the total economic cost of all health impacts attributable to air pollution for the year being $120 billion (2016 CAD). This is equivalent to approximately 6% of Canada’s 2016 real gross domestic product.”

Health Impacts of Air Pollution in Canada: estimates of morbidity and premature mortality outcomes – 2021 Report. 

On the eve of flu season and likely another COVID wave, Ontario’s health care system is ill-prepared to manage even the day-to-day demands on it. Nor, with our climate-denier government, is it equipped to respond to an extreme weather event or inclined to address in a fundamental way the insidious impacts of fossil fuelled air pollution or other health impacts of the climate crisis. Far from the “help is on the way” promise that Doug Ford made while campaigning for his first term, our health system is staggering with hospital occupancy rates that exceed 100%, record-high waiting lists for everything - for medical and diagnostic procedures, for long term care and in-home support, for mental health services - as well as lack of access to physicians, outright shut-downs of emergency departments, code zeros – no ambulance available, and an over-burdened and exhausted front-line public health system. Doug Ford’s government took an already ailing health system and weakened it further, by starving it of resources. His government underspent health budgets and, with Bill 124’s cap on pay, forced nurses and other health workers to leave the system. Ford’s latest atrocity, Bill 7, not only unfairly targets seniors as the cause of our system breakdown, but the public outcry it has provoked provides convenient deflection away from his efforts to trim the government’s largest source of expenditure – the health sector – and turn as much as possible over to the private sector.

Seniors bear the brunt of the lack of access to health services and are one of the groups most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate breakdown. We have witnessed the deadly impact of fossil fuels on our environment and many of us are paying the price with our health and lives. But we (Seniors for Climate Action Now!) are (is) mobilising to force our governments to act on this existential crisis. We are determined that our children and the children to come have a bright and healthy future.

The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage.”

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
Director-General of the World Health Organization.

The municipal election on October 24th is a key opportunity!

We must elect climate champions who will support action on the climate plan in local communities across Ontario. 

Encourage your members to get involved in supporting climate champions.  Read our full municipal climate action plan and check the list of candidates who have pledged to support this plan at this link.  Help us add to the list! Send signed certificates, along with name, ward or municipality, role (mayor, councillor or school trustee) and date signed to ocec.info1@gmail.com.  Candidates should read the full plan before signing. Questions can go to ocec.chair@gmail.com.

A pre-municipal election webinar was held on September 14th with speakers Phil Pothen and Maude Barlow. They explored the big climate impacts of local decision making and the power of municipal elections amidst a climate emergency. Co-hosted by the Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign and the Ontario Chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

1. Please tell us about your organization, its history, purpose, and membership, as well as your role in it. Is there a particular event in your history that you would like to share with the OCEC network? 

While serving as Co-chair for OCEC, I also serve as Ontario Regional Chair for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE-ON), a signatory group of OCEC.  So I may be responding from two different but overlapping perspectives.

CAPE was founded in 1993. It has a long history of advocacy across Canada including banning of certain pesticides and coal in various jurisdictions, opposing liquid natural gas and fossil fuel advertising just to name a few, in addition to establishing the PaRX program, Canada's first national nature prescription program. CAPE seeks to better understand how the environment affects human health and educates healthcare professionals, the public and policy-makers about environmental health issues. 

CAPE acts collaboratively to build power at provincial, national and international levels in an evidence-based ethics driven manner to protect and promote human health by addressing issues of environmental degradation. The organization enables health for all by engaging with governments, running campaigns, conducting research, and drawing media attention to key issues.  While CAPE particularly supports physician advocates, all other allied healthcare professionals and non healthcare related persons are equally welcome to join CAPE as supporters.

Personally, I’ve felt connected to and concerned about the environment since childhood. Practising medicine over the last few decades I’d kept up with climate science and supported multiple environmental organizations. But as the climate crisis continued to escalate rapidly and I felt I had to do more, I realised I could be most impactful by acting and advocating in the environmental/planetary health space, as these two spaces naturally came together.

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In this section we will highlight current actions being conducted by signatories.

If you have an action you want to share, please send a brief description of it to
OCEC-news@gmail.com

Many thanks to everyone that contributed their time and talents to this issue of OCEC Connections.

Do you have any resources, upcoming events or actions you want to share? Send them to us at OCEC-news@gmail.com.