DRAFT MEETING NOTES
GTA CAC Draft Meeting Notes from Friday May 23rd, 2014
Links to Proceedings of Meeting
Theme: Community Engagement Strategies
Presentations
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Lucy Cummings, Faith and the Common Good. Greening Scared Spaces and Faith
Communities and Resilience Hubs (see meeting notes) or (mp3 of presentation)
Lisa Brodsky, Assistant Public Health Administrator, Bloomington Public Health
Minnesota: Ready, Set, Go! Faith Community Emergency Preparedness Program
and Toolkit (pdf of presentation) (video of presentation) (link to toolkit)
Kevin Behan, Best Practices in Climate Communications (pdf of presentation)
(video of presentation)
Damian Szybalski, Town of Halton Hills: Sustainability Implications Training and
Worksheet (pdf of presentation) (video of presentation)
Link to infromation on City of Toronto Weather Prepardness Consultation
Communicating Climate Change Resources
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Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, The Psychology of Climate
Change Communication
United Nations Development Programme Adaptation to Climate Change Policy
Framework, Engaging Stakeholders in the Adaptation Process
WeAdapt, Learned lessons on key considerations for communicating climate risk
United Kingdom Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology – good examples
of briefing notes on many issues
ICLEI Canada – Having the Climate Conversation
George Mason University – Centre for Climate Change Communication
Climate Access: network for those engaging the public in the transformation to
low-carbon, resilient communities
Climate Masters Nebraska: adult education program which was developed to
teach climate change and ways to reduce your carbon footprint
Resource Media, Visual Story Lab
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
Presentations & Discussion
Lucy Cummings, Faith and the Common Good (FCG), Greening Sacred Spaces and Faith
Communities and Resilience Hubs
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FCG helps faith groups seek common ground for the common good
Main program is the Greening Sacred Spaces program which offers tangible
resources, programs, network opportunities to support faith communities to be
better stewards of the environment (e.g. tools to mobilize green teams and
community action for the environment)
Have lean central staff and local chapters throughout Ontario (governed by interfaith steering committees with local mandates). Active chapters in Toronto,
Brampton, Oakville, Peterborough, Hamilton and Waterloo. Emerging chapters in
York and London.
Work with 600-800 faith communities annually, have about 1000 events per year
1 in 3 Canadians attend worship regularly, have over 27,000 faith buildings in
Canada; believe strongly that galvanizing faith groups to be neighbourhood
sustainability role models is crucial for a greener, healthier and more resilient
Canada.
Climate change adaptation is becoming an increasingly important part of this
work.
Seeking funding to run pilot proof-of-concept project in Toronto (model will look
similar to what Lisa Brodsky is doing in Minnesota)
Lisa Brodsky, Assistant Public Health Administrator, Bloomington Public Health
Minnesota: Ready, Set, Go! Faith Community Emergency Preparedness Program and
Toolkit
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Bloomington context – population of 1.4 million, home of Mall of America
(makes location one of the top ten targets for terrorist attacks), in Tornado
valley, experiences extreme cold and hail storms.
Community organizations are a direct link to the community and vulnerable
populations, non-profit groups make the biggest difference when it comes to
assisting local communities (have finger on the pulse – are the first in and last
out in disaster events, people are also more likely to turn to faith community
when dealing with stress given that they are trusted leaders and they are
familiar).
Cooperating with community organizers is a way to ensure that resources meet
all people with needs, ensures that the underserved receive resources
(emergency organizers can’t get to all people)
Worked a lot with adolescents in juvenile detention centre – became interested
in why kids do not commit crime – what skills did they have? Became familiar
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
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with concept of resiliency, what skills are they taught that keeps them resilient
to disasters. Can’t prevent disasters but can ensure community has knowledge
and necessary skills to reduce impacts and recover more quickly
Principle idea: knowledgeable and prepared community is less likely to
experience fear and panic and can cope better with emergency and disaster
Started with faith communities, created kits and trained the trainer (had to be
tailored to specific groups)
Some faith entities have created emergency response teams (that have more
higher level training) to ‘hold down the fort’ until first responders can arrive
Some entities have signed MOU stating that in widespread anthrax attack, it is
agreed that entity will be dispenser site.
Goal of project: promote preparedness for vulnerable populations by increasing
capacity of organizations that they are connected with
Project funded by federal dollars
4 objectives: Identify and locate all organizations that serve vulnerable
populations, engage them in planning, increase their capacity to provide
services, create a replicable model.
Identify and locate – used census data (e.g. age, language spoken); mapped
where trusted community organizations were (important because some groups
don’t trust the government)
Engage - Worked with stakeholders to develop effective preparedness messages
and materials (some cases it is not the message that matters, it is the language
used and who delivers it)
Increase capacity – asked what additional services they could offer (over and
above what they already do). Findings were surprising (collect money, distribute
clothing and volunteers – many things government couldn’t do). Created toolkit
to leverage their abilities and support their limitations.
Provided toolkit including emergency preparedness manual (most entities did
not have one or were not aware of having one)
During H1N1, public health unit gave out many vaccinations but realized that the
people that were coming out to the dispensaries were not representative of
population. Undertook a vaccine utilization gap study to find out why people did
not come to vaccination clinics.
o Did focus groups, paper surveys – targeted: low income groups, seniors,
Spanish-speaking and Somali-speaking populations
o Found: cost was barrier (miscommunication since they were not aware
that certain dispensaries were free), strategy was not public health
friendly (can’t give vaccination to only three children when there are four
in a family, gave to all four); worries over side-effects
o 77% of Spanish speaking group relied on faith community as trusted
source (same as Somali group) – challenge because even though we’re
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
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Public Health, we are still ‘government’, to many this is a problem of
trust.
o 55% respondents would rely on faith community within first 72 hours,
over half rely on neighbors; government was relied on the least.
o Sources of information: varied by target group – almost everyone would
rely on family and friends; Spanish and Somali speaking relied heavily on
faith groups, government lowest for Spanish and Somali groups as
trusted source of information.
o Assistance: a lot or somewhat 77% Spanish speaking would rely on faith
community in first 72hrs.
o Somali participants stated importance of educating faith leaders (in own
language) and have clinics in places that already exist (schools, places of
worship, community centers etc.) - Spanish participants echoed this
advice.
Key points to take away: faith based organizations (FBO) and community based
organizations (CBO) are already trusted sources of information, so utilize them as
much as possible; already serve vulnerable populations (give equal access) –
ensure messages reach them (either in their own language or trusted source);
very important to ensure that faith communities keep doors open to provide
services that are needed; if they don’t then public health will have to serve their
population. FBOs and CBOs are willing to help during emergency, but need the
resources and skills to respond and be resilient themselves.
Questions
An area that is seriously ignored surrounds mental health issues after an emergency.
There is an expectation that people will just get on with it. Have you come across
anything in your research related to a better success or mental health outcome for
people after an emergency when more involved with faith groups?
One of the models that we’ve adopted is psychological first aid training (behavior health
response – how to speak with victims, how to deal with loss etc.); train the faith group
leaders – spent a lot of time on behavior health models, whenever we can, we try to
include behavior health considerations. Certainly a huge issue that is often overlooked,
have looked at training options for lay community as well (small fraction but have
trained many people – train them how to recognize people in need). Not a typical
emergency management response (they go in and do the clean up, and then they are
gone). Even if insurance covers it, there are going to be impacts emotionally and
psychologically – need to acknowledge and address these.
What was the key drive for engaging faith communities to be resilience hubs and what
was the key barrier?
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
Key driver was me! It made a lot of sense to me, but also I was the only one doing it at a
time. Funding was a barrier (had to write a grant but also get that grant approved by
every city manager – had to make the case for why we’re using tax dollars). Received
the grant, a lot of valuable lessons, a lot of things fell into place. Faith communities are
on the same page as public health units and wanted to do more, their interests are
perfectly aligned with public health (they want to help their communities). Faith entities
turned to me in anthrax scare events and said there are a lot of homeless people in this
area, can we help them too – they wanted to be engaged.
So fair to say that a key driver was that faith community’s interests aligned with a
social justice mission?
Absolutely. They just weren’t asked before but they wanted to be a part of it.
And for the barrier, apart from funding, what was some of the push back that you got
from entities that didn’t want to be involved?
Largely surrounded issues of medication dispensing. They felt that they didn’t have the
capacity and staff resources to do so. But not a be all and end all, can help out in
different ways (menu of options): Can teach emergency preparedness, be a shelter in
the case of heat, hand out brochures, identify how many people in area need help etc.
Very few actually chose to not be involved.
You talked about an ‘all hazards’ approach to planning – did you specifically talk about
climate change and did you find that you had to spend a lot of time convincing people
about climate change and climate preparedness, or did you talk strictly about ‘all
hazards’.
We did more than an ‘all hazards’ approach but recently had a lot of issues with climate
change in our area. Had extreme heat over a July 4th weekend. Didn’t have heatresponse plan since it wasn’t really an issue before but had dispensing plan. Massdispensed water – engaged faith communities to distribute messages to seniors and
vulnerable groups. Since that time, have done more education around heat. Found that
20-24yr olds are having the most impact, specifically outdoor workers, didn’t get time
off during heat and no health insurance plans. Created awareness campaign ‘stay cool
Bloomington’.
Other piece with extreme heat that I learned – had mutual aid agreements with faith
communities for sheltering, so when there were extreme heat events, we dealt with
issues of power outages. Faith entities were engaged to act as cooling centers. Most had
backup generations but few had backup generators connected to AC (almost $10,000
more to have it hooked up – so loss almost half of the sites as a cooling centre). Eye
opening experience, now working with them to secure funding to have them hooked up.
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
Public health units in this region have quite well developed heat response plan but
when they evaluate them, find that cooling centers are not well used during heat
events. What could be done better with a faith based community model vs. public
health model (in terms of which is more receptive). How we can attract more people
that are not involved with that faith based group? Is there a necessity for a massive
marketing push from municipalities to back up faith based groups?
Not sure if that would be of assistance. Our cooling centers were not used a lot but if
the power had gone out, people would’ve used them. People need to self-identify when
those resources will be used. In the time of need, if they are available, that’s probably
when marketing will be most valuable. Increased knowledge makes people feel more
comfortable, less panic, more knowledge never hurts.
Happy to hear discussions about critical mass nature of most of our buildings with
energy systems – when conservation house was being built in Saskatchewan – called
an ‘energy lifeboat’. Most of our built environment is subject to brittle energy
systems. Part of setting up emergency standard, must be to infiltrate self-reliance and
self-generation – is there anything about getting solar panels, renewable or batteries
into system to give core source of energy?
Not in my area but other entities are doing so, for example environmental health
entities and sustainability projects using solar panels. In Minnesota, when gas line in
Manitoba and North Dakota went, we had a huge propane shortage. Since this was a
large heat source, there was some public education. We deal more with the public
vulnerability side however, e.g. long-term facilities and nursing homes that have
window air conditioners only which are completely useless after 90 degrees. Need to
ensure they have central heating so looking at some of those modifications.
Given different rates of affiliation with faith based communities, are there any other
times of analogous organizations you have had some success with?
There are a few - YMCA (works with youth and seniors), la mission (church of
assumption) that works with Spanish populations – working with clothing/food markets
(e.g. diverse Somali market in the area); all food banks are on the list, mental health
entities… we send out the material and whoever self-identifies as a non-profit or
community-based entity that provides services, that’s who we work with.
There is a companion piece for non faith based community organizations to the toolkit
available on the website. Targeted at community based entities- focuses on the
continuity of operations (very concerned they will not be able to continue to provide
services – each year we ask what would shut you down e.g. fire, tornados, etc. and what
do you need to continue services – if situation has changed)
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
In the survey you undertook, what was your response rate?
First time – sent out to all entities that we had connection with, first response was 545
Reponses, 66% from our jurisdiction – having local connection really helped our
response rate. Did surveying internally (used Survey Monkey).
City of Toronto Update of Extreme Weather Resilience & Public Consultations
City Manager’s office has been very active on this file, resulted in 64 recommendations
as result of extreme rain and ice storm. Office is putting out staff report ‘Resilient City’,
going to council in June. Would be of interest to this group to have recommendation
that there be extensive outreach and engagement initiative for all forms of residence
and businesses – can see connection point for Faith and the Common Good.
Weather wise partnership indicated that electrical power is the biggest concern and this
resulted in a Weather Wise Electrical Sector Core Project Team –initiated risk
assessment, looked specifically at concepts of vulnerable people and mapping them.
Did survey on preparedness of critical infrastructure groups across GTA (raised 60,000 in
federal money to do so)– findings are not good.. Surveyed 1700 entities (food, fuel, fire,
police, ambulance, medical), only 190 responses. Only 50% had up-to-date emergency
and business continuity plan. Only 17% can make it 72hrs without significant disruptions
to their critical operations. None of the fuel providers responded.
Meg Shields, City of Toronto, Information on “Is Toronto Weather Prepared?
Weatherproofing Your City” Public Consultations
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City of Toronto doing an online survey, open until the end of the month
We want to know: whose homes were affected, innovative or creative ideas,
suggestions and critiques of how the City handled it, what we can do better in
the future.
Online form available in 10 languages.
All of the information will be posted on the website following at a later date.
Can look at all data and see what might be appropriate for your city
Consultation website :
http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=f688b1616a325410
VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD
Questions
Do you have a sense of what the turnout was for the public meetings and is it
consistent with other turnouts?
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
160 people came out to public consultation meetings, several hundred already filled out
form. Fairly consistent with other public consultation meetings although not as
polarizing of an issue as other events (last meeting was about a casino). People giving
meaningful responses – not really looking at a yes or no, we want to learn about
experiences, suggestions etc. Lots of open text boxes to provide a lot of feedback.
Kevin Behan, Best Practices in Climate Communications
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A lot of failings on the communication side of things. We constantly talk about
and accept ‘best available climate science’, but don’t stop to consider ‘best
available communication science’.
 Major failing on our part and something that needs to be addressed.
 This presentation does not in any way provide all of the solutions, but highlights
three areas – knowing your audience, framing and the use of words/language
and additional resources.
Knowing your audience
 Who needs to know what, what are their concerns – need to relate to their
concerns and what they want and don’t want to hear.
 What are the decision making responsibilities of the people we’re talking to (how
can we can communicate it to them in a way that they understand).
 Need to communicate issues that resonate with people (a local context).
 Six America’s Studies (2012) done by communication people. From Alarmed
(most concerned) to Dismissive (don’t feel it is an issue).
 Can’t attack belief systems, it just doesn’t work. Need to give space and respect,
sometimes best to just back away completely.
 Alarmed: act with beliefs, (10%), use bike, transit and carpool; only somewhat
likely to contact politicians, primarily female, white, less religious and strongly
left in politics.
 Concerned: (15-20%), see climate change not as an immediately imminent issue,
somewhat likely to carpool, not into engaging politicians, primarily female, white
and middle aged, less religious, left to centre left politically.
 Cautious (about 50% believe there is scientific consensus on climate change);
somewhat likely to use active transportation, don’t engage politicians, primarily
female, little older, slightly less educated and slightly lower income, less
religious, centre left but not in favor of government regulations.
 Unconcerned: not concerned but feel it’s better to be safe than sorry, realize
there are wins to be had, believe in the behavioural change. 84% white, more
male than previous groups, higher income, centre right, higher religious
participation
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
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Doubtful: believe climate change is not an issue for at least another 100 yrs,
primarily male, older, moderate income, strong right in politics, believe in
smaller government and much more individualistic (more American values).
 Dismissive: completely unconcerned, don’t believe it’s happening, 30-49yrs old
(very odd). Male, upper middle income, likely well educated, most religious of 6
groups and strongly right.
 Sometimes these are strong ties to religious ideology; if you look at how groups
have changed over the years, despite scientific findings, political parties
becoming more on board, finding have not changed over the years.
 Cara Pike – communication expert, looks at mental models. Explanation of
thought processes based on small set of fundamental assumptions. Studies give
us an idea of people values and if we can identify these, we can better focus our
communication. Will have better chance for success.
Framing
 Alarmed: no need for framing, perhaps just reinforcing
 Concerned: probably don’t need motivating but clear instruction on how to act
(a lot of inconsistent information with climate change)
 Cautious: still 50-50 debate on whether it’s happening, need to debunk the
debate.
 Concerned: debunk the debate, use of religious institutions seen as key for
delivering messages
 Doubtful: focus on economic benefits of adapting (not the cause), just focus on
the wins
 Dismissive: don’t even bother (only 9-10% of people, strong views).
 2013 study: review of papers that referenced climate change, 10853 vs. 2 talk
about climate change happening and that humans are to blame (this study is
helpful for debunking the debate)
 ICLEI Canada paper – broke down six groups into three, skeptics, opportunists
and believers (in a Canadian context)
 Skeptics – tap into risk aversion and management (dollars and cost analysis),
protection of assets, past weather events, taxation, ecological stewardship,
avoid alarmist language
 Opportunists: avoid alarmist language e.g. talk about flooding, not climate
change, co-benefits (innovation, local impacts)
 Believers: ecological stewardship, civic engagement, national and global
consciousness, avoid infrastructure only solutions and exclusively on technology
and top-town solutions
 Framing considerations: Do you care about what they care about? Mitigation vs.
adaptation arguments; are we educating? (broadening knowledge base, selfreflect on broad issues); address potential uncertainty; choose right words
Use of Words
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
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Focus on cost-benefit, local context, can’t keep talking about 4 degree change,
immediacy is more meaningful (melting glaciers and polar bears isn’t connecting
people in the same way)
Technical drawings, temperature increases (some people may think a 4 degree
change is kind of nice, don’t really understand impacts). Global picture doesn’t
resonate locally.
Image of basement flooding can have more resonance (many people
experienced this in Toronto last summer). Heat island mapping shows a more
local context, can have more impact.
Forest fires may be meaningful in certain areas (Muskoka area has yet to
experience this but could be a reality).
Algae blooms in Lake Erie can be meaningful. Ice Storm of 2013 and associated
power outage, seepage and leakage in basements from flood events, Tourism
impacts in cottage areas etc.
Even if people get it, even if we’re communicating effectively may not always see
action.
Many studies show values and beliefs changing, but environmentally supportive
behaviour is not changing (people not acting accordingly). This paper talks about
why we don’t have the action.
National survey in Canada, response rate of 34% (1664 people, corrected for
sex, location)
Explanatory variables were individual (basic values, environmental beliefs, lack of
information), household, (time, money spent in household and support from
household members) and societal (perception of control in decision making,
availability and quality of community environmental services)
Findings: 72% self-identified that they had the belief but were not following
through with the behaviour; constraints on individual level, 48% felt there was a
lack of information; constraints on household level were time and money; and
for constraints on societal level, 40% felt they had a lack of control over decision
making (need to empower people in decision making process)
If people know about community environmental services (composting, recycling
etc.), they are more likely to use them
Summary of key observations: values are never going to really correlate with
environmental behaviour, there is communication niche here to bring the two
into alignment; people struggle with the right thing to do even with their own
beliefs (can help to communicate what they should do, what are the supportive
behaviours); filling people up with information won’t illicit behaviour (there is a
lot of information out there), need to communicate things that resonate with
people; motivated reasoning - when people have a way of seeing things, it’s
hard to tap into their beliefs and try to change it, let it go; Resources- realize that
there is limited money.
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
Joint Action Discussion
Damian Syzbalski, Town of Halton Hills: Sustainability Implications Training and
Worksheet
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Worksheet development and strategy for integrating sustainability into all
council reports and helping to embed sustainability into all departments and
council considerations. Started in 2008 and based on our learnings since then
have revised the process to make it easier and more useful.
How do people access the worksheet? It’s on our internal website and everyone
knows where to download the council report templates. If they have a question
on whether they should fill it out or not they would call me but even if they think
it is not applicable they still have to complete the section explaining why they
think it is not applicable. There is some stock wording to help in the rationale for
why it’s not applicable. Also learnings along the way in cases where it was
thought to not be applicable but then council said it was (provides insight for
how and why they thought there were sustainable implications).
Was your original Sustainable Team internal or external. The original Mayor’s
Green Team was external and they included Chambers of Commerce and there
were some Directors from the Town on it but their main goal was to develop the
Green Plan. The Sustainable Team is more of an internal municipal team from
the various departments.
We are just starting this in June and there will be a learning curve for this. We
don’t want to set people up for failure but if they are not positively impacting
sustainability then there would be some working with them to improve their
projects/activities ability to improve upon benefiting sustainable implications.
What about external contractors, or influencing RFPs? Yes we will be doing that
and identifying opportunities to influence suppliers and contractors we work
with.
Does this worksheet include the question how is climate change going to
impact upon your activity? There is a question considering climate change and
municipalities have a lot of great wording in policies on considering future
implications of climate change but legally if you say you are but in reality your
actions don’t reflect that, there is a good possibility that you are opening
yourself to liability and future law suits. It would be good if we could work
together to try and find more effective ways to help people answer the climate
change question and improve our ability to reduce liability. Some cities in Illinois
are being sued by the insurance industry
http://m.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/19/climatechange-get-ready-or-get-sued/
How are you reporting on this and what measurements are you using? We will
be reporting every two years on progress on the Plan and the measurement
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DRAFT MEETING NOTES
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criteria that are provided in the report will feed into the Plan Progress Report in
addition it will be the responsibility of each of the departments to provide their
updates on their responsibilities and actions to me every year, usually in the June
time period.
Who is doing the training video for you? We have a student from York
University doing that. I wrote the content and they are going to do the video for
that.
2015 Declaration Development
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There are 24 Declaration actions in the 2012 – 2014 Declaration. We will of
course continue to work on these actions however in the development of the
2015 Declaration we were thinking of keeping the Declaration items to about the
top 10 priority action areas and to focus on actions that would enable us to
regionalize initiatives (for example green development standards; new emerging
issues and actions that have the ability to have targets and reporting
requirements attached to them. Here are some initial suggestions for possible
Declaration Items:
 Ecological Valuation
 Regionalization of Community Green Development Standards
 Residential and Commercial Sector Energy Efficiency Programs
 Regionalization of Inventories and Tracking Progress
 Green Infrastructure
 Street Lighting
 Community Energy Planning
 Land Use, Transit, Active Transportation, Public Health Business Cases
 Adaptation Resilience, Stormwater Management, Building Code Changes,
Business Case Analysis
 Community Engagement/Civic Participation
The plan is to interview CAC representatives over the summer to collect
qualitative input on what the CAC has been doing, how they have been able to
make best use of the CAC, what resources have been particularly useful, what
new resources may be of most value to them, suggestions for priority action
areas and targets that they think are doable.
Then in the fall we would undertake a more quantitative evaluation and ask for
input from each of the CAC member jurisdictions to vote for the Declaration
actions that are of the greatest priority for their jurisdictions. Finalists from that
list will then have targets attached to them and we will do a strategic planning
meeting to identify what and how we will pursue progress collectively across the
region. The plan is by the early part of 2015 to have a new CAC Declaration and
Workplan. This strategy for Declaration development was approved by the CAC
at the May meeting.
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