Case Studies

Wachiay Friendship Centre is leveraging the expertise of GMF’s Sustainable Affordable Housing (SAH) initiative to develop energy-efficient, affordable housing in Courtenay, BC. Their new apartment complex, breaking ground in 2023, will provide homes for 40 Indigenous seniors and adults living on low income.

Discover the outstanding environmental initiatives that received FCM’s 2022 Sustainable Communities Awards.

In an effort to reduce GHG emissions from transportation and provide more equitable transport options, a group of municipalities in the Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine region teamed up with transit organization RÉGÎM to create TCiTé, a shared mobility project.

While natural assets such as wetlands are known to provide both tangible and intangible benefits for communities, their value can be hard to put a number on. The Alberta municipality of Parkland County has been experiencing extreme weather events and degradation of natural infrastructure. They evaluated the costs and benefits of maintaining and restoring wetlands and other ecosystems.

In three municipalities in P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, a new program is offering financing to homeowners to help them retrofit their houses for better efficiency — and to save money on energy costs, too.

A challenge facing many municipalities is how to divert more waste from landfill, both to lower GHG emissions and to reduce their need for landfill space. In Quebec’s Lac-Saint-Jean region, communities and waste management have teamed up to create Réemploi+, an organization that is creating a system for waste diversion and reuse while also developing skills training opportunities.

In order to find the most impactful ways to reduce food waste, Guelph-Wellington conducted a study that examined the local food system from production to export and consumption. It found a number of solutions to the food waste problem that have the potential to both address economic inequality and reduce the community’s carbon footprint.

Many Canadian municipalities have declared a climate emergency and are seeking ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. One major contributor to these emissions is ice rinks, which make up about one-quarter of energy usage from municipal buildings. In order to find cost-effective ways to reduce the carbon footprint of these facilities, a group of municipalities teamed up to analyze the issue and create net zero road maps for themselves, as well as a pathway for other rinks to follow.

Roads and vehicle traffic are a significant source of injury and mortality for wildlife, and road ecology experts are looking for ways to improve this situation, especially for species at risk. In one Ontario community, a road construction project presented an opportunity to try a new approach to reducing its impact on turtles and snakes. A group of partners came together to rescue reptiles from the roadside and research the effectiveness of various mitigation methods. The result? More than 3,500 turtle eggs saved, at a lower cost than traditional barrier fencing.

Read our case study to learn how a group of Quebec municipalities piloted an innovated method of separating organics from trash.