From the left: Luke Gilgan of the Peter Gilgan Foundation, Eric Campbell from Clean Economy Fund and Sylvie Trottier of the Trottier Foundation pose in Toronto, on Nov. 13. The foundations are among a group of nine Canadian families and foundations pledging $405-million to climate action over the next decade.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Nine wealthy Canadian families and foundations are making the country’s largest-ever philanthropic commitment to climate action, pledging $405-million over the next decade to accelerate the shift to a low-carbon economy.
The influx of grant money will be a major boost to charitable giving aimed at climate-related initiatives, an area where Canada lags the global average, the donors said late Wednesday. They are urging others to join the cause to push for economic changes that will bring meaningful reductions in emissions.
The total commitment includes $150-million from the Trottier Family Foundation, $100-million from the Peter Gilgan Foundation, $18-million from the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, $15-million from the Chisholm Thomson Family Foundation, $10-million from David Keith and Kirsten Anderson, $6-million from the Sitka Foundation, $5-million from the Vohra Miller Foundation and $1-million from Allan Shiff.
It also includes a previously announced $100-million from the Ivey Foundation. Toronto-based Ivey made headlines in late 2022 when it announced it was winding down its fund and distributing the entire endowment to programs aimed at aligning the Canadian economy with achieving net-zero targets.
At the time, its president Bruce Lourie said the foundation planned to enlist other organizations into its campaign. To kick-start the effort, he created the Clean Economy Fund to direct philanthropic efforts toward solving climate problems. The aim is “to bring business and economic thinking to the climate change issue,” he said this week. The fund is co-ordinating the $405-million campaign.
Montreal’s Trottier Family Foundation has granted large sums to climate-related projects for most of the past decade, and was next to sign up for the campaign. The two foundations formed the base for the rest of the group to join, said Eric Campbell, the Clean Economy Fund’s executive director.
The group will concentrate on five priorities: clean energy and electrification; industry and economy, including agriculture, oil and gas; emission reduction in cities; impact on people and democracy; and policy and finance.
“There is a lot of alignment amongst all of them, and each of them has signed a commitment form that says, ‘This is what we’re going to spend it on.’ But everybody is responsible individually for implementing their commitment,” Mr. Campbell said. “There’s going to be a lot of collaboration through us on allocating those commitments.”
According to the Clean Economy Fund, climate-related initiatives currently represent just 0.9 per cent of charitable giving in Canada, well under the international average of 1.6 per cent. This, as Canada pushes other rich countries at the COP 29 climate summit under way in Azerbaijan to toughen their emission-reduction goals when they get renewed next year.
The philanthropists are proceeding with their new campaign at a fraught time in the battle to contain climate change. In the United States, the election of Donald Trump to the White House has raised the spectre that his promised pro-fossil-fuel policies will again push the U.S. away from global efforts to reduce emissions.
However, elections in the U.S. and elsewhere have no influence on the impact of climate change around the world, and individual efforts will continue, said Sylvie Trottier, a director of the Trottier Family Foundation.
The fight to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels, the most ambitious target set out in the Paris Agreement, is getting tougher to achieve with 2030 interim targets approaching, Ms. Trottier said.
“We know that there is a clock ticking. The foundation very easily knew it was not something that was a debate. We needed to double down on what we were already doing, what we knew was already having an impact and also to do it as much as possible in community with others,” she said. That includes other philanthropists, foundations, funders and experts in the different sectors seeking solutions and ways to scale them up, she added.
Luke Gilgan, board member at the Peter Gilgan Foundation in Toronto, said the organization distributed $3.6-million in grants to 24 different climate-related organizations last year, so it will have to take a thoughtful and careful approach to ramping up to $100-million by 2035. Its current priorities are nature-based solutions, green building, climate resilience, and low-emission and renewable technology.
“We took quite a while working with some internal parties as well as external consultants on coming up with our theory of change and what led us to those funding themes, and I don’t anticipate those changing,” Mr. Gilgan said.
The philanthropic contribution is large, but the group is under no illusion that it alone will be sufficient to meet Canada’s needs to achieve net zero. Ottawa’s Sustainable Finance Action Council has estimated $115-billion in investment from public and private sources is required annually to meet its 2050 goal.
That’s why attracting more donors to the cause is crucial, Ms. Trottier said.
“It can be something as simple as convening actors together who normally don’t speak to each other because they’re from the private sector, the public sector, civil society, or what have you,” she said. “Philanthropy can actually bring those folks in the room and say, ‘This is a common problem. Let’s actually figure this out and come up with tangible kinds of actions.’”