This is a special newsletter to let you know that Climate Ready Ottawa, the City’s Climate Resiliency Strategy, is now available. We’re sharing this update as soon as possible so you can learn more about the strategy and how it will guide action over the coming years.
Climate Ready Ottawa is the City’s strategy to prepare for the impacts of climate change and build a climate-resilient Ottawa by 2050. It outlines a long-term vision supported by a five-year action plan (2026–2030) that prioritizes the most urgent climate risks to people, infrastructure, the environment, and City services. The strategy shifts the City from reactive responses to a proactive, coordinated approach across departments and with community partners.
Ottawa is already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, including warmer winters, hotter summers, and more frequent extreme weather events. More risks are coming: projections show the city will see more heat waves, flooding, and severe weather such as damaging winds, ice storms, and wildfire smoke in the years ahead.
The City is already taking action. Critical infrastructure, such as the two water treatment plants are being protected from flooding. The City continues to install permanent backup generators at key recreational facilities to make sure they can keep running during emergencies.
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Climate Ready Ottawa’s seven priority programs turn the strategy into action. Over the next five years, each program will focus on targeted solutions to protect people, infrastructure, the natural environment and City services. Climate Ready Ottawa builds on existing programs and partnerships, and supports pilot projects and programs to test new technologies and approaches that reduce long-term costs.
Flood Preparedness: Reduce risks to homes and neighbourhoods from flooding through infrastructure upgrades, public education, support for home retrofits, and flood response plans.
Cooling Strategy: Expand public cooling features and support heat-vulnerable residents with shade, water access, and cooling in parks, buildings and other public spaces.
Community Climate Preparedness: Help residents and communities respond to climate impacts through education, grants, and resilient home upgrades.
Critical Infrastructure Protection: Keep essential services like water treatment and emergency services running during floods, storms and outages.
Climate-Ready Infrastructure: Build and upgrade City infrastructure using resilient design standards and nature-based solutions. Test new technologies and approaches for smart investments in infrastructure upgrades.
Tree and Natural Asset Management: Protect Ottawa’s tree canopy and natural systems to reduce climate risks and improve resilience.
Extreme Weather Preparedness and Response: Strengthen emergency response with better plans, equipment, training, and partnerships.
The strategy identifies $25 million in financial needs over five years, to be brought forward through the annual budget process. An additional $149.5 million in rate-supported investments is planned for flood and water-related infrastructure projects.
The Strategic Initiatives Department will lead implementation, with shared responsibilities across all departments and collaboration with community partners. Performance indicators and annual reporting will track progress, and a five-year review will refresh the strategy.
Equity is a guiding principle, with targeted actions to support residents most at risk from climate impacts, including those in flood-prone areas, with limited resources or with mobility or health challenges.
Everyone has a role to play, and the strategy includes programs to support residents in preparing their homes, families, and communities for extreme weather and ongoing climate risks.
Multi-year consultation confirmed strong community backing for proactive climate action, with residents calling for resilient infrastructure, emergency readiness, and natural asset protection. The latest As We Heard it Report is included as part of the report to Committee and Council.
The strategy is scheduled to be considered by the Environment and Climate Change Committee on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. You can read the proposed strategy by following the links on eSCRIBE Published Meetings.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the engagement process. Your ideas and feedback played an important role in shaping the final strategy.
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