Purpose

To track and show how climate-related items are being voted on within Brampton City Council.

Mission

To increase transparency on how councillors and the mayor are voting on climate-related items so that local constituents and climate groups can hold City Council more accountable for meeting the climate targets outlined in the Community Energy and Emissions Reduction Plan (CEERP).

Scope

The climate-related items shown on this website are items voted on by City Council that help address the climate crisis and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As a guide, we referenced the CEERP and the Brampton Sustainable New Communities Program to identify the scope of items. This includes items that support green electrification, transit infrastructure, bike lanes, flooding prevention, social policies, land use decisions and more. Some policies that have a positive impact on the environment and align with the City's CEERP goals may not currently be on the website. The scope of social policies may also be limited despite its interconnection to the climate crisis. As the website evolves, we plan to expand the definition of climate-related items to align more fully with the Climate Emergency Plan and include policies that lower consumption-based emissions.

Methodology

This website uses data extracted manually from Council meetings to track the voting results of councillors and the mayor. An item can be listed as being either Pro-Climate Vote Yes or Pro-Climate Vote No. A councillor/mayor can either vote in support (vote “Yes”), not support (vote “No”), or be absent for an item.  If a councillor/mayor votes yes for an item that’s listed as Pro-Climate No, that equivalent to voting No for an item listed as Pro-Climate Yes. In some cases, "Absent" can also indicate that a member chose not to participate in a vote because they declared an interest under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. We do not show the results of all items that are decided upon at Council meetings. Volunteer BEA Board members select only items deemed to be “climate-related”. This currently is a manual process as decisions by council are stored only in the meeting minutes as text-based files. Entry of votes is also done manually as Brampton does not currently have electronic voting. Finally, most decisions are recorded as either “carried” or not. There are very few “recorded votes”. With many votes being passed unanimously, it is difficult to discern climate friendly voting behaviour. One way is to look at the councillor record of who proposed the motion rather than who voted on it.

Disclaimers and Limitations

• Currently, items listed on this website date back to 2022.
• It’s important to note that the voting records of councillors/the mayor is just one indicator and does fully show where a councillor stands on the climate crisis. The voting records data is able to provide a high level finding of which councillors are most clearly not in favour of climate action but is unable to show the nuances and reasoning behind why the councillor voted in the way that they did. Some votes made by councillors could also be performative. Each individual councillor may have slightly different reasons for why they voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on an item, or have a differing degree of understanding of what they are voting on and urgency of addressing the Climate Crisis. For a deeper insight, one may want to look at how their councillor voted on amendments within an item, see how they voted on it within the committee (if they are on the committee), or book a personal meeting with them to ask questions on where they stand.

What to learn more?

Please check out the public resource folder to see details on how this project came about. This public folder also acts as a toolkit to help those working on a similar project and shares lessons learned. As stated by adrienne maree brown: “Write up these learnings and share them widely…”