SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Council chambers were packed Monday afternoon with residents pushing city hall to adopt a declaration for the right to a healthy environment.

Erica Janes took her four-year-old daughter, Sula Ray, to municipal services committee Monday to support the City of Yellowknife's adoption of an environmental rights declaration. - Randi Beers/NNSL photo

The declaration comes on the heels of a challenge set out by well-known environmentalist David Suzuki, who was in Yellowknife last week as part of his on his Blue Dot Tour.

Suzuki's aim is to inspire citizens to challenge their municipal governments across Canada to adopt a declaration for the protection of the environment.

As more communities join, Suzuki hopes they will put pressure on their territorial and provincial governments to, in turn, pressure the federal government to add the right to a clean environment to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Coun. Dan Wong took the groundswell of support created by last week's lecture and brought the discussion to Municipal Services Committee on Monday.

"I'm not a constitutional lawyer but like many of you here today I've simply spent a lot of time travelling on the land and caring about it," said Wong.

"I can tell you I used to trick or treat in a snowsuit growing up and now kids trick or treat in Spandex costumes from Wal-Mart. Northwest Territories just had the hottest summer on record, the worst fire season ... This is why I think it's important for the country and Yellowknife to pass this declaration."

Many councillors agreed with Wong, but said they wanted to see the declaration expanded to include clear policy goals.

"Without a doubt this has my full support," said Coun. Linda Bussey, before going on to add she wanted to see certain provisions in the declaration fleshed out in order to make sure it "sees light and isn't just shelved."

Coun. Cory Vanthuyne agreed with Bussey's assessment, adding he'd like to see council create a "triple bottom line" decision-making framework.

If council were to adopt it, the framework would require city leaders to consider social and environmental costs on top of financial costs in their decision-making processes.

"We are way overdue to develop a triple bottom line policy," he said.

"Most Yellowknifers know I've been advocating (this policy) and I think it's very important as it relates to today's declaration."

While Wong originally wanted the initiative to jump into the same evening's council agenda, his colleagues made it clear they weren't interested in passing an unenforceable declaration.

"If Wong can work with council and administration to flesh this out in a few hours, that'd be great," said Coun. Adrian Bell.

"But we could come out with a declaration for the rights of the homeless and 10 more declarations could follow and it would all be meaningless, so let's flesh this out so it's well understood."

Stating it would need unanimous consent to be added to same day's council agenda, Mayor Mark Heyck asked Wong to heed the advice of his fellow councillors and redraft the declaration to include the policy goal, a suggestion the councillor agreed with.

"This is better than any outcome I could have wished for," said Wong.

"We have a declaration tabled in front of us but there is nothing stopping us from going that much further, there's nothing stopping us from working with administration and councillors to create the gold standard for municipal declarations for the right to a healthy environment."

Wong then committed to beefing up his declaration and bringing it forward to council in two week's time.

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