Angela Girard's Priorities
Priority – A Climate-Ready Liveable City
Re-elect me on October 17, 2026 and I will continue to push for concrete actions to protect our community from extreme weather impacts and cut emissions:
- Prepare for the heat we’re already getting — expand tree canopy and shade, and make sure cooling spaces are open, staffed and known to residents during extreme heat events
- Grow the urban forest — deliver on the City’s 24% canopy target, which cools streets, manages stormwater and cleans the air
- Build for wildfire smoke and heavy rain — clean air spaces during smoke season, and stormwater infrastructure sized for the rainfall we now get, not the rainfall we used to get
- Hold to our emissions targets — Council set community-wide reduction goals in 2019; the work now is implementation, and reporting honestly on progress
- Deliver the Climate and Environment Strategy — the adopted strategy sets the actions; the job is funding and executing them
- Prepare for the heat we're already getting — expand tree canopy and shade, and make sure cooling spaces are open, staffed and known to residents during extreme heat events
- Grow the urban forest — deliver on the City's 24% canopy target, which cools streets, manages stormwater and cleans the air
- Build for wildfire smoke and heavy rain — clean air spaces during smoke season, and stormwater infrastructure sized for the rainfall we now get, not the rainfall we used to get
- Hold to our emissions targets — Council set community-wide reduction goals in 2019; the work now is implementation, and reporting honestly on progress
- Deliver the Climate and Environment Strategy — the adopted strategy sets the actions; the job is funding and executing them
Why this matters to me and my community
The climate isn’t changing somewhere else. It’s changing here: hotter summers, smoke that keeps people indoors for weeks, and rainfall our drainage was never designed to handle. Those aren’t forecasts. They’re the last several summers.
Some of that warming is already locked in, which is why resilience and emissions reduction have to happen together. Cutting carbon is how we do our part to limit how bad it gets. Adapting is how we protect people in the meantime and the people most at risk are the ones least able to buy their way out of it: seniors in older apartments without cooling, people with asthma, outdoor workers.
The good news is that the local work is practical. Trees, shade, cooling and clean air spaces, and drainage that can handle a storm are things a City Council decides on and pays for.
Last term, while a member of the City’s Advisory Design Panel, I advocated for buildings with greater overhangs and larger openable windows, as well as designs which supported the retention of trees where possible. I also supported the City’s first tree protection bylaw to protect our tree canopy on private property, in multi-family residential, commercial, civic, industrial and mixed employment areas across the city. This means that any tree at or greater than 20cm diameter at breast height (1.4 metres) will require a permit for removal, even if there is no active development taking place.
This term, I supported the Urban Forest Directions Report and the City’s new 24% canopy target, backed by stronger tree protection. This new target would add 24,800 new trees to the City’s urban environment.
I also brought forward a motion for a City Cooling Strategy — a maximum indoor temperature of 26°C in existing apartment buildings, and provincial changes so that no landlord or strata can stop a resident from using a portable cooling device.
A person shouldn’t need permission to keep their home survivable in a heat wave.
That’s the direction I want to keep pushing: fewer targets on paper, more protection where people live.
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Angela is a strong leader for affordable housing, child care and climate adaptation issues. Her initiatives and voting record highlight integrity and her desire to improve the community in every way.
— Nora Gambioli
Councillor, District of West Vancouver