"Everyone’s Doing It" & The Five-Step PCP Policy Trap
🧱 Mini Paris Accord Series — Article 3
"Everyone’s Doing It" & The Five-Step Policy Trap
By Maggie Braun | KICLEI Canada
🧠 This Article at a Glance:
This week in our Mini Paris Accord Series, we examine two of the most deceptive lines in the FCM–ICLEI "Partners for Climate Protection" (PCP) joining resolution — the kind of wording that lulls councillors into support:
“Don’t worry — everyone’s doing it.”
“It’s just a five-step guide.”
These lines are not innocent. They mask the true nature of the PCP program: a UN-directive program and data regime that commits your town to far-reaching policy shifts — without full debate, legal review, or a public mandate.
“WHEREAS over 350 municipal governments across Canada representing more than 65 per cent of the population have already committed to reducing corporate and community GHG emissions through the PCP program since its inception in 1994;”
“WHEREAS the PCP program is based on a five-milestone framework that involves completing a GHG inventory and forecast, setting a GHG reduction target, developing a local action plan, implementing the plan, and monitoring progress and reporting results;”
🧩 "Everyone’s Doing It": The Peer Pressure Clause
This line is there to reassure councillors:
“Over 350 municipalities have already signed on…”
But the number isn’t the issue. The process is.
Most of these municipalities joined the PCP program:
Without public consultation
Without a cost analysis
Without ever reviewing ICLEI’s UN origins or the implications of signing onto global climate architecture
What’s actually being signed? A commitment to years of data collection, spending, and emissions restructuring — for a letter of recognition from FCM.
📊 What Are "Corporate and Community GHG Emissions"?
Municipalities must commit to tracking, reporting, and reducing emissions in two broad categories:
🔹 Corporate = All municipal operations
The PCP Milestone 1 Protocol requires detailed tracking of:
All municipal energy use (including electricity and fuel)
Emissions from public buildings, water treatment, and vehicle fleets
Staff travel and commuting
Waste breakdown audits at the bin level
Methane assessments and landfill decay calculations
Public lighting, heating, and transit systems
This alone demands special software, outside consultants, and massive staff hours.
🔹 Community = You and everyone in town
PCP protocols also require:
Emissions tracking from all homes, businesses, and institutions
Fuel sales and kilometres travelled by vehicle type
Agricultural emissions (including livestock)
Waste composition and methane potential
Water, transit, lighting, and fugitive emissions
This is not just tracking trends — it’s a granular surveillance system, handed to third parties like ICLEI, for a program most residents have never heard of.
🧱 The “Five Milestone” Framework: A Policy Trap in Disguise
At first glance, it sounds harmless — just a guide to reduce emissions.
But in reality, it functions as a step-by-step implementation tool for UN climate targets, including IPCC-aligned net-zero policies.
Let’s walk through what each milestone actually requires:
⚙️ Milestone 1 — Inventory & Forecast
Set up the full GHG tracking system as outlined above, complete with new and costly smart city tech. Forecast emissions trends and determine baseline data across all sectors.
📉 Milestone 2 — Set Reduction Targets
This is where the trap is set.
Many municipalities are pressured to adopt “net-zero by 2050” targets — not based on local realities, cost assessments, or voter input, but on IPCC climate modeling developed by unelected international panels.
Here’s what the PCP website says:
“The PCP Milestone Framework encourages members to set a midterm target and a long-term target… aligned with IPCC’s scientific targets of a 45% reduction by 2030 and net-zero by 2050.”
But these aren’t casual suggestions. When a council adopts them, they become official policy — embedded in a recorded council motion.
They’re defacto policy obligations that:
Shape all future land use, transit, and infrastructure planning
Are often accompanied by a formal climate emergency declaration, designed to “galvanize public opinion” and fast-track spending
Can’t be reversed informally by future councils. A reversal requires a new motion and formal council vote.
The reward? A letter from FCM.
🧾 Milestone 3 — Develop a Local Action Plan
This plan typically includes:
Purchasing EVs and green tech
Retrofitting buildings to meet new green building standards
Adopting energy audits, renewables, and planning mandates
Committing to specific technologies and vendors, often those approved by ICLEI.
These measures may be marketed as sustainable — but they lock your municipality into costly vendor pathways, and open the door to lobbying by global contractors and NGOs.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Even after compliance, municipalities will be asked to address “residual emissions” through:
Purchasing carbon credits, and
Funding carbon capture plants.
All of this, to meet net-zero by 2050 — with no clear benefit beyond a certificate and global recognition. This is how climate policy becomes a permanent fiscal burden — managed locally, dictated globally.
💰 Milestone 4 — Implement the Plan
This step enshrines the PCP plan into your town’s policies — ensuring that future capital planning is shaped by a UN-aligned emissions agenda.
Every retrofit, fleet purchase, or infrastructure decision must now pass the “climate lens.” And this lens is not designed by your voters.
🔁 Milestone 5 — Monitor, Report, Repeat
This is how they normalize global governance as if it were local duty.
Once a municipality completes the first four milestones, the cycle restarts:
📊 New emissions data is collected
🎯 New targets are set
📣 Climate emergencies are declared
💰 And more money is committed
But here’s the critical truth:
🔍 Emissions monitoring is not a core municipal responsibility.
It’s not in Section 92 of the Constitution.
It’s not required by provincial legislation.
It’s not why municipalities were created.
Municipal governments exist to manage local services: roads, infrastructure, safety, waste, water, parks, housing. Not to track carbon molecules or enforce UN climate targets.
So why do towns keep doing it?
Because access to federal funding — through the FCM’s Green Municipal Fund (GMF) — now depends on “climate alignment.” Municipalities are being financially coerced into treating climate accounting as their primary function — while essential local services get side-lined.
🛠️ What You Can Do:
🔹 Ask your councillor: Have you read the five milestones handbooks in full?
🔹 Request a cost review and legal opinion before committing
🔹 Share this article with neighbours, councillors, and local media
🔹 Join the growing network of Canadians saying “enough.”
Next article: We expose what the so-called “Member Benefits and Responsibilities” really mean — and how they quietly lock your town into a UN-designed emissions program.
In local service,
Maggie Braun
KICLEI Canada
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