Ask the Expert: Alan Desousa
Winner of the 2022 CAGBC Green Building Champion Award
CAGBC Staff on December 15, 2022
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Currently serving his sixth term as Mayor of Saint-Laurent, Alan DeSousa is the 2022 recipient of the CAGBC Award for Green Building Champion. Mayor DeSousa has contributed to the implementation of several sustainable developments in Montreal and received several distinctions for efforts.
For over 13 years, Allan has championed green buildings as an integral component of sustainable development in the Saint Laurent borough of Montreal, as well as across Québec and Canada. As the Montreal executive committee member responsible for sustainable development for over 11 years, Mayor DeSousa has been the architect of the City of Montreal’s environmental and sustainable development policies, plans and programs. He is a frequent guest speaker on sustainable development issues, including green building policy, and has addressed audiences at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), Americana and the Canada Green Building Council. As current Vice-Chair of the Green Municipal Fund Council of the FCM, he has advocated for green building certification in FCM building programs for municipalities across our country.
Tell us how you became involved in sustainability and your role today.
As a citizen, I was always interested in environmental issues and how they affected my community. Newly elected as mayor of Saint Laurent, as well as to the City of Montréal’s executive committee in 2001, I attended the second Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002. Ten years after the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the most common refrain that I heard from delegate after delegate was “Nice plan, no implementation”. Returning to Montreal. I vowed, as the newly responsible for sustainable development for the city, that we had to move beyond plans to action and tangible results.
In the months and years to come, I initiated and implemented multiple policies and action plans in sustainable development for Montreal that were also mirrored in Saint Laurent. The city’s green building policy was adopted in 2009. Through it all, I never forgot the refrain from Johannesburg and that has always motivated me to be results driven.
Today, as Chair of the Green Municipal Fund Council of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, I am privileged to be able to share and replicate green building practices with municipalities across Canada.
What have been the main drivers behind the City of Montreal’s adoption of green building practices? Are those same drivers present in Saint Laurent?
The City of Montreal committed to reducing its community greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 percent by 2020 as compared to 1990 GHG emissions. This decision became the main driver behind the city’s adoption of its green building policy in 2009. However, reducing energy and water consumption and construction waste materials were also supplementary goals of this policy. By setting ambitious targets in its green building practices, the city also wanted to influence and deepen the knowledge of all partners in the building construction ecosystem, be it architects, engineers, construction companies, subcontractors, tradespeople and financiers.
In the wake of competing demands for financial resources at the city for infrastructure and other projects, there was considerable debate in the adoption of this policy. I was glad to rally an eventual consensus of my colleagues at the decision-making table, and since then, Montreal has never looked back.
Wearing my hat as mayor of Saint Laurent made it imperative for me to ensure that there was coherence between the Montreal policy and that of my community. Saint Laurent became a laboratory for Montreal, nimbly leveraging green building practices to institutional, commercial, residential and industrial projects.
Is there a particular project that you are most proud of that reflects the city’s commitment to sustainability?
I am perhaps most proud of the evolution of the corporate culture of our staff at the city, and their embrace of sustainability as the lens through which all civic decisions are looked at. The political leadership in the city has successively put sustainable development as a central tenet of the City of Montreal’s raison d’être, and our city staff have risen to the challenge – and this is reflected in projects across the board.
If I was to choose one project that encapsulates what we have tried to do in Montreal, it would have to be our Bibliothèque du Boisé. Certified LEED Platinum and winner of numerous international and national awards, the library is a haven of peace and tranquility in the urban landscape, one where the view of the neighbouring woodlands allows Mother Nature to paint the colours of each changing season for the viewing benefit of those within.
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You were recently named Green Building Champion as part of CAGBC’s Leadership and Green Building Excellence Awards. What does it mean for you to be recognized as the 2022 CAGBC Green Building Champion?
I would like to thank the CAGBC for this national recognition and I am deeply honoured to receive this award. It will serve me as a trampoline to be able to advocate for green building practices to my fellow mayors and city councillors across the country. I have always been an ambassador for quality architectural building design married to highly certified environmental standards and this award gives me license to continue my mission.
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Are you optimistic about our ability to address climate change and a sustainable future?
Cities and towns have been at the forefront in reducing GHG emissions and reducing carbon in our communities in Canada. At city councils across the country, the political will is there. As well, the knowledge and expertise, the technology, the financing and real-life practical examples have come together to position us to address climate change. It’ll be up to each and everyone of us to seize the opportunity and make it happen now.
Without underestimating the challenges that lie ahead, I am confident that we have what it takes to ensure that our generation and those to come will have a sustainable future.