Tapping the Potential of the Silent Majority: The Role of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs in Building Resilient, Low-carbon Communities

On April 22, 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed the Paris Agreement to limit and respond to global climate change. He was joined by representatives from 174 other countries — more than have ever signed a deal of this kind. The Paris Agreement emerged out of the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The agreement states that the parties should work to limit the increase in global average temperatures over preindustrial levels to 1.5°C, an ambitious goal supported by Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna. Holding global warming to this level can only be achieved by making specific commitments to reduce GHG emissions, and until new targets are set by the current federal government, Canada will be held to the targets set by the previous government led by Stephen Harper: emissions at 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.