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Spring — and the wonderful spirit of growth and renewal that it brings — is still with us and summer is just around the corner. At GMF we continue to mark our 10th anniversary year in big and small ways and this edition of the newsletter spotlights the excellent achievements of the municipalities we support: the large and small, urban and rural communities in every province and territory that are working to realize a more sustainable future.
Representatives from many of those municipalities gathered just days ago, at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto, for FCM's 73rd Annual Conference and Municipal Expo™. One of the highlights of that event was the presentation of the 2010 FCM Sustainability Community Awards, along with two new awards to recognize |
excellence in environmental stewardship: the FCM Individual Award for Sustainability and the FCM Municipal Award for Sustainability. I encourage you to read more about the winners and their green initiatives in this newsletter.
After taking a break last year to review and evaluate, FCM will again host its popular Sustainable Communities Mission this year, from August 15 to August 20. The 2010 delegation will visit innovative green sites in the city of Montréal and in Québec City, along with other stops along the Montréal–Québec City corridor. The study tour is a bilingual event. Please consider joining us to learn from your peers how policies, programs and technologies have been used in Québec municipalities to make their communities more sustainable.
ReNew Canada magazine recently recognized 10 municipalities and their GMF-funded initiatives in a special publication called Smart Initiatives: Building Municipalities of the Future. We can’t think of a better way to celebrate our 10th anniversary than to showcase 10 of the country’s best GMF-funded projects.
And it really is all about you, our Canadian municipalities that are taking action to make your communities more sustainable. We’re always listening to what you have to say and thinking about how we at GMF can better support your work. In 2009, we began a series of activities to respond to feedback received from municipal governments, including identifying ways to improve access to the Fund, simplifying and streamlining the GMF Application Form, and streamlining the application and contracting processes.
The results of these initiatives will be rolled out very soon this summer, and will focus on:
- Increasing the amount of funding available
- Broadening our eligibility criteria
- Simplifying our application form
- Processing applications and contracts more quickly
- Being more flexible in the ways we disburse our funds
News on our updated funding offer is posted on our website; stay tuned for the release of our online application form at www.fcm.ca/gmf.
Karen Leibovici
Chair, Green Municipal Fund Council
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