Ottawa | Traditional, Unceded Territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People, November 10, 2025 – The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) delegation of physicians and program team will be in Bélem from November 11 to 20.
While the federal budget 2025 may have fallen short, Canada’s commitments at COP30 can still make up for lost ground by stepping away from investments in fossil fuels including LNG, by investing in clean electricity and renewable energy, by tackling disinformation around the impacts of fossil fuels and enforcing strong climate and pollution regulations.
If Canada meets its climate targets, we can save an estimated 112,000 lives between 2030 and 2050 from cleaner air alone. Yet Canada is not on track to do so, putting people’s health at risk. Physicians see the effects in our patients every day. Every dollar not invested in prevention will cost far more in treatment and lives lost. That is why CAPE physicians will be at COP30: to call for climate action that puts health first.
During COP30, CAPE will be organizing panels and holding a press conference.
Individual quotes from the physicians
Dr. Samantha Green, President‑Elect of CAPE, Family Physician
I am looking forward to attending COP 30 to help hold the Canadian delegation and international delegates to account. There have been many missed opportunities over the years, many driven by mis- and disinformation propagated by the fossil fuel industry and oil-rich states. The CAPE delegation will be holding those companies and those petrostates to account at COP30, ensuring that the health of people in Canada and the health and wellbeing of people around the world is kept top of mind. Climate change is the greatest health threat we face and this must be underscored at COP30.
Dr. Courtney Howard, Chair of CAPE Territories, Emergency Physician
As an ER physician in the subarctic and Chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, which leads the organization of health sector civil society at the international climate change negotiations, I’m heading to COP30 looking to harness our shared desire for good health and functional healthcare to increase ambition within both the negotiated text and the discussions which occur around it. The Belem Action Plan is focused on health system adaptation, which is essential for high-quality healthcare now, but is not enough: limits to adaptation mean that decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is required to maintain the possibility of high functioning healthcare into the future. People are most motivated to protect what they love, including the health of the next generation, making health the argument for climate action. As we do during successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation, it’s time to push hard, push fast, and not stop in our efforts for a healthy planetary future.
Dr. Melissa Lem, President of CAPE, Family Physician
My priorities at COP30, ten years after the landmark Paris Agreement was signed, include climate misinformation and information integrity, strong methane regulations to mitigate climate change, and low-carbon, sustainable healthcare that protects nature and biodiversity and connects communities to it. As an official member of the Canadian delegation this year, I look forward to close dialogue with government decision-makers to ensure that planetary health is foregrounded in our negotiations and discussions with other nation states.
Dr. Mili Roy, Co-Chair of the Ontario regional committee, Ophtalmologist
The climate crisis is the greatest health crisis of our time. And COP is the key to urgently mobilizing the single greatest global response of our time. As an Arctic nation, Canada’s North is warming disproportionately fast while Indigenous communities disproportionately bear the consequences. But none of us are spared. I am committed to community based, democracy driven climate action, and the clean energy transition and I aim to advance methane phaseout, as well as more ambitious industrial pollution pricing, currently Canada’s most effective emissions reduction policy. I value attending COP30 with my CAPE colleagues to elevate the increasingly critical collective voice of healthcare professionals in the fight of our lives. For our planet. For our children. And for theirs.
Dr. Joe Vipond, Past President of CAPE, Emergency Physician
For years now I’ve been going to COP30 with the intent of making a good change. And we slowly progress. It is the biggest moment of the year for positive advancement of humanity’s greatest challenge, and it is increasingly seen as important for the fossil fuel industries to show up and throw sand in the brakes of our accelerating momentum. That is why I attend: to counter the naysayers, the profiteers, and those pushing for the status quo. Am I optimistic? That’s the wrong question. We act, we push, we advocate, because our kids, the plants, the animals, the beauty of this world, deserve every chance in the world to be protected from what increasingly looks like an alarming future. We are there because we care.
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For additional information, refer to our media advisory outlining CAPE spokespeople and their respective areas of expertise. A detailed list of CAPE-led events will be updated on this COP30 Events page.
About CAPE
The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) is a physician-directed non-profit organization working to secure human health by protecting the planet. Since its founding in 1994, CAPE’s work has achieved substantial policy victories in collaboration with many partners in the environmental and health movements. From coast to coast to coast, the organization operates throughout the country with regional committees active in most provinces and all territories. cape.ca
Media contact
Loujain Kurdi (She/Her)
Communications Manager | Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
647-762-9168