Check out the Ottawa Responsible Events Guide

Canada Day - Parliament Hill at dusk © Photographer Taylor Burk

Ottawa is putting sustainability into practice with its new Responsible Events Guide — a framework led by planners and designed to embed community impact and environmental responsibility into every stage of event delivery. Focusing on a practical decision tree and supported by partnerships across the destination, the guide helps organisers align their meetings with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and connect with local initiatives, such as food recovery programmes, accessibility initiatives and Indigenous markets. According to Stephanie Séguin, Vice President of Business and Major Events at Ottawa Tourism, the goal is to ensure that sustainable choices become the norm for events held in Canada’s capital.
 

What prompted the development of Ottawa's Responsible Events Guide, and how does it align with your broader destination strategy for sustainable and community-conscious tourism?

The guide was written to respond to a need within the planning community, as well as a clearly defined objective in our Strategic Plan. We wrestled with how to equip event planners with practical tools and resources without overwhelming them with too much information. The guide is centred around an easy-to-use Decision Tree which provides succinct guidance and local solutions as well as turnkey solutions such as our social impact programmes and the À La Carte food recovery programme, our destination-led food recovery programme. This directly reflects our commitment to the Sustainable Tourism 2030 Pledge and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 8, 10, 13, 15). We want to inspire and empower organisers at all stages of their sustainability journey while also connecting them to the local community.
 

One of the unique features of the guide is the ‘Decision Tree’, alongside the Responsible Event Commitments that allow planners to pledge specific sustainable and inclusive actions. How do you envision planners using this to shift everyday decision-making towards more intentional outcomes?

It is a visual tool that helps organisers evaluate each component of their event, from delegate bags to meal service, through a sustainability lens. The goal is not perfection, but progress. Planners are encouraged to ask: Can this be eliminated? Can it be more sustainable? Can it create a positive impact? They can then track efforts through their commitment sheet, and our communications chapter shows event planners how to inform, showcase, and report on the actions taken.
 

The guide touches on F&B sustainability, from plant-based starters to a food recovery programme, À la Carte. What does this approach tell us about Ottawa's local ecosystem and its readiness to support sustainable event delivery?

Ottawa is a fertile ground for working with planners to deliver sustainable events. Through programmes such as À la Carte, our destination-led food recovery programme that is implemented in over 20 hotels and venues, our hospitality partners are demonstrating their commitment to offer readily available sustainable hosting solutions and to build our destination's capacity for hosting sustainable events.
 

Accessibility and inclusion are often under-addressed in impact conversations. Can you share how your partnerships with Abilities Ottawa and Whimble Care are integrated into event planning workflows?

Our goal in developing partnerships with local service providers and community organisations is to make it easier for planners to integrate better accessibility practices into their events. For example, when Whimble was hired during the World Junior Championships, we received feedback that fans bought extra tickets because they could attend for the first time without a support person. For events, we can now demonstrate that we have a unique local solution provider with the option to provide temporary support workers.

Abilities Ottawa does incredible work to make sport more accessible to everyone, which conferences can support through our Social Impact Guide by leveraging activations such as a para-sport try-it event or by adding a para-athlete to their speaker list. Abilities Ottawa are a key partner, available for a wide variety of events and we are very happy to facilitate introductions and partnerships.
 

Legacy is increasingly on the agenda for destinations, and your guide offers a concrete pathway through initiatives like Indigenous Markets, Forêt Capitale Forest, and the Volunteer Program Directory. How can meeting planners best engage with these local organisations to build authentic, community-rooted experiences into their events?

By developing partnerships through our Social Impact Guide and providing additional inspiration through the Volunteer Directory, we aimed to make it easy for planners to identify ways to leave their legacy in Ottawa.

Creating impactful connections with local community organisations was top of mind when developing these partnerships and projects. We also recognise their limited capacity, so we designed the process to ensure an authentic and reliable experience without overtaxing them. Event planners can use the existing menu of options to book an experience, and our community partners are always open to discussing how an event can be made more exciting.

For the volunteering directory, we carefully checked each organisation’s needs and capacity limits; connecting them directly with a group’s requirements should be straightforward, as they are accustomed to groups of various sizes.
 

How might this guide serve as a collaborative blueprint for other Canadian cities, or even international DMOs, looking to codify sustainability and social impact into event planning?

It is clear that DMO’s worldwide, including our Canadian counterparts, must work collaboratively if they are to continue attracting international association events. Sustainability and ESG are a key part of this collaboration and offer a real opportunity for knowledge sharing amongst our peers. We purposefully sought partnerships with organisations working across environmental, accessibility, and reconciliation priorities, all of which we hope will become examples of best practice across the industry.

We must all acknowledge that industry-wide change takes time, effort and the support of experts, which is why, in our particular case, we engaged consultants to help develop suitable products and impact metrics. Our social impact projects have been tied to the Responsible Events Guide from the outset, giving planners a clear path to fund and engage with community groups. We believe the key is to make collaborations reliable while offering turnkey solutions that can be easily integrated into any event.

When an event planner reads our guide, they have a ready-to-use toolbox to understand local options and the resources to make their event more sustainable and impactful. For example, the Lend-a-Lanyard Library with the Rogers Centre is a specific partnership with our largest convention centre.

In the end, it is all about a DMO investing in our communities and inviting our guests to join that investment to create impact and legacy. The specifics will be different for each DMO, whether here in Canada or further afield, but the principal and ethos remain the same.
 

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