MEDIA RELEASE CCL Canada Lobbies in Ottawa Again – Thirteenth Time Lucky

CCL Canada Lobbies in Ottawa Again – Thirteenth Time Lucky

For Immediate Release – October 26, 2018

SUDBURY ON: From October 13-16, 2018 Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada was back in Ottawa for their 5th annual conference, and thirteenth time as a collective. They sent 55 volunteers to meet with members of Parliament. In total, including lobbying in home ridings this month, CCL Canada volunteers met with 54 Parliamentarians including cabinet ministers, both opposition critics for the environment and most members of the All-Party Climate Caucus.

Prior to lobbying, volunteers from Halifax to Vancouver spent 16 hours learning together on the weekend from a stellar line-up of climate change and communication experts including Mark Cameron from Canadians for Clean Prosperity – which produced the groundbreaking report in late September showing that the vast majority of Canadians would come out ahead with carbon fee and dividend. Videos from the Canadian conference can be viewed on CCL Canada’s website.  At the end of the weekend, three new Citizens’ Climate Lobby chapters were activated in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Oro-Medonte, ON, and Saskatoon, SK.

Thirteenth time lucky is what the foray onto Parliament Hill will be remembered as. While on the hill, there were indications that carbon fee and dividend was going to be announced as the official backstop policy for pricing carbon pollution. For example, Independent Senator for Edmonton, AB Senator Grant Mitchell said, “You are one of the most successful lobbying groups I have worked with because you are about to get what you lobbied for.” We asked if we could quote him on that and he graciously said, “yes”. CCL Canada has been meeting with Senator Mitchell since November 2011.

On Tuesday, October 23, 2018, Prime Minister Trudeau announced: “It is free to pollute, so we have too much pollution.” He presented the solution simply too, saying, “Starting next year, it will no longer be free to pollute anywhere in Canada. We are going to place a price on the pollution that causes climate change from coast to coast to coast. We’re also going to help Canadians adjust to this new reality.”

PM Trudeau stated that a family of four would receive $307 with their tax return this spring. That will more than double to $718 by 2022. Using one province as an example, Trudeau said, “Eight in 10 Ontario families will get back more than they pay.” The policy also includes extra support for small, rural and remote Canadian communities. Trudeau emphasized that “every nickel” of the carbon pricing revenue would be returned to Canadians. The carbon fee revenue returned to households will be called a Climate Action Incentive. 

And thus, Canada became the first country in the world to enact a carbon fee and dividend policy.

Since its inception in 2010, CCL Canada has lobbied relentlessly for Ottawa to adopt carbon fee and dividend, over the years holding 793 meetings with members of Parliament and generating close to three thousand letters to the editors, opinion pieces, editorials, and articles about the climate crisis and carbon pricing.

“We’re the little lobby that could,” said Cathy Orlando, CCL’s International Outreach Manager based in Sudbury, Ontario. “Our patience and persistence have been rewarded with an effective program that puts Canada on the path to meeting its global obligation on climate change. The announcement this week is also an affirmation of CCL’s approach to engaging government with an attitude of appreciation, respect and being nonpartisan.”

On October 8, 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report concluding that we have just 12 years left to reign in the climate crisis with severe consequences of inaction being felt by as early as 2040. That urgent message was brought to parliamentarians. On Monday, October 15, while on Parliament Hill, an emergency debate on the IPCC’s 1.5C report happened.  Many CCLers watched in the House of Commons Gallery including 11-year-old Sophia who concluded afterward, “I wish they would cooperate.”

With a national election coming up next year, political attacks on the policy will be coming fast and furious, so the job of generating political will for carbon fee and dividend is by no means finished in Canada for them. Success will hinge on their continued approach of persistent and respectful engagement that eschews partisanship. As one Conservative MP told the group, “We like you because you are nonpartisan.”

CCL’s Cathy Orlando and her daughter Sophia were also featured in a TV report that touched on the Parachutes for the Planet project displayed on Parliament Hill produced by CCL volunteers which seeks a soft landing for the climate crisis. In total, 41 parachutes for the planet from coast to coast were on display on Parliament Hill on Monday, October 15 too.

MEDIA CONTACT Cathy Orlando cathy @ citizensclimate.org, 705-929-4043

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Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change. With nearly 500 active chapters across the world, our volunteers work to generate the political will necessary for passage of our Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal