40 Reasons to Love Citizens Climate Lobby Canada

Our volunteers have seats to best the show on Earth – watching humanity respond to the climate crisis.  Sometimes we are not just watching the show. Occasionally we get to produce, direct and act in this show.

So much has happened over the last five years.

• We had an MP champion carbon fee and dividend in the House of Commons. This is HUGE! Thank you MP Bruce Hyer (MP Thunder Bay – Superior North 2008 to 2015) . This is historic. This would be the pinnacle achievement of any lobbying group and we achieved it Canada. With all the love and respect in our hearts – you are Canada’s Bob Inglis  Bruce for what you did in Parliament for the sake our climate.
• We produced three TV and radio Public Service Announcements that aired across Canada many times between August 1 and now. They have been noticed by parliamentarians to us. And they aired during the final game of the World Series .
•  One of our volunteers got over 28,000 signatures on Care2 petition for Carbon Fee and Dividend.
• Ms Chateliene 1970 road a bike across Ontario with our Care2 champion to draw attention to the best way to price carbon pollution: Carbon Fee and Dividend.
• We lobbied as a team on Parliament Hill eight times: every November and June from November 2011 onwards – excluding November 2015 because Parliament was not sitting.
• We have lobbied our MPs and MLAs/MPPs in our home ridings for carbon fee and dividend countless times.
• At our last official tally in June , we determined that we have lobbied 91 federal Parliamentarians and 45 provincial parliamentarians.
• We have credibility on Parliament Hill.  In November 2014, when attempting to secure an appointment with a fairly significant MP, once we clearly identified who we were, the aide said, “Oh your are the  Citizens’ Climate Lobby. We like you guys.  You are reasonable.”
• We have been mentioned numerous times in the House Commons, the Canadian Senate and more recently at Queen’s Park by a hand full of Parliamentarians from various political stripes.
• We cohosted a Climate Change movie, The Change Agents, on Parliament Hill with an MP that was well-attended.
• We have been invited to share  meals in the Parliamentary dining Hall with MPs on four occasions.
• We currently  have 28 chapters producing CCL metrics (lobbying, letter writing and media hits) covering at least 70 ridings now and we have a few incubating chapters.
• We conducted two full-out national conferences (2013 and 2014) and a gathering and lobbying days in Ottawa (2015).
• We conducted a conference and lobbying days in Toronto in October 2015. 
• CCL Toronto held a sold-out carbon pricing forum in January 2015 with For Our Grandchildren and University of Toronto.
• We have recorded and published our national events on our Youtube channel since 2014 via Google Hangout.
• We in Canada have been meeting regularly on teleconference calls since November 2011:  over 120 times. We are a  team – not just an internet group.
• We have been conducting monthly CCL Canada education calls since January 2013.
• We created a national plan in 2013 to create the political will for a liveable world that has kept us focused on creating the political will for a liveable world, one riding at a time by lobbying politicians, media and community leaders  for carbon fee and dividend.
• Regionally CCL BC, CCL Ontario and CCL Nova Scotia are collaborating regularly together.
• CCL Albertans are connected and doing remarkable things too.
• We produced bilingual cartoons explaining carbon fee and dividend and cap and trade that have been flung far and wide
• We exceeded our goal for number of resources that would be translated that we aimed for in our two year plan.
• Canada lead the first delegations to the World Bank (starting in 2011) and to the IMF (2013). The State Department in the USA controls the US divisions at the World Bank and IMF and in 2011 they weren’t letting CCL through the door. So with our help, CCL Canada we went through the Canadian-Irish-Caribbean side door at the World Bank. Now we have a seat at the international carbon pricing table because of the work of Joe Robertson.
• We have sent a Canadian delegation to congress to lobby every year since 2011. In our first year, our words made a Republican aide cry
• We have created  100’s of infographics – which have been complimented repeatedly to us.
• We have members whom have done great research for us leading to the development of valuable documents that are guiding us as we negotiate the best carbon pricing policy for Canada.
• We have  been “Canadianizing” CCL Actions, laser talks and media packages for four years now.
• We have over “2000 friends” in Facebook – which is rather remarkable for a group that is hyper-focused on the ho-hum-yawn subject of carbon taxes.
• We have documented almost everything we have done on our website (over 200 pages and documents still being curated and linked in our new website and Saleforce (over 2000 metrics entered since January 2013). We documented everything between 2010-2013 too. We are freaking organized people.
• We have a website that is now AWESOME – thank you Kate and Ricky for transferring the old website to a new place and combining the old and new. Thank you Casey for helping fix all those links and making the pages prettier with Wack-a-Mole precision. (We need a few more sessions to get it perfect so bear with us)
• Our metrics for media hits and lobbying are growing year after year  and we are easily going to double our total output of metrics in 2015 compared to 2014. Look for a full report in March.
• CCL Canada consistently produces year after year 10% of all LTEs produced internationally. We are pulling our weight Canada in the CCL!
• Our volunteers educate each other.  We learn from each other. The talent amongst them is par excellence.
• We had an MP donate money to CCL Canada (first and only one in all of the CCL organizations on the planet).
• We a former MP sleep at a CCL member’s home (first and only one in all of the CCL organizations on the planet and not the same as above).
• We have a national manager working full-time, who connects with all group leaders in Canada personally and is the only non-USA citizen that sits on the twice-weekly CCL staff calls. She is a published educational author and scientist (peer-reviewed first author twice), Diamond Jubilee Medal Recipient and shared well-over 100 presentations on climate change between 2008 and 2010 after being trained by VP Al Gore in Montreal.
• We have been in full-partnership with CCL USA since 2010.  The USA is Canada’s geographic, historic and economic partner after all and that is why our national manger brought CCL to Canada. CCL USA has generously shared many resources with us.
• We are not guessing on how to do this work. We are building relationships with citizens, media and lawmakers across this great continent and beyond.
• Is it any wonder a Senator said this about us right after Election 2015:
  “You have done so much “ground work” that can now start to really pay off. I feel that the prospects for climate action are exceptional.”
• We are becoming too connected to fail.