Come Together Ontario – Lobbying at Queen’s Park, October 2015

When Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers heard in August that the Ontario government would be introducing a carbon pricing policy in mid-October, we pulled together and conducted a carbon pricing conference and lobbying days on October 4 and 5, 2015 in Toronto.

Jeff Rubin author of “The Carbon Bubble: What happens to us when it bursts”, was our keynote speaker. In his tenure as chief economist at CIBC World Markets, Rubin witnessed three economic bubbles: the dot-com bubble (2000), the subprime mortgage bubble (2008) and the carbon bubble (now). The carbon bubble’s false assumption is we can combust and emit as much carbon as we wish into the atmosphere to power economic growth. Unlike the first two bubbles, Canada is at the epicentre of the carbon bubble. Rubin eloquently detailed why the way forward is a national and revenue-neutral carbon tax. He said, “Decarbonizing our economy doesn’t mean increasing taxes: decarbonizing our economy means shifting the tax base from income to carbon.”

Our guest speaker, Tom Chervinsky from Clean Prosperity shared with us insights on how to build support across party lines which we applied the next day lobbying our representatives.

On Monday, October 5, 33 of us lobbied 13 Members of Provincial Parliament. Additionally, in October at 4 more provincial lobbying sessions took place in home ridings in Ontario.

Come Together Ontario Video

For more information, check out the conference booklet, our pre-event Media Release, our post-event Blog  and our Facebook photo album.