Get excited: It’s time for our second Day of Action for a Green and Just Recovery from covid-19!
Since our last Day of Action on May 27th when thousands of you took action, a number of Liberal Members of Parliament have already spoken up in support of a green and just recovery — people like Toronto MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Montreal MP Rachel Bendayan and Quebec City MP Joël Lightbound.
You asked them to speak up and they answered. We’re on a roll, so let’s not give up now.
While we’ve been taking action, Big Business hasn’t been resting on their laurels. A Greenpeace investigation has found that the oil and plastics sectors have logged more than 400 communications with federal officials since the pandemic began. Aviation, automotive, banking and forestry lobbies have logged hundreds more.
We need to keep the pressure on and push back against corporations that have the attention of our elected officials, especially considering that these corporations include those lobbying for bailouts and against climate regulations, a plastics ban, forest protections and more.
We need transformative, system change. The goals of the economic recovery from the pandemic should kick-start that change. We want to say ‘goodbye’ to a system designed to fail the most vulnerable people in society and ‘hello’ to one that safeguards human health and nurtures our collective relationship with nature.
We know that right now, the Prime Minister Trudeau’s government is working on a longer-term recovery plan. This is the perfect opportunity to remind MPs in his party to listen to their constituents and put people and nature ahead of corporate profits.
We are inviting you to challenge key Liberal MPs to speak up publicly and within their party, to make sure we build back better. The MPs we’re asking you to connect with have each shown that they care about the environment and think climate action is a top priority. Let’s challenge them to speak up for a #JustRecovery.
Julie Dabrusin
Julie Dabrusin was elected as MP for Toronto-Danforth, one of the most environmentally-conscious ridings in Ontario, in 2015. She got involved in politics because of her concern over urban greenspace, active transportation, public transit and rising inequality and is actively committed to tackle food insecurity. Let’s challenge her to speak up now for a #JustRecovery!
Sample tweet:
Call script (constituency office phone number: 416.405.8914)
“Hello Ms Dabrusin, I am calling to ask that you publicly support a green and just recovery. You’ve been a strong advocate for developing urban greenspaces, public transit and for tackling food insecurity. Federal funding to cities for electric transit, better access to greenspaces and urban farming can help kickstart a #JustTransition. Today, I’m asking you to take a clear position in favour of a green and just recovery that puts people and nature first. Thank you”
Sample email ([email protected])
“Hi Ms Dabrusin, I want to thank you for your work in these difficult times. I want to tell you that I don’t want us to go back to a ‘normal’ defined by a system which creates rampant inequalities based and on a model of infinite exploitation and destruction of nature.
Now that the time has come to rebuild our future, I hope you can keep being a leader. The recovery from COVID-19 must make our society more resilient, fair and sustainable. I urge you to speak out in favour of a green and just recovery with your fellow Parliamentarians and the media.
I look forward to working with you and our community to build this better world.
Sincerely,
Your name.”
Terry Duguid
Terry Duguid was elected as MP for Winnipeg South in 2015. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development, with special responsibility for Western economic diversification, he could play an important role in designing a just transition program as part of a green and just recovery. Let’s challenge him to speak up now for a #JustRecovery!
Sample tweet
Call script: (constituency office phone number: 204.984.6787)
“Hello M. Duguid, I am calling to ask you to publicly support a green and just recovery. Today, this kind of leadership is more urgent than ever. I’m asking you to take a clear position in favour of a green and just recovery that puts people and nature first. Thank you”
Sample email ([email protected])
“Hi M. Duguid, I want to thank you for your work in these difficult times. I also want to tell you that I don’t want us to go back to a ‘normal’ based on a system which creates rampant inequalities and promotes a model of infinite exploitation and destruction of nature.
Now the time has come to rebuild our future. The recovery from COVID-19 must make our society more resilient, fair and sustainable. I urge you to speak out in favour of a green and just recovery with your fellow Parliamentarians and the media.
I look forward to working with you and our community to build this better world.
Sincerely,
Your name”
——-
MPs and the government have to step up with real support for communities to recover from the pandemic in a way that builds resilience and sustainability. It’s NOT a time for handouts to the oil companies, causing the climate crisis or increasing our vulnerability to threats like climate change.
Let’s speak out together and make sure the recovery plan puts people and nature first.
Thank you and keep the pressure up!
Discussion
We have to put the environment and people’s health and lives first
It's time to take action. It's not just the plastic cups...it's also all the plastic takeout boxes. Plants based and biodegradable cutlery and boxes should be used by all those restaurants.
it only make sense to try to green up our society, after this lock down has shown the world could get better with a bit of help
Please save our environment and all the MAGNIFICENT living beings that share it with us.
Ever since I was a child in the 60’s, I have witnessed societies wasteful and destructive disregard for the environment. We are disconnected from the damages each of us choose by our daily activities and limited in our daily lives by what we can do as individuals to effect change. I am screaming at the top of my lungs in terror at my helplessness, hoping you will hear my whisper that begs for the action that I cannot accomplish without your help to adjust our priorities.
I hear you and am listening my friends.
Our climate is reminding all the people on earth, to not use. Plastic, is making Her sick! Please use more paper products, not more oil products in making recycled products! Stop sending money to the oil companies, which are destroying our water and soil!!!
I'm hoping - actually - praying that our opening of our economy get's a real "green" start - let's go lots of different routes to decrease our carbon out puts. Things like growing Kelp, building solar and wind farms, using the Carbon Engineering - Pioneering Direct Air Capture of CO2https://carbonengineering.com. This process will take carbon outputs from hundreds of cars out of the atmosphere every year, increasing transit across the country, decommissioning oil wells and capping them so they no longer leak methane - this is mostly in the west. Then there is producing energy from wave motion. Also what about increasing the subsidy on electric cars so people will think seriously about getting one instead of a gas guzzler. What about keeping people who can work from home doing that? There are so many things that can help us and we will need to do a lot of different things. This Covid has really shown us that it is possible. But we don't need to make it so severe as the shut down has been with Covid. But we must start to do a lot of different things so it will make a large effect. Our planet and indeed, our survival depends on it.
Neoliberal ideology has had 40 years to change elected representatives' mandate from "to serve the needs of their constituents," to serving the demands of big business, from a welfare state to corporate welfare, from reasonable equality to extreme inequality. And all that is a crime.
Thankyou for explaination, its a crime against nature & a sin against the Lord in heaven.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my thoughts on how to make this country better than it was before. First of all big business has run this country ever since confederation and this is what we end up with. Wars, depression,recession, more wars, environmental disasters, unemployment, etc. etc. Now lets put it back together again by letting the people who actually do the work,have a say in how to make it better. Lets make this a true democracy by letting the majority of the people have a say in how to run this country,instead of having selfish corporate billionaires,who only think of their shareholders, do what they have always done.
How much good will it do for me to contact two MP's who are from other provinces?
Listen to the people, of our communities and our world.
Please let’s take away measures that were put in place to protect our environment for our children and their children’s children etc. Protect our water resources, to prevent terrible illnesses.
Lets stick to a green recovery we may never get another oppprtunity like this, make it positive from the negative.
Jason Kenney still riding oil as lead pony in Alberta economy. He is obsessed with privatizing health, education, parkland systems, laboratories . He terrifies me. well being for us all in Canada lies with the federal liberals to whom I am deeply grateful?
That man preached earlier about his war room, he sounds like the warmongers that send so many precious people to death. The similarity is vague but in reality that man must really hate his world.
We have to protect our precious environment Canada
Yes and around this fragile planet, lets not have fear of their facade and have faith in each other.