,
October 5, 2015
Dear friends,
We’ve been thinking long and hard about how to make the big announcement we’ve been hinting at for the past month. After much consideration, we decided a simple invitation was all we needed.
This is an invitation for you to step up. To consider risking arrest in a gentle but serious series of actions designed to welcome the next Prime Minister, whoever he is, by calling on him to change the direction that Canada has been headed.
You already know the facts. It’s a pivotal moment on our planet — 2015 has been defined by the wildfires, floods and record breaking temperatures that made headlines across Canada and around the globe this summer.
It’s also a pivotal moment in this country’s history. We’re in the midst of an election where no political party with a chance of forming government has a plan to do what scientists say is necessary to meet global climate targets – keep at least 85% of tar sands oil in the ground.
In other words, we’re in a hole — and when you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is: stop digging. Which is literally what we need our new leader to commit to: freeze tar sands expansion, and allow no huge new mines on top of the ones that already scar the landscape and poison the environment in violation of the collective rights of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
It’s not a radical plan; indeed, given the science, what would be radical is to keep digging. We need a calm, deliberate, and steady plan to wean Canada off volatile boom-and-bust oil revenues, and reorient our economy towards 21st—not 19th—century technology. We need to stop the violation of Indigenous rights, erosion of democracy, and complete disregard of scientific principles that has accompanied all-out government support for tar sands expansion.
We need to push Canada towards helping solve the world’s problems instead of making them much, much worse.
So here’s the plan.
Two weeks after the election, and just a few weeks before the Paris climate talks kick off, we’re going to show up at the Prime Minister’s residence at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa to create a kind of “climate welcoming committee”.
For four days, we’ll march on the Prime Minister’s residence, sit-in and deliver welcome gifts. The gifts will come from all across Canada and come in many forms, from reports detailing how Canada can get off of fossil fuels, to thousands of messages describing why a clean energy future is in all of our best interest.
We will do it in a dignified fashion, demonstrating that our demands are not radical, but rather that freezing tar sands expansion is the smartest first step to getting Canada back on track.
Here’s what it could look like – Indigenous peoples, students, parents, teachers, climate scientists and people from all across Canada ready to greet the next prime minister right at his doorstep.
I hope you’ll think about joining in — click here to sign up.
Sincerely,
Clayton Thomas Muller
P.S. We’re preparing for every possible outcome of this election, and going to be ready no matter what happens. That being said, we’d rather not have to deal with another four years of Stephen Harper. While we’ve been working hard to change Canada’s climate politics our good friends at Leadnow.ca have been working tirelessly on a strategy to keep Harper from another four years in power. It’s called Vote Together and we think it’s a pretty great plan – click here to find out more and support it.