Advocacy

Amplifying Leaders’ Calls
for Necessary Climate Solutions.

Climate Caucus works with local elected leaders on a range of government relations and advocacy initiatives, each designed to create conditions that support the immediate and long-term needs of our communities during a time of increasing climate disasters, affordability challenges… and profound opportunity for change.

We prioritise legislation that can enable communities to better meet their needs: additional funding, affordable and climate-appropriate housing, better risk mitigation, clean transportation, energy security and more. We also lobby for changes to provincial and federal climate, infrastructure and industrial policies which have significant ramifications for our members and for the millions of Canadians they represent.

Our support takes different forms, and includes:

• Conceiving and launching advocacy campaigns for legislation and policy reform both at a provincial and federal level.
• Building coalitions of local elected leaders to work towards legislative and policy change.
• Contributing to large-scale campaigns with other organisations and community groups.
• Supporting our members with specific advocacy needs for their communities.

Some of the major campaigns we have been proud to support are listed below. Please get in touch if you are a local elected leader who we can support.

• Elbows Up for Climate
• Help Communities Lead
• Dedicated Climate Response Funding

Elbows Up for Climate

Of national reach and significance, Elbows Up for Climate is a campaign by and for local, elected leaders, with Climate Caucus as anchor partner. We believe that our government must address the dual threats of tariffs and climate change by investing in national projects that protect and connect Canada. Launched with an open letter signed by more than 200 elected leaders—from coast to coast to coast—Elbows Up for Climate proposes five bold and achievable ideas the government can implement to tariff-proof our economy and create a jobs boom in every community. Further information can be found at Elbows Up for Climate.

Local elected leaders can still sign on to the Open Letter, or please get in touch if you would like to discuss a deeper involvement in the campaign. 

Help Communities Lead

Help Communities Lead, formerly Help Cities Lead, is an education and awareness campaign working to build support for more focused collaboration on climate policy between the province of British Columbia, and the province of Ontario, and local governments.

Through a strong coalition of municipal elected officials, staff, and NGOs, we advocated for provincial governments to further support local governments with tools to decarbonize buildings. We successfully demonstrated that our policy recommendations had strong support from a diverse array of communities, and succeeded in getting 37 local governments in British Columbia—from Kitimat to Metro Vancouver— to pass resolutions of support and write to the ministers responsible, leading the province to immediately prioritize three of the five actions.

Further information about Help Cities Lead can be found here. We continue the Help Communities Lead campaign in Ontario. We welcome working with communities of all sizes in other provinces to build momentum for change when local governments feel provincial legislation is limiting their ability to take action on climate. 

Dedicated Climate Response Funding

In 2023 and 2024, Climate Caucus lobbied dozens of politicians, senior civil servants and cabinet members to launch a dedicated funding stream of $3 billion/year for six years to support municipalities implement federal programs, including, but not limited to the National Adaptation Strategy (NAS), the Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund (DMAF), Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAA), the Alterations to Existing Buildings code and the updated National Model Building Code of Canada.

The fund—which we continue to advocate for—would provide resources to small and medium sized communities to develop sustainable, long-term responses to climate change, housing needs, equity and affordability by:

• Developing capacity and expertise to apply an adaptation, mitigation and equity lens onto all municipal planning;
• Building policies, programs and expertise that enables the construction of affordable, energy efficient housing;
• Building administrative capacity to enable municipalities to secure federal, provincial and private sector investments for climate resilient, net zero infrastructure and housing.

Climate Caucus was one of the top climate lobby groups in 2023. We will continue to build on these partnerships and advocate for increased funding for local climate action.