From Emergency to Action: New Campaign Aims To Take Green New Deal Movement to Local Communities

The Council of Canadians is launching a campaign to win local Green New Deals in municipalities from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

"The Green New Deal is capturing people's imaginations and reframing the climate debate, building a groundswell of support for a major social and economic shift," says Dylan Penner, Climate and Social Justice Campaigner with the Council of Canadians. "We can start building a Green New Deal, right now, from the ground up in our communities."

Municipal governments oversee the development and maintenance of the majority of local infrastructure and public services. According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, local governments also "currently have direct or indirect control over approximately 44 per cent of GHG [Greenhouse Gas] emissions in Canada."

"Will corporations decide our climate future, or will it be people and communities?" says Maude Barlow, Honorary Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. "We decide our future with a Green New Deal. We can weave a Green New Deal together by winning municipal resolutions from coast-to-coast-to-coast."

"Becoming a Green New Deal Community is also the next natural step for communities that have declared a climate emergency, which hundreds of municipalities in Canada and around the world have now done," says Penner. "Now that the recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis is widespread, it's time to take the next step."

Making a community a Green New Deal Community is a way of advancing a Green New Deal locally, while also applying upward pressure to ultimately win a federal Green New Deal.

A Green New Deal for all will ensure the transformation needed to tackle the climate crisis is carried out equitably, that it is rooted in climate justice, that it respects the rights of Indigenous peoples, and that it creates over a million jobs in the process.