In May, during EECOM's AGM at the 2010 conference in Vancouver, EECOM members in attendance voted unanimously in favour of the following motion, that: "EECOM in collaboration with its affiliated organizations in each province and territory, organize a campaign to investigate a National Environmental Act via a private members bill or other appropriate mechanism."
We are writing now to ask if your association would be supportive of, and interested in collaborating with EECOM and with other provincial/territorial associations such as yours, in this important national project -- that of advocating for a National (and non-partisan) Environmental Education Act to be approved by Canada’s parliament.
Why is this important? Canada is one of the few western countries without such a national act. Educators in other countries know that a national act obligates their federal government to provide important supports for environmental education. In the US for example, their National Environmental Education Act ensures that the government supports and disseminates EE research, operates a competitive grants program, ensures government agencies at all levels coordinate efforts in promoting EE, and publicizes innovative enviro-education practices.
What it would take to make this happen here in Canada? This is what we'd like to talk to you about! The first steps would likely involve finding supportive individual Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Bloc, Liberals, NDP (and Conservatives?) willing to co-sponsor such a bill. A bill would then have to be drafted for comments from the environmental learning community and be vetted amongst all political parties. For reference, we will provide everyone with copies of the 10 page 1990 US act.
Above all, what will be needed to be successful in this outreach effort is an out-pouring of emails, letters and phone calls by educators in every corner of English and French Canada, both to their own Members of Parliament, but also to the Prime Minister. This is why we are turning to you and your organization, and asking if you would support EECOM and others with this initiative.
We recognize that your next board meeting may be as much as one or two months’ away. If you can let us know when your board might next have the opportunity to discuss this matter this would be much appreciated. We thank you in advance for your earliest consideration of this matter, and look forward to hearing from you soon. We plan to kick off our networking efforts in earnest sometime this fall.
All the best,
David Zandvliet (EECOM co-chair, dbz@sfu.ca) & Tim Grant (former EECOM board member, tim@greenteacher.com)
