 Welcome everyone to our Wins of Change training webinar. We're very pleased to have Cheryl McNamara with us again and willing to share all her wisdom on meeting with your representatives. And glad that you could make it out. We are also recording this webinar so that we can share it with others after the fact. So with that, let's begin. Cheryl. Okay, well, welcome everybody. Good afternoon or good morning. Depending on where you are, of course. Welcome. We're here, of course, to talk about meeting with your elected representatives. And of course, we're gearing up for the big Wins of Change specifically education for reconciliation campaign and meeting our representatives around this. However, I'm going to keep this webinar pretty broad as well. So this could help with future campaigns or current campaigns you might also be working on. So I'm just going to move on over to the next slide. So what we're going to cover in this webinar is methodology, as well as setting up your first meeting, what that looks like, and we'll end with resources. Shannon's going to do some housekeeping on education for reconciliation next steps. And of course, we will address any questions that you may have. All right. So I should share a bit of my background. What is the media coordinator doing leading a webinar on meeting with your elected representatives? Well, in my other life, I have founded and co-lead the Toronto chapter of the citizens climate lobby. And I guess in my time, six years meeting with representatives in Canada and the United States, I've met with over 50 representatives. With Citizens Climate Lobby, they have borrowed a methodology that is from an organization called Results. And Results started in the United States in 1980 and has brought into many countries, including Canada, with the objective to mitigate poverty and hunger worldwide. And they have been behind such initiatives as microcredit loans. So Citizens Climate Lobby just borrowed their methodology, which I will share. Okay. So methodology, what does it take to be an effective lobbyist for a specific issue? Well, really, the big, big takeaways are you need to be very focused and you need to hone a relationship with your political representative and hopefully work within an organization that is people on the ground, meeting with their elected officials too on that specific ask. So, and I have been in meetings with representatives with other organizations that really didn't have quite a sharp focus of what they wanted. And the politician really pointed that out in a very diplomatic way, that it was really, really important to come in with a very specific ask. I've heard a number of politicians reiterate that. So if you go into a meeting with a huge laundry list or even a laundry list to say three things that you want the politician to do, and then have a meeting and leave and expect them to do that, you're likely going to be disappointed. It's really important to walk into a meeting with something that's very, very specific that's going to be a catalyst for change. With Citizens Climate Lobby, we focus on a very specific carbon pricing methodology, and we have been doing it since 2009. With Winds of Change right now, we're focused on education for reconciliation, advancing the TRC recommendation 62.1. That's all we're asking for. Of course, it's going to be nuanced depending on the province that you're in and how far your province has advanced in making sure that the full 62.1 is implemented. So coming in with a focus and not giving up is very, very important. That is key to success. The other thing that we do in terms of methodology is a thing called a laser talk. Laser talks are provided for you. They're a short little text on paper basically summing up the quintessential important thing that you want to convey. The laser talk is not meant to be memorized. It's meant to be read over a few times with your colleagues or to yourself in the mirror. And the idea is to get some really key information into your head in a very kind of conversational way so that when you are meeting with your elective official, even your brother-in-law over dinner, when they're asking you about certain things, this should come out easily for you. And a perfect example to give you. When I first went to Washington DC to join the Bobby efforts there, my very, very first meeting was with the office of then Senator John Kerry. You can imagine how nervous we were. We didn't actually meet with the senator himself. We met with his, his eight. But for a lot of us, it was our first meeting and I had this assumption that Americans are very confident people. When we walked into the meeting, we all were very prepared and I thought I'm going to be the note paper. So I don't need to say much. I'm a Canadian. I'll just take the notes. Well, we got in there and the person who was supposed to lead us off grows. She was so nervous and I pour a vacuum so nobody was stepping in. So I just jumped in and I just started to talk to them. And I realized as I was talking that I was actually making sense, which really surprised me. But I really credit that for the work that I did on practicing the laser talks. And we will provide you with a laser talk on education for reconciliation. The other thing that you want to be always, always is very polite, very diplomatic and very persistent. You always want to try to get the second meeting and third meeting. You want to develop a relationship with your MP and you want to educate them as well. You are very passionate about this issue. Indigenous rights is very, very important and there's other issues that you're very passionate about as well. You know a lot about it. You've done your research. You can't assume that your elected official will be at the same level as you. So this is a real opportunity to educate them. And you know for some people it's well they should know this issue. Well they are dealing with so many different things. There are several committees likely and they have their own issues that they're very passionate about as well. So this is just an opportunity to very gently, kindly educate them and bring them up to speed. And the other thing to keep in mind as well which is always a good idea is to always develop a relationship with your representative aid. I had a great relationship with the aid of my former MP. He was on-site with what we wanted to do but the aid and I worked really, really well together and that was very helpful. So moving right along. So some of the best practices to consider when planning your meeting and while you're in your meeting. I mean I have this picture of this kid wooing this girl and in a way you are. You're developing a relationship. You're wooing your MP and for some of you you may not really let your MP. You may not depending on who that person is. But if you do want to build a good working relationship there are just certain common sense things to keep in mind. The first thing is really setting up a meeting and you really want to be persistent. For most of us our MPs they're likely backbenchers so it's going to be very, very easy to set up a meeting. Typically whether you're dealing with an MP or an MPP or an MLA. Typically they're in their constituent office on Fridays so that's when you're going to set up your meeting. Unless of course it's reading week or it's the summer holidays. If your MPP, MLA or MP just happens to be a cabinet minister the likelihood of setting up a meeting quickly is not great. Just be persistent with the scheduler. Keep following up. You will have success. When Bob Ray was an MP it took us a year to secure a meeting. And sometimes especially if you're meeting with an elected official who happens to be a minister on the issue that you're concerned about whether it be if it's education for reconciliation than the education minister. Meeting with the political, sorry the policy makers as well is very helpful and you definitely want to develop a relationship with them. Always do your research prior to when you secure the meeting you want to do your research. This is common sense. I know you want to find out what their parliamentary roles are. I mean are they in a committee that is significant for the issue that you're working on. What's their voting record? That's helpful. If you're working with the federal level there's this wonderful tool that you may know already called Open Parliament. Just Google it and that will provide you with great detail on who your MP is, their voting record, all that wonderful stuff. The other thing of course is to visit their website. Often they blog so it's good to kind of get a sense of what they're thinking about, what they're passionate about. You want to determine how likely they are to support your ask and you also want to find out what they have in common. And sometimes it's as simple as if you're a parent are they a parent as well. For climate change this is very helpful. You always of course want to be punctual you want to respect their time. I'll go into this a little bit but especially around roles but you always want to assign a timekeeper. You want to find out how much time you have and you want to respect that. And I'll talk a bit more about that in a second. There is a rumor going around that politicians love to talk and I can tell you with my experience that it's absolutely true. They love to go on and on and on and that's a good thing. It's a really good thing because while you're doing all this research on them, what they are actually able to tell you provides so much more information obviously. So you want to offer them an opportunity to really talk about where they stand on the issue, where they think about that sort of thing. And again I'll get a little bit more into that. Clearly you would want to listen attentively to what they say obviously to find out more information about them and how you can proceed with them moving forward. But everybody likes knows when they're listening to. Everybody knows what it's like to be talking and the person you're speaking to isn't really listening. They're mind is somewhere else. And often when a person is speaking to somebody and they really think they're being listened to, they'll go away thinking that that person is just wonderful. And that makes a lot of sense. So if you want to really build a good relationship with your MP, you want your MP or your MPP or your MLA to walk away and go, I really like these people. They're smart, they're good people. And usually it's because they really listen to you or you really listen to them. The other thing to keep in mind is refrain from bringing up projects. Again this comes into the point I made earlier about coming in with so many different issues. If you have another campaign that you're working on, another issue that's really, really important to you that's very current, what you might want to do right after the meeting is to say, oh, by the way, I'm also working on this. I wouldn't like setting up a meeting to discuss this issue. And quite often they're quite amenable to that. But refrain from giving them a lot of material unless they seem really, really open to it. And you don't need to come in with a lot of material to give them because that can seem a bit daunting. If you talk about, say, a document or a report or this or that and they seem keenly interested, this is a wonderful opportunity to reach out to them afterwards and go with it with an email and to feed them the information. And this is the education component. And this is kind of an ongoing relationship that you want to have with them. And then finally, after the meeting, what you want to do after you leave is send the official a handwritten note. And this is something, it's always a nice gesture to get the people who've been in the meeting to sign it. And you might want to give it to the receptionist or just mail it. But that's just a really, really lovely touch. Okay. So when you have your meeting, congratulations, you have a meeting. You want to have a pre-meeting. So you want to prepare who's going to say what. Usually you have a facilitator and this is the person who's usually set up the meeting. And so they're going to bring you together for a pre-meeting. This is maybe a day or two before. And usually that's about a half an hour. And you want to figure out, you know, who's going to do what. So the facilitator, the person who's kind of organizing everything. This may very well be the constituent. They don't need to be the one to leave the meeting. But just person who's kind of making sure that everything is arranged going in. You want to assign somebody who's going to take notes. This is a very, very important role. This should not be assigned to somebody who doesn't really know a lot about the issue. And is nervous to talk. And just says, oh, that's okay. I'll take the notes. This really needs to be somebody who knows the issue very, fairly well. It can take really good notes, very informed notes based on that knowledge. You want to, the person, you want to assign somebody who's kind of welcoming. This could be the facilitator. It should be the constituent. Absolutely. It should be a constituent. And they're the ones who come in. Thank you so much. You know, introduce everybody. That sort of thing. You want to assign some people to ask specific questions. I'm going to get into that into a second. You want to assign somebody who's going to deliver the actual ask. This is what we're proposing. This is what we want you to do and they can explain it further. You want to assign somebody who's going to provide the follow-up material. And again, this is usually the facilitator. Okay. No taking is so important that I've dedicated two slides to it. And we, what we're going to do is provide you with a resource, basically document on these tips. So why are notes so important? I mean, it's probably a little obvious, but it really helps us certainly at Kairos, the organizers to know exactly where the representative stands on the issue and our ask. So we can get all of these wonderful notes from you. We can review them, find out what the trend is. It just helps us strategize further. And of course they inform you as well. This is very helpful in future meetings with that representative. So you know, you can review your meetings, what was that? And it's a good marker to know where they are on the issue if there are any kind of advancements. And it also is a reminder of what kind of follow-up that you need. Comment problems with note-taking. The note-taker talks about what Kairos members have said, not a lot about, you know, what the elected official has actually said. And actually this happened. I've seen this with Citizens Climate Lobby. It's a little frustrating. We can assume that you are going to be saying the right things, but what we need to know is what responses from the elected official. The other problems that are common is using abbreviations that are not defined, poor handwriting of course, and just not enough detail. Okay. So in terms of note-keeping, some of the most important things to capture, any concerns that the elected officials will have about your ask, questions that they have, it's just nice to know where their head is at currently. Any recommendations they might provide you with in terms to help you advance or help you with your strategy, points that the elected official is interesting about that or ask and about, you know, the issue and who they work well with across the aisle. And across the aisle just simply means, you know, in other parties. And of course, within their own party. So who can they go to about this? And also what's good to know, and this is where your spidey sense kind of kicks in, their body language, you know, the sense they get when they really keenly interested, whether they're excited about it, that's really good to record as well. And this is something that you can check in with your other co-meeting members about just to, you know, I got this sense about them. Did you feel the same way? And of course you want to record any action items for the elected official. Oh, they promise to talk to so-and-so, or they're going to do this, or they've said that, yes, I'm going to read out the petition in the legislature. This is all good to know, very important to record. And of course any action items for yourselves as well. Okay, the meeting itself. So you got the meeting, you've done your pre-meeting, and here you are, you're sitting down in your meeting with your elected official. So of course you want to thank them. You want to briefly introduce yourselves. And it's usually, as I say, the person who's doing introductions, who's kind of leading it. Then you want to ask the elected official how much time they have for the meeting. Oh, one thing that I did not mention, a very important role that you need to assign somebody to do, and that is the timekeeper. So somebody who's going to ensure that if the elected official say, I only have half an hour or I only have 15 minutes that they keep to it. So 10 minutes before the wrap-up, that's when the timekeeper says, you have about 10 minutes. And usually at that point that's when you want to do the ask if you haven't already. So this is very, very important. The nice thing about this is sometimes usually they only have half an hour because they have a meeting that follows or they have somewhere to go to. But I've often been in a meeting where they say half an hour and that's usually the standard. And then the timekeeper says, oh, we have 10 minutes. And the elected official will say, oh, I have a little bit more time. And that's always, of course, a very good sign. I've been in a meeting where half an hour meeting turned into a 90-minute meeting. And it was very, very good. The next thing you want to do, and this is really, really important, you want to acknowledge, appreciate, respect, and show gratitude for the work that they're doing. Often with politicians, as we all know, they don't have the best reputation in the world. And that's really unfortunate. Yes, they're bad apples. And those bad apples tend to get the media attention. What doesn't get the media attention are the good, hard-working politicians that work for their constituents that work on specific files. The folks that I've met, whether in Canada or the United States, the reason why they got into politics is because they strongly, firmly believe that they can make a big difference in our country, in our communities. They're usually quite passionate about a very specific issue as well. So that's why the research comes in, of course. So there's two things that we're going to be thanking them for, specifically around education for reconciliation. The first one is where your province is at this point in time, what they've done so far to advance TRC calls 62.1. So thank you so much, if you're meeting, say in Ontario. Thank you so much for recently stating that you are going to be covering, making mandatory in the curriculum, the residential schools, the treaties, and the contributions of Indigenous peoples. What we need to see, however, and you'll get into that later, but thank them for what they've actually done up to now. Because often, if you don't do that, what you want to avoid is the elected official saying, but, well, we've done this, this, this, and this, and just going on and on and on about what they've done, which you already know. So the first thing you want to do right off the top is thank you for the work you've done so far and acknowledge specifically what it is. And that opens them up as well, because you don't want them to have their backup. And then look at what they've done personally as well. It's really nice to be acknowledged for what you've done and some of the work they've done today, they're probably very proud of it as well. So acknowledge them for that. You're probably wondering, what if we're dealing with a politician and there's nothing I can think of that I want to thank them for? And that has happened to me. There's usually a nugget somewhere, something that you can find. And it should be genuine when you provide them with that, that appreciation. Then you want to do a very brief overview of what Kairos is. Most politicians know, but some may not. So just keep a very brief overview of who we are. And the Winds of Change campaign as well, to ensure that the TRC calls to action are met. You might need to explain what the TRC is. Then what you want to do is specify the request that the asset you're going to make. And of course with education and reconciliation, we want the support legislation that fully realizes TRC call 62.1. But before getting right into it, ideally what you want to do is say, but before we discuss this, we're curious to know where you are with this issue of reconciliation and the TRC and moving forward. And that's our little intel moment. That's when you kind of want to hear very closely what they're saying and not to engage too much, except maybe to ask a question regarding clarity. This is prime opportunity for your note taker to take really specific notes. Before meeting, when you do your pre-meeting, you want to think of some questions that you'll have. And with education for reconciliation, some general questions or questions that you may want to consider, you don't have to ask all of these, but what are your thoughts about the call to action? What do you think are the key priorities to make reconciliation possible? What does reconciliation mean to you? And what might be preventing you from supporting our legislation? And this might be a question that you want to ask later once you get into the ask. When you do your research, it's going to help you ask maybe a little bit more specific questions as well. And then you want to get into your ask. And 15 to 20 minutes into your meeting, this is when you do it, specifically as it written out what it is. And then you're going to leave them with a leave behind. Now, they're going to ask you lots of questions hopefully. If you don't know the answer to any of your questions, don't despair. Don't sweat it out. Sometimes that's both always, always. It is an opportunity to say, this is a really good question. I'm not too sure. I'm going to get back to you with an answer. And that's a great opportunity for follow up because this is an ongoing relationship that you want to fill up. We're going to provide you with a leave behind. It's going to be province specific. And then to just to wrap up, ask them. You know, you always want to ask them how can we work with you to advance this legislation? They're going to provide really great information for you and for us. How should we follow up? What are the next steps? It's not like you want to set up a next meeting immediately, but you kind of want to get a sense of where, what they're going to do, what you're going to do. You can certainly as a side ask, and this is going to be up to you and your spidey sense to ask that they would be willing to read the petition in the legislature. And that would be awesome. So you want to do a bit of follow up around that. And then you want to ask if you have time, you know, who does they work with in other parties? Who can they connect to with regards to this issue? Thank them for their time. And then I don't be very, very, I need to really emphasize this. Sometimes you're in meetings and you do want to extend the time a little bit. What about this? What about that? And you know that you're a little over time. What you want to do is to avoid that as much as you can. Just wrap up, show them that you really respect their time. You can always follow up with them afterwards. And then post meeting evaluation, trying to decide some like 10 minutes right after the meeting, you can maybe go to a coffee place or somewhere where you're kind of outside and do a bit of post mortem on how the meeting went. And this is very helpful for the note taker as well. And then you want to know where they are on the champion scale. So what is the champion scale? The champion scale is something that Citizens Climate Lobby developed. And I think it's brilliant. It's really, really very helpful. Where does the elected official stand on the issue? And they set it up and Kairus is going to adopt this. If they are in A, it means that the elected official does not feel that your issue is important and will not support your ask. If there are B, they're ambivalent. They think it's somewhat important, but it's not really on their radar and they're not going to support your ask. C, they believe that your issue is really important, but they're ambivalent or they're not going to support your ask or they have problems with your ask. D, they believe that your issue is really, really important and they are championing your ask. So that's the champion. That's the champion, brother. So why is a D not an A? Well, this is psychological. Usually when you think of Ds, you think, oh, you know, failure. And we want to make sure that we're giving those elected officials who are more challenging as much attention as our champions because we want to move them up the scale. We want to make, if you have an A, if you're dealing with an A, you want to make them a B. That's the next level. If you're dealing with a B, you want to make them a C. If you're dealing with a C, you need to make them a D. So that's kind of your objective with that elected official. With education for reconciliation, I think you're going to get a lot of people who are quite open and very positive to this, but you never know. Certainly with dealing with climate change, we deal with a lot of A's. We deal with climate deniers. Not a lot, but they're very clear. With education for reconciliation, you might get somebody who, sorry to say, might be a racist, really. You don't know who you're dealing with sometimes. So it's just good to know who you're dealing with and what the next level is. And in terms of reconciliation, I think this is all part of that. It's that journey that we all need to take together and that we're wanting to take with our elected officials. So wrapping up, we're going to be leaving you with some resources. We're going to have it up on our Winds of Change page. There's going to be the note-taking form for you. We are looking at creating an online form that may happen or not so that you could just record things, report things online. So we will keep you posted on that, but right now we do have a form that you can print off and take with you. And then once you fill it out to send it to Shannon, Newfield. The other document you're going to have is a leave behind that's specific to your province. A laser talk specific to your province that you can practice. The first meeting outline that I shared with you or we went through, you'll have it on a one page to help you prepare for your meeting. And the tips on good note-taking as well. So Shannon, I'm going to ask you to join because I know that there is some housekeeping that you want to do regarding education for reconciliation. Thanks very much Cheryl for sharing all your wisdom on meeting with our representatives. And for all those tips and the promises of all those resources that we will have ready for you and coming out over the next number of weeks and months.