You may have already seen them, those lumbering juggernauts of the Canadian political jungle. They rumble through your community in buses and car convoys advertising “Paul Martin’s Liberals” or “Harper All The Way!” Yes, the 2006 election campaign has begun in earnest. The major political parties and their candidates want you to listen closely to their soapbox speeches and campaign promises. But despite their considerable media exposure, they’re not the only ones doing the talking. The nonprofit sector is talking back…and expects the parties to listen closely.

Knowing full well that candidates are now more prone to promise anything to secure votes, nonprofits and charities are mobilizing their own grassroots forces to get measurable commitments they can hold over the new government after the dust settles from this election. Here’s how some organizations are going about it.

Hitting the streets

Merrilee Robson, national communications officer for the Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada (CHFC) in Vancouver, wants to get more funding for cooperative and affordable housing. She explains how the CHFC is trying to secure these interests this election. “We have a grassroots campaign. We’re sending out letters and information to all of our member housing co-ops, getting them involved in questioning candidates when they come knocking,” she says. Other CHFC methods include attending local candidates’ meetings, encouraging their co-op leaders to ask housing questions, and ensuring that other members of co-ops are actively involved in the campaign on a riding-by-riding basis.

Nationally, the CHFC plans on using more sweeping techniques. “We’re looking at adding an advocacy function on our website, where people can send an e-mail to candidates in their ridings,” says Robson. “We’re hoping that the people who are actually looking for co-op housing and have the most to gain from it, will get involved in this type of campaign, and it will be very empowering to them. It would be very effective for those people to have a voice in this campaign.” Other organizations are implementing similar advocacy campaigns.

Talking and writing it out

Jo-Anne Liburd, manager of marketing and communications at the Family Service Association of Toronto (FSA), talks about their plan of attack for the election. “FSA is supporting an all-candidates meeting on child and family issues on January 12. The event is sponsored by Campaign 2000, which is a coalition led by FSA Toronto, and [of which] FSA is also a supporter,” she says. “Campaign 2000 is also doing a comparison of the candidates’ positions on child and family issues…has sent letters to the four party leaders on key issues, and will be releasing the responses to those at a press conference in January.”

At the Canadian Association of Food Banks (CAFB), public education and research coordinator, Chokey Tsering, hopes his organization can raise the profile of the national hunger issue to the major parties through use of an election kit developed for this campaign. The kit, downloadable from the CAFB website, contains the following message for its members: “We believe that the biggest opportunity lies in January to attend or host all-candidate meetings, send media releases, or ask candidates for their positions on our issues.” The kit also contains brochures with statistics about hunger in Canada, a voter’s guide and questions to ask candidates, as well as “key food bank positions to communicate to candidates.”

In answer to how they will try to push their cause nationally, Tsering points to the advocacy plans found on their website, outlined as follows: “We will be writing letters to the political leaders and policy advisors asking them to respond to the questions in the Election Kit…asking leaders publicly about their plans to end hunger in Canada and researching opportunities to submit questions during public debates in January. This includes television, radio and Internet.” However, there are some organizations that prefer not to advocate publicly, or at all, during this election campaign.

Advocacy abstinence

Diane MacDonald, executive director of the Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP), feels her group’s issues benefit from a lower key approach. “Our government relations committee chooses not to lobby directly to politicians in this way,” she says. “We work quite closely with government officials and feel comfortable with our relationship with the various departments that we work with. We feel we are already on their agenda and have not taken action during this election process.” It’s a position reflected by CAGP government relations chair, Malcolm Burrows.

Burrows writes, “[W]e are a strong example of being effective at [government relations] without big political lobbying. And we are proud of it. We lobby through education, trust building, and detailed proposals. The most effective work happens behind the scenes.”

While the CAGP chooses not to lobby during election time, and others, like the CHFC, FSA and CAFB, focus advocacy campaigns on their members’ specific needs, another organization is tackling a macro systemic issue for the whole charitable sector.

Defending a whole sector

At the Institute for Media Policy and Civil Society (IMPACS), Cathy Beaumont, manager of the Charities and Democracy Project, talks about how they are pursuing a much larger, but no less important concern – a portion of the Income Tax Act. More on that in a moment.

IMPACS’ main advocacy tactic relies on a specially designed election kit distributed to charities across the country. “The distribution is completely electronic and we’re expecting that it will be viral in its distribution. The kits are downloadable on our website. So we will be monitoring how many sites are linking to that page and how many PDFs are being downloaded,” she says. So what’s the issue?

“We’ve done this in the service of charities. Because [they] are restricted by an obscure and outdated portion of the Income Tax Act (section 149.1-6.2 to be exact) to spending no more than 10% of their resources on what the Canada Revenue Agency calls ‘political activity’ and what we call ‘advocacy’,” she says. “The other restriction [on charities] is that they must be non-partisan. So our election kit helps charities remain scrupulously non-partisan.” What’s more, Beaumont believes that most candidates and sitting MPs don’t even know about these restrictions or even why they exist. To that end, she feels it is incumbent upon IMPACS to champion this issue now.

“Our role is to facilitate and empower charities across the country. Though we’re a national organization, we’re located in one place and one riding,” says Beaumont. “We want charities to ask questions at all-candidates meetings, to sit down and have one-on-ones with candidates, talk to them about [these] restrictions and ask them what they would do if they were elected.” It should make for interesting discourse.

Getting out the vote

Whether it’s a national association or a local charity, in the end advocacy is all about one thing: ensuring the voice of the people is heard. And thanks to organizations like the ones profiled here, on January 23rd hopefully it will be.

Check out our free Election Connection service to help you connect with candidates and advocate for the issues that matter to you. Find this new section at: www.charityvillage.com/cv/ires/fedelection.html.

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is a freelance writer living in Toronto. He can be reached at aajzenkopf@yahoo.com.