Meet the 'impact voters' keeping climate on the campaign trail

There’s a reason Riley Moskaluk moved from Alberta to the northwest coast of British Columbia, and it wasn’t for the ocean view. 

Moskaluk is a long-time wildland firefighter. He’s been working since 2016, first in Alberta and then on British Columbia’s fire crews three years ago. He left Alberta because successive provincial governments showed no interest in furthering the development of their wildfire program. 

“I basically just kind of got tired with the politics of it,” he said. “The further up I got, the more I was not interested in having to deal with upper level management, just the lack of interest in any kind of improvement in our system, and in the people that work on the crews.” 

Moskaluk goes back to the fireline each summer and has seen the fire season getting longer and burning more hectares. He knows Canada is in a new era of fire and believes governments should invest to catch up to the new realities. 

Moskaluk is what My Climate Plan calls an impact voter — a member of the electorate that has been both impacted by climate change and lives in the swing riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley. 

My Climate Plan is a membership organization created to help build climate-safe homes and communities. The membership is modelled after the American Association for Retired People, which provides benefits to members like discounts on health insurance. For My Climate Plan, the climate version is similar, providing benefits and discounts on heat pumps, air purifiers, alongside other advocacy. My Climate Plan’s goals translate to preparing and responding to the impacts of climate change, and addressing the root causes like fossil fuel combustion. 

Last summer, My Climate Plan organized its “Don’t Let Canada Burn” campaign, demanding a doubling of wildfire supports for fighting wildfire and emergency management. Other work includes organizing heat buddies during heat waves to protect the most vulnerable community members, and helping people access discounted or do-it-yourself air purifiers during smoke season. 

Its new impact-voter initiative is a non-partisan campaign aimed at mobilizing and organizing people impacted by climate change who live in swing ridings — ridings that have flipped between the different parties since 2006.

Jamie Biggar, co-founder of My Climate Plan, says climate change is no longer an environmental problem of the future. Climate impacts are here today, found in the smoke that chokes people on summer days and the once-in-a-century storms that flood whole communities, even in a metropolis like Toronto. 

Biggar understands that affordability and climate can seem at odds, particularly during electoral campaigns. “It can feel like a ‘nice to have’ instead of a ‘need to have,’” he said. It’s why he thinks the voices who are the most impacted by climate change, sometimes referred to as climate survivors, need to be organized and heard by elected officials. 

“We need governments to act to make our communities climate safe,” he said. “We need them to act at a whole other level, and at a continually improving, accelerating level.”

The organization used insurance data to identify the regions most impacted by climate change. Organizers pulled old electoral maps, drilling down to the level of individual polling stations to uncover what new ridings will be competitive in the next election. 

Currently in the fundraising stage, the organizers have released an ongoing impact voter survey. The survey is meant to pinpoint the types of policies these voters want to see their elected officials pursue in the next federal election campaign to combat the arrival of climate change’s effects. 

Organizers hope the campaign will live on long past the next federal election. It’s meant to serve as an evergreen, shared agenda developed by voters most impacted by climate change to keep their voices heard by elected officials, Biggar said. 

“The priorities of the people who have raised their hands to say, ‘I want to vote for climate safety in this impact riding,’ will live beyond the election as a shared agenda for the community being built through this work,” he said.

The campaign will also leverage vote tripling, a technique used in New Zealand, Brazil and the U.S. to get voters to the polls. Participating impact voters are encouraged to pull three friends or family members out to vote, particularly if they often sit out elections.

The technique could pay dividends in the next election, which could be marked by low voter turnout, Biggar said.

Moskaluk, waiting for his next season fighting fires in northern B.C., is adamant wildfire should “be at the forefront, and not just in a busy year; it needs to be a long-term plan that gets locked in,” he said — the kind of climate planning My Climate Plan is hoping to foster.

“Ultimately, my biggest thing with politics would just be to see that this career be essentially recognized as a proper career, and not just a seasonal summer gig that you just fire summer students into.

“It would be really awesome to see a good, liveable wage, good benefits, something that you could have a family and kids in a home and do this career and not have to give it up in order to achieve those goals,” Moskaluk said. 

Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative