Advocacy in Formal Processes
Possible by Design's advocacy ideas inform substantive submissions to government consultations and procurement processes. These submissions are public, on the record, and available for citation, reuse, and reference.
Submission to the Canadian Sustainable Finance Taxonomy: Methodology Report Public Consultation
Submitted August 13, 2026 to Business Future Pathways and the Canadian Climate Institute
Possible by Design responded to the public consultation on the draft Canadian Sustainable Finance Taxonomy: Methodology Report.
​
The submission supports the Council's decision to add a third category for abatement measures - a genuinely differentiated Canadian contribution to a global taxonomy landscape where peer jurisdictions have largely stopped at Green or Green-plus-Transition. It challenges two specific engineering choices: the sequencing that defers criteria for Canada's largest emissions exposure to 2027 or later, and the confinement of permanent carbon dioxide removal eligibility to the deferred abatement category alone. Both are fixable within the current framework.
Three recommendations of equal weight anchor the submission. First, every activity's criteria must place it on a clear ramp to Geological Net Zero, with the endpoint specified and interim milestones the criteria can test against. Second, emissions must be evaluated on a net basis, with standards recognition for all climate-science-aligned pathways - both "do our best" emission reduction and "remove the rest" permanent removal - available across all three categories. Third, criteria for the abatement measures category must be developed in parallel with green and transition in 2026-2027, not deferred to 2027 or later. Together, these changes align the taxonomy with Canada's own federal procurement precedent (PSPC 24062-250403), with the EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming framework, and with the national climate frameworks of Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden.
​
The submission also urges the Council to recognize Climate Footprint Labels as the demand-side complement to the taxonomy. Approximately 61% of global emissions originate in consumption categories where the point of decision is a household purchase rather than a capital allocation. A taxonomy directing capital to activities on credible ramps to Geological Net Zero, paired with mandatory disclosure making those activities visible on the demand side, is a substantially more powerful engineering system than either alone.
​
Download the full submission here:
Read the blog summary here.
Submission to the Canadian 2026-2029 Federal Sustainable Development Strategy Consultation
Submitted May 12, 2026 to Environment and Climate Change Canada
​Possible by Design responded to the public consultation on the draft 2026–2029 FSDS.
The submission identifies a structural gap in the draft strategy: Canada's legally binding net-zero target rests on a regulatory architecture in which approximately 31% of national emissions face no federal requirement to decline at all, and approximately 69% are regulated but with no requirement to reach zero. To close that gap, the submission proposes a Universal Ramp to Regulate All Emissions: every source on a published, predictable, multi-decade trajectory to fully decarbonized by 2050, with permanent carbon dioxide removal as the universally available backstop.
​
Three further mechanisms - Climate Footprint Labels, Abatement Pathway Standards, and Geo Zero Product Certification - complete the system, making the net-zero target not only arithmetically achievable but also visible to consumers, available to every sector, and rewarding for first movers.
​
The submission also urges the FSDS to make a commitment its current draft does not: to recognize intergenerational fairness as a dimension of the "no one is left behind" principle. Climate harm falls disproportionately on Canadians not yet born and Canadians who are currently young - the people with the largest stake in this planning cycle and the least voice in it. Climate anxiety in Canadian youth is now a documented, growing burden with a structural cause that policy can directly address. Mechanisms that restore agency - by giving people something visible to see, choose, and ask for - are direct interventions in that reality. The four mechanisms proposed are, among other things, such mechanisms.​​
Download the full submission here:
Read the blog summary here.
We will make additional formal submissions available here when ready.