At Social Innovation Canada we are connecting and building the capacity of social innovators in Canada. This involves supporting opportunities to physically bring social innovators together. In this vast country of ours this can involve a lot travel. And those trips emit a lot of green house gases (GHGs).

We want to diminish the impact of those GHGs. One way we are doing that is reducing trips and creating digital opportunities to connect. For trips that we do fund we commit to offsetting them by purchasing carbon offsets.

As of late 2019 the Canadian context is as follows:

1) Canada is developing a national carbon offsets system

2) Specifically, BC, Alberta and Quebec (Provinces that have offset standards) offsets will count for compliance .

3) As protocols are developed, Canadian standards will be established. But that is a few years off .

As social innovation ecosystem builders we endeavour to build capacity of the thriving systems we will need tomorrow, hence we want to support the development of a national carbon offsets system, and even international protocols.

At Social Innovation Canada we are supporting these steps  by making the commitment to offset our travel expenditures today using offsets.

Specifically, we have decided to buy the Great Bear Rainforest offsets as these contribute to The Coast Opportunity Fund which enables social innovations in the coastal regions around the Central and North Coasts of British Columbia. It is our hope that we will see similar ecosystems and offset initiatives emerge across Canada.

For more information about carbon offsets review the Canadian Federal Government GHG offset system and David Suzuki foundation description of offsets.