Silicones Environmental, Health and Safety Center
Impact plays the lead advocacy and communications role for the Global Silicones Council’s engagement on Siloxanes in Canada. Industry goals were to advocate scientific decision making at Health Canada and Environment Canada.
CHALLENGE
SEHSC worked with Impact Public Affairs to ensure that government decision makers made fair, science-based decisions about the siloxanes that it produces. This included building awareness among elected decision makers and officials about the role siloxanes play in Canada’s industry and the economy, the history of research into their effects and impacts, and new and upcoming research. At times, this meant countering incomplete or incorrect information put forward by groups such as the David Suzuki Foundation and early decisions by Canadian regulators. Impact worked to coordinate an in-depth communications plan to educate journalists, the public and government officials through media relations, advertising, and one-on-one meetings in efforts to shift the conversation.
THE RESULTS:
The Minister of the Environment called the first ever Board of Review under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which confirmed SEHSC’s substances as safe. Canada is now the model for SEHSC activities globally, and decisions made here are being leveraged in these campaigns.
We achieved these results with a multi-pronged approach:
- Ongoing media relations, particularly with trade and science journalists
- Crisis communications, including preparation ahead of anticipated government announcements
- Stakeholder engagement with industries that rely on substances and the academic community
- Grassroots communication through social and traditional advertising
- Development of advertising concepts for use in domestic markets
- Decision maker education on the impact of siloxanes, their record of safety, and the impact of Canada’s decisions
- Economic studies
