We are dedicated to advancing anti-colonial, intersectional climate and environmental justice. For us, the climate crisis intersects with social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental systems and exacerbates existing inequities. Climate solutions must therefore address community-identified needs and strengthen long-term resilience, particularly for structurally vulnerable populations.

Those most impacted by environmental racism, toxin exposure, climate displacement, and economic marginalization must shape priorities and solutions. We recognize ongoing colonial land dispossession across what is currently Canada and the underrepresentation of equity-deserving communities in positions of institutional power. We honour the significant contributions of Indigenous, Black, and other racially and ethnically marginalized peoples who continue to advance climate justice despite systemic barriers and exclusion. We work to shift these conditions as part of all that we do.

Communities already hold knowledge, strategy, and leadership. We build with communities most impacted, not for them, and approach partnership through reciprocity, consent, and accountability. We organize in solidarity with grassroots groups, Indigenous land defenders, researchers, artists, policymakers, and advocates across Canada, across generations, and across disciplinary silos. We do not seek to reinvent work that already exists. We prioritize collaboration, resource sharing, and alignment to strengthen collective impact.

We believe that how we organize is inseparable from what we organize for. We view joy as a strategy that strengthens community bonds beyond urgency-driven organizing culture. We invest in community care infrastructure that makes space for joy throughout our work and reject burnout as a measure of commitment.

While we support living wages for all paid roles, we also see value in volunteering and view it as a form of distributive justice that allows people to contribute as their capacity allows. This approach resists the idea that lack of institutional funding should prevent grassroots and transformative organizing from taking place. At the same time, we recognize the importance of compensating people for their expertise and labour wherever possible.

Within our workspace and initiatives, we remove structural barriers to participation and access across identities, geographies, generations, and lived experiences. Our workspace is inclusive of all who call Canada home. We actively practice anti-oppressive organizing and maintain accountability procedures. We commit to minimizing harm regardless of intent. We invest in horizontal learning across diverse identities and perspectives while recognizing that no individual speaks for an entire community. Our mandatory monthly Active Learning Club supports ongoing education and growth within our team, and we share learning publicly to strengthen broader movement capacity.

Communities already hold the knowledge needed to lead change, and our role is to support, amplify, and connect that knowledge across sectors. We honour the expertise of community members and recognize multiple ways of knowing, including Indigenous and community-based knowledge systems.

Our advocacy is grounded in utilizing a diversity of evidence sources, including western science, lived experiences and community-generated knowledge to help inform our work. Storytelling is central to how we advance environmental justice. Through art, narrative, and creative practice, we expose structural harms, challenge dominant myths, and expand what feels politically possible. We understand that policy change alone does not transform systems if public narratives remain unchanged and we value the critical role art plays in shaping culture and norms. In policy spaces that privilege technocratic language, we ensure that story and data are held together, and that community voices shape how issues are framed and understood.

We invest in artists to ensure our creative campaigns are thoughtfully designed to be effective mediums of communication that not only inform but shift culture, making visible the lived realities of environmental racism, extraction, and inequity while strengthening collective imagination for just futures. 

We focus on transforming the structural drivers of environmental harms and social inequities, including colonial land dispossession, extractive and fossil fuel-dependent economies, racial capitalism, and governance decisions that prioritize profit over collective wellbeing.

Our approach integrates both inside and outside strategies. Inside strategies work within institutions to translate community demands into policy and regulatory change through research, advisory engagement, legislative advocacy, and relationship-building with decision-makers. Outside strategies build independent community power through organizing, public education, creative mobilization, and collective pressure. Community organizing shifts political and cultural conditions, while institutional engagement converts that momentum into durable policy change. We believe strongly that sustainable systems transformation requires coordinated inside and outside efforts, which is why we operationalize both strategies.

Across all of our work, we are strictly committed to non-partisanship. We view climate change and environmental protection as non-partisan issues that impact everyone and all aspects of life on our planet. Being non-partisan allows everyone to engage as the climate crisis requires intergenerational and intercultural support to address; and proves especially important amidst growing societal polarization. 

At SUTE, non-partisanship means refraining from endorsing or opposing any political candidate or political party that is actively campaigning for power at any level of government. We do not rank party platforms, endorse candidates, or allow our platforms to be used for campaign purposes unless equal opportunity is provided to all existing candidates. When issues are subject to public discourse and multiple parties have brought forward positions, we ensure equal representation of viewpoints and maintain context when contributing to public conversations. We use objective language when discussing political platforms so that readers can draw their own conclusions based on available information. We do not slander political figures, provide one-sided evaluations of platforms, or use persuasive language to compare parties. We refer to governments by jurisdictional responsibilities rather than by party or leader. All members of SUTE are responsible for upholding these standards throughout their tenure. We do not accept partisan sources of funding, and have extensive vetting processes to ensure value-alignment, to protect our independence and mitigate external pressure. Transparency, accountability, and research integrity are central to maintaining our credibility.