Notes for Visiting your MP or MPP

• Your group needs to meet to prepare. One person should act as team leader to co-ordinate, contact the politician’s office, etc., make introductions and ensure that you don’t go off-message at the meeting, and finally to ensure follow-up.
• Discuss in advance what content you want to focus on (there is so much).
• Prepare detailed questions and statements that you want to go over with the politician
• Ensure that you have written background information to take to the meeting.
• Arrange the team going to the meeting because different participants bring different areas of expertise.
• Political parties have different positions on various social justice issues. Find out the general position of your politician’s party. (Your member may have an individual position somewhat different, but would find it difficult to say so publicly.)
• Contact the politician’s office to arrange a meeting. This may take several telephone calls and/or emails or faxes. Unless you get a meeting arranged immediately, follow up with a written letter to the politician. Politicians are busy, spend much of their time in Ottawa, and have other obligations that require travel outside the constituency. We can’t be sure that a request for a meeting actually got to them.
  A letter to a federal politician needs no stamp (stamp required for Ontario MPPs) if it is sent to:
  Name of MP,
  House of Commons,
  Ottawa ON, K1A 0A6. 
  (Emails go free, too, but there are so many one may be ignored.)
• Members’ assistants tend to be nice and helpful. Cultivate!
• Persistence may be required. This is a very important and urgent cause.
• Arrange to meet briefly with the group just before the scheduled meeting takes place, to review who is doing what.
• At the meeting, introduce yourselves and clarify how much time you have. Make sure that you get to make your points within that time. Politicians may go overtime--some find the opportunity to discuss the issues is helpful to them. You can’t predict how a meeting will go. Discussions can ramble--bring the politician back to the subject if he or she digresses too much. Be specific about what you hope for on the part of the politician.

• Bring a written statement to leave with the politician, a brochure, or another organization’s brochure. You will doubtless be politely received. It is good to take notes (a tape recording might be tacky). If the politician is keen and largely on side, propose that he or she sponsor a “town hall” or community forum on the issues, to help push the agenda. If your politician is not at all keen, say you hope to change their mind, that this is urgent. Refer the person to other sources, websites, etc. Keep the door open for another visit. No party is saying or doing as much as is needed. So, wherever your politician stands, try to get him or her to move further.
• If you are told that the politician is doing everything already, ask if he or she has supported your particular issue and how. If you get an absolute refusal, ask if the politician has any “open hours” at his or her office, or when he or she might be having a meeting or community forum that you could attend and ask your questions publicly.
• Thank the politician for his or her time.
• When you are well away from the politician’s office, debrief. Analyze how it went. Consider how to follow up.
• Follow up with a letter of thanks for the politician’s time. (This helps to keep the door open for another visit, by you, or others, or some combination of new blood and you.) 

Source: Excerpted and adapted from Just Earth http://www.justearth.net/MP-meeting