(Le texte français suit le texte anglais)
Welcome to Good Sunday Morning – Leadership Edition! Throughout the weeks of the leadership contest we hope that you enjoy these insights provided by our six fantastic contestants, most of whom will contribute each week. Due to unforeseen circumstances some contestants may skip a week here and there, so don’t worry if you don’t see all six each week! We are also providing those articles in French – when provided by the contestants. The order of appearance is randomized weekly.
Thank you for joining us, and please enjoy—
Chad Walcott
Good Sunday morning everyone,
This week I wanted to write to you about the importance of the representation of youth and underrepresented groups in politics.
Participatory democracy is a central tenet of Green values. This is because an essential part of maintaining a healthy and sustainable democracy is ensuring all members have a voice and are able to contribute to the growth and direction of a society. It is no secret however that the current era of Canadian democracy is rife with despair, disengagement, and disillusionment toward our democratic institutions. This has the effect of turning young people, in particular, away from these structures and turns them off from wanting to learn how they function, and how they can function for them.
We must actively find ways to encourage young people to learn about and engage in the political process. We must show them how democratic systems can work for them, and how to mobilize to get results. We must train and empower young leaders to lead.
If we want more young people and people from underrepresented groups to seek out leadership positions and engage more actively in the political process we must deliberately make space for them in decision-making spaces. We must also provide them with meaningful opportunities to contribute to the decisions that are made. This is true for government bodies but also for non-profit organizations and for-profit corporations.
Representation is one thing, but the ability to have an impact is crucial. It is not enough to open the door to youth and underrepresented groups as a way to tick a box and say they are present. We need to constantly be empowering the next generation of leaders.
It is equally important that we strive to include and build leaders that represent the full diversity of our society. Ensuring we build decision-making spaces by intentionally including diversity of culture, age, and ethnicity ensures a diversity of lived experiences around the table. This diversity of experience is all the more important in areas of policy development. This will not only ensure that we are developing the best, most intersectional policies, but it will broaden the idea of “what is possible” for a whole generation of traditionally underrepresented groups.
Unfortunately, due to the homogeneity of most board rooms, leadership positions, and decision- making structures, young people and people of colour receive the subconscious message that they do not belong. These groups therefore often self-select out of even attempting to integrate into these spaces. This is why diversity of representation is essential.
A driving factor in an individual’s desire to pursue a given field of work or interest is the perception that they belong in those spaces, or are “supposed to do that”. I believe that this sense of belonging can begin to be fostered in young people, especially those from underrepresented groups, by seeing other people like themselves in leadership roles.
This is a major part of why I am stepping forward, into the Green Party of Canada leadership race.
Chad
Jonathan Pedneault
“Good Sunday Morning,
“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.” – Seneca
As I write these lines, Atlantic Canada and Québec’s îles de la Madeleine are faced with one of their greatest trials of recent years – one of the worst storms to ever hit our country. I am confident that they will do so with stoic strength.
Talking of stoic strength: Anna Keenan readied her home on PEI on her own ahead of Fiona’s passage, and Marlene Wells, Elizabeth’s incredible campaign manager, sat through a long Zoom townhall with us on Friday night as the storm gathered strength outside her house. Hats off to these two. We can all find inspiration in their unwavering commitment and strength.
My thoughts therefore go out to them and all Maritimers and Newfoundlanders who are on the frontlines of climate change today, just as BCers were last year. They deserve our love and attention.
I will be traveling to the region on Monday to witness the damages and show solidarity to Greens in the region. Make sure to follow-me on Twitter for more details (www.twitter.com/j_pedneault). I’ll be sure to report back on what I see and hear in next week’s Good Sunday newsletter.
A stoic mindset can help us weather the storms, but we know that won’t be enough to protect our communities from what we know is coming.
With a global average temperature of 1.2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we’re already seeing countless communities devastated by extreme weather events from coast to coast to coast. Remember that the Paris Agreement’s objective is to limit the rise “well below 2 degrees” and that current global policies are projected to result in a rise of more than 2.7 degrees.
That means more fires, more hurricanes, more floods, more destruction and more suffering. Stoicism just won’t be enough. We need to take the right choices, now, to prepare for such a future. That requires us to elect more Greens in Parliament. And we won’t do so before we stabilize and grow our party.
The ongoing leadership race is our chance to do so. I’m confident that members will engage and ensure our party can help this country weather the storms.
If you think Elizabeth and I are the team that can do so, please visit our websites, share your email addresses with us and help us visit your communities by donating at elizabethmay.ca and jonathanpedneault.ca
Till next week, stay well and stay strong!
JP
Elizabeth May
Good Sunday Morning!
By the time you read this, Atlantic Canadians will have a clearer sense of how much was lost and how much damage was done by Hurricane Fiona. By the time the storm made landfall, it had been downgraded to “Post-Tropical Cyclone.” Still, it hit with hurricane force winds.
I am from Cape Breton (emigrated from US with my parents in 1973). My brother and sister-in-law are still at our homeplace on the Margaree River. At 4:30 AM early Saturday, my brother was up repairing a window that had blown in. As I write this, my friend and campaign manager Marlene Wells in NS is without phone or power. She managed to text from a dying battery that mature trees crashed in her yard, one crushing her car. Leadership candidate Anna Keenan had to get in all the harvest at their PEI farm with her son as her husband was away. Despite no power, she had sent a tweet that she was hunkered down.
The science makes it clear. This is a climate event. As I pointed out in Parliament on Friday, over Conservative MP guffaws, Atlantic Canada never used to get hurricanes. We used to get tons of rain at the tail-end of tropical hurricanes that were slowed by the cold water south of the Maritimes. Hurricane Juan in 2003 was the first full force hurricane to hit Nova Scotia. Nationally, news reporters asked why people were not better prepared. Reporters missed the reality that Juan was unprecedented. The warming ocean no longer stopped the worst impacts. And the ocean is still warming.
I keep making this point in Parliament. On September 22, I emphasized that every single second the oceans absorb climate crisis-generated heat equivalent to seven Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs.
Elizabeth May: The oceans are showing catastrophic effects of the climate crisis – YouTube
My first question in Question Period this session was on the dangers at 1.5 degrees as revealed in this new study:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950
Elizabeth May: When will this government wake up and cancel TMX and Bay du Nord? – YouTube
Please do not let trivia and gossip undermine the work Greens must do. We are the only truth-tellers on climate – and on so much more.
Help Jonathan Pedneault and me by sharing these messages, posting our videos, spreading the word. Volunteer. Donate. Please. Jonathanpedneault.ca and elizabethmay.ca
Mother Earth is hammering on the door. Like Greta, she is screaming “our house is on fire!” Trudeau and Singh are comfortable in the warming house. Poilievre is getting out the marshmallows.
For now, we are holding all in Atlantic Canada in our minds and hearts. Like friends in BC’s interior, many are losing their homes. Roads and bridges will be out. Pray no one dies, as nearly 1000 did last year in BC from heat dome, floods and fire. Time to get serious. As Greens, we must do better. Parliament and the planet need us.
Elizabeth
Anna Keenan
I’m writing this newsletter entry Saturday afternoon, with rapidly dwindling battery, from my home on Epekwitk/PEI, while the tail-end Hurricane Fiona continues to rage outside.
Lying in bed last night, when the storm was at its peak, I could hear the pounding wind and rain and the cracking trees in all directions. But simultaneously, I could hear the gentle breathing of my 6 year old son, my giant dog and my cat: all of whom had joined me, safe and warm in ’the big bed’, for an extra sense of security.
Like most Maritimers, our power cut out around 1am. Once the storm subsides, community aid work will begin. Neighbours will share chainsaw skills and generators. Hardworking utility crews will gradually reconnect the power grid.
We are counting our blessings: like most homes in Canada, thanks to well-regulated building codes, our house is secure – despite a bit of water in the basement. We are safe and warm with a wood stove for heat and cooking.
There are excellent, well-funded public services nearby: hurricane shelters have been set up for the homeless. Well-equipped and well-trained fire and rescue teams have been evacuating people who live closer to the pounding surf to safety, throughout the night and the morning. Insurance companies will come through to replace the vehicles and homes that have been either damaged or washed away into the sea.
Ultimately, Atlantic Canada will recover; we have handled this sort of thing before, and we remain calm. Compared to the destruction wrought when this same hurricane hit the Caribbean, we are the lucky ones. I can only pray that there are no deaths announced in the coming days.
We know that in the lifetime of our children, the climate crisis will continue to get worse. Reinforcing our community infrastructure and public services is essential. We cannot let the ‘every person for themselves’ ideology of individualism and competition take further root. In times of disruption, community connection makes all the difference. Together, we can get through anything.
All this has got me thinking about the culpability of the fossil fuel industry.
Fossil Fuel companies knew, 40 years ago, that this future was coming, and that their work was the cause. They hid and confused the science, and suppressed solutions. Their advertising and lobbying drove demand, and ultimately caused social and economic addiction to their products, all for the purpose of short-term profit. This year, as gas prices skyrocket, they are profiting more than ever, while society as a whole, and future generations, bear the costs.
Now, it’s past time to set both emission and production caps for the fossil fuel sector, in line with the requirements of climate science, and to make polluters pay. No new extraction infrastructure can be built. Courageous regulation is required, not just tinkering at the edges.
Chad and I are ready to bring that message to Canadian politics, loud and clear.
Anna
Visit www.KeenanWalcott.ca.
Simon Gnocchini-Messier
Good Sunday Morning!
Simon Gnocchini-Messier from Quebec here. It is a great pleasure to speak to you again. This Friday, I participated in the Global March for the Climate, starting at Gatineau’s City Hall and finishing in front of the House of Commons. As I entered the gates to Parliament Hill, I was delighted to see not one but four other GPC Leadership Candidates. It was wonderful exchanging ideas with Jonathan Pedneault, Elizabeth May and Chad Walcott, and reconnecting with Sarah Gabrielle Baron.
If there is one thing that all the leadership candidates agree on, it is that the Trudeau government’s lethargic reaction to Canada’s very high per capita Greenhouse Gas emissions must be challenged at every opportunity. Not only have GHG emissions gone up, not down, since Trudeau came to power, but Canada has the worst Climate Change record in the G7. And why is that? It is Trudeau’s subservience to the fossil fuel industry, which represents 27% of GHG emissions. Oil and gas exports last March reached their highest level since 2014. On a volume basis, oil shipments in the first three months of 2022 are up about a quarter since Trudeau took office. And as a share of total merchandise exports, the fossil-fuel industry represents 27.4 percent of shipments. Instead of moving quickly to ramp up investment in renewable energy (hydroelectricity, wind, solar and green hydrogen), Trudeau is now providing new financial subsidies to oil and gas development, and not for the short term but for the long term. The Bay du Nord Development Project is slated to operate for 30 years, and its planners are examining the potential for additional wells and tie-backs to the production facility. That doesn’t sound like phasing out fossil fuels to me.
I believe that the Trudeau government’s insincerity on Climate Change reflects its addiction to the taxes on fossil fuel products it uses to offset its exploding government deficits. Even more disconcerting is the reality that they have made the value of the Canadian dollar dependent on oil and gas exports. It is a dangerous game of poker to tie our national currency to such an extremely price volatile commodity. Today, the price of oil dropped by four dollars a barrel, pushing the Canadian dollar below 74 cents.
The Trudeau government has squandered seven years tied to the hip of the fossil fuel industry when it should have been forging ahead on developing renewable energies for domestic consumption and exports. If there is some sunshine after Trudeau’s years of neglect, it is that our allies have decided not to wait on this sleepy head to invest in renewable energy in Canada. Germany is now in the driver’s seat for developing Newfoundland’s green hydrogen potential. On the flip side, can we really trust the Trudeau Liberals to carry out the necessary impact studies and mitigation measures? I think not.
Thank you, Merci, Meegwech, HÍ SW KE
Simon Gnocchini-Messier
Sarah Gabrielle Baron
Dear SGI Greens
Happy fall equinox! I’m excited to announce the launch of my campaign platform, called “Wisdom to Change” at sarahgabriellebaron.ca.
One of our movement’s founding documents is Die Grünen. It was published in 1984, and chronicles the start of the Green political ideology, in Germany. In it, there is a part where they talked about a leader being limited to only a 2-year term. They were emerging from the worst experience of a dictatorship known to man. They wanted to create a political system where no one could ever abuse power again. This is where our key principle of Participatory Democracy comes from: that in all ways power must be invested at the local or regional level. Citizens must be in control of the decisions that affect their lives, and only where absolutely necessary should power be held in the hands of the few.
Our power as Greens is that we are a collective. That is why every single plank in Wisdom to Change references the member made policy book. We have been making amazing policy since 1988. We need to grow our membership again. And when a member sees their policy, or a policy they helped develop, make it to the national stage then that is a member for life.
Our Electoral District Associations should be the seat of power in a Green movement. You will see in Wisdom to Change that the leader’s office will focus on helping to grow EDA’s in between elections, because that is how you win elections. For too long our EDA’s have dwindled to skeleton teams, or faded out of existence altogether.
In my first week as leader, I will start convening Table Talks that any member can attend. One such monthly Table will ask Green organic farmers to generate a national food security mandate for the climate crisis era.
Another ongoing Table Talk will focus on picking one form of proportional representation. The excuse that “it’s too confusing for Canadians” must be answered by the Green Party of Canada picking one form to stand behind and then explain to Canadians. No one else will do this work for us. By the summer of 2023 we will have picked one form of proportional representation. We will educate each other and then we will educate Canadians.
I hope you enjoy Wisdom to Change. The formal launch will be later this week, and will also include my campaign deliverables for my first 6 months in office. Please reach out, I love hearing from you. My email is SGB@greenparty.ca.
Sarah
(texte français)
Simon Gnocchini-Messier
C’est Simon Gnocchini-Messier du Québec. C’est un grand plaisir de vous écrire à nouveau. Ce vendredi, j’ai participé à la Marche mondiale pour le climat, qui a débuté à l’hôtel de ville de Gatineau pour se terminer devant la Chambre des communes à Ottawa. En franchissant les portes de la colline du Parlement, j’ai été ravie de voir non pas un, mais quatre autres candidats au leadership du PVC. C’était merveilleux d’échanger des idées avec Jonathan Pedneault, Elizabeth May et Chad Walcott, et de reprendre contact avec Sarah Gabrielle Baron.
S’il y a une chose sur laquelle tous les candidats à la direction sont d’accord, c’est que la réaction léthargique du gouvernement Trudeau, face aux émissions de gaz à effet de serre par habitant qui est très élevées du Canada, doit être dénoncée. Non seulement les émissions de GES ont augmenté, et n’ont pas diminué, depuis que Trudeau est au pouvoir, mais le Canada a le pire bilan du G7 en matière de changement climatique. Et pourquoi cela ? Cela est dû à servilité de Trudeau envers l’industrie des combustibles fossiles qui représente 27 % des émissions de GES. Les exportations de pétrole et de gaz ont atteint en mars dernier leur plus haut niveau depuis 2014. En volume, les expéditions de pétrole au cours des trois premiers mois de 2022 sont en hausse d’environ 25% depuis que Trudeau est au pouvoir. En ce qui concerne la part des exportations totales de marchandises, l’industrie des combustibles fossiles représente 27,4 % de ces exportations. Au lieu d’agir rapidement pour accroître les investissements dans les énergies renouvelables (hydroélectricité, éolien, solaire et hydrogène vert), Trudeau accorde maintenant de nouvelles subventions financières à l’exploitation pétrolière et gazière, et ce, non pas à court terme mais à long terme. Le projet de développement de Bay du Nord est censé être exploité pendant 30 ans, et ses planificateurs examinent la possibilité d’ajouter des puits et des raccordements à l’installation de production. Pour moi, cela ne ressemble pas à une élimination progressive des combustibles fossiles.
Je crois que le manque de sincérité du gouvernement Trudeau en matière de changement climatique reflète sa dépendance à la taxation des produits issue de l’extraction des combustibles fossiles. Il utilise ces taxes pour pallier à l’explosion du déficit public. Ce qui est encore plus déconcertant, c’est qu’il a rendu dépendante la valeur du dollar canadien aux exportations de pétrole et de gaz. C’est un jeu de poker dangereux de lier notre devise nationale à un produit dont le valeur est extrêmement volatile. Aujourd’hui, le prix du pétrole a chuté de quatre dollars le baril, poussant le dollar canadien sous les 74 cents.
Le gouvernement Trudeau a gaspillé sept années à être tributaire de l’industrie des combustibles fossiles alors qu’il aurait dû aller de l’avant en développant des énergies renouvelables pour la consommation intérieure et les exportations. S’il y a un peu de soleil après les années de négligence de Trudeau, c’est que nos alliés ont décidé de ne pas attendre son réveil pour investir dans les énergies renouvelables au Canada. L’Allemagne est maintenant bien en selle et en mesure de développer le potentiel d’hydrogène vert de Terre-Neuve. Mais, peut-on vraiment faire confiance aux libéraux de Trudeau pour réaliser les études d’impact et les mesures d’atténuation nécessaires ? Je ne le crois pas.
Merci, Meegwech et HÍ SW KE
Simon Gnocchini-Messier