Good Sunday Morning!
And happy long Victoria Day weekend!
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It has been a very busy week, with debates until midnight Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Mike took Monday, holding the Housing Minister to account just before the midnight hour. I was in interminable and highly partisan debate on the new gun legislation, C-21, til midnight Tuesday and baled at 10 pm Wednesday. Thursday Mike and I had the rare chance of back-to-back questions in Question Period with both of us pressing for the federal government to do more to stop Doug Ford’s destruction of the Greenbelt.
And, as predicted in last week’s letter, on Sunday last, Trudeau launched by-elections. I should have realized he would not call the by-election for Calgary Heritage while the Alberta provincial election is underway. Four, not five, by-elections have been called for June 19. And the big news I held back last week was that we are ready in all of them. Cheryle Baker is running in Oxford, Doug Hemmerling in Winnipeg, Nicolas Geddert in Portage Lisgar and my partner in leadership, Jonathan Pedneault, is our candidate in Notre Dame de Grace Westmount! (see greenparty.ca and the following links for details: Support their campaigns Doug Hemmerling Cheryle Baker Jonathan Pedneault donate to Jonathan’s campaign! )
On Monday morning, I was in Montreal with Jonathan for the press conference announcing his candidacy. It was so great to arrive in the Metro station to see Jonathan’s signs up all round the station. Our Montreal team had gotten new signs printed with a great photo of Jonathan’s smiling face plastered all around the riding. We were the first out the gate! By Friday the only other campaign signs were generic NDP signs featuring Jagmeet Singh’s 2021 photo. And quite sure he will not be their candidate! The Liberals nominated their candidate, Anna Gainey on Monday. She is a friend of Justin Trudeau and was heavily favoured to win the nomination. But, by week’s end, her campaign remains invisible.
Jonathan Pedneault’s launch was covered prominently in national and Quebec media. We rented an office pronto and by Thursday I was back in Montreal for the office opening party. Friday morning early found JP, GPC president Ian Soutar and me plus local volunteers handing out campaign literature at the Metro closest to our office on Monkland. (The office is on the corner of Decarie and Sherbrooke if you are in Montreal and want to drop by.) Connecting with morning commuters, wearing headphones and studying their phones, as they move blearily toward their first coffee is daunting, but we made progress. People had already noticed JP’s face and those who were awake stopped to chat – including Seth and his dog Lucylou from Salt Spring Island. He promised to let his Montreal friends know that it is great to have a Green MP.
JP has put together this video focusing on why we are Greens – fighting the climate crisis!
The irony is as thick as the smoke that blankets Calgary. We are in a climate emergency. Alberta is on fire and in a provincial election. Neither the Conservative Premier nor the NDP leader want to discuss the climate crisis. Rachel Notley made it known she finds the Liberals’ language for a “just transition” to be “divisive” and she opposes the limp climate policy of Jagmeet Singh to end fossil fuel subsidies. Says Notley, the fossil fuel sector may have had a great year of profits in 2022 (at over $66 billion), but they had such a hard time in Covid we should keep the taps flowing from provincial and federal coffers to boost oil and gas production.
Totally ignored by the media is Alberta Green leader Jordan Wilkie. On several counts one would think he was worth talking to. Other than the parties led by Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley, the Alberta Greens have the most candidates and the best polling numbers among all the other parties. But one might think that when a province is on fire and the leader of one of the parties is a firefighter, he might be worth a call.
Also ignored by the media is that the climate crisis caused by burning fossil fuels and laying waste to our forests has created the conditions that lead to devastating fires. Here is a typical line from a Reuters story, “Record-high temperatures and lack of rain this year have led to widespread fires burning nearly 830,000 hectares…” No mention of climate change. Nor in this story from May 19th’s Edmonton Journal, “Alberta Wildfires: More than 200 structures damaged; smoke causing poor air quality.”
In Parliament, whenever a cabinet minister attempts to bring up the connection, there are howls of derision from Conservative members. To mention the obvious is to “politicize” the disaster. In such bad taste.
Into this conspiracy of silence, steps writer extraordinaire, John Vaillant. His previous best sellers The Golden Spruce, The Tiger, and The Jaguar’s Children established him as one of this country’s best writers. He started researching fire in 2016, exploring the Fort McMurray fire. His latest, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, is not yet on bookstore shelves, but the national media is giving him voice now. Vaillant was on national CBC and had a huge spread in Saturday’s Globe and Mail.
From the Globe and Mail:
“We weren’t a week into May before 30,000 people had been evacuated because of dozens of fast-moving wildfires in Alberta… and politicians were trotting out words like ‘unprecedented.’
“Unprecedented? Where were they in 2017, when British Columbia had its worst fire season on record and generated four simultaneous pyrocumulonimbus thunderstorms? Where were they in 2016 when Fort McMurray burned – for days – along with 6,000 square kilometres of forest? What about in 2011 when Slave Lake lost its town hall, radio station and 500 houses in a few hours?
“No, the current fire season is not unprecedented and calling it ‘the new normal’ is offensive. There’s nothing normal about it.”
Vaillant lays out with a vengeance how our fossil-fuel addicted world has created wildfires on steroids. “After two hundred years of relentless combustion, our fossil-fuel-driven civilization has become its own volcano.”
And this arresting parenthetical comment:
“Nature: ‘Behold my mighty volcanoes and wildfires!’
“Humans: ‘Hold my beer.’”
Vaillant brings to his analysis a rage at the governments and corporations that have been the accomplices in this humanity destroying project. “This is fire weather for a new planet. A planet we have made.”
How to fight back and save ourselves? Help get Green candidates media coverage- whether in Alberta’s May 29th election or in the four June 19th federal by-elections in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec. Damn right we better politicize the climate crisis. Our governments act like maniacal children. With gasoline spilled all over the floor, they are throwing around lit matches. It is not rude to stop them. It is not impolite to point this out.
It is our duty.
I hope you are safe where you are. Enjoy the weekend but give a thought for those who cannot.
Love,
Elizabeth