And a Good Sunday Morning to you!

Last Friday, I had a really fun time as part of a political women’s panel gathered to roast Sheila Copps in Cornwall, Ontario.  Sheila Copps, famously part of the Liberal “rat pack” back in the day, took on conservative politicians like John Crosbie. He once told her in Parliament, “Quiet down baby.” She shot back “I’m nobody’s baby!” She left active politics quite some time ago, a victim of the internal Liberal Chretien-Martin wars.

So why Cornwall?  Of all things, a very clever fundraiser for a Cornwall-based children’s charity, Children’s Treatment Centre, realized getting Sheila Copps to Cornwall for a roast would sell tickets for a fundraising dinner. They asked Sheila to pick her roasters and she decided to go for an all women panel–Progressive Conservative and wife of former prime minister, the Rt. Hon Joe Clark, Maureen McTeer, Liberal Catherine McKenna (like Sheila, a former Minister of Environment) and me. I asked former CEO of the Saanich Peninsula Hospital Foundation, and one of my best friends, Karen Morgan, to come as my date. Karen and I met thanks to Sheila Copps! Back in 1993, Sheila appointed both of us to the National Round Table on Environment and Economy (NRTEE), a great multi-stakeholder policy group created by Brian Mulroney in 1988 and killed by Stephen Harper in 2012.  When Karen was on the Round Table, she led the charge to get a change in the tax treatment of ecologically sensitive land. Donors used to be hit with “deemed capital gains,” as though the donation of land had created new income for generous donor. Karen convinced then-Finance Minister Paul Martin that Canada could increase the protection of nature by treating gifts of land with biodiversity benefits the way the tax system already treated valuable works of art. Karen’s victory was a huge achievement, one of many for the NRTEE, all now gone and forgotten.

Friday was a rare evening of cross-partisan fun. Sheila is also an old friend of my husband, John Kidder.  After a while in Canadian politics, you realize everyone knows everyone else. Still, I was really surprised when Sheila asked how Rob Botterell was doing!  She said she had just been talking with him about his campaign for BC Greens in Saanich North and the Islands! They did a project years ago that was a big success, but neither are telling me details. So, they must be bound by solicitor client privilege, or some such thing. So good to know my next MLA is all about getting things done.

Parliament this week was almost daily in your news headlines. I am very grateful to the dozens of constituents and other readers of this letter across Canada who wrote to offer advice on how Mike and I should vote on Poilievre’s non-confidence motion. It is quite remarkable that not one person supported voting with the Conservatives!

Greens have not voted for a government budget since the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline for more than Kinder Morgan paid for it and then the waste of $34 billion to build the expansion. Watch our scrum  on the motion here (Elizabeth) and here (Mike), and see them scrum with the press here (at 34:22).

This Friday night was at the other end of the emotional spectrum from the Cornwall event. Ever since Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, I have been working with a remarkable friend and constituent, Corey Levine, to rescue Afghan women. Corey, who lives in Victoria, had been living in Kabul. Prior to the Taliban take-over she had been working with elected women Afghan MPs. When the Taliban took over, Afghanistan had 39 women MPs. Then war was declared on women and girls.  We have been trying to help people get out. Prominent women, like the former MPs have been scattered and in hiding. Many have been in Pakistan and at times it seemed Pakistan was ready to deport them back to Afghanistan. Corey had been the indispensable key organizer, constant mobilizer and driver of the efforts. It was Corey who decided we should recruit at least one MP from every party to work on this rescue mission. For well over a year, we have been a tight unit. Pressuring the Minister (first Sean Fraser and now Marc Miller) we have kept the locations of the women and their families very secret. Bit by bit, we have been getting women to safety in Canada. On Friday, I had tea with four former Afghan MPs at a Turkish coffee house in Toronto. Most of these former women MPs have chosen Canada as their new home. They all know Corey and depend on her. It was only Friday we were able to tell them why we were both in Toronto.

It was in mid-January 2023 that one of the former women MPs we were trying to get to Canada was killed. She and her bodyguard were shot dead in her Kabul home. Her brother was injured.

It was the murder of Mursal Nabizada that pushed our small quiet group of MPs to go public. My dear friends in this shared effort are the (Bloc Quebecois) son of Gilles Duceppe, Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, (NDP MP Edmonton Strathcona), Heather McPherson, two Liberals who were particularly brave to go public with our frustration that it was taking so long that we had lost one of our Afghan women MPs–Marcus Powlowski who was a doctor before politics representing Thunder Bay-Rainy River, and Leah Taylor Roy (Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill ), and a quite remarkable Conservative, hanging out with the likes of all of us, MP for Bruce Grey-Owen Sound, Alex Ruff. Alex is former military and had spent a year of his life deployed in Afghanistan. Beyond a doubt, I would trust him with my life in a heartbeat.

On Friday night, most of us (Marcus, Alexis, Leah, Alex and I) were at the arrivals gate in Pearson Airport Terminal 3 for the incoming passengers from Istanbul–Mursal’s mother and her three brothers, the youngest 14, boys with a very deep love of their sister. Exhausted and bleary-eyed, in broken English they kept saying it was hard to know it was real. We all hugged and cried for a long time.

Also with us was CBC network anchor and Chief Correspondent of The National, Adrienne Arsenault. The CBC has been quietly tracking our work for a while. The feature on rescuing Mursal’s family will likely air October 3.

In other things that matter the most, my dear family, it was a tough week as John tested positive for COVID on Monday. Unlike the first time he got it, this time he is really sick, isolating and not able to campaign–obviously! He also missed Cate’s baby shower yesterday, which I managed to host after borrowing a friend’s house in Vancouver, after that very late night in Toronto Friday.

What a week! But once again it has confirmed for me that miracles happen, that against considerable odds we were able to welcome more Afghan women to Canada and hold and comfort Mursal’s family. We are so very lucky–among a very small handful of the luckiest of the human family. And with that luck comes the responsibility to do more for our brothers and sisters all around the world. Every time we have a happy ending it holds the promise of more.

Love and thanks,

Elizabeth