Good Sunday Morning!
Let me start with a quick report on the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and a shout out to Keith and Bern Wyton of Vancouver Island who, with a group of like-minded peace activists started the Peace Train. I met up with the Peace Train in late November 2024 in Ottawa. They had traveled from all over Canada with a clever message, “Train is a verb. If you want peace, Train for Peace.” With MP Gord Johns, Greens co-hosted a reception for them on Parliament Hill. I cannot remember exactly how it happened (rather organically as with all things that grow naturally!) but I asked if they knew about the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Convention for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons taking place on March 3-7, 2025. I told them I was taking the train from Montreal to New York and asked if they would like to join me. As it turned out, it felt more like I joined them!
We boarded together on March 2 in Montreal and went to the United Nations meetings together. Some of our sessions of International Parliamentarians for the TPNW were closed sessions, but citizen activists were in the room for much of our work! I was the only Canadian MP to attend, a bit disappointing that others must have been told by their parties they had to stay home and knock on doors. Senator Marilou McPhedron was the only other Canadian Parliamentarian, but we had a good group from the Peace Train plus youth activists against nuclear war through ICAN.
The mood at the official sessions was sombre. Trump’s presidency has cast a dark shadow. Worse, some countries previously against nuclear weapons now think they might need them as the US has gone rogue. As Laura Boldrini, brilliant MP from Italy put it, “Nuclear deterrence is not a security strategy.” Of all things, I ended up quoting Andrew Coyne! I explained his status as a respected Canadian conservative commentator, writing in a very establishment conservative paper, the Globe and Mail. On March 1 he wrote, as I told the assembled group, “The United States of America has given the nuclear codes to a madman.”
I made the case that we have to make more noise, move faster and more effectively toward nuclear disarmament. When so-called leaders like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu begin to talk about possible use of nuclear weapons, the Cold War doomsday clock moves closer to midnight.
In the end, I felt encouraged that we have a global network, but discouraged that NATO countries like Germany and Norway that had sent official government delegations last year had not done so in 2025. At least parliamentarians, including Greens from many countries, could keep meeting together. Laura Boldrini was very inspired by the Peace Train. She thought all countries should mobilize at the grassroots level and encourage a peace train movement.
Meanwhile, I had to head back to Canada in a hurry to hold a press conference with co-leader Jonathan Pedneault to call for Canadian progressive parties to cooperate!
Yesterday I celebrated International Women’s Day in Guelph–launching the campaign of an amazing woman, Dr. Anne Marie Zajdlik. Anne Marie is a prominent doctor in Guelph and a front-line physician from very early days in the fight against HIV AIDS. In the small world department, she started a group called Bracelet of Hope, helping a small African county with a devastating rate of HIV-AIDS. Only “small world” because through another mutual friend, Peg Herbert, I had also been working with a great group helping that same small country–Lesotho. I have only become friends with Anne-Marie recently, but Peg and I know each other from church in Ottawa, and I was one of her first volunteers even before Help Lesotho had a charitable number. Of course, Anne-Marie and Peg are friends and mutual admirers!
I have been so struck by the competence and reliability of the government of Lesotho. Through Green leaders like Kenya’s Wangari Maathai and the courage and leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa, murdered in Nigeria by the Abacha regime, I knew many African country dictators to line their own pockets at their people’s expense. Abacha grew rich on money from Shell Oil while the Ogoni people suffered. Wangari was often in jail for her work to create a greenbelt of forest planted by Kenyan women. And yet here was this tiny landlocked mountain kingdom of Lesotho, with leaders who linked arms with great humanitarians like Anne Marie and Peg, and Stephen Lewis.
I once asked Stephen Lewis, someone with whom I have been privileged to work and know as a dear friend, if I was right and if there was something about Lesotho that made it different. He said there was. During South Africa’s horrific apartheid period, many human rights groups from around the world wanted to work in South Africa to help and defend Nelson Mandela and the ANC. Being physically in South Africa was risky, so they often set up operations in the geographical heart of South Africa, in the politically separate and sovereign nation of Lesotho. Lewis told me that almost by osmosis good policy and organizational skills were transferred to leaders in Lesotho. The proximity to South Africa was why AIDS spread so fast in Lesotho. Its men went for work in South African mines bringing the scourge of HIV AIDS home and making Lesotho the country with the highest rate of HIV AIDS orphans in the world.
And as ever, Trump made a comment cementing his fundamental ignorance of all things good. In his rambling, self-aggrandizing address to Congress this week, he said, “Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” eliciting laughter from some US lawmakers. Lesotho Shocked by Trump’s Remarks BBC
Trump, addressing the US Congress in his first speech since his return to the Oval Office, made the reference as he listed cuts made to what he said was “wasteful expenditure.”
As the US cuts aid to Lesotho please think about helping these two great groups! Bracelet of Hope and Help Lesotho
Also please donate to Guelph Greens and the campaign to make our hero Anne Marie Zajdlik the next MP for Guelph. Local MPP is Green leader Mike Schreiner who, like his deputy leader Aislinn Clancy in Kitchener Centre, just won a land-slide re-election to Queens Park.
In these dark times do not be discouraged. Instead look for where someone is lighting a candle and ask what help they need!
By the way, I need your help. The Conservatives in SGI have nominated their candidate and they are pouring effort into defeating me in Saanich-Gulf Islands. It was, after all, a conservative or reform seat for about 20 years before I won it in 2011. I can take nothing for granted, while also working with Jonathan Pedneault to help Greens win seats across Canada. JP is running in Outremont in Quebec! We can win more seats, and also keep trying for cooperation.
My goal is clear–to ensure we have a minority parliament within which Greens can exert influence and ensure a parliament that reflects Canadian values for human rights, climate action and defending ourselves and the world against Trump and his bullying buddies, fascists all. We can do this because we are capable of it and we can defend Canada and protect the planet. We can and we will stay strong and remain committed to the greatest cause ever set before our species–saving democracy, ourselves and all our allies, human and non-human on this precious planet,
If you are near Sidney, come for a Saint Patrick’s Day Party and office opening on March 17. Details to come! Our new campaign office is at 9776 Fourth Street, just down the way from my non-partisan MP office also on Fourth. Hope to see a lot of friends there. And please sign up to help and to take a lawn sign.
Thanks and sending love!
Elizabeth
P.S.
As many of you will know, Stephen Lewis is very ill with cancer. He is hanging on and is also very close to David Suzuki. David told me last weekend on Salt Spring that he is continuing to record interviews with Stephen to save as much as possible of his inspiring wisdom. I know not everyone believes in prayer or miracles, so forgive my casual references to both. I hang on because I do believe that we must make the impossible, possible. As Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible, until it is done.” Send prayers.
Much love,
Elizabeth
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