My point of privilege was (I think) well delivered. I had worked hard all long weekend digging up precedents from other Speaker’s rulings and debates going back to 1963 when they invented this whole idea of recognized parties and unrecognized parties. Amazingly, Canada is the only country among those using Westminster parliamentary democracy to have this absurd rule that bigger parties have more procedural rights than smaller parties. It all stemmed from a 1963 change in the law so that parties with more than 12 MPs would receive public funding for their parliamentary work. (Funding has now risen to about $2 million/party as soon as they get 12 MPs). Rights were nowhere mentioned in the 1963 bill, but – over time- it became customary to keep MPs from smaller parties off committees and to never allow them to put forward Opposition Day motions. But no one has ever suggested we have no rights to ask a question in QP, even though the slot for smaller parties is the last question – with no supplementary questions – ever.

The YouTube video of my argument runs 13 minutes and is included here:

Elizabeth May: Blocking Greens from asking questions during QP is antidemocratic

The Speaker has not yet ruled, so I wait in hopeful anticipation.

I really wish I had the chance to put a question forward in Question Period this week. I have been trying to get up to speed on an issue of which I was dimly aware and which I am now convinced needs a lot more attention. So, lacking a question in QP, at least I can tell you about it.

One of the most extraordinary resource conflicts in Canada is playing out so far north that we hear little of it in southern Canada. A group of Inuit hunters, widely supported in their community, set up a protest camp that blocked access to the airstrip serving an iron mine on Baffin Island. The mining company, Baffinland Iron Mines Corp, calls itself a Canadian corporation, but is owned by Texas based Energy and Minerals Group and Luxembourg corporation, ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel maker.

After many years of technological and financial hurdles for developers, the open pit mine began operations in 2014. While initially welcomed locally, the mine now wants to double the size of its operations at Mary River from six million tonnes to 12 million. Incredibly, the company has been acting as though it had permission to proceed, even before hearings opened. It has drawn down a billion dollars in financing and, according to the Inuit protesters, has already begun construction.

The doubling of production will involve building a railway and increasing shipping with an additional quay at Milne Inlet. The ore is shipped to Europe along routes that cut through narwhal habitat. As well, the iron ore dust is contaminating the landscape and has been detected in Arctic char, a key food source for the Inuit and other animals that are part of their traditional diet – like narwhal.

The Nuluujaaq Land Guardians set up a camp in early February in peaceful protest against the mine expansion. The camp shut down the airstrip – blocking access to supplies for the mine and its 700 workers. I just cannot help but be inspired by the protest by Inuit land defenders in minus 33 degree weather. In 24 hour darkness. In an outdoor camp.

The company received a temporary injunction against the protest that ended February 10th. The hearing for a permanent injunction has been taking place in Iqaluit. The environmental assessment hearings are to resume in April. Meanwhile, the Nuluujaaq Land Guardians are calling on the federal ministers of Fisheries and Oceans, Natural Resources and Northern Affairs to step up to support their rights and for the RCMP to launch a criminal investigation into Baffinland’s actions.

In another issue pitting resource extraction against Indigenous peoples, I am trying to create some leverage for concerned Canadians to act to stop and appalling project in Namibia. Vancouver-based ReconAfrica has gained rights to frack in very sensitive areas along the border with Botswana. Threatened by the fracking is the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO world heritage site that straddles Botswana and Namibia. The SAN people of the area are protesting the violation of their rights.

In order to launch an investigation, I have written the newly created CORE – Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise – Sheri Meyerhoffer. The CORE office was supposed to have more robust powers than ultimately were established. My letter and call for an inquiry into ReconAfrica is something of a test case. I will keep you posted as we create a petition and other tools for Canadians to protest this outrageous assault on indigenous rights, biodiversity and climate. This link has a very good briefing on the issue: Open Letter: Save the Okavango Delta — HowNow Magazine

So, we enter the last week of February. My personal COVID counter, like marking the walls in an imaginary prison cell called COVID, started with Monday, March 9, 2020. That was the day we recorded the first COVID death in Canada. So we approach a full year of this. The threat that the variants will outrun the vaccines, creating a far worse third wave, is never far from my thoughts.

Be very careful. Stay safe.

Sending love and hopes for happier days – soon!

Elizabeth

PS more links for parliamentary interventions:

Elizabeth May: Can Canada meaningfully commit to obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples?
Elizabeth May: Tabling a Private Members’ Bill is not the time to make a partisan speech
Elizabeth May: How much sovereignty has Canada lost under the Canada China FIPPA?

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The post Good Sunday Morning – February 21 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I remember the struggle to develop a treaty to combat drought and encroaching deserts. Canada was one of the few countries in the lead to negotiate the treaty. I was not intimately involved, but I knew people who were. When it was signed in 1994, I was elated. Along with the conventions on climate and biodiversity, the treaty to combat drought addressed a global and pressing concern. It was clearly related to climate change, but was more regionally specific. And, although desertification is not a current threat to Canada, certainly drought is.

There had been no inkling or rumour that Stephen Harper wanted to exit another global environmental law. Given that the only treaty from which Canada has ever withdrawn, since 1867, was Kyoto, the cavalier way in which this news leaked out—posted on a Foreign Affairs website and noticed by Canadian Press— added to the shock. That we gave no notice to the secretariat for the Convention was further evidence of our contempt for both the United Nations and the threat posed by climate induced drought and desertification.

In Question Period the next day, Ralph Goodale (former Liberal finance minister and now only the MP for Wascana) posed an excellent question in which he linked other recent Harper administration decisions reducing the Prairies’ preparedness for drought. He charged ‘Maniacal front-line cuts have killed PFRA (the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration), which had world-class Canadian brainpower on soil and water conservation. Conservatives vandalized community pastures, the prairie tree farm and Experimental Lakes Area. Now Canada is the only country in the world sneaking out the back door on the UN Convention Against Drought.’

I was grateful Goodale noted cuts to programmes put in place after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, as I have been trying to draw attention to them. What Harper has against hedgerows and water conservation in the Prairies is certainly a mystery that has angered Prairie farmers. The Prime Minister’s response was spun to create the impression that the convention on drought and desertification was akin to a poorly run charity, in which aid dollars were poorly spent: ‘This organization spends less than 20% of the funds that we send are actually spent on programming. (sic) The rest goes to various bureaucratic measures. That is not an effective way to spend taxpayer money.’

‘This organization?’ The Prime Minister is speaking of a treaty, within which every other country on earth is making some level of contribution, financial and otherwise. How much were we spending? An astonishingly low pittance… $290,000/year. Admittedly that is a nice amount of money if you are collecting for a new school gymnasium, but it is chump change in the federal budget. We approve more than that routinely by unanimous consent for Parliamentary committee travel. Equated with those things the Prime Minister thinks are a good use of taxpayer funds, things like renting Pandas at $1 million/year, the drought treaty was a bargain.

Canada’s diplomatic corps is shocked. Former Ambassador to the United Nations, former Deputy Minister of National Defence and victim of a terrorist kidnapping in Mali, Robert Fowler, sent an email to the media. Calling our withdrawal from the treaty ‘a departure from global citizenship,’ here’s what he said:

‘It (the Harper administration) has taken climate-change denial, the abandonment of collective efforts to manage global crises and disregard the pain and suffering of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa (among many others) to quite a different level.’

Responding to Foreign Minister John Baird’s defence that Canada won’t ‘go along to get along,’ Fowler continued:

‘No, by jingo, we’re not going to go along to get along! Such vainglorious nose-thumbing at the international community’s efforts to tame a very present threat to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest and most desperate is nothing short of incomprehensible.’

Another former Ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, agreed that the move was both inexplicable and bound to confirm to the international community that Canada cared nothing for climate action, nor for the fate of Africa.

The UN itself was shocked. Noting that Canada will now be the only nation on earth not part of the convention, it, in typically understated diplomat-speak, called Canada’s decision ‘regrettable.’

It turns out our notice of intent was sent on January 14. The treaty requires only a 90-day period for full withdrawal so we exit the treaty on April 14, right in the middle of an important scientific review of the threat of desertification and drought, running April 9-19. ‘The next gathering of the scientific conference … is expected to deliver a major breakthrough by presenting the first ever cost-benefit analysis of desertification and sustainable land management,’ an UNCCD statement had commented, of the review and of Canada’s withdrawal.

‘Canada played crucial roles in both processes. Crucially, these processes have also moved the actions taken by parties to a result-based management approach where performance and impact are not only measured using indicators, but also assessed and monitored every two years.’

The rumours in Ottawa is that all our multilateral commitments are under review. I have heard well-connected folks express fear that we may withdraw from the United Nations Environment Programme and UNESCO. To block further erosion of our role in the world, we need to ensure that the reaction to this cutting and running from the problems of the world will not disappear as a one-day headline.

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“We do not see Harper withdrawing from trade deals. The treaties he views as of no importance are those designed to protect the environment. What message does it send to African nations that in the same week we eliminate CIDA, we withdraw from a treaty to stop the advance of deserts?” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

The UN and the nations of the world are losing faith in Canada. Our 2010 failure to get elected to the Security Council was a stark signal of our declining credibility,” said John Streiker, Green Critic for Northern Affairs.

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On Thursday, Hélène Laverdière (Laurier—Sainte-Marie, NDP)  moved that the committee spend at least one public session on Canada’s stance at the February UN Arms Control Treaty Negotiations {details here}.  It was agreed that the debate on the motion be adjourned to consideration of committee business. After the witnesses spoke and responded to questions, the meeting was suspended and resumed sitting in camera to consider said committee business. It is speculated by many that the motion was negatived in camera. Link: “Lost In Camera’ Link to the Minutes.

At both meetings, opposition members expressed concern about the general government funding freeze.  In response, Lois Brown (Newmarket–Aurora, CPC) pointed out that the current government has doubled aid to Africa.

On Tuesday, Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, Lib.), noted that the committee’s original plan for what to study in these current meetings was Canada’s role regarding Africa in the 21st century.  He added that Tuesday was the third session on what the study topic has become the role of the private sector in achieving Canada’s international development interest, with all witnesses thus far suggested by the government.  The Chair stated these matters would be discussed on Thursday.  The public portion of Thursday’s meeting ended early; the last part of the meeting was held in camera, to discuss committee business.

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This June, Canada is hosting both the G-8 and the G- 20. 2010 is a critical year for these meetings. In the wake of the failure in Copenhagen, we desperately need to make progress on the climate crisis. As climate events exert themselves globally, we are already experiencing crop failures, exacerbating a growing food crisis.

At the 2005 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, the G-8 committed to alleviate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Our due date on those promises is 2010. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are due for completion in 2015 and are not on target. The increasing numbers of extreme weather events threaten the fragile progress in development. Poverty, climate, and food security are inter- related and they are not receiving adequate attention or resources. Maternal and child health, the host country’s named lead issue, is one of the MDG and, like the others, languishing for lack of resources.

Many commentators have gone as far as questioning the value of these summit meetings. Security concerns increasingly drive them to ever more remote locations. Witness that in 1981, Trudeau welcomed world leaders to Montreal, in 1988 Mulroney hosted sessions in Toronto, in 1995 Chretien held successful meetings in Halifax, but by 2002, the G-8 retreated to less accessible Kananaskis Country in Alberta. Prime Minister Harper has chosen Huntsville, Ontario. The cost of security for the meeting really does demand that something useful be accomplished.

It is in a climate of scepticism that Canada is again host. And Canada’s government’s parochial approach to issues is already causing diplomatic waves. For the first time since the last 1980s, Canada has opted not to hold a pre- meeting of the G-8 Environment Ministers.

Climate is on the agenda in a minor way, and only because the other G-8 leaders insisted. Tragically for the task of developing a global consensus on climate, Canada has decreed that climate change will not be on the G-20 agenda at all. Member countries have begun to ask out loud, ‘Can the host country really control the agenda to such an unhelpful extent?’

President of the European Union Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, urged Canada to act on climate change, saying, ‘In Europe, we believe, according to science, that there is a real threat to our survival as a civilization. And for the future of our planet and the quality of life of our children … I think we have to move.’

And two weeks ago, United Nations Secretary General Ban-ki Moon came to Canada and urged that the Prime Minister stop blocking the inclusion of climate change for the G20 agenda. He also chastised Canada for failure to even try to meet Kyoto targets.

Meanwhile, the Canadian approach—shades of George W Bush—to reproductive health services as an aspect of maternal and child health has created unhealthy divisions among allies. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made clear, as did the UK, that any package of measures to improve women’s health must include access to a full range of contraception and family planning, including safe and legal abortions. It seems the Canadian government chose this theme with an eye to domestic political advantage, ‘softening’ the Prime Minister’s image and hoping to close the gender gap in his support base. This distortion of the agenda for maternal health by opposing the inclusion of funding for legal abortions has been attacked in the eminent medical journal, The Lancet.

These efforts have been rebuffed by Prime Minister Harper. In a carefully scripted session with university students, and hosted by Conservative Senator Mike Duffy, Mr Harper proclaimed that the only issue of importance for the summits is the economy. He termed all the other issues, including the climate crisis, ‘side-issues’.

International meetings of this importance should not be designed for a narrow domestic political agenda by the host government. Canada is in the big league here. Real issues are pressing and no world leader has time to come to Canada to watch people eat seal meat. This is not the time to play to a local audience. This is the time for leadership. If Canada refuses to play this role—shuts down discussions on climate and twists the urgent MDGs for a public relations message at home—the world will remember time in Canada as time wasted.

And, we all know, on climate, we have no time to waste.

Elizabeth May is leader of the Green Party of Canada and a candidate in Saanich Gulf Islands.

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