On the basis of the 2011 election results, none of the seats were in any doubt. In each case, the outgoing MP had won with more than 50% of the vote. Each was what pundits like to call ‘a safe seat.’

The Green Party looked at Calgary Centre right away. The Alberta provincial election had exposed a split among Conservative voters. Stephen Harper and his Alberta MPs had been pretty transparent in promoting the Wild Rose Party and its leader Danielle Smith. It might have been wise for Harper’s team to be less exuberant about the prospects of a majority Wild Rose government in Alberta based on polls—polls which turned out to be spectacularly wrong. Lee Richardson is an old school, decent, Progressive Conservative. (I have known him since the 1980s when he was in Mulroney’s PMO and lent a hand in creating Gwaii Haanas National Park). It was shocking when he announced his departure in the House and every party rose in turn to pay tribute to his long record of service—except the Conservatives. When I was at the Calgary Stampede, for the first time, people would say ‘I am an Alison Redford Conservative; not a Stephen Harper Conservative.’ Greens had always done relatively well in Calgary Centre, with a high of 17% of the vote in 2008. So we had something of a base and only needed a great candidate. When nationally renowned author Chris Turner agreed to seek the Green Party nomination (after a lot of soul-searching, as he had never imagined himself in politics), we decided we were all in to try to win a seat in Stephen Harper’s backyard.

It was a shock when Denise resigned. Unlike the Calgary Centre nomination, where no one in media wondered how the Green Party would do, within hours the local media was full of speculation. The usual media ‘conventional wisdom’ decided that Victoria was a test for the Green Party and for me. Unlike Calgary, where we hoped for a surprise upset, suddenly in Victoria we had no choice but to run a really serious campaign. We had never done so before because Denise was such a strong MP. Even Greens voted for her. But now, if we didn’t make a serious effort to at least significantly improve our vote, we would be judged harshly.

When one of my oldest friends, Donald Galloway, agreed to run (another wonderful person who had never imagined running for office), we began to get organized in Victoria as well. In Durham, Green candidate Virginia Ervin ran a great campaign, but we could not see any likelihood of the Conservative grip on that riding slipping at all. So we did not emphasize the Durham by-election.

Now that the dust has settled, it is clear we made good choices in deciding to run hard in both Calgary and Victoria. Where the previous winning candidates had won with over 50% of the vote, in the by-election, the races became very close. In both cases, they were squeakers. In Calgary, it turned into a three-way race, with only a ten-point spread between the winner Conservative Joan Crockatt and Green candidate Chris Turner.

Liberals, who came in second, have spoken bitterly of the Green vote ‘splitting’ their vote. As Chris Turner pointed out in a column in the Globe and Mail, the first poll gave the Liberal 30% of the vote and Chris Turner 8%. By election day, the Greens had over 25% of the vote and the Liberal candidate 32%. So it is hard to make a claim we took votes from the Liberal column. Chris believes he engaged people who otherwise would not have voted at all.

Victoria was a lot closer. In fact, the majority of the votes cast on November 26 were for Donald Galloway. It was the votes cast in Advance Polls that gave the win to a very strong candidate (and another old friend of mine) new NDP MP Murray Rankin.

Some pundits have said this shows that Thomas Mulcair is not as popular as the late Jack Layton, to explain the difference between NDP votes in 2011 and 2012. I doubt there is much in that. I think that a lot of the votes in 2011 were not NDP votes at all. They were Denise Savoie votes. With the chance to look at all the candidates, Donald Galloway really impressed. Especially for those who attended the all-candidates debates, Donald won people over by being the most impressive in a field of good candidates. Economist Paul Summerville had been an NDPcandidate in Ontario and ran a one-issue campaign (which I regret as it allowed media to ignore important issues like climate, and parliamentary democracy and fracking and so on). Dale Gann was as good a candidate as the Conservatives could ever hope to have. He runs the Vancouver Island Technology Centre, is progressive and articulate.

The real story here is the collapse of the Conservative vote. Having come in second in 2011 in Victoria with 23% of the vote, the Conservative vote dropped to third place and a poor one at that, with 14% of the vote. The Liberals were just behind in fourth place. My belief is that the Conservative vote was torpedoed way before Denise resigned. It evaporated in the wake of nasty partisan swipes at anyone in BC who opposes supertankers full of bitumen crude. Epithets of ‘radicals’ and ‘against Canada’ and ‘foreign-funded’ opponents of the national interest turned off Conservatives in droves. If I were a Conservative MP in BC, these results would make me very nervous.

And that is very good news indeed. I keep working to stop the ratification of the Canada-China Investment Treaty where our only hope lies now in Conservative MPs pressuring the Prime Minister. Conservative MPs know their voters want them to reject the treaty—or face their wrath at the polls.

Something seems to be getting through. Lately, Stephen Harper’s messaging around Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project has started to re-align to reality. I can see the ground shifting, such that even the Prime Minister may walk away from that one. (However, with Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline twinning coming onstream, I do not want to declare any premature victories for fear of losing the energy of the campaign to prevent supertankers on our coast.)

The by-elections have been a boost for the Green Party. It is wonderful to see such a large rise in the Green vote overall. And, yes, I do wish I had another Green MP to help me with the work I am doing in Parliament and to represent the people of Victoria, not just deliver partisan messages disseminated from the leader’s office. Donald Galloway was a superb candidate and, like Chris Turner, I hope they will take the Green banner forward again in the future.

My goal now is to work to get the Liberals and New Democrats to agree to cooperation in the next election. We need to develop a one-time pact to cooperate, and then after one election, get rid of first-past-the post elections for good.

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The basics go back to the line between what is political (elected people) and what is non-partisan (the civil service.) I could go back to discussions of the role of the Prime Minister, who in the early days was a Cabinet member with a portfolio like everyone else (usually Justice Minister and doubling as Prime Minister). The Prime Minister is, in theory, “first among equals.”

There wasn’t such a thing as a powerful Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) until Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister, but since 1940 there has been an office to coordinate the civil service, the Privy Council Office (PCO).

The role of the Privy Council Office is to provide non-partisan advice, over-see the civil service and provide a sound basis for public policy. It must maintain a complete distance from partisan control. I recall Alex Himelfarb, when he was Clerk of Privy Council (the title for the head of the civil service, essentially Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister’s Office) referring to the critical division between the PMO and PCO as a “Chinese firewall.” Messages could pass in between PMO and PCO, but the Privy Council Office could never be allowed to become a tool of the political arm (PMO).

It is a tricky relationship. Obviously, civil servants must take instructions and implement policy under different political masters. So when a civil service is under Progressive Conservative instructions from Brian Mulroney, for example, (or more accurately, Kim Campbell) one day and then under Liberal Jean Chretien the next, the civil service must pull together the appropriate advice and fulfill the direction based on instructions from the political masters.

What is not acceptable is for the PCO to “cook the books” to help buttress a political argument. The PCO has to stick to the facts, not invent them for the government in power. Which is exactly what I think is now happening.

The firewall between PMO and PCO is down.

Public policy making is now only a shadow of good government. The outward appearance of a functional Cabinet government supported by a non-partisan civil service is being maintained, but the reality is that nothing is normal.

What makes me think this? Some examples come to mind.

• The Environment Canada report on Greenhouse gas emissions, claiming that we are half-way to our target, is essentially an exercise in public relations. It is out of whack with what the Commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development calculated, as well as contradicting the National Round Table on Environment and Economy (which has been terminated). It says things like by 2020 our emissions will have declined to 720 MT a year, when 720 MT is higher than levels in 2010.
• The report from Transport Canada to the Joint Review Panel on the Enbridge Project was proclaimed in a Transport Canada press release as saying that super tankers can safely carry bitumen crude from Kitimat BC to Asia. But the report never mentions any of the navigational risks, or includes the amount of time and distance it takes for a tanker to stop, or comments on any one of a few dozen key considerations. In fact, the report does not say oil can be safely transported. It merely says there are no “regulatory difficulties.” It reads like a report from people told what they must report, not a department that actually did a good faith review.
• The claim that no one in Statistics Canada objected to elimination of the Long-form Census even when it was very clear the department had pushed back.
• Recently, a colleague mentioned a friend at Justice Canada who nearly quit. The lawyer was asked for a legal opinion, but was told in advance what the opinion should say.

Other things that make me think the government is not functioning as it should come from many conversations I have had with Ministers in Cabinet. Without betraying personal conversations, it has been clear to me over and over again, that they do not know what is going on in their departments. When I worked for Tom McMillan, Minister of Environment in Mulroney’s government, no branch would have been laid off or key roles re-assigned, that the Minister had not weighed all the options and made a decision after long discussion with his senior civil servants. He would have known what was going on. The current role of Ministers appears to have been reduced to the role of “chief spokesperson” for their portfolio. Hand them the cue cards to deliver the approved message and off they go. But I do not think most Ministers in Mr. Harper’s Cabinet are actually involved in the decision-making. I think the exceptions to the rule make a short list — Rona Ambrose (who is doing a very credible job cleaning up various messes), Jason Kenney, James Moore, and Jim Flaherty, but even they can be over-ruled by the PM. True Cabinet decision-making appears to be a thing of the past.

My sense is that decisions are made by Stephen Harper alone. He dispatches orders directly to the Clerk of Privy Council, who sends instructions to the Deputy Ministers. The Ministers are handed the talking points to explain decisions they didn’t make.

What this means is that the civil service is completely corrupted by political pressure. The first phase of this process was the muzzling of scientists, then the massive lay-offs, ensuring that morale is at an all time low. The next step was to ask for reports that make a certain point, instead of asking for an objective assessment of the evidence. Government reports are no longer non-partisan. If I am right, the situation is very dangerous. And it is even more dangerous because it is invisible – in plain sight.

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Bill C-45, a second Act to Implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, the Conservatives’ latest omnibus bill, has weakened Canadians’ historic right to navigate the lakes, rivers, and streams of Canada without being impeded by pipelines, bridges, power lines, dams, mining and forestry equipment, and more.

The Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) of 1882, considered Canada’s first environmental law, has been changed – to the Navigation Protection Act.  If a body of water is not mentioned in Schedule 2 on page 424, it will no longer be covered under the NWPA permit process from the rampant resource development being advocated by the Harper Conservatives.

“This is nothing less than tragic for the majority of Canadians who love and respect our waterways from coast to coast to coast,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands.  “Even rivers like the Margaree River in Cape Breton, a National Heritage River, will no longer be covered by the NWPA. The only river listed in the entire Yukon is the Yukon River.

“Our inland harbours, including Shoal Harbour in my riding, and gulfs, including the Gulf of St. Lawrence, will be vulnerable.”

The Conservatives first weakened the NWPA in the 2009 budget when they curtailed the heritage rights of anglers, hunters, cottagers, and paddlers to access our streams, lakes, rivers, and other waterways.  Under the previous version of the NWPA, any body of water deemed navigable could be accessed to the high water mark without that being considered trespassing.

Under the Harper version, a natural body of water was considered navigable only when the Minister of Transport deemed it so.  The Minister of Transport was also given arbitrary power to exempt certain “works” from assessment or oversight – like dams, bridges, booms, and causeways – without public consultation, transparent disclosure, or a review of any kind.  The Minister could also set up an arbitrary “class system” for waterways, and exempt them from the Environmental Assessment Act (now greatly weakened too).

With Bill C-38, further changes to the NWPA made pipelines and power lines exempt from the provisions of the Act.  Also, the National Energy Board took control over the NWPA whenever a pipeline crossed a navigable water.

“This is a real threat for thousands of our pristine waterways,” said May.

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Canada undermined global climate negotiations in Durban in December, negotiated in bad faith, and immediately announced intent to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol when the Environment Minister touched down on Canadian soil. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver kicked off the New Year with an assault on environmentalists and First Nations as “radicals.”  The Prime Minister attacked environmental groups for accepting foreign funding, even as he courted Communist Party controlled state operations from China as investors in the oil sands.  One Parliamentary Secretary said anyone opposed to pipelines and tankers was “against Canada.”  When asked to withdraw the remark as un-parliamentary, she refused.

The legislative juggernaut, C-38, repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, replacing a coherent piece of legislation with a discretionary formula for confusion, conflict and court cases.  The gutting of the Fisheries Act raised the ire of four former federal Ministers of Fisheries.  Environment Minister Peter Kent insulted the four former ministers, suggesting they had not read the Act.  Mulroney era Minister Tom Siddon showed up to testify before the sub-committee on Finance and in short order made it clear he may be the only Minister who has read the act.  While Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield tried to claim the new Fisheries Act will improve habitat protection, the assault to habitat is real, underscored by the subsequent lay-off notices to all DFO habitat officers in British Columbia. The National Round Table on the Environment and Economy is scrapped.  The Species at Risk Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act amended to allow the National Energy Board to assume jurisdiction of endangered species or navigable waters are in the way of any pipeline.

Basic science and monitoring is being savaged with the end of funding to the Canadian Foundation of Climate and Atmospheric Science, elimination of the Adaptation research group within Environment Canada, the cuts to ozone monitoring, the closure of the Polar Arctic and Environmental Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, the sale of the 58 lakes in the globally unique Experimental Lakes Area near Kenora, Ontario, the elimination of the marine contaminants programme within DFO, the loss of scientists in Natural Resources Canada to study ice cores data (and the hope to find a university with a large fridge willing to take the 80,000 year ice core record Canada’s government no longer wants), the end of monitoring smoke stack emissions, cut backs in the Canada Oil and Gas research group in Halifax, and cuts at NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) resulting in the closing of the Yukon Research Lab at Yukon College in Whitehorse.

The thin end of the wedge of privatization has hit National Parks – first Jasper and then the hot springs at Banff, while cuts to ecological staff in the parks compelled former Deputy Minister Jacques Gerin to call on Harper to stop gutting National Parks.

It is a blitzkrieg of bad news as cut-backs and programme cancellation hit the core areas of federal responsibility to protect nature.  The multi-faceted assault has the effect of blinding media and the public to the largest threat.  In 2012, Canada still has no plan to address the threat of climate change.

While Stephen Harper has succeeded in dramatically reducing the Canadian media coverage of climate science through the muzzling of government scientists, the atmosphere does not seem to have gotten the memo.  Around the world, the force and frequency of severe weather events has woken up even the mainstream US media.  Fires, floods, tornadoes, heat waves are wreaking havoc on agriculture and running up the bills to the insurance industry.  The culprit for much of this year’s strange weather phenomenon is the rapidly warming Arctic.  As the Arctic warms the differential in temperature between the Arctic and the Equator becomes less pronounced. That causes the jet stream to lose its straight and fast course. (Francis, Vavrus study, Rutgers/Univ of Wisconsin). Slowing down, it has allowed large low pressure systems and high pressure systems to sit for far longer periods than normal in one place —  causing flooding in the low pressure zones and heat waves and fires in the high zones.

Loss of agriculture, losses to floods and fires also cost the economy, as well as human lives. Despite the Prime Minister’s attempts to destroy the collection of data, the evidence of the climate crisis is all around us.  We are sabotaging our children’s future – but what does it matter as long as the bitumen flows?

Elizabeth May is the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada.

First published in the Hill Times.

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If they have money, we have a different approach. It is a carefully executed piece of hypocrisy that requires a sanctimonious tone. The listener is somehow to suspend disbelief in the face of a counter-intuitive advanced wisdom, which is this: ‘If we are really concerned about human rights, the best way to secure improvements is through trade and forging relationships with countries that abuse human rights.’ Over and over again, Canadian governments have advocated that trading with China will cause China to absorb, as if through some mercantile osmosis, Canadian values.

No set of diplomatic criteria drove Stephen Harper to refuse to meet with Cuba in the room, while courting Communist China. If Cuba had all the money, our prime minister would be smoking cigars in Havana every chance he got.

It was not always so. Former Prime Minister Mulroney led the charge to enforce sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Against the indomitable Iron Lady herself, Mulroney succeeded in getting South Africa ejected from the Commonwealth.

It was former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien who first argued we had to trade to improve human rights as he inked a nuclear deal with the butcher of Beijing, so-called for his role in the Tiananmen Square massacre. On November 26, 1996, Chrétien made a quick visit to Shanghai and clowned around with former Chinese Premier Li Peng. Coverage of the visit noted that replying to Amnesty International’s criticism, ‘the prime minister responds that quiet diplomacy and stronger trade ties are the best way to promote political liberalization.’ (Jim Brown, ‘China deal warms China ties, sparks hot attack,’ November 27, 1996, Canadian Press.)

That nuclear deal is highly significant in light of Bill C-38. The 1996 CANDU deal marked the first time that in order to accommodate China, Canada violated its own environmental assessment laws, and, retroactively, weakened them.

In order to get China to buy two CANDU reactors, Canada lent China $1.5 billion. This was, at the time, the largest external loan in the history of Canada. The use of federal money triggered an environmental assessment under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (as it was before C-38.) On discovering they had accidentally triggered a mandatory environmental review, the Cabinet met in a hasty late night session and passed a regulation to change the review of projects outside Canada. In January 1997, the Sierra Club of Canada, of which I was Executive Director at the time, launched a court challenge against evading environmental assessment law to accommodate the Chinese government.

Here we are, fifteen years later, and China still does not like our environmental assessment laws. According to a 2010 report, Canada’s environmental assessment laws are a barrier to greater Chinese investment (Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canada-China: Building a Strong Economic Partnership, July 2010.) In the 2010 Conservative budget implementation bill environmental reviews were weakened to accommodate China.

In the House, explaining why Bill C-38 must be passed, the Prime Minister said it was in order ‘to provide certainty to investors.’ (May 10, 2012). What investors would those be?

In the last few years direct ownership of Alberta oil sands by Chinese state-owned oil companies has gone from nearly nothing to over $12 billion. Chinese money is already invested in the Enbridge pipeline and tanker scheme, Petro-China wants to build the pipeline, and Suncor is talking about using lowerwaged Chinese temporary workers–just in time to drive down wages and environmental standards. Sinopec is the fifth largest corporation in the world with a board of directors appointed by the Chinese Communist polit-bureau. And now Sinopec’s 9% share in Syncrude has given it veto power over any future decision to refine Syncrude bitumen in Canada, rather than put it in tankers.

‘The servility of Canada’s political leaders…to the obvious manipulations of Chinese strategists who flaunt world trade and financial market principles and jail democracy–promoting authors for 10-year terms is a national disgrace.’ That quote was cited by Victoria writer Terry Glavin, who added, ‘It wasn’t some dweebish umbrage-taker from the Kitsilano Civil Liberties Union who wrote those words. It was Tony Campbell, the former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat for the Privy Council Office.’ (‘China has our forests, now we’re sending our oilfields too,’ National Post, January 17, 2012).

So, back to that wonderful transmission of values through trade. Does anyone else notice that it seems to be working? Canada is absorbing Chinese values respecting human rights, labour laws, and environmental protections. It is indeed a national disgrace.

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The book, entitled Paradise Won: The Struggle for South Moresby was written in 1990 after an epic 12-year struggle to stop logging in a unique global ecosystem – referred to as “Canada’s Galapagos” – which stretches 90 km and includes 138 islands and is steeped in thousands of years of Haida culture.

“I wrote this book to celebrate the creation of Gwaii Haanas which was a major achievement for the Haida Nation as they asserted their sovereign rights and the environmentalists who worked selflessly with them,” explained May.  “After their courageous blockades and other forms of civil protest, it took the leadership of former prime minister Brian Mulroney to make this extraordinary conservation dream a reality.”

Paradise Won: The Struggle for South Moresby is now on the Elizabeth May MP website (www.elizabethmaymp.ca). Originally, published by McClelland and Stewart, the copyright has now reverted to the author and is no longer in publication.

PDF – http://elizabethmaymp.ca/wp-content/uploads/Elizabeth_May__Paradise_Won.pdf
eBook – http://issuu.com/canadiangreens/docs/elizabeth-may-paradise-won

“As Canadians face the most anti-nature prime minister in our history, I think it is important to revisit this historic triumph,” May said.  “The strategies and tactics that worked to save Gwaii Haanas from the chainsaw are needed once again to fight climate change and to protect fragile ecosystems from coast to coast to coast. 

“This book is a gift to all Canadians with the hope that it will entertain, inspire, and spur people to action.”

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Twenty years ago, the nations of the world rushed to Rio with sunny ambitions and plans to create political momentum for a world-wide green economy, to protect the environment and tackle poverty and inequality. Within weeks, it had all started to unravel. Twenty years later another Rio Summit is set to begin but the Canadians who took part last time return in a different political climate. Today, we look at what they hoped for and what we’ve got.

That’s where the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development officially opens tomorrow. My next two guests were among Canada’s key players in Rio in 1992. Elizabeth May is now the member of parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands, and the leader of the Green Party of Canada. She was in our Ottawa studio. And David MacDonald served as chair of the parliamentary committee on the Environment as a Progressive Conservative MP under PM Brian Mulroney. He was also the Lead Parliamentary Advisor for the Canadian delegation at the 1992 Earth Summit. He was in our Toronto studio.

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Conservative politicians – including a former Reform MP who was his party’s environment critic when Stephen Harper was opposition leader – have joined more than 20 other former members in protesting the government’s decision to kill the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

Bob Mills, who represented the Alberta riding of Red Deer between 1993 and 2008, joined Mark Parent, an environment minister in a previous Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative government, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May are among those who have written to the Prime Minister asking him to reconsider.

The National Round Table of the Environment Economy (NRTEE), which was established by the former Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in 1988 to promote sustainable development, is among a number of groups that lost their funding in this year’s federal budget.

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Canadians will “pay a price” for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s imbalanced and mistaken approach on environmental issues, says a former Reform and Conservative party MP.

“I always thought that ‘conserve’ was part of the Conservative mantra, but I might be wrong,” Bob Mills said Thursday at a news conference organized by Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “Stephen Harper puts other priorities, I think, ahead of the environment, and I think that’s a mistake.”

Mills, who served as environment critic for the Conservatives in opposition and later chaired the House of Commons environment committee for the governing party from 2006 to 2008, travelled from Alberta to Ottawa to deliver his criticism, which focused on the government’s decision to do away with an advisory panel known as the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

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There is a new front opening, as opposition to Stephen Harper’s budget — and his broader agenda — gathers strength. Increasingly, criticism is coming from dismayed conservatives offended by Harper’s hostility, or indifference, to the environment. And to democratic tradition.

The dissidents are mostly Progressive Conservatives, but not exclusively. This week, for instance, former Alberta Reform MP Bob Mills joined Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in decrying the elimination of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy (a Mulroney-era initiative.)

Mills, a one-time biology teacher, served as environment critic in Harper’s Opposition shadow cabinet. While he stoutly defended market-friendly prescriptions, Mills won friends across party lines. But Mills proved too green for the PMO and was never appointed environment minister — although he was a member of the now-doomed NREE, after he left politics in 2008.

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