Almost thirteen years later, youth in Canada face increasing problems – high levels of unemployment, diminished social programmes, weakened environmental protection, and the threat of climate change. It’s time for young people to speak out more than ever! Canada needs your energy, your fresh vision, your courage in order to regain the kind of fair and just country established after WWII – and presently being dismantled.

During the federal election in May, 2011, we saw young voters across the country – including Greens – turn out to vote with an increased sense of purpose and urgency. Unfortunately, with our first-past-the-post electoral system, the Harper Conservatives won a majority – although some riding results are being contested in the courts.

This year, International Youth Day comes almost one month before the next session of Parliament, which promises to be a great challenge to those who care about Canada. We call on our Young Greens, whose hard work and dedication we appreciate very much, and all youth to help stop the Harper Conservatives. In fact, with the support of aware, open-minded young people, we can make this country even better than before!

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The Greens should use their scheduled August convention in Sidney to start demonstrating to Canadians they’re more than a one-person party.

Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May has shown herself in the year since she won her seat to be a media-savvy political dynamo.

The Green leader has been “punching above her weight [as] a single MP and she seems to be getting a fair bit of air time,” Ekos president Frank Graves observed earlier this month.

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Canadians, who for the most part have never lived under any kind of totalitarian regime, tend to be complacent. Press censorship happens in places like Uganda or Iran. It could never happen here – for one thing, we have a charter of rights, which would prevent such an unthinkable idea. During the 2011 general election, the media (with the probable exception of the CBC) refused to allow Elizabeth May, of the Green Party, to be part of the televised leaders’ debates. This worked well for Harper, as he fears Elizabeth May more than any other leader – certainly more than Michael Ignatieff, and even more than Jack Layton. He, and other Conservative big shots, put in a tremendous effort to try to prevent Elizabeth May’s election. A truly free and independent media would have refused Harper’s demand. If one were to examine the relationship between Levant and the Harper Government, Sun Media, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Enbridge, Trans Canada Pipelines and Big Oil in general, one finds one massive echo chamber, with everyone repeating and endorsing everyone else.

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As important as were these political events, I don’t think they qualify for Biggest Story of 2011. Arab spring is a closer contender since it has redrawn the political map of the Arab world. But I think, for me, the biggest story is the one that never gets told. 2011 was another year of record breaking extreme weather events, most of which are likely the result of human-induced climate change. Of course, the single most devastating event, the Japanese tsunami and the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, were unrelated to climate change.

Nevertheless, the famine in North Africa, brought about by record-breaking drought; the astonishing, long-lasting flooding of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam; and the evacuation of parts of Manhattan due to storm surges worsened by sea level rise, are some of the global events that fit the models of climate crisis impact.

For Canada, extreme weather events made 2011 the second most expensive year for the insurance industry. The prairie floods put more land underwater than ever in our history. And the flooding lasted from October 2010 until late July 2011. More devastating floods hit Quebec.

The wild fires brought on by extremely dry conditions destroyed one third of Slave Lake. Much of Canada was blanketed in record-breaking heat for much of the summer. Arctic sea ice hit a near record summer low.

There is more, but my biggest story of the year is the on-going refusal to connect the dots and describe climate change events for what they are. Not “Mother Nature” on a rampage; not some “wacky and wild curve ball.”

Climate change events, fitting the pattern of increased extreme events one would expect due to, what is in human experience, the all-time high greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

So for political story — Canada filing legal notice of withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. For biggest story of 2011, the ongoing, accelerating losses due to the climate crisis and the fact of, unlike a suicide bomber in a troubled region where media are keen to find who “claims responsibility,” the amazing level of denial. These disasters are no longer “natural”–their causes are known and our government is charting a course to make them worse, year by year.

(As originally appearing in the Huffington Post.)

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If you were a supporter of my campaign, you might have gotten to know Fraser for the first time. He spoke at the huge pre-election rally we had at the airport hangar — a businessman in the unlikely company of tree-huggers, poets and musicians.

I first met Fraser Smith at a fundraiser for my campaign.  A mutual friend had dragged him along.  He made sure to tell me he was a strong Conservative and long-time friend of Gary Lunn.  But that didn’t stop him from bidding on items at the Silent Auction and having a grand time.  I was an immediate Fraser fan whether he would vote for me or not.

Over time, we came to know each other better.  I knew that he had played a role (a significant role) in starting the Reform Party. He had worked closely with Preston Manning. He continued as a staunch Conservative, despite the changes within that party.  He was a big man with a heart just as big.  Kindnesses to many within our community were offered quietly and at the perfect moment.  Young people he mentored, kids who needed a helping hand, were all lucky to have Fraser throwing them a life line.

His road to Damascus conversation from Conservative to Green was dramatic.  Things had been bothering him in government policy.  The “tough on crime” agenda, building new prisons, made no sense to him.  In one of our Rotary meetings, we had a speaker talking about restorative justice.  Fraser started his question, “I am a staunch Conservative, but…” And that “but” led to a diatribe about how little sense it made to build more prisons when the crime rate is dropping.  He found Canada’s prohibition laws against cannabis to be wrong-headed and ineffectual.  And when he heard that the government wanted to make it an offense with a mandatory minimum prison sentence of six months in jail for possession of more than five marijuana plants, he was deeply troubled. 

At one of our Green Party events, he came walking toward me with a steely and determined look on his face.  His generally warm and generous smile was displaced by a storminess that made me think he might be angry with me for something.  Instead, he opened his wallet and withdrew two cards.  One was plastic, just like a credit card.  With a picture of the House of Commons in full colour, it read “2009 Leaders Circle Member” with the big blue “C” of the Conservative party logo.  The other displayed his membership in the Conservative Party of Canada.  It was plasticized paper.  He then proceeded to try to rip them up.  They didn’t rip.  “Here,” he said, “you keep them. Give me a membership form. I am joining the Green Party.”  And the he pulled out his chequebook.

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That was just the beginning.  He wrote his entire client list and urged them to switch whatever previous political allegiance they had had to support my bid to be the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.  He decided we needed more billboards on the Pat Bay highway, so he registered himself as a Third Party and had big signs, (white background with green lettering), saying “Canada needs Elizabeth May in Parliament, but only you can elect her.”  He took out a two page ad in the Seaside Times to explain why he was voting Green.  He put himself and his reputation on the line, risking losing friendships of many years.

I write these words, tearing up, sitting at my desk in the House of Commons.  I have the cards Fraser tried to rip up on my desk. I have carried them with me as a sort of good luck piece ever since he gave them to me.  I will keep them in my desk inside the House of Commons from now on.  Fraser Smith played a significant role to elect me to the House of Commons.  I will work every day to improve decorum and respect, dedicating my service to his memory.

Ironically, at this moment, we are debating the Omnibus Crime Bill.  I have notes in front of me to point out, when I next speak, that the mandatory minimums for growing cannabis would be four years more than for sexual assault on a child. I write this as the government just succeeded in passing a motion to limit debate on the very bill Fraser found so offensive.

I owe a lot to Fraser Smith. So do many people in my community.  On Sunday morning September 25, he died unexpectedly from complications that may or may not have been related to cancer he was also fighting.  He leaves his beautiful and devoted wife, grown son and daughter and grandchildren. 

Let me leave you with the image I will hold in my heart of this wonderful man.  A man built on the basic principle with which God made mountains, strong, large and inspiring, with greying curls framing a face alive with mischief.  A huge smile on his face, a glass of red wine in one hand with the other holding a bottle to make sure everyone else’s glass was full.  Fraser Smith will be missed  — for a very long time.

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On July 25^th Canadians were stunned by Jack Layton’s press conference announcing a leave of absence to concentrate on his health.  No pundit following the election would have imagined that relatively unknown Nycole Turmel would be made interim leader of the Official Opposition.  And despite the deep concern that Jack Layton was frighteningly changed in that July press conference, the news of his death ended all summers.

Canadian political life has rarely experienced the shared mourning and collective grief provoked by Jack Layton’s death.  The only thing in living memory that comes close was the funeral train bearing Pierre Trudeau’s casket as Canadians spontaneously lined the tracks.  Still, the heartfelt grief and chalked walls of Toronto City Hall put me more in mind of the British response to the death of the Princess of Wales. Spontaneous gatherings in public spaces in Montreal and Edmonton, the line ups in Ottawa where his remains had laid in state for public visitation, all surpassed the expectations of even long-time colleagues, like Stephen Lewis.  The reaction has prompted some to ask, “what accounts for this? Why is this country so engrossed in public grieving?” 

The state funeral was also well outside of previous political experience.  It was a generous gesture for the Prime Minister to offer Jack Layton’s widow, Olivia Chow, a state funeral.  It is a rare event even when the death of a public figure has been anticipated through long illness. 

It was a singular event.  I was able to attend the funeral, cancelling, with regret, attending the Pender Fall Fair as well as some celebratory gatherings on Salt Spring Island.  As has happened before in political life, but perhaps not in such high relief, a shared humanity  transcended the partisan.  Sitting with members of all the federal parties, the tears were out of respect for Jack, but the emotions also reflected something above and beyond any one human being.  It spoke to the potential that, despite our deep divisions, we could unite as one community.  

Obviously, those gathered, myself included, had had profound disagreements with Jack Layton over the years.  My own relationship with Jack Layton had begun when he was in Toronto City Council.  I was a huge fan and was very happy when Jack took the reins at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). As Executive Director of Sierra Club of Canada, I was working a lot with FCM, having successfully persuaded the former Minister of Finance, Paul Martin, to set aside $300 million for a climate plan at the municipal level.  I was even happy to support the decision when Jack phoned me to apologize for hiring away Sierra Club’s climate campaigner to run the FCM climate programme.  This is not the time to think about our disagreements.  In the scheme of things, they ceased to matter some time ago.

Protocol determined that in the funeral, I was seated with the other Opposition leaders, just behind Environment Minister Peter Kent and Foreign Minister John Baird, and two  rows behind the former Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin.  In the next row, the Prime Minister and the Governor General.  It is hard to imagine deeper adversaries than those who gathered to mourn.  And it is hard to imagine a more ennobling service, a more inspiring and inspired call to shared values, cooperation and an end to what Stephen Lewis so rightly described as “vituperative attacks” in the House.   

As we sang one of my favourite songs from the 1960s, Chet Wilson’s “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now,” I reached forward and took Peter Kent’s hand in one hand and my Bloc colleague Maria Mourani’s hand in the other.  A few MPs near us got the idea, but the notion that we could get all MPs to join in was short-lived. 

One thing should be abundantly clear to all political parties in Canada.  The Canadian people are yearning for a voice that speaks to hope over despair.  We as a community want political leadership that inspires, that seeks ways to work together.  We want an end to the ad hominum attack and hyper-partisan abuse of political foes. 

Rarely does a window of opportunity open for real change such as that which opened in the days following Jack’s death.  In the mingling of the crowd after the service, I spoke with old friends Stephen Lewis and his wife Michele Landsberg about the potential. We held the same question in our minds: Can this outpouring of love and respect for Jack Layton leave a permanent mark on our political culture?

Will the call for greater non-partisanship, cooperation, inspiration and optimism in political life carry us forward into a new political normal? Is such a thing even possible or will the 41^st Parliament slide back from the shared sense of community to more routine ritualistic nastiness?    

As your Member of Parliament I pledge to try.

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“I want to thank the voters of SGI for choosing respect, for choosing a positive vision for Canadian politics. Together we will make history and change Canadian politics,” said Ms. May. “I also want to thank the Green candidates and volunteers, who worked so hard for the last 37 days. Most of all I want to thank everyone who voted Green.”

The undemocratic action of the broadcasters limited the choice of Canadians in this election.  Immediately following the 2008 debate, when Canadians had a chance to see Ms. May, Green Party support increased. Following the 2011 debates where Ms. May was excluded, support began to drop immediately. As a result, across Canada, the overall Green Party vote declined, although there were still strong showings in ridings such as the Yukon, Victoria, Vancouver Centre, Dufferin-Caledon, Calgary Centre, Okanagan-Shuswap, and Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.

“In 2008, I was able to show millions of Canadians what a truly positive and forward-thinking party looks like, and our vote went up significantly. In 2011, the TV networks decided positive messages do not make for good TV, and 4.3 million Canadians were denied the chance to hear our positive vision, and our vote decreased. There is a direct correlation,” said Ms. May.

“Despite this, the Green Party achieved our goal for 2011. We now sit in Parliament, and we can no longer be denied our place in any aspect of Canadian democracy,” Ms. May continued. “On this foundation we will build and we will show Canadians there is a real alternative to the old parties. The Green Party will continue to grow, addressing the critical issues the other parties ignore.”

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