Originally published in the Hill Times, December 6th, 2021

Thank you for your editorial, “Climate change is a horror story,” (The Hill Times, Nov. 29) focus on the emergency debate on the climate emergency and the recent devastating damage experienced
in British Columbia.

Allow me to make a small correction. Saanich-Gulf Islands did experience damage, while my speech focused on the massive landslides and major highway closures on the mainland that eclipsed damage in my home riding. But we certainly experienced damage.

Recently, we had a Zoom meeting with the local government representatives from the Gulf Islands (known as Trustees in the Islands Trust) and our wonderful MLA, Adam Olsen, who organized the meeting.

In a review of all our areas of responsibility, no area was unspared. Roads on the peninsula were closed, such as West Saanich Road while Chalet Road collapsed. As well, the Gulf Islands were impacted. Saturna Island experienced extensive damage at the Narvaez Bay Road. The people living at East Point were cut off. On Salt Spring, the main road between Ganges and Fulford Harbour (two key population and transit points) was closed and extensive damage was done to Isabella Point Road. So too were Galiano Island, Mayne Island, and Pender impacted by flooding. All the sewage systems of my electoral district were stressed.

As ever, local community members have rallied round and are working on better local planning for emergency preparedness. We know that even if Canada started living up to promises to cut
emissions, worse is to come. The horrors of the heat dome, the wildfires and the massive flooding have all occurred with a global average temperature increase of 1.1 degrees C. The world is watching as any chance of keeping that increase to no more than 1.5 degrees C—the Paris Agreement target—is slipping away.

We must move away from fossil fuels and expand natural carbon sequestration as fast as possible—while also investing in adaptation measures to reduce the damage the climate emergency will inflict. We need to move faster in transitioning to renewable energy, protecting workers in the fossil fuel sector, rebuilding infrastructure that can better cope with climate events, plant crops that are drought resistant, adapt our health care system to a more dangerous climate and on and on. And do it all at once.

We have no choice.

Elizabeth May
Green Parliamentary Leader and MP
Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.

Original Editorial, November 29th, 2021

On a cold and rainy Monday morning last week, MPs came back to Ottawa to open up the new Parliament. But the global pandemic wasn’t the talk of the week, it was the devastating floods in British Columbia. It dominated debates in the House all week as MPs whose ridings were devastated by the floods described what they saw. MPs also held an emergency debate on the floods which happened two weeks ago and affected the Fraser Valley, the Fraser Canyon, and the B.C. Interior, killing four people, breaching dikes, damaging thousands of homes and businesses, major rail lines and highways, and displacing nearly 20,000 people.

Conservative MP Ed Fast, whose Abbotsford riding was hit hard, said the torrential rains were like a “horror” that flooded thousands of homes and businesses, drowned farm animals, washed out highways and bridges, and water and sewer systems. “The scene in Abbotsford is one of unimaginable destruction. Countless families have been displaced. Dikes have been breached, pump stations overwhelmed and untold property lost as the carnage swept across our city,” he said on Nov. 24 in the House. “The damage will take years to assess and is in the billions of dollars.”

Conservative MP Brad Vis, who represents Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, said his riding had already suffered the devastating forest fires on June 29, when “Lytton burned to the ground” and was now dealing with the aftermath of floods. “Now floods and mudslides have destroyed critical infrastructure and private property in every corner of my riding in the last few weeks. My constituents in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon are hurting. B.C. is hurting.”

Conservative MP Dan Albas, who represents Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola, said some of his constituents are now “in a race against time” to rebuild their lives before winter freeze sets in, meanwhile, sewer and water systems aren’t working and there is no gas or electricity in some places.

Green Party MP Elizabeth May, whose Saanich-Gulf Islands riding was not affected, told the House about her stepdaughter who was at her husband’s family farm in Ashcroft, B.C., last summer when there was a heat dome in B.C. and the temperature hit 50 C. She said her stepdaughter nearly died and had brain edema. She said the 1,600 B.C. wildfires from April to September destroyed more than 868,000 hectares of land, which she said also contributed to last week’s floods. “The ground had become hydrophobic, meaning it expelled the water that fell on the ground. The ground could not absorb the water; the ground repelled it. The flooding was worse because of the fires.”

This government, which made a commitment in last week’s Throne Speech, and this Parliament will have to step up and finally treat climate change like the emergency and the horror that it is. The country has to work together with the provinces to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and to make the transition to renewable energy as quickly as possible. We have to avoid runaway global warming.

Right now, there are 500 members of the Canadian Armed Forces who will remain in British Columbia for as long as needed and the prime minister has promised emergency and infrastructure funding to help rebuild the devastated province.

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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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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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“Canada should be continuing in Kyoto and negotiating the targets that would be palatable for this government. By withdrawing, we become a pariah on the world stage,” said May.

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, in its report “Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada”, estimates that the cost of Canada’s failure to act on climate change will range from $5 billion per year by 2020 to as high as $91 billion per year by 2050. Impacts on forests and coastal areas will be particularly felt in terms of hits to the Canadian economy. An increase in flooding, wildfires, heat waves, and poor air quality has already resulted in increased death and destruction of property. Canada’s insurance sector is seeing costs from storms and wildfire escalating rapidly.

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“Refusing to be a part of the global effort to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate will put Canada behind economically as other countries make investments in efficiencies and renewable energy. Canada has an opportunity to capitalize on a green economy and instead we are clinging to fossil fuels,” said May. “Withdrawing from Kyoto is an appalling decision. It will only hurt us—economically and environmentally.”

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“The provinces and victims should not have to bear the burden of clean-up and recovery for these massive disasters alone. There should be federal support, especially for the First Nations communities that have been affected,” said Ms. May. “The federal government will also have to be prepared to assist with the environmental impacts, as there are concerns these floods have washed large quantities of sewage and farm chemicals into sensitive waterways.”

“This is an unprecedented situation, with serious flooding happening simultaneously in multiple regions of the continent,” added Ms. May. “Once the clean-up is done and life has returned to normal for the affected communities, we are going to have to look at the broader ramifications.”

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