In a catalogue of alleged failings of the Green Party of Canada, (editorial July 30, 2014) the most absurd claim is that of moral relativism. We are the only party left in Canada to have principles and stick to them.

The Conservatives were once thought of as a party of fiscal responsibility, yet Stephen Harper has added to the national debt and expanded the size of government. His promises of accountability are buried under scandals of the culture of entitlement he once decried.

The New Democrats once championed the poor and down-trodden, but now clamor to appeal to the middle class calling not for guaranteed annual income, but for lower banking fees.

The Liberals stand less condemned, if only because their approach to principle was always pretty flexible – big tent and all. Still, the support for the Keystone and Kinder Morgan pipelines while opposing Enbridge suggests polling as a basis for position.

The Green Party of Canada, along with Green parties around the world, stand on six global green values: participatory democracy, social justice, ecological wisdom, non-violence, sustainability, and respect for diversity.

In the context of conflicts around the world, we are anything but moral relativists. The reason I was the only Member of Parliament in June 2011 to vote against the continued aerial bombardment of Libya was that Green principles of non-violence and promotion of a culture of peace made voting for bombing impossible. There were peace talks rejected as we joined the side of those calling for Gadafi’s head. It was clear when Parliament voted to keep up the bombing that the side we supported included al-Qaida-linked extremists. It was clear that warehouses full of munitions would flood into other countries and lead to greater instability, loss of life and chaos. It was clear that shifting our mission statement from Responsibility to Protect (R2P) innocent civilians to regime change would cost us down the road and remove the possibility of relying on the R2P doctrine to intervene in Syria.

In the case of the current Israel-Gaza conflict, it is critical that positions be based on international law. Pursuing peace cannot be discarded as unrealistic. It should be possible for all Canadian political parties to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization and to demand it cease its shelling of Israel. It should be possible for all other political leaders to continue to press for a two-state solution, one that defends the right of the State of Israel to exist, but equally calls for a secure Palestinian state. It is simply not credible to take the stance of all three other leaders (Messrs Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau) that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s siege of Gaza is legal and meets humanitarian standards. It does not. The death toll among Gaza’s civilians provokes the conscience of the world. Hamas is to blame for provocation, but to imagine that Israel is blameless is untenable.

We are the only party that bases our decisions on evidence. That is why we may take positions ahead of the “group-think” curve, calling for caution on newer technologies while others throw caution to the wind. We have been consistent about climate policies, while other parties treat the greatest threat to our children’s future as “flavour of the month.”

Our budgetary plans are based on a thorough examination of the sources of revenue, macro and micro-economic impact of policy. We are the only party to prepare election platforms that have been thoroughly costed over a three year horizon. We were the only party to submit our budget to the Parliamentary Budget Office to ask for verification that our numbers added up. (They did.)

We have been the most accountable in office of any MPs. I was the first MP to post all my expenses (original receipts) on line. Now Bruce Hyer, Green MP from Thunder Bay-Superior North does as well. We have pushed other parties to greater levels of accountability.

The biggest reason that Canada needs to Green Party is that we are the only party fighting to restore real democracy by reducing the power of political parties themselves. We need to tear down the bloated Prime Minister’s Office. We must reduce the unhealthy top-down control that turns good people, elected as MPs, into little more than ciphers. We are the only party that wants to eliminate the excessive hyper-partisanship of modern political debate and replace it with respectful dialogue to find common ground. We will make it a priority to replace the perverse first past the post voting system with fair proportional representation.

We will elect more Green MPs in the next federal election, forging consensus across party lines and working for the people who elected us. I appreciate that your editorialists would like it if all Canadian political parties kow-towed to “group think. We never will. And for that reason alone, more Canadians are turning to the Greens to give them reason to believe in the possibility of responsible government.

Elizabeth May, O.C., is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands. Her eighth book, “Who we are: Reflections on my life and Canada” (Greystone Books) will be released in October 2014.

The post Staking the moral high ground – why the Green Party exists appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I want to ask my hon. colleague this. There is something in the history of how these rebel forces in Mali got hold of so many weapons, and the trail seems to lead to Libya, where some of the people whom we supported in the effort to get rid of Colonel Gadhafi opened up warehouses and shipped large amounts of weapons to al-Qaeda forces. Some of the people we supported in Libya were in fact themselves previous al-Qaeda fighters.

How do we learn from this? How do we ensure that in future when we enact, under the responsibility to protect, the need to go in to protect the civilian population, we do not inadvertently side with people who are prepared to turn warehouses full of weapons into a flow of arms to terrorists who will of course allow conflict to spill into areas that had previously been peaceful?

Lois Brown: Mr. Chair, what we have heard from officials is the suspicion that many of the weapons left long before the conflict in Libya even started or was finished.

I would like to quote the Leader of the Opposition, though, who actually said on January 15 on CBC Power and Politics:

I don’t see the link necessarily between our intervention in Libya, which was a UN mandate directly to NATO based on the UN charter, protection of civilians who were being attacked by their own government. It’s too indirect.

What he is trying to allege as a link to Mali would judge Mali on its merits and look at information put on table if need be, so we are not sure there is a link there.

The post Conflict in Mali appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Canada should not be surprised by China and Russia choosing to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down.  “We predicted that Russia and China would be very reluctant to approve a future UN Responsibility To Protect (R2P) mission in Syria after the mission creep in Libya turned it into an active regime change exercise,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands).  “The needed Security Council trust around the use of R2P was imprudently damaged.”

NATO’s mission creep in Libya eventually resulted in heavy continuous bombing of Tripoli to effect regime change, though the original R2P Security Council resolution was only to take limited military action in Libya to protect civilians in imminent danger.

“Russia and China must surely recognize that their own interests are not served by the growing internal violence in Syria and need to quickly re-engage in crafting a new Security Council Resolution that prevents R2P mission creep,” added Eric Walton, Green International Affairs Critic. “Time is quickly running out for diplomacy – even for direct Russian efforts”   added Mr Walton.

Pro-democracy protests in Syria have been underway since early last year, with massive civilian casualties. President Bashar al-Assad has responded to the protests with lethal military force.

The post Violence in Syria must stop appeared first on Elizabeth May.

There was no sense that we were building a strong relationship with that new government. I wonder if the member has a sense that we are building that now. Again, I apologize for bringing back what the Prime Minister’s comments were at the time. We certainly took a lead in Libya, but in Egypt we did not. I am wondering if the hon. member thinks that will affect our ability to influence the government to protect the lives of Coptic Christians.

Hon. John McCallum: Mr. Speaker, my colleague has a really good point. I had forgotten about that, but I do remember that comment by the Prime Minister back then that “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”. It hardly seemed an enthusiastic endorsement of the Arab Spring in Egypt. I seem to remember our leader was a little more positive than that, but the Prime Minister is the one who really counts in foreign relations.

One cannot undo what happened in history, but clearly that comment and the lack of enthusiasm that he displayed would not be a positive in our ability to exert influence on Egypt. But we have to work with what we have and do our best even where we are.

The post Coptic Christians in Egypt (D) appeared first on Elizabeth May.

My concern, to the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells, is that yes, we are protecting women, but on the other hand, how do we stand as a country when we know that a Libyan woman whose surname was Gadhafi was shot by the Libyan rebels while she tried to get her family out of the country? Babies were killed. The only mistake they acknowledged was that they thought she was a Gadhafi family member.

Is it now acceptable for our allies to kill small children if they think they are related to Colonel Gadhafi?

Nina Grewal: Mr. Speaker, that is the very same reason we are in Libya: security. That is what is needed there.

If this mission is not extended, how are we going to help? For various reasons, we need to extend the mission so that we can help the Libyan people in Libya.

The post Libya appeared first on Elizabeth May.

There are increasing reports that our responsibility to protect must extend beyond those people threatened by Colonel Gadhafi and must extend to those people who are now understood to have once favoured Colonel Gadhafi. How do we protect those people when we are not allowed by the transitional government to be in Libya to protect civilian populations through a UN peacekeeping force?

Hon. Irwin Cotler: Mr. Speaker, as part of our engagement we will have to work closely with the National Transitional Council to ensure that the appropriate protection is extended to all groups, including protection against vengeful attacks, and that we move forward in such a way that we build a democratic and inclusive provisional government and a democratically plural society in Libya. I believe we can play in role in that objective.

The post Libya appeared first on Elizabeth May.

What does the hon. member think of the threats that are weighing on the civilian population of Libya?

Christine Moore: Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to meet the ambassador when she came to a meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence. I had the opportunity to ask her some questions about that. The thing that came out of the conversation was the importance of diplomatic aid. Establishing Canadian diplomatic aid will help the Libyan people set up a justice system very quickly. Then the criminals from Gadhafi’s camp and also the people in the NTC who have overstepped the bounds can be prosecuted quickly. This will prevent those people from being involved in building the new Libya. For that we need major diplomatic efforts, not military efforts.

The post Libya appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Hon. Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, of course I am concerned about any and all of those indications of linkages outside the country to extremism and to continued stubborn efforts that are being made by those loyal to Gadhafi to continue the violence. In fact, just this weekend inside Libya, Gadhafi’s daughter was broadcasting the following message, “Remain reassured, your great leader is doing well. He carries weapons and is fighting on the fronts”. This is a clear indication there is still the capacity to do harm, the capacity to bring violence to the people of Libya in many parts of the country.

It reinforces and underscores the need for Canada to continue to play a leadership role, both on the military and diplomatic fronts, and to continue to try to root out all forms of violence, of intolerance, of assaults against human rights. This is why Canada is such an admired country in the world today.

The post Libya appeared first on Elizabeth May.

In this ongoing mission, I doubt that the Canadian Forces will be invited to protect those groups because the Libyan rebel government has said no foreign troops, whether United Nations or others, will come into Libya to help secure civilian safety.

How does the hon. parliamentary secretary see Canada’s role in protecting civilians now?

Deepak Obhrai: Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question with regard to holding the NTC accountable. It is understandable there are concerns regarding that.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs visited with the NTC. He sat with its members and asked them to clearly show what plan they had to run the country on the basis of the principles of the rule of law, human rights and so forth.

As well, as I just said, the Prime Minister has gone to the United Nations to attend high-level meetings concerning how the NTC will be held accountable for its actions and what it has to do. If disturbing reports should come out, I can assure members that Canada will make its views known to the new government in Libya.

The post Libya appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I’m reporting in after the first five days of the fall parliamentary calendar, finally posting this blog Monday morning. Our proceedings were dominated by two pieces of legislation, and book-ended by an all-party tribute to Jack Layton and the visit of UK PM David Cameron.

Question Period floats above (or more accurately, below) the legislative calendar with most questions focusing on “scandal de jour”. Of course, there are perennial favourites. NDP MP Charlie Angus goes after Tony Clement with glee and rhetorical flourish. The minister seems to be incapable of shame for the outrageous way in which tens of millions of dollars were funnelled into his riding – although the slurs in Angus’s question almost make you sorry for Clement. (Almost).

Last week’s QP faves were Peter MacKay using a search and rescue helicopter as a limo service, with serious questions about the health of our economy and the planned deeper integration with the US (NextGen).

My question focused on letters to key scientists at Environment Canada, who run various aspects of ozone monitoring, telling them they may be terminated (or as Peter Kent puts it “separated from Environment Canada”). Both NDP and Liberal Environment Critics (Megan Leslie and Kirsty Duncan) were also attempting to get clear answers from the minister. I like them both enormously and shared whatever information I had with them.  It was a good joint effort. The threat is to the Global Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Monitoring and Data Collection Centre, the Ozonesonde programme (in which balloons in multiple locations are released every week to take ozone measurements at different altitudes), and to a senior scientist who analyzes all data as part of the ozone reporting system.  Kent says none of those programmes are at risk. Yet, the three scientists who received the letters run those elements.  There are not five managers for the global data centre — there’s one. And he got a letter.

Kent says it is a Treasury Board guideline that requires people who are not going to be fired to receive a letter that says they might be. I am checking that out as Kent honestly seems to believe that is what’s going on.  I have another theory….

Meanwhile, most of my time was devoted to fighting two very bad pieces of legislation.  The first, Bill C-4, the so-called “Human Smuggling Act,” should be titled the “Refugee Internment Act.” It sets out to treat “irregular arrivals” to Canada, primarily by ship, and some form of “group” of political refugees to a different kind of treatment.  All must be kept in detention for a year, without benefit of judicial review.  Men, women and children must be jailed for a year if they arrive by boat or any other way the minister determines to be an irregular arrival.

The Refugee Internment Act is opposed by the Refugee Lawyers Association, the Canadian Bar Association, Amnesty International, and other human rights groups. But government members have their talking points from PMO and ignore the substantive problems with the Act.  In debate, any questioner of the bill’s outrageous impacts is attacked as “giving comfort to human smugglers.”

Similarly, to find fault with the mandatory minimum sentences of the omnibus crime bill is to be met with taunts that the MPs in opposition favour criminals over victims.

Canadians need to speak out and urge Conservative MPs to push back.  They have the votes to pass each and every bill over the next four years. Only if the government benches work to change the bills will we avoid some very draconian legislation. Eventually, if passed, and after huge expense, these bills will not survive a Charter challenge.

This week we have the Libya mission vote (again I will vote “no”), and continuing debate on C-4 and C-10.

The post The first week appeared first on Elizabeth May.