Happy Mother’s Day!

Originally, Mothers Day was one women’s effort to honour her own mother.  Ann Reeves Jarvis, who died in 1905, had been a peace activist in the American Civil War. She and Julia Ward Howe, another peace activist, started “Mother’s Day for Peace.” Her daughter took the effort to governments to gain official recognition for Mother’s Day. And then Hallmark cards took over.

Mother’s Day should be a day for peace-work.  All the mothers who mourn in Ukraine and Russia should be honoured by ending the war. I also think we need to honour Mother Earth this day.  I am very happy to have my daughter coming over to make me a fabulous brunch, shared with John’s oldest daughter – also a great mother.  But as we continue our war against Nature, we should mobilize to love and protect Mother Earth.

Nothing threatens Mother Earth as much as the threat of nuclear war and the climate crisis.  It is a daily horror that we have the risk of both.

This week I raised the threat of nuclear proliferation from the development of experimental nuclear reactors in Question Period, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cap6YIJ4ne4 as well as putting a direct question to  Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault in Environment Committee.  I asked if he was prepared to overhaul the “Emissions Reduction Plan,” (ERP) released March 29, so it could align with the IPCC report of April 4. I put it to him that we must comply with the urgent warning that to even stay below 2 degrees C, globally emissions must peak at the latest by 2025 and dropping rapidly in half by 2030.  I was baffled by his answer. He said Canada’s emissions have already peaked so we are compliant with the pathways to hold to 1.5. But the ERP says we will increase oil and gas production by 21% by 2030.  And then they approved Bay du Nord, and the budget commits to completing TMX– but shifting it to Indigenous ownership!   I was lucky to be able to ask even one question. I was given 2 minutes from a friendly Liberal on Committee, Patrick Weiler from West Vancouver.  But it is frustrating to have no right to participate on any committee. For that Greens need ten more MPs – 12 being the minimum number under our strange rules.  Three years to 12 MPs is my internal mantra these days!

Some of the same points that drive me crazy in pressing the government for appropriate action were made brilliantly in this opinion piece by Seth Klein:

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/05/05/opinion/canada-versus-ipcc-do-nothing-halves-which-can-be-done-quarters

Could there be a better description of the Liberals’ gong show of climate action than this great F.R. Scott’s poem about Mackenzie King:

Postpone, postpone, abstain …

Truly he will be remembered

Wherever men honour ingenuity,

Ambiguity, inactivity, and political longevity.

Let us raise up a temple

To the cult of mediocrity,

Do nothing by halves

Which can be done by quarters.

As of last week, we wrapped up MP Community Meetings in nine locations, on  each of the southern  Gulf Islands of my riding and in Gordon Head, Brentwood Bay, Sidney and Cordova Bay.

It was a real joy to see people face to face – or more accurately, mask to mask!  Turn-out after a two-year hiatus was lower then pre-COVID numbers, but that was a good thing as we were able to maintain distance, and also left windows and doors open for good ventilation.

All together over 200 constituents participated.  We are planning to hold more meetings before summer – but on zoom.

As was always the case in the past, constituents are well informed and came with interesting questions and comments.  Some key issues were raised in every session – climate, the affordability crisis in housing and the doctor shortage. We also dove into questions of the April 7 budget – details of what was there for housing – whether making flipping less advantageous from a tax standpoint, banning foreign ownership or providing tax rebates to homeowners who add a granny suite.  Many constituents expressed deep concern about the war in Ukraine. Others raised the question of Canada’s failure to move rapidly to rescue Afghanistan’s endangered former translators, as well as women and girls at risk.

As ever, the communities on Pender and Mayne Islands expressed their understandable frustration at the use of our waters as free parking for freighters. On this, I was able to report that I continue to press the Transport minister for action, as well as having coordinated with a supply chain of others aggrieved by the problem.  For those who do not know, the worsening situation stems from a failure to properly coordinate the arrival of bulk goods at the Port of Vancouver to be picked up by incoming freighters. The bulk cargo is basically two things – grain and coal.  The government has promised to end the thermal coal shipments as an aspect of our climate commitments, but has not yet done so. Hence my petition (please sign if you have not- deadline is Tuesday! https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-3919

The grain shipments used to be coordinated through the Canadian Wheat Board.  Since Harper abolished the Wheat Board no one is coordinating the shipments with the railroad companies, CN and CP. Now both private sector, CN and CP have a habit of cutting employees and then being unprepared for the grain harvest.  So I work with the Teamsters as well. They are very frustrated with management for cost cutting that also leads to unsafe working conditions. Further up the supply chain, the grain elevator owners and Prairie farmers struggle with losses and delays created by the railroad and by the inefficiencies of the Port of Vancouver. And those ships that show up for bulk shipments that have not yet arrived end up anchoring in the Salish Sea, particularly in Plumper Sound, and all the way up to off Ladysmith and Cowichan Bay.  Dragging anchor, polluting and diminishing the quality of life for residents.  Adam Olsen, Green MLA and I are working hard on this. Transport Canada has deflected responsibility by delegating solutions to the Port of Vancouver. No one is adequately engaging First Nations whose Douglas Treaty rights are also violated by the ongoing and worsening situation.  I am so grateful to the volunteers and concerned residents who formed the South Coast Ship Watch Alliance https://nofreighteranchorages.ca/about-us/.

Others raised the on-going threats to species at risk- Pacific salmon and Southern Resident Killer Whales. No one is satisfied with the Ocean Protection Plan.  Single use plastics remain a concern and the government’s draft regulations are full of loopholes.

Never short of work to do, we now have parliamentary rules that allow extending sittings to midnight. We did so the other day in a long and quite respectful debate on the anniversary of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKD1EZFYN98

Our response as a nation is a daily tragedy.

So I close this Mother’s Day missive with the call that we each and every one do something this week in solidarity with those mothers who went missing, to their daughters whose disappearances were met with neglect from authorities. Hang a Red Dress this Mother’s Day and commit to justice.

Love and thanks to all our mothers,

Elizabeth

Saanich-Gulf Islands Greens
http://www.sgigreenparty.ca/

The post Good Sunday Morning – May 8 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 04/05/2022 22:49:55
Context: Debate

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Madam Chair, it is an honour to rise today toward the end of the debate. We have some time left and some more speakers, but I think this take-note debate has been one of sincerity and has been heartfelt. I think we have seen some real change in the way we are able to discuss things in this place to say and to accept the inquiry.

I remember when the inquiry came out, not quite three years ago. When the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirited inquiry first said that this is a genocide, there was a great deal of response in the media as if that might not be the case. It has been stated by members on all sides of the House today without question. That gives a sense that we have made progress in understanding the scope, scale and gravity of the issue.

I want to start by acknowledging that we are here on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe peoples. I want to just also acknowledge the territory that I am honoured to represent here in Parliament, my riding name of Saanich—Gulf Islands being a corrupted English pronunciation of WSANEC, the WSANEC nation of the Coast Salish peoples. I am deeply indebted to the peoples of our territory.

I want to also begin by saying that I will be splitting my time with the honourable and terrific member of Parliament for Edmonton Griesbach.

There is a lot that has been said. With the time remaining for me it would be hard to add a great deal more, but in preparing for this and whenever I think about the inquiry, I do not want to talk about statistics. I just want to say as a woman from the culture of women, recognizing the privilege of the colour of my skin, that I am so lucky. I have a bunch of great women friends, but it is only my indigenous women friends who say things casually like, “I was left for dead in a dumpster”. I hardly know any close indigenous women friends who have not had the experience of the loss of close family members, particularly in the downtown east side in Vancouver. That statement of “I was left for dead in a dumpster” was actually in the context of sitting in a circle after this report came out in Victoria with a woman who I thought I knew really well. Her anglicized name is Rose Henry. She goes by the Tsilhqot’in name now of Grandma Rosa. I had no idea that my friend Rose, as a kid, had been left for dead in a dumpster after being beaten and abused.

These experiences are not statistics. These are our friends, our mothers, our aunties and our children. The levels of abuse and casual violence against indigenous women and girls is appalling and a human rights abuse. We have not responded with the urgency that we must. We went for years, as I am sure colleagues will remember, demanding that we get an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We got the inquiry. We got the recommendations, but women and girls are still going missing on a routine basis. Indigenous women and girls are still marginalized and at risk and we have 231 calls for justice to make that not the case any more. In the time remaining for me, I want to emphasize a few of them that stand out.

Call for justice 4.5, that I have mentioned tonight in questions and comments, is a call for a guaranteed livable income that will end the marginalization and take women and girls from being in a position of great risk to being safer by the security of having enough money to not be in poverty. It is pretty straightforward.

We also know from this inquiry that women who have gone missing are quite often, through their marginalized economic status, forced to hitchhike. They do not own a car. They are not going to be getting safe and affordable ground transportation because there is none. Our ground transportation system in this country is worse than that in most developing countries. Think about that. This report came out before Greyhound withdrew service right across Canada. I talk to my Nuu-chah-nulth friends, particularly Chief Judith Sayers of the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation. She has been a prominent supporter of a local bus company called Wilson’s bus lines that has been trying to stay afloat, trying to connect services. The government needs to acknowledge that we need VIA Rail to work for the marginalized.

We also need to address the huge threat of wellness checks in which indigenous women and girls die. A wellness check should not result in an inquiry and a coroner’s report. This also needs urgent attention.

The post We have not responded with enough urgency to address the crisis of MMIWG2S appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-05-05 20:37 [p.6728]

Mr. Speaker, my thanks to my hon. colleague from Jonquière for splitting his time with me.

We are in a terrible place now. When we were first getting used to the idea that we were in a pandemic and needed to adjourn Parliament on March 13, 2020, some of us stood in this place to say that by unanimous consent we were going to adjourn until April 20, 2020. It seems absurd now. I clearly remember saying that the Greens had given their unanimous consent, while wondering if we really needed to stay out as long as April 20. It seemed maybe a little extreme, but we would see.

We have learned a lot. We started talking about flattening the curve. We thought that would be adequate, because we were told it would be, but we have learned more. This has been a very steep learning curve. We could have learned faster, gone faster, and followed the models of countries like New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, the countries that decided to go hard and fast, using the kind of advice that the World Health Organization, Dr. Michael Ryan, recommended back then of, “Go hard, go fast. Don’t wait to be perfect. Speed trumps perfection.” I thought we were going fast and I certainly am not at the level of someone who wants to start casting blame.

I find this debate tonight difficult because, as much as there is blame to be cast, does it help? I do not want the people of Alberta to feel that the federal Parliament has decided to lay into them with clubs. It is pretty clear that their premier miscalculated badly and cost people’s lives.

I want to reflect a bit on something that I do not think gets said enough in this place. I think there is a perception in Alberta that people like me, who want to see the fossil fuel industry shut down, phased out over time and take care of the workers that that somehow means we do not love Alberta. I really love Alberta and I love Albertans.

I have so much respect for the grit of Alberta in facing major disasters. I remember very clearly, of course, the 2013 floods in Calgary. I went. I pulled rotted debris from people’s basements in High River because I found myself in the days after the 2013 flood in Calgary for the stampede and just thought I could be more useful if I got a friend and we went up to High River to see if we could help. I have the t-shirt that says, “Come Hell or High Water”. Mayor Nenshi decided that even though it looked impossible to have the stampede, they were going to have it. I admire that spirit.

Soon thereafter, during the 2016 fires at Fort McMurray, there was incredible community spirit with no one left behind. There was a very strong image of a patient, orderly evacuation with fires on all sides, and the residents of Fort McMurray moving out along the single road. If somebody’s car ran out of gas, they got into somebody else’s car. It was inspiring.

For Alberta to be the site of the highest COVID rates in North America is devastatingly frightening, because we know more about this pandemic now. We know about this virus. We know the longer the virus lives among us, the more likely we are in a human petri dish to have more dangerous variants. We do not know yet if it is all about getting vaccines in case a variant overcomes a vaccine. We are in a very dangerous place during this third wave.

Today we are marking Red Dress Day, to think about and to pledge solidarity with all of the families of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It was early June, two years ago, that the government had delivered unto it the report of the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirited peoples. One of the inquiry’s key recommendations was to shut down the “man camps”. At that point, the threat to human life was from what were called the “man camps” in the inquiry. Many Canadians may not know the term, but it meant that large construction sites represent a threat to the vulnerable, to the marginalized who have to hitchhike.

I know there was a very strong reaction from people in Alberta, and of course most of the workers are the dads, the grandads, the brothers, the sons and thoroughly decent people, but there is no question but that the evidence shows that missing and murdered indigenous women and girls are at more risk when there are transient camps of workers.

In COVID, I just want to ask why it is that we, public health officials and governments, decided that when others things had to close down, like mom-and-pop shops and various places where people might have been able to be better off than in a concentrated place like a work camp, the work camps were so essential that we could not shut them down. The highest rates of COVID in Alberta right now are in the region of the oil sands. They have very high rates.

In British Columbia the NDP Government of British Columbia has decided Site C is so important to continue, that we would not possibly think of shutting it down when it has outbreaks. We have outbreaks right now at the Site C dam site, the Kitimat LNG facilities that are being built, along the Trans Mountain pipeline construction link, the Coastal GasLink. All the man camps turn out to also be places where COVID flourishes.

One of the key things about the oil sands is that the workers commute by airplane. Members can think of poor Newfoundland and Labrador, where they were in the Atlantic bubble and felt that the rates were low enough to meet the requirement under Newfoundland and Labrador law that new Premier Andrew Furey had to call an election within a few months. Suddenly, they had an outbreak of COVID from the oil sands workers, and they are having them now. If we search this we will find it everywhere that academics and scientists are saying they have a problem with these fly-in, fly-out camps. One expert said that COVID did not just walk in there by itself, it showed up on an airplane.

While we worry about international borders and why we are not being tighter with our borders, how is it that we are so addicted to oil that we turn a blind eye to the impact of these man camps that we should have been shutting down, or at least ensuring that the work force there was not commuting across many provincial borders? There were ways, perhaps, to keep people in the construction industry working when many other industries were shut down, but we have turned a blind eye to the fact of these squashed, busy workplaces like slaughterhouses. We have shut down parts of our economy, but turned a blind eye to the places that seem to me, in reviewing the evidence, to be the places where COVID flourishes.

We have seen the mayor of Lethbridge, Chris Spearman, say, “We have done the least of the provinces. We’ve tolerated protests against masks and at the hospital and rapid vaccination clinic.” We need to do more. One of the Albertans I admire the most, because he is brilliant, is journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, who wrote a piece just a few days ago in The Tyee entitled “A Coronavirus Hell of Kenney’s Own Making”. I only mention the title so members can look it up.

He said the “numbers reflect, first and foremost, Premier Jason Kenney’s callous and persistent disregard for scientific findings and mathematical reality.” One of those mathematical realities is exponential growth. Alberta is in a dangerous place right now, and it is certainly not the fault of Albertans. We had a government in Alberta that, over Christmas, had a fairly significant portion of its elected provincial leadership decide it was okay to go on a vacation. As I dug into it, I found one of the ministers excused herself by saying she wanted to make sure she was helping the airlines in this economic crisis. I thought it was a facetious comment that would not land well, but then I read further and found that the premier had thought it was a good way to help WestJet and that there would be a kind of safety on an Alberta-to-Hawaii corridor that could somehow live outside the reality of COVID.

There were problems in leadership. There were problems of not leading by example. There were problems in not wanting to address the science of COVID by allowing the policies to be ideological. None of us can let this be ideological. We have to set aside whatever partisanship we bring to this and end up where Andrew Nikiforuk’s article ended, which was, “It’s time to pray for Alberta,” and I will also note that faith by itself does not do the work.

We need to do the work to help Alberta and Albertans in any way we can.

The post Why are “man-camps” exempt from lock-down? appeared first on Elizabeth May.

This weekend of Valentine’s Day is also a time marking Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This year is the thirtieth annual series of events and marches.

On Wet’suwet’en Territory, The Hereditary chiefs and matriarchs were holding a ceremony to honour the memories of the missing and murdered indigenous women when they were arrested on February 10, 2020. The hanging of red dresses along fences posts and trees has been a powerful symbol of those missing mothers and aunties and sisters and daughters. No one image spoke so powerfully to me of the failings of our government to meet its obligations to indigenous people as those of RCMP officers removing the red dresses. I guess any reminder of murdered and missing women is a threat to Coastal Gas Link.

There is a connection. The Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls reported its conclusion that large resource projects and labour camps pose a threat to vulnerable indigenous women and two-spirited people. Hitch-hiking is the only mode of transit for those without cars. Greyhound service is gone. And the camps – “man camps” as the MMIWG report labels them – create risks. Not that every construction worker is a threat to women, but some are. Violence and addiction increase in such settings.

This article in The Narwhal by Sarah Cox includes photos of the RCMP taking down red dresses. It also points out that John Horgan’s claim that the company has all the permits it needs is incorrect. https://thenarwhal.ca/rcmp-exclusion-zone-called-unlawful-as-police-arrest-matriarchs-at-unistoten-healing-camp/

This week’s massive response in solidarity actions across Canada have been inspiring – or horrific, depending on where you sit. This week I have heard friends say “we cannot have mob rule.” The news media wants to focus on what this costs our economy. All I can think is, with all the clear warning the BC and federal governments have had, what did they think would happen if the RCMP moved on to Wet’suwet’en territory to arrest Hereditary chiefs? We tried to tell them that full nation to nation consultation was required. Did they think that the resistance was down to a few individuals, who could be easily hauled away to enforce an injunction that turns our national police into private cops?

One of the strongest summaries of the “rule of law” argument came in this strong letter (slightly edited and published in the Globe and Mail) from one of my favourite constituents – Ronald Wright:

“As one who wrote about the Oka Crisis in my book Stolen Continents, I had a strong sense of foreboding when I heard BC Premier John Horgan invoke the “rule of law” to justify using force against the Wet’suwet’en pipeline protesters. Those same words were used often during the Oka Crisis by the government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1990.  Have we learned nothing in thirty years? Of many parallels, these stand out:

“1) Like the Mohawks, the Wet’suwet’en have never lost their ancient sovereignty as an independent people. Under international law there are two ways for a people to lose their sovereignty: by armed conquest, or by signing it away in a treaty. Neither is the case here.

“2) Like the Mohawks, the Wet’suwet’en have an ancient system of self-government that predates European occupation and is still alive. In the BC case, this is exercised by hereditary chiefs, who have consistently upheld their people’s rights since outsider encroachment began.

“3) The elected band councils set up under the Indian Act merely administer the small territories defined as reserves under the Indian Act. They have no jurisdiction over traditional territories beyond those boundaries, and no authority to make ‘agreements’ on what may be done there.

“With the Delgamuukw decision of 1997 and the Tsilqot’in decision of 2014, the Supreme Court has upheld aboriginal rights in BC and has said that the Wet’suwet’en unceded territory –in other words, land never transferred to Canada – may cover as much as 22,000 square kilometres. This means that neither the federal nor provincial government has any right to enforce its will there.  It is British Columbia and the RCMP who are breaking the rule of law.”

We must continue to push back on those who refer to the “rule of law” as though those who respect indigenous rights – and s 35 of the Constitution, for that matter – are outside the law. The fact is that economic damage and inconvenience for many travelers are the cost of Canada continuing to pretend we won a war and can do whatever we want to this land’s first peoples and the land that is their territory. Reconciliation and UNDRIP talk are in the air, but the mind-set of our governments appears hard-wired to fossil fuel extraction.

Meanwhile, there was news from 10 Downing Street. COP26 now has a president, replacing Claire Perry O’Neil, UK’s former Energy minister, whom PM Boris Johnson fired two weeks ago. More senior UK Tories, David Cameron and William Hague refused the role. It falls now to former secretary of state for international development Alok Sharma to steer COP26 in Glasgow to a successful conclusion.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/15/alok-sharma-cop26-success-climate-change?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A great deal of the success or failure of COP negotiations rides on the skill of the president. To get a successful result in November at COP26, Sharma not only has to build a strong team serving his presidency, he has to start crisscrossing the globe to build relationships, test ideas and press for early commitments to much improved targets and plans. When I look back at the dozen climate sessions I have attended, the character of the president is a huge factor. Laurent Fabius who succeeded in Paris, Patricia Espinoza who rescued climate talks in Cancun in 2010 as well as Stephane Dion who led the COP11 talks in Montreal are all remembered as spectacular chairs. The disaster in Copenhagen in 2009 was largely the fault of Prime Minister Rasmussen who fired his Environment minister half-way through the talks and took over himself. Rasmussen relied on back-room dealing and bad faith negotiation. But to most people watching these cumbersome, lumbering formal sessions, among and between 194 countries, the idea that it can all come down to a handful of people and their own talents may seem far-fetched. The world is depending on someone I had never heard of until yesterday’s announcement. With every day bringing more and accelerating bad news – locusts, storm surges and the hottest January on record, we all need to hope that Alok Sharma is a miracle worker. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/13/january-hottest-earth-record-climate-crisis

Have a great long weekend. Paul and Jenica and I are back in Parliament starting Tuesday!

Love and thanks,

Elizabeth

P.S. some friends asked me to attach links to some of my recent media and articles:

My interview with Evan Solomon on CTV where I try to explain the legal foundation of Wet’suwet’en land rights: https://podbay.fm/podcast/1039513210/e/1581551460

My article on the rising costs of the TMX (formerly Kinder Morgan pipeline): https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/02/12/opinion/elizabeth-may-asks-what-cost-canada

And lastly, friends have asked for a link to the wiki page leading to a Renaissance of Green Party vision and values. “GreensTogether”.

This weekly blog is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

The post Good Sunday Morning – February 16 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“We need a fundamental shift and that shift must begin with dignity for all Indigenous peoples,” said Ms. May. “Every Canadian has a part to play in implementing the recommendations of the inquiry”

The final report, released today, has more than 200 recommendations, including a call for governments and police to develop an effective response to human trafficking, sexual exploitation and violence.

“It means respect, an end to policies of assimilation, and strong support for health and education on and off reserve. It means ending poverty in Canada with a guaranteed liveable income.”

Green Party Indigenous Affair critic, Lorraine Rekmans said: “It must be a priority for any government to empower Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people to ensure an end to these horrors. We must invest in healing the trauma and empowering women to move forward. These recommendations must be enacted to send clear signals that we all find this situation intolerable.”

Ms. May said that she will read the inquiry’s 1,200-page report and she urged all Canadians to do the same. “My hope is that this report will help us to realize that the issues affecting Indigenous peoples in Canada are complex and cannot be addressed without full recognition of the terrible violence of centuries of assault upon their traditional cultures and values.”

####

For more information:
John Chenery
613-562-4916 ext. 215

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