With all respect to the hon. parliamentary secretary, I suggest to him that his three tiers are not enough. We have to have airport security as a priority and border security as a priority.

When the unions that represent border service agents say they think smugglers will get the upper hand, Canadians should be worried.

When the RCMP officers are pulled from our airports for austerity reasons, I think we should all be concerned. It is a small amount of prudence for a large amount of benefit.

Pierre Poilievre: Mr. Speaker, the RCMP as the police of jurisdiction will continue a police presence at the Kelowna and Victoria airports with routine patrols and in response to 911 emergency calls for service. I assure the member that the RCMP is well equipped, well trained and well positioned to continue to carry out this essential function. We will support our national police force in so doing.

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As well, the RCMP presence was withdrawn from Kelowna. Although Kelowna is in quite a spectacularly beautiful part of Canada, in the Okanagan, it happens to be, according to security experts with whom I have consulted, something of a thoroughfare for the smuggling of drugs and weapons. It is in an area where there are significant markets in northern Alberta and, without the RCMP detachment at the Kelowna airport, there is a concern that there will be an increase in drug dealing and other offences.

This comes at the same time as significant cutbacks in border security agents. According to the union representing the border guards, the Canada Border Services Agency has had cuts of up to 1,000 people. A lot of us saw the news coverage of the loss of the canine division, which was very efficient, effective and accurate at detecting the presence of illicit drugs and narcotics and so forth at borders. We have lost the canine division, we have lost the workforce of Canada Border Services agents who worked with that canine force, and we are losing security along the Canada–U.S. border at the same time that these cutbacks at the RCMP have lost us protection in our airports.

I have to say that I find this rather baffling, coming from an administration that has fashioned itself as being tough on crime and as being one that wants to protect Canada and Canadians from the threats of violent crime and the threats of illegal and illicit activity. This is in fact not just affecting particularly the Canada Border Services agents, not just affecting so-called backroom arrangements, agents and operations, but actually will affect the front-line operations of border security agents in such a way that the president of the union feels that smugglers will get the upper hand.

It really would be appropriate for the federal government to revisit these ill-advised cuts and to restore and replace the presence of RCMP officers in the class 2 airports, such as in Victoria and in Kelowna, and at the same time to revisit the cutting of border security agents. These are ill-conceived cuts that will cause far more damage through the loss of security than they can possibly gain in austerity.

Pierre Poilievre: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for providing me with the opportunity to respond to some of her concerns. Like other police services across Canada, the RCMP in British Columbia provides on-site policing at airports. Airport security in Canada is designated into three tiers across the country.

Tier 1 includes larger airports with policing detachments such as Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver and similar other larger centres. The policing detachment in each tier 1 airport is provided by the police of the jurisdiction in that municipality where the airport is located.

Tier 2 airports are located in medium-sized municipalities that include cities like Kelowna or Victoria.

Tier 3 airports are located in small communities across Canada and do not have dedicated police presence as part of their security measures.

Security assessment of all airports is a continuous effort of Transport Canada.

The funding for airport security measures is paid directly by Transport Canada to the airport authorities and the municipality.

The RCMP provision of policing services under contract is conducted through co-operation with the municipality and the chief operating officer in each airport.

Total security operations for each airport include various measures, for example, perimeter fencing, employee security passes and controlled access zones. Budget allocations by Transport Canada are based on the assessment to determine the risks and need for security at each airport.

In 2012, Transport Canada estimated that existing security measures as a whole at tier 2 airports, including Kelowna and Victoria, other than dedicated police officers and detachments, were sufficient to ensure public safety at these airports.

We have confidence in Transport Canada’s assessment that the overall security package at Canadian airports, including Kelowna and Victoria, provide maximum security and safety measures for all Canadians. Let me assure the House that the policing presence at Kelowna and Victoria airports is ongoing through routine patrols and by responding to all emergency 911 calls for service.

With that being said, I thank the member for her query and I now anticipate her follow-up.

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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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Elizabeth May’s Holiday Recipes

Biscotti (Mandebrodt-kosher version)
Charleston Light Dragoon Punch
Croissant Cheats
Divine Cheese Melts
Eggplant Soufflé
Hollandaise Sauce
Poulet Marengo

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Pockets of old growth are being discovered and documented by the organization that sponsored the meeting, Ancient Forest Alliance (www.ancientforestalliance.org). Ancient Forest Alliance is new on the scene, founded in January 2010 by Ken Wu. In less than a year it has grown quickly as an important voice in forest protection in BC.

What struck me about the AFA team was its idealism, its energy and its youth. For those of us who have been in conservation battles for decades, it was electrifying to listen to a new generation of young activists who are passionately committed to this land and its forests.

Adriane Carr, Paul George and I found it reminded us of ourselves in the mid-1980s fighting to protect Gwaii Haanas. Yet, these young activists have a different energy. Something hard to articulate is their knowingness—an awareness of the fact that the lines they draw in the sand are around tinier and tinier ecosystems.

As you read this I will be at the climate negotiations in Mexico, where the early dispatches of calls for action are from the global climate youth movement. Over 1,000 young people from forty countries have made their way to the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16). Youth are at the forefront of the call for global climate action.

The chair of COP proceedings has the discretion to recognize representatives of civil society. While there is no obligation to do this, UN practice allows two interventions a day from those not speaking for nation states. On the first day, youth demanded protection of global forests as carbon sinks. A young New Zealander, Emma Moon, spoke on behalf of global youth in demanding a proper classification system for forests, distinguishing between natural forests and plantations.

On the third day, youth took the stage again. One of my colleagues, Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu, who serves as climate critic in the Green Shadow Cabinet, is already in Mexico for the conference. She wrote that the youth provided ‘a moment of hope.’

A twenty-two-year old young woman, Hanna Smith of the UK, spoke on behalf of the UK Youth Climate Coalition. ‘We are reaching the end of the first (Kyoto) commitment periods, and we—the International Youth— are asking you to look beyond your national interests and towards the interests of us all as global citizens,’ Smith told UN leaders. The youth urged negotiators to take seriously the proposal from Grenada that emission reductions be made aggressive and sufficient to avoid a global average temperature increase of 1.5oC. According to Adriana, the youth were ‘broadly applauded.’

Meanwhile, closer to home, on October 21, United Nations Day, students from Salt Spring Island schools held the 5th Annual Children and Youth Peace Assembly. They launched the ‘peaceworks’ project asking all of us to sign on on-line to a ‘command statement’ calling on ‘the United Nations and all the governments of the world to bring world peace and the complete end to all wars on planet Earth by November 11, 2018—100 years to the day that the treaty to end all wars was signed (www.sd64.bc.ca).

Looking to our children for leadership is not really new.

We have embedded in our collective consciousness (regardless of religion) fragments from gospel (‘And a little child shall lead them…’), and song, (‘we rise again in the faces of our children’) But there is a peril in recognizing youth leadership. It lies in the generational cop-out: ‘these will be issues for the next generation. They will be wiser….’

Ending war, finding peace, eliminating poverty, saving what’s left of ancient forests and rare species, and weaning our addiction to fossil fuels are not issues with long time lines. The need for action is well past its ‘best before’ date.

We cannot abandon our children to solve these issues where we have failed. It is our responsibility as adults, no matter how grey our hair or aching our bones, to fight ever harder for our children’s future. It is in that compelling honesty of youth, in their energy and clear-eyed statements of the changes that must come, that we should find inspiration and resolve.

In the face of evidence to engender despair, it is the young who keep alive in us that most courageous of emotions—hope.

Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and youth emeritus. For full disclosure, Ken Wu is also working part-time on her campaign to be elected as the MP for Saanich Gulf Islands.

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