Elizabeth May

Science behind Petronas LNG approval 'fraudulent,' says former government geologist

Elizabeth May — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 17:02:56 +0000

How corrupt is the environmental review process? Or how is it that DFO, CEAA and NRCan decided that Petronas LNG was not a threat to the Skeena Salmon?

I do not use the word "corrupt" lightly. If not for a fairly random connection, I would merely be heartbroken at the environmental and climate atrocity wrapped up in the approval of Pacific NorthWest LNG. Instead, I am angry and deeply concerned that the Cabinet ministers who made the decision were denied key scientific evidence by the very civil servants who are mandated to provide them with the facts.

British Columbia's lax LNG regulations a disaster waiting to happen

Elizabeth May — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 18:03:09 +0000

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British Columbians need to have a say on the provincial government's commitment to link the province's economic future to a very large bet on LNG. The total number of plants currently proposed for B.C. approach in volume the entire current global capacity.

Peter MacKay's bluster over pipelines is thin smoke when it comes to facts

Elizabeth May — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 19:51:04 +0000

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There is a catechism of the fossil fuel industry, with oft-repeated claims that seem by repetition to escape examination. Peter MacKay's recent opinion piece on pipelines was a veritable greatest hits compilation of such claims.

The world's elite share stirring speeches but little action on first day of COP 21 climate talks

Elizabeth May — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 16:48:36 +0000

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Fixing what Harper broke, part two: The toxic culture in our House of Commons must end

Elizabeth May — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 15:16:03 +0000

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The first "to-do" list focussed on changes to policy and legislation brought in under the Harper administration. But the damage was not confined to omnibus laws and brutal ideologically motivated cuts. More subtle damage was done to the principles that underpin Westminster parliamentary democracy. Our system of government has limitations on abuse of power, but they are not codified.

Fixing what Harper broke: A to-do list for the incoming government

Elizabeth May — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 19:32:43 +0000

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We need a stock-taking. A "to-do" list. Some of what the Harper administration broke will be easy to fix; much will be very hard indeed.

What we must do is insist the damage be reversed. There is an equally long list of steps to take moving forward -- but we need to repair immense damage to nearly every aspect of federal law and policy.

Here's a start:

1) Fixing security law:

The Conservatives' demonization of 'political correctness' is a dangerous game

Elizabeth May — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 20:26:53 +0000

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While I was on a television stage August 6 in the Toronto CityTV building on Queen Street West, sparring and trying to get a word in edgewise with the leaders of the Conservative, New Democratic and Liberal parties, south of the border on a more crowded stage stood the seven contenders for the Republican nomination.

Regardless of faith, Pope Francis's statement on climate change is ambitious and powerful

Elizabeth May — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 16:23:03 +0000

It is increasingly odd to realize that the voices of the established order, sources of top-down control and out-dated structures, are suddenly allies. My experience for decades was to deride the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for perverse "structural adjustment," the World Bank for bad development, the International Energy Agency for focussing on expanding fossil fuel reserves, and the Vatican for policies so opposed to contraception as to ignore the threat of HIV-AIDS. I now find myself in the oddest of positions as a Canadian. They are all more progressive than my own government.

I dreamed of an all-women cabinet and it was beautiful

Elizabeth May — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 19:25:03 +0000

I could claim "last night I had the strangest dream..." It had to do with International Women's Day. And suddenly the male leadership decided it had really made too big a mess of things to be able to continue in good conscience.... And....political parties vaporized at the astonishing voluntary surrendering of power.. and with no parties... somehow the House of Commons reconvened with me as Prime Minister.

Now, given the chance, I get to assemble the best Cabinet I can. And I decide to put together Canada's first all-woman, all-party Cabinet. (It's only fair. Through most of our history Canada had all male Cabinets). And the nice thing is, there is no shortage of talent right now in the House of Commons.

Harper's anti-terror law will turn Canada into a police state

Elizabeth May — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:54:01 +0000

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Stephen Harper prepares to trample on workers' rights yet again

Elizabeth May — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 21:38:14 +0000

Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada and Member of Parliament for Saanich -- Gulf Islands, issued the following statement earlier today regarding the Harper Conservatives threat to use back-to-work legislation and force employees of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) to end their legal strike:

Climate negotiations at COP 20 will go down to the wire

Elizabeth May — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 21:17:58 +0000

By the time you read this, I will be in Lima, Peru at the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). When I say we are "down to the wire," many readers (being well aware of the threat of runaway climate change) may think it is already too late. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) continue to rise. Extreme and dangerous extreme weather events are on the rise. The Arctic ice is shrinking. The oceans are becoming more acidic. Impacts from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaching 400ppm (30 per cent higher than at any time in well over a million years) cannot be reversed.

Harper's assault on our national parks

Elizabeth May — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 19:03:03 +0000

Unlike our current prime minister's attack on climate policy and push for every pipeline and tanker in sight, this one is flying under the radar. In fact, Conservative Party talking points make great claims of having expanded the national park system.

The following is from the Conservative Party website:

Since 2006, the Government has taken significant action to protect our natural areas, including taking steps to add more than 160,000 square kilometres to the Canadian federal parks and marine conservation system -- a more than 58 per cent increase…

Parliament Hill shootings do not 'change everything'

Elizabeth May — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:23:23 +0000

Wednesday, October 22 was set to be a typically busy day in the House. From my first meetings in Centre Block on Parliament Hill starting at 7 a.m. to heading to my Confederation Building office for staff meetings, reviewing our amendments to try to stop the legislation to dismantle harm reduction sites (like InSite), improve legislation aimed at increasing hiring of veterans, and then on to meeting with the other MPs who fall into the category of representing small parties or independents.

The Iraq speech I did not get to give

Elizabeth May — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 17:36:12 +0000

I had thought that the debate on sending a military mission into Iraq would allow for me to make a 10-minute speech. Due to the motion for closure, I never had that chance. I had some rough notes of what I had wanted to say and decided to share them. Despite my deep doubts about the mission, the concern that the mission violates international law, and does exactly what the terrorists hoped we would do, I fervently hope to be wrong.

Mr. Speaker,

The debate today is one of the most important, if not the most important, of the 41st Parliament.

Let me start with some first principles. Fundamental underpinnings of the current situation on which all Parliamentarians, and indeed all Canadians, are agreed:

Elizabeth May speaks against military intervention in Iraq in Parliament

Elizabeth May — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 18:44:12 +0000

Mr. Speaker, with that, let me convey my thanks to all members of this House for the rare unanimous consent to allow a member from an unrecognized party to respond, although I do stand here recognized as a member of Parliament for the Green Party.

A $15 minimum wage will not solve inequality -- but it'll help

Elizabeth May — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 17:09:16 +0000

I am going to vote for the NDP's motion on reinstating the federal minimum wage. A federal minimum wage would only apply to federally regulated industries which comprise only a small portion of the workforce. The reaction to this motion has been fairly predictable. Labour supports it and the Canadian Federation for Independent Business opposes it. Both have some good points.

Here's the full text of motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should reinstate the federal minimum wage and increase it incrementally to $15 per hour over five years.

Elizabeth May: In September, march for climate sanity

Elizabeth May — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 18:36:09 +0000

This article was primarily written for an international audience, but I thought Canadian Greens might want to join me too!

On Sunday September 21 I will be with my daughter in New York, marching with tens of thousands of concerned citizens -- demanding action on the climate crisis. The march is timed to build pressure on world leaders and in support of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Solutions Summit on September 23.

In December 2013, I was in Warsaw at the 19th Conference of the Parties within the world's legally binding climate treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change when the Secretary General announced the summit. He wants to push governments to make real progress.

Staking the moral high ground: Why the Green Party exists

Elizabeth May — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:13:51 +0000

What follows is my original piece rebutting a National Post editorial. The NP editors requested cuts and changes, which I accepted.

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How not to protect the lives of sex trade workers

Elizabeth May — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:49:12 +0000

The ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada was pretty clear in the Bedford case. The laws were preventing women (and men) in the business of selling sex from being unacceptably vulnerable to violence and murder. We only need to remember the horrors of the Pickton hog farm to know that we were systematically failing the most marginal in our society. The Supreme Court told Parliament to fix our laws to keep sex trade workers safe.

Instead, Bill C-36 makes their lives more precarious than before the Bedford decision.

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Together, we can stop Enbridge's pipelines and tankers

Elizabeth May — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 18:10:28 +0000

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Train travel in Canada is running off the rails

Elizabeth May — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 15:59:53 +0000

There has been a lot of attention of late to what moves on Canada's rails. Train derailments, disasters such as Lac-Mégantic and near-disasters, such as the railcars loaded with toxic diluents that were suspended on a crumbling bridge over the Bow River during the June Calgary floods, have focused on the threat of unsafe rail cars and inadequate infrastructure. It really matters to accelerate the complete phase-out of the unsafe DOT-111 cars moving hazardous goods. Tragedies such as Lac-Mégantic must never happen again.

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For young people, the future ain't what it used to be

Elizabeth May — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:48:26 +0000

"Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world."

- Hannah Arendt

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Pipeline politics muddle the Fraser Institute's reading skills

Elizabeth May — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 03:59:35 +0000

The HuffPost blog from the Fraser Institute's Senior Director, Natural Resource Studies, Kenneth Green, set out to make me look uninformed based on my submission to the U.S. State Department on the proposed Keystone pipeline.

From his first words, "Recently, Green Party leader Elizabeth May orchestrated an open letter to United States Secretary of State John Kerry..." it was pretty clear he didn't grasp the concept of writing a letter. "Orchestrated?" "Open letter?"

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Four damning facts about the Keystone XL pipeline

Elizabeth May — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 16:02:16 +0000

Two weeks ago, I wrote to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to urge him to reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

In the letter I was clear about four Keystone XL facts:

- Keystone hurts the Canadian economy: The Keystone pipeline -- along with the other proposed pipelines across the country -- would carry unrefined bitumen mixed with "diluents" (dilbit). These projects would make Canada's economy even more dependent on the export of unprocessed fossil fuels, leaving us in a vulnerable position when the carbon bubble bursts.

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Places you will never find Stephen Harper

Elizabeth May — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:58:19 +0000

The title might suggest I am about to point out you'll never find him at the Saturday Farmer's Market on Salt Spring Island or the Galiano Island Literary Festival, where I happen to be at the moment. But this blog is not intended to be the event equivalent of Yann Martel's reading list for the PM, sub-titled "books we don't think he will ever read."

No, I have been meaning to share for some time the number of places where every previous Prime Minister would be routinely spotted, but where a sighting of Stephen Harper would be as rare as seeing a pterodactyl soar over the Peace Tower.

There are a lot of traditional Prime Ministerial places and events where Stephen Harper is a "no show."

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What if we treated 'labour' as 'people?'

Elizabeth May — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 19:04:41 +0000

It used to be understood that a healthy economy included low unemployment and available jobs right across the country. Pockets of persistently high unemployment would receive help in stimulus investments and in enhanced unemployment insurance coverage.

Now, all that has changed. Just as ownership of raw resources is globalized, with multinationals from all around the world owning oil sands mines and wanting to ship out raw bitumen, so too is labour unhinged from local. Without loyalty to what is local or even what is Canadian, workers are stateless, pressured by competitive forces and downsizing. Employment is precarious.

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2013 saw many environmental wins -- but too many losses

Elizabeth May — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 19:07:26 +0000

I have been over the last few days, like most Canadians, getting the deluge of retrospectives on 2013. Rob Ford's name looms large in these reviews, along with Duffy and Wallin, Senate expenses and shenanigans.

This review will not mention those names. The highs and lows of 2013 as I saw them:

The "Lows"

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Fossil fuel economy has short and painful future

Elizabeth May — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 13:48:08 +0000

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The Warsaw aftermath: Can this process succeed?

Elizabeth May — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 21:30:27 +0000

I am now back in Ottawa, resuming the normal duties of trying to amend government legislation that undermines various aspects of the Canada we love -- criminal justice, labour laws, harm reduction, and so on -- but the events of the week in Warsaw are much with me.

The 19th Conference of the Parties of the climate convention managed to advance the process only minimally. The hoped-for injection of urgency from the Philippine delegation's brave call to greater commitment, fell on deaf ears. Nevertheless, here is a quick and dirty (emphasis on the "dirty") summary of COP19 decisions:

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