Canada is faced with multiple crises, including climate change and capitalism, according to the leaders of the Green Party of Canada, at a town hall meeting in Campbell River on March 2.
Green Party of Canada leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault were introduced to the attendees by Jessica Wegg, the party’s candidate for the North Island Powell River riding in next year’s federal election.
May and deputy leader Pedneault made some introductory speeches, which included a joke made by May about feeling inadequate standing beside Rainbow Eyes for only being arrested once.
Rainbow Eyes, the party’s Second Deputy Leader (as of Feb. 8) and the critic of Indigenous Affairs, spoke earlier about the importance of honouring mother nature through what all have faced through the colonial system, protecting the land from resource extraction, and a brief acknowledgement of her arrests at the Fairy Creek Blockade.
“In what has become Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience, thousands of arrests, I was arrested five times,” she says. “The colonial system doesn’t see Indigenous people standing up for Mother Earth as something that is in our DNA, something that is called, something we hear from the depths of our being. I think all you Green Members understand this.”
Rainbow Eyes mentioned she is facing jail time (for seven counts of criminal contempt) for up to 51 days. She will not know until April 4 or 5 when sentencing comes down from Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson.
May also spoke about Canada having an opportunity to become the most creative generation of humanity since human kind became bipedal.
“This is our moment to be the ones who save this planet, and ourselves, and civilization, but it won’t be if we are talking about tweaking around the margins of the status quo. We have to turn that table over and start a new,” May says.
Pedneault, in his speech, says he believes things need shaking up.
“We have a country that is faced with multiple crises at this very moment,” he says. “People are looking for that north star, this reason to be hopeful for the future. We are seeing our politicians, the influences among us, peddle narratives of hatred and anger. There is anger in the country. I don’t know about you guys, but I am angry. I feel like a lot of the things that made this country work, and they are not to be taken for granted, are slowly slipping from our fingers.”
He spoke about his childhood and how his mother faced mental challenges, being on welfare, but how he was still able to forge a life for himself, compared to many of the children he has worked with in refugee camps and war zones who have not been afforded the same opportunities, despite being “more capable and intelligent than” he is.
Pedneault hopes the party will demonstrate in the upcoming months that Green isn’t just a colour and it’s not just a party, but a movement. A movement, he says, was built by people convinced Canada can do better. He also lamented about Canadians living in a bubble and isolating themselves from their communities due to the current economy occupying their time trying to make ends meet.
“All of this time is stolen away by a system that has also been contributing and continues to contribute to the environmental disaster we are in. It’s an extractivist system. It extracts from nature (and) it extracts from human beings, accumulates extraordinary wealth in the hands of a very few fortunate people and leaves the rest of us chasing our tails, exhausted, (and) trying to find purpose.”
Pedneault says there is no one in Ottawa fighting for what he says is the most important thing, “our kids and their well-being,” adding they will not flourish or inherit a healthy Canada if the country continues down its present road and fails to preserve “Mother Earth, and its beauties and its wonders” for future generations.
Another topic discussed by the leaders was the resource industry, including protecting old growth.
May took aim at Paper Excellence, a pulp and paper manufacturer owned by Jackson Wiljaya Limantara, which owns seven facilities in Canada and is the country’s largest player in the industry. Wiljaya has refused an invitation to appear before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Natural resources twice. May believes Wiljaya’s means to purchase these facilities are connected to China and bemoaned the lack of review to regulate foreign interference in Canada’s paper mills and resource industry.
One solution was to stopping the exporting of raw logs and insist on Indigenous governance over Indigenous lands and how forests in those lands are treated and banning the logging of old growth. However, this would require a reexamination of the Constitution Act (1867 and 1982) regarding forestry.
READ MORE: Elizabeth May Announces North Island-Powell River candidate in Campbell River
May spoke about Green Parties around the world, and how almost all of them share the same values. She also talked about doing whatever she could to help Sonia Furstenau, leader of the Green Party of BC, in the upcoming provincial election, and how Aislinn Clancy, a member of the Green Party of Ontario (Kitchener Centre riding), won more votes in the province’s by-election on Nov. 20, 2023, than every party combined.
“That sets us up for all kinds of things for electing more Greens federally in Ontario,” says May.