SoVote

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/31/22 10:06:39 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will just parenthetically say to the hon. member for Carleton that I did not object, but I think he has made his position well known, so perhaps he can rest assured. On the subject of my petition, on behalf of residents of Kitchener Centre, I am presenting a petition sponsored by the hon. member for Kitchener Centre calling for a review and immediate changes to Canada's voting system. The petitioners point out that the current voting system, known as “first past the post”, is almost unique in the world of democracies in presenting results that are perverse, in that the public will is distorted in the distribution of seats that occurs in the House following an election. They point out that in the 2021 election, the percentage of the popular vote versus the number of seats was quite disparate. They call for proportional representation as a system that ensures that any government elected with a majority of the seats actually entertains a majority of public support. They call for the immediate move to a proportional representation system to bring credible representation to Canadians.

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/31/22 10:59:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, many years ago—in 1988, to be precise—I was recruited by the spectacular scientist who headed The Royal Society of Canada, which is Canada's premier scientific body. He was Dr. Digby McLaren, and he realized they had a problem. The Royal Society had fellows, and they happened to mostly be fellows, so they asked this question: Why do we have such a high proportion of men? This was the beginning. It is hardly diversity and inclusion to recognize that white men dominated everything. Bringing in more white women is an improvement, but our society has overwhelmingly failed to have institutions that look like Canada. In the context of this debate, the research councils and the tri-councils have made it a priority to look at diversity and inclusion. Was that their decision or was it politically dictated by the Liberal Party, as some have suggested in this debate?

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/31/22 11:32:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is unappreciated by some in this place that the barriers to entry for women are quite significant and that they will not be broken down unless the first step is to ensure what used to be called affirmative action. That is just recognizing women like me, who are women of privilege by the colour of our skin. If we are going to also want to ensure diversity, inclusion and equity, we need to do more. I am reminded of one of the really good things that the Prime Minister did, which was to appoint a gender-equal, balanced cabinet. I vividly recall listening to conservative media commentators. By conservative, I do not mean capital-C conservative: that was not a partisan comment. They were on the national news saying, “Oh, are we now going to have less qualified cabinet members because the Prime Minister is forced to find 50% of them as women?” It was so insulting, but it was so ingrained that the cabinet ministers in this country, the members of Parliament, are all supposed to be white men, and they were from 1867 until Agnes Macphail was elected.

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Ms. Elizabeth May

May/31/22 11:33:41 a.m.
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The heckling that I just experienced was a personal attack to my personal integrity, and I take personal offence. I ask the hon. member to withdraw those remarks, because they are untrue, unfounded and based on malicious gossip. He should be ashamed.

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/31/22 7:07:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise tonight in adjournment proceedings to pursue a question I asked on March 28 during question period at two o'clock in the afternoon the day before we were expecting the emissions reduction plan from the federal government. My question to the minister was about what we were to make of the fact that there would be an announcement on March 29, knowing that by April 4 there would be a new IPCC report that could well make the emissions reduction plan outdated and require immediate overhaul. Not surprisingly, the parliamentary secretary who responded felt that we were really on track, but the parliamentary secretary did say that we will need to do more. With the three minutes I have remaining in my opening statement for tonight's adjournment proceedings, I will be brutally honest about the science and where we stand. There is no sugar-coating this. It is not easy. I do not say these things because I want people to be afraid or because I want people to despair, but I desperately want people to wake up, particularly the people who have the power to make the decisions over whether my children and grandchildren will survive on a livable, habitable planet, or endure unthinkable deprivations from climate breakdown. What we did not know when I asked that question on March 28 was what the third working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would say in its sixth assessment report, and it advanced the clock. It advanced our timetable more than I had expected. It shook me, and I have been working on the climate issue since 1986, when I was with Environment Canada. What the IPCC said was that to hold to 1.5°C, which is the target of the Paris Agreement, and at most we must try to, at the very least, stay as far below a 2°C possible global average temperature increase above what it was before the beginning of the industrial revolution. They are hard concepts to get our heads around and long to describe. What the IPCC said on April 4 makes the government's plan from March 29 completely useless. Doing better, doing more and trying hard means nothing if we miss the main point. The main point is this: The IPCC now says that we must ensure that between 2020 and, at the latest, before 2025, all around the world we must ensure that we stop addition and start subtraction. It is math; it is a carbon budget. We cannot go up anymore. We must peak and go down, and go down rapidly, such that by 2030 we would globally be emitting about half of the greenhouse gases that we did in 2010, or else. This is the part that gets hard. If we do not do that, we run the risk of hitting tipping points in the atmosphere that we cannot predict, which could lead to unstoppable, self-accelerating global warming. At the very least, we can look at what is happening right now to us, including here in Ottawa, with a very dangerous storm that killed 11 people. People did not see that coming. That is when we are at 1.1°C global average temperature increase. The heat dome in British Columbia killed 600 people in four days was also at 1.1°C. We have had wild fires and floods. We see what is happening at 1.1°C global average temperature increase and we are pretending that we have it under control, as we stand at the very edge of too late, and because it is not too—

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Ms. Elizabeth May

May/31/22 7:15:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, with one minute left, let me be very clear with my friend, the parliamentary secretary. Net zero by 2050 is fraud. Net zero by 2050 is fraud in the absence of the targets I mentioned earlier: peaking well before 2025, dropping in half by 2030, not adding, only subtracting. Approving Bay du Nord is adding. Building the TMX pipeline is adding. Having an emissions reduction plan that says that by 2030 Canada's production of oil and gas will go up by 21% is adding. What is it adding? It is adding to the almost certainty that my grandchildren will not be on a livable world because too many people thought it was too hard to do what must be done. I will not give up on the government doing the right thing, because the Liberals must know better. They must know better than what they are doing.

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