SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

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

Mar/20/23 3:31:31 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, this is also not the first time I have presented a similar petition. The constituents in Saanich—Gulf Islands remain devastated by the deaths from the opioid crisis, both near our home and across Canada. The opioid crisis in Canada is a poisoning crisis. It has not yet been declared, but the petitioners call on us to declare it a public health emergency based on the number of deaths in Canada due to the poisoned drug supply and the illegal drug supply. The petitioners call for us to recognize it as a health issue and not a criminal issue. They call on us to act on the recommendations made by social workers, frontline workers, nurses, doctors, and organizations like Moms Stop The Harm, and decriminalize drugs in Canada.

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Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

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

Mar/20/23 5:14:12 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it may be that the Green caucus is the only one here prepared to say it has not decided how it is going to vote. There are many good and compelling reasons to want some sunshine and daylight on this matter, but the part that makes me not want to vote for the motion is the excessive hyperbole and partisanship and some of the cheap shots at people like David Johnston and at the Trudeau Foundation, calling it Chinese-funded. This sort of thing drives away independent-minded and really committed Canadians. Would the hon. member help me understand how we can approach this issue in committee without it becoming toxic?

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Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

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

Mar/20/23 6:17:09 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House on the lands of the Algonquin Anishinabe peoples. I am speaking today as a follow-up to a question that one might think was stale-dated, but it gives us an opportunity to pursue what was a remarkable success in Montreal at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It is nice to be able to recognize the success of anything in this stage of a planet on fire and biodiversity in free fall. I raised this matter at the end of November, before the conference occurred, when I was asking if the Prime Minister would be able to raise the profile of this event and encourage other world leaders to come; that question is definitely stale-dated. However, the results of what happened at COP15, which is titled the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” after the city in China where this event was supposed to have happened, as well as the global goals for 2050, are worth taking the time to recognize right now. I am grateful that the parliamentary secretary is here for the adjournment discussion. What did we accomplish? I will say, which I have not had a chance to say in this place, that the hon. Minister of Environment did a great job in negotiating and keeping some diplomatic heavy lifting going. This was a convention discussion where the cards that were dealt on this were not good; they were pretty bad. COP15 was supposed to have happened in September 2020. There were all the delays because of COVID, but the geopolitical cards were not good either. At basically the last minute, in June 2022, Canada said to the People's Republic of China that clearly it did not have a place to host this right now. Montreal is the host city of the Secretariat for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, so Canada offered to step up and invite everybody here. When I say “last minute”, six months may sound like a lot of time to people, but we know what it is like if we suddenly decide we are going to invite 30 friends for dinner at four o'clock in the afternoon, and they are due at seven o'clock. In UN terms, that is what we did. The dynamic here was very challenging in that the People's Republic of China remained the host in the context of being in charge. It was, in UN terms, the president of the COP. This meant that our Minister of Environment was a physical host in Montreal. Again, I give credit to the Minister of Environment; he actually put himself into an interesting position and worked in a very unusual diplomatic, successful partnership with the minister of environment for the People's Republic of China. What did we accomplish there? The goals are many and they are detailed. Today, I want to speak to today the 23 detailed targets. However, I am afraid that what we are going to see is the typical response out of Environment Canada: Here we go, our targets are 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030. Then it becomes a job of drawing lines on a map. The targets are not about lines on the map, which might even do a disservice to the targets of slashing pesticide use, reducing food waste and recognizing mother earth and indigenous sovereignty. These goals require far more transformational changes than lines on a map, where if an area is outside that line, it will be decimated. We need to focus and plan.

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Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

Ms. Elizabeth May

Mar/20/23 6:24:30 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, a lot was accomplished, as I said in my moment, but what I really want to focus on now is what is next. The question will remain: How do we recognize this language? The targets from Kunming-Montreal are truly transformative. This is the first UN document that has referenced mother earth; our relationship as humanity with mother earth; the leadership of indigenous peoples around the world; and the indigenization of our cultural approach, which has forever been, at least in industrialized modern society, exploitative, extractive and violent. This is a call for a transformation of our values, a change in our industrial systems and a requirement that we do more in how we conduct agriculture, aquaculture and forestry and that we change our ways while we still have time.

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