[Written by Elizabeth May. To receive current blog posts by email, as soon as they are published, you can subscribe here.]

Good Sunday Morning!

And, if it isn’t the Ides of March…

Not to be superstitious, but on Friday the 13th , Parliament adjourned. We set the date of April 20 to return, but essentially pre-approved staying out longer if required – or coming back sooner if economic and other pressing matters require it.

We are in uncharted territory.

[Written by Elizabeth May. To receive current blog posts by email, as soon as they are published, you can subscribe here.]

Good Sunday Morning!

And Happy International Women’s Day!

March 8, 1980 was a huge day for me in finding my path.  I had always wanted to be an environmental lawyer, but my parents’ decision to move us to Cape Breton Island had resulted in big financial reversals.  From 1973, when we moved, until 1980, I was waitressing and cooking in our family restaurant on the Cabot Trail, unable to afford university. The business was seasonal so in the off-season, through the winters of 1975-1979, I worked to stop aerial insecticide spraying of the forests.  Our campaigns were largely funded with my waitressing tips. 

Good Sunday Morning!

And welcome to March.

We do have reason to celebrate on this Sunday Morning.

Seven days ago, on a very good Sunday evening, Teck Resources issued a public letter withdrawing its application to build one of the largest oil sands mines in Alberta’s history – the Teck Frontier project. 

[Written by Elizabeth May. To receive current blog posts by email, as soon as they are published, you can subscribe here.]

Good Sunday Morning!

I just spent some time in jail..

Along with friends and colleagues Jody Wilson-Raybould, and Senator Pao Woo and Senator Kim Pate, on Friday morning I visited the William Head prison outside Victoria. In the evening, we toured a hell-hole of a detention centre in the basement of the Vancouver airport. It has served for decades as the “temporary” facility for people on their way out of Canada under deportation orders. It is about to be closed and replaced with a much more humane facility to open soon in Surrey.

Greens work on more than any one issue at a time. Restorative justice and humanity in our correctional facilities really matter. Before being a senator, Kim Pate worked her whole life for the rights of the incarcerated and fairness in our justice system. So she is making it a priority to get parliamentarians to tour jails. 

[Written by Elizabeth May. To receive current blog posts by email, as soon as they are published, you can subscribe here.]

Good Sunday Morning!

This weekend of Valentine’s Day is also a time marking Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This year is the thirtieth annual series of events and marches.

On Wet’suwet’en Territory, The Hereditary chiefs and matriarchs were holding a ceremony to honour the memories of the missing and murdered indigenous women when they were arrested on February 10, 2020. The hanging of red dresses along fences posts and trees has been a powerful symbol of those missing mothers and aunties and sisters and daughters. No one image spoke so powerfully to me of the failings of our government to meet its obligations to indigenous people as those of RCMP officers removing the red dresses. I guess any reminder of murdered and missing women is a threat to Coastal Gas Link.

[Written by Elizabeth May]

Good Sunday Morning!

Did you know that today - February 9th – is the deadline for the Canadian government to table its new climate target with the United Nations? That’s okay, Justin Trudeau and his environment minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, don’t know it either.

It is a little complicated. The Paris meeting, COP21, resulted in two agreements.

[Written by Elizabeth May]

Good Sunday Morning!

Happy Groundhog Day -- which for me now conjures the Bill Murray movie of that name. I half expected to wake up to Sonny and Cher “I’ve got you babe.” (Apologies if any of you have never seen the movie….and the movie’s premise of a day that repeats itself endlessly until it comes out right.)

The Groundhog Day theme may actually fit with what I wanted to share in this letter. We certainly have taken NAFTA and done it again. It is not perfect, but it is certainly a vast improvement. And all three Green MPs voted in support this week.

[Written by Elizabeth May]

Good Sunday Morning!

Last night was my last community meeting for January.  Today I head back to Ottawa for the resumption of Parliament.  Despite a round of significant winter storms, we only had to cancel one of the nine planned gatherings. We will be holding Saturna Island’s meeting in February and we have added another meeting for Sidney as well as so few people were able to make it as the snow kept falling.

I love that in Saanich-Gulf Islands my constituents, at least those coming out for community meetings, are so concerned about the on-going conflict in Wet’suwet’en territory. Overwhelmingly, those who spoke about the situation stand in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.

It is a source of outrage to many that Premier Horgan has refused to meet the hereditary leadership of the Wet’suwet’en, stating that he respects the “rule of law,” as though the hereditary chiefs do not.

[Written by Elizabeth May]

Good Sunday Morning!

Depending on where you are in Canada, you are likely dealing with one form of unpredictable extreme weather or another.  For those of us on southern Vancouver Island, folks in Winnipeg and St. John’s are entitled to think we are a bunch of wimps who cannot handle winter. But, honestly, as a Cape Breton girl used to fierce winds and howling blizzards, what we had here this week was just as cold and stormy as a bad snow day anywhere I have lived.  Here’s hoping you are reading this somewhere warm and cozy.

This morning, I am going to try to give you a decoder ring to the court cases swirling around the Trans Mountain (formerly Kinder Morgan) pipeline. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously on Thursday, dismissing the latest BC government case.  This was reported, in error, as though this was the last possible legal route to stop the pipeline. Link 

[Written by Elizabeth May]

A Hard Morning!

It is not possible to write a cheery “Good Sunday Morning” after the multiple tragedies of this week. As a country, we are in mourning with deep pockets of grief in ever widening circles around each victim. We grieve with increasing intensity as we learn more of the individual lives cut short by the missile strike against a civilian airliner.

We know who was innocent. Every life lost on the ill-fated Ukrainian Airlines flight was innocent, from the Ukrainian flight attendants to the Canadian-Iranian newlyweds, to the brilliant graduate students heading back to Canada, to the babies.

It is harder to know who was individually guilty, but many decisions led to this tragedy.