Gettin' Political

For the past couple of weeks in Ottawa, I've been having way too much fun playing with friends, MPs, and fantastic people in the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. Some highlights include:

Making a giant invoice for the government of Canada for the cost of inaction on climate change, since it wasn't addressed in the new federal budget. (Sir Nicholas Stern estimates that this cost will be around $71,900,000 per year for Canadians - yep, that's almost 72 billions bucks.)

Look - even Stephen Harper showed up to present us with a cheque.


Attending Clean Air Committee hearings in Parliament all last week to see how this special committee would re-work the government's proposed environmental legislation. Even though they mostly spent time saying things like "I think section 1(a)4 should be replaced with subject 1(b) 5.2" , the politicians also got some real zingers in at each other. They also got a ton of work done - all the opposition parties joined together to force some strong amendments on meeting Kyoto Protocol targets, penalties for businesses that emit too much carbon, and the creation of climate change "hot spots" which will be targeted for protection.

We were also on hand to share tasty fortune cookies with MPs, minions and other assorted politicos attending the Committee hearings.

I mean, who doesn't need a little encouragement cleverly disguised inside baked goods?

This past weekend, I went to a great teach-in held by the Council of Canadians on the proposed US-Canada Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) called Integrate This! It was really educational and also, to be honest, a little bit frightening. I'd encourage you all to educate yourself on this issue because it could have a huge impact on our sovereignty over natural resources (including oil and water), health care, military, transportation regulation, environmental policy and lots of other really key areas.

My friends Rosa & Ben were invited to speak about climate change & the SPP - and they were totally amazing. They reminded me of how articulate, heartfelt & plain old damn smart young people often are, even in front of 600 people, about 5 TV cameras, Avi Lewis and a few heckling members of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (we only heckle out of love).


Lastly, we made sure to let our leaders know that young people in Canada are proud of the work they've been doing, and that we hope they can keeping on working together to make the (newly re-named) Clean Air & Climate Change Act happen! Sadly, the conservative government is threatening to block the bill by refusing to put it to a vote in the House of Commons, but hopefully they'll come around. Maybe they just need more fortune cookies?

On a non-political note, it's finally getting to be spring in Ottawa. Here's a picture of a partially-melted Rideau Canal and a blue blue spring sky:


I hope it's warm where you're at too!