Earlier today in the House of Commons, MP Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan-Malahat-Langford) made a statement about the Cowichan Valley chapter of Earth Guardians climate strike and asked the government to take urgent action on climate change.
Statement – May 17, 2019
Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge 16-year-old Sierra Robinson and the Cowichan Valley chapter of Earth Guardians, who are organizing a youth climate strike for action in my riding today. An environmental consciousness is awakening in Canada’s youth, who are increasingly looking at the threat of climate change and to their future on this planet.
Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are warming our planet, and our current trend will see us arrive at an increase of between three and five degrees Celsius by the end of this century. The ecological and economic consequences of this warming will dwarf anything and everything humans have ever faced during our time on Earth.
Unfortunately, our federal government, through its continued subsidies to oil and gas, and its purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline, is not meeting the expectations of our youth. We have the skills, the technology and the know-how to make a transition to the renewable energy economy of the future. We just need the political will to make it happen.
Question Period – May 17, 2019
Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, we have a climate crisis before us with current global warming trends predicting a global increase of between 3°C to 5°C by the end of the century. Canada’s youth are looking to us, the elected officials, to embrace the crisis that is putting their futures in jeopardy with the same urgency that they are feeling.
The government claims to understand that there is a climate emergency, but it refuses to debate the issue today and it voted against the NDP’s motion earlier this week. When will the government put some action behind its words and treat this crisis with the urgency that it deserves?
