Alberta budget weakens environmental, climate monitoring: Opposition
“We will have diminished capacity,” said Marlin Schmidt, New Democrat environment critic. “We won’t know if we’re meeting environmental standards or not.”
A group of youth were forcibly removed from the House of Commons Monday
morning after staging a protest demanding real climate action from the
new Parliament. One of the participants, Julia da Silva, explains what
motivated today’s protest in Ottawa.
He said now is not the time to make cuts to education, period.
“When you have a province that desperately needs innovation and diversification, forcing people away from post-secondary to a shrinking job market seems counter-intuitive …it’s our post-secondary students that are very often innovators and entrepreneurs,” he said.
It is with that belief that I speak to you today. We are in a climate crisis. This crisis is an unfortunately logical conclusion of centuries of colonization of Indigenous lands, and the oppression and abuse of the world’s Indigenous peoples – here in Nova Scotia the Mi’kmaq Nation. This colonization of land and people enabled the accumulation of wealth by a few, as a result of taking the wealth of many. In the past few decades corporations has been able to amass so much wealth that they have paid for access to innumberable government decision making processes and public forums, including those that are meant to address the climate crisis. This is the root of the climate crisis, and we cannot forget that as we make greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. This is a crisis of inequality, wealth accumulation, and political power that is now manifesting as climate change.
The conclusion: “Conservatives missed out on thousands of potential votes across the country thanks to a weak climate plan.”