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by Jonathan Randall
Endangered Forests, Species Top Environmental Agenda for
Sierra Club of Canada
An Interview with Executive Director Elizabeth May
Elizabeth May, the Sierra Club of Canada's executive
director, first became heavily involved in environmental
issues in the mid-'70s fighting insecticide spraying on
forests near her home in Nova Scotia. She served as senior
policy adviser to the federal environment minister in 1986,
and was instrumental in the creation of several national
parks, including South Moresby in British Columbia, and in
drafting new legislation and pollution control measures. In
1988, she resigned in protest after the minister granted
permits for dam construction in Saskatchewan as part of a
political trade-off. A federal court later ruled that the
permits were illegal.
May received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the
Sierra Club in 1989, the United Nations Global 500 Award in
1990 and the Ontario Society for Environmental Education's
award for Outstanding Leadership in 1996. She has
represented the Sierra Club of Canada since 1990 and was
named executive director in 1993. The Club currently has
2,615 members in Canada.
Q: Canadians know all about America and Americans, but
Americans know very little about Canada and Canadians. What
are some of the biggest differences you see between the
environmental movements there and here?
We're smaller and poorer. The Sierra Club of Canada is one
of the strongest national environmental groups in Canada on
a really tiny overall budget. Canada has a strong, rich base
of grassroots groups across the country, many of which the
Sierra Club of Canada works with on a regular basis. Louise
Comeau of our Ottawa office, the most influential climate
activist in Canada, works in the Climate Action Committee
with over 200 environmental organizations across the
country, big and small.
Q: How do the differences in the political systems of Canada
and the United States affect the different approaches to
environmental problems?
Two major differences. One is that the provinces here have
far more clout than individual states in the U.S. The other
is that we have parliamentary democracy, in which the prime
minister, as leader of the party in power, can control the
legislators in his or her party. Members of Parliament have
to vote along party lines, otherwise they get thrown out of
the party. This means our lobbying scenarios are very
different from what Club activists do in the U.S. because we
can't twist arms and change votes. What we can do is raise
awareness and get that awareness mobilized in a way that the
key decisionmakers can see it. We also have far less
decisionmaking by legislators and more by key ministers. The
number of bills that move through our House and Congress in
any given session is probably a tenth of what the U.S. deals
with.
Q: Nine out of 10 Canadians live within 100 miles of the
U.S. border. Does that affect the way they look at
environmental issues within their own country?
The proximity to the U.S. has been a major help to us. Many
of the Club activists who helped us defeat the James Bay
Great Whale (Grande Baleine) project were from Connecticut,
Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New York. They made the
difference in defeating those projects. The electric power
to be generated was all for export. And almost all the
forest being logged in Canada is for export. We're a small
population and we're the world's largest exporter of forest
products. Because U.S. policies affect us so profoundly, it
makes sense to knit our campaigns together across political
boundaries. We have a lot of shared environmental concerns -
the Great Lakes, for one. And then there are a lot of issues
that are truly international, like climate change and ozone
depletion, that no one country can deal with just by itself.
Q: Does the jobs-vs.-the-environment debate get as much
attention in Canada as it does in the U.S.?
It does, but I don't think it's as persuasive. In terms of
the polling results we've seen, Canadians are stronger than
Americans on questions like, "Would you accept reduced
environmental regulations for economic growth?" Eighty to 90
percent of Canadians will say no. People will also say no to
accepting reduced environmental quality for higher
employment. The Sierra Club has done a lot of work pointing
out that the positions we're advocating will create jobs.
The public doesn't want the government to cut corners on the
environment. They tend to be very environmentally conscious.
In focus group testing around biodiversity, Canadians
completely support the idea that every species has the right
to exist, whereas I've heard that focus groups in the U.S.
say, "Yeah, most species are valuable, but you can't say
that every little tiny bug has the right to exist." The
right to a clean environment is something that Canadians
really believe in, even though we don't have it. But there's
a lot of public support for getting there.
Q: Are you following our upcoming elections? What are the
implications for Canada?
Implications for Canada with an anti-environmental Congress
or anti-environmental White House are always disastrous.
Bush was a disaster for Canada. He held back the Rio climate
negotiations, which was a disaster for the whole planet, not
just for the U.S. On the issue of climate change we clearly
need a strong environmental presence. There's no
question that Clinton's been a disappointment, but it's
still important for us that he gets re-elected.
Q: How are volunteers at the local level making a
difference?
Volunteers in the Ottawa area have been working very hard
for years in a large, quite spectacular area of wetlands
near the middle of the city. The Agassiz Group in Winnipeg
has gotten started in fighting to protect wetlands. The
Lower Mainland Group in B.C. is working to save important
wilderness areas near them. We have good volunteer activists
at the grassroots level. Many local groups have had
significant successes all on their own.
We just had a major victory this summer. We helped force the
Nova Scotia government to back away from a plan to bury
Canada's largest toxic waste dump containing 700,000 tons of
toxic waste. The estuary in the town of Sydney is heavily
contaminated by this toxic waste, is open to the sea and
surrounded by residential areas. There's a Sierra Club group
just starting up there in Cape Breton. We worked with them,
4-H, Catholic Nuns for the Earth and the local Mi'kmaq First
Nation. The burial plan is now scrapped, and we're looking
at a large community consultation process to pursue the very
best cleanup plan for the site. And thanks to the Sierra
Club campaign working on this issue with local groups, the
federal minister to the environment went down to Sydney. He
was the first federal minister to the environment to even
look at this area in 10 years. There are local Sierra Club
activists on the issue, but we worked with a lot of other
groups. We're the voice that they have in Ottawa. They'd get
publicity locally, but to get the federal minister of the
environment engaged, you need some national presence -
that's what we brought to it.
Q: Victories are understandably uplifting for environmental
activists, but not always so frequent. What keeps you going
in-between?
I've been doing environmental work in Canada for over 20
years. I don't know how I would live my life if I weren't
engaged full-time in trying to stop what humans are doing to
the planet. I really don't feel I have any choice. And the
sense that I have to do this work because it's critical has
only gotten stronger since I became a mother. Every time I
read statistics and look at climate change models that show
what's likely going to happen to the planet, I've gone
beyond being outraged for myself. I'm moved to even more
action because I don't want my daughter to have to deal with
these things. It's like breathing. I don't know how I'd live
if I didn't do this.
For more information:
Sierra Club of Canada,
1 Nicholas
Street, Suite 412, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 7B7, CANADA
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Sierra Club Prairies Chapter, 63 Albert St., Suite 411,
Winnepeg, Manitoba R3B 1G4, CANADA; (204) 444-2750;
e-mail:
<hebertjl@xpressnet.com>
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Sierra Club of Eastern Canada, 204-517 College St.,
Toronto, Ontario M6G 4A2, CANADA; (416) 960-9606;
e-mail:
<sierrac@interlog.com>
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Sierra Club of British Columbia, 1525 Amelia, Victoria,
B.C. V8W 2K1, CANADA; (604) 386-5255;
e-mail:
<sierrabc@cyberstore.ca>.
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