Christie McLeod: Advocating for Climate Change

This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty One territory, the traditional territory of the Anishnawbe, Cree, Oji Cree, Dakota, and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis nation.

This is Humans, On Rights. A podcast advocating for the education of human rights.

Here's your host Stuart Murray.

I'm delighted to welcome the guest today.

Christie McLeod, Christie's an articling student at Miller Thomson LLP.

She also does some volunteer work.

She's a policy advisor with the lawyers for climate justice and fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.

So she's on the leading edge of all matters pertaining to the environment and Aboriginal law. Christie, welcome.

Thank you.

It's great to be here with you actually know for sure.

No thanks very much.

So you're, you're, where are you today? You're in-

I'm calling in from Vancouver which is the unseated territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people.

Christie, let's go back to what I would call the beginning when you and I first started chatting and back in 20015, you're a student at global college.

Um something made you get very interested in human rights and you did something about it.

You created something, you’re founder of the hub.

Let's talk about that.

It was when I was at global college studying human rights and global studies and I was also doing the international development studies degree at UofW.

University of Winnipeg and I noticed something that continually happens to me, I would hear it about an event the day after it would happen.

I think the worst instance was when Romeo Dallaire came and I didn't hear about it until the day after it happened and I was distraught and this would happen to several of my other friends, they would hear about an event that I went to and be like, oh I really wish I had heard about this event and it happened enough times that I decided, you know, maybe we should have a central space uh to hear about all of these great events that are happening in Winnipeg.

And so I created a website called seeking social justice and having no web design skills.

It was a very basic, not just the most attractive looking website and I think most of its viewers were members of my immediate family.

Um, but it really solidified This idea that there was a lot happening in Winnipeg.

I would compile the amount of events happening on a monthly basis and this list would have maybe 50, 60 events even in the middle of winter in Winnipeg, there'd still be tons of events and marches happening.

And so it was that website that I then approached Dean Peachey, who was the Dean at Global College shortly after graduating and the two of us decided to create something called the Human rights hub and go to the Winnipeg Foundation for funding to try and make that a reality.

So it was really a combination of both being sort of so interested in human rights, but trying to ensure that events didn't happen and just pass by and people would sort of say, hey, what a great advantage would say, I never even heard about it.

Well there's so many great names of people from outside of Winnipeg coming to Winnipeg and then so much knowledge within Winnipeg is already that I thought when I went to these great events, you know, it's really a shame that there's not more people here hearing this, I wish more people had come to hear this great knowledge or about this really important human rights issue.

And so it was really just wanting to amplify the voice of the individuals and organizations that were already doing such great work here in Winnipeg.

Well, one of the things that I admire that you did when you first started this was you gave a platform for people that wanted to blog or people that were interested in human rights in various areas and so you kind of created a space, a safe space where people could, you know, be very engaged in human rights conversations and and you you allowed that space to happen and I think that's amazing talk to us a little bit about what what did you sort of see there and why did you sort of feel that that was important.

Winnipeg gets a hard rap sometimes from people within it.

Winnipeg and people outside of Winnipeg look at all of this is happening.

And I think that's one of the great successes of the hub was having records of data and so going through the events calendar that we had for several years and saying, look, there was over 1000 human rights events in Winnipeg this year alone, having data like that to show people, you know, it's not just me saying, look at Winnipeg, it's awesome.

It's actually hard data to prove that our human rights sector is so vibrant and there's so much happening And same thing with created a master list of organizations and I just continue to add to it over the years and organizations popped up and I think it has over 350 organizations somewhere around that number today.

And those are organizations based in Winnipeg, working on human rights issues in Winnipeg or more broadly.

And I think that that's really sort of central to this whole point about why the hub was successful because I think people were looking for a place to sort of park information or people had information, they didn't know where to go.

And so you gave them sort of that home and that opportunity.

I think one of the things that you also did was there was an issue here in Winnipeg around one of the restaurants that was having some issues in the workplace environment.

And I think you were very instrumental in providing a platform around that.

You want to talk a little bit about that.

There was an instagram account called not my Stella's hashtag not my Stella's that was launched and that was to raise awareness about some of the harassment and issues that were happening at the chain of restaurants in Winnipeg.

The person and people who founded that instagram account were sharing the stories of different employees and what the human rights have did was take that account and move it on to a website.

So we did a blog post sharing this so that people who weren't on instagram or who hadn't seen that could hear about this important issue.

And that was done by one of our bloggers, Amelia for me er 48 she brought the issue to my attention on a friday night like 10 p.m.

She was like can we have a phone call, this is really important and yeah, so we we amplified the message quite a bit.

I think we broke the story before CBC did and so our blog got a lot of traction just because it was the first website talking about the instagram account and the important work that those people were doing through their account to raise the profile of human rights issues happening at the Stella's restaurants.

And I just have to ask you when you kind of first started looking at this idea, did you ever think that it would have that kind of an impact.

No, it's it's been remarkable, especially considering the predecessor the seeking social justice.

I it was amazing to see that transformation into the human rights hub and then to see the human rights hub continue to live on.

Um I think it launched in October 2015, and then I actually moved to Toronto to begin law school in September 2016.

And so that was a little bit earlier than I had perhaps thought I was going to leave Winnipeg and ended up managing the hub throughout law school.

And and that presented a lot of challenges just in terms of time management and to see the hub continue on now, for those of you who don't know, the hub is launched with the emerged sort of with the core, the city of human rights Education and those two organizations are sort of working parallel.

And so, to see the hub continuing on without me managing the helm of it is really exciting.

Well, it's one thing to that will be very amazing.

You know, anytime you looked at your site, you're linked inside your personal site Christie the fact that you're very proudly have the founder of the Human rights Hubble, Winnipeg is really, really important because that it is your, it's your baby, if you will, you've created something pretty amazing and I think the opportunity that you've created for something that can grow and participate in this whole human rights conversation is really amazing.

So let's continue on a little bit in the sense that you've been studying?

Uh but you obviously law is something you were very interested in and one of the things that you did, I want to talk a little bit about this paper that you submitted to the faculty of the Environmental Studies Masters and environmental studies at York University.

And this is in March 25 and 2020, it's called, what is Canada's fair share of the global emissions burden, an examination of fair and proportional emissions reduction targets.

Why did that sort of grab your attention and how did that create your sort of sense of advocacy efforts moving forward to back up a little bit just to give a bit of context.

So I was studying Lost School at Osgood in Toronto and focusing primarily on environmental law and through a series of ongoing opportunities.

I found myself looking more and more into climate change and climate policy and for familiarizing myself with the climate science and doing that, I realized that I needed to learn a lot more about this and that that was a core interest of mine.

And so I actually petitioned the york University to allow me to enter a Master's degree as part of the joint program after the second year of my law school.

And so they haven't done that before, but they agreed that it would be worth a try.

So then I was able to spend a full year just diving into climate change, which was a nice break from law school.

And yeah, and so then and then my final year was sort of a mix of Masters.

When I was writing this paper that you mentioned and finishing up my law degree.

So this paper was sort of a culmination of my experience, reading the climate science and seeing the drastic need for far reaching change over the next decade.

And so I was curious as to what would be an adequate target?

What would be a fair target if we looked at different ideas of fairness, what would be a target for Canada that fits within sort of this idea of human rights and doing your fair share.

And So to make it a little bit easier, you could kind of think of Pizza Pie, that's the carbon budget.

If we want to stay below 1.5° of global warming, then let's say we can admit this many emissions and that's your pizza pie.

And so then the question is, how do you split the pie?

The pie is being split among countries.

And so you could split the pie based on responsibility.

So who's committed more in the past?

That raises questions of what when do you start considering the past?

Um, you could do it based on capability.

So who is the most financially capable?

Where the abatement costs?

The cheapest?

You could do it based on equality.

So per capita, you could do it in different stages based on GDP, there's there's so many different ways to slice the pie and the international community has not landed on one approach obviously because different approaches benefit different countries.

And so what I did for my master's paper was walk through those different approaches and see Based on those different ideas of fairness, what would Canada's target B there's a lot of news and charts that I'll spare you.

But the short answer is that Canada's 2030 target would be about 2-5 times more ambitious than it is right now.

And so anyway, that you consider fairness, we're not doing our fair share.

And again, Christy to put it into perspective, because I did read the document, it's uh it's as, as you say, it's there's a lot of charts and it's a it's extremely well written.

But the notion is of course, is is on a comparative basis.

I think what you mentioned in there is that Canada's the 10th highest emitting state in the world.

And that's maybe that has maybe changed as you and I are talking.

But at the time of your research, Um, how do you feel about that?

I mean, do you look at that and sort of say, you know, we should be number three, we should be number what number should we be if we're at 10 and you're looking at fairness.

How do you sort of find that balance?

Well that that's a really fair point because so the the U.

N.

Intergovernmental panel on climate change they've said globally what we need to do is decrease our emissions by 45% below 2000 and 10 levels by 2030.

Essentially they're saying the world has a decade to almost half its emissions.

And so if you're splitting that up equally it would be like okay every country should have its emissions.

Canada today is one of the top 10 emitters and historically is also one of the top 10 cumulative limited emitters.

And so we have a large responsibility to undertake more than just the average that every state should do.

And just to give you an idea of what we're doing our our 2018 emissions.

That's the most recent year that the government has data for is essentially the exact same as our 2005 emissions.

And so yeah our our target right now Um in Canada the federal target is to reduce our emissions by 30% below our 2005 levels by 2030.

And so essentially it's gone up it's going down but if you look at the net progress we've made none.

And and so Christy I just want to explore that because I you know one of the things that you know and I want to talk a little bit about get your thoughts on how you know starting with the real Earth summit and then how it's built up to the paris agreement and talk a bit about that.

But you know, I guess the question that always fascinates me a little bit is that when governments put out, you know, here's our target and they talk about 2030 or they talk about 2040 I mean they talk about out and I understand the purpose is that we can't do this overnight.

But I think the flip to that sometimes is well, that's so far away, I can't even think about it.

And so it just doesn't sort of be, it's not on the radar on a regular basis.

And that's one of the reasons that climate legislation is starting to have more short term and interim targets because it's exactly like you said, if the target is for For 10 years or 20 years from now, there's a very high chance that we'll have a different minister of environment, a different government altogether.

And so there's no accountability if the targets are 20 years in the future.

And so that's why it's important to have the shorter term targets.

And just globally, if every country was to meet its targets as they are right now, The world is projected to warm 3° by 2100.

And that's a step from this past december.

And so globally are targets need to be much more stronger than they are.

And Canada has a large role to play in that in encouraging other countries to follow suit, we can't ask other countries to have a stronger target if we don't ourselves have one.

And and there in lies Christie one of the challenges because I think, you know, when you talk globally, which I mean it has to be a conversation that is global, when when sometimes, you know there's organizations or countries say organizations would pick a country, you know, it's like India or china and sort of say, well, you know, how are we going to compete with them?

You know, uh from an economic standpoint when we are trying to take a different path and you know, this could be a hindrance and I look at sort of some would say that, you know, maybe we can live with a certain increase as long as our economy is strong.

And so there's that balance there.

How would you, how would you sort of speak to that?

Yeah, well there's there's so met, there's so many opportunities from clean energy and the amount of jobs that can be provided from clean energy far surpassed those that are in the fossil fuel industry right now.

And if Canada was to stop subsidizing its fossil fuels, um that would also provide significant more resources.

Okay, let me just stop you there.

So that that's an incredible statement.

I mean there's more jobs to be created in the fossil fuel.

Like can you just give me just back that up a little bit.

Where did where did you get that from?

Well there's more jobs in the clean economy than in the fossil fuel industry.

Yes, that's what I said, wow, that's I mean, again, those are sort of parts of the conversation that you're never sure kind of where do they fit and how do they how do they fit in?

Right.

So, so, you know, come back to, you know, this notion about these summits that take place and there seems to be all sorts of great high interest of meeting in these exotic places.

How do you feel about what happens in some of these organizations starting off with the the RIO summit?

And then, you know, I think after that, I believe it was, I'm not sure if I got my orders right, but Tokyo and then Copenhagen, and then the paris accord, how do you feel about those sorts of meetings?

Do you feel they're productive short answer.

No.

And so they've met yo for the Earth Summit in 1992 and that was where states signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and said, okay, developed countries should take the lead in this, but they didn't explain how or provide any sort of target.

And so every year since then, they've been meeting in different cities talking about how to do this.

Um But it hasn't solved the problem.

They met in 2015 to create the paris agreement and that was signed there, but that still doesn't address fossil fuels which are the predominant source of climate change.

And so that's why I'm involved with the fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.

We believe that we need a fossil fuel treaty to build on the existing work of the paris agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Because those don't address the key problem which is uh fossil fuel production which continues to grow.

So I want to I want to come back to that Christy but I want to explore something that you had in in your paper when you talked about the fair share etcetera.

The notion that there was an element of discrimination that happens to people around this.

You know, um the whole climate and climate change and how, you know in certain areas particularly women and Children and an issue around poverty that people are really impacted.

What what did you find out that has an impact or why is that an important part of this?

Yeah.

Climate justice is is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle because those who were at least responsible for the emissions that have caused and led to the climate emergency that we're in today are facing the brunt of impacts and are projected to experience the brunt of impacts that will continue to emerge from climate change.

And just to give you an example the the U.

N.

I.

P.

C.

C.

There they did a special report on 1.5 degrees Celsius.

And if you're looking for climate science, that's a really good place to go to get information from the world's leading climate scientists and They had a chart in there where they talked about the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C.

And you hear these numbers a lot they're thrown around and you don't really have a contextualized idea of what this means.

And the difference between those two worlds, A 1.5 degree world and a two degree world means hundreds of millions of additional people facing heatstroke.

What lack of water, lack of access to water?

The impacts are staggering and those are projected to occur.

I believe in sub Saharan Africa And perhaps eastern Asia.

I would double check those countries.

But there are areas in the global south that are projected to feel the brunt of the impact if we are unable to limit warming to 1.5°.

And what role does technology play in some of this Christie?

You know, I I you read about, you know, that double edged sword about some some of the elements that to get, you know, the mining that we do to produce certain things that help on the technological side that create opportunities for advancement of technology.

But there's, you know, kind of that that balance about well what what energy is taken up to produce something that is then ultimately supposed to create something that is green energy.

I mean, you know, there's always sort of, I don't want to see two sides, but, you know, sometimes it's it's not a cherry picking argument.

I mean, it is a fulsome argument, and it's quite can be quite complicated.

How do you feel about those sorts of of and and in some ways there could be barriers people are trying to sort of, you know, say why we shouldn't do something.

How do you sort of with your research in your background, how do you look at that and say, here's an argument why this is so important to do.

There's an over reliance on unproven unskilled technologies presently.

And so the U.

N.

I.

P.

C.

When they are making their projections, they're assuming that technology will grow beyond the scale and level that it's at right now, there's ideas of carbon capture and carbon storage technologies, so things that will pull carbon out of the air and put it in the ground or put it in a storage facility to reduce emissions, But those have not been tested or proven at the skills that we need them yet.

And so they're assuming that that will continue to grow and that will be part of what we can hopefully rely on to help reduce our emissions.

But you'll see lots of oil companies that will use climate scenarios that overly rely on these and so they will continue to increase their emissions in the hopes that carbon capture and storage techniques will be developed in the coming decades.

That will allow them to decrease their emissions while still maintaining business as usual activities.

And so this is a huge problem.

Um, one example is shells sky scenario and I think the level of carbon capture and storage facilities that they relied on required an obscene amount to be built per day, just a number that isn't realistic.

And and then this is also a problem in terms of government policies.

So Canada has just put forward Bill C 12 and that's its net zero emissions accountability act.

Um, but nowhere in this act does it say that it will reach a certain level of emissions?

Um, there's no maximum amount that it can rely on technology To reduce its emissions just in comparison Swedish legislation requires that 85% of its reductions be domestic emissions reductions.

And then it can rely on overshoot technologies, um, purchasing carbon credits in other countries to reduce that remaining 15%.

But Canada hasn't said anything about whether it will reduce its emissions a certain amount or rely on offsets a certain amount.

And so when you hear the word zero, unless it's qualified, it really doesn't necessarily mean this great climate action that um the language might suggest that it does well, and that's a great point because, I mean, you know, there's that old sort of adage when you go to talk to an accountant and uh, you know, they'll say, you know, you've got two and two and they say, well what do you want it to add up to be?

I mean you can sort of decide what does that number going to be.

So when you look at net zero Christie, one of the things that I think again, what I love about it is it makes it makes sense.

I mean, you can understand what Net zero means, but does it really, really mean, you know, from somebody from your perspective, if you were to look at net zero and say it's really actually just a title for a bill or it's a title for a policy, but the reality is it's not doing what it should do.

Do you feel good about sort of what Net Zero means in terms of and we're going to talk about a little bit about Bill, Bill C 12, I feel good about the idea of net zero, depending on what what is followed in the sentence.

Um if it's net zero with no overshoot, which means they won't go over zero emissions and then bring it back down by by carbon sequestration technologies, then I feel better if it's net zero relying on carbon sequestration forests, where those forests have already been claimed, quote unquote by another, another company who's hoping to rely on the same forests?

There's a lot of talk about using nature based solutions to just allow companies or countries to keep admitting as per usual.

And so we need to be careful that we're not using net zero as permission to keep maintaining business as usual in the decade that will make or break us in terms of climate action and responding to the climate emergency.

I know that you have to have a petition for Bill C 12, which is the Canadian Net Zero emissions accountability act as it's known.

But Christy, I want to just make a comment that it's um, you know, you are one of these incredibly energized motivated young professionals that really believe so much about this whole issue about climate change and making a difference.

And and uh, you know, even kind of on your link to incite change starts with you take climate action now.

I mean, it's really a call to action.

Um, just fascinated to why is it that it's young people like you and Greta thornburg and others, Why do you think that it's them carrying the message?

And you know, sort of the elderly generation just are sort of listening as opposed to taking action?

Yeah, well, I think that's that's a little bit of a generalization because there definitely are young people that are not doing anything.

And there's several people that are amazing the grannies for social justice are are an amazing group of Winnipeg women who are always out on the ledge singing about different protests.

But I do agree with you that a lot of the movement is coming from youth And that's because this is our future.

That's at stake when we read the statistics about what's projected to happen by 2100, that's looking at, you know, maybe just outside of my lifetime, but if I was to bring kids into this world that's squarely in their lifetime.

And so the impacts are tangible.

And then if you're opening this up to a more global conversation, the impacts are happening now around the world in places that are disproportionately impacted by climate change.

They're experiencing the impacts of climate change today.

And they already have been for decades in Northern Canada.

Um Is Northern Canada is warming it three times the global rate.

Um The rest of Canada is warming at double the global warming rate.

And so I was in uh Inuvik, the Northwest Territories last fall for a pilot program run by Youth Climate Lab uh which in tribal council and the question first Nation.

And they were talking about the importance of traditional knowledge and climate policy working together.

And it's precisely because of this reason is that they've been responding to climate change already for decades.

They have knowledge built within their systems and governance and ways of life because they're seeing the changing climate already happening.

And so I think just around the world, youth are frustrated with the lack of action.

They're aware of the they're aware of the emergency and the crisis and they're just seeing nothing happened to change.

Right.

Right.

So, so let's talk a little bit about Bill C.

12, you have got a petition.

I want to talk about why you let's talk about the petition that you've got and why you feel it's important and some of the recommendations in that bill or that your story in the petition that you want people to sign.

Yeah, well this is a momentous occasion.

Um advocates have been pushing for climate legislation in Canada for years and this will have global implications given that Canada is a top 10 emitter as we noted.

And so it's really important that we have a plan to hold our government accountable.

We have not met any of the targets that we have set on climate change.

We've been setting them since I was in diapers.

And so, and so that's a bad track record.

And so I think it's important that we have an accountability act um to really try and hold our government accountable to taking action on climate change.

And I was very excited when the bill came out and I read it the morning of and then I immediately started drafting a submission because it falls short in many, many areas.

Um one of the things that is really frustrating about it is that it doesn't recognize the urgency of taking action.

This is demonstrated by the fact that the first milestone year is 2030 instead of 2025.

And so we don't want to check in at the end of the decade, when we're told, this is the decade we need to take action and say, oh, it looks like we didn't do anything.

It would be much more prudent to check in at 2025 see how we're doing And make changes as needed to ensure that we're on the right path to take action by 2030.

And so that's one of the recommendations that I want to change the definition of, of milestone year to include the year 2025.

And Um I think it's also important to ensure that the 2030 target aligns with the present climate science, and so, um Canada's 20-30 target right now, was set by Stephen Harper in 2015, and Trudeau has talked about increasing it.

He ran for re election on a promise to increase our target, and he has only committed to surpassing our target, um some sort of vague references to exceeding our target, but no commitment as to What that would actually mean, and no commitment to make sure they were on a path to reach net zero by 2050.

And so it's really important that we take action in the next decade.

And that was just one of the things that struck me was there's no accountability to ensure we do that over the next 10 years well.

And I think that comes back a bit to what we talked about at the beginning and that is, you know, you can put these great numbers out.

You can, you know, sort of have, you know, great charts and, you know, kind of, you know, a beautiful presentation and a great words.

But I think that, you know, what you're doing and what I think is why it's so important, what you're doing is you're really are trying to bring this back down to why it's necessary and why it's important to take action and why it's important to have a sense of accountability.

Because, I mean, you mentioned this at the kind of the top of this conversation, kristi that, you know, one of the challenges in Canada is that you kind of start down a path and then there's a change in government or you get a different minister and now all of a sudden you're kind of back to where you started.

Um, let me just sort of just pivot for one second around that, but talk about, you know, the countries that you say that, you know, these people got it on like they understand it, they get it.

If you were to say, you know, we should look at as a model, what what country might you model or countries would you say, Well, one country that comes to mind is the UK their legislation.

They have met their targets.

Um, and so they have a track record that shows, um, they have an independent climate committee and that's really important and that's the one thing that our our bill does not put forward.

And so the committee will help determine if the targets are on point and we'll assess the progress.

Um And so the U.

K.

Will also set carbon budgets sort of like an economy wide budget of allocating emissions.

And then that ensures that they know okay this is who can admit what and it ensures that we're making progress towards our target.

Whereas Canada doesn't um Quite do that and it just sort of leaves it as a free for all.

And that's why emissions continue to increase.

Um the oil and gas sector in Canada is emissions have increased a staggering amount since 1990.

And it's our largest sector representing I believe 26% of Canada's emissions and it's projected to grow through 2030.

And so Canada should look to other countries who are having sectoral targets or uh broached the notion of sub national targets.

I know the constitutional um debate between provinces and the federal government is a is a dicey one.

Um in terms of who has jurisdiction to take environmental measures.

But it's an important conversation because most of our emissions are coming from a few provinces that are quite resource dependent on certain industries Well, and, you know, Christie the question I was going to ask you was the, you know, in the UK, which is interesting because that surprises me, I thought you might go to, you know, Sweden or or or some other country and nordic country up there, but do they have, do you know, is there is that tied to the legislation that when they've got that, is it an independent body that sets this or is it part of parliament?

So in other words, I just want to come back to address the fact they've been successful, but they've also had changes of ministers change the government.

We have the same parliamentary system.

But does it work there because of something that they have mandated that regardless of changing governments, these targets will still continue.

Yeah, I believe, I believe it is an independent committee and for anyone who's interested in looking into this more, I believe it's a 2015 West Coast Environmental Law report authored by Andrew gauge and it does a great comparison of looking at the UK's climate system and how it could be adopted in Canada.

And so that's a great resource.

You are right.

Some of the nordic countries are doing great things as well.

Um like I said, Swedish, um, the Swedish Climate Act has a max on the level of offsets that can be used.

Um the Scottish legislation um defines fair share and calls for the target to actually comprise no more than Scotland's fair share of the global emissions.

Um and then Denmark just said by 2050, they're looking to exit the fossil fuel industry and so there are lessons from all over the world that we could and should be drawing from.

Yeah, well, and I think it's interesting that um, you know, today, of course, I mean it was actually yesterday I think that the new president joe biden, you know, sort of killed the XL pipeline, which you know is a big issue in Canada, particularly for Alberta.

I know that you had written some information or had put out some ideas on pipelines and some of your concerns about them.

What what's your biggest concern about running a pipeline?

Well, it's the long term investment in a in a terrible future for myself and and future generations and and frankly we don't need it anymore.

And a new report from the Canada and energy regulator.

And so that's the body that replaced the National Energy Board and that's the group who said we approved the trans mountain pipeline twice.

They have said that they put out a new report saying we don't need trans mount or keystone in in a world where Canada wants to strengthen its climate policies and meet its emissions targets.

And so that's the very body that approved these pipelines saying we don't need them in this new context.

Um, and that's a opinion that's been echoed by many people around the country.

The fact that it encroaches on indigenous traditional territory, the fact that it will have severe impacts on the Orcas.

There's so many reasons why I don't think that we should be continuing to long term invest in infrastructure that that continues the fossil fuel industry just because we know that we need to be exiting that industry and starting a transition a just transition away towards a cleaner economy.

It just doesn't make sense to continue to put money into it.

Right?

No, fair enough.

And I, you talked about the issue of pipelines and the issue of respecting sort of indigenous lands and what's we've seen that happen in Canada.

And uh you know, coming back to one of the recommendations that you have put forward um with respect to, you know, Bill C.

12, you talk about a man's Section eight of the bill to include the importance of considering indigenous knowledge and setting targets and making plans to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Explain why why you think that is so incredibly important as a recommendation to put for the government to consider.

Yeah, well, like guys like we were talking about earlier, indigenous communities have been in Northern Canada.

They've been dealing with the climate impacts already for decades.

Um in other areas of Canada, they've also been dealing with the impacts of climate change and these are also indigenous communities.

Many of them live off the land.

Many of their knowledge systems are integrated their laws, their governance, their language, their culture is it's all integrated with the land and is so rich with knowledge about the land and it's also indigenous peoples who are going to be disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis.

They're also an important part of Canadian society.

And so I'm writing another submission on Bill C.

12 actually, with lawyers for climate justice and so on.

That submission, we um, make a recommendation that the advisory committee include indigenous representation just because it's important that their voice be represented in these important conversations.

It's a very important conversation.

And I think that that, you know, there's always been a debate and some would say that when you look at, you know, as as Canada was as starting out as a nation.

One of the things that united us, if you will, was this steel ribbon that went from coast to coast to coast, the railroad.

I mean, and that was an important way to sort of move goods and people, etcetera from, you know, east to west, etcetera.

So people are always looking for ways to sort of talk about building the nation.

What is nation building?

And you know, I think some would say that part of the opportunity and and and Christy at your point, you know, you look out years and there is going to be changes.

I mean, it's happening around us.

But as we sit today when you're sitting on a lot of natural fossil fuel and it's sort of your economic engine.

You know, the importance of trying to use that as a way to ensure that the health, if you will and the economic health to be clear, the economic health of the country remains strong.

And so that's why some would say it's so important for us to have those pipelines to get that product to market.

Yeah, I would just counter that by saying that, I believe it's less than 3% of Canada's GDP that comes from the oil and gas, and other, I think it's oil, gas and mining sector.

And so I think there is this big belief that, that our National GDP solely relies on this, um, and will be cut phenomenally if we start to exit this industry.

But it's not true.

Alberta alone has so much sunlight and could be a massive area for solar energy just to go back to the idea of fossil fuel subsidies.

If we were to exit those and use those on clean energy.

I think the industry would look a lot different than it does.

So I'm, I'm in Bc and in our province, we spend twice as much on fossil fuel subsidies than we do on climate change programs while provincially, wow, those are all, you know, this is why I think it's, it's important to find a way to have this conversation so that it's, you know, I mean, it's an emotional conversation clearly, but you have to have a way to sort of maybe take the emotion out of it to talk about the science, the facts.

And I think those things are really important and that's what I like, what you're you're trying to do with all of the things that you've been involved in, frankly, I mean, you know, I've seen some of the other articles that you've written.

I mean, you know, the one you wrote for Maclean's magazine on residential schools, I know this is a little off topic, but it speaks to kind of who you are and and kind of where you see this going, I'd love to just kind of get your thoughts Christie on the importance of being an activist and that relationship with government.

Because, you know, governments, as we talked about, they come they go, they change, they'll give you platitudes, they'll campaign on something.

And I think a lot of people frankly were quite surprised at the very first day that biden, you know, President biden took over, he put an executive order killing the XL pipeline.

A lot of people would say, well, if you didn't follow that election, he campaigned on that, so he's kind of delivering it.

Which again, sort of fits in that realm of while politicians may say certain things that they might make promises, but they may not deliver.

That's a hard and cold fact of somebody who said this is what I was going to do and this is what I'm going to do.

How do you sort of ensure that all of the effort, the energy that you you're putting in your volunteer time, the things that you're doing, you know, with the the lawyers for climate justice, et cetera.

How do you sort of square that with the notion that you ultimately have to sort of hand this often governments of the day and say over to you, please put some action behind this.

It's a very difficult question and one that I that I struggle with all the time.

I think one of the things that's interesting is during the trump administration, americans realized they weren't going to get much done on climate nationally.

And so what they did was target sub nationally and municipalities rose up and municipalities banded together and they said, okay, what can we do collectively to make our voices bigger than are single city.

And so, recognizing that the government sometimes will not fulfill its pledges or it won't even make the pledge in some cases, um, you need to turn to other ideas and so for lawyers for climate justice, just as an example, we're targeting the Canadian Bar Association because that's the regulatory body that administers and regulates lawyers throughout Canada.

And so we're calling for them to pass a climate leadership resolution um to adopt a definition of climate justice and to encourage lawyers to engage in pro bono efforts to reduce emissions and to work on educating lawyers and sort of the core competency of climate change and to encourage lawyers to be thinking about climate change to think of all of their legal matters is happening within the context of the climate crisis.

And so I think you just have to target the, your communities and target who you can leverage.

And sometimes governments aren't the ones who are going to make the change.

Um sometimes you need to be uh looking at the corporations and peer pressuring them to change their tactics.

One route is through legislation, but another route is through reputational um peer pressure.

Yeah, I mean, there's a way to bring attention to certain companies that aren't, you know, sort of following what has been generally agreed to be sort of the norm or the new rules or the greener rules are becoming more of an energy efficiency organization.

So I I think it's a great sort of conversation to have with people like you because this isn't like you kind of just woke up and and and and did this.

This is something you've been doing for some time and you believe in it and you're very active and you're finding time again, not only as your article ng, which takes up a tremendous amount of time, which I know, but you're finding time to volunteer, you know, with with organizations like lawyers for climate justice.

Is that Christy?

The lawyers for climate Justice?

Are they also, do you have any affiliations or through the United States or through great Britain?

Is there other places?

Or is this really a Canadian initiative?

This is a Canadian initiative.

It was launched by a group of lawyers in Victoria BC around the global climate strikes that occurred in September 2019.

And I think they were really struck by the global movement and wanted to take action.

And so they formed sort of an ad hoc group I joined in february 2020.

Um and since then it's just sort of been growing in terms of thinking about what our legal profession could and should be doing.

Um I know there are sort of similar movements in other countries and that might be something we look at down the line is, you know, perhaps we can greater our efforts by partnering with other affiliations in other in other jurisdictions.

Yeah.

And I'm not here to to sort of point any fingers at at anyone or any organization Christy, but I just, it's fascinating that lawyers, you know, have taken this on and you look at some of the other professions.

Are you aware of any other profession accounts or any of those sorts of organizations that are also trying to get engaged in this conversation.

Have you been aware of any of that in in in crossing your path?

Yeah, there's Cape, which I believe stands for Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

And they recognize the health implications of the climate crisis and are doing a great job on speaking out about that.

And and then like you said, accounting, insurance, investing their all seeing the huge ramifications of um climate change on impacting disclosure, insurance risks, it's completely changing that landscape.

And so, um a lot of people in those industries are quite well versed in in the need for corporate climate disclosure well, and it helps, you know, with the whole sense that it's not just lawyers.

I mean you're part of a bigger puzzle, you know, you're trying to sort of fit these all together and everybody sort of sees the value in it.

So the more voices, I mean it just it pivots, it allows it to become Something that is more every day.

And and I think that what you're doing again, I just want to I want to just say, you know, well done.

I think it's just fantastic what you're doing.

Let me just ask you on the bill c.

12, I want to come back to that.

Is there a petition?

I know you're talking about kind of a it's a you mentioned about young people getting involved.

Is there a way that we could on our social media?

Could we advocate on behalf of where where should somebody go if they want to sign that petition?

Yeah, I'll send a link that the human rights hub can post to the youth submission.

We're presently looking for youth around 35 or under or youth led organizations to sign on.

And by the time this airs that that petition might have gone to the Standing committee on Environment and sustainable Development, but we certainly recommend and encourage others to send their own letters.

They can just say I endorse this submission and send it off and that would be great.

Is there any place that you would say at this point?

Is there say if I were to ask you, is there one important link that you think we should make sure we try and drive some of the people that are listening or some of the people that are following and that they should go to.

Is there someplace that you should say look, here's a here's a great link for you to go to think maybe the 2020 emissions gap report that's by the U.

N.

Environment program and the executive summary is quite readable.

The full reports of bit longer.

But it really just emphasizes here's the climate science, here's where we're at today, here's the big gap and of how we need to get there.

And I think that just really lays clear because I know there's a lot of numbers when people here, we're at this, we need this and sometimes it's hard to know what all of that means.

And so I think that report which is produced every year, does a really great job of emphasizing that there's a lot of action that needs to happen to fill that gap in between those two bridges.

Yeah, great suggestion.

That's excellent.

And the other thing we just chatted about before we before we were having this conversation was, you know, any any documentary, you know, that you might recommend again, anything that you think that somebody should go and look at, there's a lot of them I know, but if there's one that just sort of say, look, this one just hits it out of the park, it's great.

There's so many, I think there's more documentaries on my to watch list then my watch list, one, that one that comes to mind and it's, it's a few years old.

It's called Virunga and that's really good.

It's not, it's not about climate change, it's about the gorillas and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But that one is really interesting.

It's definitely good.

I have a few book recommendations.

That's more my, that's more my scene one book that I just came out this past, september by a Canadian author called Seth Klein.

It's called a good war mobilizing Canada for the Climate emergency.

And it talks about how we should adopt a warlike mindset to tackle the climate crisis.

And it was fascinating because he looks back at World War Two and how Canada responded and says, here's some of the great things we did that we could and should do.

Here's some of the things we might want to avoid doing.

And if I found it such a practical resource just because it showed things that Canada had done proving that it's possible saying, Hey, Canada has done this before.

Let's let's do it again.

Yeah, yeah.

Seth klein Yeah, Excellent.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Have you got another one?

I mean if you're asking um another book that I read this one I read last year don't judge the title, but it's called I'm Right and you're an idiot, um the toxic state of public discourse and how to clean it up.

And it's by James Hogan, who was the founder of the smog blog.

And I just found this book fascinating because it talks a lot about the psychology of why our world is so polarized right now and it does so within the context of climate change, I learned so much from that book.

And so I think if anyone's interested in trying to understand why it seems like there's a left side and the right side and a good side and a bad side and why these two sides seem so polarized and people sort of refused to talk to the other and demonize the other.

This book was really helpful for me to understand, you know, the harms of doing that and why people are doing that and sort of how to not do that.

Perfect.

No, that's fantastic.

And again, we'll put up on our on our website will make sure that these references are there.

So if people haven't been able to write them down, they can they can go and use them as references.

So, you know, it's fantastic.

And I know we sort of used a little bit about if there's an artist that you sort of said, you know, a musician that is really, you know, I mean, there's a lot of them that tried to sort of take, you know, sort of human rights or they look at taking, um, you know, sort of mathematics and they sort of write about them and, and particularly, you know, where you are at NBC, it's so active out there.

And I just didn't know if there's any any artists that you, you know, sort of thought was really doing an amazing job, sort of trying to sort of bring their craft of being, whether it's musical or whatever it may be into the conversation of of, you know, whether it's an indigenous laws or whether it's just human rights or the climate, any of that stuff.

That's one where I'm going to look to take recommendations from people.

I don't have any of my own.

I usually just play instrumental pieces during the day when I'm at work because I get too distracted if it's, if it's anything too good or exciting.

But I do agree with you that lots of people are using music and other art forms to respond to human rights issues and the climate crisis.

So, yeah, we're hearing from your listeners, which yeah, for sure.

And that's a good one.

People can maybe give a shout out and I do know that you you love to play piano.

So that's uh, that that's just another, another side of you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Christy.

I just want to say, thank you so much for taking the time to, to chat about your passion.

Um, your, your runway is is uh in front of you, is is, uh, is going to be amazing.

I mean, the, the the impact that you've had already is telling.

And uh, the people that I know that that no, you continually talk about how impressive you are and how passionate you are and what just a genuine, incredibly fine person you are and trying to sort of make a difference.

And I think that that you clearly when you get up in the morning, that's your you if that's what you're trying to do.

I got to tell you as an observer, you're doing it in spades.

So, you know, continued success and I look forward to many more conversations with you.

But but for today, thank you so much for taking the time.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much Stuart.

I really appreciate those kind words.

And thanks for having me Today.

Humans on Rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray.

Social media marketing by the creative team at full current in Winnipeg.

Thanks also to Trixie.

Maybe music by Doug Edmund for more, go to human rights hub dot C a a production of the sound off media company.

Your gut wants to tell you something, can you hear it?

Self care expert, author, food scientists and yoga instructor Marla bar deep dives into the amazing things that beautiful belly of yours has to say from digestion to intuition and for managing your emotions to strengthening your core muscles.

Marla helps you own your wellness and guides you on the road to attaining the best health of your life.

Listen to your gut reaction on apple podcasts, google podcasts, Spotify or at your gut reaction dot com, a production of the Sound off Media company.