Yk turns out for environment minister
Catherine McKenna holds town hall meeting at Somba K'e Civic Plaza
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Not since Justin Trudeau was in Yellowknife last fall has the city seen a Liberal love-in like it did Monday night.
Catherine McKenna, the federal minister of the environment and climate change, waited patiently at Somba K'e Civic Plaza as admirers lined up to take selfies with the cabinet minister. Upwards of 200 people had turned out to the park for a town hall meeting on climate change.
McKenna, who watched a fox cross the grounds beside city hall during the event, said it was the most unique town hall she had ever been to. She has been attending similar events, albeit indoors, across Canada to seek input before the Liberal government comes up with a global warming action plan this fall.
The crowd filled the amphitheatre area in the plaza to listen as McKenna told them that climate change is real and nowhere is it more evident than in the North. She added it is in fact indigenous people who are feeling the impacts of global warming more than everyone else.
"They've known that the climate is changing through traditional knowledge and elders have been talking about it," McKenna said. "It has taken a long time I think for us to catch up as a government."
McKenna said she learned a lot when she attended the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris last December, where 195 countries were represented. They all supported a motion to lead the fight against climate change. Almost all the world's countries set an objective to limit the increase in global warming to under two degrees and try to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees by the end of this century.
McKenna pointed out the federal government also has targets, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 35 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. But she added that the fight against global warming is not all about targets.
"It's really about making sure that we pass on to the next generation and generations after that the lands that we value so much and that we do everything we can to protect it while being mindful that people need jobs and the economy matters," McKenna said. "We're in this together. It's not environmentalists versus industry or indigenous leaders versus other groups."
Many of those came to the meeting eventually split off into several working groups to try to identify specific climate change problems in the North and possible solutions.
The problems included the territory's reliance on diesel for power, the need for more alternative energy sources, the lack of consultation with indigenous people on climate change, the need for better public transit systems, the environmental effects of fracking and the weak rules for industrial polluters.
Tamlin Gilbert, a spokesperson for one of the focus groups, listed a number of ways the territory is impacted by climate change.
"There have been bigger and longer fires, hotter and drier summers, warmer winters, earlier ice breakups on lakes and rivers, water levels and going down and diesel is running more frequently in some of the communities," he said.
McKenna said the federal government wants to have coast-to-coast-to-coast carbon pricing policy but added she understands the last thing Northerners want is another tax. A carbon tax is generally defined as a tax based on greenhouse gas emissions generated from burning fuels. It puts a price on each tonne emitted. McKenna addressed the issue at a news conference earlier in the day at the legislative assembly along with all three Northern environment ministers, including the NWT's Wally Schumann.
"The situation in the territories is different from the rest of the country," she said. "There has been no decision on what carbon pricing would look like."
Not everyone who caught up with McKenna during her whirlwind two-day visit to the city was enamoured with her. There were some grumblings in the media after the minister, who hosted two news conferences and the town hall meeting, answered a total of only five questions from reporters. She also referred to Michael McLeod as the MP for the Western Arctic. The riding was changed to NWT in 2014.
One man, Brad Enge, walked away from the plaza on Monday night shouting, "We'll all be back in caves again," and a member of the crowd responded, "Yeah, but they will be solar powered caves."
