Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, came to the University of Manitoba last Friday to speak as part of the faculty of Law’s Distinguished Visitor Lecture Series.
While addressing students, faculty and members of the community, May called for electoral reform, called the recent growth of the prime minister’s office a “dangerous thing” and advocated that Canadians become informed about what their government officials do in office.
After describing her love of having been a law student at Dalhousie, and her love of practicing law, May quickly started to talk about politics — more specifically, how much she “hates politics.”
“The current culture of political life in this country is toxic, [and] that’s why sensible people don’t want anything to do with it,” May said.
May continued and challenged the media, saying that “a free and independent media” is necessary, but the media in Canada is currently “on the ropes and not particularly relevant [ . . . ] as we watch what used to be journalism descend into something that’s more entertainment and inane commentary.”
“The most dangerous thing to consume a society, short of totalitarianism, [ . . . ] is consumer culture,” she continued.
“The feeling [is] that we’re consumers in an economy more than we are citizens in a democracy.” Consumer culture is responsible in part for low voter turnout, with “consumers” (voters) saying they don’t vote, “because [they] don’t want to encourage [the politicians].”
May thanked Anita Neville, one of 14 Liberal MPs who voted on Bill C311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, which would have given the Canadian government specific environmental goals in time for Canada’s participation in the climate conference at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. The Liberal Party encouraged MPs to vote to delay the bill, but Neville went against her party line to vote to pass the bill.
May also critiqued the changing political landscape, describing “an increasingly dictatorial prime minister’s office,” as something that Canadians should be aware of.
“We don’t, in this country, elect a prime minister. The only people who vote for Stephen Harper are the people in his riding. [ . . . ] It would have been perfectly constitutional” for the MPs to choose another MP to be prime minister.
“There is a creeping intolerance in Canada,” May said, as she described the flaws with Canada’s system for people who wish to claim refugee status.
In an interview with the Manitoban after the lecture, May said, “We don’t take that many refugees in Canada, compared to lots of countries around the world. We have a historical record that is shameful.”
May touched on the Second World War, when Mackenzie King, the minister of immigration at the time said, “one Jew is too many,” concerning a boat load of European Jewish refugees seeking refuge in Canada.
“We turned our back on them. We didn’t see it at the time, but what do we see now? The Harper propaganda makes it sound as though refugee status is an easy thing to get, [but] you can almost never answer a question well enough for the immigration board to accept you.”
After calling strategic voting “nonsense” that increases voter apathy, and spending an hour in Robson Hall describing some of the political problems in Canada, May said that the key to making real change is to become educated on what is going on in their country, to vote, and to confront lies or misinformation in the media.
