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Elizabeth May

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Green Party

Saanich—Gulf Islands
British Columbia
Voting Attendance: 61%
Expenses Last Quarter: $201,868.20

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 287 - Feb/28/24

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Feb/28/24 5:09:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend from New Westminster—Burnaby for his really heartfelt concern for my health. I did have a hemorrhagic stroke after working, straight, seven days a week, for 51 days. For May and June, we were sitting until midnight. I can remember well when a different Speaker would say, “It now being 1:15 in the morning, the question is that the House do now adjourn. The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.” He did not stop for a breath because I was doing adjournment proceedings. I think that, if we are going to work those long hours, and everyone knows that I am not afraid of hard work, I want a nurse's station in the foyer. I want some health care professionals checking the blood pressure of members of Parliament, checking to see if their health needs attention. This would also be very important, as the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby has said, for the workers in this place, who are not elected and who do not have the fantastic salaries we have to do this work. I also believe if that, if we were to use the rules that exist, for instance, against reading a speech, as they do in the Parliament of Westminster, we could more expeditiously schedule our work so that we would have meaningful debate, as opposed to what sometimes, although I hate it to say it and I should not say it, resembles bad high school theatre. I think we really do need to focus on debates and take our time to do it right. It is not about being afraid of hard work, but about not being forced into late night sessions, which are inevitably bad for everyone's health. I thank all of my friends across all party benches who let me know that they prayed for me. I am miraculously healed.

322 words

Context: House Hansard - 83 - Jun/7/22

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Jun/7/22 11:31:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in Adjournment Proceedings. I have to say the hour is awfully appropriate. I am going to be following up on a question I asked in question period on May 2 related to what are called small modular reactors and their connection to nuclear proliferation, so it certainly is appropriate that the clock is approaching midnight. It reminds me very much that there is something called a doomsday clock, which is kept up to date by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. I just checked it and it shows that we are “100 seconds to midnight”, given the combined factors of the increased threats of nuclear war brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the significant risk to the whole planet brought on by the climate crisis. These issues are related, and I related them in my question in the House on May 2. The answer from the Minister of Natural Resources was not sufficient and that is why I have brought it forward this evening. The so-called small modular reactors are not part of any solution to the climate crisis. Moreover, they are untested and essentially experimental. Lastly, I again draw the attention of this place to the risk of nuclear proliferation. Just to walk through those three points, the Minister of Natural Resources has said frequently in this place that there is no pathway to climate solutions that does not include small modular reactors. That is simply not true. Reducing greenhouse gases involves phasing out fossil fuels, cancelling the TMX pipeline and not pursuing Bay du Nord. These are tangible things that have nothing to do with nuclear. Nuclear is actually in the way. It is highly expensive. Per tonne of carbon reduced, it is about the most expensive way we can go. There is also a long timeline before we see any results from a decision to go with nuclear. The fact that these reactors are untested and essentially experimental has not had enough attention in this country. I turn to an expert in the area, Professor Allison M. Macfarlane, as a source. She is actually the former chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is currently at the University of British Columbia. She told this to the CBC: “Nobody knows what the numbers are, and anybody who gives you numbers is selling you a bridge to nowhere because they don't know. Nobody has ever set up a molten salt reactor and used it to produce electricity.” A molten salt reactor is exactly what the Government of Canada and the Government of New Brunswick are throwing tens of millions of dollars at. A private sector operator has proposed this and wants approval to go ahead and build it. It is being reviewed at this moment, but the money is flowing toward a molten salt reactor that will use plutonium from the spent fuel at Point Lepreau in order to create this unproven technology and allegedly produce electricity. It is all very much in question, except for one thing. There is a huge risk in taking plutonium from spent fuel. It is the kind of risk that existing nuclear non-proliferation treaties are very careful to prevent us from taking. If we are promoting a global plutonium economy, even a tiny, infinitesimal amount of plutonium in the hands of terrorists could create a dirty bomb. If it is in the hands of other countries around the world, there is the very large risk that they will produce a nuclear weapon. We had this experience in 1974 when Canada gave India one of its CANDU reactors. It turns out that these new SMRs, which was just recently noted in The Globe and Mail this week, produce far more nuclear waste than conventional reactors, that is, two times to 30 times more. I ask the government to think twice. This is a mistake. This is radioactive snake oil.

664 words

Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/31/22 7:07:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise tonight in adjournment proceedings to pursue a question I asked on March 28 during question period at two o'clock in the afternoon the day before we were expecting the emissions reduction plan from the federal government. My question to the minister was about what we were to make of the fact that there would be an announcement on March 29, knowing that by April 4 there would be a new IPCC report that could well make the emissions reduction plan outdated and require immediate overhaul. Not surprisingly, the parliamentary secretary who responded felt that we were really on track, but the parliamentary secretary did say that we will need to do more. With the three minutes I have remaining in my opening statement for tonight's adjournment proceedings, I will be brutally honest about the science and where we stand. There is no sugar-coating this. It is not easy. I do not say these things because I want people to be afraid or because I want people to despair, but I desperately want people to wake up, particularly the people who have the power to make the decisions over whether my children and grandchildren will survive on a livable, habitable planet, or endure unthinkable deprivations from climate breakdown. What we did not know when I asked that question on March 28 was what the third working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would say in its sixth assessment report, and it advanced the clock. It advanced our timetable more than I had expected. It shook me, and I have been working on the climate issue since 1986, when I was with Environment Canada. What the IPCC said was that to hold to 1.5°C, which is the target of the Paris Agreement, and at most we must try to, at the very least, stay as far below a 2°C possible global average temperature increase above what it was before the beginning of the industrial revolution. They are hard concepts to get our heads around and long to describe. What the IPCC said on April 4 makes the government's plan from March 29 completely useless. Doing better, doing more and trying hard means nothing if we miss the main point. The main point is this: The IPCC now says that we must ensure that between 2020 and, at the latest, before 2025, all around the world we must ensure that we stop addition and start subtraction. It is math; it is a carbon budget. We cannot go up anymore. We must peak and go down, and go down rapidly, such that by 2030 we would globally be emitting about half of the greenhouse gases that we did in 2010, or else. This is the part that gets hard. If we do not do that, we run the risk of hitting tipping points in the atmosphere that we cannot predict, which could lead to unstoppable, self-accelerating global warming. At the very least, we can look at what is happening right now to us, including here in Ottawa, with a very dangerous storm that killed 11 people. People did not see that coming. That is when we are at 1.1°C global average temperature increase. The heat dome in British Columbia killed 600 people in four days was also at 1.1°C. We have had wild fires and floods. We see what is happening at 1.1°C global average temperature increase and we are pretending that we have it under control, as we stand at the very edge of too late, and because it is not too—

615 words

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Member of Parliament

Elizabeth May