Green & Just Recovery- Vancouver Virtual Town Hall

Please join us in a conversation about a Green & Just Recovery from COVID-19 on Friday, July 17th at 3:30pm PT

We will be joined by all levels of government:
Chief Leah George-Wilson, Tsleil-Waututh Nation
Jenny Kwan, Member of Parliament for Vancouver East
Hon. George Heyman, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Vancouver-Fairview & B.C.’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy
Christine Boyle, Vancouver City Councillor

The event will be moderated by Andrea Reimer (Public Servant, Organizer, Change Maker), along with Zoe Ng (Sustainabiliteens).

This event will happen virtually and the panelists and organizers will be joining from their homes on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.

RSVP FOR THE ZOOM EVENT HERE
https://www.forourkids.ca/vancouver_town_hall
We also invite you to submit your questions for the panel via our registration form!

Why Green & Just Recovery?
COVID-19 is a warning of how devastating a planetary crisis can be and the scale of response necessary to tackle it. At the same time, our kids and grandkids face potential waves of new crises – fires, floods, droughts, and global insecurity – due to the climate crisis. Sparked by the murder of George Floyd by police, millions across the globe are now risking their health and safety in mass protests to demand the dismantling of systemic racism, which relies on the same systems of oppression responsible for the climate crisis.

Against this backdrop, Canada’s federal and provincial governments are pouring billions of dollars into economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. How they spend that money is critical to the kind of world our children will grow up in: will it be a healthier, more sustainable, more just society, or will it further entrench the climate destruction and injustices that pre-dated COVID-19?

We parents and grandparents have a huge role to play in calling on decision-makers to focus on green and just principles to guide our recovery from the impact of the pandemic and our transition to a new way of life.

Join us and add your voice to the call for a Green and Just Recovery!

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Panelist Bios:

Chief Leah George-Wilson, Tsleil-Waututh Nation
Leah George-Wilson was the first woman to be elected Chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in 2001. She served 2001-2003, and 2005-2009. Her ancestral name is Sisi-ya-ama, which was given to her by her late Grandmother.

Leah holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Simon Fraser. Upon graduation, she began working for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in 1992. She began as a Researcher and helped with Elder interviews for the different Specific Claims and litigation. Eventually she rose to Negotiator on the Dollarton Specific Claim as well as at the Treaty Table. Leah became the Director of Treaty, Lands and Resources in 2001, a position she held for 9 years.

Leah left TWN to go to UBC Law School full-time in 2010, after working for the people for 18 years.. She graduated, articled and was called to the Bar in British Columbia in January 2015. She has worked as a lawyer since then.

Leah is proud of being a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and lives in the community along with her immediate family. She is married and has a lovely daughter.

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George Heyman, MLA and BC’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy
George Heyman was first elected as the MLA for Vancouver-Fairview in 2013, and was re-elected in May 2017. Born and raised in Vancouver, George has lived and worked here and throughout northwest BC. George currently serves as the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, and he previously served as the Opposition Spokesperson for Environment, Green Economy, and Technology.

Prior to his election as MLA, George was Executive Director of the Sierra Club BC, one of our province’s oldest environmental advocacy and education organizations. He also served three terms as president of the BC Government and Services Employees’ Union (BCGEU) from 1999 to 2008.

George has been a faculty member of Simon Fraser University’s Dialogue and Negotiation program, teaching courses in multi-party negotiations and collaborative decision making. He has guest lectured at a number of universities in BC and abroad, and served on advisory committees for post-graduate and undergraduate degree programs at three BC Universities.

He has also been a board member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC, the Columbia Institute, and the Workers’ Compensation Board. George is a passionate advocate in Victoria for issues facing Fairview constituents – including education, health care, the arts, child care, workers’ rights, transit, and affordable housing.

Since his appointment as the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Strategy, in July of 2017, George has been dedicated to advocating for the people and the environment against climate change. He took on a major role in creating the CleanBC plan, aimed at the reduction of air pollution, while creating more jobs and economic opportunities for people, businesses and communities in the renewable energy sector.

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Jenny Kwan, Member of Parliament
For over 26 years Jenny Kwan has fought for the people of East Vancouver. In 2015 she was elected as the Member of Parliament for our community.

Born in Hong Kong, Jenny immigrated to Canada at age nine. After graduating from Simon Fraser University, she worked as a community legal advocate in the Downtown Eastside. In 1993, she became the youngest city councillor elected in Vancouver’s history, distinguishing herself as a fearless voice for the community.

In 1996, she was elected MLA for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, becoming one of the first Chinese-Canadians to sit in the Legislative Assembly. Jenny was also the first Chinese Canadians appointed to cabinet and served as Minister of Municipal Affairs, Minister of Women’s Equality and Minister of Community Development, Cooperatives & Volunteers.

Her tireless efforts were recognized once again in 2015, when Van East residents voted overwhelmingly to send her to Ottawa, to continue the fight for a Canada where no one is left behind. She currently serves as the NDP’s Critic for Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship and Housing, as well as Critic for Multiculturalism.

From the community to the BC Legislature to the House of Commons, Jenny has made a difference in the lives of people in Vancouver East. Standing on the shoulders of the people before her, she is continuing to build a multicultural society where everyone, no matter who you are and where you come from, has the opportunity to succeed—a Canada where social, economic, and environmental justice will always prevail.

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Christine Boyle, Vancouver City Councillor
Councillor Christine Boyle was elected to Vancouver City Council in 2018. She is also a Metro Vancouver Director, and sits on Metro Vancouver’s Indigenous Relations Committee. Councillor Boyle is passionate about tackling inequality, contributing to climate solutions, dismantling systemic racism, and deepening democratic engagement.

Councillor Boyle is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, and was part of leading national efforts within the United Church to divest the church’s funds from fossil fuels. In 2015 she traveled to the Vatican for events around the release of Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change and the economy, and later that year was a civil society delegate to the COP21 Climate Summit in Paris.

Councillor Boyle spent many years supporting progressive local governance and leading strategic communications at the Columbia Institute’s Centre for Civic Governance. During that time she also supported the development of GreenJobs BC, bringing together environmental, labour, and community leaders to advocate for a just transition to a green economy.
Prior to this, Councillor Boyle spent many years in front-line social service roles at First United Church in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and at Grandview/?Uuqinak’uuh Elementary School in East Vancouver.

Councillor Boyle has a BSc in Global Resource Systems (focused on Urban Agriculture and First Nations Studies) from the University of British Columbia, and an MA in Religious Leadership for Social Change from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is an enthusiastic cyclist, gardener, and bread baker, and lives in East Vancouver with her partner and two kids.

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Sustainabiliteens
We are a movement of young people across Metro Vancouver—united by the urgency we feel to stop climate catastrophe and by a shared vision to exercise our agency, and create a more just and sustainable world. We exist to create space for youth to engage with these issues and lay the foundations for a future that they can look forward to.

Our generation is not only inheriting an environmental collapse, but also this collapse’s cause: a broken worldview where the profit of corporations is valued over peoples’ lives. With our roots in climate striking, we understand the power of coming together to shift public consciousness around what change we urgently need. By using mass mobilization and other tactics to build and escalate our political power, we can achieve this change.

Although deep systemic transformation is our ultimate goal, we recognize that people are being hurt right now—by a system that continually emits greenhouse gases and exacerbates existing injustices. In order to reduce harm towards those most affected, we are focused on pushing for policies which reduce emissions at a greater scale and speed, while also addressing the dual challenges of the climate crisis and inequity.

Zoe Ng will be representing Sustainabiliteens at our town hall.