Massey is Missing COP26 – Part I: Intergenerational Voices: Why Climate Change Matters To ALL Canadians

This event is free and open to all. Advance registration is required to attend this event.

Lloyd Axworthy and David Suzuki have spent decades advocating, pressing and legislating for social justice and climate justice with enormous success and also setbacks. Looking back on more than 50 years on the frontlines of activism, what can they share with a new generation of activists? And why now do they see the need to come together and join forces on the critical consequences of a planet warming at an accelerated rate?

The Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, Chair of the World Refugee & Migration Council, and David Suzuki, Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, join youth climate activist Sophia Mathur for an armchair conversation across the generations, moderated by Rosemary McCarney, former Ambassador of Canada to the United Nations (2015-2019) and the Bill Graham Centre / Massey College Resident Visiting Scholar in Foreign and Defence Policy and Global Affairs.

To register for this event in our series, Intergenerational Voices: Why Climate Change Matters To ALL Canadians, please click here. This event is free and open to all.

The Honourable Lloyd Axworthy is the chair of the World Refugee & Migration Council and one of Canada’s leading voices on global migration and refugee protection. After a 27-year political career, where he served as Canada’s minister of Foreign Affairs and minister of Employment and Immigration, among other postings, Mr. Axworthy has continued to work extensively on human security, refugee protection and human rights in Canada and abroad. He was presented with the Pearson Peace Medal by the Governor General of Canada in May 2017 and is a Companion of the Order of Canada. In his term as president and vice-chancellor of the University of Winnipeg, Mr. Axworthy initiated innovative programs for migrant and aboriginal youth communities, and has also done a great deal of work on refugee reform as a Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at Germany’s Robert Bosch Academy.

Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. He is Companion to the Order of Canada and a recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for science, the United Nations Environment Program medal, the 2012 Inamori Ethics Prize, the 2009 Right Livelihood Award, and UNEP’s Global 500. Dr. Suzuki is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and holds 29 honorary degrees from universities around the world. He is familiar to television audiences as host of the CBC science and natural history television series The Nature of Things, and to radio audiences as the original host of CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, as well as the acclaimed series It’s a Matter of Survival and From Naked Ape to Superspecies. In 1990 he co-founded with Dr. Tara Cullis, The David Suzuki Foundation to “collaborate with Canadians from all walks of life including government and business, to conserve our environment and find solutions that will create a sustainable Canada through science-based research, education and policy work.”  His written work includes more than 55 books, 19 of them for children. Dr. Suzuki lives with his wife and family in Vancouver, B.C. Read more here: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/david/

Sophia Mathur is in Grade 8 French Immersion in Sudbury. Sophia’s environmental lobbying to politicians began at age 7 and has taken her all the way to the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament with the organization Citizens’ Climate Lobby. She embraced Greta Thunberg’s call for youth climate action in November 2018 and was the first youth in the Americas to do Fridays for Future strikes starting on November 2, 2018.  Sophia was proud to win the 2019 Canadian National Museum of Nature Youth Inspiration Award. With Ecojustice, Sophia is one of seven young people taking the Ford Ontario Government to court for weakening Ontario’s 2030 climate target.  Sophia co-starred in the documentary CitizenKid: Earth Comes First produced by White Pine Pictures that aired nationally in Canada on World Environment Day June 5th, 2020 on YTV. She will also be one of many youth featured on the 60th Anniversary episode titled “Rebellion” on The Nature of Things on CBC TV/CBC Gem November 6, 2020.

Rosemary McCarney is the Inaugural Pearson-Sabia Distinguished Visitor In International Relations at Trinity College at the University of Toronto as well as the incoming 2020/2021 Bill Graham Centre/Massey College Resident Visiting Scholar in Foreign and Defence Policy. She was Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations and the Conference on Disarmament until the Fall of 2019. Rosemary’s career has spanned every sector of the economy from law, academia, technology, international development to multilateral diplomacy in over 100 countries.

Thank you for your interest in Massey’s five-part virtual climate series, Massey is #MissingCOP26. These online events are free and open to all. To learn about other events in the series and for more information, we invite you to visit our main page: https://www.masseycollege.ca/programs-and-events/massey-missing-cop26/