Q & A: Elizabeth May

The Silhouette's managing editor Julia Redmond sat down with Green Party leader Elizabeth May on March 13 to discuss politics, environmentalism and McMaster. For more on May's visit to McMaster, click here.

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Redmond: What do you think students can do to be involved in politics and to push environmental mandates, aside from being involved in the Party?

May: It’s my obligation to students, what can we do to make sure that you guys don’t have huge levels of student debt, don’t have interest-bearing student debt. The universities are starved for funds and have too-big class sizes and lectures being taught by PhDs being paid $6000—there’s a lot of injustice right now in the university system that needs to be addressed. But the youth of Canada have a huge role, whether students or not students, in making sure we bring up the voting turnout.

As of course you know, 18-25 is the lowest voting turnout and that’s a problem. If you let old people make the decisions, they’re not decisions you’re going to like, right? So encouraging people to understand that—this is a message I’m very glad you asked me because I love to have this reach students at McMaster—if you don’t think your vote has power, why do you think Stephen Harper went to so much trouble to make it harder for you to vote? Consider the Unfair Elections Act. Of course Stephen Harper doesn’t want youth to vote. The whole category of decisions he’s made undermine your future. Why would he want you to vote? But the cynicism in the way politics is carried out is designed to make people disgusted and not vote. So a lot of young people—and old people—think I don’t want to vote, because that behaviour just disgusts me, or I look at that and I’m not interested. It’s a deliberate ploy to keep you from exercising your power.

So on top of voting—and the buddy system to get somebody else to vote with you—the other thing is writing letters to the editor and paying attention to social media, the comment pages on newspapers and CBC, CTV and Global, their websites. Paying attention to issues and engaging and just defending the comments that you think are good comments—not being driven off the page by trolls. Because corporations and political parties have people who are fake people, right, on social media, and they’re the ones that are the most abusive. They’re there to drive real people away. So pay attention—it’s like weeding a garden. Adopt one page in a newspaper and stay there and weed it and stand up for good comments. And encourage other people to get engaged.

And of course, on campuses, [through divestment movements] move as hard as you can and know that you have complete support from a broad movement of citizens who know that divestment campaigns at universities are part of the cutting edge of change.

Redmond: At McMaster I know the divestment group has faced a lot of resistance. Do you think campaigns like that stand a realistic chance of, in the near future, achieving their goals?

May: Some universities are starting already. When they fall, they’ll fall like dominoes. It’s an unethical position for a university to be invested in fossil fuels. And it’s also—guess what—a really bad bet. I’m a member of an institution…and I said ‘we’ve got to get rid of these oil sands stocks’ and they didn’t do it. And the next year at our annual general meeting they said ‘oh, we should’ve gotten rid of the oil sands stocks because we lost a lot of money this year.’ Smart money is moving to renewables, so getting out of fossil fuels is actually good for the economics of the university.

Redmond: Being the only federal party leader right now who’s a woman, what kind of advice do you have for women—young women especially—who are interested in politics?

May: Run. Decide to run, run when you’re young. Join a campaign. If you don’t want to run this time around, become a volunteer for any party you like. They’ll be happy to have you. The Greens win elections because we attract volunteers. The older parties have gone away from volunteers because they can’t get them anymore…it’s not their fault really, they’re just stale. They do things the same old way. A Green campaign runs on pure energy and enthusiasm.

So if you’re interested, get in touch with me, but if you’re interested in other parties, tell them, because you can get involved early, you can run young, or you can get some experience and work in the world and then run for politics. One thing, since you mention it, I’ll tell you I’m excited about. I haven’t said it very much publicly, but I think there’s a very decent chance that in the next election the Green caucus can be the first caucus to have more women than men, and I think that’d be really cool.