The leader of the federal Green Party visited the riding this week with ideas about how Canada should navigate a "polycrisis world."
Elizabeth May spoke to Probus Club of Ladysmith members on Wednesday, July 17, at the Ladysmith Seniors Centre. She spoke about a range of global crises and conflicts and the ways they interconnect and overlap, mentioning how COVID-19 arrived during a climate crisis and opioid crisis, followed by global inflation creating an affordability crisis, then by conflict in Ukraine and Gaza.
"You don't get a moment to breathe and you can't approach these crises sequentially," said May. "One doesn't go away before you have to deal with the next one and they cascade and the risks of one enhance the risks of the others."
She said the climate crisis, for example, has caused crop failures which have driven up food prices. Some of the solutions require international co-operation – she pointed to the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as past approaches to creating global stability – but some must come from Canadians, she said.
"I think we need to challenge people in elected office to avoid the temptation to dumb things down to slogans that rhyme," May said. "It's tempting. I could do it too, you know, we could say 'scrap the crap,' that type of thing. Not dumbing down to things that rhyme would be a good start, and embracing the fact that things are complex, that there's nuance."
May said continuing to move away from fossil fuels is a good start, as it will slow climate change and harm Russia's economy.
The Green Party leader also favours a guaranteed basic income that she said would reduce poverty, replace a shame-based income assistance system, and eliminate an under-the-table economy. She doesn't think it's impossible, as she noted that the Canada Emergency Response Benefit during the pandemic substantially reduced child poverty and it was something that all the country's political parties were able to agree upon.
May said Canada has the "super power" of social cohesion, something demonstrated during disaster response, for example, when people have embraced and cared for one another.
"We need to celebrate that, we need to hang onto it for dear life, because what we're facing as a species isn't pretty, but it's survivable," she said.
