Youth Consultation with Canada's Ambassador for Climate Change

Youth Consultation with the Canadian Ambassador for Climate Change Vancouver / Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Territories - May 30, 2019

1

It is still not too late to act.

It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking.

I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible - Greta Thurnberg

Introduction Canadian youth are on the forefront of climate action — whether as activists, innovators, policymakers, or everyday citizens, young people across the country are making their mark. In Vancouver especially, where young people have been pushing new transit investments, engagement with the Province’s CleanBC strategy, zero waste business models, and municipal climate emergency declarations, the breadth of activity is incredible.

As part of the shoulder events for the 10th Clean Energy Ministerial and 4th Mission Innovation Summit, Canada’s Ambassador for Climate Change, Patricia Fuller, asked to convene a workshop with young climate leaders from around Vancouver. Deborah Harford, Executive Director of Simon Fraser University’s Adaptation to Climate Change Team (SFU ACT), and George Benson, Co-Founder of the Climate Migrants and Refugees Project and a national lead for climate initiatives with the Global Shapers Community, convened and co-hosted a roundtable with the Ambassador, with a selection of Vancouver’s young climate leaders to talk about youth climate initiatives in the region and areas where there are opportunities for more collaboration between the Ambassador for Climate Change and young climate leaders from around the country.

Key points of Discussion during the Consultation 2

• Youth were excited to learn how the Ambassador for Climate Change’s office is working on a number of fronts to help drive Canadian climate action forward, including strengthening the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Action, strategic global initiatives like Powering Past Coal, or the Global Commission on Adaptation, and climate change finance. Canada’s focus on climate finance and nature-based solutions was highlighted as key areas of interest and enthusiasm.

• Meaningfully engaging young people is key to raising ambition on climate action.

Governments and institutions must go beyond inviting a small number of youth to be present in decision-making spaces, and to move towards fully integrating the voices of young people in panels, roundtables, debates, and meetings throughout all decision-making processes.

• Young people are already actively engaging on all levels regarding climate change across the country and around the world — their voices are being registered in some forums, and not in others. Many youth are still not seeing their voices reflected, particularly with regards to the urgency of climate change, in the statements and direction of many governments’ policies.

• The engagement and inclusion of young Canadians in international and domestic spaces should not be treated as mutually exclusive. Youth have long been leading the demand for climate action both at home and with partners abroad, recognizing that it is an issue transcending borders. Therefore, the presence of young Canadians should be ubiquitous in all climate-related forums engaged in by the Government of Canada.

• Youth are bringing a truly intersectional lens to climate action, whether in policy and service work, or in advocacy. Issues as diverse as migrants’ rights, just economic transitions and transformation, public transit, nature based solutions, decarbonizing the energy system, gender and racial equity, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and many other issues, are all being brought together more and more as part of holistic responses to climate change.

• The Government of Canada must continue increase, and make more explicit, efforts to include marginalized, racialized, immigrant and Indigenous youth in these conversations, as traditional consultation formats have failed to adequately include their voices.

Recommendations for Canada’s Ambassador for Climate Change 3

These recommendations were developed by the youth leaders attending to create helpful, actionable steps that the Ambassador’s Office and others members of the Government of Canada leverage the strength of youth to better deliver on Canada’s responsibilities on climate change and other intersecting issues, such as reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

1. Create a clear, accessible way for young leaders to reach out to the Government of Canada regarding delegations for international events related to climate change, and to coordinate support youth in attending these events;

2. Create clarity around ongoing funding support for international work by young people by issuing clearer, more regularized calls for proposals, and also by providing more ongoing means of support for attending key events, program development and operation, and otherwise;

3. Convene a recurring consultation process with young Canadian leaders, similar to the May 30th roundtable, to establish an explicit youth and equity lens for government delegations to international events, so that problems of access, funding, and accreditation are not downloaded to young people, particularly youth from historically marginalized communities;

4. Work with Canadian young climate leaders to find processes and partnership models that enable the Ambassador for Climate Change to leverage the many national, provincial, and local climate initiatives led by young people;

5. Create predictable, inclusive, and ongoing opportunities for young people to weigh-in on government policies and processes related to climate change (and otherwise); and work with youth leaders to ensure that those participating are representative of Canada’s full diversity and that these processes respect and uphold Canada’s commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

Youth Consultation Attendees

4

Name

Organization

Anitra Paris

Clean Energy BC / Climate Vote Project

Caroline Merner

Climate Guides / Youth4Nature

Colton Kasteel

BC Council for International Cooperation

George Benson (Facilitator)

Global Shapers Community / Climate Migrants and Refugees Project

Kate Hodgson

Our Time / UBC 350

Maya Guttman

Working with First Nations Youth

Shakti Ramkumar

Student Energy / UBC Climate Hub

Sophia Yang

BC Community Energy Association

Tesicca Truong

CityHive / The Starfish Canada

Veronika Bylicki

CityHive

Cover Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons user Formulaone

5