“Powershift to hit Ottawa” – Chronicle Herald

Power Shift to hit Ottawa
1,000 students want their green message heard
By TASLEEM MAWJI
Sat. Sep 26 – 4:46 AM

Dalhousie students participating in an upcoming summit in Ottawa are upset that Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently opted to lunch with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg instead of attending a UN gathering. (Adrian Wyld / CP)

About 1,000 Canadian young people will head to Parliament Hill this October to pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to take action on the environment and climate change.

Fifty-five of them will come from Maritime universities, colleges and high schools.

This will be the first Power Shift in Canada, a four-day, student-run summit that will include activist training, speeches, demonstrations and time with MPs.

William Horne, a student organizer at Dalhousie University said he thinks Ottawa is off track.

“We’re demanding that the government subscribe to science-based emission targets as opposed to just arbitrary political targets that don’t really mean anything in terms of solving the climate crisis.”

Hopes are high for the students who will “head to Ottawa to make climate change history” by participating in the “the largest gathering of young people on the environment in Canadian history,” he said.

Mr. Horne and Kaleigh McGregor-Bales, another Dalhousie student organizer, were upset that Mr. Harper recently opted to have lunch with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg instead of attending a UN gathering being held in advance of the UN’s climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

The Prime Minister’s Office told the Toronto Star the meeting with Mr. Bloomberg was to “raise the Buy America clause and the importance to promote open and free trade.”

Mr. Horne said Mr. Harper was “was clearly just avoiding the whole thing because he knows how humiliated he would be at such an action-minded event.”

Ms. McGregor-Bales added: “Stephen Harper has been absent from recent negotiations in New York and is very resistant to signing onto global treaties.”

Twenty-five Nova Scotia students have registered to go to Ottawa for Power Shift. The organizers have raised about $1,000 of the $12,000 they need to make the trip. Dal students have been seeking support from local businesses, their student union, departments and faculties at the school, and their MPs.

So far Mr. Horne has heard back from the NDP and the Liberals. He has only recently written to the Green party.

“A couple of the NDP representatives explained that they couldn’t help us due to the economic situation, but it still looks promising on both fronts, but no guarantees yet from either,” Mr. Horne said.The students plan to march on Parliament Hill on Oct. 24 and 26, then speak with MP Megan Leslie and others.

“The Canadian government needs to take strong action on climate change in Copenhagen and sign a fair, ambitious and binding treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol,” said participant Emily Rideout.

She is a Halifax member of the Canadian Youth Delegation, an arm of the Sierra Club, a U.S. and Canadian environmental organization.