For East Coast Post.
Vancouver, Montreal, Yellowknife have already joined cause
A new movement is sweeping through communities across Canada.
Environmentalists, human rights activists, politicians, lawyers and more have joined together to fight for the right to a healthy environment.
This includes the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, consume safe food, access nature, know about environmentally harmful pollutants and have more participation in governmental decisions that affect the Canadian environment.
Led by the David Suzuki Foundation and Ecojustice Canada, an environmental law charity, the movement is known as the Blue Dot.
The ultimate goal of the Blue Dot is for every Canadian citizen to have their right to a healthy environment recognized, which means that the right must be added to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The pathway to amending the Charter is a long and difficult one, involving first municipal and then provincial declarations in support of the cause.
As part of the movement, participants sign an online petition and organize their own Blue Dot chapter in their local communities.
Chapters focus on rallying people together to let municipal leaders know they want their support. Leaders then can make the declaration with the support of city council.
Five municipalities and three major cities, including The Pas, Man., Richmond, B.C., Village of Dunnottar, Man., Austin, Que., Montreal, Vancouver and Yellowknife have succeeded in getting their leaders to make a declaration.
So far, almost 1,000 people have signed the petition in the HRM area.
The Halifax Blue Dot committee is in charge of mobilizing supporters of the Blue Dot in the Halifax Regional Municipality area through holding events, organizing social media campaigns, canvassing to raise awareness and more. All volunteers are encouraged to join the committee.
Katie Perfitt, the leader of the Halifax committee, works with the David Suzuki Foundation and the Blue Dot movement.
She says despite the lack of declarations in the East Coast, she believes the campaign is picking up momentum in Nova Scotia.
She sees the municipal declaration as a visionary piece.
“It doesn’t set stringent targets for municipalities, whereas if you have an inclusion in the human rights act or the environment act for environmental rights that’s really meaty, that’s what communities can look to when they’re trying to stand up against fracking, or a dump in their community or something like that.”
Interestingly, Mount Uniacke have had some progress in their municipality, says Perfitt.
“We could see somewhere else in Nova Scotia pushing this forward before even Halifax.”
To get the ball rolling in Halifax, Haligonians must reach out to Mayor Mike Savage and express the need to give a municipal declaration in support of environmental rights.
Members of the Halifax Blue Dot committee met the newest addition to their team, Mike Whitehouse, last Monday.
“My concern is the government … will be too slow to respond to the environmental needs,” says Whitehouse.
Whitehouse says he joined the committee because he was looking to make some sort of contribution to society, and wanted to get more involved with the Halifax chapter of Blue Dot.
He heard about the movement when David Suzuki led the Blue Dot tour through the East Coast last September.
Whitehouse says he likes the movement’s goal to amend the Charter because it is something that can produce measurable outcomes rather than just remain an abstract idea.
One especially dedicated volunteer, Kate MacEachern-Ali, played a major role in bringing Blue Dot to Halifax last year and coordinated the kickoff event along with Perfitt.
MacEachern-Ali points out the importance of campaigning for a better future, so that her son and other future generations can live safer, healthier lives surrounded by resources that are protected rather than depleting.
In other words, having environmental rights protected by federal law is a way of guaranteeing the well-being of not only the country’s natural environment, but the health of those who will be living in it.
“My son’s … been told ever since he could walk, ‘don’t hurt trees, don’t hurt animals, don’t hurt anything,’ because without it you can’t live,” she says of her five-year-old, Malikai, who was a keynote speaker at the Halifax Blue Dot kickoff.
Like MacEachern-Ali, other Blue Dot members are involving their children at a young age and putting young people at the front of the movement.
Doing so reminds people that the quality of the country’s future is at stake.
MacEachern-Ali hopes that Halifax Blue Dot gains more momentum this year and, alongside other Blue Dot groups, urges municipal leaders to get on board.
“We’re the capital, let’s show some leadership here.”