Climate crisis | Youth resume weekly protests

Thirty high school and CEGEP students demonstrated for the climate on Friday in Montreal, resuming for the second week in a row a tradition interrupted by the pandemic.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

“Hotter, hotter, we are hotter than the climate”, they chanted, among other things, as their predecessors did until spring 2020 during their weekly school strikes.

Dissatisfied with the governments’ response to the climate crisis, the young protesters also denounced the Bay du Nord project, which aims to build a floating platform for the extraction of oil and gas off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ottawa must announce by March 6 whether it will authorize this project by the Norwegian company Equinor, after postponing its decision for 90 days in December.

“The project must absolutely be refused, because it is incompatible with Canada’s climate targets and international agreements”, declared to The Press Shirley Barnea, student at Cégep Sainte-Anne and co-spokesperson for the Pour le futur Montréal movement, which organizes these weekly demonstrations.

“The solution to Newfoundland’s economic problems is to invest in a just transition”, rather than in “an industry that has no future”, she added.

Leaving from Place Vauquelin, next to the Hôtel de Ville, in Old Montreal, the small group of demonstrators marched to the constituency office of Minister Guilbeault, on Boulevard De Maisonneuve, to tell him hear his message.

“As an environmental activist from a young age, I applaud these young people for their commitment and dedication,” said in a statement sent to The Press Minister Guilbeault, who was in Ottawa.

Saying he is “fully aware of the importance of the decision” that he must take concerning the Bay du Nord project, Steven Guilbeault affirmed that the government will take “the best possible decision in the interest of the population and the environment. “.