In Quebec, the youth climate movement started gaining momentum in the spring of 2019, just months after the last provincial election. After a global pandemic, and on the eve of the next provincial elections, young people continue to demonstrate for the future.
I was there in 2019, and I can tell you why we sacrifice one day of classes a week: we believed in a better world, and we fought to make it happen.
In 2022, young people have neither lost hope nor given up: they continue to demonstrate against unsustainable and senseless projects such as Bay du Nord, the oil project off Newfoundland and Labrador approved last April by the Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, a project that even the Norwegian company Equinor is beginning to doubt. Foreign oil companies, it seems, have more environmental backbone than our own federal government.
Next Friday, June 3, the young people of Pour le futur Montréal are organizing their last demonstration of the school year. I will be there to support them and I invite you too, at 1:30 p.m. in Dorchester Square.
Because as long as projects like Bay du Nord continue to be proposed and approved, and as long as our governments do not present measures to measure up to the climate crisis, our young people will still be on the streets.
To see in video