Justin Trudeau faces “Whales in the Room” at campaign stop in Fredericton

Citizens held a silent rally in downtown Fredericton tonight, Sept. 8, outside the Liberal Party campaign barbeque attended by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to make a very visible call for action on climate change.

Using their North Atlantic Right Whale “No Energy East” signs, the Fredericton chapter of the Council of Canadians made quite a splash.  Although several Liberal supporters tried to block the whales and climate change signs, the large crowd and Justin Trudeau could not help but see the elephant in the room.

All of our political leaders need to address climate change. Fredericton has already experienced more severe weather of climate change, most notably Post-Tropical Storm Arthur in July 5, 2014 when the city suffered widespread damage with the loss of over 5000 trees from an unusually severe summer storm with gusts approaching 100 km/hr.

Citizens had the copy of two reports which they handed out to Justin Trudeau’s campaign team.  One was the scientific paper from the Nature journal that states that 85% of Canada’s tar sands, among other fossil fuel reserves in the world, needs to stay in the ground in order to tackle climate change.  The other was the just-released report by Citicorp, the third largest bank in the United Nations.  Citicorp makes the conclusion that the world economy must transition away from fossil fuels, and with the low price of oil, this would actually be cheaper, rather than maintaining the status quo of our carbon-based economy.

Mark D’Arcy is with the Fredericton Chapter of the Council of Canadians.