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Rockin' Rhonda & The Uptown Blues Band: Here comes Peter. Here comes Dave. Oh listen. Bringing stories, making waves. No missing. Spinning tales in the podcast cave. So much laughs and insights everywhere. Peter and Dave, they're on the mics. Alright, join the ride. It's gonna feel just right.

Dave Graham: Welcome to the Pulse Community Podcast, where we dig into the stories that make mid Vancouver Island such a special place. I'm Dave Graham, and as we prepare to usher in the fall season, my mind is on transitions and change.

Peter McCully: Uh oh. Should I even ask just what it is you might be thinking about?

Dave Graham: Well, I'm giving thought to how important change is and yet how reluctant we can sometimes be to allow it to happen. And I'm also thinking about vegetables.

Peter McCully: I'm Peter McCully, and I'm guessing we'll be talking about these things and more this week, including some changes coming to the life of Elizabeth May, the member of Parliament for Saanich and the Gulf Islands, and also the leader of the Green Party of Canada. She will be stepping down as leader next year. We talked to her about that and her proposal for a Council of Canadian Governments modeled after Australia's system.

Elizabeth May: In the Australian example, what they did is they have a council of Australian governments. As we all know, Australia has states instead of provinces, but they've worked together to create this Council of Australian Governments. That also includes their local governments, which I think is key because we have a lot of—goodness knows—local governments are treated like the children of provinces and don't have a seat at the table. As well, in Canada, we have First Nations governments, so the Green Party proposal is to do what they do in Australia, which is bring everybody around the table and set priorities and goals together. Then each jurisdiction uses its own tools to reach those goals, but at least it gets everybody pulling in the same direction.

Dave Graham: Here's where the vegetables come in. I met Dan Larocque recently at the Community Garden at the McMillan Art Center, where they are teaching gardening. They are building community connections, and they're bringing neighbors together, which is all the more critical in this age of disconnection and loneliness. And of course, they are making available fresh food for anyone who needs it.

Dan Larocque: Originally, it seemed a little odd that our motto was "what we grow, we give away" as a business model. It's not perfect, but we've stuck with it. We don't ask anybody any of their financial situations, and we just invite them to take what they need. Hopefully they take only what they need, and we can't police that and don't intend to start.

Peter McCully: Future guests to the Pulse Community Podcast include Neil Osborne of 54-40. The band has had an incredibly busy year and they're producing new music.

Dave Graham: I'll say they're busy. I was checking the 54-40 website. They are so busy. Their happy Canada Day greeting is from, well, it's from last year, but they still mean it. They have other business to attend to, including the fact that they're about to crisscross this country, shows coast to coast, including Vancouver. Also coming to the podcast, Shelly Soffer of Nanoose Bay—you know, she recently captured her third Canadian Women's Seniors Championship and she'll be joining us to talk about golf and she'll offer some putting tips. Now wait, what are putting tips?

Peter McCully: Uh, Dave, we're talking about golf, so that's going to be putting tips.

Dave Graham: Ah, that's confusing. It's spelled the same. I'm putting the ball in the cup. I'm putting the ball in the cup. Oh, I'll never understand sports. But that does solve the mystery of putting practice.

Peter McCully: Peter Kent of Qualicum Beach was Arnold Schwarzenegger's stunt double in 14 movies and he'll be joining us in a future edition of the Pulse Community Podcast.

Dave Graham: Oh, I gotta say it was pretty cool to sit down with a guy who has such an interesting story to tell with Peter—the Hollywood glamorous side. He has experienced significant directional changes throughout his life and along the way he's done some pretty wild things. Also, on a future podcast, some wild people. Shannon Sinn, author of The Haunting of Vancouver Island, will tell us about the wild people of the woods, otherwise known as the Sasquatch.

Peter McCully: Now here's a question for you, listener. Do you know of a story you think we should be looking into? That could be in the form of a person, a cause, an event, whatever it is, we're open to suggestions. Contact us at thepulsecommunity.ca.

Dave Graham: I could be biased, but I believe the island attracts what seems to be an unusually large number of highly skilled and creative people. So that's just an endless source of stories there, but we can better represent who we are with your help. Oh, and as far as all that other computer interweb stuff goes, you can also find us on Amazon, iHeart, Apple, TikTok, and YouTube. We're also on Facebook and Instagram.

Peter McCully: Hello? Hi, is that Nikki? Yes. Hi Nikki. It's Peter McCully calling from the Pulse Community Podcast. You entered our contest for the grill, chill and fill. We had a portable barbecue we were giving away, as well as an Igloo cooler and a hundred-dollar gift certificate from Thrifty Foods. I wanted to call you and tell you that you won.

Nicky Westnedge: Excellent. Well, that's fabulous. I never win anything. I bet everybody says that to you.

Peter McCully: Yeah. I wanted to give you a call and let you know that you've won that, and we'll make arrangements for you to be able to pick that up at Thrifty Foods in Parksville.

Nicky Westnedge: Oh, lovely. Well thank you very much, Peter. Okay. And have a great day.

Peter McCully: Yeah, you too. Bye-bye.

Nicky Westnedge: Alright, thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay and Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX Vancouver Island's most advanced real estate business networks since 1996. Marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, recreational, investment and project development real estate. Ian has received several awards recognizing his exceptional community commitment locally, as well as awards for outstanding performance and achievement from both RE/MAX International and the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board. You'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Tablet Pharmacy: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni. The Bookwyrm used books are just $5 each, and be sure to ask about their volume discounts. The Bookwyrm on the corner of Redford and Anderson, open seven days a week from 10 to 5. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collection weekdays from nine to six and weekends 10 to 5. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New books, used books, activity books, puzzle books, and much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and your books will be waiting when you arrive. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Fireside Books and the Bookwyrm—two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.

Dave Graham: I am pleased to share the news that I got myself immersed the other day. I'm not sure I'm ready to hear another story about your bathing habits. It's okay. We'll save that story for another time. No, I want to tell you about my visit to the McMillan Art Center to check out the new show with Robert Held and Brian Middleton. They're collaborating on an immersive multimedia experience called "Trip the Light Fantastic." Now speaking of change, this show represents new ways of creating for both artists. And it just so happened that while I was there, they were there too. They were working on enhancing the immersive effects and they told me that the content of the show itself is being augmented on a regular basis. So even during its run, the show is changing.

Peter McCully: And just outside the McMillan Art Center is where Dave met to talk with our first guest. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: The Parksville Community Garden at the Mac is where volunteers grow fresh food for anyone who needs it. No questions asked. Dan Larocque joins us to talk about how it is teaching gardening, building community connections, and proving that food access can bring neighbors together naturally.

Dave Graham: Welcome to the podcast, Dan. It's great to meet you out here in the community garden, which is what we're here to talk about. And let's begin at the beginning, shall we? The origin story—how this amazing place came to life.

Dan Larocque: We got a grant for the community garden back in 2022. That was through Agriculture Canada. We had already been as a group gleaning local fruit trees and distributing fruit. For that, this became a flagship location where we are able to grow, produce, and distribute all the fruit that we glean year after year.

Dave Graham: And yet this space has become so much more, and I'm wondering if there was a moment where it dawned on you the potential that this place has.

Dan Larocque: We deliberately set out to create a social hub, but we didn't realize that it would become quite as accepted and popular and vital to the community. I think we have people walking through here all the time of all ages, just enjoying the space and appreciating the connection that it brings to our food system and the food that we grow and eat.

Dave Graham: Is there any one particular moment or encounter or person that comes to mind that sort of captures the magic of this place?

Dan Larocque: Gosh, that's a good question, but there's lots. We had one lady last year who was just so beautiful and she was 92 years old and she would walk down from her condo building and just sit. We have another woman who I believe she lives at Hearst House, and she comes in to play the piano regularly and beautifully. So if you're walking around the garden and all of a sudden the sounds of live piano ring out into the air, it's pretty magical.

Dave Graham: So we've revealed the presence of a piano. Walk us here, if you will—give us a little imaginary tour of what this place looks like for our listeners.

Dan Larocque: So we got a couple of gates at the front. We're surrounded by parking lots and this used to be a lawn, a disused lawn. But now we've got these gates that open up. We've got two 12-foot long picnic tables on either side of the entrance. We've got raised beds, we've got hydroponics, we've got berry bushes and fruit trees, and towards the back of the location we have a—I'm looking here—we have a beautiful 320 square foot greenhouse that allows us to grow food year round. We have our piano towards the back and around the corner we have a permaculture food forest that was just planted by a teacher up from Springwood Middle School.

Dave Graham: Well, I've used the word magical already, and once you enter the place, I think anyone would get a similar sense. And I'm wondering if maybe that's at the heart and maybe you could explain further as to what it is about this place that brings people together—people of different ages and cultures and all that.

Dan Larocque: We all eat. We all have to eat every day. And I think for a long time, for a couple of generations at least, we've been separated from our food supply, from growing food. And to see it in its vibrancy in front of you, I think it brings some of the magic. It's a living place. It changes every day. It's colorful, it's aromatic, and it's inviting.

Dave Graham: For those who need this place and places like it, there are no restrictions. You don't have to prove need or anything like that. Was that an idea from the start?

Dan Larocque: It was. It's barrier-free completely. Originally it seemed a little odd that our motto was "what we grow, we give away" as a business model. It's not perfect, but we've stuck with it. We don't ask anybody any of their financial situations and we just invite them to take what they need. Hopefully they take only what they need and we can't police that and don't intend to start.

Dave Graham: Do you grow what's popular? Or do you just grow what grows well and make the best of it?

Dan Larocque: A little of both. We try to grow a lot of berries and a lot of raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, anything that appeals to children, because we do want to bring in the younger generation and inspire them about foods, show them where a raspberry comes from. We also grow things like kale and chard, which are not so popular with the kids, but they grow really well. But we try to educate people on how they can prepare that kind of food because it is plentiful around here and it will grow all year round. We do have recipes that we share with people about foods like that.

Dave Graham: Have there been, in your experience, any surprises or interesting challenges along the way?

Dan Larocque: That's a good question too. We were faced with a pretty big challenge fairly soon because this is a hundred-year-old property. This is the original schoolhouse. We believed when we conceived of this project that it was all one property with one owner, and after looking at the survey from 1970-odd, '73 or '74, it was apparent that this is owned by two different individuals. So we had to change our plan for the siting of the greenhouse. We had to get a survey, we had to get a variance from the city and change where we had placed the greenhouse, and it took six to eight months to do. It was a bit of a challenge.

Dave Graham: This is a rather sprawling place, and I'm just wondering how many people it takes to maintain.

Dan Larocque: Well, we have about 15 to 20 volunteers who come in regularly. We have a board of directors, but we also have gardeners of all ages who will come in. We had Arnold the other day who came in and did a bang-up job on the strawberry bed here, somebody with experience. And then we have a 28-year-old new resident to town who comes in and is really eager to learn about gardening and things like that. So we have a very varied volunteer base that we're pretty happy about. And we've developed a lot more volunteers this year than last year. The first year that we broke ground, it wasn't easy to get volunteers, mostly because we had a hundred cubic yards of soil that we had to move, and we didn't have a lot of people jumping at that opportunity. But now these days, because everything is actually gardening, we have quite a large base of volunteers. A hundred cubic yards. A hundred cubic yards of soil donated by Earthman. So we were really grateful for that, but it was heavy.

Dave Graham: Yes. That makes me think that this would be a great place, for example, for someone who wants to start their own food garden to get some hands-on experience and that kind of thing.

Dan Larocque: Definitely. We run workshops, regular workshops, pretty much every couple of weeks on various topics. We try to harness some of the knowledge around here. We have a lot of really experienced gardeners, people like Connie Kuramoto and Alika, so these experienced gardeners come in and teach workshops to people who are looking to get into gardening themselves. We produced 4,000 seedlings this spring and gave them away as well. So part of our mission is to definitely encourage and inspire new gardeners to grow their own food, because it's important. We can't continue to rely on Florida and Mexico and California to supply our food. It's too expensive. The impact on the environment, driving lettuce to a place where we can grow lettuce, is too high as well. The financial cost of buying food from California is also too high. If we can grow our own food in our own city, in our own backyards or patios, it just makes more sense.

Dave Graham: Do you ever hear of people having misconceptions of what this whole place is about?

Dan Larocque: I don't think so. I mean, it's hard to please everybody, and I don't try. So, no, I don't think there's been any misconceptions at all. I think almost everybody has embraced it and been really positive about it.

Dave Graham: Do you think about where this place might be and the purposes it might be serving, say five years or more down the road?

Dan Larocque: It's hard to think that far ahead. I think we'll probably outgrow it. I think as a demonstration garden it will be much loved, but I think as a group we'll probably look at a larger space to be able to grow more food and leave this as a hub, as a social hub.

Dave Graham: And an artistic space. You haven't mentioned the art that's here too.

Dan Larocque: Yeah, absolutely. We've been so lucky to have Jennifer from the McMillan Art Center as one of our main proponents and champions of this space. She actually bought our sculpture over there, "The Muse" by Sheena McCorquodale and has brought in other local arts into the space. And so together we built a really artful and creative space, I think. Any future plans or events that you haven't had a chance to mention yet? We have our Apple Festival coming up on September 20th. We have a ghost story event coming up on October 3rd. That is gonna be really exciting. We have an orchard maintenance workshop coming up on October 4th, and that's going to be presided over by Katie Greenaway. She's with Denman Island Orchard, that's gonna be exciting. We have our preserving and canning workshops coming up, dates to be determined in partnership with the Bradley Center and Monica Bradbury from Eco Chef Academy. That's the events that we got. We've got all this fruit that we've been gleaning. We're up to 3,500 pounds of local fruit that we've picked and distributed, and it keeps coming in every day. Other residents are bringing it in and it just flows through pretty quickly.

Dave Graham: Wow. Congratulations to you and all of the folks who come together to make this place happen. It's a wonderful place and I invite people to come see you. Thanks, Dan.

Dan Larocque: Nice. Thanks so much, Dave, for visiting.

Peter McCully: A fantastic community group and effort to those who need help these days, and there are many of those. I wonder if they can help me with my rhubarb because it's had a tough year.

Dave Graham: I'm sure they could help you, but are you sure it's just rhubarb you need help with? Okay, change of topic. Have we mentioned the newsletter yet? Be among the first to know of upcoming contests and guests. Sign up at thepulsecommunity.ca.

Cokely Manor: Hi Peter and Dave. I wanted to let you know that Arrowsmith Lodge and Cokely Manor are busy with their annual fundraiser. It's called the Grand Parade, and it happens all across Canada, celebrating seniors and the charities that support them. Many people don't know that Arrowsmith Lodge and Cokely Manor are the Oceanside area's only nonprofit care facilities. And as we gear up to walk on September 20th, our teams of walkers are gathering pledges and donations, helping us build a much-needed covered outdoor space for events and daily activities. Donating is easy. You can head online to thegrandparade.org at the Parksville location, or you can visit our website at arrowsmithlodge.ca. You could stop into the lodge too. We'd love to give you a tour. There's a big chance you know someone who's walking and a bigger chance you know someone we're walking for. Arrowsmith Lodge has been a fixture in Parksville for over 55 years, delivering person-centered care for many of our family, friends and neighbors needing assisted living and long-term care. Check out thegrandparade.org Parksville location online. It's not too late to join in the fun. We'd love your support. We'll be walking and waving our flags Saturday, September 20th on Moilliet Street and around our neighborhood in support of Arrowsmith Lodge and Cokely Manor, and reminding everyone that life is grand.

Thrifty Foods Parksville: At Thrifty Foods, we love to help nonprofits, charities, and schools. Our Thrifty Foods Smile Card bulk program allows organizations to immediately save up to 6% on the purchase of Smile Cards in bulk, allowing you to keep more money in your organization's pockets. Ask for details at Thrifty Foods in Parksville.

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Peter McCully: The Pulse community includes two series of stories for kids. There's the Mellow Submarine and there's Gracie the Eskimo Dog. The stories featured local and familiar places and events, and you'll find them at thepulsecommunity.ca, skookumkids.com, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, iHeart, and YouTube.

Dave Graham: And we have new Skookum Kids stories coming out regularly. For example, the next Mellow Submarine story is about starting a garden, an underwater garden. That's something our next guest might appreciate. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: In the green room is Elizabeth May, member of Parliament for Saanich and the Islands and leader of the Green Party of Canada. She's an author, politician, environmentalist, activist, and lawyer.

Peter McCully: Welcome to the podcast today, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth May: Thank you for having me.

Peter McCully: I know you keep a pretty busy schedule even in the summertime. How many ferries do you suppose you've been on in the past month?

Elizabeth May: Somewhere around 16, 18, maybe. Around that.

Peter McCully: One every other day.

Elizabeth May: Yeah, there's back and forth to Vancouver a fair bit like for Pride Parade and for other events. There's back and forth to fall fairs, at least every other day and sometimes twice a day. Although my riding geographically, you look at a map and you compare my riding to anything like Skeena Valley, and it's a teeny weeny, tiny little riding. But when you consider where the population is and getting to see my constituents, my life is very much either, sometimes people ask me where I live, and I think depending on the month, it's either BC Ferries or it's Air Canada.

Peter McCully: And those fall fairs are great for stocking up on preserves.

Elizabeth May: They never get out of my bag. But I did stock up. I definitely did at the Saanich Fall Fair. One of my favorite local business people does Rosie's Jams and Rosie is lovely and I stock up and I have gifts for people through the year.

Peter McCully: What were your constituents telling you at your community meetings this past summer?

Elizabeth May: Well, we're not done yet. We do nine locations twice a year. Really strong turnouts, lots of interest. And of course every community within my riding, some of the same issues come up everywhere. Healthcare, the lack of family doctors, concerned about what the heck with Trump. And of course, at least in this area, people are really concerned with the threat to the survival of our southern resident killer whales, and a lot of concern about what on earth are we gonna do about the climate crisis. The concern I know I see in the national polls that concern dips. Not here in Saanich-Gulf Islands. The concern about climate is quite consistent. People look at the wildfires this summer. People look at the impact on our health of smoke and air quality. I had one person at one of my community meetings who's a doctor, said that, you know, when people are talking about their concern about the rise in violent crimes, he said, "I'm wondering if they know that the kind of particulate matter in wildfire smoke is linked," and I haven't checked this out, but he's a doctor and he said it in one of the meetings that you get an increase in violent episodes when you have low air quality. And also you get an increase in violent crimes when you have heat waves and heat dome effects. So the two together spike both domestic violence and random attacks. I have a very interested, engaged community or a set of communities, and one indicator of that is that in the federal election, Saanich-Gulf Islands had 78% voter turnout, so well above average.

Peter McCully: And over the years we've seen that in various ridings across the country that it is not anything in terms of being stable, it's just up and down.

Elizabeth May: When I first got elected here, which was amazingly enough to me 14 years ago, and I defeated a member of Stephen Harper's cabinet, you remember an MP, Gary Lunn who was Harper's minister at the time, he'd been minister of natural resources. I think when I won the election, he was minister for sport. In any case, Gary's a nice guy. Anyway, that election, we had the highest voter turnout in Canada because the national voter turnout was at 60% and Saanich-Gulf Islands was 75%. So I was surprised to find that here. Now, 14 years later, we actually had voter turnout even higher at 78%. The turnout, particularly from youth, really meant a lot to me, because it was a tougher election than I've faced in a long time.

Peter McCully: And now you've won five consecutive elections in Saanich-Gulf Islands, but this recent one saw you returned as the sole Green MP to Ottawa, the only Green voice in a parliament with a minority government. How do you plan to leverage that to advance those Green priorities?

Elizabeth May: It's funny because when I was first elected saying I was the only Green MP was a sign of enormous victory because no one thought I was gonna win and no one thought a Green MP could ever win. When I say no one, including quite a few Greens who thought, as long as we have the first-past-the-post voting system, how are we ever going to make a breakthrough? So when I was the only Green MP and had defeated a sitting cabinet member, as I mentioned, that was a huge victory in 2019, getting reelected was a big victory. And in 2021, for the first time reelected with company, so there were three of us reelected, and then I stepped down as leader continuing as MP. So I'm quite used to my role if I'm the only MP in the House for the Green Party, and I'm more familiar than most MPs with the rules of parliamentary procedure, and I know how to make an outsized impact with the one voice I have, and I know I'm able to do more than members of Parliament who are in the larger parties, are much more constrained in terms of what they can do with the rules that they have because they also have the overlay of being told what to do. And I don't have that problem. So in the time I've been a member of Parliament, I've had three private members' bills become law. And that's a lot above what most MPs could ever expect to get in terms of private members' bills. My first one to get a national strategy on Lyme disease and now people are so much more aware of the spread of Lyme disease and how dangerous it is. But I'm really, that was one where, thanks to the fact, I think of a public shout out, but again, I got elected the first year that Stephen Harper had a majority government in 2011. But Rona Ambrose was the Minister of Health, and she's a very fair-minded person, and she looked at my private member's bill and decided that, and most of the MPs in the Conservative Party had been educated about Lyme disease by their own constituents. That applies to all the MPs, the Lyme disease community turned out in large numbers and went to visit every single MP. It's astonishing when you consider that these are people who are suffering and have ill health and a lot of stress. Anyway, my bill passed the House and the Senate unanimously back in 2014, so I'm familiar with what to do to make an impact from the position of being the only Green MP in the House.

Peter McCully: What made this past summer the right time to make your announcement about not leading the Green Party into the next federal election?

Elizabeth May: A combination of things. It's a Liberal minority parliament, which means we won't have a full four years till the next election. On top of that, the Green Party has very strict rules because it is truly a party that is grassroots. It's bottom up. And as leader, I know the leader has no authorities or powers to, unlike in other parties, you don't get to say, "I don't like the cut of his jib. He's not gonna be a candidate for us." We also have a, not just a policy, but a bylaw against whipping votes within the party. Even when we have a couple of MPs, we often vote different ways. So all that said, one of our policies, one of our bylaws in the Constitution is that after every election, within six months, there's a leadership review and at, barring, if this had been a majority Liberal government, we knew how much time we were gonna have. I would've not necessarily announced, I didn't wanna represent the party in the next federal election, but I know the next one's gonna be shorter than four years away. And the leadership review is mandatory and has to be concluded by October 28th. So the reason I decided to make the announcement was I really felt obliged to be as candid as possible with our membership. Our membership is going to be receiving a ballot in the mail, not email, but mail. "Do you support Elizabeth May continuing as leader?" And I want them to vote yes. On the other hand, I know that within the next six months to a year, I was gonna be saying, "By the way, I'm stepping aside as soon as a new leader can be elected." I didn't want the Green Party members to feel, "Well, we wish she'd told us that earlier," so I figured I'll announce it now. So everyone knows I'll be stepping aside as soon as a new leader can be elected, there'll be a leadership race and we also make our decisions by consensus with a larger group because as I said, the leader isn't in charge and doesn't have the authority. But we do have an elected council, like a board of directors. I told the federal council in early July, "Be prepared for this. We need to start thinking about when we can put together a leadership race, come up with rules that work, and frankly learning from past mistakes." I mentioned I stepped down as leader in 2019, right after an election where we'd done super well and elected three MPs. I made a mistake thinking it would be better to step down right away and have an interim leader rather than doing what I'm doing this time, which is I'll step down once the leadership race is over and I can actually physically, on the stage of a leadership convention, pass the baton. That's why the timing, it was really dictated by circumstance that this was the right time to make sure members knew. "Yes, please vote for me to continue for at least another, maybe six months. It might be a year, but I'm not going to be continuing as leader into the next federal election campaign." I think the party needs renewal and we will do better with a change in leadership, but I will not be retiring, and I hope to continue as a member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands and run again next time.

Peter McCully: This past federal election, the result was different than what one would have predicted. It would be by the polls, the NDP, and both the Green Party lost seats and lost voters. How are you gonna track those voters who in the past election voted for other parties?

Elizabeth May: This election was a real lesson learned, and I hope that we can change our voting system because it's really fear-based voting. A lot of people were voting not what they wanted to vote for, but fear was in a couple of directions. A lot of Canadians were afraid of what Donald Trump intends to do to our country. So angry at Trump, angry at the collapse of our previously assumed great relationship with our neighbor to the south. So there was a fear factor relating to Donald Trump, and there was a fear factor among many voters relating to Pierre Poilievre. So a lot of conservatives actually got elected where voters thought "uh oh," and I heard it a lot on the doorstep in my own riding. "I better vote, quote unquote, strategically, I've got to vote for Mark Carney because Carney was seen as both by a lot of voters as the best bet could take on Trump and as the best way to make sure Pierre Poilievre didn't become Prime Minister." Ironically, it was that surge in fear-based voting that meant that Mike, my Green colleague and member of Parliament for Kitchener Center, Mike Morrice, who's pretty much universally respected in the House. I had a lot of Liberals come up to me after the election and Conservative for that matter too, and say, "We're really gonna miss Mike. Mike was great," but Mike was defeated by a Conservative candidate that nobody had thought was a real contender, and it was because of voters leaving the Green Party to vote Liberal, that let a Conservative win. So that's the kind of thing that happens with first-past-the-post voting. Bringing the voters back: one thing is we're starting earlier. The snap election really hurt us and it hurt the NDP as well. So we're already nominating candidates. We're already gonna have candidates starting sooner, knocking on doors. We haven't got a whole slew of candidates nominated yet, but we're close to having people able to say, "I'm your Green Party candidate." We don't know when the election is gonna be, but we can let voters know this will be your Green Party candidate. And give those candidates the chance to get out early, start knocking on doors, making sure they've collected their signatures. Because that was where we had a huge glitch. We had nominated candidates in every riding across Canada. But when Mark Carney called the snap election, collecting signatures became a real hurdle that we never encountered before, where for many different reasons, I won't go into all of them, but people were having trouble collecting signatures. Well, we don't want that to be a problem. Again, that's just a matter of timing. So we wanna start early.

Peter McCully: You've written a proposal for a Council of Canadian Governments, which I understand is modeled after Australia's system. What is it and how does it work?

Elizabeth May: The conundrum, which we now face too. Carney's talking about it a lot too. We've got 10 provinces, three territories, and a federal government who don't seem capable of thinking like a country. We've got all these interprovincial trade barriers. The estimates are that we lose about $300 billion of GDP just from our inability to function as well together as say 23 separate nation states in the European Union are able to function and they've got something like 40 different official languages. And here we are with two official languages, as I said, 10 provinces, three territories, one federal government. We can't seem to get along to get things done. So in the Australian example, what they did is they have a Council of Australian Governments. As we all know, Australia has states instead of provinces, but they've worked together to create this Council of Australian Governments that also includes their local governments, which I think is key because we have a lot of, goodness knows, local governments are treated like the children of provinces and don't have a seat at the table. As well, in Canada, we have First Nations governments, so the Green Party proposal is to do what they do in Australia, which is bring everybody around the table and set priorities and goals together. Then each jurisdiction uses its own tools to reach those goals, but at least it gets everybody pulling in the same direction.

Peter McCully: Does that proposal include what Australia's method of voting is? Which is if you don't vote, you pay a fine?

Elizabeth May: No, we're not overhauling our whole system to Australia. Australia does have, of course, an elected Senate, which is of real interest, and they elect their Senate by proportional representation. In any case, now, this is not holus-bolus taking on what Australia does. It's just saying, look at this cool example. I first learned about the Council of Australian Governments from Deborah Coyne, who's such a genius policy wonk. Anyway, the Council of Australian Governments works well. We have the First Ministers' meetings, which went outta fashion for quite a long time. We're now seeing, I think Prime Minister Mark Carney is doing a great job of spending a lot of time with provincial premiers without it being as formal as a First Ministers' meeting, but we're still leaving out all the local governments and municipal order of government is really where the rubber hits the road. They have a huge burden of a lack of tax dollars, lack of revenue, but almost a huge burden of services fall on local governments. And there's the downloading of provinces, loading more onto local governments all the time. And again, if we're gonna have true reconciliation, we have to have nation to nation relationships. So the way this would work in the Green Party view is you'd have a large national table of premiers, prime minister, First Nations leadership, and the way Greens conceive of this is we'd have the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, FCM, designate a group of big city mayors. Not all mayors, obviously big city mayors, and a good representation from their rural caucus. Rural municipalities have particularly different challenges and need to be recognized, so get them seats at the table and then First Nations, Inuit and Métis leadership, and you'd have this one large table for what are our national goals? Right now as a parliamentarian, you can't use the word national. You can only say federal. But if you had a council of Canadian governments, what are our national goals? But then what they do in Australia, we do too, is okay, that's the national policy picture. Let's break it down and have an education council, an environmental council, a defense policy council, transportation council. You see how drilling down. We do have councils of education ministers across Canada, council of Health Ministers bring that down with a Council of Canadian Governments so that you can get policy coherence and policy alignment. It is a truism, but true that there's only one taxpayer in Canada, but the tax dollars flow to different orders of government and they can be wasting a lot of people's tax dollars, let's be blunt, by pulling in different directions, let's get everybody pulling in the same direction. And with policy alignment and policy coherence, you get more bang for your buck and you actually get things done.

Peter McCully: Talking about the leadership of the Green Party coming around in 2026, looking at the younger generation of environmental activists and politicians who gives you hope, who do you see the torch being passed to in the next generation of green leaders?

Elizabeth May: There's so many. Right now we're having a leadership race with the Green Party of British Columbia. Green Party of British Columbia has in the last number of years achieved a lot of electoral success to the point that both former Premier John Horgan and current premier David Eby have managed to stay in power only on the basis of the confidence and supply agreements with British Columbia Greens. So we have right now a leadership race, and although we have Green MLAs in the BC legislature, none of the MLAs are running for leader. But we have three candidates and they're all relatively young. So it's been covered as a story of a generational shift. We have the youngest candidate, Adam Olsen is 23. Next youngest candidate is about to turn 25, Emily Lowen, who's a climate campaigner and has worked a lot on indigenous solidarity movements. And the third candidate is an elected member of Comox Council and is a medical doctor, Jonathan Kerr. So he is older than the others, but he is 44, so he's way younger than me, so I would feel like I was passing a torch to a young person. To pass it to someone 44, 45 or 50. I've been the oldest party leader in Canada since I was first elected in 2006. I could keep doing this forever, but I think in terms of a renewal and presenting to Canadians, the vigor and the image, and particularly appealing to younger voters. I want to see a leadership race that's exciting and interesting the way the one is here in British Columbia with really impressive candidates and some of them quite young and at least relatively young.

Peter McCully: In 2015, your daughter Kate, was on the ballot in the Quebec riding and there was never a mother and daughter running as leader and candidate for the same party in Canadian federal election history, which is very unique and she's worked on a number of your campaigns, and I know I've asked you this question before, but I'm wondering whether she's reconsidering or just considering running again.

Elizabeth May: No. My daughter, Kate is way smarter than me and she's almost finished her PhD at the Institute for Social Justice at UBC, but she's also a school teacher and her academic work aligns with her day job in that she's working on how we decolonize and indigenize our educational system. I remember when she was being interviewed, when I first stepped down as leader back in 2019, and someone asked her the same question on CTV National News, "Would she ever consider running?" The way she put it was, "I really don't think dynasties are a thing," but she is active, she's very active in supporting other people in politics. She continues to help me in my campaigns. She's, as a volunteer working on one of the campaigns for one of the wonderful young leadership candidates in the BC leadership race. And now I'm unbelievably obnoxiously happy Peter. My daughter's had a daughter, so on October 30th, I became a grandmother, not for the first time, because I have 11 step grandkids. But I was singularly unprepared for how nuts I was gonna go about my daughter having a daughter. So my granddaughter's named Lily, and that's one reason I'm never gonna retire until we fix the climate crisis and ensure that my step grandchildren and Lily can have a livable world. And at this point, we're not assured of that, but I know we can make the changes that will assure our kids and grandkids of a livable world, so I'm very motivated by that.

Peter McCully: Congratulations, by the way.

Elizabeth May: Thanks.

Peter McCully: You've been representing people through the Sierra Club, through politics, through your seat in the House of Commons for many years, and as someone who moved to Canada from the United States early in your life, what does being Canadian mean to you?

Elizabeth May: Everything. It means everything. Increasingly, when you look around the world, and I often ask myself, is there any other country where I would wanna live? And there's not a single place in the world that I would trade anything for my citizenship for being Canadian. I'm very pleased that when, back in the early seventies when my parents moved us to Canada as a family, it was really easy and virtually automatic to renounce US citizenship to become a Canadian citizen. So I'm not a dual citizen and I'm extraordinarily grateful for the shared values of this country, which are much more around taking care of each other. We're not a country that celebrates selfish individualism, and I'm afraid that when you compare, it sounds really wonderful to have a country that lives for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but give me "peace, order, and good government" any day. We have a role in the world and we need to step up into it more. As the US retreats from a role of responsibility and caring for peace and democracy, means the world needs Canada more than ever.

Peter McCully: Thanks for your time today, Elizabeth. Look forward to our next chat.

Elizabeth May: Thank you, Peter. What a treat.

Dave Graham: Elizabeth May preparing for change. You know, she's written seven books, including one called "How to Save the World In Your Spare Time." Hey Peter, let's get a copy of that. See what we can get done over coffee. Could you imagine what we could do if we added some fries and gravy?

Rockin' Rhonda & The Uptown Blues Band: Here comes Peter, here comes Dave, oh listen. Bringing stories, making waves. No missing. Spinning tales in the podcast cave. So to speak. Laughs and insights everywhere. What a treat. Peter and Dave. They're on the mics alright. Join the ride. It's gonna feel just right.