Youth activists ‘felt heard’ by environment minister

REGINA Eighteen-year-old Sydney Chadwick says a meeting she and two other youth activists had with Saskatchewan’s environment minister Tuesday is just the beginning.

“It’s really important to see this as a starting point and not just a one-off,” Chadwick said. “This is a conversation and we’re going to keep talking.”

Chadwick is one of three youth organizers of Fridays For Future Regina who met with Minister Dustin Duncan on Tuesday afternoon.

Part of a global movement sparked by Swedish teenager and passionate environmentalist Greta Thunberg, also known as the School Strike 4 Climate, students have been marching to the Legislative Building in Regina on Fridays as part of their call for action on the climate crisis.

Scott Moe’s Sask. Party government had taken some heat from critics in recent weeks for failing to meet with the student activists.

“I felt heard,” Chadwick said. “I think so did my fellow activists.”

Chadwick, along with Ada Dechene and Alex Flett, expressed their concerns to Duncan about the slow pace of climate action in the province. They pressed him on issues such as oil extraction, public transit, the net metering program for solar power and the need for Saskatchewan to declare a climate emergency.

While both Chadwick and Flett described the meeting as productive and respectful, there were a few items that the two parties drastically disagreed on. Declaring a climate emergency was at the top of that list.

“You just look at the science, you look at the statistics — people are dying. People are losing their homes from natural disasters intensified by climate change,” Chadwick said. “It’s getting pretty bad and it’s going to keep getting worse.

“It is an emergency.”

She said Duncan was resistant to the idea, because there isn’t an immediate action the government can take, as it would if a state of emergency was declared due to forest fires or flooding.

But she said a declaration from the government is an important step to sending Saskatchewan residents the right message.

“If our government stood up and said, ‘Hey, this is an emergency. We do have to act on this,’ I think it could help change people’s perspective on that a bit,” Chadwick said.

Flett said the other major sticking point was the slowing down of oil extraction, something the trio feels is essential to tackling the climate crisis.

“I tried my best to see where he was coming from, but the world is certainly changing and the world’s demand for oil is going to go down, so we don’t want Saskatchewan to be left behind as that transition begins,” he said.

Chadwick expressed frustration that Duncan did not seem receptive to the idea.

“I could tell he was coming from a good place, but it’s still hard to hear that when we know that we need to move away from fossil fuels as a province, as a country,” she said.

Duncan said they talked about everything from transitioning employees in the coal industry to solar panels in the meeting, which was scheduled for half an hour but went on for a little over an hour.

“I think there’s things that I learned from them,” he said. “I certainly appreciated their points of view, and them taking the time to come in and meet with me.”

Duncan committed to meeting with the group again, although neither party had a timeline for that.

He also agreed to speak at the next Fridays For Future rally planned for Nov. 29. The rally coincides with another global climate strike.