Elizabeth May stops in Hamilton: 3 questions for Green leader

There was another party buzzing on James Street North on Friday night. 

While Juno fever raged around town, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May spoke with supporters in Hamilton Friday, about her disdain for Bill C-51, her hopes to be included in the election-season leaders' debate and her desire to see the party motivate unregistered voters to get involved in Canadian civic life.

• READ MORE: Bill C-51 'Day of Action' protests denounce new policing powers

She toured Hamilton's co-op grocery store, The Mustard Seed, and made a pit stop at the Green Smoothie Bar before heading to the Vasco de Gama hall to meet with a couple hundred supporters.

After picking up some local jam (rhubarb), she took a few minutes to talk with CBC Hamilton about cleaning up the Great Lakes, improving air quality and the dangers posed by shipping crude by rail.

On Hamilton's waterfront and the Great Lakes 

You've written about Sidney Tar Ponds. We have Randle Reef here. 

Oh, I know. 

What do you think needs to happen on Hamilton's waterfront?

The Great Lakes cleanup momentum just dropped under Stephen Harper. There's been almost no money for Great Lakes cleanup. We left vacant for years the position on the International Joint Commission for a Canadian rep. So the whole Great Lakes agenda needs to pick up again. There was one year, it may have been the budget in 2010, where the Harper Conservatives had more money for fencing around the perimeter of the Great Lakes to stop terrorists than for cleaning up the great lakes. 

We have priority areas of concern like Randle Reef. Hamilton's made loads of progress, no question. But getting it cleaned up enough to where you remediate it, you have healthy fish populations, you can drink the water, you can swim the beaches, that's a goal. That's still within reach.

But I can't get over how the Great Lakes have just dropped off the radar screen. I was talking to a government scientist the other day about how Great Lakes as a topic area don't even get discussed. 

You don't see Great Lakes in budgets. But the Great Lakes are, since the 1909 Boundary Waters Act, a key responsibility of the federal government. 

We're having dropping lake levels that will lead to an increase in contamination, because when the increased evaporation globally leads to the lakes dropping, which they're doing now, and then the concentration of toxic chemicals increases just because the volume of water is less.

The federal government has to get back in the game on Great Lakes cleanup. 

On air quality

With the air quality here, there's been a concern and a criticism that Ontario provincial regulation of steel producers, for example, and other industrial producers, has really lagged behind the U.S. 

What role do you think the federal govt should be playing in that? The provincial government has played, according to some critics, a very pro-industrial role at the possible expense of the air quality. 

As you say, the provincial air quality standards and regs are the driver here. But what I believe the federal government should do in a wide range of areas is create national goals and national standards. And that requires consultation and cooperation, which is what Stephen Harper never does; he never sits down with the premiers.

No Canadian should have no dirtier air, or undrinkable water compared to another Canadian.- Elizabeth May, MP

So what Greens believe we need to do is create policy goals that create policy coherence, so municipalities, provincial governments and national governments are all working in the same direction. 

Within a national environmental policy, there'd be clean air standards, drinking water standards — there are a whole bunch of things we can agree upon as set national standards. 

Within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms no Canadian should have no dirtier air, or undrinkable water compared to another Canadian. That's a Charter right. To get there, you need to have a policy foundation.

• READ MORE: Should Hamilton hire 3 more people to combat bad air quality?
• READ MORE: Despite new standards, high levels of carcinogens remain in Hamilton air

Ideally from the point of view of Canadian citizens, those three levels of government should be pulling in the same direction. So that's how Greens see our way out of silos. So yes, it's provincial jurisdiction to set the air quality standards but it's Health Canada concern if people are breathing unhealthy air. 

The best example of our split jurisdictions is on water quality. because water quality is provincial but fish are federal. So this really is a formula that calls for cooperation. 

On shipping crude oil by rail

With the explosions that have just happened in Northern Ontario with crude by rail it's on everyone's mind what's coming through our cities on the railroads. Are you happy with what Transport Canada is doing for regulation? 

Moving to remove [most dangerous] DOT-111 rail cars, Transport Canada has moved a bit faster than the U.S. I like giving credit where credit is due, so I'll give credit for that. And Lisa Raitt, Minister of Transportation is one of my favourite ministers. We're friends and I think she's a good person.

That said, we are nowhere near doing enough. 

'Right now I don't feel confident that what happened at Lac-Mégantic couldn't happen again. And that makes me very upset as a Parliamentarian. And a Canadian."- Elizabeth May, MP and Green Party Leader

We have the technology in the 21st Century to have computer systems on board every train. To tell a headquarters somewhere, just the way an airplane tells a control tower. The technology of positive train control, they can tell you if the tires are getting too hot, they can tell you if the brakes aren't working, and they can tell headquarters that.

[We need] better-enhanced computer technology on board, and enough workers going on the train. They've reduced it to such an alarming level, and they've also expanded the length of the freight, the number of cars they're moving. 

• READ MORE: 7 of every 100 Hamilton rail cars contain hazardous material

If you're double-stacking on freight, and you have a really, really long, miles-long of freight moving, and you're carrying combustibles ....

Municipalities have a right to know what's going through their town. 

In real time?

Yeah, they can, absolutely. We should be diverting away from the most populated areas the most dangerous products. We shouldn't be shipping Bakken crude (the type of oil that exploded in Lac-Mégantic) at all. 

Right now I don't feel confident that what happened at Lac-Mégantic couldn't happen again. And that makes me very upset as a Parliamentarian. And a Canadian.