Environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki is travelling across the country asking, "If you were prime minister, what would you do for the environment?" And he's getting an interesting selection of answers.
The David Suzuki Foundation tour has already stopped in 12 cities from St. John's, Newfoundland to Cornwall, Ontario, and plans to continue heading west to Victoria.
Suzuki says he launched the tour because it seemed to him that so many Canadians are concerned about their air and water and the health of their children, but the federal government doesn't seem to be hearing them.
"When you hear what politicians talk about in elections, it's all about a 1 per cent reduction in GST. I've never heard a Canadian say we've got to reduce the GST so there seems to be a disconnect between what politicians are all talking about and the public," Suzuki explained to Canada AM.
"So I thought let's go across Canada and get them to tell us what they really think are key items, and we'll take them to Ottawa."
Amazingly, he says, during the time he was organizing the tour, climate change suddenly became a hot topic, perhaps in part because of a disturbingly warm fall and early winter. Some polls suggest it has surpassed health as the top concern of most Canadians.
According to a poll conducted last month by the The Strategic Counsel for Â鶹´«Ã½ and The Globe and Mail, about 93 per cent of those surveyed said they were willing to make some kind of sacrifice to solve global warming.
Suzuki wants to build on that momentum before it fades.
"Sadly, we've already been here," he says. "In 1988, the environment was at the absolute top of the agenda."
But it somehow fell off the radar, particularly as the economy slowed down in the early 90s.
"The important point now is we've got the politicians' attention again. Let's not let that decline. We've got to keep that pressure up," Suzuki says.
So far on his tour, Suzuki says he has met plenty of average Canadians who say they are tired of the political games being played between the countries three main parties.
"What I find is a tremendous revulsion against this 'they didn't do anything, vote for us, we're going to do this.' they just say 'get off this rhetoric and let's see some concrete targets. Let's see some timelines.' What I hear from the public is 'We're willing to do our share, but we want to be sure that government and the private sector, industries are going to do that as well.'"
Suzuki says Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, asked two questions this past fall: What will it cost for us to do something serious about climate change? He decided that if all countries dedicated about one per cent of their GDP to the cause, they would have billions of dollars for environmental programs.
"Then he asked the important question: what will be the cost if we don't do anything? And this is what the private sector or economists often ignore. If we go on with business as usual, it will absolutely destroy the economy of the planet," Suzuki says.
When the tour wraps up in March, Suzuki says he'll take the ideas he hears to Ottawa. He may also make a documentary.
