The Castlegar community has come together to create a care package for climate activists sitting-in in Ottawa next week.
The new Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will receive a climate welcome at his home in Ottawa to help him prepare for and to get serious about increasing Canada’s commitments at the Paris Climate Talks, which start at the end of November. 350.org Canada is leading the action with a 4 day sit-in to deliver gifts. “It will all come together to create a kind of ‘climate welcoming committee.’ We’ll take bold action to demand the government freeze tar sands expansion and come up with a plan to build a just, clean energy economy in Canada. We’ll be risking arrest with our trespass to demonstrate that we don’t have time to wait any longer for politicians to take action, that here and now is our moment of truth on climate,” writes 350.org Canada.
The local Castlegar group created a package to support activists sitting-in in Ottawa as well as climate welcome gifts for Trudeau. This includes a quilt that knitters throughout the West Kootenays have been making one square at a time for Ottawa activists to stay warm during their sit-in. There is also a bottle of water from the Columbia-Kootenay river system, as safe water supplies are threatened and water can also bring the threat of devastating floods because of climate change.