Eco and the
moneymen

>> Quebec promises to match funding
raised for green campus causes

GETTING THE GOVERNMENT TO COUGH UP: Peter Schiefke

by SAMER ELATRASH

Environmentalism may have overtaken animal rights as the mother of all fashionable liberal causes—with its naysayers derided as shills and smelly cranks—but David Suzuki remembers when he had trouble finding an audience in corporate Canada. “Now I’m getting to speak at businesses,” says the veteran environmental activist. “Ten years ago, they wouldn’t have me through their door.”

What a difference an increasingly hotter decade makes. Suzuki was wrapping up a Quebec campus tour last week at Concordia and preparing for an evening gala that would be attended by, among others, Quebec’s environment minister. Still, for Suzuki, the environmental movement has some way to go. But while he has always taken on the role of a green Cassandra—“I don’t understand why the word ‘alarmist’ is a bad word,” he says—last week, he and other Montreal environmental activists where pleased to have scored a victory in a campaign to have the Quebec government match funds raised by students to promote sustainable campuses.

Quebec environment minister Line Beauchamp announced last Thursday, April 3, that the provincial government would match the funds raised by campuses in Quebec—some $250,000, most of it raised at Concordia—that were aimed at projects that would reduce carbon emissions. Peter Schiefke, director of Youth Action Canada, the group behind the campaign, says it’s about time the government supported the students.

Last year, Concordia students voted to pay a sustainability fee, raising about $150,000 to be spent on reducing waste and making Concordia sustainable. Other Quebec campuses adopted similar initiatives.

“Students were taking it on themselves to do it,” says Schiefke. “We thought the government should be involved, seeing they have the largest coffers. We wanted to make sure the government isn’t throwing this on the students.”

The government’s pledge, however, comes with conditions. Government funds will only go into projects that meet the government’s policy to reduce carbon emissions. Schiefke says campaigners still have to meet with the government to figure out how the funding will be spent, but says the money raised by students could still go to projects that don’t qualify for government funds. While the government’s policy may cover some of the student initiatives on campus, such as the 100 ton capacity composting facility being built in Concordia, it would not cover plans to have an industrial-sized dishwasher in Reggie’s, Concordia’s campus bar, to cut back on the 100,000 plastic cups the bar throws out each year. Schiefke says the government money may also help replace Concordia’s fleet of shuttle buses with electric buses.

Still, for Schiefke, securing the government’s pledge was the end of a hard campaign that included amassing a number of environmental celebrities to tour Quebec campuses, mobilizing students along the way. The Generation Pact tour aimed at having Quebec campuses allot a sustainability fund that would be matched by the government. Schiefke says his group “was floored” by the enthusiastic student response and the number of sustainability initiatives proposed by students. Now he says his group hopes to offer help to campuses outside Quebec, such as Guelph in Ontario, which raises about $300,000 a year for sustainability projects, on how to secure government funding.

Suzuki says he hopes the campus initiatives will get the ball rolling off campus as well. “It’s important that students are making a commitment,” he says. “People start to see that we’ve got to do something. Hopefully it spills over.”

For more information, see www.pactedesgenerations.com.