Anja Karadeglija
© Provided by National Post Steven Guilbeault is taken into custody by Toronto Police after environmentalists scaled the CN Tower on July 16, 2001
Steven Guilbeault’s first environmental protest took place when he was around five years old, in his hometown of La Tuque, Que.
He lived in a house that backed onto a forest where he used to play, and one day he saw developers removing trees. Panicked, he ran inside to his mother and asked what he should do; she responded that if he climbed a tree, they couldn’t cut it down.
“I climbed it and stayed there for hours and hours, and that day, they didn’t cut down that tree,” Guilbeault recounted in a 2017 Radio-Canada interview. “That was the beginning.”
Now 45 years later, following decades of environmental activism and several arrests, Guilbeault is Canada’s new environment minister.
It is an appointment that has startled, and even frightened, some who fear that the “Green Jesus of Montreal” — as he was dubbed by Quebec media — is going to clamp down hard on the country’s oil, gas and energy sector.
Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner was the latest to attack him when she said on Friday that the country needed policies that help spur economic growth and lower greenhouse gas emissions in a way that “leaves no one behind.”
“Justin Trudeau could have appointed an environment minister that understands this point. Instead, Justin Trudeau appointed an ideological anti-energy activist,” she said in a statement, claiming that Guilbeault had fought “to shut down entire industries.”
Steven Guilbeault’s first environmental protest took place when he was around five years old, in his hometown of La Tuque, Que.
He lived in a house that backed onto a forest where he used to play, and one day he saw developers removing trees. Panicked, he ran inside to his mother and asked what he should do; she responded that if he climbed a tree, they couldn’t cut it down.
“I climbed it and stayed there for hours and hours, and that day, they didn’t cut down that tree,” Guilbeault recounted in a 2017 Radio-Canada interview. “That was the beginning.”
Now 45 years later, following decades of environmental activism and several arrests, Guilbeault is Canada’s new environment minister.
It is an appointment that has startled, and even frightened, some who fear that the “Green Jesus of Montreal” — as he was dubbed by Quebec media — is going to clamp down hard on the country’s oil, gas and energy sector.
Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner was the latest to attack him when she said on Friday that the country needed policies that help spur economic growth and lower greenhouse gas emissions in a way that “leaves no one behind.”
“Justin Trudeau could have appointed an environment minister that understands this point. Instead, Justin Trudeau appointed an ideological anti-energy activist,” she said in a statement, claiming that Guilbeault had fought “to shut down entire industries.”
Guilbeault grew up in Quebec under what he described as “modest” circumstances. His father was a butcher and Guilbeault learned English from his mother, who was of Irish origin. He got involved in student politics in high school, helping to organize a student strike to push school administration to resolve a school transport strike.
He was inspired by his uncle, a missionary in Haiti, and whose suggestion led Guilbeault’s parents to adopt one of his sisters from that country. Guilbeault went on to study political science and theology at the Université de Montréal.
He’s pointed to the link between environmentalism and religion in interviews, talking about how prophets thousands of years ago called for humanity to protect the environment around them. Later, he became a prominent figure and voice for the environment in the province.
In 1994, the Montreal Gazette published a story on a youth leaders’ conference in which moderators behaved in bizarre and authoritarian ways to see how the students reacted. “Some of the participants, like (Steven Guilbeault), a political science and theology student at the Universite de Montreal, questioned the moderators’ tactics,” the article reads.
“They charged that the approach was not constructive; they tried to foment revolution. They failed.”
A year earlier, Guilbeault had co-founded the environmental organization Équiterre. Elizabeth Hunter, his co-founder, said its origin was both in youth work during the Earth Summit in Brazil, and in public interest research groups that were founded by Ralph Nader, which both Guilbeault and Hunter were involved in.
“We were on the first board of directors and it was a very scrappy little organization that had no money and that sort of slowly cobbled together bits of funding,” and then over the years has “grown and strengthened and rooted itself in Quebec society and issues,” Hunter said in an interview.
One of her earliest memories of Guilbeault was at a retreat when Équiterre was being set up. “And I remember distinctly him explaining climate change to me, and this would have been in around 1993, and it was just not on most people’s radar at all,” she remembered. “At the time it was new to me… he really was on the early edge of understanding climate change and what it was going to mean for us.”
© Reuters Greenpeace activists Chris Holden, top, and Steven Guilbeault hang from cables near the the top of Toronto’s CN Tower in 2001 after displaying a banner protesting the lack of action by Canada and the U.S. on environmental issues.
He joined Greenpeace in 1997, a move that meant over the next decade he would be regularly mentioned in the news media — as a spokesperson on environmental policy, but sometimes also as the newsmaker. He was arrested four times as a result of various protests meant to draw attention to environmental issues.
That same year, he and four other activists blocked the opening of a storage container at an electrical generating station to try to stop a ship from unloading coal. “Steven Guilbeault of Montreal brought food and water with him and was prepared to stay suspended from the huge receptacle, called a hopper, for as long as it takes for the environmental group to make its point,” the Canadian Press reported.
In 2000, Guilbeault and several other activists fastened themselves to a piece of Suncor equipment to stop the 440-ton coker from going to Fort McMurray, Alta. The RCMP brought in two rented cherry pickers from Edmonton “and plucked Steven Guilbeault … from atop of the coker,” the Canadian Press reported.
In a later interview, he had nothing but praise for the RCMP. “They were extremely nice to us. They offered us food and gave us coffee and tried really hard to make everything as pleasant as possible,” the Edmonton Sun quoted him as saying.
In 2002, Guilbeault was one of the organizers of a stunt in which activists climbed then-Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s house to place solar panels on top.
But Guilbeault’s most famous protest came in 2001, when he and British activist Chris Holden climbed the CN Tower in Toronto to protest a lack of action on climate change, after the U.S. and Canada failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. They hung a banner that said “Canada and Bush — Climate Killers.”
When he first ran for office in 2019, Guilbeault hung a big photo of the CN Tower stunt in his campaign office. He told the National Post at the time that “in many ways… I’m still this guy who climbed the CN Tower.”
Guilbeault added that for him, “civil disobedience was never a goal in and of itself. It was just a tool. And now I’m using different tools.”
He left Greenpeace in 2007. By then he was well-known in Quebec; the Gazette wrote at the time that he “has such a high profile in Quebec politics and the Canadian environmental movement that some argue he long ago became ‘bigger than Greenpeace’ in terms of his impact and credibility.”
Though Guilbeault was approached by multiple political parties to get involved in politics, he declined because his children were still young at the time. Instead, he moved back to Équiterre, where he stayed until 2018. He told Radio-Canada he had wanted to work on something more local and more solution-oriented. That also meant working with governments on environmental issues, work that wasn’t a natural fit for the activism-oriented Greenpeace.
Guilbeault’s contemporaries in the environment movement describe him as a good communicator and a pragmatist. Patrick Bonin, a Greenpeace Canada spokesman who has collaborated with Guilbeault on various initiatives over the years, said in an interview there is no doubt about Guilbeault’s conviction and commitment to fighting climate change.
“He knows what’s at stake with the issues. He knows he can work with businesses, with unions, with environmental groups, with politicians, so in that way he’s always been the one trying to build bridges,” Bonin said
He joined Greenpeace in 1997, a move that meant over the next decade he would be regularly mentioned in the news media — as a spokesperson on environmental policy, but sometimes also as the newsmaker. He was arrested four times as a result of various protests meant to draw attention to environmental issues.
That same year, he and four other activists blocked the opening of a storage container at an electrical generating station to try to stop a ship from unloading coal. “Steven Guilbeault of Montreal brought food and water with him and was prepared to stay suspended from the huge receptacle, called a hopper, for as long as it takes for the environmental group to make its point,” the Canadian Press reported.
In 2000, Guilbeault and several other activists fastened themselves to a piece of Suncor equipment to stop the 440-ton coker from going to Fort McMurray, Alta. The RCMP brought in two rented cherry pickers from Edmonton “and plucked Steven Guilbeault … from atop of the coker,” the Canadian Press reported.
In a later interview, he had nothing but praise for the RCMP. “They were extremely nice to us. They offered us food and gave us coffee and tried really hard to make everything as pleasant as possible,” the Edmonton Sun quoted him as saying.
In 2002, Guilbeault was one of the organizers of a stunt in which activists climbed then-Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s house to place solar panels on top.
But Guilbeault’s most famous protest came in 2001, when he and British activist Chris Holden climbed the CN Tower in Toronto to protest a lack of action on climate change, after the U.S. and Canada failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. They hung a banner that said “Canada and Bush — Climate Killers.”
When he first ran for office in 2019, Guilbeault hung a big photo of the CN Tower stunt in his campaign office. He told the National Post at the time that “in many ways… I’m still this guy who climbed the CN Tower.”
Guilbeault added that for him, “civil disobedience was never a goal in and of itself. It was just a tool. And now I’m using different tools.”
He left Greenpeace in 2007. By then he was well-known in Quebec; the Gazette wrote at the time that he “has such a high profile in Quebec politics and the Canadian environmental movement that some argue he long ago became ‘bigger than Greenpeace’ in terms of his impact and credibility.”
Though Guilbeault was approached by multiple political parties to get involved in politics, he declined because his children were still young at the time. Instead, he moved back to Équiterre, where he stayed until 2018. He told Radio-Canada he had wanted to work on something more local and more solution-oriented. That also meant working with governments on environmental issues, work that wasn’t a natural fit for the activism-oriented Greenpeace.
Guilbeault’s contemporaries in the environment movement describe him as a good communicator and a pragmatist. Patrick Bonin, a Greenpeace Canada spokesman who has collaborated with Guilbeault on various initiatives over the years, said in an interview there is no doubt about Guilbeault’s conviction and commitment to fighting climate change.
“He knows what’s at stake with the issues. He knows he can work with businesses, with unions, with environmental groups, with politicians, so in that way he’s always been the one trying to build bridges,” Bonin said
.
© Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raises the hand of Steven Guilbeault during an event to launch Guilbeault’s candidacy for the Liberal party of Canada, in Montreal on July 10, 2019.
Guilbeault is someone who can bring people together, Bonin said. “He has the capacity to make allies out of what could be seen as opponents at first glance.”
Hunter said Guilbeault has always been “quite determined but in a quiet way.” When Guilbeault was at Greenpeace, attention-grabbing stunts like climbing the CN Tower were important because climate change wasn’t on people’s radar, she noted. Hunter, who also briefly worked with Guilbeault at Greenpeace, said his approach has always been multi-faceted, in which he focuses on a having a deep knowledge about the issues.
“I can just picture him as we’re talking, looking things up on databases, and making sure that he had the right information. I think he had that sort of nerdy interest in having the right information, but also admirable ability to speak to a really wide range of issues in the environment.”
Équiterre co-founder Laure Waridel said Guilbeault is someone who is oriented toward finding solutions.
“Actually, it’s really funny for us here in Quebec to hear that the premier of Alberta is presenting Steven as a radical because here, among environmentalists, many people present him as not radical enough,” and too quick to compromise, she said.
In 2019, Guilbeault finally made the jump to politics, running as the Liberal candidate in the Montreal riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie. Following the election, Guilbeault had to switch gears from environmental issues, given his new appointment as Heritage minister.
He had plans for three separate pieces of legislation meant to impose unprecedented regulations on the likes of Google and Facebook. But his approach drew controversy when an amendment to Bill C-10 to modernize the Broadcasting Act led critics to charge it would violate freedom of expression. Despite months of outrage that led the opposition to stall the bill in Parliament, Guilbeault refused to overturn the amendment and exempt user content from CRTC regulation.
That criticism didn’t seem to put him off from moving forward with a bill to tackle online harms that he told an industry conference would be even more controversial than C-10. Critics have since sounded the alarm about the government’s plans for that bill, outlining a number of ways the proposed scheme to regulate illegal social media content would violate Canadians’ constitutional and privacy rights.
As of Oct. 26, those bills are no longer Guilbeault’s babies. As the new environment minister, he’s back on familiar ground, though his arrival at COP26 will be a little different than when he attended the inaugural conference in Berlin in 1995, when he could only afford to stay in a gymnasium in East Berlin.
Bonin, who has been at previous COP meetings with Guilbeault, said “those are the moments where Steven has been at his best, I would say, working on complex issues with many countries and positions and high stakes.”
Guilbeault is someone who can bring people together, Bonin said. “He has the capacity to make allies out of what could be seen as opponents at first glance.”
Hunter said Guilbeault has always been “quite determined but in a quiet way.” When Guilbeault was at Greenpeace, attention-grabbing stunts like climbing the CN Tower were important because climate change wasn’t on people’s radar, she noted. Hunter, who also briefly worked with Guilbeault at Greenpeace, said his approach has always been multi-faceted, in which he focuses on a having a deep knowledge about the issues.
“I can just picture him as we’re talking, looking things up on databases, and making sure that he had the right information. I think he had that sort of nerdy interest in having the right information, but also admirable ability to speak to a really wide range of issues in the environment.”
Équiterre co-founder Laure Waridel said Guilbeault is someone who is oriented toward finding solutions.
“Actually, it’s really funny for us here in Quebec to hear that the premier of Alberta is presenting Steven as a radical because here, among environmentalists, many people present him as not radical enough,” and too quick to compromise, she said.
In 2019, Guilbeault finally made the jump to politics, running as the Liberal candidate in the Montreal riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie. Following the election, Guilbeault had to switch gears from environmental issues, given his new appointment as Heritage minister.
He had plans for three separate pieces of legislation meant to impose unprecedented regulations on the likes of Google and Facebook. But his approach drew controversy when an amendment to Bill C-10 to modernize the Broadcasting Act led critics to charge it would violate freedom of expression. Despite months of outrage that led the opposition to stall the bill in Parliament, Guilbeault refused to overturn the amendment and exempt user content from CRTC regulation.
That criticism didn’t seem to put him off from moving forward with a bill to tackle online harms that he told an industry conference would be even more controversial than C-10. Critics have since sounded the alarm about the government’s plans for that bill, outlining a number of ways the proposed scheme to regulate illegal social media content would violate Canadians’ constitutional and privacy rights.
As of Oct. 26, those bills are no longer Guilbeault’s babies. As the new environment minister, he’s back on familiar ground, though his arrival at COP26 will be a little different than when he attended the inaugural conference in Berlin in 1995, when he could only afford to stay in a gymnasium in East Berlin.
Bonin, who has been at previous COP meetings with Guilbeault, said “those are the moments where Steven has been at his best, I would say, working on complex issues with many countries and positions and high stakes.”
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