Speakers
Aliénor (Allie) Rougeot is a climate justice activist, and a program manager at Environmental Defence Canada where she advocates for an equitable energy transition away from fossil fuels. She previously co-founded the group Fridays for Future Toronto and has led numerous student climate strikes in that role, while completing a degree in Economics and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She has been recognized by Corporate Knights in their 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders.
Celine Isimbi is an engaged community member dedicated to using her creative, critical writing to support justice and environmental liberation in every space. She believes that solidarity needs to go beyond colonial borders and strives to use an internationalist, anti-imperial, and pan-Africanist approach to organize in the spirit of the revolutionary power of the African people she descends from.
She has taken on student leadership roles, serving as the coordinator for UWRAISE, a student-run service, and contributing to the organizing team for the Xchanges 2021 conference - Borders of Being - fostering solidarity within the university and the broader community with keynotes from Dr. Angela Davis and Ericka Hart. Celine actively participates in consultations and advisory groups, ensuring student voices remain influential in decision-making. In her final year as a Bachelor of Environmental Studies student at the University of Waterloo, she is currently the co-lead organizer and co-founder of the Climate Justice Ecosystem at UW. Using the climate justice framework, this independent student group seeks to build student power for a sustainable, resilient and just UW.
Beyond her academic commitments, she engages with the global youth climate justice movement. She is currently a campus organizer at Change Course, a youth-led non-profit supporting grassroots organizing across so-called Canada. to demand an end to all fossil fuel financing in support of Indigenous sovereignty and Climate Justice. In recognition of her environmental leadership, Celine was awarded the Top 25 Environmentalists under 25 awards in 2023 by Starfish Canada.
Elizabeth May is one of Canada’s most respected parliamentarians, a life-long environmental advocate, author of ten books, lawyer and leader, with Jonathan Pedneault, of the Green Party of Canada. Elizabeth is an Officer of the Order of Canada and was the first Canadian Green to be elected federally or provincially. Since 2011 she has served as MP for Saanich - Gulf Islands.
Enya Fang attends Southridge School in Surrey, British Columbia. She is a prolific debater and public speaker, having represented Canada at international levels. Her writing has been awarded national accolades by CBC, A&E, and the Royal Canadian Legion. Interested in technology, human rights, and sustainability, she leads a global climate nonprofit as well as an organization dedicated to dismantling gender discrepancies in STEM-related careers.
Jacqueline Lee-Tam (she/elle) is the Director of The Climate Justice Organizing HUB, a support structure for grassroots social movement organizers in Canada. Through responsive troubleshooting and emergent capacity-building, the HUB helps organizers find their way to building a critical mass of engaged people who are working towards a just transition. Jacqueline has been involved in grassroots campaigns ranging from pipeline resistance to fossil fuel divestment to mutual aid efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. She holds a B.A. from McGill University in Gender, Sexuality, Feminist and Social Justice Studies, with a double minor in Environmental Studies and Economics. Jacqueline currently resides in Tkaronto (Toronto) in the ‘Dish With One Spoon’ territory.
Manvi Bhalla is an activist-scholar with extensive intersectional community organizing experience. She is recognized as one of Canada’s ‘Top 25 Under 25’ environmentalists, ‘Top 30 Under 30’ sustainability leaders and was honoured with the ‘Youth Eco-Hero of the Year’ award in 2022.
Manvi co-founded Shake Up The Establishment, a national nonprofit dedicated to climate justice & political advocacy, alongside missINFORMED, a nonprofit focused on health promotion for women and gender-diverse peoples. She serves on numerous advisory committees including UBC’s Robson Square, FES’ The Harbour and Youth Climate Corps.
Alongside her advocacy work, Manvi is a published health researcher, frequent public speaker and guest lecturer who works to centre anti-colonial approaches. During her MSc, she investigated barriers towards climate action within the public health sector. Presently, she is a PhD student at University of British Columbia with SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship funding. Her research interests include intersectional health policy making & environmental justice.
Mike Morrice is the first Green Member of Parliament ever elected in Ontario, representing the riding of Kitchener Centre. He is the founder of Sustainable Waterloo Region, co-creator of ClimateActionWR, and piloted Canada’s first Green Economy Hub - which later led to Green Economy Canada and eight Green Economy Hubs across the country. Since being elected in 2021, he has continued to address the climate crisis including through his private Members motion 92, which would place a windfall tax on the excess profits of the fossil fuel industry and direct resulting funds to proven climate solutions that also help address affordability for Canadians. This could include investing in public transit, greening our electricity grids, and significant rebates for energy-efficient upgrades including heat pumps.
Mike has also helped to build cross-party support to fast-track the Canada Disability Benefit Act and introduced a measure to stop the financialization of housing to make homes more affordable for people to live in - instead of investors to trade.
Victor Yin (he/they) is a writer, poet, human geographer, and climate educator from Burnaby, BC. Victor's experience is interdisciplinary, and spans academic, public and non-profit sectors.
Victor's involvement in the environment started in high school as the co-chair of the Burnaby Youth Sustainability Network. In university, they were involved with the SFU Faculty of Environment as the digital communications assistant and the SFU Sustainability Office as a student educator. Furthermore, they helped develop the university's 2022-2025 Strategic Sustainability and Climate Action Plan as the undergraduate representative of the SFU Sustainability Advisory Committee.
As a queer POC, Victor uses their intersectional experience to address inequities in compassionate, human-centered and transformative ways. Victor currently works with the Comité Francoqueer de l'Ouest, a non-profit organization that supports francophone and queer communities in Western Canada. Victor is the co-founder of Sword Fern Collective, a community-based youth-led organization with the goal of mobilizing climate awareness and building capacity.
swordfernco.substack.com
At age 17, Jonathan Pedneault smuggled himself into Darfur in the back of a pick-up truck filled with rebels to document the deadly rights and environmental crisis for a CBC/Radio Canada documentary. By then, he had spent two years giving conferences to fellow students about genocide and Canada's responsibility to prevent mass atrocities. That was his first foray into foreign reporting.
A gay, mixed-race single son of a single mom, Jonathan was raised in a poor suburb of Montreal. An early understanding of how privileged he was to be born Canadian impacted everything he later set about to do. For Jonathan, privilege comes with immense responsibilities. And he is one to take responsibility seriously.
Over the next fifteen years, Jonathan worked to report on crises throughout the world and advocate for greater accountability and global social justice.
Through his work, Jonathan interviewed fishermen in Somalia who had turned to piracy to fight off illegal fishing, documented sexual abuses by UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, witnessed failed revolutions in Egypt and Libya and documented excessive force by police in places as diverse as Chile, Belarus and the United States.
With two years spent living on Svalbard, in the high arctic, and years reporting from places affected by extreme weather events such as the Sahel and Central Asia or with refugees leaving drought and hurricane affected Central America to face abuses at southern US borders, Jonathan has been in the belly of the climate beast. He knows what's coming. And why we need to urgently get our act together.
Jonathan is an organized thinker, who seeks impact in everything he does. He believes the Green Party of Canada is the only party that has shown the moral courage and strength needed to face the coming crises. But he believes the party too needs to get its act together, and project itself as the credible alternative it is. Together with Elizabeth May, he's asking the membership for a mandate to empower the GPC to implement the changes Canadians from coast to coast to coast need. It is, after all, our shared responsibility.
Jaden Braves is one of the two current Co-Chairs of the Young Greens of Canada. Now 15, he joined the Green Party at age 9 for the purpose of future centric politics and environmental advocacy. As a political enthusiast and activist, Jaden works at Toronto City Hall advising various city councillors on their youth plan. Recently, he founded the Young Politicians of Canada, a federal nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to involving young people in politics and sustainable governance.