Hello, and welcome back to so you gotta lifesite agree. We're your hosts for Rita and Lisa to lifestyle undergrad students turn and navigate our future careers. This is Episode 19. And we're talking to Dr. Diane Sachs about being an environmental lawyer and advocate. How are you doing today? Lisa? I am doing okay. I'm a little too underslept for interviewing someone like Dr. Sachs, but it is Oh, okay. I do have an interesting night yesterday, though. So as of this recording day, I am moving into my new apartment in Hamilton in a week from now. And so I've been starting to do all my packing, I ordered some stuff from IKEA a week or two ago. And you know, like I came in like various boxes, and one of the boxes contain a bunch of dishes. And like it said, like fragile on the box and everything right. And so it was kind of weird. Like the dishes were kind of wrapped in like this. Like I've never seen wrapping paper like it. The best way I can describe it is it's kind of a mix between a honeycomb and wrapping.
It was weird. Um, but yeah, like it seemed to be effective at the cushioning. And so I was like, Okay, I'm not gonna unwrap these individual dishes just because I think I could just bring this whole thing as is right. But then last night, I was like, okay, maybe I should open it and check to just make sure everything's there and that nothing's broken. And good thing. I did that because the top several dishes were okay. Yeah. And then as I got to the middle, like, I purchased this one pot for a plant that I'm getting from some friends and the saucer of the pot was broken. And as well this other bowl had like a chip on it. And then the very bottom of it. I think the two large plates that I ordered completely broke. I couldn't even take them out to take a photo because I took a photo of some of the other stuff because you know, I wanted to like send it to be like, hey, this happen. Yeah, so that happened and so I'll probably get a refund of a bit and then I'll just It's okay, I kind of need to go again. Anyway. So yeah, but yeah, so like the funny story that came out of this was that because like the pot only the saucer broke. The pot is in great condition. And, and the friends that I'm getting this, this plant from who is Apulia plant, if you don't know that, look it up. It's also called the pancake plant. It's it's very cute. I like
that, okay, but like, I know that like people make jokes about like, talking to plants, like they're sentient, but this plant has just has character.
I don't know, man,
I just, I'm excited. Anyway, so I'm planning on calling her Leah Apulia. You know, it's something that I've been thinking about for, you know, months and months. And so yeah, so I have these two friends who have a bunch of philia plans, because, you know, the thing about plants is that they're good at reproducing. And so they're giving me one of their little pups. And so I was like, in exchange, do you want this pot? Because it's a saucer? Cuz like, if they're gonna refund me the pot, they'll refund me the whole pot, right? That's it comes in. It sounds like oh, I might as well just give you this pot. So that's what that's what's happening. They given me a plant. I'm giving them a pot. It's all gonna work out. Yeah. When you were talking about your honeycomb packaging. It was like wait, hexagons are the best. I don't think they're actually it's actually hexagonal, though. Oh, well, then what on earth makes it honeycomb if it's not hexagonal? Sorry. It's like it's just like the it's kind of got like a repeating pattern to it. It looks honeycomb like actual hexagons. Yeah. Interesting. Well,
but I mean, I don't know.
Maybe Maybe if it was hexagonal, then the dishes One, two. Yeah, exactly. For the listeners, we're referencing the video by CGP Grey called hexagons are the best icons. Yeah, ever since watching that video. I just see hexagons everywhere. Like ever. Yeah.
Yeah. Me and like
second semester organic chemistry. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing pretty good. I have finals right now. So I've been Yeah, pretty sure last semester. you're graduating. That's crazy. Indeed. Yes. You have not been playing it out. Like every time. Every time I mentioned to Frieda that she's graduating her eyes like go sideways. She goes like, ah I feel like that sums up my general emotions towards graduating. But yeah, so I've just been pretty boring for the last like, week and a half from just like studying and playing. Wow, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You're very interesting. For the listener, I think when people do air quotes, like it's also evident in the voice I guess, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the only like semi somewhat tiny bit interesting thing that's happened in the last week and a half was that I bought a bunch of dishes from Facebook marketplace and I got such a young you rub it in? You're good at buying dishes. I'm like me. Yeah, the funny thing is I don't even need them. Like I have so many. I don't know how many people want Ever you find dishes that this is like very not in character because it was such a deal. And I was like, Okay, fine. Are they at least cute? Like, yeah, I like that. If they weren't cute, I wouldn't have bought them like I do. Like them. sure we're literally. Okay, for context. They're not cute in a way that like Lisa would find them cute. They're like in a very boring adult kind of nice
way.
I can appreciate a plain adult did all my dishes from IKEA are plain white, and I think they look amazing. So okay, so don't put words into my mouth. Okay, so what I got for $20 was four bowls that look like this, bro. And then six of these tinier plates. You got the exact same dishes as me. And then six of these larger Oh my god, he literally got the exact same dishes as me like, okay, fried is holding up like a medium sized white bowl, and then like a larger white plate and then like a set of smaller white plates, like that's exactly what it got, except my large plates broke and half of the bowls broke. So yeah, I'm I'm excited. So Fredo what is our squirrel of the week? So this week's squirrel is Tim sparks squirrel. Oh, and this is actually a squirrel that I also saw when we went to get hot dogs that one time. I've told you there was so many squirrels. How do you recognise him? Or her? I mean, I only saw them once. And then I don't know if I saw them again. Like I just okay. Yeah, but basically, yeah, when we were getting hot dogs, we were walking back and in the kind of entrance part time ago, there was a squirrel, the squirrel basically perched up onto the side of a trash can then, like, held themselves there and then went into the trashcan. Got a Tim's box out.
Yeah, I'm not even joking.
And then yeah, left the trash can with a toast box and then open. Like a stuff inside is insane. This is the convergence of squirrels and raccoons for each other. That's a little scary was wild. Wow. You know, it's funny because I actually bought a tiny 10 pack of timbits about a week ago. And I was just looking at the box and just appreciating like how good the design. We're not sponsored by 10s. But it says 10 bits on the box. And then the two eyes and two bits like the dots aren't timbits so good. You got like little legs on like the different tidbits. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how securely close the box was. But right yeah, I mean, I feel like it's a 10 box. So you just punch it. Yeah, I'm sure extended at some point. Yeah, I want to see you scroll through a Rubik's Cube then I'll be impressed. Yeah, we're like, oh my god if squirrels can learn to open those like medicine bottle, oh my gosh, then they would have surpassed children human children actually just all died because I think it's really easy for a scroll to overdose on Tylenol.
Yeah, good thing they can't do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Also this morning I actually spotted Cadbury again, but food or that white foam inside couldn't take off or anything? Yeah. Wow. Well, I mean, you spotted cloudberry or a cousin. Yeah, the conspiracy is still is on so we'll see. Yeah. All right. Ready for an interview with Dr. Sachs. I am nervous and ready. This episode is sponsored by resume word. Resume worried is an AI powered online career platform that gives you instant tailored feedback on your resume and LinkedIn profile. They offer three main tools score my resume, which uses AI technology to instantly score your resume according to what recruiters are looking for. Targeted resume which analyses job descriptions to identify important keywords and skills missing from your resume, and LinkedIn review which identifies gaps in your profile to increase your visibility. Each of these features provide specific feedback to help you get past automated resume filtering and land interviews. They both offer free tools and optional paid features. I've been using resume worded myself for the past few months and I'm finding it really improves my job applications. I'm consistently surprised by how many weaknesses it is able to identify and the helpfulness of the step by step feedback. I'm also subscribed to the email newsletter. I normally hate email newsletters, but this one genuinely provides the synced and helpful advice that I would have never thought of otherwise. To check them out. Visit resume wordid calm. This week's guest is Dr. Diane sacks. Dr. Sachs is an internationally recognised environmental lawyer. She holds a Bachelor of Laws and a PhD in environmental law from York University. She worked as legal counsel and director with the Government of Ontario for 14 years early on in her career following this she worked as the principal at Tax Law Office, an environmental law boutique for 25 years. Dr. Sachs was the environmental commissioner of Ontario from 2015 to 2019, and is currently the deputy leader of the Green Party of Ontario. She has recently reopened her law practice Sachs facts law professional Corporation. She also does outreach work through public speaking her website sacks fact and her podcast green Academy heroes. Thank you so much for joining us today. Dr. Sachs, very excited to have you.
Thank you for having me.
All right. So the first question we have for you is enlighten us like What does being an environmental lawyer Intel?
It means dealing with those laws that affect or control environmental issues, typically, pollution, also climate, invasive species, modified organisms, that sort of thing.
All right, thank you for that concise answer. And then maybe you could let us know, as an environmental lawyer, who do you usually represent?
Well, environmental lawyers represent all sorts of different people. And it does depend where you practice when I practised with the Ontario government, obviously, I was representing the Ontario government and through them, hopefully, the people of Ontario in private practice, you represent whoever hires you. That can be individuals, municipalities, institutions, small businesses, big businesses, Coalition's associations, there are a remarkable variety of folks who have environmental problems of one kind or another, sometimes that they expect and many times that they don't expect.
All right. That's a great summary. Thank you very much. And I guess you kind of already touched on this, when you mentioned who you represent, you said that this is understandably really closely linked with who you're working for. But yeah, could you tell us a bit more about what types of places employ environmental lawyers, we came across the term law boutique when we were doing a bit of research on your career? And so yeah, I think there's a lot that people our age don't know about that stuff. So yeah, if you could let us know a bit about that.
So most environmental lawyer is work either for government law firms or big businesses, there are environmental law departments of one kind or another at the federal level, at the provincial levels, and also in many municipal, larger municipalities, large most full service law firms these days have to offer environmental law services to their clients in one way or another, either in house or in a link with someone else. There have also been over the years, a number of small independent law firms. And you mentioned, I ran my own independent law firm for 25 years, and I've reopened it now in a smaller way. So but most people work, as I say, for governments, or for large corporations, or for big firms, I did work for government, as you said, for 14 years, I worked for a couple of downtown law firms early in middle in my career, and I think it's fair to say I did not like it. So that's why I ended up starting my own law practice. And I liked that very much. And it was very successful.
That's lovely. Thanks for telling us about that. And now you wonder if you could elaborate a bit more on what exactly the responsibilities of an environmental lawyer might be? And if this changes drastically, depending on who you're working for, or who you're representing, maybe also touch upon that?
Yes, that's a very understandable question. And I can't give you a good answer. It depends entirely what you're doing. And it changes a lot, especially if you're in a client driven business, which most environmental lawyers are, you can start the day with a pretty good idea of what you're going to do, but it often doesn't end up that way. So very loosely, you can think of any kind of law as involving solicitor work or barrister work. So there has to work is when you're on your feet in a courtroom of some kind, a tribunal an inquest, you know, the many different kinds of courts, and litigation is pretty much all consuming. When you're in the middle of an intensive period of litigation. My experience has been, that's pretty much all you do. I mean, you have to sleep and eat and go to the bathroom, but you don't have to eat away from your desk.
You don't Yes, you know, you just don't get a lot of breaks, it's demands absolutely everything that you have to give on efficient and a bigger case. But you can't do that all the time. And litigation tends to come in fits and starts until you have a long, long period of time preparing. And then you have these very intense periods when you're actually in front of the court, aside from litigation entirely is everything else giving advice, drafting legislation, shepherding the legislation, briefing clients, briefing boards of directors, writing opinions, working on transactions, so the typical day is going to be different for everybody. And it's often not the same on Monday, but it is on Thursday. It also depends whether you're on the road now with COVID. I suspect we're all just sitting at our desks looking at computer screens but before COVID and hopefully
After COVID, there's also for many lawyers a lot of time on the road. Certainly, as a travelling prosecutor, as I did for the Ministry of the Environment, you know, I would very frequently wake up in a hotel in some new place that I often somewhere I'd never been before. So if you're in meetings or court all day, and then working all evening and trying to get to, you know, food and get comfortable and get some kind of exercise in a hotel room, you know, there isn't any other time. It also gets quite ridiculous, this whole business of trying to work effectively out of a hotel room, and it is more complicated for women. I can tell you a silly story many, many years ago, when I was a prosecutor for the Ministry of Environment, I had a big case in Timmins. Oh, quick introduction. I actually have a pen pal who lives there. Okay, well, wonderful.
Timmons before this, but there had, I was prosecuting one of the big big oil companies who had a major spill and did a huge amount of damage. Anyway, so I had a big team, I had six officers that I was working with in 200 pounds of railway parts. And, you know, I had a lot of stuff. So I persuaded my boss that I should have a suite in this hotel, so I wouldn't have to be interviewing the witnesses in my bedroom. Right? Cuz you got to work every evening. You have to work with your witnesses. Well, where do you do this? You can't do it in a public space. And if you're working in a city where you don't have an office, I mean, what are you supposed to do? So my boss, who was very understanding, agreed that I could have a suite and we rented the presidential suite at the senator Hotel in Timmins. All right, very fancy. Anyway, we got to Timmons and got to the hotel and got the key for the presidential suite and sort of swaggered up to the suite, I opened the door. And it was a large room with a very large bed and six chairs facing the bed. Oh, so I'm standing in the hall with these six officers, all male. The question is, is it better to take them in one at a time or all six? Now the really crazy thing about that is that I had another case, in Timmins about 20 years later, and I figured I had learned my lesson. And so I told my secretary that I needed a suite. And it was definitely not to be at the Senate or her to hotel. So she said, Fine, no problem. If you book me a suite at a hotel with a different name, and I flew up to Timmins and went to the hotel, and it was the same hotel, and it was the same room and it looked just the same, they had changed the name of the hotel, and they had changed the name of the suite. And they changed the picture on the wall. But it was the same room with a very same problem only by then I knew better. And I walked right back out, went downstairs and made them give us a second room for a meeting room. But anyway, there you go. That's what it was like on the road. There's all kinds of surprises.
Yeah. Sounds like there's a lot of travel involved in your work, or at least there used to be
there's a lot of that right. In non COVID times. There's a lot of travel. And there's a lot of unexpected this, isn't that.
All right. And then going back to a bit more about the roles of environmental lawyer, I think most of our listeners have basically no exposure to environmental law or even law at all. And I noticed that when you're speaking you were using words like litigation like prosecution. And so I was wonder if you could maybe go back a bit and explain those sorry, yeah. And toxicity about what these terms mean. And yeah, just kind of like, what are the different categories of things? Yeah,
no, that's absolutely fair. And I'm sorry, I've lived in this world. No
problem. No, it's very understandable, almost half
a century. So litigation is I suppose it's a form of ritualised combat in front of an independent third party. So you'll have two or more sides, and you'll have a decision maker. The classic example of that is a court where you're going to have a person on one side and a person on the other side and a judge making the decisions. But there are lots of things that are like courts, but not exactly courts have the coroner's inquest, which look into why people die. There's all kinds of tribunals like you might have heard of the lemon tenant board or the energy board, which again, there's a decision maker, but they're not a judge. Within the court system. There are civil courts and criminal courts and a few special courts like family courts or drug courts. criminal courts are where someone representing usually the government or a government agency is asking for punishment of someone who's done something wrong. So if somebody steals your car, then hopefully the police will arrest that person and a government prosecutor will prosecute that person to punish them for in order to protect the public interest, but you probably also limited depending on your insurance, you might be out of pocket, that person steals your car, so you might also want to sue that person for compensation for you personally. So there are civil courts which deal with private wrongs. There are the criminal courts which deal with wrongs and In the public good as a whole. Now, there are tribunals which deal with all kinds of specialised issues, workers compensation tribunals pay equity tribunals thought of sorry, those wouldn't be environmental tribunals and the energy board, the environmental review tribunal, the lead is planning Appeal Tribunal. So those are all types of litigation where you have this ritualised combat and prosecution is a subset of that dealing with criminal law and things like criminal law. Does that help?
Yeah, that helps. That's a really good summary how our system works overall. And maybe to help us get a bit more into the details of what it means to be an environmental lawyer. Could you perhaps walk us through an example of a case that you've worked on, understandably, one that you can actually talk about and what it was like to be on that case or piece of legislation from start to finish?
Well, of course, after so many years, I've had lots and lots of stories, but one I can tell you about that very public was arbitration over the cost of the blue box. So everybody knows about blue box, right? You've got your blue box, I hope you put things in
Oh, recycling? Yes.
Okay. So that system costs a lot of money. A lot of people think that the system pays for itself because of the value of whatever you put in it. And unfortunately, that is nowhere near true. The system in Ontario costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Wow, I did not know that. Right? Most people don't. So in Ontario, a deal was made. Not a very good deal for the public. But anyway, a deal was made that the municipalities would pay half the cost of the blue box system, and the companies that sell the packaging, printer paper and packaging that ends up in the box would pay the other half. And in a nutshell, the companies have almost never paid their full half. So that means that the municipalities and municipal taxpayers have been out of pocket at the time I worked on this case, they were out of pocket about a quarter billion dollars, which is an awful lot of money for our municipalities, which are always starved for money. So in 2014, or 2013, the relationship between the municipalities and these big rich companies broke down, and the companies refused to pay. And so the Association of municipalities of Ontario retained me to fight the big companies for the $115 million that they owed, and didn't want to pay. And I'm delighted to tell you that after an entire year is extremely hard work, they were ordered to pay $115 million was one of the only years that they ever paid the whole their whole share. It was an arbitration. So it wasn't a normal court. I mean, we did have a judge, but the rules were different from a normal court. But it's still involved. Each side presenting evidence, each side producing witnesses, each lawyer cross examining the witnesses on the other side. We had, I think, 1000s of documents, we had weeks of hearings, it was a massive, massive proceeding. But it was important, and I'm very proud of it.
Yeah, it sounds like a really big case and one that I would be terrified to be the the lead on, can you tell us a bit more about what preparing for that case was like, Oh, dear,
preparing for that case was almost a full time job for many months, the first challenge was to really understand the legal nature of the claim and the facts that was based on which you'd think the client would already know. But in fact, what the client knows, and what the client tells you is often not immediately useful. And often they don't see in the same way, I didn't think to explain prosecution, there are a lot of things they don't think to explain. Either they take it for granted, or they think it's obvious or they don't think it's relevant. So there's a lot of work at the front end and figuring out well, wait a minute, how did we get into this mess? What exactly does it mean? How does it compare to the terms of legislation? What does the legislation mean? Where did it come from? So there's a lot of figuring stuff out at the beginning, just like what's the actual story? And how can we tell this story? And how can we tell it persuasively, and then there is a large amount of work that goes into identifying all the correct documents and organising them in a logical fashion and figuring out how to present them and how to have them at your fingertips exactly when you need them. Similarly, there's a very big job involved in a big case like this in identifying all the witnesses that you're going to use persuading the witnesses to cooperate, preparing the witnesses so that they understand what their job is making sure that I know what they're going to say and then for each witness, I had to Make a long and detailed script where I was clear, what was the point I was trying to make? So you got to work backwards from what what did I want to be able to say at the end, we showed ABC. Alright, how am I going to show a? Well, I'm going to show a with this point from witness one, this point from witness to this point from witness three and these 27 documents, which are going to be introduced through witness 26, right, so that I have to have all of that plotted out so that I don't forget, anything can write lie in the memory, so that when I get to the end of the case, I can say we can prove a and here's how we proved it. And you do that over and over and over again for every point. And then you go over and over and over. And you practice with each witness, because the witnesses are nervous, they haven't done this before they're worried about being cross examined, they have to know what that's going to be like. So you practice cross examining. And sometimes it takes witnesses a long time to learn how to answer clearly. Right? So sometimes you going over the same questions, witnesses many times so that they understand what they're being asked, and they know how to answer and then stop. Yeah, it's very hard for some people to stop.
Yeah, that makes sense. That actually gives I think, quite a bit of insight into what it's actually what actually means to work on environmental law case.
And after you've done all that, then you write out your opening argument. When you tell the court you're going to be able to prove all these things. And when it's finished, you write your closing argument when you have to go through and and show everything you did prove that it right out what your cross examination is going to be for the for the other side's witnesses knowing that that won't necessarily go that way. But you have to plan it anyway. It's endlessly time consuming, and mentally and physically and emotionally exhausting
for sure. Speaking of maybe wanting to switch gears from things that are mentally and emotionally exhausting, maybe we could take a broader look. And you could tell us about the types of roles that are available in the field of environmental law.
I don't know all the rules. And certainly these days, we have lots of companies making netzero pledges looking at ways to reduce their own footprint, we have a growing push for disclosure using under the taskforce for net for climate related financial risks. So there's a lot of work on understanding what kind of disclosure is required and how to make it this still work, I'm sure dealing with contaminated sites with endangered species, with transactions with getting a full range of government permits, there are cases dealing with accidents and spills, dam failures, trucks of gasoline that turn over idiots who pump fuel oil into an empty basement and contaminate the house. pesticide cases, air pollution cases, water pollution cases, you think about the Flint, red pipe pollution case there there are the the youth climate lawsuits against the government. Yeah, I don't know what they all are. But my experience in running my own practice was that I was regularly surprised by what came up and what people needed.
Yeah, thanks for telling us about that. And I guess this is a similar type of question. But in your opinion, what do you think the the job outlook is for environmental lawyers in the next few decades, while our listeners might be working,
I don't have a crystal ball. I can say that in the 45 years of my career, there have always been more people who want to do environmental law than there has been in paid environmental law work. I mean, even for myself, it took me 10 years to get a full time paid environmental law job. Right. So they're not easy to get. And a lot of people end up working for polluters, because people have the money. So many people think that being an environmental lawyer means being Erin Brockovich and fighting for the right. And there are some jobs like that, but they don't tend to pay very well. And they tend to involve an awful lot of hard work, and not necessarily a lot of victories. So it's important to be, you know, really sure that this is what you want to do, because it's not like the movies.
Yeah, absolutely. That is actually along the lines of I think what I've heard is that a lot of people want to do environmental law, but they aren't able to. And so yeah, thanks for being honest about that. I think people will find that helpful. And then along similar lines, if a life science student like let's say 1920 years old is studying, you know, molecular biology or environment, like environmental sciences and is interested in pursuing a career in environmental law, do you have anything to say about what steps they should perhaps take? Well,
I would mainly my first step would be the same. really be sure this is something you want to do. Law is hard. You deal with a lot of aggression. I remember, as I said, though, some of was ritualised aggression is I have certainly had occasion over the years to have to deal with some very unpleasant people and I'm sure there are unpleasant people in many walks of life. But there are some in law who, who are rewarded for it. I mean, I've literally had a big shot lawyer when I was a young female slam a courtroom door in my face just to show that he was important, and I was not so so you have to be prepared for a certain degree of aggression. There's a lot of unpleasant jokes about lawyers, and some of them have a grain of truth. So you have to be prepared to live in that world and spend most of your working hours in that world, which not everybody is going to want to do. Not every place in law is like that. But there are a lot, you have to be sure that you really want to do a lot of very, very detailed work. A lot of law involves mastering an enormous weight of detail. So if you prefer big picture, stuff, you don't like detail, you probably will not like law. Right? If you love being outside, your joy is being in the field. There is not a lot of that in law. So I would suggest that you spend some time reading lawyers, newspapers, make yourself read what lawyers actually have to read and see. You think it's really interesting, or do you think oh, my goodness, if reading lawyers, newspapers doesn't appeal to you, and lawyers, magazines, in those articles, bore you, you probably will not like law. So that would be my first thing is really, law is hard. Getting into it is hard. Doing it is hard practising is hard. So don't do it unless you really, really want. I have loved my career, but it hasn't been easy in any way. And I'm sure there are easier ways to have a wife.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really great advice. I can somewhat relate to being in, you know, like, kind of like a club or a career that has like a tough culture to it. I was in debate for I mean, it's nowhere near the same thing. But I was in debate, like quite intensely for several years in high school as well as in university. And yeah, sometimes like there is a certain culture, I think that comes with, you know, certain professions or certain clubs, and it can be tough for sure. So I think that's good to know, going into it
again, it's not always like that. But yeah, I have found certainly quite a bit more of it than I hoped for.
Right. Absolutely. And then maybe switching gears a bit, because I'm sure you would like to talk about some of your other work as well. Could you tell us what it means to be the deputy leader of the Green Party of Ontario?
Well, let's talk about a complete change in life. Yeah, absolutely. Well, as you mentioned, I was the environmental commissioner of Ontario, I was the last environmental commissioner of Ontario, and the Ford government passed special legislation to break my contract and silence my office after I criticise their destructive climate policies. So last year, after thinking about it for year and a half, I did join the Green Party and I am running to be the Green Party candidate in university Rosedale, and I'm looking for volunteers. Oh, and I also became the deputy, a deputy leader of the party, so that we have two deputy leaders, a male and a female by the Constitution. So being deputy leader means that in addition to having responsibility for running and hopefully winning in my writing, I also have responsibility for the success of the party. Generally, I will spend a lot of time working on policies for the party, I represent the party in meetings. And to the press, I provide some encouragement to the writing associations across the province. If we ever get out of COVID. I'm sure it means that I will be also doing more. I mean, I don't know how much travel like I can do, but certainly want to encourage we've got strong candidates in a number of writings and really hoping to increase the number of Green Party npps last election was the first time we had an Ontario Green Party MPP with Mike Schreiner, and he's done such an outstanding job. I'm really hoping that people of Ontario will see that and elect a few more in the next election.
Yeah, that sounds good. And, you know, you kind of mentioned this yourself, What motivated you to pursue a position in politics?
Well, I really didn't want to do it. No, I mean, almost literally every single day I was the environmental commissioner of Ontario, I gave thanks that my job was to respond to be responsible for good public policy and not politics. But I feel a powerful sense of moral obligation. I think the people of my generation, it was on our watch, that climate damage has become so bad that environmental collapse is so far advanced and that we owe it to the young people of today to do everything we can to make right what we've done wrong and I just don't feel morally that I can just stand aside and say, okay, fine, you know, I've had a good life. I've I've had a great practice and you know, I've got a nice house and I'm alright jack and I've taken my turn somebody else do it, I just don't think that's moral. And so as long as body and mind will hold out, I feel a powerful obligation to be contributing as I can. And I've very reluctantly had to recognise that running for office is an important and powerful thing that way that I can contribute. And I'm at a point in my life where, you know, my kids are grown up and independent. And so I'm now more free than I was at almost any other time in my legal career to do something, which is financially a terrible idea. and time consuming, but a huge public service. So that's why I'm doing
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. And thank you for saying that. I feel like that's a really good mindset, actually, for someone in public office to have that I'm not in this because for the power anything, but I'm in this because I feel like I have a duty for it. So so thank you for all the work that you do. You're welcome.
I was looking for power. The Green Party is probably not the right.
Yeah, no,
that's Yep. I agree with you there.
Clearly, I'm in the Green Party, because I think it is essential to have better ideas on the political field. And the the old parties are too frightened to to do the right things there. You know, we saw Canada's inventory report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This came out last week and look at as was the week before anyway, look at our emissions up again. Yeah, we're going in the wrong direction. So we, we've had one party in power, we've had another party in power. And look, it hasn't made any difference. So we're still our missions are still awful. And so the Green Party is much more science focused, we wouldn't get the kind of idiocy we've just had in Ontario, where the scientists were ignored. in favour of pollsters. We've made ScienceBase decisions, and we need them now. Because Time's running out.
Yeah. And yeah, the the last question that we have for you is, if you wanted to tell us a little bit about your own podcast, a green economy heroes, what's it about and when you started and why?
Well, as I as I think I mentioned, after Mr. Ford abolished my office, I spent the next year trying to continue my work as Commissioner as best I could with no staff and no money, I kept on travelling the country talking to people about climate, urging them to take action. And I kept studying the issue in writing opinion pieces and looking for opportunities to to do the best work I could and to inspire others. Then, of course, COVID came, and I had a an entire year of very busy speaking schedule, and it collapsed because we all had to stay at home. So one of the things I decided to do was to start a podcast, I had been thinking for quite a long time that I mostly give people bad news about climate because the news is bad. And on the question of environmental collapse, mostly, the news I give people is bad because the evidence is bad. And when I started as environmental Commissioner, that's what people most needed was to be told that really, the news is very bad, because that message had not come across through the mainstream press. But after doing that, for four or five years, I was tired of bad news all the time. And I realised that many audiences knew that we're in trouble. And now we're looking for some kind of hope, some way of finding a way forward. And I also knew that there are many people in business making a living, running businesses that are reducing our carbon footprint. So I thought These are stories that I don't get to tell very much that I would love to hear. And I think a lot of other people would love to hear. Maybe I can do a podcast about those folks. And you probably were told the same thing. The average podcast only lasts seven issues. And I thought, well, I don't know how many of these people I can find, but I can probably find at least a couple of dozen. So you know by then COVID will be over. It'll be fun. Right? So I started with an initial list of a couple of dozen companies that I might be able to talk to, and I started I paid someone to teach me a little bit about starting a podcast and then I hired a recording engineer who knows what he's doing. A Toronto mic is great and pay for it all out of my own pocket and I just started that way. And the first couple were really nerve racking and not very good. But gradually, I got better got more comfortable. And to my delight and amazement. There are lots of people there are so many people so many different kinds of stories all across Canada, young people, older people, men and women, small businesses, big businesses biology, chemistry, engineering, marketing, doing running businesses. Is that our reducing our carbon footprint? And so we're Oh something over 50 episodes now I've now stepped Wow,
that's quite a bit.
Yeah, I've noticed it down to once every two weeks because I'm just too busy with with everything else, but I get to talk to the most amazing people and then mark Bedard line electric well, several unfactored the people that I'd interview just won the clean 50 Award, line electric just won a big grant from the federal government. They build electric vehicles, electric buses, electric trucks, which are going to be fantastic in improving inner city life, less air pollution, less noise, as well as reducing our carbon footprint and making it safer for people who live along the bus lines. This week's last week's guest was Connie Stacy, a woman from Edmonton who was pushing her twins in a stroller, sleep deprived new mother and had an idea for a better way to build to put batteries together to reduce costs and make them much more interchangeable. And so she's she's got her new business, there's Alexander's some of astri. Also just want to clean 50 Award for for her project. So it's, I'm getting to talk to amazing people right across the country, doing all kinds of things, you know, down to a DJ who lost his job with COVID and started a home business selling shoe maintenance kits. So you can keep your expensive, running shoes in good condition longer and not have to buy so many new ones to throw it off once that just lots of different ways of doing it. And so many different kinds of people are finding away and I am delighted to give them a voice. And also I'm finding a great new things to buy.
Yeah, that's really good. I absolutely agree. I think it's important to show the progress we're making as well. And we've interviewed several like people involved in climate change, you know, like the E, Triple C and, and that sort of thing. And I personally find it very helpful to know that even though things are bad, there's also a lot of good things that are happening. So there
are and it makes my life better to have a solid borrow shampoo with no packaging, and no plastic that's lightweight, if I ever do get back to travelling again is better than something that can't spill and doesn't it weighs almost nothing, and is easy to use and does a good job. I mean, it's just it's great being able to same thing with laundry detergent, right? So I don't have to buy those big jugs of laundry detergent, lug them around anymore. I have these little dry strips that work just as well or better. And they just come to the house. So there's just so many people doing things that are better, and things that I that I hadn't thought of thoughts and lots of innovators in Canada and they need our support. So I can help a little bit for them to tell their story. And then other people get inspired and and do more. So I'm really delighted to be part of telling that good news story. And thank you for telling your audience about my podcast. please do check it out.
Yeah, it sounds like a great thing. But yeah, thank you so so much for being on our podcast. It was lovely to chat with you had such a great time. Thank
you so much. Well, that's kind of you Lisa.
Hello, if you've made it all the way here congratulations. It's time for a review of the podcast review of the podcast. Freedom What does this week's review say? This week's review is from art sigh Beth sigh they write super relevant for life slash med size students at all points of their degrees. The interviews are informative and guests give inspiring and down to earth tips have been recommending to all my fellow life slash med Sai friends smiley face. What a lovely review from a lovely username. If you lovely listener would like to leave us a review you can do so on Apple podcasts link in the show notes. Feel free to include honest feedback about what you think about the show. We would seriously love to hear your thoughts and we will almost definitely read your review on the show. This has been another episode of so you got a lifestyle degree with Dr. Diane sacks about environmental law and advocacy. We want to give special thanks to our crew of lovely patrons including our little leaf patrons nyeem, the Neil Shafiq and shamima and our fantastic foliage patrons Stephanie. If you would like to become a supporter of this podcast, you can visit our patreon@patreon.com slash so you got to lightside degree the music you're hearing is no regrets from audio hub.com Thanks for listening and see you next time.
