Gang Green

Vancouverite Zoe Grames- Webb is part of a 15-person lawsuit against the Canadian government. All the plaintiffs are under 18 years old.

by Nathan Caddell

zoe grames-webb was 10 years old when she started learning about climate change. A few years later, she filed a lawsuit against the federal government.

“My teacher did our entire term on climate change and green energy projects,” says the now-13-year-old about False Creek Elementary’s Peter Watt. “I hadn’t learned much about it before, but it really sparked an interest for me and a passion.”

It also hit home personally for Grames-Webb, who has spent every summer of her life at her family’s cabin in Hopkins Landing, a small coastal community near Gibsons. Wildfires in the area were killing off Western red cedars, shoreline erosion threatened to destroy a significant stretch of the area—it was all particularly hard to ignore.

So three years after Watt’s class had ignited a fire in Grames-Webb, she found herself standing on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery with several other students, declaring that it was time for the federal government to pay attention. Less than a week after the federal election last October, 15 young Canadians from across the country came together in Vancouver at a climate rally to announce their intention to sue the government for its part in the climate crisis.

The plaintiffs are represented by two B.C. law firms and claim in the suit that the government’s “contribution” to climate change infringes on their Charter rights, such as equality, as young people are disproportionately affected by the issue. They’re also calling on the feds to come up with a “rigorous and credible climate plan” that will reduce greenhouse gases.

When the lawsuit—organized in part by American non-profit Our Children’s Trust—started gaining some support, Grames-Webb’s mother, Annabel Webb, a David Suzuki Foundation fellow, asked her daughter if she was interested.

She was. And though she allows that her mother has undoubtedly shaped her interest in the subject, she maintains that it would be important to her regardless. “I still would have been quite passionate about the environment,” says Grames-Webb. “I might not have gone into the lawsuit, but I would have interest in climate change for sure.”

Joining the suit required all plaintiffs to submit a section about how and why climate change has affected their Charter rights.

To that end, Grames-Webb submitted five paragraphs on how she could demonstrably feel and see climate change affecting her life. That included a passage about how she has felt wildfire smoke irritate her lungs and cause her nasal congestion, throat and eye irritation, and headaches. Because of the wildfire smoke, the case argues, the young Vancouverite has been unable to participate in a number of activities that are important for her health, well-being and lifestyle.

At the rally in Vancouver, Grames- Webb relished the opportunity to meet the other young Canadians who had come forward. The group ranges from a 15-year-old fishing enthusiast from Saskatoon worried about low river levels to a 10-year-old in Mississauga suffering from heat exhaustion.

“I think everybody got close pretty quickly,” she recalls. “In the span of two days, we got to know each other quite a bit. Everybody seemed really great, really smart and really nice.”

And really concerned. Grames- Webb doesn’t know exactly what she’ll do with her future—“I kind of want to be a nutritionist or something to do with food,” she says—but the Kitsilano Secondary School student is already talking about taking the #84 bus up to UBC if she is accepted there.

It’s part of an environmentally conscious approach that she imagines will stay with her as she grows, no matter what happens with the ongoing lawsuit.

And what does she think about the government’s response to the litigation? Grames-Webb says it isn’t really something the group has talked about.

Fair enough, given that all they received was a canned statement from the office of then-Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna: “Young people are pushing their governments for a more sustainable future. We hear them, and all the Canadians who sent a clear message this election that tackling climate change is a clear priority that they want this Parliament to work on.”

But to the 15 people that took to the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery that day, it’s not yet clear that they are, in fact, being heard.

“Hopefully, if we win, the government will come up with a climate recovery plan based on science,” says Grames-Webb. “We’re not asking for money or anything, just that they drastically reduce CO2 emissions and that they have a plan.”