Alberta Ecotrust AGM, March 24^th

Danielle Droitsch, the environmental  lawyer and  advocate who has generated big waves in the provincial water scene since her arrival in the province in 2004, bid farewell to friends and colleagues at the March 24^th Alberta Ecotrust  AGM.  Speaking to an audience of over 50 Ecotrust partners and friends, she spoke with humour and eloquence  about her work  in the province and the lessons she's learned, first as the Bow River Keeper and then as the founder and executive director of Water Matters.  The real strength of Alberta's environmental movement, she said, is its people, who work as tireless volunteers to protect the air, water, and native plants and animals of this "very special place."  Droitsch, who is moving to Washington, D.C. at the end of the month to help with family obligations, said she will particularly miss the landscape, the people she has worked with and "that great Alberta spirit."

Danielle's speech:

"When Pat approached me to speak to you tonight, she asked if I would impart some wisdom - some learnings and lessons from my years in Alberta.  Well, I don't know just how much wisdom I have to share, but I thought it would be fun to start by sharing some of the things about coming to Alberta that surprised me!

As most of you know, I'm an American and I came here to be with my to-be husband, Dave, who is here with me tonight.  I arrived in Alberta in August of 2004 from Washington D.C. We drove across the country in our U-Haul truck, spending days on the pairies, and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I saw the Canadian Rockies.  I was astounded, and couldn't believe they were to be my new home. 

In Washington, D.C. I had been working as an environmental lobbyist.  With George W. Bush in office, those were dark years for environmental protection, and they meant hard times for environmental lobbyists. For me, then, there was nothing better than the thought of getting out of Washington, D.C. and coming to Canada.  My vision of Canada was that everyone was like a Democrat.  The ruling party was the Liberal party, and I was going to go to Canada and I was going to feel right at home. 

And then I came to Alberta. . . 

Needless to say, there were a few surprises.   First, I was surprised - and that's an understatement - to realize that the majority party, the super-majority party who had been in power for decades, had the word "conservative" in it.  It took me about two months to get over that bit of news.  Next, I was surprised to discover that Canada has weaker environmental laws than the United States.  I had thought I would find stronger laws in Canada, but that's not the case, and for an environmental lawyer that wasn't so much fun to learn because it meant I had a bit less to work with.  And finally I encountered something many of you know very well, and that's "the Kennedy factor."   I had come here to be the Bow River Keeper, and in the United States the Water Keeper Alliance - the umbrella organization for the River Keeper - is tremendously popular, and Bobby Kennedy, who runs the Alliance, is tremendously popular.  Well, just before I came to Alberta, the then environment minister, Lorne Taylor, and Bobby Kennedy had been having a very public debate about their differences. What I learned was that Albertans were not at all impressed with a U.S. environmental lawyer coming to Alberta to tell them what they should be doing. So here I was, a U.S. environmental lawyer newly arrived with some ideas as to what might be good for Alberta.  It was a bit of a shocker.

Needless to say, my first days here were not smooth sailing.  But eventually I learned to accept that conservatives rule the province and  I found ways to get things done despite the weaker environmental laws.  And I discovered Alberta's greatest environmental asset: the people who are working so tirelessly to protect it.  I see that a good number of those people are in this room tonight.

In the United States there are literally thousands of professional environmentalists - people who are paid to work fulltime to protect the environment.  Here in Alberta our movement is small and mostly volunteer. What I found, though, is that the people protecting the environment here are the hardest-working bunch of folks I have every met. They are tireless, passionate, and unassuming, they're committed, and they stand up for what they believe in. They bring forward ideas that are not always popular.  They are willing to advocate and to be critical at times when criticism is needed. They persevere even when everyone is telling them they will not succeed.  And to me, that is truly the Alberta spirit that I've come to learn.  I'll miss that spirit, and I'll miss these tireless advocates.

I could not possibly list all the people who are part of this movement, and whom I have worked with and come to respect so much.  If I did that, we'd be here a very long time and never get to the food and wine!  But there are some folks that immediately came to mind when I started to think of names, and I want to mention them. Many of them are in the room tonight.  They include:

• Jim Pissot, for his years of work advocating for grizzly bears and trying to keep them safe from grain spills on the railway tracks;
• Martha Kostuch, who is no longer with us, but who set the bar high for clean air - who litigated when necessary, but used negotiation as her main tool for change;
• Cheryl Bradley, who has been such a tireless and effective advocate for our southern river systems;
• Harvey Scott and Connie Bresnahan, who established Keepers of the Athabasca, an organization that provides a voice for the local people and First Nations in the midst of significant industrial development;
• David Swann, when he was environment minister, raising water issues in the legislature when no one else was;
• John Cross and John Lawson, and the other land owners who are trying to protect the eastern slopes of the Rockies - which give us the water we drink and are our water towers for the future;
• Mark Bennett, for constantly promoting the Bow River Watershed and bringing so many different partners together to draw attention to its problems and find solutions to them;
• Shirley Pickering, who is quietly working in her local watershed to protect the local river flows but also support the local irrigation community;
• Jonathan Thompson of Ducks Unlimited, who has spent years pushing for a strong wetland policy;
• The Alberta Wilderness Association, and people like Carolyn Campbell and Nigel Douglas for making watershed protection part of their work;
• The Pembina Institute, which has brought critically needed attention to the water issues associated with the oil and gas industry and the footprint of that industry on our environment;
• Dianne and Mike McIvor, who have worked as volunteers for decades, standing up for our National Parks;  and
• Dale Christian, who has guarded a local aquifer for years against ongoing proposals for gravel mining.

Well, that's only the beginning of the list, but it points to what makes Alberta's environmental movement and community so inspiring.

Before I stop naming names, though,  I want to talk about one of my favorite people, someone who took me under her wing within days of my arriving, and that's Pat Letizia.  I don't know how many times I've seen Pat out there defending and trying to support this movement, but it's been a lot.  I remember a particular moment when we were in a meeting with Alberta Environment, and Alberta Environment was talking about partnerships - how we were all going to partner together to protect our environment.  They were laying out their plan for stewardship groups, and how the groups were going to do their piece, and Pat stopped them to say:  "Excuse me, but just how are we going to support these groups? It's a great vision, but how are we going to make sure these people have the resources they need to do the work you want them to do?  They're volunteers, and they need to be supported.  How do you propose we do that?"  She's been our advocate for years, and she's been my advocate many times as well.

I also want to acknowledge all of Alberta Ecotrust's corporate partners, the companies that have recognized the importance of Alberta's environment, and who have stepped up to support the work done by so many of us here tonight.  Alberta Ecotrust, with its environmental and corporate partners, has been a strong, fundamental part of the Alberta Environmental movement for a long time, and without your leadership, I don't know where we'd be.  As an effective community, we not might not even exist at all.

Well, I did learn some things during my years in Alberta, and if a young, emerging environmental leader came to me and asked how to save the world on limited time here in Alberta, there are the three things I'd say.

First, I'd say I have found it most effective to go straight to the people. In Alberta we have a tendency to go to multi-stakeholder forums. While those forums have their value and can be effective at times, they also have their limitations.  While we go to the table where 30 to 50 very important people are going to figure it all out for everybody, the Alberta public is excluded; they don't have a part in the discussion. And yet they really care. In my experience, I have been most effective when I've gone out and talked directly to the people and invited them to become part of the discussion: "It's a democracy," I tell them, "and if you care, speak up and talk to your decision makers."  It does make a difference.  I don't buy in to the thinking that there's nothing that will make a change in Alberta.

The second thing I would say is to talk to government and industry more often.  As the environmental community, we sometimes become so emotional that we vilify our government and industry counterparts.  In my experience, that's a big mistake, and when we do it we shoot ourselves in the foot.   It's much better to sit down with government, sit down with industry, talk about the issues, see where there's common ground, and think about solutions.  Direct communication makes a bunch of sense. We don't it very often.  We don't sit down and say, "Hey, I represent some of the people, and what can we do about this particular issue."  Direct communication like that can be much more effective than participating in yet another multi-stakeholder group.

And the third thing I'd say to an emerging environmental leader is, "Be an advocate. Don't be afraid to speak up".  The Alberta environmental is worth protecting.  All Albertans want clean water.  We all want sustainable energy.  We all want to breathe clean air.  We all want to see grizzlies in the mountains.  There's a common belief that we need to compromise.  I'm not so sure that's true, at least all of the time.  We need to set our bar high, and keep it there.  We don't want a river that is half-clean, or that is half-flowing.  We don't want half the number of grizzly bears when there are already so few in the province. We want all of it, and in a lot of cases, we need all of it.

A bit part of the problem is the paradigm of balance.  To say that we'll balance things out by protecting 50 percent of the environment and 50 percent of the economy is the wrong paradigm. The real paradigm is this:  the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. That is the way we need to be looking at the environment. We can't have a healthy quality of life and a healthy economy without a healthy environment.  Our task, as the committed group in this room, is to pull together, to build political will, and to work to reframe the debate itself.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if all Albertans took it for granted that a healthy environment is not something over there in the corner that only a few people want, but rather something that we all need. 

With that, I want to say, thank you Pat, thank you Alberta Ecotrust, and thank you -- all of you who work so tirelessly to protect our environment.  I'll miss you and I'll miss Alberta.  It's a special place."