As Green Party leader Elizabeth May stepped off the 鈥淕reen Train鈥澛爐hat took her through Jasper last weekend, she exchanged hugs with supporters and beamed with what seemed like a truly genuine smile.
She made an effort to introduce herself to everyone, and appeared delighted to see others, but her short speech to the crowd that gathered to welcome her revealed a troubling lack of effort to meaningfully engage with Jasperites.
She preached the need for proportional representation in parliament and the importance of a federal bill limiting party leaders鈥� power. She listed the benefits of rail travel and called for more environmental protection.
What she didn鈥檛 talk about were any of the issues immediately impacting Jasper.
It鈥檚 absurd that the leader of the Green Party of Canada gave a speech in a national park, but said absolutely nothing about the divisive environmental issues facing it.
Yes, proportional representation and rail travel are important, but they mean very little to Jasperites who are dealing with looming issues like the proposed development at Maligne Lake and budget cuts to national parks鈥攖hings that have and continue to have significant impacts on the park.
It鈥檚 not like these issues are even so hyper-local that only lifelong mountain-dwellers are aware of them. The proposed Maligne development and the plight of national parks often make national headlines, and even 10 minutes of casual Googling would have revealed that.
In fact, unless May did literally nothing to inform herself about Jasper, it鈥檚 baffling how she could remain silent on every important local issue鈥攊ssues that, as the leader of the party claiming to represent environmental interests in parliament, sit snugly in her wheelhouse.
In a speech to a Jasper crowd, the onus was on her to address those issues. By not doing so she proved that federal politicians far too often inhabit a completely different world鈥攐ne fundamentally disconnected from the realities facing the people they claim to speak for.
Considering Jasper was just one of many short stops May made this week, we recognize it would be unfair to expect a diatribe on the finer points of local environmental policy, but it doesn鈥檛 seem too much to ask for some effort.
After all, the 10 minutes May spent speaking to Jasperites was her chance to publicly demonstrate a meaningful effort to connect with us.
In that task she failed miserably.
