Mr. Speaker, last week I had the opportunity to attend the Ottawa premiere of the feature-film drama entitled The Change Agents. The event was co-hosted by the Citizens Climate Lobby and by my NDP colleague, the member for British Columbia Southern Interior.
The writer/director of the The Change Agents, Robyn Sheppard, used to reside in Toronto—Danforth, which is one of Canada's film-making hubs. She moved out west to Nelson, B.C., where she is the drama teacher at L.V. Rogers Secondary School.
The Change Agents is the story of dedicated high school students mobilizing co-students to make a strong, passionate statement for environmental protection, especially in relation to the tar sands.
L.V. Rogers' students were involved in all aspects of the film-making process, both in front of the camera—like Lucy Carver Brennan, who plays Ruby in the film—and behind the camera.
They, and the film itself, demonstrate that young people's despair over ecological destruction can be transformed into the kind of citizen engagement that generates hope we may yet act in time to step back from the edge of the cliff.