I think Canada deserves a forthrightly left electoral alternative. I don't see the advantage for our democracy in having a number of parties crowded in the centre. The Liberals are experts at co-opting left language and framings during campaigns, and historically, we know they don't govern like that.

So many people are on the front lines of this fossil fuel frenzy. It is infused with a sense of urgency.

If you have a culture based on hunting and fishing and all the animals are disappearing and the fish are sick, then you can't live traditionally. Then your treaty is being violated. Obviously there are degrees of choice in terms of that decision to fight.

Film 'This Changes Everything' is not a sad story. It's not a slit-your-wrists climate film. It's a story about people who are making change happen.

I think that kind of urgency is what makes this stage of the climate movement really different from what it was even a few years ago when it was much more of the professionalized NGOs lobbying behind closed doors and maybe having a march now and then.

If you spend a lot of time with activists, as I have, they're just ordinary people who instead of Netflix are getting together in church basements and making posters or making phone calls doing organizing work. It really is about finding a community of other people.

The book and the film [This Changes Everything] fed into each other in ways that were compounding and very exciting. The pain was shared.