Manvi (she/her) is an activist-scholar with over 15 years of intersectional community organizing experience. She is recognized as one of Canada’s ‘Top 25 Under 25’ environmentalists, ‘Top 30 Under 30’ sustainability leaders and was honoured with the ‘Youth Eco-Hero of the Year’ award in 2022. She co-founded Shake Up The Establishment, a national nonprofit dedicated to climate justice & political advocacy, alongside missINFORMED, a nonprofit focused on health promotion for women and gender-diverse people. Alongside her advocacy work, Manvi is a published health researcher, frequent public speaker and guest lecturer who works to centre anti-colonial approaches. During her MSc, she investigated barriers towards climate action within the public health sector. Presently, she is a PhD student at University of British Columbia with SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship funding. Her research works to advance intersectional environmental justice in environmental health policy-making to better serve the holistic health & wellbeing needs of racially, ethnically and gender-minoritized populations. Research methods for this work include critical policy analyses to assess the procedural justice implications of recent CEPA reforms, community-based participatory action workshops to capture urban South Asian communities’ embodied experiences of environmental health risks and to co-develop a submission for the forthcoming NEJ strategy public consultation, and to utilise arts-based methods to co-imagine environmentally just futures with racially-minoritized youth.

Fe de Leon is a senior researcher and a paralegal with the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA). She holds a Masters degree in Public Health. Fe has worked extensively on chemicals and waste management policy issues particularly focused in the Great Lakes Basin, the federal chemicals management plan and international agreements including the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the Minimata Convention on Mercury and the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent. She has worked collaboratively with Canadian and international non‐governmental environmental, health and labour organizations to support the listing of chrysotile asbestos for Prior Informed Consent Procedures under the Rotterdam Convention. Fe has worked extensively to promote community right to know and regimes that strengthen public participation in decision making processes with underserved and disadvantaged communities, primarily through implementation of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and accessing pollution data from Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI). She was a member of Canada`s Chemicals Management Plan Stakeholder Advisory Council between 2007 to 2019. Fe has been a member of the NPRI Working Group since 2018 and was appointed to the Great Lakes Water Quality Board in 2023.

Louise’s contributions to human rights in Nova Scotia cannot be understated, not only through her ground-breaking work as founder of SEED (South End Environmental Injustice Society) and as an outspoken advocate addressing environmental racism in Shelburne’s Black community but also as an educator, playwright, published author of Back Talk: Plays of Black Experience, and respected African Nova Scotian community leader. Founded in early 2016 by African Nova Scotian Shelburne resident Louise Delisle, SEED is a Black led non-profit society and direct grassroots response to the siting of a landfill near Shelburne's African Nova Scotian and working-poor community and is a volunteer effort to address issues of environmental racism. SEED was awarded a 2018 Nova Scotia Human Rights award for work addressing environmental concerns in the African Nova Scotian community. In 2019 and 2020 SEED made international news with the release of “There’s Something in The Water”, a documentary by director Elliot Page and co directed with Ian Daniels, based on the book by Dr. Ingrid R.G. Waldron. To improve access to clean drinking water in her community Louise has initiated extensive water testing in partnership with Rural Water Watch, advocated successfully for the creation of a community well in partnership with NSCC and funding partners, installed UV treatment and filtration systems on homes in the Black community with contaminated water in partnership with LUSH Canada and participated in numerous interviews, documentaries, and research projects. Recently Louise has been working with Dr. Ingrid Waldron, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, HOPE Chair in Peace & Health, McMaster University and Juliet Daniel, Professor, Department of Biology, McMaster University on a new study examining the links between the dump in Shelburne and cancer rates who cite that “Much of the motivation for the study comes from the work of local activist Louise Delisle , who has gone door-to-door in her community to catalogue cases of cancer, both recent and historical.”

In addition to Louise’s work as a member of SEED she was a board member Rural Water Watch and has been a member of the Advisory Council for the Shelburne Regional High School; worked as Community Liaison Officer with The Black Loyalist Heritage Society; Community Facilitator Black Women’s Health project for McMaster University National Research Project and Dalhousie University, School of Nursing; and was a member of the Shelburne Community Health Board. Louise was also the co-chair of the African Nova Scotian Community Coalition. Louise has led and currently participates in a number of boards, committees, and initiatives including but not limited to: - DPAD (Decade for the People of African Descent) - ENRICH Project (Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities & Community Health Project) - Southwest Regional Network - Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change Round Table - Senior’s Council - African Nova Scotia Justice Institute Council - Founding member of the Black Pioneers Acting Troupe - Black Artist Network - Derogatory Name Change Committee - Black RCMP Advisory Board Member - Community Foundation of Nova Scotia. One of the founding members of the ANS Western Service Providers Network.

Has one published book “Back Talk”

SEED was the winner of 2018 Human Rights award.

She is the winner of the Queens Platinum Jubilee Medal for her community work.

Vanessa Hartley is an 8th-generation Black Loyalist descendant, born and raised in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. From a young age, Vanessa’s exposure to anti-black practices in education fostered her voice for advocacy and leadership.

Vanessa found enjoyment in Community Engagement and a love for Black history when she started as Program Coordinator and Visitor Experience Supervisor at the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre. After completing her education, Vanessa returned to her community supporting Adults with different abilities. Aspiring for more growth, Vanessa started with the Tri-County Regional Centre for Education (TCRCE) as a Community Outreach Coordinator, this would lead her to The PREP Academy as Community Engagement Lead; The PREP Academy is a community-based non-profit preparing and inspiring African Nova Scotian student for College and University. Giving back to the larger African Nova Scotian community has been an essential part of Vanessa’s career and volunteer work.

In 2021 Vanessa was awarded Provincial Volunteer of the Year representing the Municipality of Shelburne. She chaired the South End Environmental Injustice Society from 2019-2022, an award-winning Society fighting environmental racism in historic African Nova Scotian communities. She also volunteered for the Association of Black Social Workers (ABSW) as the Rural COVID Community Coordinator a part of the ABSW/HACC Covid response team and was the Community Regional Researcher with the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute.

Vanessa was the Youth Delegate for the 2022 National Black Canadian Summit. Vanessa speaks nationally about environmental racism and injustice through education and awareness. Her goal is to continue to have challenging and progressive conversations that can change the narrative around environmental racism in Nova Scotia and beyond.

Sabaa Khan (DCL, LL.M., LL.L) is a lawyer and Director-General for Québec & Atlantic Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation. She also leads the Foundation’s climate change portfolio. A member of the World Commission on Environmental Law (IUCN) and the Barreau du Québec, Sabaa has held a number of advisory appointments in environmental governance, including on the NAFTA Advisory Council on Environment (Government of Canada) and the Joint Public Advisory Committee of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (Chair, 2019). She is co-editor and author of the collective volume La nature de l’injustice: Racisme et inégalités environnementales, published by Les éditions Écosociété. Her legal research has been widely published, including by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the United Nations University – Institute for Sustainability and Peace, the Leiden Journal of International Law, Cambridge University Press and the Conference of the Four Societies of international law. Sabaa holds a doctoral degree from the Faculty of Law at McGill University, where she was an O’Brien Fellow of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and a Member of the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory. She is also a pianist, mother, and steering committee member of the National Association of Women and the Law.

Brennain Lloyd is a community organizer and public interest researcher and writer in northeastern Ontario. For the last 30 plus years, Brennain has worked with environmental, peace and women’s organizations as a facilitator and adult educator supporting public participation in environmental and natural resource decision-making and various planning processes.

Brennain’s primary organizational affiliation is with Northwatch, the regional coalition of environmental and social groups in northeastern Ontario formed in 1988 to address regional issues related to energy, forests, waste management and water quality and – on a recurring basis – nuclear waste burial schemes.

Boozhoo Nindiwaymooguniidoog,

Ishkode-Anaquodoquay N’dizhnikaaz

M’kwa N’dodemun

Ojibwe/Bowdaymadomi Anishinaabe N’daaw

Aamjiwnaang N’doonjibaa

Nizo Ayeegwaa Mideo

Greetings All My Relations,

Lynn’s spirit name is “Fire in the Clouds Woman”, she belongs to the Bear Clan of the Ojibwe-Bowdaywadomi Nations. Her heart sounds from the place where the waters flow swiftly and the people gather at the spawning stream, Aamjiwnaang, and is a second-degree Midewiwin.

Lynn has had the privilege of living both in Canada and the United States learning from people of all ages and ethnicity while traveling and visiting in both countries. She is a proud grandmother with a large extended family. She has enriched her heart, mind, body and spirit by gathering knowledge from books and scholars (both native and non-native), as well as programs of study that are offered at higher educational institutes, but the knowledge she values most is that which have been gained by sitting upon the earth listening to the sacred sounds of the elders who share teachings of creation, spirit, life, and the road we all travel from birth to death and beyond….

Victoria is a staff lawyer on Ecojustice’s law reform team and co-chair of the Reconciliation Working Group. She is of Haudenosaunee (Oneida) and Scottish descent, working on the traditional unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in so-called Vancouver.

Victoria advocates for decolonization of existing Crown environmental laws and policies through amendments and new laws and supports Indigenous law and policy revitalization and resurgence. She works to advance environmental justice through reforms and policy initiatives that address environmental racism and enable Indigenous stewardship. She also advocates for collaborative and pluralistic governance models that uphold Indigenous rights and jurisdiction, thereby respecting self-determination.

Before her career at Ecojustice, Victoria studied at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia where she specialized in environmental and natural resource law. As a certified yoga teacher and outdoor enthusiast, she spends her spare time practicing yoga and exploring the local landscape.