Today’s guest is Canadian Senator Rosa Galvez. This was a very special experience to meet and speak with Rosa, whose background, expertise and humanity made this a conversation I both really enjoyed but also took so much from.

Rosa, originally from Peru, is one of Canada’s leading experts in pollution control and its effects on human health. She was appointed to Canada’s Senate in late 2016, representing Québéc, and been involved with or led many of the country’s most substantive environmental, human health, finance and planetary wellbeing regulations, initiatives and committees over the last decade, which reflects her mindset and experience in appreciating the reality of complex systems, interconnectedness, the need for holistic approaches to both thinking and acting, and her own grounded experience as and with First Nations peoples and their practices.

She’s a member of Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources and Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. She’s has also served on the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and the Special Committee on the Arctic. She’s published widely - on Canada’s building codes, what a clean and just recovery from Covid-19 would involve and look like, Aligning Canada’s Finance with Climate Commitments, introduced Bill S-243, the Climate Aligned Finance Act and helped to drive the legislation of Canada’s financial sectors approach to transitioning to a net zero economy.

Beyond her political and policy work, Rosa has been acknowledged broadly for this work and her career as an engineer. She was included in the Clean50 award in 2021, the 2022 Ecological Society of America Regional Policy Award, and the 2023 Top 25 Women of Influence Award.

In this chat we get into many and various topics - a primer on the Canadian political system and her appointment, their nation’s choices currently under pressure from Trump’s tariff and economic warfare tactics, understanding and attempting to make decisions that account for multiple and simultaneous considerations and impacts, the language of human, our disconnection from nature, ceremony and each other, as well as the idea of needing government for before inevitable calamity and crisis hits.

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem.

Climate Engagement Canada

Directors' liability and climate risk: Comparative paper - Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom

The state of sustainable finance (2025-2030) global architecture, jurisdictional approaches and emerging trends

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