'Jail sucks': Climate protester arrested after chaining herself to Trudeau's Ottawa office says she's committed to cause

A climate protester who chained herself to the prime minister’s office in Ottawa on Saturday and was subsequently arrested has been released from jail and is facing mischief charges, according to police.

On Saturday, a group of climate activists threw pink paint on the office building while a topless woman chained herself to entrance. The protester, Ever, was arrested shortly before 12 p.m. ET along with another individual.

“The chain was removed and the woman was arrested. The man filming the incident was also arrested,” Ottawa police told CTVNews.ca in an email statement Sunday.

“They have both been charged with mischief offences. The investigation is ongoing.”

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The group behind the protest, On2Ottawa, said in a press release Sunday that they were raising awareness for an upcoming caravan coming to Ottawa in August to demand stronger action from the government to combat climate change.

“Now that I’ve started on this journey, I am committed to see this through. We all deserve climate action now & I will not be intimidated,” Ever said in the release. “Jail sucks, but it is part of the broken system that we are forced to work with.”

The two individuals were held overnight in jail and released around 2 p.m. ET on Sunday, according to On-2-Ottawa.

Ever is a B.C. environmentalist who previously made headlines when she went onstage while Avril Lavigne was presenting at the Juno Awards in March, painted with slogans relating to climate action.

She and the man who was arrested for filming are each facing a count of mischief/obstructing property and mischief/obstructing property not exceeding $5000, according to police.

On2Ottawa describes itself as a “non-violent civil disobedience campaign designed to encourage Canadian governments to take urgent and meaningful action on the climate crisis” and has been calling on the government to form a Citizens’ Assembly to help guide climate change policy. This refers to a system in which a random but nationally representative group of citizens is pulled together to consider contentious political policies and questions. Ireland created a Citizens’ Assembly in 2016, which has been utilized for debates on abortion, population aging and climate change, among others.

A caravan to Ottawa plans to leave the West Coast on Aug. 1, according to On2Ottawa, which stated that this is its deadline for the government to start the process of “establishing a Citizens’ Assembly to decide how Canada’s economy will be transformed to tackle the climate and ecological emergency in the next 1-2 years.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released several reports over the last few years urging governments to take faster and more drastic action to combat climate change. In March, IPCC urged rich countries to accelerate their target for achieving net zero emissions to as early as 2040, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for a complete halt to new fossil fuel exploration as well as for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040.

A meeting of environment and energy ministers from G7 countries wrapped up on Sunday with no clear timeline for phasing out coal-fired power plants, despite Canada’s push for a clear commitment to a date.

Currently, Canada has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by the year 2050, but some experts say we’re still not doing as much as we need to do to properly meet the threat of climate change.