text: [Themes: edutainment]
  
  You think the best way forward is to help Ng to connect with MP Susan Miller. Since you know very little about her you think your best approach is to help Dinh go through a planning process herself. Besides if she's successful, maybe there will be the potential for other collaboration efforts. Hopefully environment will be an area on which the 2 MPs can find common ground.
  
  You say "Well I'm certainly no expert on Ms. Miller's track record, but it seems like you've actually considered this before. I'm guessing, from what you said, that making a genuine approach to developing trust would be crucial. If Susan Miller were to reach out to you, what would help you trust her?"
  
  The MP looks very interested and says "I just really like how you talk about things, you get to the heart of the matter, directly, but without the aggressiveness. I really like that." She continues, "Well if she supported us on the rollout of the G7 Oceans Plastic Charter, I think that would go a long way to building my trust. I think I also know where your going with this, by looking at what would help me trust Miller, I can consider what would help Miller to trust me."
  
  You blush at the MP's compliment, saying "Thanks - well it seems like you have the know-how to make a plan on how a cross-partisan relationship could be built. How might you meet Miller in a way that would build trust? Or be a gesture of good faith?"
  
  Dinh responds "Well, in all honesty I'm not prepared to answer that yet, that would take some research from my staff."
  
  You summarize "So Susan Miller might be a conservative with whom you could see eye to eye. You're not totally sure the exact steps you might want to take, but you know a bit of research could help to explore what might work". You follow up by saying "So what do you think is next for you?"
  
  Dinh responds "I think the next step is for my staff to look into this and see if we can find something Miller is supporting that we can get behind."
  
  As your leaving the office, Bob said that went really well. You have a short little heart to heart about the need to make environmental actions happen now, and he appreciates what your doing.
  
  You feel like your so close, Ng herself was talking about plans what if anything should you do now?
  
  > brainstorm a way to highlight Dinh's plan
  During the evening after your meeting you have dinner with Bob where you're sharing what feels like a victory dinner. That said you don't want to rest on your laurels. You really want Dinh to follow through and connect with Miller.
  
  You consider ways to hold her accountable, but the spirit of that type of interaction seems wrong given how you got this far. You start thinking of other ways to help appeal to her own desires to forge a prosperous relationship across a partisan boundary.
  
  As you and Bob discuss what you learned during the meeting, Bob reminds you of what was important to her. Her work on the rollout of the G7 Oceans Plastic Charter.
  
  You think about the fact that you have John's card (Ng's energy & environment staff person). Then a bunch of ideas all come together - you run your grand plan passed Bob.
  
  "So Bob," you say "what if I gave John a call and asked him how we could get a Conservative MP to support a streamlined rollout for the G7 Ocean Plastics Charter? Here's my reasoning - if we are able to succeed then we'll be able to report that back to Dinh. We'll be able to give Dinh that feeling we were talking about in the meeting - one of a "surprise ally" and the feeling of trust needed to move forward. Maybe that will be the extra encouragement Ng needs to follow through with a plan to 'pay it forward' and speak with Susan Miller."
  
  Bob looks at you a little bewildered and says "Well its sounds a bit complicated, I'm not even sure I fully understand it - this is a new thing I've never tried before. That said on your first campaign here, you seemed to make it farther than I normally do. So I'd say lets try it, I'm willing to help."
  
  The next day you call John, and say you'd like to help the MP get support for the G7 Oceans Plastic Charter. John is very happy to hear from you and offers to collaborate with CLACC on reaching MP Adam Zhao's office.
  
  Over the course of the next week you work the lead, getting in touch with Olivia Wineland, the CLACC rep from Zhao's constituency and get their two offices in touch.
  
  As with all things in government, you don't really here the final outcome but you know you've done all you can.
  
  > Grand Epilogue (2)
  100 years later...
  
  Rebecca is sitting in her women's studies class at the Dalhousie University. The current lecture is on the climate crisis in the early 21st century, and women's role in addressing it. It's funny to hear a lecture on this knowing how your great-great-grandmother was at the epicenter of this whole thing.
  
  The professor starts her lecture by discussing the muzzling of scientists in the early 2000's, filling us with facts and figures about how national progress was slowing. "Then something changed."
  
  "It all started" she says, "when a tireless Canadian MP, Susan Miller, received surprise support for her initiative to balance subsidies for fossil fuels and clean energy sources. That support came from a cross partisan MP - Tuyen Dinh."
  
  The professor highlights the work that they collaborated on before they co-founded the Coalition of Women in Parliament. Rebecca writes copious notes as her professor details the annals of history. Of course we all know how climate change was finally addressed. It was the collaborative CWP, Coalition of Women in Parliament, that built the support to pass the first meaningful legislation to actually mitigate climate change in Canada and led to a Global Energy Transformation.
  
  3 years after CWP was formed, in 2021, 80% of women in Parliament had joined, and the first legislature-approved climate action plan was passed, with a budget of 80 billion dollars over 10 years. The line at the time was "There are 8 billion people on this planet - isn't protecting the future of our habitable planet worth just a measly $1 each?". It was only a few years after, in 2022, when US President Elizabeth Warren followed our lead and countries all around the world followed suit.
  
  A student in the front row raises their hand and asks "Do we know who inspired Susan Miller and Tuyen Dinh to found the coalition?"
  
  The Professor answers "Good question - we actually do know straight from the words of Miller herself. She is on the record saying that part of what made her want to be a politician was looking at the leadership of Olympia Snowe, a Conservative Senator from Maine in the United States. The Professor continues explaining how Snowe created a bi-partisan coalition of women to prevent a financial catastrophe."
  
  On a whim, Rebecca raises her hand and asks "So we know about Olympia Snowe, but do we know what happened before that? Like what propagated Dinh and Miller to form a relationship to begin with? They were from different parties after all."
  
  The professor answers "Well we don't have the most information about that, but we believe they may have first met at a meeting of a natural resources-focused committee. As far as more specific than that, like how they first met, we don't actually know how Miller and Ng met."
  
  The world may not know, or even a women's studies professor, that it was Rebecca's great great grandmother who in her own way started a political revolution. Not with arms, or by fighting, but by asking the right questions and caring enough to listen to the answers. It goes through Rebecca's mind, as it had many times, to take credit for the victories of her lineage but she knows her family.
  
  We are a family of silent leaders, we don't do what is right for the glory of it. We do it because it's the right thing to do and that is reward enough.