Steven Guilbeault (born June 9, 1970) is a Canadian politician and former activist who has served as Minister of Environment and Climate Change since October 26, 2021. A member of the Liberal Party, Guilbeault has sat as a member of Parliament (MP) since the 2019 federal election, representing the Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie in the House of Commons. Guilbeault was previously the minister of Canadian heritage from 2019 to 2021. A founding member of Équiterre, a Quebec environmental organization, he was also director and campaign manager for the Greenpeace Quebec chapter for ten years. Guilbeault stepped down as senior director and spokesperson for Équiterre in November 2018, and in July 2019 was nominated as a federal Liberal candidate in the 2019 election. Early life and education The son of a butcher, he is of French Canadian descent although his maternal grandmother, Edna O'Farrell, was Irish Canadian. When he was five years old in his hometown of La Tuque in Haute-Mauricie, Guilbeault refused to get down from a tree that he had climbed, in an effort to block a land developer from clearing a wooded area behind his home. The tree was felled a few days later, but the event is cited by Guilbeault as the genesis of his environmental activism. After studying computer science in CEGEP, he enrolled in industrial relations at the Université de Montréal in 1989. A year later, he switched his major to political science. He minored in theology, exploring questions of international morality, liberation theology, poverty and the environment. Guilbeault became president of his faculty's student association and also took part in activities organized by Equitas (known at the time as the Canadian Human Rights Foundation). He was also active in the (FEUQ), where he made the acquaintance of François Rebello and Nicolas Girard, who would later enter the world of politics. He also joined the (GRIP), created out of the protest movement spearheaded by Ralph Nader, the renowned American consumer advocate. There he met Laure Waridel, Sydney Ribaux and François Meloche, with whom he would go on to found Équiterre a few years later. While in university, Guilbeault worked for two years (1992-1993) with the Canadian Human Rights Foundation, an organization dedicated to educating people, both at home and abroad, about human rights issues. Early career After the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1993, Guilbeault, Laure Waridel, Elizabeth Hunter, Patrick Henn, François Meloche