Comments come during candidates' debate Thursday that focused on the environment

Guelph’s candidate for the People’s Party of Canada may have picked the wrong room to criticize 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist at Thursday’s 100 Debates on the Environment event at Centennial CVI.

Thunberg has been in Canada for a number of days, participating in the climate march in Montreal and Thursday morning sent a tweet from the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary in Campbellville.

Thunberg became subject of conversation during Thursday’s debate, which featured Mark Paralovos of the People’s Party of Canada, incumbent Liberal candidate Lloyd Longfield, Aisha Jahangir for the NDP and Steve Dyck for the Green Party.

Conservative candidate Ashish Sachan was invited to the debate but did not attend.

During a question about how to engage youth in combating climate change, Dyck said his party would lower the voting age to 16 to allow young Canadians the same age as Thunberg to vote.

Jahangir compared Thunberg to Artsy Activist co-founder Sequoia Kim — who helped to organize a number of local demonstartions before starting university in Montreal in September.

Parroting attacks by party leader Maxime Bernier on Twitter, Paralovos set his sights on the adults surrounding Thunberg in her rise to fame as a climate activist.

Thunberg has described her Asperger’s — an autism spectrum disorder — as her super power.

“I used to work with autistic children, I used to work with people on the spectrum, etcetera. If they had the same affect that Greta was giving to the flashing pictures and noise in the room, I would have pulled her out of there,” said Paralovos.

“I think that Greta’s whole press conference illustrated how ill-equipped she was to take on the mantle of this fight,” said Paralovos before being momentarily drowned out by boos from parts of the audience.

He continued: “Somebody who is 16 years old doesn’t have the life experience to stand up ...“ he said before loudly being interrupted with calls of ‘shame” from the audience.

At that point, moderator Cas Herold chided the crowd.

“There is a place where you can disagree,” said Herold. “It’s the ballot box.”

“Respectful discord,” Paralovos said, in agreement.

Not discouraged, he continued: “When someone like Greta is so terrified of this, that doesn’t move me to think this is more of a crisis. I think that having the adults who are able to have the conversation in a public way without having names slung, instead having facts and figures…”

As the red card was shown by the timeperson, calls of “time!” came from parts of the crowd.

“Thank you, cut the mic if you have to,” said Herold as Paralovos attempted to finish.

For the duration of the debate, each candidate was allowed to use a ‘wild card’ to rebutt a point or defend their own position. Paralovos decided at this time to use his to continue his thoughts on Thunberg.

“To finish my thought, it is necessary when you put yourself out there to have a disagreement with people — even people who think they are 100 per cent right — and I respect that,” said Paralovos.

“Saying this person — Greta — who has these issues, has these difficulties, is capable and strong enough to bear that at 16 years old — I think that adults are failing her.”

None of the other candidates used their time or wild cards to directly respond to Paralovos’ comments toward Thunberg.

GuelphToday will have more coverage of the debate on Friday.