Senator Rosa Galvez

The Honourable Rosa Galvez is an environmental engineer, an independent senator at the Senate of Canada, and the President of the Parliamentary Network on Climate Change of ParlAmericas. At 10 years old, Senator Rosa already knew what she wanted to do; shocked by images of air pollution in major cities around the world, she envisioned a career where she could contribute to a cleaner, healthier environment. After studying engineering, she specializes in pollution control, water and wastewater treatment, municipal and hazardous waste, sustainable development, impact assessment, and climate risk to infrastructure. Senator Rosa went on to become a professor at Laval University in Québec, teaching for over 25 years and becoming Chair of its Civil and Water Engineering department from 2011 to 2016.

In her role as Senator, legislator, scientist, and educator, she is the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, and is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. Senator Rosa has published several policy papers, including a discussion paper on Canada’s building codes and a white paper on a clean and just recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, she sponsored the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, providing an accountability framework for the Canadian federal government to achieve its net-zero greenhouse gas emissions goal by 2050. She was also recipient of the Clean50 Award 2021 for her parliamentary work on climate and the environment. In March 2022, Senator Rosa published a white paper on Aligning Canadian Finance with Climate Commitments, which led to the introduction in the Senate of Bill S-243, the Climate-Aligned Finance Act, trailblazing legislation to help guide Canada’s financial sector in its transition to a net-zero economy while attaining coherence, increasing transparency, and implementing accountability.