In July, several members of Parliament—including NDP and Green leaders Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May—sent a letter to French legislators urging them not to ratify the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). “We agree that trade between our countries and continents is important,” it read. “However, we believe in…
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Canadian elections can be staid affairs. For all the talk of big change, campaigns tend to gravitate toward which party can be trusted to “manage the economy.” Trusted by whom? The coveted “middle class” voter, of course. Those at the higher-income end of that group are more likely to vote…
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Last month, as part of the research for a book I am writing on mobilizing Canada for the climate emergency, I commissioned an extensive national public opinion poll from Abacus Data.* The full results of the poll can be found on the Abacus website here. I share highlights and my…
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Not-too-late-to-save-the-world edition View the story Federal election primer: Not-too-late-to-save-the-world edition By Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood The global climate crisis—often framed as an abstract and future problem—is increasingly obvious outside our windows. Summer hasn’t officially started yet, but out-of-control wildfires are already raging across Alberta and British Columbia. Following the record-breaking burns of…
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The urgency of the global climate crisis could not be more obvious than in India right now, where a 50ºC heatwave is causing “heavy casualties” both directly through heat-related deaths and indirectly through water and food shortages. Canadians have been spared that kind of heat so far, but it’s little…
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Regulation. It’s not something many of us have time to think about. Most people are busy working, keeping the household running smoothly and generally living their lives. When we do think about how things are regulated, it’s usually after something terrible has happened: planes drop out of the sky, killing…
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Twenty years ago, the Fraser Institute published a book called Facts, Not Fear with the goal of correcting the alleged misinformation schoolchildren were being exposed to in environmental science programs. The right-wing think tank was concerned that school science textbooks were often drawn from scientific literature (of all places), which…
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Of the limited changes made to the renegotiated NAFTA agreement—also known as the USMCA—perhaps the most significant relates to the system of investor protections that permits foreign firms to challenge government policies, laws and court decisions through private arbitration. Under the USMCA, this investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system will no…
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Photo credit: Richard Bradley It seems like the wrong time to be cutting back on flood protection. In the past week, rising water has closed Highway 17 east of North Bay, submerged entire sections of communities like Bracebridge, and brought Ontarians out in droves to fill sandbags. At one…
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First, the good news. The release of the government’s first climate resilience report finally gives the Saskatchewan public a series of goals and targets that can allow us to measure and assess the government’s progress towards climate adaptation and mitigation. Moreover, the release of the report further demonstrates that the government…
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