This article was written by Thomson Reuters and was published by CBC News on February 8, 2024.
This article was written by Mark Poynting and was published by BBC News on February 8, 2024.
This article was written by Bea Bruske and Chris Severson, and was published in the Toronto Star on February 5, 2024.
BAKER BEA BRUSKE IS PRESIDENT OF THE CANADIAN LABOUR CONGRESS, AND CHRIS SEVERSON-BAKER IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PEMBINA INSTITUTE
We face an existential climate crisis and a critical moment for our economy.
Make no mistake, countries around the world are rapidly moving toward a low-carbon economy. No one is waiting on Canada to get our political house in order, so we can keep up. If we miss the boat today, the opportunity to create good, family supporting jobs in a low-carbon economy will sail right past us. What Canada does now will determine the kinds of jobs our workers will have and the kinds of communities we will build in the future.
This is why the labour movement, businesses and climate groups have been working closely with governments on a sustainable jobs plan to build a future that works. The road map for this work is contained in the Sustainable Jobs Act, C-50, tabled in the House of Commons last June.
The stakes are very high. Overall global investments in the energy transition soared to $1.8 trillion in 2023, a 17 per cent jump from the year before according to a recent BloombergNEF report.
New sustainable industries are moving forward at warp speed. Canada reached five per cent of total new car registrations being zeroemissions vehicle (ZEV) in the first quarter of 2022. By the third quarter of 2023, that had more than doubled to over 12 per cent.
When the adoption of a new technology reaches a tipping point, it can quickly become mainstream. Microwaves took decades to get to that point, then in the 1980s suddenly almost every household had one.
Today, Canadians are buying electric cars and investments are flowing into this burgeoning industry. But like with so many sectors, there is stiff competition for these dollars. The American’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) means our closest neighbour now has aggressive subsidies and tax credits, many paired with job standards. Canada needs to be smart and strategic to compete for investments, and to ensure those investments create and protect the good jobs that support communities across Canada.
This is where the Sustainable Jobs Act comes in. It brings stakeholders around a single table, in a new Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council to build the plans that can give Canada a competitive advantage unlocking these new opportunities.
By bringing workers, businesses, Indigenous Peoples, and environmental groups together with governments behind co-ordinated action, we’ll show the world that Canada is ready.
Passing the Sustainable Jobs Act and getting the new Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council working will deliver the message, loud and clear: Canada is a great place to invest, with workers who are second to none and ready to get the job done.
Since it was tabled, unions and environmental groups have worked with the government and opposition parties to strengthen the bill. Now we must pass it as soon as possible, so we can get started building an economy where sustainable industries are employing workers in good, sustainable jobs in every province and every region of the country. The kinds of good union jobs that power flourishing, livable communities.
We are ready to start building this better future, but we need the government to act with urgency, push past those trying to obstruct good jobs for Canadians and get the Sustainable Jobs Act passed as soon as possible.
If we don’t get this bill passed soon, we could delay climate action and fail to unlock these opportunities, sacrificing thousands and thousands of good future jobs and billions in future investment. Our workers, communities, and planet cannot afford to let this opportunity slip through our fingers.
This article was written by Bob Berwyn and was published in Inside Climate News on January 28, 2024.
This opinion was written by Paul Kershaw, policy professor at UBC and founder of Generation Squeeze, Canada’s leading voice for generational fairness. You can follow Gen Squeeze on X, Facebook, Instagram, and subscribe to Paul’s Hard Truths podcast. It was published in the Globe & Mail on February 3, 2024.
If you make a mess, you should help clean it up. That’s a responsibility my mom taught me. As the House of Commons returned to session, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Leader, betrayed this family value by courting voters with his promise to eliminate responsibility to pay for our pollution.
Whether to pay for pollution isn’t about consumer preferences. It’s a duty we owe to our kids. We need our politicians to recognize as much if they are to identify real solutions to the affordability crisis, and to reduce risks from extreme weather.
A new Abacus poll signals Mr. Poilievre has convinced many Canadians that the price on pollution is a primary source of financial pain. Alas, research from the University of Calgary shows he is pulling the wool over our eyes.
Professors Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter calculated the direct and indirect costs of the carbon tax to examine the entire financial impact of the tax relative to its absence. They use data from British Columbia, where the carbon price is the same as that levied by the federal plan. They found that carbon pricing adds 0.5 per cent to the cost of food and beverages; 0.29 per cent to rent; 0.2 per cent for clothing and footwear; and less than 0.13 per cent for insurance and financial services.
This means that for every dollar we spend on our major expenditures, the price on pollution adds less than a penny. The professors conclude: “Knowing that much of the present affordability crisis is due to factors other than emissions pricing, the elimination of the carbon tax is unlikely to solve the problem … [P]olicy makers will need to consider alternative solutions.”
Elsewhere, I’ve discussed how better child care, parental leave, housing, retirement and health policy offer such solutions. There are also savings to be gained from increased energy efficiency. The axe-the-tax campaign distracts attention from these options, which can deliver more relief to many wallets.
Worse still, the campaign distracts attention from why we pay for our pollution in the first place.
We pay for pollution because we love our kids and grandchildren. Their health, safety, air, food and drinking water are put in jeopardy when we pollute too much. Pollution accelerates the loss of clean lakes, healthy forests, snow-capped mountains, great plains, and the awe-inspiring wildlife with which we share our lands and oceans when we hike, boat, hunt and fish.
Beyond status, consumption and convenience, we are all driven by deeply ingrained desires to be part of something larger so that we preserve what we hold sacred for our descendants.
By punting the costs of pollution to our kids, Mr. Poilievre proposes to deal with pollution problems later. But later is now too late. Later is an abuse of the authority we wield over our kids and future generations. Since they legally can’t vote, they are trusting us to do more, not less, to fight climate change. This means urgently reducing our smog, litter and trash, and paying for messes made by our pollution – past and present.
The hard truth is that we should be expanding pollution pricing, not cutting it, because greenhouse gasses aren’t the only source of pollution. Plastics and other toxins pollute our oceans. There are pollutants from mining and fracking; industrial waste; single-use garbage, and more.
Industries with big profits and carbon footprints should pay their fair share so that the rest of us don’t feel like chumps when paying the consumer carbon price. So, it’s good news the federal government is making important, albeit imperfect, progress on this front, including its new regulatory framework to limit pollution by the oil and gas sector.
But at bottom, let’s remember we pay for our pollution to be good parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. That’s why we’re building a Good Ancestors movement at the Generation Squeeze website.
Our plan is to remind Canadians that pollution pricing helps us fulfill responsibilities to our kids by loyally stewarding sacred resources that are essential to our health.
If enough of us share this reminder, we predict more Canadians will open their hearts and minds to evidence that there are better ways to reduce affordability pressures than axing the carbon tax.
Because nobody wants to feel forced to choose between the financial security of their families right now versus leaving a healthy and safe legacy for their kids, grandkids, and generations to come.
People want both. All political parties should deliver both, if we want Canada to work for all generations.
This editorial was written and published by the Globe & Mail on January 27, 2024.
The novelist Margaret Atwood wrote and narrated a short animated video this week on the ways that countries can devolve into totalitarian nightmares. Released by The Financial Times, the video was a concise recap of how, in the 20th century, moments of chaos combined with the weakening of traditional institutions led to horrific dictatorships on the left (the Soviet Union under Stalin) and the right (Nazi Germany under Hitler).
In a bit of cosmic alignment, also released last week was an Abacus poll that found that one-third of adult Canadians cannot recall taking any courses in civics in elementary and secondary school.
Abacus found that those who couldn’t recall learning about how democratic institutions and government work were 10 percentage points less likely to say they voted in the last federal election, while those who couldn’t recall learning about current events were nine points less likely to say they voted in that election.
The survey also found that only one in 10 people said they were taught how to discuss controversial social and political issues in school. (The survey was conducted with 1,919 Canadian adults from Dec. 7-12, 2023. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.24 per cent, 19 times out of 20.)
That survey was tied to another recent survey of Canadian teachers that found that more than 50 per cent of them say they lack adequate training in civic education, and that in many provinces such courses are more of an afterthought than a centre piece of children’s educations.
The report by the non-profit group CIVIX Canada notes that “calls for civic-education reform emerge almost like clockwork alongside social crises.” But – and here is where Ms. Atwood’s video comes in – we are in a period of history where crises of all kinds are its defining feature.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the trucker protests tore at Canada’s social fabric. Inflation and surging housing costs have left people struggling to pay their bills. Climate change is making them anxious about the future. The use of misinformation and personal attacks on social media is devaluing the common currency of exchange. A growing distrust of democratic institutions such as the media and Parliament (some of it self-inflicted) and of elections (due to foreign interference) risks pulling people further apart.
Add to this Donald Trump’s attacks on the United States’ democratic institutions and conventions, plus the aggressions of strongmen like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China, and we are at a point where democracy can’t go a day without being introduced to a new threat.
The upshot in Canada is that people seem in these hard times to have lost sight of how lucky they are to live in this safe and democratic country. At the fringes, there are even those who compare Canada to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, a ludicrous opinion fuelled by either malice, political opportunism or an ignorance of history based on a lack of personal experience for which the holder ought to be eternally grateful.
Ms. Atwood accurately points out in her video that democracy requires a public that has an understanding of how the system works – its flaws included, we might add – in order to withstand the slings and arrows of populism, and to survive difficult moments.
In Canada, that needs to start in school. Teachers need to be properly trained, and provided with adequate time, to instruct their students on how our democratic institutions operate, why it is important to vote, how to get involved in community and how to discuss and debate controversial issues in a civil manner.
The latter is critical to democracy. Teenagers must learn how to express their opinions respectfully, and to respect the opinions of others. (A lot of adults need to learn that, too.)
Education is a provincial jurisdiction, of course. But there is a national interest in strengthening our democracy from the bottom up. Last week, the Trudeau government announced it would hold a national summit on car theft. Nice idea but, as serious as that issue might be, it can’t match the urgency of armouring Canada’s future voters against the erosions of the 21st century.
If anything needs a shared national effort to solve, it’s the state of civic education in Canada. Failing to provide children with an appreciation for democracy is a mistake at the best of times. Doing so today seems self-destructive.
This article was written by Theresa Beer and was published in the Toronto Star on January 27, 2024.
THERESA BEER IS A COMMUNICATIONS AND POLICY SPECIALIST AT THE DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION.
“Progress, but not fast enough.” It’s a common headline these days when it comes to climate action — not fast enough for a climate-safe future in which the 1.5 C goal set by the Paris Agreement to prevent global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels is kept alive.
It’s easy to miss momentum that arrives in small steps rather than huge leaps. But climate policies and regulations are working to bring down emissions, with big gains expected once they kick into higher gear and loopholes that favour oil and gas use are closed.
An independent assessment for the Canadian Climate Institute models existing climate policy against a no-climate-policy scenario and finds that emissions today would be seven per cent higher, and 41 per cent higher in 2030, without legislated, developing and announced policies.
Last year, Canada moved ahead with plans to clean up the electricity grid, cap harmful emissions from fossil fuels and make electric vehicles more available and affordable. Not only do these regulatory and policy advances tackle emissions, but they also come with jobs and health benefits. The rapid pace of announcements for investments in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing points to the economic writing on the wall. The policies are big cost-savers compared to not acting on the worsening climate crisis.
And after decades of silence, the world’s spotlight at the COP28 climate summit turned to transitioning off oil, gas and coal. While gaping loopholes remain that risk expanding gas production and rely on unproven technology like carbon capture and storage, the main culprit behind the climate crisis — the fossil fuel industry — was identified.
Fossil fuel greenwashing is being called out and accountability demanded. Ideas from health-care professionals, such as banning advertising for fossil fuels, are gaining traction. Some are calling for a windfall tax on fossil fuel profits as people struggle to pay for rent and food while oil and gas companies rake in record profits.
Then there’s the rise of renewables. The International Energy Agency assesses clean energy growth as “unstoppable.” The agency projects that nearly half the world’s electricity supply will come from renewable energy by 2030. Renewable energy has become the lowest-priced energy in history. Heat pumps and energy efficiency have hit the mainstream.
Indigenous communities demonstrated what leading a transition to a clean energy economy with equitable solutions looks like. Many are gaining energy sovereignty through renewable energy. Outside of utilities, Indigenous nations are the largest renewable energy asset owners in Canada.
Despite these benefits, some provinces, politicians and industries want to put the brakes on climate action, under the dubious pretence of addressing affordability. Alberta and Saskatchewan, in particular, are rejecting climate progress on multiple fronts. Canada’s fossil fuel industry is risking creating stranded assets as it seeks to increase production of products like liquefied “natural” gas, especially in B.C.
Some are calling for effective policies, such as carbon pricing, to be dropped. But climate action based on politics rather than evidence won’t get us where need to go. The carbon levy adds a small amount to inflationary woes compared to the volatile fossil fuel industry, and most people in Canada receive rebates to help with affordability — the most recent in January this year.
We can’t afford more delays to climate action. We can’t afford to reverse course or stall if we want to avoid worsening impacts from extreme weather-related events, such as wildfires, floods and droughts. The momentum for a clean transition must increase as we move away from oil, gas and coal.
That’s how Canada can finally meet climate targets and build more livable communities in the process. The good news is that people in Canada want climate action. It’s time for a “whole society” approach with all levels of government, industry, communities and people doing their part. That’s how to change the headline to “Canada’s action on climate on track to make a big difference.”
An independent assessment for the Canadian Climate Institute found that emissions today would be seven per cent higher, and 41 per cent higher in 2030, without legislated, developing and announced policies
This article was written by Mark Winfield and was published in the Toronto Star on January 22, 2024.
MARK WINFIELD IS A PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND URBAN CHANGE AT YORK UNIVERSITY AND CO-CHAIR OF THE FACULTY’S SUSTAINABLE ENERGY INITIATIVE.
The Ford government announced last month its intention to procure 2,000 megawatts (MW) of new electricity supplies from renewable sources, including wind, solar and hydro by 2030, with a potential for another 3,000MW by 2034.
The government’s move is certainly a welcome development, particularly given its previous refusal to consider additional renewable energy sources in its electricity plans and its infamous 2018 decision to terminate 758 renewable energy projects across the province at a cost of at least $231 million.
At the same time, it is important to recall that the government’s decision does nothing to change its overall trajectory on electricity and energy. The province remains committed, as laid out in its July 2023 energy plan, to a major expansion of the role of nuclear energy, including 4,800MW of new generating capacity at the Bruce site, and four 300MW new reactors at the Darlington site.
No cost estimates are available for the proposed nuclear projects. The bids submitted as part of the province’s last attempt at a new-build nuclear project would optimistically suggest costs in the range of $50 billion for the Bruce project alone. The costs of the four smaller reactors proposed for Darlington remain essentially unknown, given that none of the proposed type of reactor have ever been built or operated before anywhere in the world, but will run into the billions as well.
A refurbishment of the four-reactor Pickering B station, previously assessed as uneconomic, is under consideration as well.
The province is also in the process of adding 1,500MW of new natural gas-fired generation to the system.
At the same time, the role of existing natural gas-fired plants is growing rapidly to replace nuclear facilities that are being refurbished or retired. Emissions from gas-fired generation have more than doubled since 2017, and are projected to continue to increase dramatically.
None of these directions have been changed by the December renewable energy announcement. The province’s electricity system remains on the same high-carbon, high-risk and high-cost pathway of nuclear and natural gas-fired generation expansion that it was on before.
It continues to lack any meaningful planning process around its electricity system — the process is instead governed by political directives. That means there is no need to explain or justify the costs and risks flowing from its nuclear and gas heavy plan, before any sort of meaningful public review process or regulatory body.
Nor is there any requirement to demonstrate consideration of different pathways to decarbonization, such as those might incorporate a stronger focus on energy efficiency and productivity, greater development of renewable energy, distributed energy resources, such as networked rooftop solar and building-level energy storage resources, and relationships with neighbouring jurisdictions.
The province has been happy to accept billions in federal funding for “green” steel, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, and nuclear projects. But it continues to lack any meaningful or effective strategy around climate change, particularly in key areas like transportation, space heating and land use.
Instead, the growing role of natural gas in electricity generation has put it in a position of directly contradicting the directions laid out in the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, intended to move Canada towards a net-zero electricity gird.
A carbon-intensive highway expansion plan remains at the centre of the province’s transportation strategy.
Ontario needs a serious and substantive climate plan and an open, accountable and evidence-based approach to decision-making around energy. A rational planning process for electricity and decarbonization would prioritize the options with the lowest economic, environmental, technological and safety risks first.
Higher-risk options, like new nuclear, would only be considered where it can be demonstrated that the lower-risk options have been fully optimized and developed in the planning process.
Unfortunately, the province continues to take the opposite path — pursuing the highest cost, highest risk and highest negative impact option, nuclear expansion, first, along with growth in greenhouse gas-intensive natural gas-fired generation. Everything else — efficiency, renewables and distributed energy resources — remains at the margins.
Last month’s announcement does nothing the change that basic reality.
This opinion was written by Barry White and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 22, 2024.
Just like many here in Canada who worry about climate change, I am worried about attacks on the carbon tax. As others have written, the carbon tax works – it reduces greenhouse-gas emissions – and crucially, it accomplishes that goal while ensuring most Canadians receive more money from the yearly rebate than they pay in extra tax. And yet, the carbon tax is increasingly unpopular.
As a decision scientist, I study how decisions are structured, what people think about them and how to better design decisions so people can make the choices that best align with their values. A few weeks ago, I listened as callers expressed their frustration with the carbon tax on CBC’s Ontario Today call-in show. Many callers seemed not to know they were likely making money from the policy’s rebate. Now that the Conservative Party has put the carbon tax in its crosshairs (“Axe the tax!”), taking advantage of the tax’s unpopularity to win support, we might lose a tool to combat climate change because it is politically expedient to get rid of it.
The blame for such a failure lies largely with the government. Of course, the Conservatives are not helping, but opposition parties always hit the government where it is weak. Clearly, people do not know or feel the tax is working for them. But how could that be, if the majority are financially better off than without the policy? Decision science suggests an answer: The policy, as designed, requires us to feel that it makes life more expensive so the policy works.
According to this line of thinking, the carbon tax leverages the fact that we usually consume less of something when its price rises. But if we felt the true magnitude of the rebate – that it makes us richer even with the extra tax payments – then that would diminish the effectiveness of the very mechanism required to make the policy work. We would internalize the fact that our budget to spend on energy has increased, at least partially offsetting the effect of higher prices.
But that is not what happens. We do not feel the effect of the rebate the same way we feel the effect of the tax, so we consume less energy – and so the tax achieves its goal of lowering emissions. That makes sense to a decision scientist: It’s an example of “loss aversion,” wherein a loss of money feels more “bad” than a gain of the same amount feels “good.” It could be that the rebate, even if it is higher than the tax, is not high enough to offset negative feelings of higher prices.
We also only get the rebate a few times a year, but are directly confronted by the tax each time we fill our cars or buy fossil fuels in another capacity. In addition, once enough time passes after the latest rebate deposit, we go to the pump or open our natural gas bill and we feel the sting of higher prices with no accompanying emotional salve from the rebate. Each rebate payment will, without much notice on our part, get eaten up in smaller amounts by regular household expenses. We don’t place it in some mental accounting column as “money to pay for the increased cost of energy” every time we pay for fossil fuels. All of these factors contribute to a negative overall feeling toward the policy. It is worth repeating that the success of the policy depends on us not feeling the rebate makes up for the tax when we make decisions about how much energy to purchase.
If the continued success of the policy did not require people to like it, then its current implementation might be just fine: A government can’t please everyone, and policy makers would know the finances of Canadians are better off, even if many do not believe it. But, for better or worse, the policy must be popular for it to be effective in the long term, because otherwise, a new government will probably get rid of it. The Conservatives might be elected because they are promising to do exactly that.
How might we design something better? If the policy needs to be popular to succeed, then we need to convince Canadians they are better off with it. That could mean better communication on how the rebate works, and it might also include a better explanation of its climate benefits. If policy makers relent slightly on the amount of the tax, diminishing its cost (and, arguably, its effectiveness), even that would be better than electing a government that would get rid of the carbon tax completely.
This article was written by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and was published by Reuters News on January 17, 2024.
Mobilize, Canada! 