Conservative politicians across Canada have strongly opposed the Trudeau government’s promise to impose carbon tax since the idea was floated in 2015. Beginning with Premier Wall in Saskatchewan, opposition to the carbon tax is now a central commitment of conservative Premiers Pallister, Moe and Ford, as well as the leader of the official opposition, Andrew […]
More regular reporting on extreme weather patterns would help Canadians understand the real threat of climate change The tornadoes that recently hit the Ottawa area cannot be blamed specifically on global climate change. But they are consistent with the long-predicted pattern of increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, highlighted in the most recent […]
Federal pipeline needs independent assessment, global health leaders say After a summer that saw over 90 heat-related deaths in Quebec, drought-impacted crops across the Prairies, and large swaths of Western Canada and Ontario ravaged by wildfires and shrouded in smoke, many of the world’s leading experts gathered in San Francisco at the Global Climate […]
Things look bleak these days for the Trudeau government’s Pan-Canadian Framework on climate change (PCF). The framework represents Canada’s primary compliance path with the Paris Climate Accord, requiring provinces to establish a price on carbon or have one imposed by Ottawa. Opposition Conservatives have railed against the plan in the House of Commons. Newly-elected Ontario […]
Kickstarting the renewable energy economy comes first A version of this commentary appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, Vancouver Province and the Waterloo Region Record Pricing carbon is about much more than getting people to drive less. It is also about generating the money we need to accelerate the process of getting our economy off fossil […]
Climate change has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the biggest health threat of the 21st century.
This week, Canadian physicians are gathering for the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA). Often called Canada’s ‘Parliament of Medicine,’ one of the meeting’s strategic sessions is zeroing in on the health consequences of climate change.
Just off a bustling urban street, in the heart of a middle class Canadian community, I came upon an elderly man wilting in the low lying shrubs, mere feet from heavy traffic and visibility. He appeared unconscious, perhaps brought on by the searing summer temperatures that had pushed the mercury above 30 degrees Celsius.
A young child arrives at the hospital emergency room in respiratory distress, his asthma worsened by smoke exposure. An elder has uncontrolled blood pressure because there wasn’t time to get her medications when the evacuation orders came through.
