When Canada knew how to lead on the environment
This is Environment Week in Canada. It was created decades ago by an act of Parliament to raise awareness and support environmental action. The first week of June was chosen in order to bracket June 5, World Environment Day. Back in the 1980s, when I was the senior policy advisor to the minster of the […]
Canada’s effort to reduce plastics pollution have been found wanting
Recently, Canada has been getting some bad press. Since 2013, the Philippines has been asking Canada to take back some 69 shipping containers filled with garbage, erroneously labelled as recyclable material. Fed up with the Canadian federal government’s inertia, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte finally threatened to “declare war” on Canada if we continue to let […]
Environment
Senate amendments, ‘toothless’ regulations undercut Bill C-69
This June marks the 120th anniversary of Treaty 8, which, according to our tradition, is solemnized by the Creator to bind both parties in a promise between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians that is supposed to last “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the river flows.” However, the latest legislative brinksmanship unfolding […]
What will it take for the Trudeau government to ban single-use plastics?
Canada is in a plastic waste crisis, and Canadians know it. But despite all signs pointing to the need to follow the lead of other jurisdictions taking steps to ban single-use plastics, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and the Trudeau government have largely skirted the issue. What will this mean for the pending national strategy on […]
Senate to decide on fate of tanker ban, Liberals leaving U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade bill until last minute
Several high-profile government bills are entering the final stretch of scrutiny by Senators this week, with a decision on whether or not to kill the controversial tanker ban bill, C-48, on the docket, and third reading debate on the government’s sweeping environmental impact assessment bill, C-69, expected to begin early this week. The government has […]
Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, is having a hard go in the Senate. Should this bill get passed? Why or why not?
Cameron Ahmad Liberal strategist “The environment and the economy must go hand in hand. That’s a key principle that Andrew Scheer fails to understand when he says he wants to make pollution free again. Coastal communities understand better than anyone the need to take action to protect our environment and they expect their government to […]
Senate compromise on government’s signature impact assessment bill would put maligned regulators back in charge on environmental review panels
Senators on the Environment Committee changed the government’s signature impact assessment bill last week to give industry regulators the majority of seats on environmental review panels, reversing a key clause in the bill that sprung from widespread criticism and distrust of the role those regulators had played in assessments under the previous Conservative government. Those […]
Feds should make like a hiker meeting a grizzly and speak to, not fight with, Alberta
PRIDDIS, ALTA.—In one of his most memorable songs, the folk- and country-music icon Ian Tyson sang of Springtime in Alberta as the time of snow melting, cattle branding, and the land reawakening after a long winter. This year, springtime in Alberta also heralded the arrival of the new United Conservative Party government, which is bound […]
If this week’s dumb shrieking battles are any sign, this election won’t be pretty
OTTAWA—The past week provided a sadly predictable look ahead at this fall’s federal election. Dynamism was eschewed for dumb shrieking battles that we have seen a million times before and ultimately advance nothing but the same old partisan pepper spray. Sprinkle in the silly and you get a feel for what is coming our way. […]
