environment

Tuesday January 28, 2020

January 28, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 28, 2020

Peter MacKay launches his campaign promising to unify and expand Conservative Party

Peter MacKay officially launched his leadership campaign on Saturday with a speech that emphasized his experience on the world stage, and promised to unify and expand the Conservative Party ahead of the next election.

Peter MacKay Cartoon Gallery

“Together we’ll expand outward that big blue tent, while strengthening its solid poles of conservative principle,” he said in a speech in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, the area which he represented in Parliament from 1997 to 2015.

“I stand here before you today with my heart on my sleeve for every Canadian, whoever you love, wherever you live,” he said.

The speech leaned heavily on MacKay’s experience in senior cabinet roles during Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, particularly his time as foreign affairs minister and defence minister. While pitching himself as a Prime Minister in waiting, he also took shots at Justin Trudeau.

He said Canada and the planet are facing “big challenges with big complicated questions,” but the current Liberal government is “shrugging and often doing more harm than good, virtue signalling without action.”

However, there were no specific policy proposals in the speech. Notably, the speech made no mention of climate change, instead discussing the general importance of protecting the environment.

“We’re stewards of the environment,” he said. “The greatest gift that we’ve received as Canadians, alongside our freedom and democracy, is our natural splendour of land and sea.”

May 2, 2019

MacKay is widely seen as the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race, which will end June 27 in Toronto. His main competition, at least for the time being, is expected to be Ontario MP Erin O’Toole. O’Toole is launching is campaign Monday in Alberta.

Three high-profile potential contenders for the Conservative leadership race — Jean Charest, Rona Ambrose and Pierre Poilieve — all dropped out over the past week. However, candidates still have until Feb. 27 to enter the race, so others may come forward.

Other candidates who have declared their intention to run include Ontario MPs Marilyn Gladu and Derek Sloan, Alberta businessman Rick Peterson, and former Conservative staffer Richard Decarie. (National Post) 

 

Thursday December 5, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday December 5, 2019

Ford government’s climate change plan is not based on ‘sound evidence,’ auditor general says

Young Doug Ford: the mini-series

Premier Doug Ford’s plan to fight climate change is not based on “sound evidence” and will fall well short of Ontario’s 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk warns in a damning new annual report.

Despite repeated assurances from Ford as recently as Tuesday that the plan is on track, an internal analysis by the environment ministry acknowledges that proposed measures won’t do the job, the auditor revealed in her massive report released Wednesday.

“Ontario is warming faster than the global average,” Lysyk said in her three-volume, 1,176-page report, noting the Paris Agreement target is to reduce emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

December 11, 2014

But the Progressive Conservative government’s calculations have been flawed on many levels, she said, such as the inclusion of impacts from renewable energy projects and the previous Liberal administration’s cap-and-trade program that were scrapped in the summer of 2018.

The environment ministry also projects sales of electric vehicles will rise to 1.3 million in 2030 from 41,000 this year but has “no policy mechanisms” to drive an increase after cancelling cash incentives for buyers and the installation of more charging stations more than a year ago, Lysyk found.

July 11, 2018

An end to cash incentives, which were bankrolled by the Liberal cap-and-trade program that generated $1.9 billion annually, has resulted in a drop of 53 per cent in the number of electric vehicles purchased or leased.

As well, “some emissions reductions were double counted and overstated” because they are targeted in more than one program, said the report.

The auditor general also found troubles in the health care system, court backlogs caused by a lack of modernization, higher rates of fatalities and injuries in commercial vehicle crashes and use food that is past its best-before date in nursing homes. (Hamilton Spectator)


 

Friday October 11, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 11, 2019

Liberal climate plan offers the most hope

The critics who claim this federal election is devoid of big issues have got it wrong.

The challenge of fighting climate change stands out like a mountain that rises above a noisy, crowded plain.

On Election Day, the opportunity is here for this country to move up that mountain as never before, just when the calls for action around the world have reached a crescendo and as scientists warn time’s running out to avert an eventual catastrophe.

Fully aware of this, the main four national parties are all offering an action plan. But while each has its merits, after weighing the pros and cons of each party’s proposals, this newspaper believes the Liberals’ strategy is the most substantial, balanced and workable.

April 11, 2018

Despite what some well-meaning ideologues insist, Canada cannot meet its carbon emission targets — far less the utopian dream of no net emissions — overnight or in a few years. Not unless it wants to shut down its fossil-fuel-dependent economy, which no government would ever do.

The Liberals realize this and are trying to marry environmental necessity and economic reality. The policies they’ve enacted over the past four years are on track to taking Canada more than halfway toward meeting its Paris Agreement commitment. That would see this country reduce its carbon emissions in 2030 by a full third from what they were in 2005.

So far, the Liberals have imposed a carbon tax on provinces, such as Ontario, which have not put a price on carbon emissions. Implemented in April at $20 a tonne — about 4.3 cents a litre of gas at the pump — the tax will rise to $50 a tonne by 2022 and possibly more after that. If re-elected, the Liberals would also regulate the carbon content in fuels.

May 14, 2019

In sharp contrast, the Conservatives would axe the carbon tax, ignoring the fact that because most Canadians receive more in a carbon-tax rebate than they pay out, their pockets are not being picked even as they’re being encouraged to change their energy-consumption habits. The Conservatives’ approach also flies in the face of what most economists have long agreed: pricing carbon works from every perspective.

The Conservative plan to invest more in green technology and force large companies to spend more on such solutions if they fail to meet new emission standards would take Canada into unknown territory. It’s impossible to say how much emissions would fall under these initiatives or if they’d fall at all.

September 18, 2019

For their part, the New Democrats would keep the carbon tax while cancelling the rebates to millionaires. The party would also aim for a more ambitious emissions reduction — 38 per cent below 2005 levels — by 2030. Persuasive details for how this would happen, unfortunately, seem lacking.

As for the Green party’s commitment to even higher carbon taxes, more aggressive reductions in emissions and an end to the expansion of all pipelines including the Trans Mountain project, it ignores the serious economic fallout it would surely create.

The Liberals’ plan is far from perfect and, indeed, is still a work in progress. But while they’ve been criticized for buying the Trans Mountain pipeline and trying to expand it, the Liberals realize the race to stop climate change will be more like an ultra marathon than a 100-metre dash.

Canada needs to be in this for the long haul. And it must be economically healthy enough to keep running. Better than their rivals, the Liberals realize these truths and, on this issue at least, have the best plan. (Source: Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday June 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 20, 2019

Scheer’s climate pledge is nonsense, just like Trudeau’s

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s long-awaited climate change plan means the Tories will now join Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in lying through their teeth leading up to the Oct. 21 election.

May 2, 2019

Scheer’s 60-page plan released Wednesday, which does not include a carbon tax, says the greenhouse gas reduction targets agreed to by Trudeau under the Paris climate accord in 2015, “are Conservative targets and our plan will give Canada the best chance at reaching them.”

Scheer has to say that because Trudeau’s targets used to be Stephen Harper’s targets and Scheer previously said he supports the Paris accord.

But in the real world Scheer’s plan, containing 50 initiatives, has as much chance of hitting the Paris targets as Trudeau’s, meaning somewhere between slim and none and slim just left town.

This as evidenced by the fact Scheer’s plan contains no timeline or deadlines for actually achieving the Paris target of reducing our emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.

That means Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna will spend the election denouncing Scheer for not having a plan to meet the Paris targets.

Of course, they will ignore the fact the federal environment commissioner, nine of 10 provincial auditors general, the United Nations, the federal government’s own studies and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, say the same thing about Trudeau’s plan. (Toronto Sun)

April 11, 2018

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is an icon of progressive politics who has promised to “put a price on pollution”. Last week, to much applause, he proposed a ban on single-use plastics. On Monday night, his government declared a national “climate emergency.”

He is also now the public face of a Canadian plan to expand a pipeline that would triple the amount of crude oil that moves from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific Coast for shipment around the world.

Such is his dilemma — and Canada’s.

Trudeau’s Liberal government announced Tuesday it will push ahead with the stalled Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, $5.5 billion project that has long pitted the country’s energy sector against the concerns of environmental and some indigenous groups.

December 1, 2016

Trudeau, announcing the decision at a news conference in Ottawa, pledged that every dollar earned from the pipeline will be used to fund projects to power Canada’s transition to clean energy.

“We need to create wealth today so we can invest in the future,” he said. “We need resources to invest in Canadians so they can take advantage of the opportunities generated by a rapidly changing economy, here at home and around the world.”

The move will be welcomed by the country’s struggling oil sector and the many Canadians whose fortunes are tied to it. Landlocked Alberta produces four-fifths of Canadian crude but struggles to get it abroad, and so must settle for selling at steep discounts against global benchmarks — hitting the province hard.

But many Canadians have protested the expansion proposal out of concern for oil spills and the continuing promotion of climate-changing fossil fuels. They question whether this is the moment to increase Canadian shipments of oil.

Trudeau has been left to walk a tightrope between the two sides, taking heat from both as he limps toward a federal election this fall. (Washington Post) 

 

Tuesday April 30, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 30, 2019

Doug Ford links Ontario floods to climate change: ‘Just rips your heart out’

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he believes climate change is among the reasons eastern Ontario homeowners are trying to save their homes from flooding for the second time in three years.

February 28, 2019

Ford was in the rural west end of Ottawa Friday morning, touring flooded areas along the Ottawa River, where officials are warning a new rain storm will make water levels rise rapidly over the next few days, likely exceeding the levels seen during a 2017 flood.

Ford says when you see the affected people face-to-face it “just rips your heart out.”

“These folks can’t go through this every single year,” he said.

He said local officials desperately need volunteers to help fill and distribute sandbags.

The Ottawa River is just one of several water bodies overflowing this week, forcing thousands of Canadians from their homes in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, where the Saint John River is experiencing a major flood for the second year in a row.

December 1, 2018

In Quebec, officials said Thursday 3,148 homes are already underwater and another 2,305 are surrounded by it, with 1,111 people out of their residences. In New Brunswick, 84 roads are closed because of flooding, including a portion of the TransCanada Highway.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency because of flooding Thursday, with another 20 mm to 50 mm of rain forecast to fall Friday and Saturday.

Residents in several small communities on the eastern and western edges of Ottawa are sandbagging to keep their homes dry, while paths along the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, including behind Parliament Hill, are underwater. About 400 soldiers have been deployed to the Ottawa area to help sandbag and assist with other flood operations. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)