Opinion

As Canadians weather the COVID-19 pandemic, severe cases mirror a slower epidemic of pre-existing conditions, Meg Sears writes.

"Unless Canada is willing to plan ahead, rural communities with the lowest capacity to cover costs of (climate-related disaster) disruption will continue to be hardest hit," write UBC grad students Victoria Ker, Erica Steele, Stephen Patenaude and Brayden Pelham.

At 32, linguist and storyteller Lindsay Borrows has practised law, written a book, introduced hundreds of law students to her people’s world view and is contributing to the revitalization of the Anishinaabe legal system.

Now that we know where we want to go on climate change, James Riley says, the real question becomes: How do we get there? 

"Five years (after the Paris Agreement), facing the ravages of the worst public health crisis in a century, what can we apply from our response to public health to our response climate change?" asks Catherine McKenna, former environment minister and current minister of infrastructure and communities.

LNG development will not only prevent Canada from meeting its emissions reduction targets, it may also be an economic non-starter due to decreased demand for fossil fuels and the increasing affordability of clean energy alternatives, says Beth Lorimer.

In conversation with Canada’s National Observer on Thursday evening, Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein flagged a tangential result of the past four years of Donald Trump: a deluge of hard-hitting, gobsmacking investigative journalism, Luke Ottenhof writes.

In the face of a pandemic and an unprecedented surge in government spending and economic support that has widespread public approval, the organization remains steadfast in its belief that governments ought to be doing less rather than more, Max Fawcett says.

"UNDRIP has become — depending on your politics — a key to transforming Canadian laws in an extraordinary act of reconciliation or a 'bogeyman,'" writes Karyn Pugliese, a.k.a. Pabàmàdiz.

Far from being merely “expenditures,” the federal government's fiscal update presents investments in the recovery as a “down payment” for a greener and more inclusive future Canada, says Sen. Rosa Galvez.

Alexa Goodman, 25, co-ordinates the remediation of abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear — otherwise known as “ghost gear” — for the Nova Scotia-based non-profit Coastal Action.

This fiscal update reminds us that in order to have a resilient Canada, we need to meet times of crisis with strong, smart ambition.

The broad-based mobilization of citizens is essential to ensuring the implementation of emissions reduction measures are commensurate with the urgency of the crisis, says Bruce Campbell.

For conservative premiers across the country, and conservative politicians throughout North America, protecting the freedom to do business seems more important than preventing the spread of a deadly virus.

Solar energy has an increasingly important role to play in combatting the global threat of climate change and helping Canada reach its 2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target, writes Robert Hornung of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association.