Opinion

CEO and editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood shares why she started Canada's National Observer, how independent media is vital to preserving democracy and what to expect from us in 2021.

"I wonder if there is not a risk that people are tiring of the standard COVID-19 messaging. How do we encourage positive behaviour, even as the situation becomes more dire?" author and consultant Ingrid Stefanovic asks.

Just as COVID-19 vaccination should strive for universal coverage and be guided by equity, governments should legislate paid sick days on the same basis, emergency physician Jesse McLaren writes.

For the sake of meeting the challenge of the climate emergency, we need to pay heed to the lessons of COVID-19 and apply them to climate policy, writes Andrea Reimer.

How pension funds invest our retirement savings is a major factor in how quickly we transition to a zero-carbon economy.

“No matter where you work, I respect you for putting food on the table. But I do have to say that my life has additional meaning now,” Nick Kendrick says.

As an emergency room physician, Dr. Gaibrie Stephen has seen the many ways in which COVID-19 has devastated people’s lives.

As America is ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump squats with his eyes glued to his phone, tweeting. A petulant grin on his face, he seems oblivious to the virus spilling out all around him in this cartoon by Michael de Adder.

Only a fraction of Indigenous chiefs are women, and many of those who hold the title complain of being harassed and disrespected by men.

As much as COVID-19 is a large-scale human tragedy, no doubt science tells us this is just a warning compared to the existential risks global warming poses to our civilization in the years and decades to come, writes Christian Burgsmüller, the European Union's chargé d’affaires to Canada.

In the race against rapid warming in the Arctic, 26-year-old Kirsten Reid hopes to help First Nations, settler governments and conservation groups identify species at risk and design conservation spaces and biodiversity corridors to protect fragile ecosystems.

"When the federal government gets its next opportunity to align Canada’s electoral map with the reality of its population ... it needs to do more than just tinker at the margins," Max Fawcett writes. "Instead, it needs to go big — literally."

"There have been far too many unexplained deaths, cases of unreported violence and incidents of racism in Indigenous lives, and it is time we begin paying attention, seek deserved justice and acknowledge that systemic racism exists and flourishes in this country," writes Jamie Monastyrski. 

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.