Rural communities seek changes as communication regulator looks to extend reach of system
This article was written by Jim Bronskill and was published in the Toronto Star on December 27, 2025.
Rural municipalities, Indigenous organizations and civil society groups are calling for changes to ensure people in remote parts of Canada receive emergency alerts during a crisis.
The suggestions to the federal communication regulator are aimed at closing gaps in the National Public Alerting System — more commonly known as Alert Ready — which delivers urgent messages about everything from missing children to tornadoes.
The Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission requires cellphone service providers, cable and satellite television companies and radio and television broadcasters to send out emergency alerts.
The CRTC solicited comments from interested parties on aspects of the system, including wireless public alerting gaps across Canada, distribution of alerts in English and French and the possible addition of Indigenous and other languages.
The CRTC review comes as the federal government works on a broader overhaul.
The recent federal budget promised $55.4 million over four years starting in 202627, and $13.4 million ongoing, for Public Safety Canada to support a new National Public Alerting System model.
In a submission to the CRTC review, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities said many rural areas and highways in the province lack reliable cellular service. “This means emergency alerts from NPAS don’t always reach those who need them most — farmers, travellers, Indigenous communities, and those living remote from urban centres,” the brief said.
The association called for improving the system by working with internet service providers to upgrade critical infrastructure and address cellular coverage gaps, especially along highways and remote roads.
In its brief, Rural Municipalities of Alberta suggests requiring wireless providers to meet minimum geographic coverage levels in sparsely populated areas, where alerts struggle to reach residents.
The James Bay Cree Communications Society pointed to the 2023 Quebec wildfires as an example of the National Public Alerting System’s shortcomings.
No federal or provincial alerts were received during the evacuation of the Cree community of Mistissini, the society said in its submission to the CRTC.
The society said it worked with the Eeyou Communications Network — a majority Creeowned telecommunications carrier — and the Cree Nation Government to issue verified updates in Cree and English via FM radio and livestream on social media platforms, becoming a trusted information source for thousands of residents.
“Canada’s publicalerting framework must evolve from consultation to cogovernance — ensuring that every community can receive lifesaving information in a language they understand, through systems that endure when power and connectivity fail,” the society’s brief added.
“A truly national alerting system must make local voices part of its design, not its workaround.”
The Eeyou Communications Network called on the CRTC to ensure public alerting policy reflects the realities of northern and Indigenous regions, where locally built and governed networks already carry essential public safety communications.
“Strengthening NPAS requires recognizing the role of Indigenousowned carriers, establishing northernappropriate standards, and ensuring that funding mechanisms align with operational needs in remote communities,” the network said in its submission.
The CRTC asked participants in the review about the feasibility of creating a national mobile app, available for download across Canada, as a possible solution for reducing gaps in wireless public alerting. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre told the commission there are certain limitations and concerns when it comes to the creation and operation of such an app.
“Firstly, it is unclear whether and how effective this national app will be in issuing timely emergency alerts, particularly in the rural and remote regions,” the centre’s submission said.
It added that such a feature would require access to a phone or other digital device, which may not be possible for lowincome people.
The Canadian Red Cross said alerts must reach everyone, including people in remote areas, those without reliable internet or cellular connectivity, individuals without access to mobile devices and people with disabilities.
“They must also be culturally appropriate and aligned with trusted local communication channels,” the organization’s submission said.
Communications firm BCE Inc. advised the CRTC to avoid creating expensive new public alerting system obligations for distributors of messages.
“This caution is particularly relevant for television and radio stations, which are facing severe and welldocumented financial challenges,” the company’s brief said. “Any increase in regulatory costs or administrative burden risks further cutbacks or closures to local stations, and thus, any new obligations should be well thought out before implementation.”
A June 2025 memo prepared for the federal deputy minister of public safety warned the current arrangement for the alerting system is no longer viable due to a decline in the number of cable and satellite television subscribers.
This opinion was written by Doug Saunders and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 27, 2025.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: THE GLOBE AND MAIL. SOURCES: GETTY IMAGES
Don’t lose hope, Doug Saunders writes. You’re not watching the world end – you’re about to build a new one
If you are under 30, there’s a message you’ve likely received many times during this painful year: You’re inheriting the wreckage of a once-great world, and your life will be less prosperous, peaceful or productive than the one older generations have enjoyed. You’ve heard it apologetically from your parents and their peers, ominously from the media, and perhaps angrily from your own mind. You may even be among those who’ve vowed not to bring children into “this world.”
I get it. The unprecedented period of global growth and betterment that lasted from about 1990 to 2010 predated your adult life. Instead you’ve watched, over the past decade and especially over the past year, as older generations and their leaders have crashed the planet ecologically, allowed autocratic-minded figures and intolerant extremists to seize key parts of the democratic world, set out to replace human labour via resource-guzzling data centres, and left you a future seemingly without decent jobs or affordable housing and a catastrophically diminished world order.
But this is a dangerously shortsighted vision. Today’s end-time pessimism is a fallacy. It’s built on path dependency: the notion that the downward curve on the graph will continue, that the current decline has become irreversible. And it’s built on this century’s underlying belief among liberals and moderate conservatives that we must be passive victims of history, rather than its agents.
In fact, it is much more likely that Gen Z has come of age at a fortuitous time. We are not approaching the end, but coming to a beginning.
People who are young today will very likely be the heirs to the greatest period of rebuilding, growth and new invention of this century – not as a matter of choice or ideology, but out of urgent necessity. They face a role comparable to those who were young in 1946, when the decades of rebuilding after the Second World War had only begun.
At that time, surrounded by the endless ruins of nations and institutions and economies and the threat of terrifying new technologies, prospects for the new generation looked grim. The young adults of 1946 were surrounded by severe inflation, unemployment, food shortages and the worst government debt in history. Western countries struggled with fears that the forces of nationalism and authoritarianism that had propelled the war were about to come sweeping back, supported by a miserable generation suffering declining living standards, without any of the glory of the war years.
Yet the opposite proved true. The boomers inherited an era of renewal. The rebuilding of the world’s economies and the creation of new international structures and institutions led to the greatest explosion of economic growth, well-being and international co-operation in human history, one that propelled two decades of full employment and upward mobility and an unprecedented spread of democracy and human development.
This comparison might have seemed hyperbolic before the catastrophic events of 2025. The collapse of the United States into a shockingly extreme form of far-right strongman rule – one that even cautious and conservative analysts now freely call fascism – has rapidly threatened the security, institutional and democratic stability of the free world. It became a global threat earlier this year when Washington made the promotion of extreme-right and racially intolerant governments in European democracies its official international-security policy. “The decades of the Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe,” Friedrich Merz, Germany’s conservative chancellor, declared this month. “It no longer exists as we know it.”
And 2025 capped off the three consecutive hottest years in recorded history, leading scientists to declare that a dangerous atmospheric warming of 1.5 C (at least temporarily) is now unpreventable.
That occurred as the United States, the world’s secondlargest greenhouse-gas emitter, withdrew from virtually all climate agreements and aggressively pushed its own economy away from renewable energy and electric vehicles and toward coal, while constricting global trade with punitive tariffs and shutting down the world’s largest sources of humanitarian, medical and military aid.
After a decade of democratic governments backsliding into de facto authoritarianism and illiberalism, this year marked a nadir: The Sweden-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance declared that 2025 saw the worst decline of democratic freedoms this century.
Unlike the Second World War, today’s global emergencies won’t have a clear end date. The rebuilding has to begin while multiple crises are still taking place, and while major countries are opposed to solutions. But that also has precedent: The rebuilding of the 1940s began before the Second World War was finished, and often before its end was a sure thing (the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions that still regulate the world economy were being created while the war was at its peak). And of course, that age of rebuilding took place amid the Cold War, and thus on two isolated but competing tracks – one democratic and one authoritarian – which is also similar to what’s happening today, with China’s share of climate rebuilding already substantially under way.
Building a climate-resilient and non-emitting world, and restoring the world’s institutions of governance, economy and security in the absence of the United States, will be a massive undertaking that will occupy decades and cost more than any project in world history. It will require, and create, great amounts of economic growth over long periods, and will be a major source of employment. Current fears that artificial intelligence will destroy job markets will likely be answered by this need: Given the soon-to-be non-growing size of the global workforce, both human and non-human employment will likely be maxed out, for a considerable time, by the looming demands of such projects.
In fact, the rebuilding has already begun – albeit only in some places. Both Canada and Germany this year elected governments that wouldn’t otherwise have been very popular with voters, but won rare cross-party support because they were singularly focused on building new institutions and relationships to replace the hole left by the disappearance of the United States, in security, trade and climate. While you may not agree with the targets or quantities of Mark Carney’s or Friedrich Merz’s security and “nation-building” investments, their popularity speaks to a mass public appetite for programs intended to build a new world rather than tear down the old one.
There will be an era of rebuilding, even if we do not know when it will fully begin, how long it will last, or whether it will fully succeed. It will not be the product of a choice, a specific ideology or belief system: It will arise from necessity. We have brought the political and ecological challenges of the world to the point of unavoidable crisis, and the sane majority will have no option but to act.
The big question is whether we have a sane majority.
Although extremist regimes have rarely attracted a majority of voters (including in the United States), they excel at manipulating the electoral system to gain power. It is entirely possible that France or Germany could end up with a neo-fascist government for a time. What if support for parties of hate and isolation is not declining but growing, especially among the young?
There is strong reason to believe that it isn’t.
The past year was marked with dramatic uprisings by young people, especially in poorer countries, that sought to overthrow entrenched dynastic authoritarian regimes and to restore or introduce something resembling democratic or at least more normal and accountable government. These “Gen Z revolutions” began in Bangladesh, where students and other people under 30 successfully drove the resignation of a long-serving and corrupt ruling family in late 2024 and delivered a democratic moment that continues to inspire hope. They continued this year with regimes forced out of office in Nepal, Mongolia, Madagascar, Peru and Bulgaria, with major protest movements continuing in a dozen other countries.
There’s reason to be skeptical of the “Gen Z” branding: It has always been people under 30 who have dominated protests, riots and revolutions, everywhere in the world. Virtually any mass uprising could have been named after whatever generation happens to be in its teens and 20s at the time.
But there is something measurably distinct about under-30s in many countries. The voting waves that have brought authoritarian-minded governments to power have, with only a few exceptions, been dominated by people in their 40s and 50s. And the principal victims of the decline in economic conditions and freedoms created by these governments have been the youngest generations.
There is substantial evidence that a majority of young people in most countries – democratic or otherwise – strongly desire a change in the system to one that is more representative and reformist, especially on issues such as inequality and climate change, not less.
A major meta-analysis of multiple international surveys conducted this year by professors Bobby Duffy and Paolo Morini at King’s College London found that, contrary to some headlines and small-scale surveys wrongly suggesting that democracy has fallen out of favour among the young, the authoritarian-minded population under 30 is exceptionally small – under 6 per cent in Britain – and that more detailed studies showed a desire among youth to replace those elected populist governments that have shortchanged them. “They have significant issues with how the political system has not delivered for them,” Prof. Duffy said, “but they’re not looking to tear it up and replace it with autocratic leadership.” Their results were supported by a Pew Research Center study that found that in 10 countries (including Canada), the proportion of under-35s who want dramatic economic-system changes to reduce inequality was typically 50 per cent again larger than older groups.
There is substantial evidence that a majority of young people in most countries – democratic or otherwise – strongly desire a change in the system to one that is more representative and reformist, especially on issues such as inequality and climate change, not less.
The economic harm of tariffs and protectionism, and the increased inequality and reduced freedoms caused by far-right governments, tends to accrue disproportionately to the young. And these regimes oppose climate-change policy – one of the top two things that young people in most countries say they are disproportionately concerned about, even more than earlier generations were at the same age. So it’s quite likely that Gen Z uprisings will become more widespread, and increasingly successful, as demographic change makes that cohort a larger share of the electorate.
Much of the current end-times pessimism is rooted in the way we think about the climate crisis. Too often this century, the message has been one of loss: “Unless we do something painful, this is going to be devastating, and potentially fatal to human civilization.” But it should have been one of cost and opportunity: “Solving this is going to be expensive and labour-intensive – and the longer we delay, the more expensive and challenging it will be.”
We have now reached the point where the climate emergency is actually taking place, and will surely get worse before it gets better.
That doesn’t mean we will quietly await our tempestuous fate. Majorities in most countries understand the need for very large-scale public investments to reduce the risk.
It means we now face a triple challenge: First, to replace our carbon-based energy and transportation sources with non-emitting ones; second, to develop and implement new technologies and methods to reverse existing warming; third, to erect vast amounts of infrastructure to protect our cities and farmlands against existing warming and ocean-level increases while keeping them productive.
The last decade has seen the publication of several global estimates of the investments required to end, and then reverse, atmospheric warming (usually by 2050) from the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and from groups of scholars. All estimate that de-carbonizing electrical generation and transportation is the single largest need, the sine qua non: If the largest economies can manage that, we’re most of the way there.
Most estimates say that about 1,000 gigawatts of renewable and nuclear energy capacity will need to be constructed for each of seven years to meet a 2050 goal; in 2024, only 585 gigawatts were added, although major investments in China and Europe are raising that number.
This will require investments of around US$5-trillion by 2030, or about 2 per cent of world GDP – about double what humans are currently spending. The world is on track to meet about 85 per cent of this required renewable growth, in large part thanks to Chinese investments. In fact, one clear way for liberal democracies to win popular support back from the autocrats is to start outdoing them in climate investment.
Most estimates say the world will need to retire or retrofit perhaps two billion internal-combustion passenger cars by 2050. Electric cars now represent around 25 per cent of light vehicle sales worldwide, up from 14 per cent in 2022. Half of that production was in China, and a quarter of it in Europe; the United States and India have lagged behind. Charging infrastructure and battery production will also require enormous public and private investments.
Some of the biggest opportunities come from our pending need to de-carbonize commercial land and sea transportation (the latter is estimated to require a trillion dollars in investment by 2050), steel and concrete making, and eventually air travel – some of which still require the development of new technologies. If we are unable to electrify some of those sectors, we will need to invest even more heavily in carbon capture and CO2 removal, an underperforming sector that will require even more trillions of investment.
Because we have waited until the crisis is upon us, some of our largest investments – and our least optional investments – will be needed not to prevent but to protect us from the effects of the warming and ocean-level rises that will happen regardless. Massive sea barriers will be needed in most maritime cities. Drought-resistant crops will need to be engineered and cultivated throughout large regions, as well as new irrigation solutions and urban infrastructure.
The notion of investing an estimated US$150-trillion over 30 years may sound implausible, especially after the devastating political and economic events of 2025. But that ignores the fact that most worldwide economic activity in the coming decades will contribute to this goal, directly or indirectly. About half the world’s economies, according to estimates by the Energy and Carbon Intelligence Unit, are now “absolute carbon decoupled” – that is, every dollar of economic growth in those countries now causes a decrease, rather than a rise, in greenhouse-gas emissions (because most investments result in the replacement of ecologically inefficient technology). China and most of Europe are there; Canada is just barely decoupled but faltering; the United States is not, although a return to its 2024 policies would soon get it there.
That illustrates why the ecological crisis is so intimately tied to the political crisis; it also suggests why a decade of democratic backsliding is unlikely to hold. Tariffs and closed borders and military misadventures don’t just choke off growth and lower living standards – they choke up the atmosphere.
Sooner or later, an excluded generation will begin to clear the air, and step clear of the wreckage. The rest of us ought to stop apologizing to them, and get ready to thank them.
This article was written by Ty Oneil and Jaimie Ding, and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 27, 2025.
Powerful winter storms brought the wettest Christmas season to Southern California in years, sending mud and debris sliding and half-filling homes with mud.
There was still a risk of more flash flooding and mudslides Friday despite slackening rain around Los Angeles, the National Weather Service warned.
“Still not quite out of the woods, but for the most part, the worst is over,” said Mike Wofford, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Los Angeles.
Firefighters rescued more than 100 people Thursday in Los Angeles County, with one helicopter pulling 21 people from stranded cars, officials said. L.A. police also responded to more than 350 traffic collisions, the mayor’s office said.
In Wrightwood, a 5,000-resident mountain town about 130 kilometres northeast of Los Angeles, relentless rain this week turned the roads to rivers and buried cars up to their windows in rocks, debris and mud.
Sherry Tocco’s neighbourhood was devastated, she said Friday. Several homes were destroyed, but her house was spared from mud and debris.
The river was raging and “then it just came through and destroyed, took everything with it,” she said.
A shed was washed down the road, and several others were strewn about. Firefighters helped her evacuate earlier this week and she slept in her car on Christmas Eve.
Most of the town lost power and many were buying fire starters, logs and propane, said Eric Faulkner, manager of Mountain Hardware.
“My phone’s been non-stop of, ‘Do you have this?’ or ‘Can you help me with that?’ ” Mr. Faulkner said outside the store while it rained Friday.
Manny Simpson, a Wrightwood resident of 14 years, said the storms were the worst he’s seen. His basement was flooded, but he was still counting himself lucky.
“I’ve seen some other houses and I feel good about what happened to me,” he said.
Fire officials rescued several people from trapped cars earlier this week when mud and debris cascaded down a road into town. There was one injury reported.
In the nearby mountain town of Lytle Creek, raging waters destroyed a bridge Wednesday, cutting off a neighbourhood, resident Travis Guenther said. By Friday morning, he said, water subsided enough for people to walk across the debris.
One home had as much as 122 centimetres of debris piled up inside after mud blew through the front door earlier this week, Mr. Guenther said.
“The guys are still trying to stay there but they can’t shut their doors,” he said. “They were stuck inside because there was a raging river on either side of them.”
Meanwhile, forecasters said a weekend storm could bring New York’s biggest snowfall in three years. Freezing rain was falling Friday in Lancaster, Penn., and in New York, an emergency was declared for much of the state ahead of widespread snowfall expected Friday night into Saturday morning.
In Connecticut, people were encouraged to avoid travel as a winter storm approached the Northeast on Friday.
The California storms brought the wettest Christmas season to downtown Los Angeles in 54 years, the National Weather Service said. The area recorded 7.6 centimetres of rain in three days, while areas in Ventura County saw up to 43 centimetres.
This article was written by Tom Polansek and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 26, 2025.
Cattle futures started rising in late November after their steep slide but remain below where they were before U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments on the price of beef.
Trump declared this fall that prices must go down, shocking farmers who largely voted for him
Gary Vetter was 10 years old when he started feeding cattle at his family’s farm. Fifty-five years later, after surviving bouts of extreme weather, changing consumer tastes and global trade disruptions, the Westside, Iowa, farmer faces an unexpected risk from the man he backed for U.S. President: Donald Trump.
Facing intense frustration from voters over rising everyday costs, Mr. Trump declared this fall that beef was too expensive and ranchers must lower cattle prices. The price of beef was “higher than we want it, but it’s going to be coming down soon,” Mr. Trump said.
Much like the price of eggs during the Biden administration, the cost of beef has become an emblem of the affordability crisis in America. Beef prices hit record highs earlier this year as the cattle herd shrank and consumer demand remained strong.
Mr. Trump’s comments shocked ranchers, who largely voted for the President. Then his administration announced plans to quadruple low-tariff U.S. imports of beef from Argentina, launched an investigation into meat packers for price manipulation, and removed duties that Mr. Trump imposed over the summer on imports of Brazilian beef.
The series of moves knocked down cattle markets but did not significantly lower the cost of beef at grocery stores, causing ranchers, typically straight shooters, to speak up.
“It would have been nice if Trump hadn’t said anything,” Mr. Vetter said. “I’m still a Trump supporter. I’m just not a happy Trump supporter.”
Reuters spoke with a total of eight ranchers who said they still backed Mr. Trump, though he hurt prices for their cattle.
Feeder cattle futures dropped by an exchange-imposed maximum that limits how far prices can fall each day and sank by 21 per cent over a little more than a month after reaching a high on Oct. 16.
On that day, Mr. Trump first said his administration was working to lower beef prices.
CATTLE FARMERS FEEL HEAT
The sell-off sliced profits for ranchers, pushed livestock buyers from making purchases, and chased away speculative traders as cattle markets turned increasingly volatile, cattle producers and traders said.
“It’s affected the price that we as ranchers are getting; it’s affected what feedlots are getting; but it hasn’t done anything that I’ve seen or heard about yet to impact what the consumers are paying,” said Marty Smith, 66, whose family has been ranching in Wacahoota, Fla., for 175 years.
Cattle futures started rising in late November after their steep slide but remain below where they were before Mr. Trump’s comments. Economists said it would likely take months for retail beef prices to reflect the setback in cattle markets. Effects on retail prices would also be less dramatic because meat packers, wholesale distributors and retailers stand between ranchers and consumers and add to costs, they said.
Many cattle ranchers also raise crops, and cattle had been a bright spot for their businesses as grain and soybean prices slumped due to large supplies and Mr. Trump’s trade policies. Mr. Trump unveiled a US$12-billion aid package intended mostly for crop growers this month.
Cattle prices had reached record highs throughout 2025 after years of drought dried up grazing lands and forced producers to slash the nation’s herd to its smallest size in decades. As a result of the decline, the U.S. for the first time in 2025 lost its spot as the world’s biggest beef producer to Brazil, according to U.S. government estimates.
Cattle supplies tightened further after the Trump administration halted U.S. imports of Mexican livestock to keep out a flesheating parasite. As tight supplies raised costs for meat processors, Tyson Foods said in November it would permanently shut a major U.S. beef plant, removing a market for cattle. The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month lowered its estimates for cattle prices through 2026 in part because of the impending closure.
Mr. Trump has accused meat packers such as Tyson of driving up beef prices through manipulation and collusion, and ordered the Justice Department to investigate. Meat packers said their industry is heavily regulated, and transactions are transparent.
STICKER SHOCK IN THE GROCERY AISLE
The retail cost of ground beef in November climbed to US$6.54 a pound from US$5.63 a pound a year earlier, up 16 per cent, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For boneless stew meat, retail prices jumped 23 per cent to US$9.17 a pound from US$7.43 a pound. Since Mr. Trump’s comments in mid-October, wholesale prices for select cuts of beef shipped to buyers in large boxes were up 0.5 per cent as of Monday, while wholesale prices for choice boxed beef eased 1 per cent, according to U.S. data.
High prices for a range of goods, including beef, coffee and electricity, have upset consumers and frustrated Mr. Trump. A recent Commerce Department report showed annual inflation rose at its fastest pace in nearly 11⁄
2 years in September.
Democrats exploited voters’ angst about the economy in recent state and local election victories, campaigning in 2024 on a pledge to lower consumer prices.
“The Trump administration is taking a whole-of-government approach to lowering beef prices, with multiple agencies slashing regulations, supporting small processing facilities, and taking other actions to support both ranchers and consumers,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.
WHO WILL REBUILD THE HERD?
Ranchers felt beef was targeted unfairly because costs were high for a number of goods.
“It’s a sock in the gut for all of us,” said Dean Meyer, 62, a Rock Rapids, Iowa-based cattle feeder who temporarily paused buying cattle last month owing to increased uncertainty and falling prices.
Eight ranchers in rural America said that they still supported Mr. Trump because of his stances on immigration and other issues, after voting for him in the last presidential race. But for some of them, Mr. Trump’s interference in the beef market shook their confidence in him.
A fledgling effort to rebuild the nation’s cattle herd, which economists say would eventually help reduce beef prices, is at risk after Mr. Trump injected uncertainty into the market over imports, ranchers and economists said.
Falling cattle prices did not help.
Mr. Vetter, who buys young cattle to fatten for sale to meat packer Cargill, said he paid about US$2,500 a head for 450 steers weighing about 500 pounds each around the end of October. By the end of November, the price had dropped by about US$300.
At the same time, meat packers were willing to pay less to buy cattle that Mr. Vetter feeds to weigh about 1,650 pounds.
Reached just before Thanksgiving, Mr. Vetter said that he was facing potential losses of US$250,000 on his recent cattle purchases after prices tumbled.
“The President can do whatever he wants but it’s going to be hard to build the cow herd if we don’t have some stability,” Mr. Vetter said. “I’m going to push a pencil really hard before I buy that next set of calves.”
This article was written by Ty Oneil and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 26, 2025.
Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors.
A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths
California, soaked from days of relentless rain and recovering from mudslides in mountain towns, was hit with another powerful storm Christmas Day that led to evacuation warnings and high surf advisories.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California issued an evacuation warning for Wrightwood, a mountain town about 130 kilometres northeast of Los Angeles, a day after rescuing people trapped in cars during a mud slide.
The National Weather Service said waves near the San Francisco Bay Area could reach up to 7.6 metres Friday.
Statewide, more than 70,000 people were without power Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.
A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths.
A major storm system moving toward the Midwest and Northeast was expected to interfere with travel, according to the National Weather Service.
A mix of freezing rain and sleet could create icy conditions in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland. Forecasters warned heavy ice could cause outages. Snow was expected to blanket the Northeast early Friday
Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors.
“It’s really a crazy Christmas,” said Jill Jenkins, who was spending the holiday with her 13-year-old grandson, Hunter Lopiccolo.
Hunter said the family almost evacuated the previous day, when water washed away a chunk of their backyard. But they decided to stay and still celebrated the holiday. Hunter got a new snowboard and e-bike.
“We just played card games all night with candles and flashlights,” he said.
Davey Schneider hiked 1.6 kilometres through rain and flood water up to his shins from his Wrightwood residence Wednesday to rescue cats from his grandfather’s house, walking through flood water up to his shins as it rained.
“I wanted to help them out because I wasn’t confident that they were going to live,” Mr. Schneider said Thursday. “Fortunately, they all lived. They’re all okay – just a little bit scared.”
Arlene Corte said roads in town turned into rivers, but her house was not damaged.
“It could be a whole lot worse,” she said. “We’re here talking.”
With more rain on the way, more than 150 firefighters were stationed in the area, said San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Shawn Millerick. “We’re ready,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at this point.”
A falling tree killed a San Diego man Wednesday, news outlets reported. Farther north, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died in what appeared to be a weather-related crash.
Areas along the coast, including Malibu, were under a flood watch until Friday afternoon, and wind and flood advisories were issued for much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The storms were the result of atmospheric rivers carrying massive plumes of moisture from the tropics during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
Southern California typically gets 1.3 to 2.5 centimetres of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 10 to 20 centimetres, with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said.
More heavy snow was expected in the Sierra Nevada, where gusts created “near whiteout conditions” and made mountain pass travel treacherous. Officials said there was a “high” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe and a winter storm warning was in effect through Friday.
Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe recorded about 30 to 91 centimetres of snow overnight, said Tyler Salas, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Reno. Forecasters expect to see up to another 91 centimetres of snow through Friday, Mr. Salas said. The area could see 72-km/h gusts in low elevation areas and 161-km/h winds along mountain ridges.
Governor Gavin Newsom declared emergencies in six counties to allow state assistance.
Leaders say move would `grind projects to a halt’
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on December 24, 2025.
First Nations leaders in British Columbia have issued a joint statement criticizing calls to amend the provincial Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in response to a recent court ruling.
The statement is endorsed by more than 50 First Nations in B.C. and says recent talks of changing legislation are a “fearbased response” from opponents of the ruling “that reaffirm the crucial need to consult and negotiate” with Indigenous communities on mining rights. It calls for British Columbians to “slow down, take stock, and reflect” on the path forward, noting resorting to “fearbased reactions” risk undoing hardwon progress on reconciliation.
The statement says changing the legislation would “grind projects to a halt” as First Nations may be forced to defend their rights through the courts.
The statement comes days after Kitasoo Xai’xais Nation chief councillor Chris McKnight warned B.C. Premier David Eby he risks fuelling racism and losing the trust of the Indigenous community if changes to the act are made.
The B.C. Appeal Court decision on a First Nations challenge of the province’s mining tenure system gives effect to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Eby has said changes to the law may be necessary.
Among those endorsing the latest statement calling for B.C. to think carefully about changing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act are the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the First Nations Summit.
The statement says the court decision affirms the need to consult and negotiate with First Nations, but a negative narrative has begun to take hold.
“This narrative wrongly blames First Nations for uncertainty, while ignoring the historical reality that British Columbia was largely settled without treaties. It replaces facts and experience with fear, and cooperation with division,” the statement says.
“We call on Premier Eby to uphold the Declaration Act, resist calls to amend it or pursue appeals, and to sit down with Indigenous leadership to continue the work of building certainty, trust, and economic prosperity for everyone in British Columbia.”
This Letter to the Editor was written by Paul Kahnert and was published in the Toronto Star on December 24, 2025.
Re: Mark Carney’s journey from climate `visionary’ to pipeline promoter, Dec. 21
Thirty years ago, the executive director of Greenpeace Canada said, “We must get on the pathway of harm reduction leading to harm elimination.”
Putting profits before people, climate crisis denying should be a crime. Deliberately ignoring the climate crisis and taking us on a pathway of increasing harm is an even worse crime.
Don’t be fooled with claims of carbon capture and storage. It is just oil corporation propaganda, trying to protect their profits. Carbon capture and storage does nothing to mitigate harm from their product. The vast majority of scientists are constantly warning us climate change is an existential threat to all.
We need to get on the pathway of harm reduction immediately.
A courageous leader would stand up to corporate oil and their servant, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. It is not optional.
Prime Minister Mark Carney should again read his book, “Value(s).”
This article was written by Clyde Russell and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 24, 2025.
Conventional wisdom in the crude oil market is that producers such as OPEC+ largely determine the price by altering output levels to achieve a desired outcome.
That shibboleth was challenged in 2025 by China, which used its status as the world’s biggest oil importer to provide an effective price floor and ceiling by either increasing or decreasing the volume of crude it sent to storage tanks.
Production cuts in 2022 by OPEC+, which groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies led by Russia, did shore up prices. Those gains faded once it began reversing the cuts in April this year. Now, facing a looming oil glut, OPEC+ has decided to sit tight and hold production levels steady in the first quarter of next year.
That leaves China to mop up the excess.
What China does in 2026 is now the biggest known unknown in crude markets. Other participants are likely to set their strategies in response to Beijing.
China doesn’t release public information on its strategic or commercial stockpiles, making it challenging not only to assess physical flows, but also to determine what policies are likely to be followed.
What was clear in 2025 is that China was buying more crude than it needed for domestic consumption and exports of refined products.
China does not disclose the volumes of crude flowing into or out of its strategic and commercial stockpiles, but an estimate can be made by subtracting refinery throughput from the total crude available from imports and domestic output.
It is worth noting that not all of the surplus crude was likely to have been added to storage, with some being processed in plants not captured by the official data.
For the first 11 months of 2025, the surplus crude amounted to about 980,000 barrels per day (b/d), given that imports and domestic output combined were 15.8 million b/d, while refinery processing amounted to 14.82 million b/d.
The surplus has been built up since March and came after refiners made a rare draw on inventories in January and February, when processing rates exceeded available crude by about 30,000 b/d.
There is a solid correlation between the volume of surplus crude and the price of oil, with China adding barrels when prices dip but cutting back when they rise.
This was in evidence in September, when the surplus crude dropped to 570,000 b/d after hitting 1.10 million b/d in August.
Cargoes arriving in September would largely have been arranged at the time of the IsraelIran conflict in June, when crude prices were elevated. Global benchmark Brent futures spiked to a six-month high of US$81.40 a barrel on June 23.
With prices easing since June, China’s refiners resumed buying excess crude, with a surplus of 1.88 million b/d seen in November, the biggest since April and up from 690,000 b/d in October.
It could be argued that China’s storage flows are the main reason that crude prices were locked in a fairly narrow range in the second half of 2025, with Brent anchored either side of US$65 a barrel.
The key question for 2026 is whether China will, and can, continue to buy excess crude when prices drop, effectively providing a floor.
Estimates vary as to how much crude China already has stored, with a range from around 1 billion barrels to as much as 1.4 billion barrels.
If the assumption is that a country should have 90 days of import cover, and China’s base imports are around 11 million b/d, then 1 billion barrels would be sufficient.
But at least 700 million barrels are likely commercial inventories, implying a strategic reserve closer to 500 million barrels.
That in turn suggests that Beijing may wish to add about another 500 million barrels to the strategic stockpile, though the timeline is uncertain.
China is building more storage, with state oil companies including Sinopec and CNOOC adding at least 169 million barrels across 11 sites in 2025 and 2026.
Assuming a storage flow of somewhere around 500,000 to 600,000 b/d, this would add in the region of 200 million barrels over the course of a year.
If Beijing does continue to add to strategic inventories at this rate, it would imply that much of the forecast surplus of supply in 2026 will simply go into Chinese tanks.
If this does happen, then it is likely that crude prices will once again enjoy a Chinese-supported floor, but also a cap as China will simply trim imports if prices rise too high.
Of course, there are a number of “ifs” in the above paragraphs, but the recent history suggests that China will continue to build inventories in 2026, and probably into 2027 as well.
What is also clear is that China is quite prepared to use inventory flows as a pricing mechanism.
Given China’s seaborne crude imports of around 10 million b/d are about a quarter of the global seaborne total, it is possible that Beijing’s policies are now the most important factor in oil markets.
China doesn’t release public information on its strategic or commercial stockpiles, making it challenging not only to assess physical flows, but also to determine what policies are likely to be followed. What was clear in 2025 is that China was buying more crude than it needed for domestic consumption and exports of refined products.
This article was written by Jeffrey Jones and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 24, 2025.
Energy storage developer Hydrostor Inc. is close to breaking ground on its first utility-scale project after receiving final regulatory approval in California.
Toronto-based Hydrostor said it is finalizing offtake agreements with utilities in the state before starting construction at its US$1.5-billion Willow Rock Energy Storage Center in Kern County, Calif., north of Los Angeles.
The U.S. project, which has been under review for more than four years, is one of two large developments the company expects to start in 2026. The other is in New South Wales, Australia.
Its long-duration technology, known as advanced compressed air energy storage, is designed to smooth out electricity supply on power grids, storing excess power generated from fast-growing renewable sources such as wind and solar until it’s needed.
Hydrostor’s system works by pumping compressed air into a cavern deep underground. The rush of air pushes water up to a reservoir at the surface. When electricity is needed, the water is released back into the cavern, sending the air out and driving turbines to generate power.
The benefits are that the facility can store energy for longer periods than batteries, and the system can run on either excess or off-peak power from the grid or from renewable sources.
Last Friday, the California Energy Commission granted final permitting approval to the 500megawatt/4,000-megawatt-hour project, which will have the capacity to power more than 400,000 homes for more than eight hours at a time.
Hydrostor president Jon Norman said the company has grid interconnection agreements for its planned facility, as well as engineering, procurement and construction contracts, and union deals, in place.
“That’s good to start constructing the project. We just need those last pieces of revenue,” Mr. Norman said. Early this year, the project won conditional approval from the U.S. Department of Energy for a loan guarantee of up to US$1.76-billion. However, since then, U.S. President Donald Trump has cancelled many green and climatefriendly programs.
The company said, based on its discussions with the department, that it is confident its financing is secure. It offers benefits to U.S. utility customers, and “grid reliability and resilience are bipartisan priorities,” chief executive Curtis VanWalleghem said in a statement Tuesday.
In February, Hydrostor secured US$200-million in financing from the Canada Growth Fund, Goldman Sachs and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to push forward with its projects. Its other investors include ArcTern Ventures, Loren Partners and Canoe Financial.
The company plans to have the Willow Rock project in operation in five years. Mr. Norman said there is more opportunity on the horizon, as California has called for a major expansion of storage capacity by 2032.
In Australia, Hydrostor is nearing the start of construction on a 200-megawatt/1,600-megawatt-hour project in Broken Hill, New South Wales, which is estimated to cost about US$640-million.
Mr. Norman said its proposal has been delayed for regulatory reasons – its planned method of storing and transmitting power is a first for the country.
Those details, as well as sales contracts, are being finalized. “We expect to have an announcement early in the year about a priority designation for that project from the New South Wales government that will form a very strong basis for it to go forward,” Mr. Norman said. “So we’re really looking at getting to construction on these projects in parallel.”
In total, the company says it has the potential to develop 7,000 megawatts’ worth of projects in the next few years in Canada, the U.S., Australia and Britain.
Hydrostor plans to construct some of them itself, but also sell the systems to utilities and independent power producers that can operate them on a turnkey basis, Mr. Norman said.
“So this really is the beachhead for an entire growth industry around compressed air energy storage,” he said.
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