This article was written by Fatima Syed and was published in Canada’s National Observer on April 17, 2024.
This opinion was written by Kent Elson, an energy lawyer, and was published in the Globe & Mail on April 10, 2024.
Gas customers across Ontario should be paying close attention to Bill 165, which is up for debate this week at committee hearings at Queen’s Park.
Among other measures, the bill incentivizes new natural gas infrastructure by subsidizing the costs for developers. By doing so, the bill will not only raise gas rates for customers today, it also creates huge risks that will leave energy customers swamped in debt and undermine Ontario’s industrial competitiveness in the coming decades.
All that doesn’t even touch upon the serious political issues behind the bill: Energy Minister Todd Smith is directly overruling an independent regulator that had blocked such a practice for Enbridge Gas. (I represented Environmental Defence, an intervenor, in that hearing.)
Bill 165 deals with what is commonly known as natural gas – a potent fossil fuel that is more accurately referred to as methane gas. A third of Ontario’s carbon emissions come from burning methane gas. We need to stop burning it, and fast, but Bill 165 makes the risky assumption that methane gas use can keep increasing, in direct opposition to steep declines projected by the federal government and climate science.
Bill 165 is called the Keeping Energy Costs Down Act – part of a sad trend in dishonest naming, as it will increase energy costs. Most importantly, the bill will reinstate free or highly discounted methane gas pipelines for new developments, subsidies that were slated to end in January, 2025. Reinstating those subsidies will cost more than $250-million a year, which will be added to the accumulated capital costs that all customers are paying off via their gas bills. If you own a gas furnace in Ontario, you will be subsidizing the cost of installing pipelines to and throughout residential developments.
Getting existing customers off methane gas is a challenging project for all provinces as we fight climate change. But for new construction, it is a no-brainer. Although heat pumps are somewhat more expensive upfront, that is not the case if you account for the cost of the methane pipes in new developments. That is one reason why New York State and many other jurisdictions are banning gas in new developments.
Ontario is doing the opposite by hugely incentivizing methane gas pipelines for developers. This will saddle new homebuyers with higher energy bills, because electric heat pumps cost much less to operate than gas furnaces. And if we build 1.5 million houses by 2031, as Ontario plans to do, mostly heated with gas, the costs and financial risks associated with all those new gas pipelines are huge.
This is financial insanity. Gas pipelines are paid off over roughly 60 years (i.e. depreciated), so a pipeline built today will be paid off in the 2080s. This is long beyond the point at which fossil fuel use is set to drastically decline. Investments in new gas pipelines today will almost certainly go bad, and Bill 165 forces Ontario’s gas customers to make that bad investment.
As customers increasingly leave the gas system through electrification, the remaining ones must pay more to cover the accumulated capital costs, which will raise rates, causing more customers to leave, which will raise rates further, and so on. Energy wonks call this a death spiral.
In a Dec. 21 decision regarding Enbridge’s rates, the Ontario Energy Board found that funding gas pipelines in new construction was a bad investment for Ontario’s gas customers. That finding was based on a year-long hearing, many expert witnesses and tens of thousands of pages of evidence.
This is the decision Mr. Smith is now overturning with Bill 165.
Enbridge has been lobbying the government to follow through with Bill 165 (despite opposition from municipalities and ratepayer groups) and take additional steps to overturn a $250million annual capital budget reduction resulting from the OEB’s Dec. 21 decision. It has been arguing that the decision “sets a deliberate course to eliminate natural gas from Ontario’s energy mix.”
The opposite is true: The decision aims to avoid bad investments and maintain the affordability of gas as an important part of Ontario’s energy mix during the energy transition.
The OEB’s mandate is to protect energy consumers. That is exactly what it did with its recent decision – and exactly what the government is undoing with Bill 165.
Enbridge has won through government lobbying what it could not get from an evidence based independent process. All energy customers should be very worried – especially the ones, like industry, that will find it hard to jump ship in the decades ahead.
The Doug Ford Government has put forward Bill 165 to overturn the Ontario Energy Board decision regarding Enbridge Gas. This decision would have stopped Enbridge from expanding its natural gas pipelines to new housing developments by charging its costs to all Enbridge customers in Ontario. The OEB is an independent, regulatory body whose mandate is to look out for the interests of energy consumers in Ontario.
This article was published by the Narwhal on April 17, 2024 and describes how the Doug Ford Government discussed with Enbridge overturning the OEB decision. This article was published by the Globe & Mail on April 10, 2024 and explains why we need to oppose this proposed legislation. Here is an earlier article by Canada’s National Observer published on January 23, 2024.
There are several calls to action that have been generated by several environmental organizations to tell your elected representatives to stop Bill 165. Please send the message to the Doug Ford government to stop Bill 165 and respect the Ontario Energy Board decision:
Here are some related calls to action that you can also do:
Thanks for making a difference.
Ray Nakano
This article was written by Rebecca Boone and was published in the Toronto Star on May 1, 2024.
Months after a catastrophic fire burned more than 2,200 homes in Hawaii, some property owners are getting more bad news — their property insurance won’t be renewed because their insurance company has deemed the risk too high.
It’s a problem that has played out in states across the U.S. as climate change and increasing development has raised the risks of wildfires and other natural disasters damaging communities. Insurance providers, state regulators and researchers are grappling with how to keep the insurance companies in business while keeping residents and their properties insured and protected.
“I think most of the insurers, you know, I’m very grateful that they’re committed to the Hawaii market, so we haven’t seen wholesale withdrawals,” after the Aug. 8, 2023, fire burned through Lahaina and killed 101 people, Hawaii insurance commissioner Gordon Ito said during a Wildfire Risk Forum for insurance commissioners held at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
But one or two insurance companies have stopped renewing policies for wood structures like townhomes that are in wildfire risk areas, Ito said Monday, in part because the companies have seen their own insurance costs climb. Property insurers typically have their own insurance coverage to help when there are big payouts, like the roughly $3 billion (U.S.) in claims that have been paid so far on an estimated $6 billion in damages from the Lahaina fire. But those “reinsurance” rates are climbing, Ito said, and that’s forcing some companies to re-evaluate the policies they are willing to issue to residents.
The same thing happened in Colorado after the 2021 Marshall Fire destroyed 1,100 homes in Boulder County, causing an estimated $2 billion in damage, said Colorado Division of Insurance deputy commissioner Jason Lapham.
Last year, Colorado lawmakers authorized the creation of the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, which is expected to provide bare-bones property insurance coverage for residents who can’t get insurance from a private company starting in 2025. Other states like California, Louisiana and Florida have also resorted to providing their own state-affiliated “insurers of last resort,” which can fill in the gap when the private insurance market abandons an area because of natural disaster risk.
Insurance industry researchers say part of the solution could come from homeowners taking steps to make their properties more fireresistant.
“This peril is a preventable peril, and it will take a will to change and do something different,” said Anne Cope, the chief engineer for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety.
She later demonstrated her point by taking the commissioners to two nearly identical buildings — one made out of fire-resistant materials with plenty of space between landscaping and the structure, and the other built with traditional materials and landscaping.
Small fires were started next to each building, and the fire-resistant one remained mostly undamaged while the traditional building was quickly engulfed and burned to the ground.
Research shows that protecting homes from blowing embers using fire-resistant roofs and gutters and keeping the area around a home free of easily flammable material makes a big difference, Cope said.
Once one building in a community catches fire, the problem quickly compounds — while forest fires and other wildland fires generally produce small blowing embers that are quickly extinguished, structure fires create much larger embers that can be as big as a human hand, Cope said.
Those big, chunky embers carry enough fuel with them to keep burning once they land on another structure, quickly setting it aflame.
This article was written by Alessia Passafiume and was published in the Toronto Star on May 1, 2024.
Ottawa is failing to remediate contaminated sites in the North, leaving Indigenous Peoples at risk and raising the government’s own financial liability for the polluted areas, environment commissioner Jerry DeMarco said Tuesday in a new audit.
DeMarco’s probe found the government’s liability for contaminated sites increased by $7 billion since 2005, when the government launched its plan to remediate and reclaim abandoned mines.
More than 60 per cent of that liability is in the North.
“After 20 years, there is still much work needed to reduce financial liability related to contaminated sites and to lower environmental and human health risks for current and future generations,” DeMarco said. “As well, the government needs to take urgent action to advance socio-economic benefits, including employment opportunities, and to support reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples whose lands are often affected by contaminated sites.”
DeMarco said at one mine there is still ongoing work needed to keep contaminated water from leaching into surrounding areas, while another still houses a large volume of arsenic which needs to remain frozen underground.
Most of those sites are on Indigenous land but DeMarco says Indigenous Peoples are not being fully included in the remediation efforts.
DeMarco called their inclusion in the efforts a “significant opportunity” to support reconciliation and promote economic development.
He said during remediation work at the Giant Mine near Yellowknife the department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada failed to meet employment targets for northern and northern Indigenous workers.
While the department began developing a socio-economic framework for the Faro Mine in Yukon, it failed to do complete it. However DeMarco said it did exceed internal targets for training of Indigenous Peoples, northerners and women during the pre-remediation work.
DeMarco said Indigenous Peoples expressed concern with the federal government’s handling of projects, saying there has been a lack of meaningful consideration of their inputs.
‘‘ After 20 years, there is still much work needed.
JERRY DEMARCO
ENVIRONMENT COMMISSIONER
This article was written by Amanda Stephenson and was published in the Toronto Star on May 1, 2024.
Some Indigenous communities in northern Alberta hope the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will mark the start of a new chapter in their relationship with Canada’s oilsands industry.
The long-awaited Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is complete and the Canada Energy Regulator has given the go-ahead for the project to open.
The regulator said Tuesday it has approved the last remaining “leave to open” applications submitted by Trans Mountain Corp., the Crown corporation behind the project. Approval of these applications was required before the expanded pipeline could begin shipping oil.
Also on Tuesday, Trans Mountain confirmed that Wednesday will mark the commercial start date for the expansion.
However, due to logistics and marine timing, the first transport ship is not expected to load with oil from the new line for export until the middle of May, a Trans Mountain Corp. spokesperson said.
The pipeline’s opening is a big deal for the Fort McKay First Nation, located about an hour’s drive north of Fort McMurray and home to around 800 people of Dene, Cree and Métis descent.
“It matters to the Fort McKay First Nation. When there’s an opportunity like the Trans Mountain pipeline, the question is, how can we actually leverage it to transfer that opportunity to Fort McKay?” said Chief Raymond Powder.
“Because I’ve shared that with my industry partners across the table from time to time — I’ve said, ‘You know, if you guys want to grow and want to expand and all that, that’s not an issue for us.’ ”
But Fort McKay also needs opportunities for growth as the industry expands, he said.
Located smack-dab in the middle of the Athabasca oilsands, Fort McKay is the bull’s-eye on the dart board of the world’s third-largest crude oil reserve.
The First Nations community is surrounded by industrial development, and the acrid scent of nearby oilsands facilities can be detected in the breeze.
Band members like to point out the black, tarry-smelling soil that lines residents’ roads and driveways here — evidence of the rich bitumen deposits that lie so close to the surface.
In Fort McKay, the complicated relationship the oilsands industry has with Indigenous people is evident.
The First Nation is one of the wealthiest in the country, thanks to revenue generated from impact benefit agreements with oilsands developers as well as from the many Nation-owned businesses that serve the oil and gas sector.
But Powder is quick to point out his community’s relationship with industry has not always been so rosy.
“When you go back to the history of who Fort McKay is, we actually did not initially begin with a good relationship with industry because of the fact that who we are as First Nations and our identity was tied to the land,” he said.
Fort McKay also has significant current concerns about the safety and environmental impact of the massive oilsands wastewater tailings ponds in the area.
Last month, the Fort McKay First Nation struck a memorandum of understanding with Suncor Energy Inc. on an oilsands lease development opportunity on its reserve lands.
While Suncor is still assessing the quantity and quality of minable bitumen in the area, if the project goes ahead, it would be the first oilsands production on reserve lands in Canada.
This article was written by Patty Winsa and was published in the Toronto Star on May 1, 2024.
Canada can lay claim to significant progress made during the fourth round of global treaty negotiations to reduce plastic production and waste held in Ottawa this week.
For the first time, the 175 member countries taking part agreed to allow negotiations to continue outside of formal talks, which some countries had refused to do before now.
That means working groups can continue bargaining towards one of the treaty’s goals — reducing harmful chemicals in plastic — leading up to the final round of formal treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea, in seven months, negotiations which so far have moved at a glacial pace.
But the move also signifies that one of the treaty’s major goals might be unattainable.
There was no agreement among countries to continue informal negotiations on plastic production, which some critics said is necessary in order to get any kind of consensus on production limits leading up to final negotiations in Busan.
“This compromise diminishes the ambition of this process as it ignores the central role of plastics production in fuelling the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises,” said Brett Nadrich, the communication officer for #BreakFreeFromPlastics U.S. & Canada, in an email.
“This is not only an utter disappointment, but also a missed opportunity to tackle the root causes comprehensively.”
Plastic pollution is a global problem and one that is only expected to get worse with estimates that plastic production will double in 20 years.
Microplastics have been found in the atmosphere and in the ocean, where scientists say it is contributing to a warming climate. Microplastics have also been found in animal and human tissue.
Negotiations for a plastic treaty began in late 2022 after 175 countries adopted a UN Environment Assembly resolution to develop an international legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution that would tackle the entire life cycle of plastics, including production, design and disposal.
A draft treaty, referred to as the “zero draft,” was created by the UN and released in September 2023. Critics say the document has ballooned to 75 pages and includes numerous options from countries on how plastics should be handled — options that critics say have weakened the original document.
Many environmentalists blame the oil and gas industry, of which plastic is cheap by-product, of lobbying countries to ensure that plastic waste is managed downstream, by recycling, instead of limiting production.
But there was still a lot of optimism after the third round of negotiations ended in Nairobi in November of 2023, said Karen Wirsig, a senior program manager with the Canadian non-profit Environmental Defence.
More than 60 countries, including Canada, had joined a so-called “high ambition” coalition committed to not only eliminating plastic waste, but reducing plastic production.
But she said that ambition died in Ottawa this week.
“I think we lost that this week,” said Wirsig, who was an observer at the negotiations. Countries decided to “compromise on all this stuff because ultimately what they want is some kind of agreement coming out of this.”
On Sunday night, representatives from Rwanda and Peru put forward a proposal to continue talks after Ottawa on limiting plastic production, which has always been one of the goals of the so-called International Negotiating Committee, or INC, which was struck by the UN to broker a treaty.
More than 50 countries said they were in favour of the proposal, but Canada was not one of them, said Wirsig.
Environment Minister Steven Gilbeault had signalled earlier in the week that production limits on plastic might be off the table, sounding doubtful about how a production cap could be enforced globally.
But Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, the executive secretary of the INC, said in an interview with the Star that she still believes the member states could reach an agreement at the final round of negotiations.
“I believe that member states will reach an agreement in Busan on the life cycle of plastics, which is what was requested of them,” said Mathur-Filipp.
“They made the resolution themselves at UNEA,” she said, referring to the adoption of the resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly. “So I believe that they will come to an agreement on the life cycle of plastics,” that won’t be the status quo, she said.
Jyoti said the intercessional work would be conducted through webinars and one in-person meeting.
The fifth and final round of negotiations on the plastic treaty will run from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1.
I believe that they will come to an agreement on the life cycle of plastics.
JYOTI MATHUR-FILIPP INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE
This article was written by Robert Benzie and was published in the Toronto Star on May 1, 2024.
Premier Doug Ford is racing to show progress on the proposed Highway 413 against the backdrop of Thursday’s Milton tightly fought byelection.
Speaking to reporters in Caledon on Tuesday, Ford touted the controversial 52-kilometre freeway between Milton and Vaughan that will connect Highways 401 and 400.
“Highway 413 is going to be a game-changer for the region,” said the premier, who was flanked by union leaders whose members are expect to build the road that goes through Caledon.
“I’m thrilled to announce that construction on this highway will begin in 2025,” he said, noting it would create 3,500 jobs annually during construction such as “heavy equipment operators, drilling and coring contractors, concrete and steel workers, utility contractors, environmental specialists, laboratory technologists and safety inspectors.”
Ford’s comments came after a major hurdle in construction of the highway was cleared two weeks ago, when Queen’s Park and Ottawa agreed to establish “a joint working group in which provincial and federal officials will recommend appropriate measures to minimize environmental impacts in areas of federal environmental jurisdiction.”
That will complement the ongoing provincial environmental assessment process.
While Highway 413 was a cornerstone pledge of the Progressive Conservatives’ successful re-election campaign in 2022 — and Ford’s party won every riding along the proposed route — it remains a contentious project.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles warned the Tories are “spending billions of taxpayers’ money on a project with no end date in sight … a project that also threatens Ontario’s farmlands and gives preferential treatment to insiders.”
Stiles said to tackle gridlock, Ford should make the privately operated Highway 407 “toll-free for truckers — freeing up space on the 401 to get commuters home to their families faster.”
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said that “just like the Greenbelt scandal, the ineffective $10-billion Highway 413 is designed to benefit one group of people: Doug Ford’s wealthy insiders, Conservative donors and rich land speculators.”
Environmental Defence, which opposes the freeway that would cut through protected lands, pave over thousands of acres of farmland and cut across streams and rivers more than 100 times, agreed: “the same pattern is playing out with 413” as it did with the Greenbelt land swap scandal now being investigated by the RCMP.
“The Ontario government is working overtime to convince people that this latest plan to cut into the Greenbelt is a done deal,” said Environmental Defence’s Phil Pothen.
“But Highway 413 will not be built by 2025, or at all, as long as the federal government does its job by denying permits to destroy federally protected species at risk and their habitats,” said Pothen.
Tuesday’s announcement came ahead of byelections Thursday in Milton and Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, ridings that had been held by Tory cabinet ministers who resigned.
While the Tories are confident of holding the London-area riding of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, which had been represented by former labour minister Monte McNaughton, polls suggest Milton, the former riding of ex-red tape reduction minister Parm Gill, is a dogfight between the Tories and Liberals.
Premier Doug Ford said 3,500 jobs will be created annually during the construction of Highway 413
‘‘ Highway 413 will not be built by 2025, or at all, as long as the federal government does its job by denying permits. PHIL POTHEN ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE
This article was written by Emma Graney and was published in the Globe & Mail on May 1, 2024.
Imperial Oil Ltd. shareholders have rejected a proposal from an Alberta First Nation that would have made the company disclose the financial effects of climate change on its assets.
The shareholder proposal was the latest development in Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation’s continuing dispute with Imperial, after the oil giant failed to tell the community about leaking oil sands tailings ponds for almost a year. Water tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, dissolved metals and hydrocarbons has been seeping from the Kearl oil sands project in Northern Alberta into the environment since at least May, 2022, but no local communities were told until a separate incident in February, 2023, spilled 5.3 million litres of waste water.
ACFN Chief Allan Adam told shareholders at Imperial’s annual meeting Tuesday that the eventual cleanup of the company’s long-life oil sands sites was already a pricey problem for shareholders, and it would only get worse as climate change and public calls for environmental accountability place more pressure on the oil and gas sector.
By failing to factor those costs into its forward-looking financial statements, Imperial is not being honest with its investors, Mr. Adam said.
Calgary-based Imperial scores poorly on a number of climaterelated financial and policy disclosure measures according to an assessment by Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take action on climate change.
The company does not incorporate material climate-related matters into its audited financial statements or disclose financial assumptions and estimates around climate change, for example, nor has it published a detailed and accurate account of its corporate climate policy positions and engagement activities.
Over all, ClimateAction 100+ found that Imperial’s climate policies do not align with what is needed to deliver on the targets set by the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.
Mr. Adam told shareholders that voting yes on the ACFN proposal would force Imperial to provide a “true financial picture of the health of the company,” including billions of dollars he says it will have to pay to clean up its tailings ponds in the oil sands. And it would allow shareholders to make informed decisions about where to invest their money.
“A vote ‘no’ would be a direct attack on the well-being of our people,” he said.
Imperial chief executive officer and board chair Brad Corson said Tuesday that the company remains “deeply sorry” for the issues at Kearl, and acknowledged it would take time to rebuild trust with the community.
Still, he argued against the ACFN proposal on behalf of the board, saying Imperial already uses various assumptions around the cost of retiring assets, including legal obligations, technical assessments and inflation rates.
Adopting climate transparency per the ACFN resolution would “produce a set of arbitrary and hypothetical views of the future,” Mr. Corson said, rather than the “thoughtful, fact-based approach” the company currently uses.
In the end, around 80 per cent of independent shareholders voted against the ACFN proposal.
Mr. Adam said in a statement that large, institutional shareholders like Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Canada and Vanguard should demand higher degrees of transparency from the companies that they invest in – including Imperial.
“Publicly traded companies around the world are starting to disclose climate and environmental liabilities, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it is financially prudent,” he said.
“Alberta’s oil sands have an estimated 1.4 trillion litres of tailings ponds that will eventually have to be remediated. Simply ignoring the problem does not remove the financial liability upon taxpayers and company shareholders.”
The Kearl leak and the secrecy around it spurred numerous investigations, including by the House of Commons environment committee, and prompted Imperial’s CEO to apologize. ACFN is also suing the Alberta Energy Regulator.
The oil sands site had its strongest production on record last year, reaching 270,000 barrels a day, which helped contribute to Imperial’s second-highest-ever earnings of $4.9-billion in 2023.
Mr. Corson said momentum at Kearl has continued into 2024, with a record first-quarter performance, averaging 277,000 barrels a day, and record monthly production in both February and March.
He said Kearl is well-positioned to increase production to 280,000 barrels a day in 2024, and has lowered operating costs by more than US$6 a barrel compared with 2022.
Regarding the continuing leak, Mr. Corson said the company has significantly expanded its water seepage interception system, and has stepped up engagement with communities to share information and progress.
This article was written by Wendy Stueck and was published in the Globe & Mail on May 1, 2024.
Plastic treaty talks in Ottawa wrapped up with a moderately streamlined draft and an agreement for countries to keep negotiating before a final set of talks scheduled for November in South Korea.
Although that doesn’t answer the contentious question of whether there should be a cap on plastic production, it leaves the door open for an ambitious treaty to tackle what United Nations officials have called “a global scourge” of plastic pollution.
The fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, or INC-4, ended early Tuesday, as negotiators talked past midnight to set the stage for the final round. The committee is tasked with coming up with an international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution by the end of this year, spurred by a pollution crisis and health concerns resulting from the world’s growing plastic burden.
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said “all of the options are still on the table” for the next round of negotiations.
“I believe there are lots of things that we can find common ground on as part of this treaty, such as the elimination of single use plastics, better labelling regulations, increased use of recycled plastics,” Mr. Guilbeault said.
On the final day, as the plastics treaty went down to the wire, Rwanda and Peru asked countries to consider reducing new plastics production by 40 per cent by 2040, based on a 2025 benchmark.
Industry groups are opposed to production caps, saying they could result in higher prices for consumers and interfere with production of plastic needed in applications including waste management, health care and construction.
In a statement, World Plastics Council chairman Benny Mermans welcomed the agreement on intersessional negotiations but said production limits should be off the table.
“Arbitrary production caps, while superficially attractive, will decrease, rather than increase, the investment and innovation required to create a circulate plastics system and end plastic pollution,” Mr. Mermans said.
Global plastic production is estimated to amount to 400 million tonnes a year. Around the world, about one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute and up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Over all, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used once and then thrown away, the agency says.
Anja Brandon, associate director of U.S. Plastics Policy, in a statement said the treaty must include strong mandates to “reduce the amount of plastic we are making and using in the first place.”
Matthias Egger is head of Environmental and Social Affairs at the Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit founded in 2013 that focuses on collecting plastic from oceans and rivers. He attended the Ottawa talks as an observer.
“What fills me with hope is the fact that we now have intersessional work scheduled,” Mr. Egger said.
He hopes a potential treaty will address all aspects of the plastic life cycle, from chemicals used in production to recycling to waste disposal.
But even with a treaty in place, the need for plastic cleanup won’t go away, he said.
In an April 23 post, Greenpeace International criticized cleanup initiatives, including the Ocean Cleanup, saying such efforts were “akin to mopping the floor while the tap was still running.”
Mr. Egger disputed that characterization, saying there is no single solution to the plastics crisis and pointing to recent projects by the Ocean Cleanup, including collecting plastics from a river in Guatemala.
“It’s not a zero-sum game,” Mr. Egger said, speaking from Switzerland. “If you leave plastics in the environment, it will fragment into nano plastics and microplastics, which are the harmful parts. We need to mitigate the ecological and human health time bomb and remove it.”
Over all, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used once and then thrown away, the United Nations Environment Program says.
This article was written by the Associated Press and was published in the Toronto Star on April 30, 2024.
NAIROBI, KENYA A dam collapsed in western Kenya early Monday, killing at least 45 people and leaving dozens missing after a wall of water swept through houses and cut off a major road, the Interior Ministry said.
The Old Kijabe Dam, located in the Mai Mahiu area of the Great Rift Valley region that is prone to flash floods, collapsed and water spilled downstream, carrying with it mud, rocks and uprooted trees, police official Stephen Kirui told The Associated Press.
Vehicles were entangled in the debris on one of Kenya’s busiest highways and paramedics treated the injured as waters submerged large areas.
The Kenya Red Cross said 109 people were hospitalized while 49 others were reported missing.
Ongoing rains in Kenya have caused flooding that has killed at least 169 people since mid-March, and the country’s Meteorology Department has warned of more rainfall.
Kenya’s Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki ordered the inspection of all public and private dams and water reservoirs within 24 hours starting Monday afternoon to avert future incidents. The ministry said recommendations for evacuations and resettlement would be done after the inspection.
The Kenya National Highways Authority issued an alert warning motorists to brace for heavy traffic and debris that blocked the roads around Naivasha and Narok, west of the capital, Nairobi.
The wider East African region is experiencing flooding due to the heavy rains, and 155 people have reportedly died in Tanzania while more than 200,000 people affected in neighbouring Burundi.
A boat capsized in Kenya’s northern Garissa county on Sunday night, and the Kenyan Red Cross said it had rescued 23 people but more than a dozen people were still missing.
Kenya’s main airport was flooded on Saturday, forcing some flights to be diverted, as videos of a flooded runway, terminals and cargo section were shared online.
More than 200,000 people across Kenya the country have been hit by the floods, with houses in floodprone areas submerged and people seeking refuge in schools. President William Ruto had instructed the National Youth Service to provide land for use as a temporary camp.
This article was written and published by the Toronto Star on April 30, 2024.
The Canada Revenue Agency is going to audit Saskatchewan for not paying carbon levies on home heating, Premier Scott Moe said Monday. Moe said the agency has indicated it will look at Saskatchewan’s books to see how much the province owes in levies that weren’t paid to Ottawa. “They will ask if they can look at the submissions we’ve made and for us to submit money they estimate may be owed,” he told reporters. “We don’t believe there’s any dollars that are owed.” The Saskatchewan Party government decided earlier this year to not remit the federal carbon price on natural gas, a move that breaks federal law. Moe invoked the measure after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exempted users of home heating oil from having to pay the levy in a move largely seen as politically motivated to boost Liberal support in Atlantic Canada. The CRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trudeau said last week the agency is “very, very good” at getting money owed and wished Moe “good luck” in dealing with the agency.
This article was written by Mark Ramzy and was published in the Toronto Star on April 30, 2024.
Pressed about claims that some construction jobs at an electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor are going to foreign workers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of opposing deals made with auto giants to bring EV plants to Canada.
Trudeau made that charge Monday in the House of Commons as Conservatives demanded to see contracts for six EV projects underway in Canada, and asked what they do to protect local jobs for unionized workers. Earlier this month, Canada’s Building Trades Unions (CBTU) claimed in a letter to Trudeau that nearly 200 Canadians were being sidelined in favour of international employees at the NextStar EV battery plant in Windsor, and requested his “personal intervention.”
While Trudeau agreed that Canadians should get the jobs first, he charged the Conservatives were trying to distract from their own record, which he said has not been friendly to workers.
“It is something that the Conservatives seem to have latched on to, to try and distract from the fact that they actually don’t support the Stellantis investment or the Volkswagen investment or the Honda investment,” he said in a conversation with the executive director of CBTU, a group representing skilled trades workers across Canada, during its annual conference in Gatineau.
“If they had their way, and certainly if they had been in government and not made the decision to draw in global investment in the EV sector, there would be no jobs, neither installation and construction jobs or production jobs.”
It’s the latest development in a fierce political battle as Canada’s major party leaders attempt to court workers’ support. In July, Ottawa and Queen’s Park reached a deal worth $15 billion in subsidies to lure auto giant Stellantis — the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Fiat — and its Korea-based partner LG Energy Solution, to save the construction of the Windsor EV battery plant that would create 2,500 jobs.
Shortly after, it was revealed that foreign workers would have a significant role in the construction of the plant, sparking criticism from unions and Trudeau’s opponents. Ottawa has argued the foreign workers are only temporary.
“It’s not about a kind of animosity toward a foreign worker … but when you have a Canadian worker sitting at home, collecting Employment Insurance in their home community, and there are four workers doing his or her work in a plant, that is just completely inexplicable to that Canadian worker,” said CBTU executive director Sean Strickland. “We can’t have that happen.”
While Trudeau said Monday his government will do everything it can to keep those jobs for Canadians, he said last week at the announcement of another EV plant deal with Honda, that some foreign workers were needed in the NextStar project because “there’s a certain amount of specialized equipment that needs training so Canadians can actually be doing the installing as well.”
The deal with Honda, worth $5 billion in government funding, was also under scrutiny Monday as Conservative industry critic Rick Perkins said he was worried it would not include enough guarantees for Canadian workers after he reviewed the NextStar contract.
In a statement to the Star, NextStar said out of 1,975 workers currently on the project, only 72 are not Canadian — and none of them are counted in the projected 2,500 new jobs that will be created for Canadians once construction is complete.
“There is an inaccurate and negative portrayal of non-Canadian resident workers who are needed to temporarily support the industrialization of the battery plant prior to its launch,” the statement said.
Poilievre has not explicitly expressed his opposition to the deals with the automotive giants, but has been critical of the large government subsidies and attacked the Trudeau government for the foreign workers’ involvement. His office did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
“When you have a Canadian worker sitting at home, collecting EI … and there are four workers doing his or her work … that is just completely inexplicable to that Canadian worker.”
SEAN STRICKLAND, CANADA’S BUILDING TRADES UNIONS
My Climate Change Website 