Environment + Energy – The Conversation

Lessons from the sea: Nature shows us how to get ‘forever chemicals’ out of batteries

2026-02-03T15:21:42Z

As the world races to electrify everything from cars to cities, the demand for high-performance, long-lasting batteries is soaring. But the uncomfortable truth is this: many of the batteries powering our “green” technologies aren’t as green as we might think.

Most commercial batteries rely on fluorinated polymer binders to hold them together, such as polyvinylidene fluoride. These materials perform well — they’re chemically stable, resistant to heat and very durable. But they come with a hidden environmental price.

Fluorinated polymers are derived from fluorine-containing chemicals that don’t easily degrade, releasing persistent pollutants called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) during their production and disposal. Once they enter the environment, PFAS can remain in water, soil and even human tissue for hundreds of years, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals.”

We’ve justified their use because they increase the lifespan and performance of batteries. But if the clean energy transition relies on materials that pollute, degrade ecosystems and persist in the environment for years, is it really sustainable?

As a graduate student, I spent years thinking about how to make batteries cleaner — not just in how they operate, but in how they’re made. That search led me somewhere unexpected: the ocean.

Why binders are important

Most commercial batteries rely on fluorinated polymer binders to hold them together. These materials perform well but come with an environmental cost. (Unsplash/CHUTTERSNAP)

Every rechargeable battery has three essential components: two electrodes separated by a liquid electrolyte that allows charged atoms (ions) to flow between them. When you charge a battery, the ions move from one electrode to the other, storing energy.

When you use the battery, the charged atoms flow back to their original side, releasing that stored energy to power your phone, car or the grid.

Each electrode is a mixture of three parts: an active material that stores and releases energy, a conductive additive that helps electrons move and a binder that holds everything together.

The binder acts like glue, keeping particles in place and preventing them from dissolving during use. Without it, a battery would be unable to hold a charge after only a few uses.

Lessons from the sea

Many marine organisms have evolved in remarkable ways to attach themselves to wet, slippery surfaces. Mussels, barnacles, sandcastle worms and octopuses produce natural adhesives to stick to rocks, ship hulls and coral in turbulent water — conditions that would defeat most synthetic glues.

For mussels, the secret lies in molecules called catechols. These molecules contain a unique amino acid in their sticky proteins that helps them form strong bonds with surfaces and hardens almost instantly when exposed to oxygen. This chemistry has already inspired synthetic adhesives used to seal wounds, repair tendons and create coatings that stick to metal or glass underwater.

Building on this idea, I began exploring a related molecule called gallol. Like catechol in mussels, gallol is used by marine plants and algae to cling to wet surfaces. Its chemical structure is very similar to catechol, but it contains an extra functional group that makes it even more adhesive and versatile. It can form multiple types of strong, durable and reversible bonds — properties that make it an excellent battery binder.

Mussels use molecules called catechols to stick to surfaces. (Unsplash/Manu Mateo)

A greener solution

Working with Prof. Dwight S. Seferos at the University of Toronto, we developed a polymer binder based on gallol chemistry and paired it with zinc, a safer and more abundant metal than lithium. Unlike lithium, zinc is non-flammable and easier to source sustainably, making it ideal for large-scale applications.

The results were remarkable. Our gallol-based zinc batteries maintained 52 per cent higher energy efficiency after 8,000 charge-discharge cycles compared to conventional batteries that use fluorinated binders. In practical terms, that means longer-lasting devices, fewer replacements and a smaller environmental footprint.

Our findings are proof that performance and sustainability can go hand-in-hand. Many in industry might still view “green” and “effective” as competing priorities, with sustainability an afterthought. That logic is backwards.

We can’t build a truly clean energy future using polluting materials. For too long, the battery industry has focused on performance at any cost, even if that cost includes toxic waste, hard-to-recycle materials and unsustainable and unethical mining practices. The next generation of technologies must be sustainable by design, built from sources are renewable, biodegradable and circular.

Nature has been running efficient, self-renewing systems for billions of years. Mussels, shellfish and seaweeds build materials that are strong, flexible and biodegradable. No waste and no forever chemicals. It’s time we started paying attention.

The ocean holds more than beauty and biodiversity; it may also hold the blueprint for the future of energy storage. But realizing that future requires a cultural shift in science, one that rewards innovation that heals, not just innovation that performs.

We don’t need to sacrifice progress to protect the planet. We just need to design with the planet in mind.

This research was supported by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund. Alicia M. Battaglia received funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program.

Addressing climate change without the ‘rules-based order’

2026-02-02T17:12:00Z

At the recent World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney proclaimed “a rupture” in the global “rules-based order” and a turn to great power rivalry.

While its demise is not certain, even the current disruption to global order, largely due to the Donald Trump administration in the United States, promises profound impacts on the global response to climate change. The world is at risk of losing even the insufficient progress made in the last decade.

But it’s unclear what that effect will be. That uncertainty is both a cause for concern and a source of hope. The climate crisis is not slowing, and humanity must figure out how to navigate the disruption.

Unfortunately, much of what we know about how climate politics works has depended on a relatively stable rules-based order. That order, however problematic, provided institutions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

It also established trade rules for energy technology, co-operative agreements on public and private climate finance, and parameters for how civil society and states interact. It structured the opportunities and obstacles for acting on climate change.

Everyone who cares about climate action must now grapple with how climate politics can function in a new world of uncertainty. It won’t be easy.

But, to inject a slight note of hope, I’m not convinced that meeting the climate challenge is harder now. It’s difficult in a different way. Let’s be clear: the rules-based order was not producing effective global co-operation on climate change.

Limited successes of the rules-based order

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos where he noted the ‘rupture’ in the global rules-based order.(The Journal)

The U.S. has consistently been an obstacle to global climate action. As Carney noted, under the the rules-based order “the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.” Clearly the U.S. decided from very early on that a stable climate was not a public good it was willing to seriously support.

The U.S. failed to see benefits from climate action that outweighed the perception of costs and has consistently been influenced by status quo, fossil-capital economic interests.

That’s not to say there was no progress under the old rules-based system. At least five sources of progress are worth highlighting:

A coalition of the ambitious, mostly anchored in Europe, consistently pushed for action. This coalition stayed in the Kyoto Protocol and took action domestically, moving forward on emissions reductions and globally significant technological innovation.
The changing political economy of renewable energy has drastically decreased the costs of wind and solar power.
The growth of municipal, sub-national and transnational efforts expanded the reach of climate action while also maintaining some momentum in countries, like the U.S., that were reluctant to move aggressively.
Public support and concern over the climate has grown, in part because the increasing impacts of climate change have made it a tangible problem of the present, not future.
There’s now a different global architecture for climate governance with the Paris Agreement — one based on collected national actions rather than global collective action. This new architecture was less vulnerable to the first U.S. withdrawal in 2016.

Possibilities for progress

These sources of past progress on climate action could survive the current disruption and play a role in increasing momentum in the global response to climate change. But uncertainties and questions are more plentiful than answers.

A coalition of the ambitious is clearly what Carney’s speech is seeking to catalyze among middle powers. He was not talking about climate change, but a commitment to climate action could and should be a cornerstone that a new order is built upon. This may even attract one of those competing great powers that he alluded to — China. Will China see climate leadership as a means to enhance its global position?

The political economy of renewable energy has momentum that is at least somewhat insulated from the current disruption. How insulated it remains depends on a number of uncertainties.

What will trade rules and practices look like moving forward? What happens within the fossil-fuel energy sector as the U.S. continues to engage in resource imperialism? How will resource competition and co-operation in the renewables sector (over critical minerals, for example) play out moving forward?

Can experimental efforts be a source of resistance and change within the U.S., especially among individual states? And can they play the same role that they did previously, catalyzing further innovation and public support?

Public support for climate action in this new era will likely vary wildly by country. How will growing dissatisfaction with the status quo play out as it intersects with increasingly severe climate impacts?

This could generate further support for right-wing populism. However, affordability and inequality concerns could also become the foundation for building support for climate action and a just transition.

Does the Paris Agreement survive this? It could become a backbone institution for the coalition of the ambitious. The U.S. is gone, again. Maybe other recalcitrant governments should be sidelined from multilateral climate efforts as well, and those willing to act can proceed.

If full global co-operation around climate change is no longer even a façade of the possible now, then the imperative to bring everyone along at each step in the process may evaporate.

None of the ways forward I’ve laid out here are easy. Even if the positive possibilities materialize, they do not guarantee decarbonization and a just transition that is fast and effective enough to matter; to head off the worst of climate change.

What is clear, though, is that like Carney, climate scholars and activists may need to let the fiction of the global rules-based order go. It was not working either in addressing climate change or enhancing justice. Perhaps its disruption is an opportunity to build better foundations for a just and effective global response to climate change.

Matthew Hoffmann receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Lawson Climate Institute.

Epiaceratherium itjilik: The rhino that lived in the Arctic

2026-02-01T14:17:45Z

Paleontologists at the Canadian Museum of Nature have recently been studying the skeletal remains of a rhinoceros. This might not sound remarkable at first, but what makes these remains fascinating is that they were found on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Today, mammals inhabit nearly every corner of the Earth. In Asia, Europe and North America, mammals arrived via three routes, one over the Bering Strait and two over the North Atlantic.

The Bering Land Bridge is the best known, having enabled the arrival of humans in North America approximately 20,000 years ago and shaped the population genetics of animals such as bears, lions and horses.

Less well known are the two routes that traversed the North Atlantic, one from the Scandinavian Peninsula over Svalbard and Greenland, and another from Scotland over Iceland to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.

However, it has typically been thought that land animals could not have crossed the North Atlantic by the Early Eocene, a period around 50 million years ago when the Earth’s climate was warmer.

However, the Arctic rhino’s remains provide tantalizing evidence that land mammals were able to traverse the North Atlantic using frozen land bridges much more recently than the Early Eocene.

A rhinoceros in the Arctic

Danielle Fraser explains her team’s research on the Arctic rhinoceros. (Canadian Museum of Nature)

The new species of rhinoceros was discovered from a nearly complete specimen collected from the Haughton Formation of Devon Island in Nunavut — lake sediments formed in an asteroid impact crater that likely date to the Early Miocene, around 23 million years ago.

The sediments of the Haughton Formation preserve plants, mammals and birds, among others. The majority of the rhinoceros was collected in the 1980s by paleontologist Mary Dawson and her team, with additional collections by paleontologists Natalia Rybczynski, Marisa Gilbert and their team in the 2010s.

The rhinoceros lacked a horn, which is common among extinct rhinos. It is remarkable, however, in possessing features of much more ancient forms, like teeth of forms many millions of years older. It also has a fifth toe on the forefoot, which is rare among rhinoceroses.

Anatomical comparison and evolutionary analysis suggest the specimen belongs to an existing genus, Epiaceratherium, found only in Europe and western Asia. In naming the new species, the team consulted with Jarloo Kiguktak, an elder from the nearest Indigenous community to the Haughton Crater, Aujuittuq (Grise Fiord). Together, they named it Epiaceratherium itjilik. Itjilik is an Inuktitut word meaning frost or frosty, an homage to the Arctic setting where the specimen was found.

Most surprisingly, the team’s evolutionary analysis placed E. itjilik closest to the European species of Epiaceratherium. This indicates that its ancestors likely crossed from Europe to North America via the North Atlantic at some point during the late Eocene period around 33-38 million years ago.

Bio-geographic analyses further revealed a surprisingly high number of rhinoceros crossings over the North Atlantic directly between Europe and North America, some in the last 20 million years. While a finding of such a recent crossing via the North Atlantic has often been considered unlikely, emerging geological evidence tells a different story.

How did rhinos get to the Arctic?

Today, land animals are impeded from crossing between Europe and North America by several deep, wide waterways. The Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland are separated by the Faroe-Bank Channel, Faroe Shetland Channel and the Denmark Strait. Between the Scandinavian Peninsula, Svalbard and Greenland are the Barents Sea and Fram Strait. It is believed that land animals could traverse at least one of these areas only up until the Early Eocene about 50 million years ago.

Recent studies, however, are starting to paint a more complex picture of North Atlantic geological change. Estimates for the timing of formation of the various channels that now break up North Atlantic land masses are highly variable.

Mathematical modelling suggests a highland connected Svalbard to northern Europe as recently as the 2.7 million years ago. An array of new data also suggest the Fram Strait was shallow and narrow until the Early Miocene, around 23 million years ago. The Faroe-Shetland channel may have opened between 50 and 34 million years ago, while the Iceland-Faroe Channel and Denmark Strait were submerged later, 34 to 10 million years ago.

This suggests that rhinoceroses could have walked on land for at least part of their journey across the North Atlantic. They could possibly have swum the relatively short distances between land masses but the team hypothesized that seasonal sea ice may also have facilitated their movement.

Seasonal ice

More than 47 million years ago, the Arctic Ocean and surrounding regions were ice-free all year. Ocean cores collected from the Arctic Ocean — samples of mud, sand and organic material drilled from the seafloor — contain evidence of ice-rafted debris during the Middle Eocene, approximately 47 to 38 million years ago. This indicates the presence of seasonal ice.

Another ocean core collected between Greenland and Svalbard also contains ice-rafted debris originating from across the Arctic dating from between 48 to 26 million years ago. What is emerging, therefore, is the possibility that land animals crossed the North Atlantic by a combination of routes formed over land and seasonal ice.

Vertebrate fossils from the islands that once comprised the North Atlantic land bridges are extremely rare. Given that much of the land bridges are now submerged, direct evidence for how animals spread across the North Atlantic may be lost.

Bio-geographic studies like the one conducted by the team at the Canadian Museum of Nature highlight how discoveries in the Arctic are reshaping what we know about mammal evolution. These insights further our understanding of how animals moved across our planet.

Danielle Fraser received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC RGPIN-2018-05305). Natalia Rybczynski, who co-authored the study mentioned in this article, received funding from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation. Mary Dawson, a co-author on the study, received funding for field work from National Geographic.

Scientists have identified unique sounds for 8 fish species

2026-01-28T13:27:07Z

Have you ever wished you could swim like a fish? How about speak like one?

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Fish Biology, our team from the University of Victoria deciphered some of the strange and unique sounds made by different fish species along the coast of British Columbia.

Researchers have known for centuries that some fish make sounds, and the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle even mentioned fish sounds in his writings. However, our understanding of which sounds are made by which fish species is extremely limited because it is difficult to pinpoint where a sound comes from underwater.

To accurately identify which sound is made by which fish, our team deployed an underwater acoustic localization array at sites in Barkley Sound, B.C. The localization array was designed by our project collaborator, Xavier Mouy, and it allowed us to precisely triangulate sounds to specific co-ordinates.

Using this triangulation and paired underwater video recordings, we were able to tie fish sounds to the correct species. We identified more than 1,000 fish sounds during our study, and successfully tied those sounds to eight different rocky reef fish species: copper, quillback, black, canary and vermillion rockfish, as well as lingcod, pile perch and kelp greenling.

We were particularly excited to identify sounds for canary and vermillion rockfish since these species had never been documented making sounds.

Differentiating fish sounds

We also wanted to investigate if different species sounds were unique enough to be differentiated from each other. We created a machine learning model using 47 different sound characteristics, like frequency (how high- or low-pitched the sound is) and duration (how long the sound is), to understand the unique differences in species calls.

For example, black rockfish make a long, growling sound similar to a frog croak, and quillback rockfish make a series of short knocks and grunts. The fish sound model was able to predict which sounds belonged to which species with up to 88 per cent accuracy. This was surprising and exciting to our team since many rocky reef fish species are very closely related.

Some fish species are known to make unique sounds during specific activities like courtship or guarding territory. Our research found that many species are also making sounds while fleeing from other fish.

For example, the copper and quillback rockfish both make significantly more grunting type sounds while being pursued by larger fish. We also documented sounds made during feeding activities and during aggressive activities like chasing.

Using sounds in future research

We also used stereo cameras in our research which allowed us to measure the length of the fish. We found that smaller fish make higher frequency (pitched) sounds than larger fish, which means scientists may eventually be able to estimate how big a fish is just by listening to its sounds. This discovery could be used in conservation in the future because estimating fish size is an important tool for effectively managing fish populations.

Our team plans to apply this research to improve marine conservation efforts. Now that we understand fish species sounds can be differentiated, there are many exciting possibilities for developing these acoustic tools into monitoring methods.

We can create species-specific fish sound detectors that will tell us where fish live without disturbing them. This has important implications for future conservation efforts, and the techniques we used can be adapted by scientists all over the world to decipher other fish calls.

Going forward, our team plans to develop a method of counting fish using acoustic recordings by examining the number of calls each species makes.

We also plan to compare the fish sounds we collected in Barkley Sound to fish calls made in other areas of British Columbia to see if fish have unique accents or dialects.

Using underwater sound recordings to study fish is highly beneficial. It is minimally invasive and acoustic recorders can collect information for months or years in hard to access or low visibility locations underwater. With more development, underwater acoustic monitoring could become an important new tool for conservationists and fisheries managers.

Darienne Lancaster has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada Competitive Science Research Fund (CSRF). She is affiliated with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Air pollution crosses borders, and so must the policies aimed at tackling it

2026-01-27T20:12:37Z

Parts of India, including the capital Delhi, were once again covered in thick smog recently as toxic pollution from industry and crop-burning engulfed the region. Even though India’s National Clean Air Programme has advanced clean air action, air pollution remains a reoccurring problem.

Reliably protecting public health will require tighter co-ordination across orders of governments and departments. Air pollution is shaped by different economic sectors, weather, geography and siloed institutions. Single-sector fixes alone, like pausing construction or banning older vehicles, are unlikely to deliver system-wide change.

That’s why our team conducted a study to map air quality governance in India as an interconnected system, linking the parts that determine what gets measured, what gets enforced, what gets funded and what persists beyond city boundaries.

In addition to the authors of this article, our research team included Christoph Becker and Teresa Kramarz from the University of Toronto, Om Damani and Anshul Agarwal at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Ronak Sutaria from the environmental consultant Respirer Living Sciences.

Our goal was to identify leverage points in current governance where shifts could deliver the greatest pollution-related health benefits.

If we want clean air to be a public service, we need pathways for communities to participate meaningfully. Our research argues for steady funding and training to build community monitoring literacy so accountability and action persist beyond political cycles.

Developing hyper-local monitoring

One hopeful example comes from the city of Bengaluru in the south of the country.

In this case, community groups installed monitors near schools and hospitals, using the data to spotlight the problem and seek court-mandated enforcement — underscoring the need for clear pathways to use community-generated data in enforcement.

The efforts by the communities aren’t meant to be a substitute for government enforcement. The point is to empower communities and give them a real choice in a system where they have very little voice.

The government monitors air pollution to track pollution levels over time and across locations, and to evaluate whether policies and enforcement are improving air quality.

Although India does need to scale monitoring capacities and make them equitable, we already have enough data streams from satellite observations, reference-grade monitors and low-cost sensors.

The real governance gap is in how these data streams can be used for action: standards for calibration in local conditions, quality assurance and control, and protocols for integrating evidence into enforcement and planning.

We recommend certification and quality assurance and control protocols for hyper-local monitoring so agencies can rely on the data for decisions and enforcement.

Cities elsewhere in the world have treated hyper-local monitoring as more than an awareness tool. In London, the Breathe London programme deployed hundreds of sensors alongside existing reference-grade monitors under a defined quality-assurance framework.

This data played a critical role in identifying street-level pollution hotspots, evaluating traffic interventions and assessing the impacts of policies such as the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. Indian governments can learn from this example.

When data is standardized for defined-decision contexts, it enables decision-making.

Governing the airshed

Air pollution does not respect regional or city boundaries. Yet, the National Clean Air Programme often assigns actions to cities, even when cities cannot control a large share of the pollution they face. For example, even when Delhi tightens local restrictions of cars or construction, at least a dozen coal-fired power plants near the city continue to operate without key pollution filters.

This is why we need governance at the airshed scale. An airshed is a region where local weather and geography, such as mountains, influence how air and pollutants move.

Governments must look at how air pollution spreads in an area, then develop rules for co-ordinating across jurisdictions. That means setting out clear roles for different departments, establishing shared data standards and creating dispute-resolution mechanisms so co-ordinated efforts can address the issue effectively.

Right now, the Clean Air Programme is centred on cutting the level of particulate matter in the air by roughly 20-30 per cent. A more actionable approach is figuring out which sectors are driving the airshed pollution — namely transport, construction, industry, power, waste and household fuels — and what sector-specific targets and timelines would actually lead to healthier air.

India’s Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), for example, was created specifically to put airshed-level management into practice across state and jurisdictional boundaries under the National Clean Air Programme.

The hardest part is assigning enforceable responsibilities across ministries (like power, transport, agriculture, industry, urban development) at the national, state and local levels, as well as across states.

For instance, agencies like CAQM (and NCAP more broadly) can take airshed-wide pollution inventories (estimates of how much pollution comes from different sources and sectors across an airshed) and translate them into short-term, sector-by-sector targets for each ministry, with deadlines and clear accountability.

Rewrite the objective to protect health

In our paper, we recommend expanding regulatory goals to include public health protection, in addition to meeting particulate matter targets. Putting health at the centre can shape governmental priorities, pushing agencies to focus first on the sources people are most exposed to.

As Ronak Sutaria, the founder and CEO of Respirer Living Sciences and a co-author of our study, told us:

“Air pollution isn’t an environmental statistic; it’s a public-health emergency that shows up in asthma, heart disease and hospital admissions. When we map air quality at the neighbourhood level and link it to health outcomes, clean air can move from a promise to a right — because communities can see what they’re breathing and what it means for their health, and that changes what polluters can get away with.”

A health-first objective also pushes governance toward equity, because exposure burdens are unevenly distributed across different segments of the population.

This an opportunity to align clean-air action with climate goals, while the up-front costs for mitigation are almost always offset by avoided health costs and higher productivity.

Airsheds differ, and so must actions to clean up the air. The value of systems thinking is that it offers a common way to understand what is limiting progress locally and design governance that fits local realities.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Biomass could play a key role in Canada’s transition to a carbon-neutral economy

2026-01-27T14:46:15Z

Record forest fires, under-utilized agricultural residues like straw and husks and struggling sawmills have left Canada with an abundance of undervalued biomass. If carefully and strategically managed, this resource could become a powerful ally in the fight against climate change.

Canada’s biomass sectors are facing significant uncertainty because of political and natural disruptions. The forestry sector was hit last year by new American tariffs announced by the Donald Trump administration on Canadian forest products, bringing the total duties imposed on Canadian lumber to 45 per cent.

The agricultural and agri-food sector is also particularly vulnerable, since it exports more than 70 per cent of its main crops.

In addition to facing these political uncertainties, biomass sectors are increasingly experiencing the effects of climate disasters. In 2025, fires had burned 8.3 million hectares of Canadian forests by Sept. 30, making it Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record. With climate change, extreme weather events like wildfires and droughts are likely to become more frequent and intense.

Change is accelerating and risks are mounting. For industries and communities that rely on biomass, this is the moment to define a long-term role in the climate transition.

Biomass resources

Canada needs to move towards a carbon-neutral economy, and the biomass sectors have a key role to play in this transition.

The availability of diverse biomass resources in Canada’s forests and agricultural lands, combined with new technologies to convert them into bioproducts and bioenergy, makes biomass a potential solution for reducing carbon emissions in several sectors, including industry, construction and all modes of transport (road, marine, rail and air).

Biomass can be part of climate change mitigation strategies. Used properly, it can replace fossil fuels and products, and help store carbon in different ways: in sustainable materials made from wood or agricultural residues, in the form of biochar that traps carbon in the soil or through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which prevents carbon released during energy production from entering the atmosphere.

Several recent projects have demonstrated that interest in biomass feedstocks is high in many industries. In 2025, Canada’s first industrial-scale biochar plant was inaugurated in Québec, while the Strathcona refinery in Alberta will become Canada’s largest facility for renewable diesel.

The potential role of biomass becomes clear in the pathways now being modelled to achieve Canada’s climate goals. These analyses show that if a significant portion of available biomass were used differently, it would be possible to sequester up to 94 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year through BECCS and biochar.

These results underscore the need for Canada to carefully plan new project developments and judiciously allocate biomass between its traditional and emerging uses.

Best uses for biomass

As we explain in a recent study, several factors influence the potential of biomass to reduce emissions, including the type of ecosystem where it’s harvested, the efficiency of its conversion, the fuels used and the products it replaces in the sectors concerned.

In other words, the climate benefits of biomass are not automatic: they depend on the choices that are made at each stage of the value chain. For example, if the processing or transport of resources requires a lot of fossil energy, or if the final product displaces a low-emission alternative, the climate benefit may be marginal or even negative.

Using biomass effectively requires understanding what resources will be available under climate change and their true potential to cut emissions. That potential depends not only on technological efficiency, but also on the cultural, environmental and economic realities of communities.

Still no long-term vision

Decision-makers must avoid working in isolation and take into account the collateral effects of resource allocation. Practices in biomass sectors, whether in forestry or agriculture, evolve slowly. Forests, in particular, follow long growth and harvesting cycles, so the choices made today will influence emissions for decades to come.

Yet, despite the importance of its resources, Canada has no strategy or vision for the role biomass will play in the transition to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Canada has developed several bioeconomy frameworks, including the Renewed Forest Bioeconomy Framework (2022) and the Canadian Bioeconomy Strategy (2019). However, there is still no comprehensive strategy that defines the role biomass will play in achieving a carbon-neutral future, either in energy-related or non-energy-related sectors.

Canada can draw inspiration from its own Canadian Hydrogen Strategy to develop a similar strategy for biomass, based on integrated modelling of its potential in different sectors of the Canadian economy. There is an urgent need to adopt a realistic approach based on analyses at multiple scales — from regional to national — rather than on isolated sectoral targets.

Many players in the sector are stressing the urgent need to adopt a clear national strategy for the bioeconomy in order to provide more predictability to biomass industries in Canada. In an article in Canadian Biomass Magazine, Jeff Passmore (founder and president of Scaling Up) says he’s been waiting for Canada to develop a concrete national strategy for the bioeconomy.

Another article in Bioenterprise in 2023 argued that “one of the key areas needed to build the future of biomass in Canada is a solid, long-term national bioeconomy strategy, supported by industry and governments.”

Finally, a call to action from Bioindustrial Innovation Canada recommends revising the national bioeconomy strategy by setting measurable targets for interdepartmental and intersectoral co-ordination, with a clear road map for collaboration between industry and the public sector.

Biomass cannot be managed blindly. Its impacts vary depending on the region and uses. For future projects to truly contribute to Canada’s climate goals, a coherent national vision is needed now.

In connection with the work reported in this article, Normand Mousseau received funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Trottier Family Foundation (through its support for the activities of the Institut d'Énergie Trottier) and the Transition Accelerator, a non-profit organization with the mandate to support energy transition in various economic sectors. The organizations that funded this text or the reports on which it is based were not given any right to review the analyses and conclusions. The authors are solely responsible for these.

The Institut de l'Énergie Trottier (IET) at Polytechnique Montréal was created thanks to a generous donation from the Trottier Family Foundation. Its mission covers research, training and the dissemination of information related to the challenges of decarbonizing energy systems. To support the research mandate of the Carbon Neutrality Advisory Group, the IET's biomass project was carried out with financial support from the Government of Canada. Funding was provided by the Climate Action and Awareness Fund of the Environmental Damages Fund, administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The organizations that funded this report were not given any say in the analyses and conclusions. The authors are solely responsible for these. Roberta Dagher works at the IEG in support of the Transition Accelerator. Roberta Dagher does not work for, advise, own shares in, or receive funding from any organization that could benefit from this article.

How to include fossil fuel communities in Canada’s clean energy transition

2026-01-25T13:46:20Z

Fossil fuel-dependent communities in Western Canada sit at the centre of Canada’s energy decisions. A just and inclusive clean energy transition will depend on how well governments listen to these communities and how fast they deal with the forces working to slow down energy decarbonization.

When it comes to the energy transition, public discussion tends to focus on emissions targets and policies to achieve them. These are important, but they’re just one aspect of the issue. In the oil- and gas-producing regions of Western Canada, conversations and concerns centre on livelihoods, identity and a nagging doubt: does anyone in power grasp rural realities?

Our ongoing research across the region — based on large citizen surveys, focus groups with municipal leaders and analysis of disinformation — highlights that emotions, narratives and perspectives of communities sit at the heart of Canada’s energy transition politics. As we mark the United Nation’s International Day of Clean Energy today, these voices demand attention before divides deepen further.

Focus groups with municipal staff from 10 oil- and gas-producing communities in British Columbia and Alberta revealed a delicate balancing act. They’re actively pursuing diversification — geothermal projects, hydrogen pilots, tourism expansion, data centres, manufacturing hubs, even rare-earth mineral processing — but most of these efforts build around, rather than beyond, oil and gas.

For many communities, the industry isn’t just jobs. It’s the economic engine funding hospitals, schools, arenas, roads and the very existence of their towns. Abstract talk of an energy transition can feel threatening when it overlooks this.

An Alberta official captured the fear bluntly:

“If you took oil and gas out of our community, I would suggest that there would be no hospital. There would be no schools. There would be no town. The only reason our community exists is to service the oil and gas industry.”

Deep emotional divides

Our 2025 survey of 3,400 residents in non-metropolitan communities across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba helps explains why climate policy ignites public backlash.

Affective climate polarization, which describes the emotional distance between those who support and oppose climate policy, rivals partisan left-right divides in intensity. These emotional climate identities help explain differences in support for climate policy that ideology alone can’t capture — particularly on the political right, where views on climate action are more diverse.

Policy design nuances are critical but complicated by affective polarization. Clean technology mandates and renewable electricity requirements tend to draw broader backing than carbon taxes, which are generally less popular and spark fierce resistance from right-leaning citizens.

Bundling climate policies with just transition measures, such as government-funded training for new jobs, community-owned energy, low-carbon incentives and public transit, can boost support for carbon pricing among the less polarized. However, for those with stronger emotional commitments, these just transition supports are often ineffective and can even trigger backlash.

Climate policy details matter less to people who score high on affective climate polarization. This helps explain why climate policy debates remain so deeply politicized: when emotional attachments to climate identities are strong, people respond more to elite cues and identity-based judgments than to policy design itself.

Municipalities grapple with limitations

Municipal officials battle structural voids. Officials in northeastern B.C. and Alberta juggle economic ambitions and governance limitations. They craft economic strategies and chase low-carbon investments, while being hamstrung by thin staffing and permitting delays stalling projects for years.

The sharpest barrier to the clean energy transition is the absence of coherent, regionally tailored visions from other levels of government. Federal clean growth plans promote critical minerals and hydrogen. Provincial strategies mix liquefied natural gas with renewables.

Locally, these strategies ring hollow — they seem contradictory and urban-centric. A municipal official in B.C. we spoke to decried a “one-size-fits- all” approach, citing propane-powered electric vehicle chargers in -40 C winters: “How do you gain the support … when even the province isn’t actually addressing” regional realities?

We’ve found that public attitudes differ by age, with youth embracing climate sustainability but veterans of oil-tied lives viewing transition as a “hard sell.” Without a common vision recognizing municipal governance limitations, community leaders hesitate on bold plans, wary of backlash in towns deeply connected to the promise and precarity of oil’s boom–bust cycles.

These tensions are being wilfully intensified by the fossil-fuel industry’s propaganda machine, which uses bad-faith arguments to suggest that climate policies and fossil-fuel communities are at odds.

These arguments often ignore the potential for a well-managed energy transition to improve public health, foster regional development and increase community resilience in these regions.

These are not the only narratives the fossil-fuel industry is using to slow climate action. Our research on Canada’s climate delays shows that fossil-fuel propaganda is being used to falsely portray Canadian oil as low-emissions, to urge Canada to wait for others to act first and to claim that climate policies are more detrimental to workers more than climate change.

Fostering a just energy transition

Governments must engage in genuine listening. Fossil-fuel communities aren’t barriers, but key participants in all energy transition risks and benefits. Co-creating policies with them rather than imposing top-down visions can help grow jobs, revenues and services in Western Canada.

Engagement with communities must also be emotionally attuned. Overcoming climate polarization means restoring trust via local messengers, consistent follow-through and deliberative forums like public assemblies.

At the same time, governments must confront misinformation and propaganda. They can step in with policies that challenge disinformation legally, regulate ads and fund community energy transformations beyond fossil fuel extraction.

The International Day of Clean Energy spotlights promise. In Western Canada, it also spotlights peril. The energy transition’s success hinges on centring fossil fuel communities as protagonists, not peripherals — turning the transition into a shared opportunity.

Ekaterina Rhodes receives funding from Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Megan Egler received funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Rowan Hargreaves received funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Samuel Lloyd receives funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative. He also received funding from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions for a research project that inspired one of the papers included in this article.

How the ocean’s hydrothermal systems made the first life on Earth possible

2026-01-22T13:58:43Z

A black smoker hydrothermal vent at a water depth of 3,300 meters in the Logatchev Hydrothermal Field on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (Zentrum für Marine Umweltwissenschaften, Universität Bremen), CC BY

Our planet is unique for its ability to sustain abundant life. From studies of the rock record, scientists believe life had already emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably much earlier.

But how a habitable environment developed, and how the very first life emerged on the early Earth, remain puzzling. One of the big challenges for Earth to be habitable in its infancy was the weak solar energy it received.

Astrophysical models indicate that the sun had only about 70 per cent of its current luminosity when the Earth was born around 4.5 billion years ago. That would have resulted in Earth’s surface being frozen until around two billion years ago.

Nonetheless, scientific investigations indicate the Earth had warm oceans and habitable environments as early as 4.4 billion years ago. This contradiction is known as the faint young sun paradox.

Solving this paradox and the generation of the first life both involve a key chemical compound — ammonia. But the source of ammonia on the early Earth before biological nitrogen processing emerged remains unknown.

Colleagues in China and my research group at the University of Alberta recently published our study of minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids in oceanic crusts drilled from the South China Sea basin. We discovered that mineral-catalyzed chemical reactions in underwater hydrothermal systems can produce the necessary ingredients for a habitable world and life on Earth.

Hypothesis of the origin of life

An explainer on hydrothermal vents (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Earth’s first life is hypothesized to be generated by a series of abiotic processes, also known as abiogenesis. Under this hypothesis, the building blocks of the first life were synthezised on Earth from basic inorganic compounds by abiotic reactions, or were brought to here by meteorites.

In 1953, American chemist Stanley Miller, then a graduate student working with Nobel Prize laureate Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, discovered production of amino acids in his experiments simulating lightning in an early-Earth atmosphere composed of water moisture and several gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen molecules).

These life-building blocks could subsequently deposit into the ocean for life development. This ground-breaking discovery by Miller implied that abiogenesis of life on Earth is possible.

Gases like methane, ammonia and hydrogen were not only essential compounds for synthesis of organic matter in Miller’s experiments. They are also key ingredients to establishing a habitable environment on early Earth.

They have all been proposed as potential contributors, either directly as greenhouse gases or indirectly as amplifiers of other greenhouse gases, to warm up early Earth’s surface under the faint young sun.

Where did these gases come from?

A problem, though, is that these gases were not the primary components on early Earth’s surface in the first place. Instead, the dominant forms of carbon and nitrogen were carbon dioxide and dinitrogen.

That means the very first step toward making Earth habitable and generating the first life had to be inorganic reactions to turn carbon dioxide into methane and dinitrogen into ammonia, also known as abiotic carbon and nitrogen reduction reactions.

Where and how did these reduction reactions take place?

The world’s ocean floors contain abundant hydrothermal systems where cold seawater flows into deep oceanic crust and subsequently mixes with ascending magmatic fluids. The mixed hot fluids are emitted back through hydrothermal vents such as black smokers or white smokers.

Along this pathway, water and dissolved components can react with primary minerals in the oceanic crust to produce secondary minerals and other byproducts. Methane and dihydrogen, formed by mineral-catalyzed abiotic reduction reactions during this process, have been widely observed in the emitted hydrothermal fluids.

Therefore, underwater hydrothermal systems have been considered as the most likely incubator for habitable environment and the origin of life.

A brief overview of the role hydrothermal vents play in starting life on Earth. (TED-Ed)

Searching for evidence

Yet there still exists a missing piece in this picture: the abiotic reduction of dinitrogen has not been confirmed to occur in hydrothermal systems. Scientists have searched hard for evidence of this reaction, abiotic ammonia, but have had no luck so far.

The ammonia (mostly in its dissolved form, ammonium ion) that has been detected in hydrothermal fluids collected from active vent mouths turned out to be mainly biological and not abiotic in origin.

The relatively small amount of abiotic ammonium there might be can easily be concealed by the large amount of biological ammonium in seawater. It is impossible to avoid seawater contamination while collecting submarine hydrothermal fluid samples.

However, secondary minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids can lock some ammonium into their internal structures and protect it from being contaminated by shallow seawater and mixing with biological ammonium. Therefore, studying secondary minerals in the deep oceanic crust can better unravel the ammonium source and producing mechanism in the deep hydrothermal systems.

However, such samples are not easily to collect. The International Ocean Discovery Program has made tremendous efforts to drill deep into the oceanic crust to collect samples. Luckily, a set of secondary mineral samples were discovered in a 200-metre drill core from the South China Sea.

A missing piece of the puzzle

For our study, we looked into a specific chemical feature, namely nitrogen isotopes, for the ammonium locked in the hydrothermal minerals.

Nitrogen has two isotopes with atomic mass 14 and 15, respectively. Mineral-catalyzed abiotic dinitrogen reduction strongly prefers to use the one with an atomic mass of 14. That results in a unique nitrogen isotope signature in the ammonium it produces.

Our results are consistent with this isotopic signature. This demonstrates production of ammonia or ammonium by abiotic dinitrogen reduction in underwater hydrothermal systems.

This discovery adds a missing piece of puzzle to our theories about the origins of life on Earth. These underwater hydrothermal systems at the bottom of the ocean enabled the first-step reactions of all life-constituting elements on our planet.

Long Li receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Eating insects: A sustainable solution or an overhyped idea?

2026-01-18T16:27:36Z

Faced with exploding global demand for protein and the growing environmental impact of animal farming, insects are emerging as an attractive alternative: they are rich in nutrients, resource-efficient and have already been tested by researchers, businesses and chefs.

But behind all the hype, one question remains: is eating insects really a sustainable and safe solution for feeding the planet?

Today, global meat production is putting increasing pressure on natural resources. It requires large areas of agricultural land, generates massive greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to deforestation. In fact, meat production accounts for nearly 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

It occupies around 80 per cent of agricultural land and consumes significant amounts of water and food to feed livestock.

Yet protein remains essential to human health, which means that more sustainable alternative sources must be found.

In this context, insects appear to be a promising avenue for diversifying protein sources. Raising insects requires up to 12 times less food and 2,000 times less water than beef. In addition, most of their body mass is edible: nearly 80 per cent for a cricket, compared to only 40 per cent for a cow. This efficiency makes them a promising option for reducing our ecological footprint without compromising our nutritional needs.

An interesting nutritional profile

As far as nutrition goes, insects contain between 35 per cent and 70 per cent protein, depending on the species, as well as essential fatty acids, iron, zinc and B vitamins. Some even consider them to be a credible alternative to meat, particularly for combating malnutrition or optimizing nutritional intake.

However, not all species are equal. Mealworms, for example, offer a protein quality similar to legumes, but remain slightly inferior to soy or beef. Diet and breeding conditions also alter their protein content and especially their lipid content, particularly omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and micronutrients. In short, the nutritional composition of insects varies considerably from one species to another and from one farming method to another.

Caution is also required: some insects contain anti-nutritional substances, such as thiaminase, which can interfere with the absorption of vitamin B1. So their regular consumption requires rigorous control of the processing and the quality of the products.

Health risks that should not be ignored

Although insects have been consumed for thousands of years in several cultures — from Mexico to Congo, Thailand and Japan — their integration into larger-scale food systems is relatively recent. This raises questions about the safety and regulation of these products.

Microbiological risks are a major concern. Like any food of animal origin, insects can carry pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella spp. or E. coli.

Nonetheless, in a report by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that analyzed 51 samples of edible insects sold in the country, no contamination was detected. These results are encouraging, but researchers stress that caution is still needed, especially with regard to traceability and breeding conditions.

Another issue often overlooked is the risk of allergies. The proteins in certain insects, such as crickets and mealworms, are similar to those found in shellfish. This means that people who are allergic to shrimp or crab could have a similar reaction to insect-based products. For this reason, Health Canada recommends clear labelling to warn consumers.

Production with ecological consequences

The issue of biodiversity also deserves special attention. While controlled industrial farming presents risks comparable to those of other animal production methods, large-scale collection or production could have repercussions on ecosystems.

In many parts of the world, the consumption of wild insects is already part of local food traditions. An increase in global demand could intensify this exploitation, endangering certain species and the ecological balances they depend on.

Far from being a universal solution, entomophagy is, therefore, more of a complementary option that requires rigorous supervision and sustainable resource management. Like any food innovation, its development must be carried out with careful consideration of its long-term impacts, both on biodiversity and on the communities that depend on it.

Changing our eating habits

Beyond the technical and environmental aspects, adopting insects as part of our diets poses a major cultural challenge. In many western countries, the mere thought of eating an insect provokes disgust. Several companies are attempting to normalize insect consumption by incorporating them into processed products such as protein bars, flours, burgers and pasta made from cricket powder.

Studies show that gradual exposure in familiar forms can help overcome this psychological barrier. As a result, eating insects could become commonplace within a few decades, especially if environmental concerns continue to grow.

Edible insects are not just a culinary curiosity or a simple source of alternative protein: they are at the heart of a broader debate on the sustainability of our food systems. Their potential challenges the way we produce, consume and value food. How can we feed a growing global population without exacerbating climate crises, depleting natural resources or increasing health risks?

What if, beyond simply being nutritional substitutes, insects lead us to rethink our food models, while revealing the limits of our quest for quick fixes to deeply structural problems? This reflection reminds us that the transition to sustainable diets requires more than just a new ingredient: it calls for a profound transformation of our habits, policies and collective priorities.

Nina Klioueva received funding in the form of a Master's Research Scholarship for Professional Degree Holders - FRQ Regular Component, as well as a Canada Graduate Scholarship - Master's (CGS M) from CIHR.

Maude Perreault ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

Ontario’s proposed nuclear waste repository poses millennia-long ethical questions

2026-01-15T17:16:29Z

The heat produced by the radioactive waste strikes you when you enter the storage site of Ontario Power Generation at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, near the shore of Lake Huron in Ontario.

Massive white containers encase spent nuclear fuel, protecting me from the deadly radiation that emanates from them. The number of containers is impressive, and my guide explained this waste is stored on an interim basis, as they wait for a more permanent solution.

I visited the site in August 2023 as part of my research into the social acceptability of nuclear waste disposal and governance. The situation in Ontario is not unique, as radioactive waste from nuclear power plants poses management problems worldwide. It’s too dangerous to dispose of spent nuclear fuel in traditional landfills, as its radioactive emissions remain lethal for thousands of years.

To get rid of this waste, organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency believe that spent fuel could be buried in deep geological repositories. The Canadian government has plans for such a repository, and has delegated the task of building one to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) that’s funded by Canadian nuclear energy producers.

In 2024, NWMO selected an area in northwestern Ontario near the Township of Ignace and the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation as a potential site for a deep geological repository. Now, a federal review has begun bringing the project closer to potential reality.

Such repositories raise complex ethical questions around public safety, particularly given the millennia-long timescales of nuclear waste: How to address intergenerational issues for citizens who did not produce this waste but will inherit it? How to manage the potential dangers of these facilities amid short-term political cycles and changing public expectations?

Rethinking the cost-benefit calculus

While NWMO describes the deep geological repository as the safest way to protect the population and the environment, its current management plan does not extend beyond 160 years, a relatively short time frame in comparison with the lifespan of nuclear waste. This gap creates long-term public safety challenges, particularly regarding intergenerational ethics. There are specific issues that should be considered during the federal review.

NWMO argues that the deep geological repository will bring a wide range of benefits to Canadians through job creation and local investment. Based on this narrative, risk is assessed through a cost-benefit calculus that evaluates benefits over potential costs.

Academics working in nuclear contexts have, however, criticized the imbalance of this calculus, as it prioritizes semi-immediate economic benefits, like job creation, over the long-term potential impacts to future generations.

In many official documents, a disproportionate emphasis on short-term economic benefits is present over the potential dangers of long-term burial. When risks are discussed, they’re framed in optimistic language and argue that nuclear waste burial is safe, low risk, technically sound and consistent with best practices accepted around the world.

This doesn’t take into account the fact that the feasibility of a deep geological repository has not been proven empirically. For the federal review, discussions surrounding risks should receive an equal amount of independent coverage as those pertaining to benefits.

Intergenerational responsibilities and risks

After 160 years, the deep geological repository will be decommissioned and NWMO will submit an Abandonment License application, meaning the site will cease being looked after.

Yet nuclear waste can remain dangerous for thousands of years. The long lifespan of nuclear waste complicates social, economic and legal responsibility. While the communities of Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation have accepted the potential risks associated with a repository, future generations will not be able to decide what constitutes an acceptable risk.

Social scientists argue that an “acceptable” risk is not something universally shared, but a political process that evolves over time. The reasons communities cite to decide what risks are acceptable will change dramatically as they face new challenges. The same goes for the legal or financial responsibility surrounding the project over the centuries.

In the space of a few decades, northwestern Ontario has undergone significant municipal mergers that altered its governance. Present municipal boundaries might not be guarantees of accountability when millennia-old nuclear waste is buried underground. The very meaning of “responsibility” may also undergo significant changes.

NWMO is highly confident about the technical isolation of nuclear waste, while also stating that there’s a low risk for human intrusion. Scientists that I’ve spoken with supported this point, stating that a deep geological repository should not be located in an area where people might want to dig.

The area proposed for the Ontario repository was considered suitable because it does not contain significant raw materials, such as diamonds or oil. Still, there are many uncertainties regarding the types of resources people will seek in the future. It’s difficult to make plausible assumptions about what people might do centuries from now.

Communicating long-term hazards

Current governing plans around nuclear waste disposal have limited time frames which do not fully consider intergenerational public safety. (Unsplash)

When the repository is completed, NWMO anticipates a prolonged monitoring phase and decades of surveillance. But in the post-operation phase, there is no plan for communicating risks to generations of people centuries into the future. The long time frame of nuclear materials complicates the challenges of communicating hazards. To date, several attempts have surrounded the semiotics of nuclear risk; that is, the use of symbols and modes of communication to inform future generations.

For example, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan in New Mexico tried to use various messages to communicate the risk of burying nuclear waste. However, the lifespan of nuclear waste vastly exceeds the typical lifespan of any known human languages.

Some scientists even proposed a “ray cat solution.” The project proposed genetically engineering cats that could change color near radiation sources, and creating a culture that taught people to move away from an area if their cat changed colour. Such projects may seem outlandish, but they demonstrate the difficulties of developing pragmatic long-term ways of communicating risk.

Current governing plans around nuclear waste disposal have limited time frames that don’t fully consider intergenerational public safety. As the Canadian federal review for a repository goes forward, we should seriously consider these shortcomings and their potential impacts on our society. It is crucial to foster thinking about the long-term issues posed by highly toxic waste and the way it is stored, be it nuclear or not.

Maxime Polleri has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

How street vendors and waste pickers can help cities manage growth

2026-01-14T17:15:36Z

The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact recently renewed global commitments to sustainable and equitable urban food systems. The pact has been signed by 330 cities around the world that have pledged to improve food production and distribution and to reduce waste.

Cities are now home to 45 per cent of the world’s 8.2 billion people, and that figure is expected to rise to 68 per cent by 2050. As they grow, cities are becoming key to shaping a sustainable future. Across the world, urbanization affects how food is grown, distributed and consumed, and cities are primary drivers of change in food systems.

As the Committee on World Food Security reaffirmed in October 2025, without intentional policy, this growth will not fuel the needed transformation to keep food systems sustainable.

Street foods and vendors are an essential component of the urban foodscape, providing affordable nutrition and critical income for many city residents. However, vendors are frequently met with hostility from municipal authorities who cite traffic and public health concerns.

In addition, at least one-third of food produced globally spoils, ending up in landfills, and wasting valuable resources, energy and labour. Urban waste pickers can play a vital role in reducing waste.

Addressing these issues requires the political will and investment to change our food systems for the better and make them more sustainable into the future.

Street food vendors

Many cities around the world feature vibrant street food scenes that provide livelihoods for vendors and high-quality, varied and delicious food for their customers. Scholars and advocates have argued that street foods are an essential part of the urban food system and often a healthier alternative to highly processed fast foods.

However, tensions with municipal authorities can disrupt this foodscape. For example, in Bangkok, tens of thousands of vendors have been displaced due to a municipal drive to refurbish the city’s pavements.

Furthermore, there’s a recent controversial push to move toward Singapore-style hawker centres to ostensibly create order and improve hygiene.

In New York City, an organization called the Street Vendor Project aims to balance traffic and pedestrian safety with the need to maintain these vital urban services and livelihoods. The group was instrumental in advocating for the New York City Council’s repeal of misdemeanor criminal penalties for mobile food vendors in September 2025. Equitable policy and planning means supporting, rather than further marginalizing, food vendors.

Urban waste pickers

In many cities, waste pickers collect, sort and sell discarded materials like plastic, metal and paper for recycling or reuse. While waste pickers are more common in the cities of low and middle-income countries, they are also a feature of urban areas in wealthy countries.

Food loss and waste is responsible for eight to 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of this due to poor storage, poor supply chains, last-kilometre logistics, overly restrictive regulations and wasteful practices by wealthy consumers. A 2020 study estimated that nearly 60 per cent of all plastic collected for recycling was undertaken by informal waste pickers.

Much of this plastic is related to food and beverage packaging discarded in urban areas. The United Nations Environment Program recommends that the estimated 20 million waste pickers around the world become an integral part of municipal waste management.

Improved waste management, particularly in the cities of the Global South, requires significant investments in infrastructure. But waste management systems should not simply mimic the models of the Global North.

A review of approaches and outcomes around the world for integrating waste pickers into municipal waste management systems provided several recommendations. However, a barrier remains due to stigmatization of these livelihoods.

Nonetheless, a growing number of waste picker organizations — as well as a worldwide coalition — provides a glimmer of hope to have these unsung heroes of urban recycling recognized. Some initiatives include partnerships between waste pickers and Brazilian local governments, the Binners Project in Vancouver building on the United We Can depot, Les Valoristes in Montréal, the National Street Vendor Association of India and the Linis-Ganda initiative in Manila, which partners with educational institutions and industry. These examples demonstrate how integrating informal recyclers can manage waste and help create a more circular food economy.

As the world continues to urbanize, more of us will rely on the vital roles played by street vendors and waste pickers. Inclusive policy and planning to recognize the contributions of these two livelihoods is essential to achieving a sustainable urban food future for all.

Gisèle Yasmeen has consulted for the World Bank to produce background papers that have, in part, fed into this work with permission.

Julian Tayarah and Umme Salma do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Cyclone Senyar: Why hazards continue to turn into disasters in Indonesia

2026-01-11T13:17:09Z

Weeks after Cyclone Senyar made landfall in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, the province of Aceh continues to struggle. The cyclone passed through the Strait of Malacca in late November, bringing heavy rains and causing widespread flooding in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. More than 500 people were killed and 250,000 people displaced in Aceh alone.

The cyclone’s unusually high death toll and catastrophic impacts have been attributed to a range of factors, including warming ocean temperatures due to climate change, deforestation and other environmental changes, Aceh’s unique geographical and topographical setting and how rarely cyclones occur near the equator.

What’s missing from the discussion is the root cause of why Aceh was ill-prepared for the hazard. Like many other regions in the Global South, Aceh’s vulnerability can be traced back to colonialism, which created an inequitable distribution of power, wealth and resources. Post-colonial development continues to reinforce it.

The impact of Cyclone Senyar has drawn parallels to the 2004 Aceh tsunami that devastated the province and surrounding areas. Since then, disaster preparedness in Aceh has come a long way. Yet the aftermath of Senyar suggests that disaster preparedness efforts have not tackled Aceh’s underlying vulnerabilities.

Indonesia’s national meteorological agency gave multiple warnings of the hazard well in advance. But neither the national agency responsible for disaster management, the National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure, nor the Aceh Provincial Disaster Management Agency were able to translate warnings into effective action or effectively lead emergency response efforts. Such institutional failures are among the challenges that contribute to vulnerability in Aceh.

In our ongoing research among coastal communities in Aceh, we explore how their livelihoods have been impacted by external shocks, as well as the diverse ways they have adapted to navigate these stresses.

The colonial roots of Aceh’s vulnerability

Starting in the late 16th century, the Dutch colonial government established infrastructure and policies to facilitate resource extraction in Indonesia. The focus of European colonizers was on the eastern part of the archipelago to control the spice trade in the Maluku region. However, it was in Aceh that the Dutch spent the most resources to conquer.

The Dutch East India company opened the port of Kuala Langsa in 1907, in the same area where Cyclone Senyar made landfall. That was followed by large-scale investment in rubber and palm oil plantations. Colonialists supported top-down governance and implemented policies that gave lasting economic and political advantages to those who aligned themselves with the Dutch.

An example is the Ethische politiek (Ethical Policy); among other things, it provided educational opportunities to local elites with the aim of helping the Dutch lead the colony. Local elites were also given land that had previously been communal, to expand agriculture and exploit natural resources, creating divisions within the Acehnese.

Colonial rule also had a lasting impact on the natural environment: highly biodiverse forests were converted to monocrop plantations, ports were expanded to accommodate larger ships and both land and seas were exploited for resources.

Post-independence pressures

Post-independence governments have maintained the top-down institutions put in place by the Dutch. They have also emphasized a continued economic focus on extractive industries, such as pepper, copra and petroleum to fuel Indonesia’s rapid economic growth. These coupled together continue to have devastating impacts on the environment and on the livelihoods of the communities.

In the 1970s, communities in Kuala Langsa, a village in the city of Langsa along Aceh’s east coast, shifted their livelihoods to intensive tiger prawn aquaculture as part of the push to develop marine fisheries under then-president Suharto’s “New Order” political economy regime.

However, a viral disease outbreak led to the collapse of the tiger prawn industry in the early 1990s. Intensive prawn aquaculture significantly degraded the coastal mangrove forests and reduced water quality. That, in turn, undermined the viability of small-scale fisheries that local communities had traditionally relied on.

The conflict between the government and separatists in Aceh from 1976 to 2005 led to an influx of migrants to Kuala Langsa from other parts of the province, putting additional pressures on the environment.

The 2004 tsunami destroyed many mangrove forests along Langsa’s coastline, further negatively affecting the livelihoods of communities that depended on shrimp, crab and fish living in the mangroves.

Policy decisions increase vulnerability

The hazard that struck Langsa and other parts of Aceh did not turn into such a devastating disaster due to climatic and geophysical factors alone. Hazards turn into disasters due to decisions made by those in power that make people vulnerable.

Between 1990 and 2024, almost 160,000 hectares of land was deforested to make way for palm oil monoculture plantations under permits issued by the Ministry of Forestry. Land converted into monoculture plantations loses its capacity to absorb rainwater, turning torrential rain into runoff that can create landslides. The forest on which communities depended for fruits such as durian, mangoes, rambutan and medicinal plants were impacted, affecting local incomes and sources of food, as well as their local knowledge associated with them.

Aceh’s vulnerability stems from environmental degradation from rampant resource extraction, instability and displacement due to armed conflict, top-down, centralized decision-making by the government and weak institutions stemming from poor governance and corruption.

Measures to strengthen disaster preparedness in Aceh have not tackled the region’s underlying vulnerabilities. Oftentimes, projects meant to promote resilience and development do not address the factors and processes that decrease the vulnerability of the most marginalized.

Disaster contingency plans continue to focus on geological hazards instead of taking a multi-hazard approach. These plans have not been successful in strengthening preparedness of institutions responsible for reducing disaster risk.

As the fourth-most flood-prone region in Indonesia, local and provincial authorities in Aceh need to prepare for extreme weather events so future events like Cyclone Senyar do not wreak such havoc.

As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of storms, it is imperative that disaster risk reduction efforts centre on reducing vulnerability and social justice. Equitable distribution of wealth, power and resources can only be realized when local and Indigenous knowledge is acknowledged to help build sustainable communities.

Lisa Hiwasaki has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Haekal A. Haridhi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

What the New Year’s fire at a Swiss bar tells us about fire prevention

2026-01-06T14:31:42Z

In the early hours of Jan. 1, 2026, a fire ripped through Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, killing 40 people and injuring 116, many of them severely.

Investigators believe the blaze began when sparklers on champagne bottles were held too close to the ceiling, igniting interior materials. The investigation is ongoing, and it is premature to draw conclusions about individual actions or responsibility. But fires do not need villains to be instructive.

What matters is not the spark itself, but the system into which that spark was introduced.

Fire safety, as history keeps reminding us, is not about eliminating ignition. We will always cook, heat, wire, decorate, celebrate and repair. Fire prevention is about ensuring that when ignition happens, as it inevitably will, it does not propagate.

My research has focused on how disasters are prevented, and how warning signs are missed when systems drift or protections are taken for granted. Fire safety is one area I have examined, and it reveals recurring patterns that are relevant to understanding this tragedy.

Fire as a contagion

For one thing, fire behaves less like an accident and more like a virus. It spreads through available fuel, follows paths of least resistance and accelerates when conditions are favourable. The historian Stephen Pyne describes fire as a “contagion of combustion.”

Like disease prevention, fire safety has never relied on a single safeguard. Instead, it depends on layers of them: materials that resist ignition, detection systems that identify problems early, compartmentalization that limits spread, suppression systems that slow or extinguish flames and trained humans who know how to respond when technology falters. When fires become destructive, it is almost always because multiple layers fail at once.

The Reason Model and fire prevention

The Reason Model, often visualized as slices of Swiss cheese, helps explain why disasters occur even in systems designed to be safe.

Each slice represents a layer of defence. Each slice also contains holes, imperfections, gaps and latent weaknesses. Most of the time, those holes do not line up, but when they do, harm passes through.

Latent conditions for fire exist everywhere: dry materials, electrical wiring, human fatigue, budget constraints, informal workarounds. These conditions are usually harmless until they align. The spark is not the cause of the disaster. It is merely the moment when all the holes line up.

Celebration and risk perception

The New Year’s fire at Le Constellation bar occurred in a celebratory setting. That matters, because celebration changes how we perceive risk.

Celebratory spaces often bring together the very conditions fire exploits: crowds, alcohol, decorations, reduced vigilance, temporary installation and informal rule-bending “just for the night.” When those conditions align with flammable materials or limited escape access, the margin for error shrinks dramatically.

Latent conditions are not evenly distributed across time. They cluster during moments of exception — holidays, renovations, special events when normal routines are suspended.

Notre-Dame: when multiple failures occur

When the Notre-Dame Cathedral nearly collapsed in a fire in April 2019, it shocked the world. The building was not neglected. It had a sophisticated fire detection system with more than 160 sensors. Fire wardens patrolled the attic three times daily. A firefighter was permanently stationed on site. The Paris Fire Brigade had trained for exactly such a scenario.

And yet, the fire still spread.

An alarm triggered at 6:18 p.m., but a misinterpreted code sent a guard to the wrong attic. A fatigued technician, covering a double shift, struggled to escalate the alert. The system detected the fire, but it did not automatically summon the fire department. By the time the correct location was identified, 30 minutes had passed. The roof timbers, made of centuries old dry oak, were already burning uncontrollably.

Notre-Dame did not burn because no one cared. It burned because multiple failures aligned: ambiguous alarm codes, human fatigue, delayed escalation and architectural features that lacked compartmentalization or sprinklers. A fire protection engineer later remarked that the only surprise was that the disaster had not happened sooner.

Rarity breeds complacency

One of the paradoxes of modern fire safety is that it works so well it becomes invisible. Between 1980 and 2024, the rate of reported fires per 1,000 people in the United States fell by more than 60 per cent, according to long-term data compiled by the National Fire Protection Association. Sprinklers, fire doors, smoke detectors, compartmentalization and education campaigns have made large fires rare.

But that rarity can breed complacency.

When a system prevents disaster hundreds of times, it becomes tempting to ignore precautions. Doors are left open. Materials are substituted. Alarms are misunderstood. Redundancies are trimmed.

The holes in the safety system widen quietly. Then, eventually, they all line up.

Learning from tragedies

The Swiss fire had its own specific causes, and those details matter. But the broader lesson is neither new nor obscure. Fires do not escalate only because people are reckless. They escalate because systems drift away from the conditions under which they were safe.

Fire safety is an engineering and organizational project. It requires constant attention to small details, especially when nothing seems wrong. It demands respect for fire and its destructive potential.

We have learned, repeatedly, how to prevent fires from spreading. Every major advance, from fire doors to sprinklers to automatic shutoff systems, came from studying failures where containment broke down.

The tragedy is not that we do not know what works. It is that, over time, we forget to be afraid.

Brodie Ramin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A regime change in Venezuela could have grim consequences for Canada’s oil sector

2026-01-05T17:43:49Z

Following Nicolás Maduro’s capture in Caracas by United States military forces, active planning for political transition in Venezuela has intensified in Washington, D.C.

For the U.S., the prize is the prospect of reviving one of the world’s largest proven oil reserves and reshaping global energy markets in its favour.

But the ripple effects would extend well beyond Caracas and the U.S. A Venezuelan oil revival could also subtly increase American leverage over Canada — particularly Alberta — through its impact on oil prices, investment flows and longstanding debates about Canada’s energy future.

At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive. Canada is traditionally a close American ally and its largest foreign oil supplier. Yet Canada and Venezuela largely compete in the same heavy-oil regional and global markets, and shifts in supply from Canada to Venezuela would widely reverberate across the Canadian economy and political landscape.

Heavy crude, lower prices and U.S. refineries

If U.S. sanctions on Venezuela are lifted and the country’s oil sector is partially revived, even a modest increase in production could have outsized effects on prices — especially for heavy crude. American Gulf Coast refineries are specifically configured to process heavy crude, historically sourced from Venezuela, Mexico and Canada’s oilsands.

More Venezuelan barrels on the market would increase competition for these refineries and possibly those in the American Midwest. This could push down the price premium currently enjoyed by Canadian heavy crude, such as Western Canadian Select.

For U.S. refiners, cheaper crude is good news. For Canadian producers, it could squeeze margins already vulnerable to global price volatility and high production costs.

In this sense, Venezuela’s return would not simply add supply; it would challenge Canada’s niche in the U.S. oil import market.

Investment trade-offs and the oilsands dilemma

Oil markets are not just about barrels — they’re about capital. Investors make choices about where to place long-term bets, and those choices are increasingly shaped by climate policies, energy transition expectations and geopolitical risk.

A perceived opening in Venezuela could redirect some international investments away from Alberta’s oilsands. Even if Venezuela remains risky, the idea of accessing vast reserves at lower costs may appeal to investors looking for short-term gains in a declining oil market.

This shift could further undermine already fragile (and climate-threatening) prospects for new oilsands expansion and make additional pipeline projects to Canada’s West Coast even harder to justify.

If global capital sees fewer long-term returns in high-cost, high-carbon oil, Alberta may find itself competing not just with renewables, but with other oil producers closer to U.S. markets. This could play in favour of an additional pipeline to Canada’s West Coast to reach China, which may not see so many shipments from Venezuela, especially if the U.S. pressures Caracas to privilege its own market and companies.

Economic pressure and the politics of separatism

Weaker oil revenues could also reshape Alberta politics. Much of the province’s separatist rhetoric has historically rested on the idea that Ottawa “takes” Alberta’s oil wealth through federal transfers and environmental regulations.

If oil revenues decline structurally due to lower prices and reduced investment, the economic foundation of this grievance weakens. A less oil-dependent Alberta may have fewer material incentives to push for sovereignty, even if political frustrations remain.

This doesn’t mean discontent would disappear. But it suggests that long-term changes in global energy markets could quietly reduce the appeal of resource-based nationalism in Canada’s West.

The urgent case for diversification

For Alberta and Canada more broadly, the lesson is clear: economic diversification is no longer optional; it’s an urgent necessity. Betting on sustained high oil prices has always been risky; betting on them in a world of messy energy transition is increasingly untenable.

This means doubling down on alternative export revenues, from clean technologies and critical minerals to advanced manufacturing, agri-food and knowledge-based services. It also means investing in workforce transitions, regional innovation and infrastructure that supports economic resilience beyond oil.

The prospect of Venezuela’s return to oil markets underscores why Canada cannot rely indefinitely on being the “safe” oil supplier to the United States.

A Venezuelan oil boom remains unlikely

All of this, however, rests on a big “if.” A rapid and large-scale revival of Venezuela’s oil sector is improbable. Years of mismanagement, underinvestment and sanctions have left infrastructure in poor condition.

Production costs are high, oil quality is low and the carbon footprint of Venezuelan heavy crude is significant, a growing liability in a carbon-constrained world.

What’s more, U.S. oil company interests don’t always align with American energy security and geopolitical policy objectives, and expectations of an oil surplus in the coming decades dampen enthusiasm for massive new investments.

Political uncertainty remains acute, and even American firms like Chevron operate under fragile arrangements that could be reversed. Though it’s unlikely, a more revolutionary, post-American intervention government in Venezuela might even seek retribution against the U.S. and other foreign companies seen as complicit in past pressure campaigns.

In short, Venezuela’s oil is vast, but monetizing it at scale is another matter.

Lessons from past regime change efforts

History offers sobering lessons about past efforts to bring about regime change.

In Iraq, Iran and Libya, attempts to reshape energy sectors through regime change or coercive pressure often backfired. Production disruptions, political instability and nationalist backlash frequently undermined both investor confidence and geopolitical objectives.

There are some reasons to assume Venezuela would be different, including ongoing negotiations between U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and the regime in Caracas, limited economic and military options for the former Maduro regime and a growing consensus among major powers that they can gain from a return to imperialist “spheres of influence.”

But energy markets reward stability more than ideology, and regime change rarely delivers it quickly.

Who else loses from lower oil prices?

Finally, it’s worth noting that lower oil prices would not hurt Canada alone. In the U.S., the first casualties would likely be some oil producers, particularly smaller shale firms with high debt and thin margins. While a few large American oil companies might benefit from cheaper acquisitions and refinery gains through access to cheaper Venezuelan supply, many smaller U.S. producers could suffer.

This complicates the notion that the U.S. would unambiguously “win” in the event of a Venezuelan oil revival. Energy geopolitics creates winners and losers on all sides.

In the end, Venezuela’s political future may matter less for Canada because of what happens in Caracas and more because it highlights a deeper reality: oil no longer offers the geopolitical and fiscal certainty it once did. For Canada, adapting to that reality, rather than betting against it, may be the most strategic move of all.

Philippe Le Billon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

As the Milan Winter Olympics approach, what are the environmental expectations?

2026-01-05T15:06:25Z

Italy is preparing to host the 25th Winter Olympic Games next month — from Feb. 6 to the 22nd, followed by the Paralympic Games from March 6 to the 15th.

After the excitement of the Paris Summer Games in 2024, which had sustainability at the heart of its planning strategy, the Milan Winter Games will be decisive in determining whether there’s truly a major shift happening within the Olympic movement.

Will the organizing committee be able to keep its green promises?

As a doctoral student in political science at the University of Montréal, my work focuses on both climate communication and environmental policy development, including in the sports sector.

Winter Games in the climate era

It should be noted that few sectors are as dependent on weather conditions as outdoor sports.

The climate crisis is making it increasingly difficult to practise sports, especially winter sports. The cancellation of the Alpine Ski World Cup in Mont Tremblant last year due to lack of snow is just one striking example of what’s happening.

According to a study by the University of Waterloo, only 10 former Olympic sites will remain viable for hosting future Winter Games by the year 2050. By 2080, that number could drop to just six.

At the same time, hosting mega sporting events such as the Olympics generates a considerable carbon and environmental footprint.

Although generally smaller than the Summer Games, the Winter Games have been the subject of many environmental controversies, particularly in relation to the destruction of preserved nature reserves.

For the most recent Games in Beijing in 2022, more than 20,000 ancient trees were felled to make room for an expanded ski area and the construction of infrastructure, including access roads, car parks and lodging facilities.

High-level sport is therefore caught in a conflict of both being affected by and contributing to global warming.

Agendas set new standards

In light of these challenges, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has adopted several policies in recent years to reduce the footprint of the Games, such as the Olympic Agenda 2020, with strategic objectives that were reiterated in 2021 with the Olympic Agenda 20+5.

After Paris 2024, the Milan-Cortina Games will be the first Winter Games to have to comply with these requirements.

Two of the goals are to promote sustainable Games and to make the Games a springboard for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

To this end, the IOC now requires host cities to reduce their CO₂ emissions and promote the concept of legacy to encourage the reuse or converstion of existing venues when the event is over.

Milan-Cortina on the green track

Fortunately, it looks like the Italian organizing committee has decided to make the fight against global warming a central part of its strategic plan. From the outset, it implemented a rigorous process for assessing its greenhouse gas emissions.

In its second report on its sustainability strategy, published in September 2025, the committee also presented several measures to further reduce the carbon footprint of the event.

The flagship initiatives include a commitment to use 100 per cent renewable energy and limit food waste by redistributing any surplus food to local charities. In an effort to encourage the circular economy, more than 20,000 pieces of equipment from the Paris Games were repurchased.

In terms of infrastructure, the focus is once again on reusing existing facilities and using temporary structures that will be dismantled after the Games, as they were in Paris. In total, nearly 90 per cent of the venues will fall into this category.

The few new permanent buildings being built will become training centres for Italy’s future elite athletes, or be converted for other uses. Like the one in Paris, the new Olympic Village in Milan will become a university residence, for example.

The plan also includes adaptation measures. With global warming, natural snowfall is becoming increasingly rare and the use of artificial snow is becoming the new norm to offer athletes optimal performance conditions. The organizing committee has therefore decided to modernize its artificial snow production systems to respond more effectively to needs in the event of abnormally warm temperatures this winter.

An ambitious plan, but not flawless

While the plan looks reassuring on paper, its implementation still presents a number of challenges.

Beyond the chronic delays in the progress of the work and colossal budget overruns (spending so far is at least double the initial budget), the construction of new infrastructure in the mountains necessarily has a significant environmental footprint.

It’s also worth noting that the Milan-Cortina Games will take place at venues spread across four areas in northern Italy: Milan, Cortina, Valtellina and Val di Fiemme. Together, these venues cover an area of more than 20,000 square kilometres, making these the most widely dispersed Games in history. As a result, there will be not one but six resort sites for athletes.

This undoubtedly explains why most of the budget is allocated to the development of public transport, particularly the rail network, in order to facilitate travel between the various venues. Sports infrastructure, meanwhile, accounts for less than a quarter of the total budget.

In addition, some of the construction projects have been controversial. The brand new bobsled track in Cortina, for example, has been heavily criticized because it required the felling of several hundred trees. Although these numbers are far lower than those in Beijing, the fact remains that hosting the Games leads to the disruption of local biodiversity.

In terms of temporary facilities, the committee has pledged to restore ecosystems and, more broadly, offset all residual emissions, in particular by buying carbon credits. However, pessimists will argue that what has been destroyed can never be fully restored, and that no financial or ecological compensation can truly erase the impact.

In terms of adaptation, it should be noted that the production of artificial snow, even when it’s optimized, uses a lot of water and energy, in addition to degrading soil quality. So this solution, which is supposed to mitigate the effects of global warming, paradoxically ends up contributing to it, highlighting the importance of better thinking about adaptation solutions.

Finally, residents fear gentrification. In Milan, the construction of the Olympic Village led to the eviction of residents, and the rents planned once the site is converted into student accommodation are considered too high. From a social justice perspective, therefore, it’s worth asking who will truly benefit from the new facilities in the longer term.

A genuine turning point?

Overall, the Milan-Cortina strategy shows a real evolution in the way we think about the sustainability of the Winter Games. The organizers have learned from previous Games and are now proposing even more innovative approaches.

Although the anticipated greenhouse gas emissions are lower than in Beijing or in Pyeongchang, those for Milan-Cortina are still estimated at nearly one million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. In this context, hopefully the committee will succeed in implementing all the measures planned to offset as much as possible.

Furthermore, the next Winter Games will take place in the French Alps. The brand new organizing committee for the 2030 Games is no doubt closely monitoring the choices that were made on the Italian side, aware of the growing climate challenges that await it.

In the meantime, we can count on the athletes and para-athletes, who, as I write these lines, are already hard at work getting ready to dazzle us once again, if only for a moment.

Alizée Pillod is affiliated with the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Internationales de l'Université de Montréal (CERIUM), the Centre de recherche sur les Politiques et le Développement Social (CPDS) and the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC). Her research is funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FRQ). Alizée has also been awarded the Departmental Recruitment Scholarship in Public Policy (2021), the Rosdev Scholarship for Excellence in Environmental Studies (2023), and the Scholarship for Excellence in Public Policy from the Maison des Affaires Publiques et Internationales (2025). She has previously collaborated with the Ouranos consortium, the Quebec Ministry of the Environment, and the INSPQ.

Reducing household waste poses serious challenges in residential high-rises

2025-12-23T16:04:07Z

Like much of the western world, Canada is facing a crisis in waste disposal as landfills reach their capacity. In Ontario, a live countdown gives municipal landfills just eight more years before they are full. We urgently need to reduce our garbage.

The scramble for a solution has governments considering and even approving questionable alternatives like incineration and opening new or dormant landfills in rural areas.

Colleagues and I conducted a study between 2022 and 2024 with a non-profit service provider called the St. James Town Community Corner in Toronto, and found an overlooked opportunity for greater waste diversion among renters in multi-residential buildings.

Our research team included Trisha Einmann, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Guelph, Alaa Mohamed, a client engagement worker with The Neighbourhood Organization and Aravind Joseph, a former co-ordinator with The Neighbourhood Organization.

St.James Town is a vibrant, densely populated neighbourhood with a high proportion of immigrants, racialized people and those with lower-than-average household incomes. At its core are 19 rental towers of 14 to 30 storeys that house about 18,500 people.

Policymakers must bring multi-residential buildings fully into the effort to divert household waste from landfill, so that communities like St. James Town can be part of the solution.

Residential building waste

There is a glaring need to increase the amount of waste diverted from landfills in Ontario, where the institutional commercial and industrial sector generates 60 per cent of the province’s waste, yet the sector’s diversion rate is only 15 per cent.

The residential sector also merits attention. Here, the overall diversion rate of 50 per cent is highly uneven between multi-residential buildings and single family dwellings.

While nearly 47 per cent of Torontonians reside in multi-residential buildings of five storeys or more, they divert just 27 per cent of their waste from landfills, compared to 61 per cent for single-family homes.

Our research

In our study, we focused on two St. James Town high-rises: a social housing building and a privately owned rental building.

We conducted a resident survey, focus groups and interviews with experts and authorities to understand residents’ values, practices and challenges related to household waste.

The vast majority of our 103 survey respondents — 93 per cent — agreed or strongly agreed that sorting waste is very important; 91 per cent agreed that it protects the environment; and 78 per cent said it is part of their daily routine. These figures were virtually the same for private and social-housing renters, and were higher for immigrants than those born in Canada.

Just over half of our respondents, however, found it inconvenient or difficult to sort waste, and the challenges they identified confirmed the spatial and infrastructural hurdles documented elsewhere.

In high-rises like those in St. James Town, which were built before waste separation programs were commonplace, the typical disposal option is the single, narrow garbage chute on each floor and tall bins in an outdoor enclosure for bulky waste or recyclables. Apartments typically lack space to store sorted waste.

Landlords are off the hook

Another barrier to better waste management was the lack of managerial willingness to work with concerned residents, a crucial ingredient in achieving greater waste diversion in multi-residential buildings.

In the private building, the fundamental problem was the absence of managerial commitment to waste diversion, making it impossible for residents to divert waste there.

This is rooted in past municipal decisions and current provincial policy. City service obligates the separate collection of all major waste types. In 2009, the City of Toronto allowed private multi-residential buildings to choose private instead of municipal waste services so that they could avoid the expense and hassle of collecting organics.

Multi-residential buildings that contract with private haulers (40 per cent in Toronto) become subject to the regulation governing waste in the commercial and industrial sector, which omits organics and calls for “reasonable efforts” to participate in recycling.

This weak wording and minimal enforcement by the province allows the hollowest of gestures toward recycling on the part of landlords.

In the privately owned building in our study, there were outdoor blue bins, but no separate bins for non-recyclable trash, and the blue bins were observed to contain all manner of waste. Unsurprisingly, we saw the hauling company combining blue bin and compactor content together, though the property manager claimed otherwise.

Participants at both buildings complained of an information vacuum. In the private building, 63 per cent of survey respondents reported disposing of organics in the trash chute at least some of the time; for recyclables this was 28 per cent.

The fact that people were sorting organics before putting them in the trash chute suggests they believed it will be properly sorted by the waste management company after collection. This belief was also shared by one of the maintenance staff at the building who deals with waste.

This echoes a tendency observed elsewhere, and likely reflects a misguided belief that the waste will eventually be sorted at a facility.

Many respondents told us they aren’t being properly directed on where to put any of the different forms of waste, including hazardous items. For example, in the private building, there was nothing to tell them that there’s no organics collection, or what can and cannot be recycled.

Misplaced or unsorted waste reflects the lack of information residents receive. Without stronger regulations, landlords have little incentive to invest in waste management to keep recycling separate from trash.

Waste management and housing conditions

With a savings-above-all approach to waste management, the practices of some can make surroundings unpleasant for others. In disposal areas and other common spaces, residents frequently complained of the smell and of cockroaches from organic waste piled up by the chutes, or bedbugs from furniture and other items left in hallways.

Some were reluctant to have visitors. Some also worried about batteries in the garbage, a justified concern given that 71 per cent of survey participants across both buildings sometimes dispose of batteries in the trash or blue bins.

Tenants are often fearful to take such concerns to landlords or government.

There are, of course, other major contributors to landfill waste that we should not overlook: the over-production of non-recyclable plastics and under-regulation of the industrial, commercial and institutional sector.

But policymakers must also recognize the challenges facing renters in multi-residential buildings. Failing to address these will result in more waste ending up in ever-growing landfills.

Lisa Kowalchuk receives funding from the University of Guelph Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada institutional grant.

Fossil-fuel propaganda is stalling climate action. Here’s what we can do about it

2025-12-22T17:41:44Z

2025 has been a year of setbacks for Canada’s climate policy. In November, the federal and Alberta governments signed a memorandum of understanding to remove strict climate policies in the province and to support the construction of a new pipeline from Alberta to northern British Columbia.

The government also cancelled the federal carbon tax this year, while ending funding for home energy-efficiency programs and delaying sales mandates for zero-emission vehicles.

These steps have pushed Canada even further from meeting its climate goals, which were already too weak to limit global warming to 1.5 C, as outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement.

What’s behind these changes and why is Canadian progress on tackling climate change so slow? Put simply, it’s because climate action threatens the profits of the fossil-fuel industry, and they’ve spent the past 50 years doing everything they can to prevent it.

While the industry has used many tools in this endeavour, perhaps its most effective has been its propaganda machine — a global network of foundations, think tanks and lobbyists known as the Climate Change Counter Movement.

In our newly published study, we review the academic and non-academic literature to map how this movement has used its influence to delay climate action in Canada.

The Climate Change Counter Movement

For years, the movement’s main strategy was to deny that climate change was happening or to claim that humans weren’t causing it. However, as summers got hotter and wildfires, floods and hurricanes became increasingly common, this narrative became less convincing.

The propaganda machine then adopted a new tactic. Rather than denying climate science, it exploited legitimate debates about how climate policy should be designed to sow confusion, cause political deadlock and suggest policies that don’t threaten their profits.

Three examples of these new narratives are particularly widespread in Canada: fossil-fuel solutionism (that fossil fuels can be part of efforts to tackle climate change), “whataboutism” and appeals to well-being.

Together, they uphold the claim that fossil fuels are a necessary and unavoidable part of everyday life and that Canadian fossil fuels are less carbon-heavy than those produced in the rest of the world, meaning that supporting the Canadian fossil-fuel industry would supposedly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

These arguments are logically flawed — fossil fuels are incompatible with a world below 1.5 C warming. They’re also based on a falsehood, because oil from the Canadian oilsands is roughly 21 per cent more polluting than conventional crude oil.

Another common argument is that fossil fuels are essential to the Canadian economy, but this narrative overstates the costs of transitioning away from fossil fuels and understates the enormous costs of allowing climate change to continue unmitigated.

While these narratives do originate from elite members of the Climate Change Counter Movement, our case study found evidence that they’re already being repeated by members of the general public and might even explain why many Canadians falsely believe that a clean energy future could include fossil fuels.

How can we tackle false fossil-fuel narratives?

1. Know ourselves

If we want to challenge false narratives about fossil fuels, we should begin by reflecting on how the Climate Change Counter Movement might have affected us already. Fossil-fuel propaganda is everywhere, and it’s hard to avoid internalizing some of it. It’s also important to consider whether challenging the fossil-fuel industry might expose us to physical or financial danger before taking action.

2. Know our enemy

Next, it’s important for us to learn as much as we can about the Climate Change Counter Movement. Who are its members? What propaganda are they spreading, and where are they spreading it? Which narratives work and which don’t? Answering these questions will be the work of academics, journalists and citizen researchers, who can take cues from efforts like the Corporate Mapping Project in their approach.

3. Target them directly

Once we have that information, we can use it to hold the fossil-fuel industry legally (and thus financially) accountable for their role in delaying climate action. Examples of these kinds of lawsuits are appearing all over the world, including in Canada where the Sue Big Oil campaign is uniting B.C. municipalities in suing fossil-fuel companies for their role in the escalating costs of climate change.

These campaigns not only discourage future meddling, but also move funds directly from the fossil-fuel industry to the communities they’ve affected, allowing them to build their own defences against future attacks.

4. Heal our wounds

However, even if lawsuits successfully discourage future activity by the Climate Change Counter Movement, we’ll still need to undo the damage they’ve already done to our society. Their efforts have left the public polarized, untrusting of governments, confused about fact versus fiction and feeling hopeless. We must reinvest in our communities and heal these societal wounds. Climate assemblies, an approach to government which emphasizes public engagement, offer a promising pathway towards many of these goals.

5. Pick our battles

It’s also vital for governments to continue advancing climate action, even when public appetites have been damaged by propaganda campaigns. They can do this by strengthening policies that are relatively unknown, yet still effective and popular.

These policies have not been exposed to the same levels of propaganda as others like the carbon tax and are therefore still popular, while also being effective enough to account for the majority of emission reductions in Canada, the United Kingdom and California.

6. Challenge the structural roots of their power

Finally, we need to remove the root of the fossil-fuel industry’s economic and cultural power. Within our current economic system, this means redirecting financial flows away from the industry by removing fossil-fuel subsidies and implementing stringent compulsory policies to realign markets with climate goals.

The Climate Change Counter Movement is several steps ahead of us, but it hasn’t won yet. If climate change is to be stopped, we have to stop ignoring the elephant in the room and unite against the fossil-fuel industry.

Samuel Lloyd received funding from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions for the research project that inspired the research in this article. He wrote that paper while receiving funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Katya Rhodes receives funding from Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

The climate insurance gap is widening, and it’s leaving marginalized Canadians behind

2025-12-21T13:57:34Z

Every year, extreme weather events wreak havoc across Canada, disrupting the lives of tens of thousands. Financial losses from these events have surged, surpassing $7 billion in 2024, due in part to climate change, asset accumulation and more people living in high-risk areas.

Evidence from Canada, the United States and Europe shows that weather-related disasters aren’t experienced equally. The people hardest hit are often those with the fewest resources to cope.

Lower-income and marginalized populations face greater exposure, have fewer resources to prepare or recover and incur a higher proportion of losses not covered by insurance.

Even if they are insured, many people have difficulty covering the deductible because they lack emergency savings. This means damage is not repaired, people live in unsafe or unhealthy conditions and the financial and personal risk of future events is increased.

Insurance helps households recover and can prevent them from falling — or falling deeper — into poverty after a disaster. But across Canada, insurance is becoming costlier and, in some places, harder to get. Between 2019 and 2023, average home insurance premiums rose by 21 per cent overall. For lower-income Canadians, that increase was 40 per cent.

A widening protection gap

Canada’s growing insurance protection gap is a serious concern, and it’s widening at a time when weather-related disasters are becoming more frequent and more severe.

When households are uninsured, losses can strain household budgets and leave people unable to meet their basic needs. As extreme weather escalates, so does the likelihood that more families will find themselves unable to recover.

Affordability is the primary driver of the protection gap, but it is not the only one. Many Canadians do not understand the benefits of insurance, or underestimate the probability and cost of suffering a loss.

Accessibility to insurance is also a challenge, especially in remote areas where it is usually purchased in person. While the growth of digital purchasing channels helps, it is not a solution for those without reliable internet or sufficient digital skills.

Finally, the market itself does not always meet the needs of low-income or otherwise marginalized groups. There is a lack of insurance products designed for these groups, leaving many without the protection they need.

Strengthening community resilience

Better insurance options, stronger investments in mitigation and better support for consumers can help reduce inequities and strengthen resilience.

Community-level mitigation is a good starting point. Land-use planning that steers development away from high-risk areas can prevent future losses. Programs like FireSmart, which reduces wildfire losses, and infrastructure designed for a changing climate also help limit damage as severe weather becomes more frequent.

National assessments show that making housing more resilient reduces exposure for lower-income and marginalized households that are more likely to live in older or poorly maintained homes, putting them at greater risk.

While major retrofits can be costly, even small upgrades such as improving drainage, installing backwater valves or fire-resistant materials can help prevent damage. Many municipalities provide targeted subsidies and incentive programs that support these upgrades, particularly for households facing greater financial constraints.

Making hazard information easier to find and understand can also help ensure no one is left behind when disasters strike. Many Canadians lack clear information about the hazards they face and how to prepare for them. Some residents, including newcomers and seniors, may face barriers in accessing or acting upon available information.

Finally, community supports can further strengthen resilience. People with strong social ties and access to community organizations recover more quickly after disasters. Programs that build local networks and support neighbourhood groups can help accomplish this at a relatively low cost.

Closing the protection gap

A critical step in reducing the unequal impacts of weather-related hazards is closing Canada’s insurance protection gap. Microinsurance is one promising solution, and these simplified, low-cost policies can provide basic protection at a fraction of the cost for households that cannot afford traditional coverage.

Embedded tenant insurance — automatically included when renters sign a lease — is another approach that ensures basic coverage.

Digital tools, such as mobile-friendly sign-up platforms and plain-language policy explanations, can reduce barriers for those who struggle with technology.

Public support for income-tested premium subsidies or credits can bring essential coverage within reach for low-income households, while community-based catastrophe insurance — where local governments or community groups arrange coverage on behalf of residents — offers another option.

While Canadians can’t stop extreme weather, we can work together to prevent it from worsening inequality. Increasing awareness, reducing losses, closing insurance gaps and building resilience are key to protecting those at greatest risk.

Derek Cook is the Director of the Canadian Poverty Institute that receives funding from The Co-operators Insurance Company. The Canadian Poverty Institute is also a partner with The Resilience Institute on a collaborative project that is funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Company (CMHC).

Mary Kelly has received funding from Finance Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is also on the board of directors of Heartland Mutual Insurance Company.

Anne E. Kleffner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Climate misinformation is becoming a national security threat. Canada isn’t ready for it

2025-12-21T13:57:20Z

When a crisis strikes, rumours and conspiracy theories often spread faster than emergency officials can respond and issue corrections.

In Canada, social media posts have falsely claimed wildfires were intentionally set, that evacuation orders were government overreach or that smoke maps were being manipulated. In several communities, people delayed leaving because they were unsure which information to trust.

This wasn’t just online noise. It directly shaped how Canadians responded to real danger. When misinformation delays evacuations, fragments compliance or undermines confidence in official warnings, it reduces the state’s ability to protect lives and critical infrastructure.

At that point, misinformation is no longer merely a communications problem, but a national security risk. Emergency response systems depend on public trust to function. When that trust erodes, response capacity weakens and preventable harm increases.

Canada is entering an era where climate misinformation is becoming a public-safety threat. As wildfires, floods and droughts grow more frequent, emergency systems rely on one fragile assumption: that people believe the information they receive. When that assumption fails, the entire chain of crisis communication begins to break down. We are already seeing early signs of that failure.

This dynamic extends far beyond acute disasters. It also affects long-running climate policy and adaptation efforts. When trust in institutions erodes and misinformation becomes easier to absorb than scientific evidence, public support for proactive climate action collapses.

Recent research by colleagues and me on how people perceive droughts shows that members of the public often rely on lived experiences, memories, identity and social and institutional cues — such as environmental concerns, perceived familiarity and trust — to decide whether they are experiencing a drought, even when official information suggests otherwise.

These complex cognitive dynamics create predictable vulnerabilities. Evidence from Canada and abroad documents how false narratives during climate emergencies reduce protective behaviour, amplify confusion and weaken institutional authority.

Tackling misinformation

Canada has invested billions of dollars in physical resiliency, firefighting capacity, flood resiliency and energy reliability. In addition, the Canadian government also recently joined the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change to investigate false narratives and strengthen response capacity.

These are much needed steps in the right direction. But Canada still approaches misinformation as secondary rather than a key component of climate-risk management.

That leaves responsibility for effective messaging fragmented across public safety, environment, emergency management and digital policy, with no single entity accountable for monitoring, anticipating or responding to information threats during crises. The cost of this fragmentation is slower response, weaker co-ordination and greater risk to public safety.

Canada also continues to rely heavily on outdated communication mediums like radio, TV and static government websites, while climate misinformation is optimized for the social-media environment. False content often circulates quickly online digitally, with emotional resonance and repetition giving it an advantage over verified information.

Research on misinformation dynamics shows how platforms systematically amplify sensational claims and how false claims travel farther and faster than verified updates.

Governments typically attempt to correct misinformation during emergencies when emotions are high, timelines are compressed and false narratives are already circulating. By then, correction is reactive and often ineffective.

Trust cannot be built in the middle of a crisis. It is long-term public infrastructure that must be maintained through transparency, consistency and modern communication systems before disasters occur.

Proactive preparedness

Canada needs to shift from reactive correction to proactive preparedness. With wildfire season only months ahead, this is the window when preparation matters most. Waiting for the next crisis to expose the same weaknesses is not resilience, but repetition.

We cannot afford another round of reacting under pressure and then reflecting afterwards on steps that should have been taken earlier. That shift requires systemic planning:

Proactive public preparedness: Federal and provincial emergency agencies should treat public understanding of alerts, evacuation systems and climate risks as a standing responsibility, not an emergency add-on. This information must be communicated well before disaster strikes, through the platforms people actually use, with clear expectations about where authoritative information will come from.
Institutional co-ordination: Responsiblity for tackling climate misinformation currently falls between departments. A federal-provincial co-ordination mechanism, linked to emergency management rather than political communications, would allow early detection of misinformation patterns and faster response, just as meteorological or hydrological risks are monitored today.
Partnerships with trusted messengers: Community leaders, educators, health professionals and local organizations often have more credibility than institutions during crises. These relationships should be formalized in emergency planning, not improvised under pressure. During recent wildfires, community-run pages and volunteers were among the most effective at countering false claims.

We cannot eliminate every rumour or every bit of misinformation. But without strengthening public trust and information integrity as core components of climate infrastructure, emergencies will become harder to manage and more dangerous.

Climate resilience is not only about physical systems. It is also about whether people believe the warnings meant to protect them. Canada’s long-term security depends on taking that reality seriously.

Sadaf Mehrabi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Who benefits from ‘nation-building’ projects like Ksi Lisims?

2025-12-17T16:34:30Z

When the Canadian government added the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG terminal on Nisg̱a’a territory in northwest British Columbia to its new list of fast-tracked “nation-building” projects this fall, it resurrected an idea many British Columbians thought had quietly faded away: that liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports are central to the economic future of both B.C. and Canada.

A decade ago, then-B.C. premier Christy Clark promised up to 20 LNG export plants, 100,000 jobs and a sovereign-wealth “prosperity fund,” turning B.C. LNG into one of the most polarizing issues in the province between 2011 and 2018.

My research on this period reveals how competing coalitions of industry, governments and environmental groups struggled over whether B.C. LNG represented a climate solution or a risky fossil-fuel lock-in.

In reality, most of those projects were shelved; only one major export terminal in Kitimat has now entered its first phase of operation.

In recent years, public debate over LNG has largely slipped from view. Media analysis of Canadian climate coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, shows a sharp drop in climate stories in 2020 compared to 2019 as COVID-19 dominated the news agenda. Ksi Lisims brings those debates back with a twist. It is promoted as an Indigenous-led project and as a pillar of a more “diversified,” resilient Canadian economy.

However, the rhetoric around Ksi Lisims as a “nation-building” project masks unresolved questions about who actually benefits, who bears the risks and how such projects fit within a rapidly changing global LNG market.

Ksi Lisims LNG is frequently described as an Indigenous-led project proposed “in partnership” by the Nisg̱a’a Nation, Rockies LNG and Western LNG and an example of what reconciliation can look like. Those aspirations deserve to be taken seriously. Yet, public documents tell a more complex story about who ultimately controls the project and where profits will flow.

What is resource nationalism?

As American political geographers Natalie Koch and Tom Perreault describe, resource nationalism is when “the people of a given country, rather than private corporations or foreign entities, should benefit from the resources of a territorially defined state.”

Scholars have used the related concept of petro-nationalism to describe how fossil fuel industries and their allies frame oil, gas and bitumen extraction as a national public good, casting critics as “anti-Canadian” or “foreign to the body politic.”

A key tactic in this tactic is what Canadian communications scholar Shane Gunster and his colleagues call “symbolic nationalization:” a “thoroughly capitalist enterprise organized to profit private corporations and shareholders” is presented as if it were a public enterprise serving citizens and the common good.

The language surrounding Ksi Lisims LNG fits this pattern. In a September news release announcing the project’s environmental certificate, the B.C. government called Ksi Lisims “Indigenous-led.” Premier David Eby emphasized that there has “never been a more critical time to diversify our economy and reduce reliance on the U.S.,” framing the project as part of “the next chapter of a stronger, more resilient Canada.”

Federal messaging has similarly bundled Ksi Lisims into a package of “nation-building” megaprojects intended to reshape Canada’s economy and trade patterns. Such narratives are classic markers of resource nationalism: the project is cast as serving the people and the national interest, even as its ownership and risk profile are far more complicated.

Who owns and controls Ksi Lisims?

The Nisg̱a’a leadership has framed the project as a vehicle for “sustainable economic self-determination” and as an example of what reconciliation can look like: “a modern Treaty Nation moving from the sidelines of our economy” to leading a major project.

Filings from B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office show that Ksi Lisims LNG is a “wholly owned” subsidiary of Texas-based company Western LNG.

Under the partnership agreement, the Nisg̱a’a Nation and Calgary-based company Rockies LNG sit on a steering committee until construction begins; only then do they become limited partners with specified governance rights. In other words, the project’s governance structure grants Nisg̱a’a important influence and potential revenues, but it does not resemble a nationalized public utility.

Moreover, Indigenous support is not unanimous. Along the route of the planned Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline that would supply Ksi Lisims, several First Nations — including the Gitanyow — have opposed the project and launched legal challenges. This raises a crucial question for any “nation-building” story: which nation, and whose consent, are we talking about?

A crowded global LNG market

The economic case for Ksi Lisims is being made at a moment when the global LNG market is undergoing rapid change — and not in ways that favour new, high-cost projects in British Columbia.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that over 300 billion cubic metres of additional annual export capacity will become operational between 2025 and 2030 from projects currently under construction, primarily led by the United States and Qatar.

A 2024 study by the think tank Carbon Tracker, commissioned by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation, stated that B.C. is a late entrant to an LNG market “dominated by lower-cost competitors.”

The study found that all four B.C. terminals still awaiting final investment decisions — including Ksi Lisims — sit high on the global cost curve. B.C. projects are, on average, about 26 per cent more expensive than competing projects in countries like Qatar, the United States and Mozambique.

Carbon Tracker also notes that the world’s existing LNG capacity is sufficient to meet projected demand under all three of the IEA’s main scenarios, with no new LNG export projects needed to satisfy demand through 2040.

This fragile economic base for Ksi Lisims complicates the notion that LNG expansion is a reliable source of public revenue. It highlights that long-term LNG export contracts — often touted as a way to lock in stable prices — cannot fully shield against global market fluctuations.

Rethinking “nation-building”

Ksi Lisims LNG has been presented as a reconciliation project for the Nisg̱a’a Nation, a diversification tool for Canada’s economy and a clean fuel solution for Asian buyers. But the project’s ownership structure concentrates control and profits in foreign-backed corporate hands, even as its public branding emphasizes Indigenous leadership.

Regional First Nations remain divided, highlighting an unresolved debate over consent and the meaning of “the people” in resource nationalist narratives. B.C. is entering a crowded, increasingly risky LNG market late and at a cost disadvantage.

If we take climate commitments and economic justice seriously, nation-building in the 2020s should mean something different: investing in infrastructure and industries that reduce emissions rather than lock them in, and supporting Indigenous and local communities in ways that do not depend on highly volatile fossil fuel markets.

Public discussions about the Ksi Lisims LNG project offer an opportunity to question whether the government’s approach to “nation-building” still makes sense in a warming and changing world.

Sibo Chen receives funding from Toronto Metropolitan University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is affiliated with International Environmental Communication Association and the Environment, Science, and Risk Communication Section of International Association for Media and Communication Research.

Canada’s North is warming from the ground up, and our infrastructure isn’t ready

2025-12-16T18:19:15Z

On a winter day in Northern Canada, the cold feels absolute. Snow squeaks underfoot and rivers lie silent beneath thick ice. Yet beneath that familiar surface, the ground is quietly accumulating heat.

That hidden warming is destabilizing the frozen foundation on which northern communities depend. Permafrost — the permanently frozen ground that supports homes, roads, airports and fuel tanks across much of Northern Canada — is warming as a result of climate change. The North has warmed roughly three times faster than the global average, a well-documented effect of Arctic amplification — the process causing the Arctic to warm much faster than the global average.

Permafrost does not fail suddenly. Instead, it responds slowly and cumulatively, storing the heat of warm summers year after year. Over time, that heat resurfaces in visible ways: tilted buildings, cracked foundations, slumping roads and buckling runways. Long-term borehole measurements across Northern Canada confirm that permafrost temperatures continue to rise even in places where the ground surface still refreezes each winter.

Communities in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon are already living with these consequences. As permafrost degrades, it undermines housing and transportation corridors and disrupts mobility and land-based activities. The impacts are uneven, with Indigenous communities often facing the greatest exposure and paying the highest costs.

A damaged access road or unstable fuel tank is not just an engineering inconvenience; it can interrupt supply chains, emergency access and daily life. What these patterns reveal is that permafrost thaw is not simply a surface problem. It’s the result of long-term, uneven warming below ground that reshapes soils, water, ice and infrastructure together, often accelerating damage well after climate warming begins.

Permafrost failure

A map showing areas of Canada with continuous permafrost (purple), discontinuous permafrost (blue) and sporadic permafrost (green). (Natural Resources Canada)

Monitoring and numerical modelling point to a consistent conclusion: permafrost degradation is controlled less by individual warm years than by the long-term balance of heat entering and leaving the ground. Accumulated energy, combined with the large amount of heat required to thaw ice-rich soils, explains why damage often accelerates long after warming begins.

Summer warmth penetrates deeper into the ground than winter cold can fully remove. Snow further reshapes this balance by insulating the ground, especially as a warmer, more moisture-laden atmosphere delivers heavier snow in cold regions, earlier autumn cover, longer spring persistence and uneven accumulation around infrastructure, all of which limit winter heat loss.

Buildings, foundations and buried infrastructure add their own steady sources of warmth. Each input may seem modest on its own. Over decades, their combined effect becomes decisive.

For much of the past century, northern engineering has been designed to keep heat out of frozen ground. Practices such as elevating structures on piles, minimizing ground disturbance and installing passive cooling systems like thermosyphons have proven effective under historically cold conditions. But these approaches depend on long, reliably cold winters. As winters shorten and insulating snow arrives earlier, the benefits of those practices are becoming harder to sustain.

From blocking heat to managing it

Engineers in Canada have already demonstrated ways to deliberately influence subsurface temperatures. Along northern highways and embankments, ventilated shoulders and air-convection systems have been used to increase winter heat loss from permafrost foundations, measurably cooling the ground beneath key infrastructure. These projects show that underground temperatures can be deliberately managed, not just endured.

More recently, work in the Yukon has shown that sloped thermosyphons installed beneath highway embankments can lower permafrost temperatures and raise the permafrost table, stabilizing ice-rich ground that would otherwise continue to settle. These systems are effective but only as long as winters remain cold enough to drive heat extraction.

Geothermal engineering offers a more adaptable approach. In southern Canada and elsewhere, some buildings already use foundation piles that serve two purposes: structural support and heat exchange. Rather than allowing waste heat to leak passively into surrounding soil, these systems circulate fluid to move heat in or out of the ground as conditions require.

In northern permafrost regions, the same principle could be applied differently. Instead of allowing heat from buildings, pipelines or power systems to migrate downward into thaw-sensitive soils, foundation piles could intercept some of that energy and return it to buildings during winter, when heat demand is highest. In summer, operation would focus on limiting new heat input, preserving seasonal cooling gains.

This is not about turning permafrost into an energy resource. It is about preventing uncontrolled heat leakage, sustaining the very foundations that hold northern infrastructure in place.

Protecting what holds communities together

The implications extend far beyond individual buildings. Roads, airstrips, fuel storage facilities, water treatment plants, power lines and communication systems across Northern Canada all depend on stable ground. Many also introduce persistent sources of warmth through traffic, buried utilities and electrical infrastructure.

As thaw progresses, roads deform, fuel tanks shift and runways become unsafe. A settling airport runway, for example, can ground flights that deliver food, fuel and medical supplies for weeks at a time.

For infrastructure expected to remain in service for 50 years or more, managing subsurface temperature may matter as much as structural design itself. When these systems fail, the effects ripple outward, increasing isolation, raising costs and limiting access to essential services.

Indigenous partnership is essential

The impacts of permafrost thaw are not shared equally. Indigenous communities are often the most exposed, facing disproportionate damage to housing and infrastructure that underpins mobility, food security and access to health and education services.

Many northern communities also remain heavily dependent on diesel for heat and electricity, locking in energy systems that add persistent heat to the ground and raise the long-term cost of maintaining infrastructure.

Any approach to geothermal or ground-temperature management must therefore be developed in genuine partnership with Indigenous governments and residents. Engineering solutions that stabilize the ground while reducing fuel dependence will only succeed if they align with local priorities and support long-term community self-determination.

None of this replaces the need to rapidly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. No technology can preserve all permafrost under unchecked warming. But in Northern Canada, adaptation is no longer optional.

Research shows that long before damage becomes visible, heat accumulates underground, weakening soils and reshaping landscapes. This is where infrastructure can play a central role, by influencing how heat enters, moves throughout and leaves the ground.

Canada now faces a choice: it can continue building as if frozen ground were static, or it can design for permafrost as what it is: a sensitive thermal system with a long memory. The heat accumulated below ground over decades reflects past decisions. But how much heat we add next, and how carefully we manage it, is a choice.

Mohammadamin Ahmadfard receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Mitacs Inc. for his postdoctoral research at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Ibrahim Ghalayini receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Mitacs, and has also been the recipient of academic scholarships in support of his research at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Seth Dworkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Milder winters, more parasites: Are moose at risk from winter ticks?

2025-12-15T20:46:44Z

As climate change profoundly alters ecosystems in North America, a small parasite is wreaking havoc: the winter tick. This tick, now more prevalent due to milder environmental conditions, is severely affecting the winter survival of young moose in eastern Canada.

Climate change is allowing species such as the winter tick — an external parasite that feeds on the blood of large deer — to spread to new regions. Once rarer in eastern Canada, the tick is now well established there and is causing high mortality, especially among young moose.

The winter tick completes its entire life cycle by infesting a single host. In addition to moose, it can be found on other deer species, such as white-tailed deer and caribou, on which it has little effect.

Tracking young moose

Tick larvae are found in the layer of dead leaves on the ground during the summer. In the autumn, they search for a host to attach to as it passes by. Once they are on the host, they feed on its blood to develop into adults. Adults then mate on the host.

Towards the end of winter, female ticks consume the greatest amount of blood for reproduction. Once engorged with blood, the females detach themselves from the host and lay their eggs in the plant litter on the ground.

Our research team is working to understand the links between winter ticks, moose and environmental conditions in order to better predict how these relationships will evolve based on anticipated climate conditions. Our approach involved capturing and tracking young moose in five populations in areas ranging from southern New Brunswick to north of the St. Lawrence River.

We focused our efforts on moose aged 8 to 13 months whose low fat reserves, fast metabolism and high tick burden make them more vulnerable.

Ticks, moose: Recent co-existence

During each of the three years of our study (2020, 2022 and 2023), we captured about 20 young moose in each of the five populations studied. In addition to fitting each moose with a GPS collar, we reduced the tick load (or number) of half of the individuals using acaricides (a type of pesticide specifically designed to kill mites and ticks).

This allowed us to compare the behaviour and winter survival of animals who live in the same environment but have varying degrees of infestation. The end of winter is a critical period for moose survival due to the depletion of their energy reserves. This is also the time when ticks consume the greatest amount of blood and when their effects on the condition and survival of moose are the most evident.

Our experience with a total of 280 calves allowed us to determine that the winter tick was responsible for the majority of the 67 winter deaths recorded and that most of these deaths would not have occurred in the absence of ticks.

Moose treated with an acaricide at capture, and therefore with low infestation levels, had a mortality risk approximately 94 per cent lower (nine deaths out of 135 moose) than untreated moose with natural tick loads (58 deaths out of 145).

In addition, the tick load at capture increased the variation in blood indicators in untreated moose. The risk of mortality was also higher in regions where wolves, the moose’s main predator, were present, while the size of moose at capture reduced the risk of mortality. Finally, the survival rate of young males was generally lower than that of females of the same age.

Moose are more affected by winter ticks than other large deer species. This is because ticks and moose have only recently begun to co-exist. The northward expansion of the parasite, facilitated by climate change, has created spring conditions that are more conducive to its reproduction.

The fact that this cohabitation is so recent has meant that moose have not had enough time to develop mechanisms to get rid of the parasite. Other species, such as white-tailed deer, have cohabited with ticks for longer and have developed behaviours to get rid of them before they’re weakened.

Better planning for better management

Nevertheless, the long-term effect of climate change on ticks remains uncertain. On one hand, earlier snowmelt and later snowfall favour the survival of ticks and increase their chances of finding a host.

These two conditions therefore increase the likelihood that ticks will find a host and reproduce. But hot, dry summers like the summer of 2025 are harmful to ticks, as low humidity reduces the survival rate of their eggs.

There are limited management measures available to reduce the abundance of winter ticks. Since ticks must infest moose in order to reproduce, the abundance of the two species is closely linked. Therefore, reducing moose population density is one avenue to consider in problematic areas to limit the spread of ticks. Alternatively, forest management aimed at modifying soil temperature and humidity could also influence tick survival and abundance.

Our ongoing work aims to understand how forest structure influences the presence of ticks and to identify management practices that could limit their survival. We are also developing a model to predict tick infestations based on various environmental factors. These models will make it possible to better predict the impact of infestations on moose and adjust the way we manage forests and moose populations.

Steeve Côté is a full professor in the Department of Biology at Laval University's Faculty of Science and Engineering. He heads Caribou Ungava and is a member of the Centre for Northern Studies. He has received research funding from several government agencies in partnership with industry.

Christian Dussault is a member of Quebec's Ministry of the Environment, Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks. His research is partly funded by the Government of Quebec.

Jean-Pierre Tremblay is a full professor in the Department of Biology at Laval University's Faculty of Science and Engineering. He is a member of the the Centre for Forest Research and the Centre for Northern Studies. He has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from industry partners, para-governmental organizations and non-profit organizations.

Julien H. Richard is a member of the Centre for Northern Studies and the Centre for Forest Research. His salary is fully covered by research funding from several government agencies in partnership with industry.

The rise of sinkholes: How to spot the risks before disaster strikes

2025-12-14T13:03:46Z

You trust the road beneath your tires. But what if that trust is misplaced? Sinkholes are increasingly turning ordinary streets into danger zones. And the cost of ignoring them is skyrocketing.

Each year, sinkholes swallow roads, homes and businesses around the world, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Kenya, South Africa and the United States.

They disrupt daily life, contaminate water supplies and cause significant damage to buildings and structures — often with devastating economic impact in economically disadvantaged regions. Repairs can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. With government budgets already stretched thin, it is critically important to prevent rather than fix sinkholes.

What causes sinkholes?

Sinkholes are sometimes mistaken for potholes, but they are far more dangerous.

Potholes are surface nuisances that form on the surface due to wear and tear and freeze-thaw cycles. Sinkholes, meanwhile, start deep underground. They form when water dissolves rocks like limestone and gypsum or when underground soils are eroded by water, creating hidden cavities.

Leaks from damaged pipes or concentrated rainwater runoff can trigger this process, as seen recently in downtown Toronto.

These cavities grow silently until the surface collapses, sometimes swallowing entire streets. Human activities like construction and mining, and natural events such as earthquakes, can accelerate their formation.

Loose, sandy soils and fast-moving water make the ground even more vulnerable. When collapse happens, the results can be catastrophic.

Climate change and aging infrastructure

Extreme weather events — heavy rains, droughts and freeze-thaw cycles — put stress on underground pipes, making them susceptible to damage that releases water into the ground.

Climate change worsens this by lowering water tables during droughts, causing cracks in soils and weakening binding strength, making the ground weaker and more likely to collapse.

Aging underground infrastructure compounds the problem: old pipes fail more easily releasing water into the ground. Both climate change and aging infrastructure can explain why sinkholes are appearing more frequently around the world.

Can we predict sinkholes?

To build resilience against sinkholes forming in the ground, it’s imperative to be able to predict sinkholes. A comprehensive understanding of soil properties in locations of importance is required to assess the potential for sinkhole formation and develop predictive models and early warning systems.

Surveys and geological inspections have been used to map the risk of sinkhole formation in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, where sinkholes are prevalent.

Technologies like satellite-based remote sensing and subsurface-deformation sensing techniques, like distributed fibre optic sensing, can be used to identify existing underground cavities and decipher areas of low density where sinkholes could occur in the future.

Tools used to monitor water table level can also be useful to predict future sinkholes. Damage detection sensors installed in underground water infrastructure can provide early warnings before flows from water mains result in sinkholes.

Preventing sinkholes before they happen

Cities can act now to take steps to prevent sinkholes before they happen. Rainwater runoff should be redirected into existing natural water channels to avoid pooling in high-risk areas.

Loose soils can be compacted to make them more stable and, in large projects where a sinkhole could have huge economic implications, replacing weak material with stronger fill may be necessary.

Engineers can also reinforce soils with geosynthetics and seal underground drainage channels with grout or concrete to prevent erosion and sinkhole formation. These measures cost far less than repairing catastrophic damage.

A call to action

The cost of sinkholes to economic activities and property are enormous.

Sinkholes are not just costly inconveniences, they are growing threat to commercial activities, livelihood and property. With climate change, sinkholes are becoming more frequent and will worsen with huge implications for now and in the future.

Research is needed to understand the impact of extreme weather events on accelerated sinkhole formation so we can build sinkhole-resilient roads and infrastructure and avoid disasters that will happen if we fail to act.

Governments need to invest in the development of predictive tools and sinkhole prevention strategies by providing research funding and support for scaleable technologies emanating from research on sinkholes. Supporting preventive measures will help minimize overall costs since prevention is a lot cheaper than repairs.

Peter Adesina does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Fast-tracking without foresight: Canada’s risky approach to major projects

2025-12-11T21:01:30Z

Over the summer, the Canadian government announced that it’s setting up a Major Projects Office to identify and fast-track projects deemed to be in the national interest. The projects under consideration are spread across Canada and focus on mining, power generation and port expansions.

But each update to the list throws a spotlight on a persistent gap in Canada’s planning processes. The federal government has signalled it wants to see these projects move quickly — but without a clear way to help ensure they proceed without sacrificing the climate resilience, biodiversity or community trust that Canadians also value.

For example, the government has signalled interest in expanding the Port of Churchill, Man., with new shipping, road, rail and energy infrastructure to support expanded Atlantic access for Prairie industries.

These facilities would introduce industrial activity into Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems that have seen little prior disturbance and are already stressed by rapid climate change. The siting and design choices will be critical — raising questions about how early ecological risks are being weighed.

What Canada needs alongside its list of major projects is a principled, transparent sequence of steps that governs how those projects are planned and assessed.

Without such a strategy, the focus centres on pushing the project through. And planners and policymakers fail to consider those early, fundamental questions about ecological risk, or whether the location and design make sense in the first place.

Adopting a well-established mitigation hierarchy, as outlined in our recent report, can help Canada avoid the tangled and dysfunctional outcomes we see again and again in current planning and assessment processes.

In this context, mitigation refers to the full set of tools available to deal with environmental impacts, applied in a clear sequence or hierarchy: first avoiding impacts where possible, then minimizing those that remain, then repairing damage on site, and only as a last resort compensating for residual losses elsewhere.

Step 1: Avoid harm with early-stage planning

Too often planners focus only on reducing impacts after basic design decisions are made. This leaves decision-makers boxed into weaker options than if they had first asked what could be avoided — and it can be far costlier as late-stage fixes mean redesigns, deeper ecological damage and heightened conflict.

Effective planning requires backing up and taking in the big picture. What comes into view is a sweep of globally important, largely intact ecosystems — places that anchor our climate, support communities and sustain wildlife and their movements.

That means the first step in any sensible hierarchy is to steer development away from places like sensitive peatlands, areas important for biodiversity, cultural keystone places and headwaters that sustain vital watersheds.

Early-stage planning enables the most important questions to be asked: Is the proposed option the best means of meeting the need, or do lower-cost or less damaging alternatives exist? Are projected ecological, climate and community impacts supported by evidence of commensurate economic and social outcomes?

Answering these questions well depends on strong baseline information about ecosystems and communities — something too often missing at the outset, causing delays while data is gathered.

Governments can begin closing this gap by strengthening the evidence base needed to inform projects before they advance. This includes support for sustained regional ecological monitoring, Indigenous and community knowledge programs and fuller use of strategic and regional impact assessments. All of these measures can identify cumulative effects and landscape-level priorities and provide shared information for planning across entire regions.

Delivering on the Liberal commitment to “map Canada’s carbon and biodiversity-rich ecological landscapes … to enable a more holistic ecosystem approach to conservation, carbon accounting, and project development” would substantially advance and improve early-stage planning. Integrating existing data held by public agencies, private proponents and consultants would further clarify environmental strengths and vulnerabilities.

Step 2: Minimize harm that cannot be avoided

Only after fully considering ways to avoid impacts should the focus shift to minimizing unavoidable damage. This is where design and operational choices matter: adjusting scale, routing, timing and methods to reduce a project’s footprint and its effects.

In ecologically intact regions — places where human pressures have not yet reached levels that compromise core ecological functions — minimization also means confronting growth-inducing impacts head-on by limiting new access, managing roads and corridors and regulating the pace and scale of development to prevent cascading cumulative effects.

Done properly, minimization protects ecological function and reduces long-term environmental, social, and financial liabilities for proponents.

Step 3: Remediate to make impacts temporary

Once all feasible steps for minimization have been taken, it becomes appropriate to move on to onsite remediation — rendering unavoidable impacts temporary through progressive reclamation, revegetation and decommissioning.

Prioritizing remediation in already stressed landscapes reduces cumulative effects, restores ecological function and builds trust by demonstrating recovery during the life of a project, not decades later.

Step 4: Offsetting is the last tool, not the first

The final step in the mitigation hierarchy is offsetting — the idea of restoring or protecting habitat elsewhere to compensate for what is lost to development. In theory, this promises no net loss, or even a net gain.

In reality, it’s the riskiest and least reliable form of mitigation, which is why it must be treated as a last resort. When offsetting is used in isolation, long after a project’s design is locked in, it becomes a poor substitute for the harder, but more valuable, work of avoiding and minimizing impacts at the outset.

As we stress in our report, that kind of sequencing failure matters. Once decisions are made and footprints fixed, ecological losses can no longer be undone, and offsets are expected to carry a burden they cannot realistically bear.

Offsetting should therefore function as a backstop — not a shortcut. Yet, it is frequently looked to as if it were the first tool in the box rather than the last.

A unified federal policy framework

Deploying the mitigation hierarchy is a technically simple approach to project planning, and it can make a substantial difference in getting projects built without unnecessary delays.

It requires a planning mindset open to alternatives and a willingness to invest early in understanding ecosystems and community needs. The hierarchy also aligns with Indigenous perspectives that view natural systems as interconnected, offering pathways for more meaningful engagement.

There is nothing new about this approach. The mitigation hierarchy has guided major-project planning and financing in other countries for decades and appears — albeit inconsistently — across several federal policies. But in this moment of renewed ambition for “nation-building” projects, Canada has an opportunity to bring coherence and discipline to the management of environmental and social impacts.

This is why we are calling for a unified federal policy framework, so that the mitigation hierarchy is applied consistently across federally supported projects. A clear hierarchy — applied early, consistently and transparently — would make decisions stronger, projects more credible and our commitments to biodiversity, climate, and Indigenous rights more than words on paper.

Justina C. Ray is President and Senior Scientist of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Canada and Adjunct Professor at both University of Toronto and Trent University. Funding sources to WCS Canada can be viewed through annual reports, available at https://www.wcscanada.org/About-Us/Annual-Reports.aspx.

Dave Poulton's work on this project was in part supported by funding from the Policy Dialogue program of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.

Why Mark Carney’s pipeline deal with Alberta puts the Canadian federation in jeopardy

2025-12-10T13:03:01Z

The recently struck memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta is a high-stakes strategy that risks deepening already deep divides in Canadian politics.

While the MOU touches on a number of issues, at its heart is a shared vision for a new pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia’s protected northern coast.

In effect, the deal offers a quid pro quo: Ottawa agrees to relax a range of federal environmental regulations — including a ban on tanker traffic in B.C.’s north — and to support a pipeline in exchange for a commitment from Alberta to eventually increase the price of carbon on industrial emissions in the province to $130 a tonne.

It’s a vision negotiated without the involvement of either the B.C. government or the Indigenous Peoples affected by the plan. While the agreement calls for consultations with both groups, they are relegated to the status of secondary partners, with concerns to be addressed in the execution of the plan outlined by Ottawa and Alberta.

A policy solution for an identity issue

The deal is clearly meant to bridge the gap between populist voters centred in the Prairie provinces and the rest of the country. But both the content and the process risks widening that gap, even as it deepens divisions elsewhere in the country.

Simply put, Prime Minister Mark Carney is trying to find a policy solution to an identity problem, and doing so by picking sides rather than neutrally facilitating agreement.

It’s part of the polarized, populist identity in Alberta, in particular, to oppose Ottawa and Liberal governments. In fact, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith referred to the MOU in front of the United Conservative Party (UCP) convention, she was roundly booed. Rather than being hailed as champion who had achieved valuable policy concessions, she was greeted as a traitor to the cause.

Given the rude reception, it’s not surprising that in recent days Alberta has sought ways to limit its environmental commitments.

Playing favourites in the federation

Over the longer term, the agreement risks legitimizing the narrative of “Alberta aggrieved” by treating it as a distinct, sovereign jurisdiction entitled to special treatment.

In fact, the trappings and language of the agreement seem to reinforce the idea that “Alberta” is a natural negotiating partner with “Canada” rather than part of Canada.

The MOU’s signing ceremony in Calgary — not the provincial capital of Edmonton or Ottawa — bore all the hallmarks of international treaty-making, complete with flags and a formal text in both official languages. The symbolism reinforced the image of the deal as a kind of grand bargain between Ottawa and oil country.

While the federal government often strikes deals with provincial governments, this situation is quite different. It’s a deal only with Alberta but it primarily involves British Columbia. The agreement therefore elevates Alberta to the level of a quasi-sovereign jurisdiction to be treated as an equal with Canada. B.C., site of any future hypothetical pipeline terminals, has been rendered a deal-taker, not a deal-maker.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the federation is supposed to work. Just because the federal government has ultimate jurisdiction doesn’t mean other regions don’t get a say. It’s hard to imagine the federal government striking a deal with Ontario about what should happen in Québec without Québec’s involvement.

B.C. fury

B.C. Premier David Eby was accordingly furious with the federal government’s approach before the deal was announced.

Since then, while pointing out weaknesses in the deal, the NDP premier has also been at pains to show his willingness to work with Alberta on workarounds, including an expanded Transmountain pipeline or another pipeline that would leave the oil tanker moratorium in place on B.C’.s northern coast.

In leaving Eby out of the conversation, the federal Liberals have alienated a natural ally in their pursuit of economic development, forcing the premier to defend B.C.’s status within the federation, the rights of the province’s Indigenous communities and the province’s protected northern coast and Great Bear Rainforest.

Constitutional obligations to consult

Even more telling is the united reaction of First Nations. The Assembly of First Nations has unanimously voted in favour of a motion calling for the MOU to be scrapped. In fact, the federal government may have put itself in legal jeopardy over its failure to consult prior to the MOU.

At some point, it will likely have to explain in court how it could be serious about consulting in good faith with Indigenous Peoples in accordance with its obligations under Section 35 of the Constitution Act when the MOU gives the appearance of approving the project in principle before such conversations even begin.

Offering ownership stakes to Indigenous groups in a project devised without their involvement is not consultation. Simply put, unless governments can show they’re open to amending their plans in light of information they receive during consultations, they risk falling short of their obligations.

Cracks in the Liberal coalition

While polls suggest a majority of Canadians support the idea of a pipeline so far, the Liberals’ own coalition shows some signs of fraying.

Former environment minister Steven Guilbeault’s resignation from cabinet over the deal, along with the resignations of multiple environmental advisers to the Liberal government, suggest the party’s reputation for environmental progress has taken a hit given the slow and fuzzy approach to climate action outlined in the MOU.

Other federal parties sense an opportunity. The Bloc Québecois has strongly denounced the deal and has offered to support B.C. in its campaign to defend the province’s autonomy. The move underscores the sensitivities that remain in Québec around issues of provincial rights.

Even more tellingly, federal Conservatives, perhaps initially dismayed by a deal uniting federal Liberals and Alberta Conservatives, are now putting a motion before the House of Commons asking it to endorse the government’s position on the MOU and make good on its commitments. The Liberals, for their part, have vowed to vote against the motion, arguing that it only endorses part of the MOU.

In effect, the Conservatives are seeking to turn the government’s own MOU into a wedge issue against it. The Conservatives will likely continue to press the issue going forward given how the idea of a pipeline at any cost unites Conservatives and divide Liberals. Liberal MPs in B.C. and Québec, in particular, will also likely feel torn between loyalty to the party and deference to the views of constituents opposed to the deal.

In short, a pipeline intended to unify threatens to throw divisions into even sharper relief — even within the Liberal Party itself.

Stewart Prest does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.