Articles, Op-Eds, Letters to the Editor

A statistic frequently cited (including recently in this newspaper) by those who argue that Canadians should neither reduce their own use of fossil fuels nor stop exporting fossil fuels that are then burned elsewhere is that Canada is only responsible for 1.4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  Their argument is that the remaining 98.6% of emissions would continue unabated, so that humanity is doomed anyway and there is no obligation on Canadians to do anything to avert that outcome.

This argument is what the British would call “dodgy”.

Since Canada only has 0.5% of the world’s population, it doesn’t take much thought to realize that our being responsible for 1.4% of climate-changing emissions means that we are polluting at a rate that is almost three times the global per capita average.  And it only takes seconds to do an Internet search that shows that Canada is the 13th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases among the world’s 195 countries, despite our relatively small population.  Given that, it might seem obvious that Canadians have a much greater obligation than people in other countries to eliminate fossil fuels rather than a lesser obligation.  So why don’t some people think so?

By way of comparison, consider the situation in September of 1939.  Like today, Canadians only made up 0.5% of the world’s population, and at that time Canada had only ten thousand full-time military personnel, so it would have been just as easy then, as now, to ask “why should Canadians bother” to get involved in a struggle to which we could arguably only make a small contribution.  Then, as now, there were those who thought that Canada should refrain from taking any action, and their views had prevailed throughout the 1930s, despite events such as the conquest of Ethiopia, the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the signing of the Tripartite Pact, and widespread antisemitic violence.  Prime Minister King had even sent Neville Chamberlain a congratulatory telegram upon the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938.

When the need for action finally became undeniable, however, most Canadians did not doubt that Canada and Canadians had a responsibility to contribute.  By 1943, 494,00 Canadian men and women had shown their commitment by volunteering to serve in uniform and Canada’s contribution to the war effort was decisive.  So — given that only a fringe minority can still believe that human-caused climate change is not a problem demanding urgent action – what is different now?

Perhaps some people have lost the ability to believe in collective action, or even to perceive that they are a part of a greater whole.  They have become the sort of individuals who don’t vote because their votes “don’t matter”, the kind who justify tossing trash and cigarette butts out of their car windows by arguing “other people” will even if they don’t.

When such people say that it’s China or the USA that should fight climate change, they fail to realize that in those countries and in every other country on Earth, there are people actively working to prevent climate change from getting worse.  In every country, people are promoting the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.  Canadians can undercut those efforts by exporting government-subsidized fossil fuels that otherwise could not compete with cheaper, cleaner technologies and by failing to make changes here at home.  Or, as in the great, global struggles of the past, Canadians can play our part.

As an alternative to the “1.4% Fallacy”, one way to think about our individual responsibilities with regard to climate change would be to imagine a vast field above which is suspended a very long rope which two teams of people are using for a tug of war, with children in the stands spectating.  One of the teams consists of all those people who drive gasoline-powered cars, who have oil furnaces and gas stoves, whose vacations involve cruise ships and jets to faraway destinations, and who vote for politicians that promote new pipelines.  The other team is made up of people who do the opposite, who get around on foot or by bicycle or using transit or driving electric cars, who have heat pumps in their homes, who contact their politicians to tell them they oppose pipelines.

Envisioned this way, the important thing to remember is that no one has to remain part of their original team.  The only question for individual Canadians then is:  what team do you want to be on?

It’s unsurprising that a letter-writer worried that the lithium-ion batteries in Lime bicycles could catch fire.  Battery fires tend to get reported in the news because batteries are so safe that when they do catch fire, they have a “man bites dog” appeal to editors and reporters.  As well, the fossil fuel industry has an interest in making people think that batteries are more dangerous than gasoline and diesel.

 In fact, Statistics Canada estimates that there are 10,000 vehicle fires in Canada in each year, almost all of which involve gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, and those are generally not even considered newsworthy.  After all, what’s surprising about a tankful of highly-flammable gasoline catching fire, or even exploding if any of that gasoline vaporizes?

Think about it:  would you really be willing to carry a mobile phone in your bag or pocket if it was powered by a little tank of gasoline instead of a lithium-ion battery?  So why, given that gas-powered cars are estimated to be more than 60 times as likely to catch fire than EVs, would you worry more about battery-powered vehicles rather than fossil fuel-powered ones, let alone bicycles?

It was somewhat gratifying to read Stephen Hammond’s article explaining how the City of Victoria ended up contracting with a US company for a bike sharing service at a time when patriotism demands that Canadians boycott US goods and services.  The decision itself is still disappointing, but at least one member of Council recognized that a mistake had been made and felt an obligation to inform voters of how it had happened.  Regrettably, most elected officials don’t feel any need to account for themselves or answer to voters between elections.  Hammond, however, has distinguished himself not just on this occasion, but also by his independence and sensible voting record over the past four years, so I intend to vote for him on October 17th.

The only other incumbent on council who I currently expect will get my vote is Marg Gardiner.  When I write to the Mayor and Council (which I do quite often), she is the only one that replies!  Her record also shows good sense and an absence of “groupthink”.

Of the other current members of Council, only one has previously expressed views so abhorrent as to guarantee not getting my vote, but none have earned it either.  I expect many Victoria voters will be as puzzled as I am about whether any deserve to be re-elected.

Orange skies and unbreathable air in Toronto followed by massive destruction in Spain and France and then this week’s fires in Spokane, Vernon, and other places nearby will have prompted feelings of cognitive dissonance for some Canadians.  On the one hand, no one enjoys coughing, stinging eyes, clothes that reek of smoke, or the prospect of losing their homes to wildfire.  On the other hand, our governments — with our support — are moving to build more pipelines so that fossil fuels can be burned at a faster rate, climate change can be accelerated, and we can have more such incidents.  It may seem as if something isn’t right.

Survey results add to the confusion.  In Statistics Canada data released last month, over half of Canadians reported being “very” or “extremely” concerned about climate change.  An Angus Reid poll, however, indicated that 63% of Canadians support a new bitumen pipeline from Alberta to the west coast.  How can most Canadians simultaneously be at least “very” concerned about climate change and also supportive of a project that will worsen climate change?

To reconcile opinions that seem mutually inconsistent, remember that in the early 1980s, awareness that burning fossil fuels was changing our climate went from being something only possessed by scientists (who had known since 1896) and those in the fossil fuel industry (who knew since 1954) to being something that everyone knew about.  Although I am not a scientist, even I knew enough that I wrote a guest editorial for Monday magazine in 1985 warning that CO2 emissions would result in catastrophic climate change.

Rather than halting or reducing carbon emissions in the past forty years, however, humanity has doubled the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.  During this era when we all knew about climate change and its causes, Canadians have “punched above our weight” in contributing to it, since our per-capita rate of greenhouse gas emissions is three times the global average and Canada is the only G7 nation whose emissions have risen substantially since 1990.

Canada is a democracy with a free-market economy, so our increased greenhouse gas emissions haven’t just happened; instead, over the last four decades we have consistently made choices that led to increasing Canada’s production of fossil fuels.  In the 2025 federal election, over 91% of votes cast were for the three national parties that supported more fossil fuel extraction rather than less.  Given that, is there an explanation for why a nation supposedly so concerned about climate change is also a nation that supposedly wants to see more fossil fuels burned?

Maybe we lie on surveys.

Instead of saying “lie”, one could say that we mentally adjust the questions so that we can answer them in a way that lets us think of ourselves as decent people.  So, when we say we’re “very concerned” about climate change, what we mean is that we know it’s a serious problem.  Mostly, though, it’s a serious problem for poor people who can’t afford air conditioning, or for people who live closer to the equator than we do, or for people who will live in the future, such as our children and grandchildren.

For most of us in Canada now, though, a few days or weeks of bad air aren’t enough to result in us actually doing anything to prevent climate change, at least anything that might reduce the GDP or be inconvenient.  Yes, we’re “very concerned” about climate change, but we won’t do anything about it that might cost us something.  But we can’t say that in our answers to pollsters, because the consequences of climate change are so horrific that not caring would make us seem like bad people.

“No”, some will object, “We really are genuinely concerned about climate change.”  Please!  If Canadians cared about climate change, would almost 95% of our cars and trucks still run on fossil fuels?  And wouldn’t people take two minutes to write an email or postage-free postcard telling the Prime Minister they don’t really want new pipelines?

The genius of our political leaders is knowing not to believe Canadians care about climate change.  They propose new pipelines because they think that’s what we really want, even if we won’t admit it.  Like Michelangelo seeing the angel in the uncut marble, our leaders perceive the complacency beneath the skins of supposedly compassionate Canadians.

Why, though, should politicians have to engage in this charade?  Let’s either admit that we really don’t care or start proving that we do.

Recent letters argue that the 1850 Douglas Treaties are invalid and that Aboriginal title — the right to exclusive use and occupation of land — still exists to all of Greater Victoria.  This is despite the Supreme Court of Canada having ruled in 1965 in White and Bob that an identical document respecting Nanaimo was a valid treaty.

The headline to one letter asserted that “Giving up all that land would make no sense”, particularly “to 150 newcomers who at that time occupied only a few dozen acres around what is now downtown Victoria”.

The fact that there were only 150 newcomers may have made it seem unlikely that selling rights to the land would result in any short-term changes, particularly since Governor Douglas had assured them “that they would not be disturbed in the possession of their Village sites and enclosed fields…and that they were at liberty to hunt over the unoccupied lands, and to carry on their fisheries with the same freedom as when they were the sole occupants of the country.” As well, after the last time Europeans had visited Vancouver Island, they had disappeared again for half a century. How could anyone be expected to have foreseen the changes and growth their reappearance would bring?

We take land ownership so much for granted that we can fail to understand people to whom a relationship to land and the right to harvest its resources were important rather than the ownership of land itself.  We should respect their perspective and their agency.

Recent weeks have seen claims made in Victoria about whether there exists a right to hold protests in the streets and whether the City is obligated to actually facilitate such protests.  What does the law say about this?

Three sources of law are relevant, namely:  statutes and regulations; common law; and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Victoria Streets and Traffic Bylaw (No. 09-079). S. 99 is as follows:

Procession in street requires permit

99 (1) A person must not be a member of or take part in a procession through, in, on,

over or above a street unless a permit for the procession has been issued under

an order of the Director of Engineering.

(2) For safety purposes, the Director of Engineering may impose terms and

conditions on a permit issued under this section.

On the face of it, then, anyone who holds a protest march on the street without a permit is breaking the law.  While the Director of Engineering — like any other government decision maker — has a duty to act fairly and reasonably when deciding whether or not to grant a permit, they are not required to issue a permit to every person or group that wants one.

Does the common law recognize a right to hold protest marches in the street?  No, just the opposite.  A case in point was R. v. Engler, in which the Calgary Branch of the Canada-Chile Solidarity Group was denied a permit for a protest march but held the march anyway.  In reasons upholding the conviction of the protest organizers, the Appellate Division of the Alberta Supreme Court quoted from an earlier decision of the Supreme Court of Canada:

Demonstrations are not a form of speech but of collective action. They are of the nature of a display of force rather than of that of an appeal to reason; their inarticulateness prevents them from becoming part of language and from reaching the level of discourse.

…The right to hold public meetings on a highway or in a park is unknown to English law. Far from being the object of a right, the holding of a public meeting on a street or in a park may constitute a trespass against the urban authority in whom the ownership of the street is vested even though no one is obstructed and no injury is done; it may also amount to a nuisance

Following the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, however, freedom of expression has been protected under s. 2(b) of the Charter and freedom of peaceful assembly has been protected under s. 2(c).  Since these freedoms are constitutionally protected, governments must comply with them unless they can demonstrate that limits they have imposed are reasonable and justified in a free and democratic society.  That this applies to protest marches can be seen in cases such as Villeneuve, a 2018 case in which parts of a Montreal bylaw requiring protesters to file an itinerary in advance of any protest were struck down on both constitutional and administrative law grounds.

A helpful quote for understanding the balance between Charter-protected rights and other values comes from the reasons of Justice La Forest in the 1991 case of Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada v. Canada:

…[freedom of expression] does not encompass the right to use any and all government property for purposes of disseminating one’s views on public matters, but I have no doubt that it does include the right to use for that purpose streets and parks which are dedicated to the use of the public, subject no doubt to reasonable regulation to ensure their continued use for the purposes to which they are dedicated.

That is, while there is a right to protest in the streets, that right has limitations, including those ensuring that streets can continue to be used for their primary purpose, namely transportation.  Governments are entitled to enforce such limitations; indeed, given the multiplicity of groups and interests in society that might conceivably wish to march in the streets, failing to do so would be an abdication of their responsibility.

If a group feels that its rights have been unreasonably restricted, then it is free to challenge those restrictions in court.  Conversely, if a municipal government fails to impose any restrictions, then voters may choose to replace that government at the next election.

A guest editorial on a proposed disposition of the Oak Bay Marina lands stated that local First Nations “have never sold, surrendered or gifted these lands or waters.”  This is incorrect, at least with regard to lands (since no legal interest in waters existed).  While most of the lands constituting what is now British Columbia were never the subject of treaties, local groups in Greater Victoria surrendered any land rights they might have had pursuant to what are now known as the Douglas Treaties.  The Oak Bay Marina lands (either Shpwhung meaning “flying dust” or Spewhung meaning “fog”, depending on the speaker) were understood to be part of the territory of the Chekonein, who were signatories to the agreement made on April 29, 1850.  The prologue to the document refers to “Purchase of land from the Tribe or Family known as the Che-ko-nein extending from Point Gonzala along the Boundary of the  Chilcowitch and Kosampsom Tribes as far north as Cedar Hill and including all the ground east of that line to the Canal de Arro and Straits of De Fuca”.  Thirty men from this group are listed by name, including Chee-al-thluc, who was considered the leading chief of the Songhees peoples.  The wording states “it is understood however that the land itself, with these small exceptions becomes the Entire property of the White people for ever.”  That does not, of course, preclude Oak Bay gifting or selling the lands to First Nations now.

A study in 2022 found that about 10% of the US population agreed with conspiracy claims that the Earth is flat and NASA faked the moon landing. Given that, I suppose there will be some readers who will be persuaded by Gwyn Morgan’s latest attempt (March 28, “Net zero is dead. Why is Carney still pushing it?”) to persuade them that human-caused climate change isn’t real and that governments should not attempt to limit carbon emissions.  The Times-Colonist has published dozens of Mr. Morgan’s opinion pieces over the years, and at least once (January 29, 2021) has felt obliged to follow up with an editorial titled “Why we published Gwyn Morgan’s column”.  The stated rationale was that a variety of opinions should be presented for readers’ consideration, though the Times-Colonist recognized that there were limits to what should be printed, with Holocaust denial and praise of eugenics given as examples that would cross the line.

Why would anyone think that someone Maclean’s once called the “most powerful man in Canada’s oil patch” would provide fair commentary about the role of the fossil fuel industry in changing the climate or the risk to humanity that climate change poses? Try this instead: on your phone or computer, Google “is human-caused climate change real?” If you choose not to believe the answer, that says something about you.

The Globe and Mail has now admitted that five years ago the media, including the Globe itself “did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge” the assertion that unmarked graves had been found at the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, has noted that “initial headlines and stories in the media simply stated as fact that the remains of 250 children had been found”, and has pointed to its misuse of the term “mass graves”.  Five years later, no graves or human remains have been found.

Here are excerpts from past headlines from the New York Times on this topic:  “Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada” (May 28, 2021); “The discovery of the remains of hundreds of children at the sites of defunct schools in British Columbia…” (June 7, 2021); “…just weeks after the discovery in British Columbia of the unmarked graves of 215 Indigenous children…” (June 22, 2021; “With Discovery of Unmarked Graves…” (June 26, 2021); “After Bodies Are Found, Some Say Canada Day is Nothing to Celebrate” (June 28, 2021); “…the discovery of Indigenous graves in British Columbia” (January 1, 2022).

Does the Times intend to say anything about its own reporting on this topic?

Thank you to the Times-Colonist for its reporting on the growth of paid medical services in Greater Victoria (February 3, 2026, “People with no other options turning to private clinics”), which revealed that people are paying “between $1,200 and $10,800 a year for access to a regular doctor through subscription fees” and that up to 38% of those with a family doctor were paying extra fees.

I forwarded a copy of the article to the federal and provincial health ministers and to local politicians, pointing out that Section 3 of the Canada Health Act states that a primary objective of Canadian health care policy is “to facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers” and that the preamble to that statute states that “continued access to quality health care without financial or other barriers will be critical to maintaining and improving the health and well-being of Canadians”.   Having to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees in order to be able to access medical services is certainly a “financial barrier”, particularly at a time when so many people have no family physician.

The federal minister replied promptly to say that the Government of Canada does not support a two-tiered health care system where patients may choose, or be required, to pay for quicker access to medically necessary services, but that health care is a provincial responsibility and that Health Canada does not have investigatory powers. Over to the province then, which is still governed by the party of Tommy Douglas, the “father of Medicare”; will it act to fix this or not?

While 2025 has been one of the most depressing of the 40+ years since the general public became aware of the threat of climate change, this is the season when we count our blessings and try to bring a positive outlook to the new year. Given that, it is worth remembering that — particularly from our vantage point on Vancouver Island —some good things have happened recently too.

First, a recap of why 2025 seemed so bad. Donald Trump became President and promptly started reversing what little progress the world’s biggest economy had made on fighting climate change. The COP 30 final agreement failed to even mention fossil fuels. CO2 emissions reached a new high and 2025 is expected to have been among the hottest years on record. By some measures, Canadian wildfires were second only to those of 2023 in severity, and the Palisades fire in California showed that even wealthy urbanites are not immune from the effects of climate change. Canada’s first LNG exporting facility began operating in British Columbia with more such plants coming.  A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Danielle Smith to fast-track a bitumen pipeline to the B.C. coast.  In the federal election, 96% of voters in Victoria chose parties that favoured more fossil fuel extraction rather than less (full disclosure: I ran for the Green Party of Canada on a platform emphasizing fighting climate change and got just 3% of the vote — ouch!).

On the political front, though, there was reason for hope. Victoria’s new MP, Will Greaves, recently wrote this to constituents: “Victoria’s position is clear: we do not support new bitumen pipelines.”  It takes courage for an MP to take a position at odds with their party’s leadership, so kudos to Will Greaves for taking that stance. Even more remarkably, Stephen Guilbeault resigned from Cabinet because of his opposition to the Alberta Memorandum of Understanding. Over the decades, I’ve personally known quite a few individuals who took principled positions against climate change right up until the point when they were appointed to the federal or British Columbia cabinets, at which point their principles evaporated, so Stephen Guilbeault’s resignation was a welcome surprise.

Looking around on Vancouver Island roads, it’s obvious that more and more drivers are realizing that fossil fuel-powered vehicles are, frankly, kind of crappy. They’re noisy, have poor acceleration, require expensive maintenance, and necessitate expensive trips to the gas station to buy smelly, highly flammable fuel. It’s no wonder that about a third of new sales in the Capital Region are electric vehicles. And while price is still an obstacle for many buyers, Mark Carney is eventually bound to look at soaring sales of Chinese electric vehicles in the UK and decide to drop our 100% tariffs on them to a level closer to the 10% British tariffs. After all, Canada has no electric vehicle industry of our own to protect, and is certainly no longer under any obligation to protect US automakers!

And speaking of China, in 2025 it saw its CO2 emissions actually plateau or fall, driven by record renewable energy growth (solar/wind) and massive EV adoption, even as its economy grew. Perhaps this will mean that Canadians might finally stop pointing to Chinese emissions as somehow justifying our own ever-increasing emissions and failure to meet our emission-reduction targets and obligations. Also, it’s a reminder that when clean energy technology is cheaper than the dirty alternatives, it’s foolish to expect that inertia, nostalgia, and massive government subsidies will sustain the fossil fuel industry indefinitely.

So, while our federal and provincial leaders in Ottawa and Victoria may continue to promote an economic future dependent upon Canada’s continued export of raw natural resources and may choose to ignore the horrific consequences for their children and grandchildren of the resulting climate destruction, at the end of 2025 market forces are slowly pushing us toward a more climate-friendly future.

From that perspective, maybe 2026 really will turn out to be a happy new year!

It is commendable that Hamar Foster has recently written two pieces for the Times-Colonist (August 30,  October 14) attempting to shed light on the recent Cowichan decision that — if upheld on appeal — could negate much of the land title system by which British Columbians hold private property.  Readers may, however, have been left with the impression that the decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Cowichan was inevitable and that that result followed from the 1888 decision in the St. Catherine’s Milling and Lumber Company.

In that 1888 case, the Government of Canada had attempted to argue that the Ojibbeway “had, and were always recognized as having, a complete proprietary interest”, but Canada lost the case and Ontario won.  Although the court did not did not express an opinion about the “precise quality of the Indian right”, it disagreed with the argument that the entire property in unceded lands remained with First Nations, and observed that “the tenure of the Indians was a personal and usufructuary right, dependent upon the good will of the Sovereign.”  As Emeritus Professor Foster correctly suggests, the post-Colonial government of the Province of British Columbia was foolishly intransigent with regard to settling the land claims of First Nations, but the St. Catherine’s Milling decision could have supported the belief that there was no legal obligation to do so.

The Provincial Government may also have believed that any Aboriginal title that could have existed in parts of British Columbia had already been extinguished by the Colonial government.  On February 14, 1859, Governor Douglas issued a Proclamation that “All the lands in British Columbia, and all the Mines and Mineral therein, belong to the Crown in fee.”  The Crown had already had what the court in St. Catherine’s Milling called “a substantial and paramount estate” to all the land in British Columbia dating back to when Crown sovereignty was first asserted, so proclaiming ownership of all of the lands “in fee” may have been thought to have resulted in the Crown having all of the rights to land in British Columbia, thereby effectively precluding the continued existence of any land rights held by First Nations.

That was what Chief Justice McEachern concluded when he ruled on the question in 1991 in Delgamuukw:

“To put it in a nutshell, I find that legislation passed in the colony and by the Imperial Parliament that all the land in the colony belonged to the Crown in fee, apart altogether from many other enactments, extinguished any possible right of ownership on the part of the Indians.”

The British Columbia Court of Appeal disagreed with that finding and overturned the decision, and on further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, that Court did not rule on the issue.  The issue was not argued in subsequent cases such as Tsilhqot’in.  The question of whether or not Aboriginal title could exist in British Columbia after 1859 therefore remains an open one. 

Since both the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia have forbidden their lawyers from arguing that Aboriginal title has been extinguished, it seems unlikely that we will learn the answer, unless the courts should appoint an amicus curiae to argue the point.  And since Aboriginal title is the right to exclusive use and occupation of land and since the trial decision in Cowichan, if upheld on appeal, would mean that Aboriginal title can be found to exist to what are now privately-held lands, the matter is certainly one of importance to all British Columbians.

As to whether or not the Cowichan trial decision will be upheld on appeal, who knows?  In my PhD thesis, I observed that the interests of the Cowichan to their site on the Fraser River were analogous to what the common law calls an “interest coupled with a license” and were therefore not sufficient to result in a finding of Aboriginal title, which may give some indication of how very complicated the legal issues are in this area!

Reading about the approval by City Council of a plan by which much of Centennial Square is to be turned into a children’s splash park, I felt a familiar dismay.  The project will cost money that could be better spent, is driven by ideology rather than proper planning, and is wilfully blind to the obvious problems that make many people feel uncomfortable in Centennial Square, problems that this proposal will not address.  I was, however, grateful to see that Councillors Hammond, Gardiner, and Coleman voted against the plan.
This has prompted me to write with a request that is not directed to City Council, but to the Times-Colonist itself:  please consider creating a “scorecard” on your website that tracks the voting of councillors on such controversial measures.  It’s a long time until the next municipal election on October 17, 2026, and by then it may be difficult to recall which councillors made the most egregious or self-serving decisions.  While we might remember that, say, Councillor Hammond had a solid voting record that merits another giving him another term, we might not remember all of the decisions that justify voting some other councillors out of office.  An easily-accessed record of each councillor’s voting pattern could be a big help!

For many, decision-making at election time is no more difficult than
choosing which shirt to put on before going to a sports event.  A Blue
Jays supporter is unlikely to decide to wear a Red Sox shirt to the
stadium, and someone who has voted Liberal (or Conservative or NDP)
their entire lives and whose parents did too won’t give serious
consideration to voting for the local Marxist-Leninist candidate.

The decision-making process may be slightly more difficult for those
who cast their vote along ideological lines, or on the basis of a
single issue such as gun control or the Middle East or immigration:
they just have to figure out which candidate or party most closely
aligns with their views and then vote accordingly.

But what about people whose modest goal is to elect a government that
will try to prevent climate change from causing the collapse of
civilization, closely followed by the extinction of humanity?  Is it
too much to ask of our political system that they should be able to
cast a ballot unstained by the fall of their bitter tears in the
voting booth?

As someone whose own voting over the past forty years has always been
on the basis of calculations about climate change – sometimes voting
for a candidate with decent views who had a chance of getting into
office, sometimes voting for an eco-friendly candidate with no
prospect of success in the hopes that the mainstream parties might
adjust their own policies to try to capture the climate vote – I
confess that the prospect of the pending federal election has me
befuddled.

Like 39.5% of voters, I cast my vote for the Liberal Party of Canada
in 2015, thrilled to at last be able to vote for a government that
promised to take strong action on climate change.  Three years later,
I – like many others – quit the Liberals when they bought the Kinder
Morgan pipeline.  How could a prime minister and cabinet members who
espoused the importance of fighting climate change make the policy
choice to try to expand bitumen production and accelerate climate
change?  What sort of person who genuinely acknowledged the threat to
the existence of human life posed by climate change could say that the
only possible thing to do with 173 billion barrels of oil in the
ground would be to dig it up, burn it, and send a trillion kilograms
of CO2 into the atmosphere?

Since then, the Liberals have made Canada’s level of subsidies for the
fossil fuel industry the highest per capita in the G20.  Who could
have foretold that the Trudeau Liberals would be worse than the Harper
Conservatives on climate change?

For those of us who live outside of Quebec, making our decisions on
how we should cast our vote in the next federal election is going to
be difficult.  Although the Liberals are awful on climate change, the
O’ Toole Conservatives are even worse.  They appear to have decided to
content themselves with embracing fossil fuels and at least
guaranteeing themselves some seats from the oilpatch rather than
gambling on forming the government by adopting a real climate plan.
The Singh NDP appears unable to condemn fracking and LNG exports
despite the mounting evidence that the methane emitted from the
natural gas industry makes it in some ways the most immediate threat
to a livable climate.  And if it’s necessary to mention the PPC at
all, well, let’s just remember what Walter Sobchak said to the Dude
about nihilists.

So that leaves the Greens, a party which currently seems determined to
prove it is only qualified to govern the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, or
maybe Freedonia, and which is choosing to try to make us forget that
it even has the climate high ground by its squabbles over social
justice issues.  I suppose I might vote for them, but do they have to
make it seem so futile?

The very worst thing is that as much as I’d like to blame all of these
politicians for failing us, I can’t help concluding that it’s us
instead. How did we let human survival become politically
unachievable?

Can voters make a “wrong” choice?  Or is the essence of democracy that voters are free to vote for whomever they wish, no matter how perverse or harmful the outcome might be?

We recognize that the reasons voters choose one candidate or party over another will generally reflect personal values and decisions about questions that are perennially open to debate.  When what is at stake in an election is the capacity for the Earth to support human life, however, such political relativism surely cannot apply.  If voters elect a government knowing that that government will seek to promote human extinction rather than prevent it, that would have to mean that their political system had failed.  Rather than primarily reflecting the merits or flaws of the candidates, such a result would be an indictment of voters and of the democratic political system itself.  After all, even if voters can legitimately choose to vote for their own extinction, they cannot be entitled to impose a dystopian future followed by extinction on future generations.

In our time, these are not abstract issues.  Every day provides fresh evidence of the reality of climate change and an additional selection of its flood and fire victims to populate our news feeds.  And we know, those of us old enough, that for over thirty years we have all chosen governments that have done almost nothing about the most serious threat we face as a species.

Voters around the world will all have to face up to that fact very soon, and for Canadians that will happen in the next federal election on October 21^st.  As things stand, it appears that four of five national parties will run on platforms of taking either no action or insufficient action to prevent climate change.  The leader of the People’s Party insists that carbon dioxide is harmless and that people must be confusing it with carbon monoxide.  A year after its leader promised to “soon” release a climate plan, the Conservative Party has still not done so, but threatens to scrap the carbon tax that is key to the current national approach.  The Liberal Party has stuck with climate targets set by the previous administration which it has itself labelled as inadequate, and has notoriously purchased a pipeline in order to attempt to facilitate expansion of bitumen extraction and exports.  The New Democratic Party supports the fracking and export of natural gas, despite that making it impossible to meet CO2 emission reduction targets.  That just leaves the Green Party – which has notably won the most recent federal by-election – and while no one can doubt its good intentions regarding climate change, its plans for actually fighting it are vague.

Five months remain during which these political parties can, if they choose, add to their platforms the essential components for fighting climate change, including the adoption of enforceable statutory targets.  Whether or not they do so will demonstrate the adequacy or inadequacy of Canada’s party system.

If, however, they choose to run on platforms that do not include sufficient action on climate change, what does that say about Canadian democracy itself?  There is no longer either any scientific uncertainty or room for delay that might allow responsible voters to cast their votes for candidates whose platforms include incentivizing climate change rather than preventing it.  And it is not as if parties’ support for the fossil fuel industries are hidden or that they are trying to sneak them in.  Those who vote for candidates whose plans include making the earth uninhabitable for humanity cannot plausibly deny complicity in those plans.

So what would such an outcome say about democracy, or at least about democracy as practiced in Canada?  The Greek historian Polybius in his analysis of the constitution of the Roman Republic argued that constitutions – and people – should be judged on how they react to difficulties and rapid changes.  If Canadians, in effect, once again vote to promote climate change rather than to prevent it, then that will be a terrible indictment of us and our system of government.  The Roman Republic ultimately did not survive; will we?