February 2021 - Page 2 of 5

This week, the government is expected to announce the process by which they will be selecting the next Governor General something which I find a bit shocking that it's taken this long for them to even announce, given that they should have gotten started on this months ago when the writing was on the wall about what was going on in Rideau Hall under Julie Payette. Of course, Payette's departure has led to a rash of polls about the future of the position and of the monarchy in Canada in general each worse than the last. It raises the question as to whether we are capable of having an adult conversation about the Crown in Canada and it looks increasingly like we aren't.

The polls themselves were patently misleading, to the point of shenanigans. Case in point was the Leger poll, whose questions pertained to the "British Monarchy," which has not been the legal Crown in Canada since the Statute of Westminster in 1931, when the Canadian Crown came into being as a separate entity. It also deliberately invokes the spectre of a "foreign monarch," or false notions of our "colonial past," as though that were a feature of constitutional monarchies around the world.

All of Leger's questions were loaded and civically illiterate:

Would you say that you are personally attached to the British monarchy?

In your opinion, is it urgent to replace Julie Payette, who has resigned as Governor General of Canada?

Should the federal government take advantage of Julie Payette's resignation as Governor General of Canada to question the place and role of the monarchy in Canadian institutions?

If a referendum were held on abolishing British monarchy positions in Canada (Governor General, Lieutenant Governor, etc.) would you vote in favour of maintaining the monarchy or abolishing the monarchy in Canada?

It's not the British monarchy in Canada. The replacement of Payette should be fairly urgent as we have a hung parliament and it's not ideal to have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court filling the Administrator role for very long. Questioning the role of the Governor General and the Monarchy would mean rewriting the entire Constitution, since the Crown is the central organizing principle, and asking people to consider an abstract without any notion of what might replace it is a giant hurdle that Australia could not get over when they considered abolishing their monarchy (and the tide has since turned the other way).

Likewise, Angus Reid's poll was not only loaded, but farcical in asking people to suppose that they were a "hiring manager," and whether they would review the role of the GG before they reposted the position. A hiring manager? It's the second highest state office in the country, and you want people to pretend that it's a gods damned middle manager? Are you kidding me? But wait it gets better. Angus Reid then appealed to Canadians' mean sense of hairshirt parsimony to ask whether they feel the GG's compensation is too generous, which of course people will say it is. They also asked whether the selection should be made by the PM alone, or a "committee of Parliament." No. The vice-regal appointments committee was arm's length out of the Privy Council Office, so that it ensured that the prime minister remained accountable for the final choice something that a parliamentary committee could not do, and would in fact launder the accountability. Did nobody pay any attention to the debate that followed the failed Nadon appointment to the Supreme Court?

Angus Reid asked also about the relevancy of the "Royal Family in Britain," which again, is not the same thing as the role of the Crown in Canada; about supporting recognizing the Queen as our head of state; and about continuing as a constitutional monarchy again, all without any acknowledgement that this would require a complete rewriting of the Constitution, and all that it entails given the political climate in Canada, where provinces would have their own demands when that happens.

The Bloc, meanwhile, decided to take their own decided unserious approach to the Payette situation by having one of their MPs table a Private Members' Bill that would reduce the GG's salary to $1 per year, and strip them of their pensions. This is the same tactic that the NDP tried a few years ago with regards to the Senate, because each party apparently believes that only the truly wealthy who should be the ones holding these kinds of offices, or that they should be left vulnerable to those who would buy them off.

Of course, Justin Trudeau himself has not exactly shown himself to be one who can treat this office with any particular sense of seriousness after he reduced it to something of a shiny object that he put Payette into as a reflection of what he wanted to showcase a Francophone woman who excelled in the STEM fields, and on paper, Payette was too good to pass up. It's also something of a reflection of how Trudeau and Harper have both treated our institutions while Harper was reverential enough of the vice-regal positions that he put in place the appointments committee to strengthen the process, he made a series of terrible Senate appointments, almost certainly out of contempt for the institution. Trudeau, meanwhile, did away with the vice-regal committee possibly out of spite for Harper and made that appointment without any degree of seriousness, but set up a process for Senate appointments that claimed to care so much about the institution while he still managed to screw it up for a generation, if not more.

The lack of basic civics and respect for our institutions, coming from pollsters, parties, and our political leaders, very much makes it seem as though we can't handle a grown-up conversation about the future of these institutions. The GG has an important role to play especially in keeping the ceremonial and symbolic powers out of a prime minister's hands and yet we can't be bothered to learn the first thing about what the position actually entails. It makes us look increasingly like we're not a serious country, which starts to explain the state our political leadership is in right now.

Photo Credit: CBC News

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In 2011, British writer and cultural theorist Mark Fisher penned an essay entitled The Privatisation of Stress, perfectly capturing the relationship between depression, social conditions under capitalism and increasing alienation in the post-Reagan/Thatcherite years.

"It is hardly surprising that people who live in such conditionsâ€”where their hours and pay can always be increased or decreased, and their terms of employment are extremely tenuousâ€”should experience anxiety, depression," Fisher wrote. "But . . . this privatization of stress has become just one more taken-for-granted dimension of a seemingly depoliticized world."

I think of Fisher and his writings often. I regularly reread his most famous work, Capitalist Realism, and have always admired his ability to not only write through depression and anxiety but to connect social conditions with our ever-worsening mental health. Despite headlines constantly blaring that our standard of living is ever increasing and our collective wealth is more abundant than ever, social stressors gnaw away at the foundations of our collective psyche.

The death of culture and art, for example, evident in the endless production of music algorithmically designed to evoke feeling but never provoke emotion. Literature circumscribed to appeal to the endless adolescence of an arrested readership. Tent-pole superhero films that have long since ossified and crumbled within the vaults of Disney and Warner Bros. The death of fulfilling labour, where the gig economy has driven the concept of "work" into utter absurdity (no pensions, no benefits, often no pay!), and the death of social institutions, including the church (which forever haunts us with its most destructive remnants, such as dogmatism and puritanism, even in the most liberal social scenes).

READ: Welcome to the era of woke capitalism

And, of course, a political culture that abides no realities, possibilities, no faint hopes outside of the neo-liberal consensus. Nowhere is the death of better things more evident than with the newly minted Joe Biden administration.

From a much-feted Inauguration Day poem by 22-year-old youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman calling for national healing (yet drawing water from the shallow and toxic pool of American exceptionalism that remains permanently tainted by its history of chauvinism, hypocrisy and genocide), to the collective meltdown over Bernie Sanders' frumpy winter attire (viewed by many apoplectic liberals as an offensive gesture to the pageantry of the inauguration; these people can't even be happy when they get what they want), to a trillion-dollar stimulus package that will once again deliver the goods to large corporations while handing out sparse change to working Americans (and yet again denying them universal health care, even during a deadly pandemic), the state of American politics is yet another handshake in the devil's bargain that is capitalism.

Despite the COVID epidemic and endless political urgings for all of us to pull together, Black people continue to die at the hands of police. Children remain separated from their parents and sleep on cold floors behind ICE fencing. Wall Street hedge funds clamour for bailouts because investor pushback on their long-time market manipulations managed to blow up their plans. Suicide hotlines are overworked; polling of Canadians and Americans show we are contemplating suicidal ideation at heretofore unseen levels.

READ: The left must stand against capitalism. Now.

I have seen too many people thrown out of their homes, shed tears with too many people who've lost loved ones to a pandemic exacerbated by our compromised and incompetent political class. I often wonder what Fisher would make of our current reality, haunted by the ghosts of last century's optimism and endless fictional possibilities that were quietly snuffed out by the endless existential crisesâ€”forget a pandemic, we're still staring down the barrel of catastrophic climate changeâ€”brought about by the many violences of now.

Too many doors of possibility have been slammed in our faces.

Of course, Fisher can't offer any commentary on this reality; he died by suicide in 2017. But I wonder if the insurgency of direct action that is still ongoing in the streets, on social media, and even if this new form of shareholder activism against giant hedge funds might have inspired him to consider that an alternative is indeed possible after all.

This article appears in print in the March 2021 issue of Maclean's magazine with the headline, "The death of better things." Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post Capitalism’s connection to our ever-worsening mental health appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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My latest lockdown pastime has been watching Marvel's "WandaVision" and geeking out a bit on the many fan theories. Without spoiling things, the premise is layers of the notion that "things are not what they seem", and the open question is who the big bad behind everything might actually be.

That notion that there might be a greater menace behind the present danger is a classic comic book and film trope. Yet, it really hit home to me in today's world of COVID-19 quarantining as we see the ravages of the climate crisis looming, with freak cold snaps knocking out Texas's natural gas systems, as just one example.

The fearful reality is clear that even as we face a once-in-a-century pandemic, the bigger crisis remains.

On that front, governments have had to walk and chew gum as they fight the pandemic.

In the United States, the Biden administration is all hands on deck to get their vaccination program up and running, but they also took the time to ensure the country is back in the Paris climate accords, and moving forward on green energy, fuel-emission standards, and other historic and aggressive actions. There's even talk of actually doing an "infrastructure week".

Here in Canada, the Trudeau government made the politically courageous decision to announce the carbon pollution pricing rate would increase in the coming years, but they also announced a major infrastructure funding plan of their own.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has promised a major stimulus program to fund "building back better" to the tune of nearly $100 billion coming out of the pandemic. As part of that overall package, Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna announced a "down payment" in the form of an additional $15 billion on transit and active transportation funding, with a permanent fund of $3 billion per year, and an immediate injection of $5.9 billion for "shovel-ready" projects.

This announcement is good news for our communities and especially for commuters and the climate.

Edmonton Mayor Dan Iveson said of the announcement, "Permanent transit funding offers cities long-term predictability to finally be able to deliver transformational system expansion and drive durable economic growth across our country. The recovery support here can be massive. It can be the centrepiece of the job-creating, emissions-reducing recovery that Canadians are looking for." There's that link between COVID-19 and the climate again â€” and, crucially, the economic impact of addressing both.

Speaking of mayors, I recently read former Toronto mayor David Miller's new book, Solved: How the World's Great Cities are Fixing the Climate Crisis. In it, he outlines a variety of inter-connected approaches that should be undertaken to address environmental protection and climate action, from energy retrofits to transit to waste management. He illustrates an array of approaches from major global cities to demonstrate how those approaches can be actioned, with a particular focus on what he led in Toronto.

Miller expressly argues in his preface, "there is evidence that environmental destruction â€” which worsens climate change â€” contributes to the increased risk of global health challengesâ€¦ Scientists have been warning us about such events for a very long time â€” a changing climate has the ability to devastate people and nature. And the potential consequences are serious indeed."

Further, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris provides an afterword to the book, which ties in the pandemic and climate change, writing, "I truly believe we can meet the goals of the Paris Agreementâ€¦ regional, national, and local governments are mobilized to cope with the global COVID-19 pandemic, and we need to be united and keep our minds open to new ideas, taking the best practices and making them universal, challenging ourselves daily to make our cities healthier, more equitable and better places to liveâ€¦ I am hopeful that we can build this future â€” not only because it is possible but because we cannot fail."

Our way out of the economic impacts of COVID-19 should also be a way to combat climate change, by building complete communities that are resilient, liveable and energy efficient.

Photo Credit: youmatter.world

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Here's some good news for anyone who cherishes our democratic liberties: the next federal election might be a little bit freer.

That's because an Ontario judge recently tossed out section 91 of the Canada Elections Act, ruling it was unconstitutional since it infringed on every Canadian's Charter-guaranteed right to free expression.

So, what is this Section 91 and why did a court rule it clashed with our democratic freedoms?

Well, the story goes back to 2017, when the Liberal government amended this section of the Canada Elections Act in order to thwart the spread of "fake news."

Originally, before the Liberal amendments, the law was straightforward and explicit â€” it made it illegal for anyone to knowingly make false statements about the personal conduct or character of a candidate for office.

But in amending this section, the Liberals made it a lot less precise so it could cast a wider net.

In other words, under the law's new wording, Section 91 would catch any individuals who posted "false" news, even if those individuals did so in good faith, believing it was true.

Basically, the word "knowingly" was deleted, and the term "false" was left undefined.

What this meant in practice was that under a strict interpretation of the Act, a citizen could conceivably be charged for making a sarcastic joke on social media.

And it's this vagueness and broadness of Section 91, which concerned the Canadian Constitution Foundation, an Alberta-based civil liberties group.

Indeed, the CCF was so concerned it decided to challenge the law in the courts.

In its affidavit, the group wrote: "Those who make statements honestly and in good faith are exposed to the risk of imprisonment. It is a blunt and unrefined instrument that treats sarcastic quips and deliberate lies as one and the same both are subject to a blanket ban."

Such a ban argued, the CCF, would have a chilling effect on democratic speech.

As Joanna Baron, the group's Executive Director, told the media, "In the digital age, social media serves an important 'town hall' function, and laws such as this one, which is vague, overbroad, and backed by severe punishments, pose a serious threat of chilling the debate and discussion that are necessary to a vibrant democracy."

Mind you, the government defended its changes to the law, arguing they were needed to stop the spread of malicious misinformation from proliferating on social media.

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once put it, "We're in a world right now where we've seen the impact of the kinds of polarization, the kinds of politics of misinformation, of fear and division. We have developed an approach that is going to be protecting Canadians from misinformation. We recognize that this is a careful line to walk and we will continue to walk it with Canadians."

The CCF countered that such a heavy-handed legal approach was not the answer.

CCF lawyer, Christine Van Geyn, put it this way: "What we need to do is educate the public on how to review information, how to analyze facts and think 'Is this real? Is this fake? And am I being manipulated?' Not have the government come in with a huge hammer and try and pound away at these rights in order to get the outcome that they want. Education is a much better tool for that".

At any rate, at the end of the day, the court sided with the CCF, ruling Section 91 violated Section 2(B) of the Canadian Charter which protects the right to free speech.

Mind you, the government might appeal this ruling to the Supreme of Canada, but for now freedom has won the day.

To my mind, that's a good thing.

The more freedom of speech, the more opinions, the more debate we have in our elections, the better.

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More than 70 per cent.

That's the percentage of Israelis, give or take, who have now received a life-saving Covid-19 vaccine.

Ironically enough, 70 per cent also represents the number of Canadians who are angry and, in some cases, really angry at Justin Trudeau's government. They're mad because only about three per cent of us have been vaccinated.

Ipsos released a poll about it on Friday. Said the respected pollsters: "Amid news reports that the UK, US and other non G-7 countries are further along in their vaccination efforts than Canada is, a new Ipsos poll has found that seven in ten (71 per cent) Canadians agree (30 per cent strongly/41 per cent somewhat) that it makes them angry that Canada is falling behind other countries in its vaccination rates."

"Angry." It's pretty hard to win re-election when more than 70 per cent of voters are angry with you, isn't it? It's even harder to win a majority government when seven in ten voters want to punch you in the nose.

So what could Justin Trudeau have done differently? Those other countries Ipsos refers to, above, give us some guidance.

Britain, for example, did a lousy job containing the virus at the start of the pandemic. But then they got their act together, PDQ.

The Brits were the first Western country to start mass-vaccinations back in December. They were able to do so because British drug regulators are lightning-fast unlike the glacial drug approval process we have going had in Canada.

Centralization of decision-making helped, too. In the European Union, drug approvals need to be vetted by representatives of no less than 27 member states. Britain, having exited the E.U., didn't need to do that.

That's not all. The British rapidly set up more than a thousand vaccination centres around the country, and had a process in place to deliver shots in arms well before the vaccines had been approved. Trudeau's Canada simply hasn't done that. Instead, the Liberal Prime Minister still takes petty pot-shots at the provincial governments he needs to deliver vaccines to Canadians.

The Americans got many things wrong, too, at the start. Donald Trump famously declared the virus a "hoax" and, when it became apparent it wasn't, he suggested people should inject themselves with bleach.

But Trump however lousy he was a president actually did better on vaccines than Justin Trudeau. In comparative terms, Trump's Operation Warp Speed was just that: a pretty speedy effort to acquire and deploy vaccines.

Operation Warp Speed delivered millions of vaccine shots before Trump was obliged to hand over the keys to the White House. It was successful because it was a true public-private partnership unlike the situation we have in Canada, where Trudeau's soaring rhetoric has effectively driven out the very pharmaceutical companies capable of developing vaccines.

Operation Warp Speed was created way back in April of last year right around the time that Trudeau was still covering up the fact that our CanSino vaccines deal with China had fallen apart. By moving at, ahem, warp speed, the Americans Donald Trump, no less! did far better than we did.

As of this writing, the Americans have vaccinated nearly 60 million of their people. Some days, they vaccinate more than two million of their citizens. Two million a day! Up here, we haven't been able to vaccinate that many people in more than two months of trying.

We could go on, but you get the point. Countries that were doing a crummy job at the start of the pandemic countries like the U.K. and the U.S. learned from their mistakes.

Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, hasn't. He's preoccupied himself with trying to distract Canadians with gun control measures (which everyone agrees won't work), pious sermons about organized hate (which has exploded on his watch), and huffy denunciations of Julie Payette (who, um, he personally appointed).

Justin Trudeau doesn't want us to think about the vaccine fiasco. But his change-the-channel strategy hasn't worked, and it won't. We're really, really angry with him.

More than 70 per cent of Canadians say so.

[Kinsella was Chief of Staff to a federal Liberal Minister of Health.]

Photo Credit: CBC News

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The Conservatives used their Supply Day this week to move a motion in the Commons that seeks to call on the government to declare a genocide taking place in China against the Uyghur peoples and other Turkic Muslims in the country. Thus far, the Liberal government has been reluctant to use the word "genocide," because it is a loaded term under international law that comes with consequences, particularly around steps that the international community needs to take in order to prevent it because international law is useless without enforcement. Without enforcement to back up the claim the Conservatives are demanding the government apply, would this make their motion a hollow gesture, the very kind of grandstanding that they so often accuse the Liberals of on the world stage?

Thus far, the Liberals are insisting that they are following international protocols in both demanding that China allow an international committee of experts unfettered access to the country to assess the claims independently, but are also pooling intelligence with other countries to evaluate what evidence has been presented to date. These are the kinds of process that need to take place if we want to get the UN or the Hague involved, so that we can ensure that there is coordinated action on the international stage to respond to China's actions you know, the "enforcement" part that backs up international law. It is also worth noting that the Americans have opted out of this same international law framework, so their Secretary of State making a declaration has no actual weight behind it America has announced no sanctions or other actions against China. If Canada were to follow suit without other international allies on board, we would be hung out to dry when China retaliates because they have lost face.

I am also not unconvinced that this government is currently engaged in the kinds of backroom talks necessary to get international support for such a declaration. Earlier this week, we saw Canada lead 57 other countries in launching the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations. This particular initiative was successfully kept under wraps until its unveiling, though it has been speculated that it took as long to come to fruition as it did because it depended on waiting for a change of administration in the United States, so that their signature could give the document additional heft particularly when it comes to dealing with China, whose use of hostage diplomacy Canada knows all too well given the ongoing detention of the two Michaels.

We also have history around the effectiveness of backroom diplomacy in this country, particularly around the opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Canada very much depended on behind-the-scenes talks during Commonwealth summits, to the point where it appears that the Queen got involved in an unofficial capacity in order to help pressure then-UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher into changing her position. Granted, this was an easier sell because South Africa is not the economic powerhouse that China is, which makes it all the more important that we don't alienate our allies by going off half-cocked with making declarations before we have our ducks in a row.

The other danger with a premature declaration of genocide is that a political declaration, separate from the legal declaration, has the ability to undermine the label of genocide, which is the most heinous crime imaginable. Canada is already walking a fine line with this because of the way the government handled the use of the term in the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by accepting the term "genocide" in that report without any notion of enforcement or consequence, this government ran the same risk of undermining the label. Justin Trudeau later walked-back his acceptance of the term "genocide" by saying that he conceived of it more as cultural genocide, but it may have already damaged Canada's credibility on this file credibility that could be further eroded if this Conservative motion goes ahead.

A political declaration, absent allies and enforcement, has the very real possibility of turning into slacktivism on a global stage like Canada putting a black square on its Instagram account for a week, or putting a border around their Facebook profile picture. There will be consequences to a resolution in that it may not be the best way to proceed in order to get the outcomes that we want namely for said genocide to be halted. And without a concerted and allied effort, there will be retaliation from China, both economic and symbolic, because we will have caused them to lose face.

What I find most peculiar is the fact that a lot of that economic retaliation will be hitting the Conservatives' voter base, particularly in Western Canada. We've already had issues with canola exports, and we could pretty much guarantee that would dry up immediately. Pork is another big export to China, and when there were a couple of weeks nearly two years ago when China halted Canadian imports because of a very real issue of smugglers using falsified labels, pork farmers in this country freaked out. Lobster exports to China are also a very big deal, and if the Conservatives want to make inroads into Atlantic Canada, they will also be facing those whose livelihoods have been affected by their decision to posture without backup. And then there is the fate of the Two Michaels, who would likely bear even more of the brunt of such a unilateral declaration.

All parties in this country have a record of deep unseriousness when it comes to foreign policy, and of standing on soap boxes as they declare Canada as being "back" in one capacity or another, with very little follow-through. This is an extremely serious issue, and there can be no doubt that a genocide is taking place, and that the world has a responsibility to uphold the pledge of "never again." But we have to be smart about it, and we need to be effective in our enforcement. I am dubious that a non-binding motion in the House of Commons is the smartest or most effective way for Canada to act at this crucial point in time.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

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Amidst an unparalleled pandemic, and beset with formidable domestic challenges, how much should Canada be doing to assist the very poorest in acquiring vaccines?

It is a question that many Canadians are asking themselves, especially in light of the federal government's decision to purchase vaccines from COVAX, a WHO program created to help some of the world's most disadvantaged countries access and administer COVID-19 inoculations.

For many pundits and politicians, including the Prime Minister himself, as well as a chorus of conservative voices, the decision to buy vaccines from COVAX may not be an ideal one, but it is a necessary one, particularly if it will help ensure a timelier vaccination for Canadians.

As for everyone else, well, in this competitive state, with each and every country looking out for themselves, Canada's significant contribution to the COVAX fund will help many low-income countries acquire vaccines, which is more than many other wealthy countries can say they've done.

Besides, by purchasing COVAX vaccines, Canada is technically not doing anything wrong.

After all, according to the COVAX funding agreement, half of a country's funding for the project has always been intended for the distribution of vaccines domestically with the other half going to support some of the world's poorest.

And it's not like Canada is the only wealthy country doing this. Both New Zealand and Singapore, have donated far less to the program, while also similarly requesting "early allocations" from it.

Is Canada any less deserving as these wealthy countries for purchasing COVAX vaccines? Should it not too reap at least some of the rewards for its generosity?

These are some of the justifications being made to support Canada's dipping into the COVAX program.

Others, however, like Stephen Lewis, Canada's former ambassador to the United Nations, as well as a United Nations' special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, believe there is no justification for such a self-interested play.

According to him, Canada has no business utilizing vaccines from COVAX, as "it was always understood from the outset that this was not a source of vaccines for the rich and wealthy countries of the world" but instead a fund to support those countries unable to afford the vaccines.

For Lewis, this is not only a "profound mistake" but a mistake that is "wrong morally" and flies in the face of all the righteous rhetoric that Trudeau likes to deploy when speaking about Canada and its so-called benevolence in the world.

To him, and others like Annamie Paul, "There is a very big difference between having a right and doing what's right." And while Canada may have the right to purchase COVAX vaccines for its own usage, that does not make it the right thing to do.

Between the two conflicting camps, I tend to side with the latter, though for reasons extending far beyond COVAX, and more by looking at Canada's larger role in the global vaccine scramble.

What so many in the 'justifier' camp forget is that Canada's contributions to COVAX alone (respectful as it may be) does not absolve it of its sins against the global south.

For starters, consider Canada's complicity in the hoarding of vaccines.

As countries around the globe struggle to vaccinate their populations, wealthy countries like Canada have purchased vast amounts of vaccines, most of which they have no intention of ever administering. With five times the number of doses per its population, Canada is arguably the worst vaccine hoarder of them all.

True, the Trudeau government has confirmed that it will be donating its excess vaccines to less wealthy countries. But with no set timeline for when these vaccines will be donated, it will likely be long into the future before the global south ever receives them, leaving their populations desperately at risk.

Furthermore, while Canada continues to hoard vaccines, it has also helped to oppose the efforts of South Africa, India, and over one hundred other global south countries in their efforts to temporarily waive some intellectual property rights for vaccines until "widespread vaccination is in place globally."

Instead of supporting this worthwhile initiative, which advocates like Akshaya Kumar contend has the potential to boost the global south's vaccine manufacturing capabilities, and to help spur on a global economic recovery for the benefit of all countries, Canada has shamefully chosen the side of greed by supporting the status quo, a.k.a. the pharmaceutical industry.

Perhaps if the Canadian government were not hoarding vaccines and resisting the efforts of the global south in their ability to receive vaccines, I could find the justifications for dipping into the COVAX program.

But under the current circumstances, contributing to COVAX, while not purchasing any of its vaccines intended for the global south, is the least Canada could do.

Photo Credit: BBC News

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The intersection of church and state is one freakishly dangerous corner. And an Alberta pastor is intent on running the red light.

GraceLife Church in Parkland County, just west of Edmonton, has for several weeks been violating public health restrictions, packing the pews well beyond the 15-per-cent capacity Covid 19 limits.

Pastor James Coates has issued public statements making it clear the church will continue to hold services, despite regular visits from Alberta Health inspectors and the RCMP. He has been ticketed and arrested. Most recently he turned himself in to the local Mountie detachment after receiving word the RCMP planned to arrest him again.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a Calgary-based libertarian legal nonprofit often associated with fundamentalist church causes, has jumped on the GraceLife bandwagon. JCCFC lawyer James Kitchen, who represents Coates, has issued a press release chock full of references to charter rights, freedom of assembly and religious conviction.

"The congregants of Grace Life refuse to accept the Alberta Government's dystopian 'new normal'. Their first loyalty is to obey their Lord, Jesus Christ, not the Government," says Kitchen.

While Kitchen puts the pastor's actions in the freedom-of-religion frame, Coates himself is not shy about broadening the issue well outside his church's walls.

"The science being used to justify lockdown measures is both suspect and selective. In fact, there is no empirical evidence that lockdowns are effective in mitigating the spread of the virus," says a public statement on the GraceLife website.

"We are gravely concerned that COVID-19 is being used to fundamentally alter society and strip us all of our civil liberties. By the time the so-called "pandemic" is over, if it is ever permitted to be over, Albertans will be utterly reliant on government, instead of free, prosperous, and independent."

Coates is not just ready to go to jail for his convictions. He has offered to put himself in the line of Covid fire by volunteering to help at overburdened healthcare facilities.

Chief Medical Officer of Health declined the offer at a press conference and expressed her disappointment with houses of worship and businesses that flout the Covid restrictions.

Premier Jason Kenney has stayed mum on the latest developments in this specific case, but he has been trying to distance the government from enforcement decisions about miscreant businesses, saying it is up to law enforcement agencies to decide when to ticket, arrest and charge people violating public health orders.

But realistically it's pretty impossible for Kenney and the UCP to not be embroiled in this struggle.

GraceLife is bringing it to the premier's door by using his own words against him. The church's public statement says church doors were thrown open in June when it was realized Covid wasn't as bad as first suspected. "This sentiment was reflected in the assessment of the Premier of Alberta, who deliberately referred to COVID-19 as 'influenza' multiple times in a speech announcing the end of the first declared public health emergency."

Religion and politics, particularly right wing populist politics, have a long history in Alberta. There is a strong socially conservative strain in the conservative movement that meshes with fundamental church values. That's what makes this controversy even more sensitive than the question of easing restrictions on barbershops and restaurants.

Covid-19 is forcing the governing party to confront some fundamental issues within its own ranks. Two UCP MLAs, Drew Barnes from Medicine Hat and Angela Pitt from Airdrie, have joined the End the Lockdowns national caucus, a conservative group agitating against Covid restrictions.

Kenney has criticized churches and businesses that violate restrictions. He is clear in press conferences and fire-side social media chats that he feels these groups are misguided.

The majority of churches in the province are certainly toeing the line, either holding services online or with greatly diminished in-person gatherings.

But pastor Coates and the GraceLife Church aren't an insignificant issue for the UCP, which is increasingly beleaguered as the edges splinter off its base support.

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If you're wondering why politicians' conduct doesn't appal them as much as it appals us, the sad reality is that it often does. But with a delayed fuse that only detonates once they're out of the game and ruefully wish they'd tried harder to live up to their ideals. So life being short, I invite them to do it now. And yes, I'm talking to you, Liberal MPs engaging in committee filibusters with childish glee and stone-faced hypocrisy.

You aren't the only ones. But we need to talk, because right now you're in my face including over the vaccine contracts. And your conduct is hypocrisy, because if you go and look at the 2015 campaign speeches of people with the same names as you, you'll find a lot of talk of Stephen Harper's excessive centralization, control, secrecy and deceit, and of a firm intention to give backbenchers more freedom and respect, let Parliament do its job, tell the truth and so forth.

So let me remind you that you weren't lying to get elected. You believed it. And you still do. Deep down somewhere, albeit set aside due to the exigencies of the moment and the sincere conviction that you've got to keep control. Not for very much longer. But in order to do all the good things only you can do thanks to your superior characters and principles.

Don't balk. It's not me talking. It's you. Then and now. And if I might quote Nietzsche here (I long despised him but have come to appreciate his prophetic insight into the horrible direction our civilization was taking), "'I have done that', says my memory. I cannot have done that says my pride and remains unshakeable. Finally memory yields."

It's from Beyond Good and Evil and it pretty much summarizes the conversation you're now having. But we must go beyond it because, alas, memory has its revenge one day in company with conscience.

You see, the worst part of this rather predictable and even tedious parade, for you at least, is that you will in fact still believe it in three years, or five, or ten, when you are out of office. And on the day that ambition fades, flees or crumbles, on the day that memory overcomes pride, you will say wistfully that you wish you had stood up to the Maximum Leader, had said what you knew to be true not what you were told was expedient, and had used parliamentary procedure to advance the cause of open government instead of braying like a donkey. Above all you will regret the silly lies you got away with, the silly lies that lowered the tone of debate long after the specific reasons you told them have stopped mattering.

There are exceptions and, as usual in life, the people most likely to live up to their convictions are the ones you'd most like to see slacking off. For instance Xi Jinping. And then there are the politicians who in return for swallowing their principles while in office get lucrative consulting jobs afterward from, for instance, Xi Jinping and never look back. But you're not one of them, are you?

So we need to talk, and not just about the current vaccination contract filibuster, shabby as it is. There's your government House Leader Pablo Rodriquez telling the press your party "respects" the independence of parliamentary committees and absolutely did not orchestrate the filibuster that erupted over the WE Charity and held off a reckoning until Trudeau prorogued Parliament on the empty pretext of having a clear and ambitious agenda.

Do you take us for fools? If so, it might work. The idea that MPs came up with this high-profile stunt on a vital issue without so much as a nod and a wink from the PMO insults the intelligence. But the worst thing isn't that you won't get away with it, it's that you probably will. Until the day that like Jacob Marley you think "What have I done?" and have lost the power to set things right.

Let me not seem partisan here. I could mention the Tories over the Wright-Duffy affair, and did warn them at the time. And I could mention many others because what is remarkable about such episodes is how common and how shabby they are.

For instance the governor of New York deliberately concealing the number of COVID deaths in seniors' residences. Pride says I cannot have sat in meetings defending such reprehensible conduct on such seedy grounds. If my opponent had done it, I'd have been filled with righteous indignation and rightly so. And memory says "Uh, that guy sure looks like you." And like a nasty, dirty fool.

This consideration confirms J. Budziszewski's point that conscience and morality are above all a matter of knowledge rather than feelings. When we are caught, the most common reaction is "How could I have been so stupid?" not "How could I have been so mean?" Because we did know better, we knew that we knew, and yet we did stuff that wasn't just wrong, it was bound to make us look like the fools we belatedly see ourselves as having been. And you do know.

Some day the Trudeau Liberals may not regret the level of spending they engaged in. But many will regret not tabling a budget and, even more, babbling inanities to justify not tabling one. They will see the budget process hollowed out, and hostile partisans using their tricks, and realize it's loathsome and bad for self-government. And memory will say "I have done that" and pride will say "I hate myself for it."

So you know what they say. Don't hate yourself in the morning. Sleep until noon.

No, wait. Someone clever said that one. But the wise say do the right thing. Because it's who you think you are, because it's what you believe, and it's what you'll very much wish, some morning, that you had done the night before.

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Christopher Ragan is the Director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University, and the former Chair of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. Dave Sawyer is an economist with EnviroEconomics and is a School Fellow with the Carleton University School of Public Policy.

The Canadian government recently announced its objective of achieving "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions for the country by 2050.We are not alone; many countries are adopting the same long-run goal. But do we know which technologies we need to get there, how challenging the road ahead will be, and what kinds of policies will be required?

The answerâ€”surprising to someâ€”is that we know more about this journey than we might think. Let's start at the beginning.

If you are looking for one word to capture the essence of what must occur to eliminate our GHG emissions over the next 30 years, it would surely be "substitution". We will need to substitute away from coal-fired electricity and use zero-emitting energy instead. We must substitute away from gasoline-powered vehicles and adopt electric vehicles in their place. We will need to substitute away from portable diesel generators in remote communities and use cleaner power sources, either on or off the grid.

In some parts of the economy, we will need to substitute toward a much greater use of low-carbon technologies which are currently available; in others we will need to substitute toward technologies we are only just beginning to envision. To take seriously the net-zero objective means embracing the path into the unknown.

When thinking about how much is unknown, however, it's useful to make the distinction between "safe bets" and "wild cards".

The Canadian Institute for Climate Choices (CICC) released a report last week which uses this language. "Safe bets" are those technologies we already see widely deployed, and that will continue to be important as we decarbonize towards net zero. Examples include electric vehicles, heat pumps, liquid and solid biofuels, and energy efficiency equipment. Doubling down on these technologies is really a no regrets approach to achieving net zero.

The "wild card" technologies identified by the CICC are in earlier stages of technological development; they become especially important after 2030 since there are limits to how much decarbonization can come from the safe bets. Wild card technologies include the use of hydrogen fuel cells for transportation and for industrial heat, carbon capture and storage, renewable natural gas, sequestration technologies such as direct air capture, and small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

There is no silver bullet among the various wild cards. They all have promise but they are all uncertain. To reach our net zero objective, we need to hold a fistful of these wild cards so that they can be deployed as needed, when ready. And that requires better understanding the emissions-reduction potential and costs of the various wild card technologies.

We have looked a little more closely at one of these wild cards: small modular reactors (SMRs). What is their potential to deliver emissions reductions for Canada?

Much of the focus on SMRs has been on their ability to supply clean electricity into the grid. But of equal importance is their potential to decarbonize industrial heat and power in Canada’s largest emitters such as oil sands, chemicals, and mining. These emitters face a daunting decarbonization challenge with a limited number of potential wild card technologies.

The results of our SMR simulations along the pathways to net zero were surprising.

For a wide range of cost and technical assumptions, SMRs were widely deployed in the industrial sector across a range of simulations. The SMRs substituted for several other high-cost wildcards such as hydrogen and renewable natural gas, which were then freed up to be used elsewhere for decarbonization. The net result was that SMRs captured a large shareâ€” about 20 percentâ€”of the total heat and power requirements of the large industrial emitters. In the simulations, this resulted in emissions reductions from industry equivalent to taking 3.3 million cars off the road after 2035.

With industry doing more heavy lifting with SMRs, other sectors were then able to abate less and avoid higher cost abatement options. This reduced the overall costs of achieving net zero by 2050. In other words, adding SMRs to the set of technology options led to a more cost-effective transition.

What is the role of public policy amid all this uncertainty?

First, there is plenty on the policy front that is known. At the top of the list is the power of an economy-wide carbon price to reduce GHG emissions. Carbon emissions are now priced in all parts of Canada, and the federal government has recently announced that the price will rise to $170 per tonne by 2030. Few things energize the business model of any low-carbon technology better than an economy-wide carbon price. A rising carbon price drives the greater adoption of the safe bets.

But let's also admit that not everything about policy is known. We will surely develop some policy tools and policy approaches that we've never created or experienced before. This will require policymakers to have open minds and for all of us to cut our elected leaders some slack as they venture into unfamiliar territory.

Governments are always nervous about putting taxpayers' money at riskâ€”and they should be. But carefully calibrated public investments in some technologies will likely be required if we are to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The right public investments may transform today's wild cards into tomorrow's safe bets.

The post The ‘safe bets’ and ‘wild cards’ needed to meet Canada’s net zero emissions target appeared first on Macleans.ca.