The war hawks are screeching for a more muscular response to Russian provocations at the Ukrainian border. The American president, trying to bolster his tough guy credentials, has threatened his Russian counterpart with an insurgency if he mounts an invasion.

He’s being egged on by the usual suspects in the American media. Washington Post commentator Max Boot has called for the U.S. and NATO to set up clandestine groups in Ukraine capable of launching a punishing guerilla war in case the Russians invade and occupy the country. He even suggests modeling the forces on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a World War II and Cold War-era guerrilla force that not only fought the Soviets but also participated in the ethnic cleansing of Ukraine’s Polish population and ultimately hoped to set up an ethnically-pure Ukrainian nation along the lines of Nazi Germany.

Clandestine far-right militias to fight Russians in case of an invasion? We’ve done that before, and it didn’t end well.

Of course, nothing should surprise us about this kind of unhinged view of the world. These are the same voices who loudly beat the drums for the invasion of Iraq. “Once we have deposed Saddam we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul,” said Boot at the time.

For so many people like me, who lived through the last two decades of the Cold War and the two decades of the disastrous War on Terror, rhetoric like Boot’s is unsettling.

Ukraine is a particularly dangerous place to be playing with that kind of fire: Evidence is mounting that the far-right has infiltrated the Ukrainian military. Indeed, according to an October report published by George Washington University, members of Ukraine’s Centuria group boasted on social media that they had received training from the Canadian Armed Forces. Centuria fashions itself as a protector of European “ethnic identity” and has ties to Ukraine’s far-right Azov movement.

The report pointed out that none of the countries training Ukraine’s military, including Canada, screens for extremist ideology. Canadian authorities responded by promising to investigate how it screens those it trains. The results of that investigation are still pending.

Whatever the investigation comes up with, it would be naïve to think that the training and weapons Canada is now providing to the Ukrainian military will not filter down to extremist militias, especially if Ukraine descends into an insurgency. Even now, the war in its eastern Donbas region is riddled with far-right groups, which have also attracted volunteers from as far away as the U.S. and Canada. If we are genuinely worried about the rise of far-right movements at home, we should be wary of aiding far-right movements abroad.

I have no doubt that Putin is well-aware of the risks NATO countries are taking with their military response to his provocations. He loved the Cold War precisely because Cold War competition was not rooted in the values of democratic governance; it was based on militarism, and militarism is the one thing Putin excels at. He wants nothing more than to see the Cold War rekindled.

But there are alternatives to letting him have his way. Germany has indicated that it is willing to cancel the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine. Of any economic sanctions, that would prove most painful to Russia, though it would also hurt Germany.

The effects, of course, wouldn’t be felt immediately. But over the medium to long term, meaningful sanctions would chip away at Putin’s popularity. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014 is a good example: Putin experienced an initial spike in popularity, but it didn’t last. Over subsequent years, economic sanctions ground away those gains.

Today, Putin faces the same level of unpopularity he faced in 2013, which may partly explain why he chose to turn up the heat on Ukraine now. At the same time, he’s up against a public mood in Russia which has soured on military adventurism.

In other words, the cards are stacked against Putin any way you look at it, except militarily. He could, of course, go full-on dictator, clamp down even harder on public dissent, and do whatever he wants. But that risks a further breakdown of the social contract with everyday Russians. Russia’s economy is already in tatters because of sanctions imposed after his 2014 annexation of Crimea, with a GDP now smaller than Canada’s. More sanctions would hurt, and likely mean massive public unrest and instability in Russia.

Facing such a grim future, a war footing is exactly what Putin wants. For bullies like him, there are far more effective ways the world can push back than piling troops along the border, or arming extremist paramilitaries who would someday have to be disarmed. What that would take is strategic unity to counter Putin’s divisive tactics. NATO members need to prove they can act as one, and support each other, even if that means economic and political costs in the short term.

Putin needs to learn that western democracies can mount a united front against him. Otherwise he will never stop.

The post The hawks are screeching over Ukraine. Will cooler heads prevail? appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Cindy Blackstock, a member of the Gitxsan First Nation, is the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and a professor at McGill University.

I really don’t like inquiries. They often amount to a lot of political show and not much action. But today I am making an exception—mostly out of profound desperation. We need a public inquiry into the departments of Justice and Indigenous Services Canada to stop their repeated abuses against First Nations children. In the wake of residential schools and tearful apologies from federal politicians and officials, Canada continues to treat First Nations people as if they are not worth the money by providing deficient public services on reserves and choosing to not implement solutions. The ongoing choices made by these two departments—and collateral departments, to ignore solutions to properly fix its inequitable First Nations public services and other injustices is literally costing the Canadian public tens of billions of dollars and costing First Nations children their childhoods and, in some cases, their lives.

Just earlier this month, three First Nations children died in a house fire at Sandy Lake First Nation. Community officials connect the deaths to woefully insufficient fire and emergency services, saying that “a lack of adequate water lines and infrastructure prevented the use of fire hydrants” to put out the fire. The lack of adequate resources and infrastructure on First Nations reserves is not news to Canada; the federal government has known about this problem for years and chose not to fix it. When stories of the injustices hit the media, Canada does sometimes act, but often in just a perfunctory way to defuse public pressure. Consider a recent Department of Justice’s news conference announcing $332,270 to support the families of over 4,000 murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. That is about 83 cents per victim.

RELATED: Cindy Blackstock: A relentless champion for Indigenous children’s rights

The cost of this chronic negligence came into stark relief this past month when the government finally admitted that its ongoing discrimination towards First Nations children required $40 billion to compensate victims and fix inequalities in federally funded First Nations child welfare services. This federal announcement was not voluntary. It came after 15 years of litigation by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations, over 30 government losses in Canadian courts and significant public pressure. All of this was necessary to fix a problem that would have only cost hundreds of millions to fix back in 2000 when the federal government agreed its under-funding of First Nations child welfare was driving more First Nations children into child welfare than during residential schools. Instead of fixing the problem then, even though it had a surplus budget, the government chose to kick the problem downstream, and now the receipts have come due, and Canada has to pay. But First Nations children have already paid with their childhoods.

Half of the $40 billion will compensate First Nations children and families victimized by Canada’s apartheid public services; many of them are still children. Nearly 60,000 First Nations children (that is more than the populations of New Westminster, B.C., or Fredericton, N.B.) were removed from their homes since 2006 because Canada’s deficient public services denied families the chance to recover from the multi-generational harms of residential schools. Other children were denied public services because they were First Nations. Undisputed evidence shows that the government denied a four-year-old girl in palliative care respiratory equipment, capped the number of catheters and feeding tubes, and denied basic educational and respite supports for special needs children.

Even after Canada was ordered to cease its discriminatory conduct in 2016, it continued its wrongdoing. Over 20 non-compliance and procedural orders were required to get to the $40-billion announcement. During this time, First Nations children continued to go into foster care at record rates because service providers did not have the funding needed to keep families together, and at least three children died because Ottawa defied legal orders and failed to provide mental health supports.

This whole matter of the government’s choice to not do better for First Nations children when it knows better needs to be “ventilated” in a public inquiry. That is what Peter Henderson Bryce, Canada’s health inspector for the Indian Department, called for in his 1922 booklet called A National Crime. It was part of his repeated attempts to save the lives of “Indian” children in residential schools who were dying at a rate of 25 per cent per year from tuberculosis fuelled by Ottawa’s unequal health care funding for “Indians” and terrible health practices in the institutions, which he first reported on in 1907. Canadian media covering the story in 1907 characterized the government’s behaviour as “Absolute Inattention to the Bare Necessities of Health” and reported that “Indians are dying like flies.” In 1908, lawyer Samuel Hume Blake famously noted that, “[i]n doing nothing to obviate the preventable causes of death,” the Indian Department brings itself “within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter.”

When the images of the unmarked graves ignited a public outcry this past summer, I found myself wondering: how many of those children would have been saved had Canada listened to the people of that period? And how many children could be saved if Canada stopped fighting First Nations children in court and complied with the legal orders to stop its discriminatory conduct now?

Political claims that Canada has “done more than any other government,” is “making good first steps and is committed to reconciliation” are an affront to the suffering of First Nations children and families who continue to be treated as if they are not worth the money.

Once implemented, the $40 billion in support will help families, but it will not end all the inequalities in public services on reserves. To ensure Canada ends its repeated offences against First Nations children, we need a public inquiry into Canada’s continued failure to provide equitable infrastructure and services, and we need a public and comprehensive plan to fix the discrimination across the board. As Sandy Lake First Nations Chief Delores Kakegamic asserted after the tragedy in her community earlier this month: “We should have the same level of support as anyone else in Canada. Lives are at stake.”

The post The case for an inquiry into Canada’s treatment of First Nations children appeared first on Macleans.ca.

The Hon. Navdeep Bains is Vice-Chair of Global Investment Banking at CIBC and was the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry in the Trudeau government from 2015 to 2021. Elder C. Marques is a partner with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP where he advises clients on litigation, public policy, risk and crisis management.

Just before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.  The name may be boring, but its job is to spend US$20 billion on climate tech demonstration projects in areas like carbon capture, energy storage and small modular reactors. This is just one example of many existing programs that use U.S. tax dollars to leverage private funding to support carbon-friendly innovations.

All around the world, governments and investors are making similar bets on climate tech. Coal-dependent South Korea has announced tens of billions of dollars in its Green New Deal, to be spent before 2025, with much of it dedicated to new technologies. Europe’s climate ambitions include a series of partnerships with the private sector focused on technology, with the most recent example being a billion-dollar deal with Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Foundation.

The bets are big because they have to be. A study by Boston Consulting Group and the Global Financial Markets Association estimates that $100-150 trillion in investments are needed globally between now and 2050 to achieve Paris Agreement targets. A significant part of that money is to invent, develop and deploy new technology. The scale, speed and ingenuity of these necessary changes cannot be underestimated and there are few, if any, good historical analogies. Investors are catching on: PwC’s 2021 market tracking found that 14 cents of every venture capital dollar is now dedicated to climate tech businesses.  The complexity of this change extends beyond the technology itself; if targets are to be met, we need an alignment of incentives, regulation and financing models that we are only beginning to develop and understand.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our political discourse doesn’t always encourage policy-makers to try new and experimental approaches to support clean growth.  Ironically, the innovation and ambition we demand of our entrepreneurs is actively discouraged when it comes to industrial policy, where new approaches to supporting business innovation are invariably dismissed as “picking winners.” Canada needs more collaboration, not less, and even more courage and creativity when it comes to supporting partnerships that involve strange bedfellows who wouldn’t otherwise be incentivized to work together. Coming up on the fifth anniversary of the launch of Canada’s Innovation and Skills Plan, it is time to re-assess and be even bolder.

Canada has enormous benefits going into this challenge, including our institutional stability, our high levels of education, our ability to attract global talent and numerous Canadian start-ups with innovative solutions that could be essential to fight climate change. But our overall business investment in research and development peaked around 2001, and we continue to lag our OECD peers on several key innovation metrics. If we are going to seize the challenges of the climate tech revolution, we need to be frank about our successes and weaknesses and not shy away from ambitious, large-scale solutions that reflect the urgency and scale of the problems in front of us.

There are many encouraging signs. New approaches brought on by ESG, which weighs environmental, social and governance factors in thinking about business, have revolutionized how we conceive of risk. Advisors like bankers, accountants and lawyers now overwhelmingly recognize that they need an appreciation of what the climate crisis means for their clients. And for those that don’t, evolving rules, such as those around climate risk disclosure, will make them get there fast. Asset managers care about carbon footprints in a way that was unimaginable just a few short years ago, and we have every reason to think this focus will continue to become more intense.

But all these positive signs don’t mean that problems will take care of themselves. There are three key challenges that need thoughtful leadership from business, government and opinion leaders in Canada.

First, the challenge of decarbonization is real, urgent and expensive, and it requires large amounts of patient capital. Plenty of investors who are worried about ESG are simply abandoning sectors with imperfect metrics, when we need them to help underwrite the technological changes that are necessary to meet global climate targets. Divestment feels good, and in some cases is absolutely appropriate, but who is going to pay for the innovation needed to transform underperforming sectors, and make sure it is done in a responsible way?

Second, government needs to continue to play a role. It must, for a start, look at how to make both the development and deployment of climate tech more affordable for industry. But just as important, it is uniquely placed to create models that incentivize cross-sectoral partnerships that can unlock more climate tech innovation and commercialization. In Canada, our primary research and post-secondary sectors are strong, but often disconnected from businesses. We need to find ways to translate research into marketable innovation, and then help our dynamic young climate tech start-ups grow to match the scale of the climate crisis.

Finally, we need a cultural change that sees the climate tech revolution as inevitable, urgent and essential to Canada’s future prosperity. Canada can either lead it or passively fall into line behind others. That choice shouldn’t be a difficult one, but it means we need all hands on deck to make sure the strategy and investments match the well-meaning rhetoric.

The post Canada and the challenge of the climate tech revolution appeared first on Macleans.ca.

The Hon. Navdeep Bains is Vice-Chair of Global Investment Banking at CIBC and was the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry in the Trudeau government from 2015 to 2021. Elder C. Marques is a partner with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP where he advises clients on litigation, public policy, risk and crisis management.

Just before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.  The name may be boring, but its job is to spend US$20 billion on climate tech demonstration projects in areas like carbon capture, energy storage and small modular reactors. This is just one example of many existing programs that use U.S. tax dollars to leverage private funding to support carbon-friendly innovations.

All around the world, governments and investors are making similar bets on climate tech. Coal-dependent South Korea has announced tens of billions of dollars in its Green New Deal, to be spent before 2025, with much of it dedicated to new technologies. Europe’s climate ambitions include a series of partnerships with the private sector focused on technology, with the most recent example being a billion-dollar deal with Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Foundation.

The bets are big because they have to be. A study by Boston Consulting Group and the Global Financial Markets Association estimates that $100-150 trillion in investments are needed globally between now and 2050 to achieve Paris Agreement targets. A significant part of that money is to invent, develop and deploy new technology. The scale, speed and ingenuity of these necessary changes cannot be underestimated and there are few, if any, good historical analogies. Investors are catching on: PwC’s 2021 market tracking found that 14 cents of every venture capital dollar is now dedicated to climate tech businesses.  The complexity of this change extends beyond the technology itself; if targets are to be met, we need an alignment of incentives, regulation and financing models that we are only beginning to develop and understand.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our political discourse doesn’t always encourage policy-makers to try new and experimental approaches to support clean growth.  Ironically, the innovation and ambition we demand of our entrepreneurs is actively discouraged when it comes to industrial policy, where new approaches to supporting business innovation are invariably dismissed as “picking winners.” Canada needs more collaboration, not less, and even more courage and creativity when it comes to supporting partnerships that involve strange bedfellows who wouldn’t otherwise be incentivized to work together. Coming up on the fifth anniversary of the launch of Canada’s Innovation and Skills Plan, it is time to re-assess and be even bolder.

Canada has enormous benefits going into this challenge, including our institutional stability, our high levels of education, our ability to attract global talent and numerous Canadian start-ups with innovative solutions that could be essential to fight climate change. But our overall business investment in research and development peaked around 2001, and we continue to lag our OECD peers on several key innovation metrics. If we are going to seize the challenges of the climate tech revolution, we need to be frank about our successes and weaknesses and not shy away from ambitious, large-scale solutions that reflect the urgency and scale of the problems in front of us.

There are many encouraging signs. New approaches brought on by ESG, which weighs environmental, social and governance factors in thinking about business, have revolutionized how we conceive of risk. Advisors like bankers, accountants and lawyers now overwhelmingly recognize that they need an appreciation of what the climate crisis means for their clients. And for those that don’t, evolving rules, such as those around climate risk disclosure, will make them get there fast. Asset managers care about carbon footprints in a way that was unimaginable just a few short years ago, and we have every reason to think this focus will continue to become more intense.

But all these positive signs don’t mean that problems will take care of themselves. There are three key challenges that need thoughtful leadership from business, government and opinion leaders in Canada.

First, the challenge of decarbonization is real, urgent and expensive, and it requires large amounts of patient capital. Plenty of investors who are worried about ESG are simply abandoning sectors with imperfect metrics, when we need them to help underwrite the technological changes that are necessary to meet global climate targets. Divestment feels good, and in some cases is absolutely appropriate, but who is going to pay for the innovation needed to transform underperforming sectors, and make sure it is done in a responsible way?

Second, government needs to continue to play a role. It must, for a start, look at how to make both the development and deployment of climate tech more affordable for industry. But just as important, it is uniquely placed to create models that incentivize cross-sectoral partnerships that can unlock more climate tech innovation and commercialization. In Canada, our primary research and post-secondary sectors are strong, but often disconnected from businesses. We need to find ways to translate research into marketable innovation, and then help our dynamic young climate tech start-ups grow to match the scale of the climate crisis.

Finally, we need a cultural change that sees the climate tech revolution as inevitable, urgent and essential to Canada’s future prosperity. Canada can either lead it or passively fall into line behind others. That choice shouldn’t be a difficult one, but it means we need all hands on deck to make sure the strategy and investments match the well-meaning rhetoric.

The post Canada and the challenge of the climate tech revolution appeared first on Macleans.ca.

A labour shortage. A climate crisis. A world remade by COVID-19.

Canada faces many significant challenges emerging from the pandemic, yet we haven’t figured out how to wield the full power of one of our most potent yet under-the-radar economic and societal forces.

That would be the students either staying in this country or moving here to access some of the best universities in the world. These are the people who will carry out new research to address urgent problems such as climate change and the pandemic response; who will learn new skills and develop new businesses as technological disruptions reshape entire industries; and who will, at this pivotal juncture in the rebalancing of global economic powers, help to ensure Canada is at the leading edge of new and emerging talents and technologies.

And yet, as our students and universities navigate this moment, you could be forgiven if you aren’t familiar with the vision of political leaders at any level to ensure their success. Part of that may be a function of a world ablaze with hourly headlines highlighting the fallout of COVID-19 and the increasingly urgent effects of climate change. But part of it might be the ideas on offer from conference to conference, election to election—a perennial mix of proposals aimed, for the most part, at reducing student debt or simply increasing access opportunities.

Student debt is absolutely a priority issue worth tackling, especially as the pandemic adds another layer of complexity to post-graduation job hunts. But the tendency to reduce the debate around the future of post-secondary education to this one concern alone means we are missing the wider picture of what is at stake.

Accessibility is important, but the quality of the student experience—which includes the academic programming, extracurricular activities, facilities, and social and health supports available—is what should set us apart. This is particularly true at this moment: the sector is facing increased global competition from universities in Asia that have grown tired of losing some of their brightest people. Just as the pandemic has reshaped entire industries, it has given rise to new challengers in the education space who are offering online degrees, credentials, and a faster route to citizenship—one that can sometimes come at a great cost. 

It’s clear, then, that Canadian institutions need to continue to innovate and offer experiences that cannot be replicated in such environments. But for the last decade, Canada’s public spending on post-secondary education has stagnated as other countries take action to boost their sectors in the wake of COVID-19.

With that context in mind, the kinds of ideas on offer in Canada betray a short-sightedness that risks undermining one of our country’s greatest forces. Far more than making higher education more accessible to individual students, far more than leaving them with less debt from their learning, we are talking about the future of our economy, society and the kind of country we want Canada to be on the global stage.

In that respect, we are failing as a nation to have the kind of serious debate our students and universities deserve.

Public investment in higher education not only prepares us for new and emerging threats like disease and climate change, it encourages the businesses and talents of tomorrow: In the last decade, businesses incubated at the University of Waterloo have raised over $3.5 billion. These ventures have accelerated growth in our economy in critical areas such as health and education. Now, as governments reconcile massive stimulus spending with the realities of balancing a budget, the pandemic has also made it clear that cutting funding to universities cannot be the answer.

So what is? How do we ensure that the financial resources available to Canadian universities are commensurate with the positioning we seek on the global stage? That they are secure and stable and don’t rely on the politics of any one federal or provincial government? That they reflect the very real ways in which institutes of higher learning can and do connect research with solutions to the world’s most urgent problems?

Allowing more flexibility to adjust tuition rates at an institutional or provincial level, freezing interest rates on student loans, tax incentives, spending on work-integrated learning programs: these are all ideas worth considering. What is needed, though, is a more coordinated and urgent discussion on how to proceed with these ideas in a way that transcends political cycles.

Lurching from one plan or idea to another every two to four years serves neither the interests of Canada’s world-class post-secondary sector nor the students who will go on to shape our nation’s future. As other countries make moves to capitalize on their universities’ ability to create knowledge and talent, we cannot afford to wait until another conference, another election, or even another day, to figure this out.

Vivek Goel is president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo

The post Canada is falling behind globally on public funding for universities. That’s a problem. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

A labour shortage. A climate crisis. A world remade by COVID-19.

Canada faces many significant challenges emerging from the pandemic, yet we haven’t figured out how to wield the full power of one of our most potent yet under-the-radar economic and societal forces.

That would be the students either staying in this country or moving here to access some of the best universities in the world. These are the people who will carry out new research to address urgent problems such as climate change and the pandemic response; who will learn new skills and develop new businesses as technological disruptions reshape entire industries; and who will, at this pivotal juncture in the rebalancing of global economic powers, help to ensure Canada is at the leading edge of new and emerging talents and technologies.

And yet, as our students and universities navigate this moment, you could be forgiven if you aren’t familiar with the vision of political leaders at any level to ensure their success. Part of that may be a function of a world ablaze with hourly headlines highlighting the fallout of COVID-19 and the increasingly urgent effects of climate change. But part of it might be the ideas on offer from conference to conference, election to election—a perennial mix of proposals aimed, for the most part, at reducing student debt or simply increasing access opportunities.

Student debt is absolutely a priority issue worth tackling, especially as the pandemic adds another layer of complexity to post-graduation job hunts. But the tendency to reduce the debate around the future of post-secondary education to this one concern alone means we are missing the wider picture of what is at stake.

Accessibility is important, but the quality of the student experience—which includes the academic programming, extracurricular activities, facilities, and social and health supports available—is what should set us apart. This is particularly true at this moment: the sector is facing increased global competition from universities in Asia that have grown tired of losing some of their brightest people. Just as the pandemic has reshaped entire industries, it has given rise to new challengers in the education space who are offering online degrees, credentials, and a faster route to citizenship—one that can sometimes come at a great cost. 

It’s clear, then, that Canadian institutions need to continue to innovate and offer experiences that cannot be replicated in such environments. But for the last decade, Canada’s public spending on post-secondary education has stagnated as other countries take action to boost their sectors in the wake of COVID-19.

With that context in mind, the kinds of ideas on offer in Canada betray a short-sightedness that risks undermining one of our country’s greatest forces. Far more than making higher education more accessible to individual students, far more than leaving them with less debt from their learning, we are talking about the future of our economy, society and the kind of country we want Canada to be on the global stage.

In that respect, we are failing as a nation to have the kind of serious debate our students and universities deserve.

Public investment in higher education not only prepares us for new and emerging threats like disease and climate change, it encourages the businesses and talents of tomorrow: In the last decade, businesses incubated at the University of Waterloo have raised over $3.5 billion. These ventures have accelerated growth in our economy in critical areas such as health and education. Now, as governments reconcile massive stimulus spending with the realities of balancing a budget, the pandemic has also made it clear that cutting funding to universities cannot be the answer.

So what is? How do we ensure that the financial resources available to Canadian universities are commensurate with the positioning we seek on the global stage? That they are secure and stable and don’t rely on the politics of any one federal or provincial government? That they reflect the very real ways in which institutes of higher learning can and do connect research with solutions to the world’s most urgent problems?

Allowing more flexibility to adjust tuition rates at an institutional or provincial level, freezing interest rates on student loans, tax incentives, spending on work-integrated learning programs: these are all ideas worth considering. What is needed, though, is a more coordinated and urgent discussion on how to proceed with these ideas in a way that transcends political cycles.

Lurching from one plan or idea to another every two to four years serves neither the interests of Canada’s world-class post-secondary sector nor the students who will go on to shape our nation’s future. As other countries make moves to capitalize on their universities’ ability to create knowledge and talent, we cannot afford to wait until another conference, another election, or even another day, to figure this out.

Vivek Goel is president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo

The post Canada is falling behind globally on public funding for universities. That’s a problem. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Rick Smith is the President of the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices

There are some dramas that people actually like.

The season finale of the HBO hit “Succession”, for example, was extremely entertaining. I and millions of other viewers loved it.

Here’s the thing about drama: a little can be a lot of fun. But too much—especially the stuff we feel like we can’t control—starts to take a mental toll.

It often felt, over the past year, that we were collectively being held hostage to real-life dramas that rivalled those of our favourite TV show.

The prime culprits—of course—are the tough choices we’ve had to make through the COVID pandemic. It’s the drama that just won’t stop. It’s overwhelming. It’s unrelenting. It’s so unprecedented we’ve had to create a whole new vernacular to describe the experience.

Another ongoing drama is the existential threat of climate change. Whenever I tell people that I work on climate change for a living the first question out of their mouths is some version of “Are we screwed?” It never fails: at a dinner party, at the barbershop, you name it.

This widespread angst is backed up by public opinion research. Nearly 60 per cent of global youth say they are very worried about climate change and almost half say those concerns about climate affect their daily lives. Here in Canada, this “eco-anxiety” is exacerbated by the extreme wildfires and flooding we saw this year and the expectation that the devastating effects of climate change will only get worse.

Does it need to be this way? Do we have to suffer from the anxiety and uncertainty of a frightening, dystopic future? The short answer is no.

Of course, we’re not going to sort out all of the world’s current craziness, but here’s one thing we could do in 2022 to ease Canadians’ climate change worries: make climate change boring. Boredom means predictability. It means calm. And I think we could all use a bit of that right now.

There’s a quote attributed to Winston Churchill that goes like this: “Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” That’s what we have the potential to do in the coming year in this country.

Canada now has a climate change law at the federal level, the “Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act,” which requires—by the end of March—the country’s first 2030 emissions reduction plan. For the new Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, this plan needs to include mandates for electric and zero emission vehicles, cutting down on methane pollution, capping and cutting emissions from the oil and gas industry and transitioning to a net zero electricity grid.

If the government does all of this, we’ll be well on the way to taking a significant bite out of carbon emissions in this country for the first time.

Will this instantly lift the worry-burden that people are feeling with respect to climate? Of course not. But knowing that we have a plan, that we’re starting to bend the greenhouse gas emissions curve downwards, will be a significant psychological milestone in the history of the Canadian carbon conversation.

Other countries that have already made more progress on carbon reduction show us the way forward. The U.K., for instance, has halved carbon emissions since 1990. It has settled into an annual cycle of executing the national carbon reduction plan, assessing progress against the plan, updating the plan, then repeating. It’s boring. It’s predictable. It’s working.

When public policies are working well, they usually cease being hot topics of discussion. My hope for 2022 is that we need to talk about climate change less, because we’re doing more.

The post Let’s make climate change boring in 2022 appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Rick Smith is the President of the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices

There are some dramas that people actually like.

The season finale of the HBO hit “Succession”, for example, was extremely entertaining. I and millions of other viewers loved it.

Here’s the thing about drama: a little can be a lot of fun. But too much—especially the stuff we feel like we can’t control—starts to take a mental toll.

It often felt, over the past year, that we were collectively being held hostage to real-life dramas that rivalled those of our favourite TV show.

The prime culprits—of course—are the tough choices we’ve had to make through the COVID pandemic. It’s the drama that just won’t stop. It’s overwhelming. It’s unrelenting. It’s so unprecedented we’ve had to create a whole new vernacular to describe the experience.

Another ongoing drama is the existential threat of climate change. Whenever I tell people that I work on climate change for a living the first question out of their mouths is some version of “Are we screwed?” It never fails: at a dinner party, at the barbershop, you name it.

This widespread angst is backed up by public opinion research. Nearly 60 per cent of global youth say they are very worried about climate change and almost half say those concerns about climate affect their daily lives. Here in Canada, this “eco-anxiety” is exacerbated by the extreme wildfires and flooding we saw this year and the expectation that the devastating effects of climate change will only get worse.

Does it need to be this way? Do we have to suffer from the anxiety and uncertainty of a frightening, dystopic future? The short answer is no.

Of course, we’re not going to sort out all of the world’s current craziness, but here’s one thing we could do in 2022 to ease Canadians’ climate change worries: make climate change boring. Boredom means predictability. It means calm. And I think we could all use a bit of that right now.

There’s a quote attributed to Winston Churchill that goes like this: “Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” That’s what we have the potential to do in the coming year in this country.

Canada now has a climate change law at the federal level, the “Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act,” which requires—by the end of March—the country’s first 2030 emissions reduction plan. For the new Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, this plan needs to include mandates for electric and zero emission vehicles, cutting down on methane pollution, capping and cutting emissions from the oil and gas industry and transitioning to a net zero electricity grid.

If the government does all of this, we’ll be well on the way to taking a significant bite out of carbon emissions in this country for the first time.

Will this instantly lift the worry-burden that people are feeling with respect to climate? Of course not. But knowing that we have a plan, that we’re starting to bend the greenhouse gas emissions curve downwards, will be a significant psychological milestone in the history of the Canadian carbon conversation.

Other countries that have already made more progress on carbon reduction show us the way forward. The U.K., for instance, has halved carbon emissions since 1990. It has settled into an annual cycle of executing the national carbon reduction plan, assessing progress against the plan, updating the plan, then repeating. It’s boring. It’s predictable. It’s working.

When public policies are working well, they usually cease being hot topics of discussion. My hope for 2022 is that we need to talk about climate change less, because we’re doing more.

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