National Observer

The last two years have been literally off-the-charts. Take a look...

Premier Doug Ford’s government moved to slash several key provincial watchdogs on Thursday, making the case that less oversight was producing savings in its efforts to balance Ontario’s finances.

A sign of the company’s fiscal crisis came in September when unionized journalists and sales staff at the Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Sun voted 32 to 24 to accept a Postmedia contract that reduces sick pay, dental and other health benefits. The company had threatened to lock out the workers if they didn’t accept the deal.

At the end of October, Canadian plug-in EV sales broke through the symbolic threshold of two per cent of new cars sold (2.2%), more than doubling the 0.9 per cent in 2017. This is ahead of their 1.9 per cent market share in the United States so far this year.

The federal and B.C. governments announced a $14 million conservation investment. People protested the federal government's support for pipelines at the event.

A major Calgary-based energy company is facing its fourth lawsuit in U.S. courts over climate change. The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations — the largest commercial fishermen’s group on the West Coast — has included Encana in a lawsuit attempting to link greenhouse gas emissions from 30 energy companies to damage in the crab fishery.

In an extraordinary project, award-winning landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky and documentary filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier illustrate the severe impact human activity has had on the landscapes of 20 different countries. Human destruction of their environment has, perhaps, never before looked this beautiful. 

In the last six years, Quebec has gone from supplying its refineries with crude oil mostly from overseas to supplying them mostly from North American sources, thanks in part to the 2015 reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline.

We’ve heard it time and again. The argument that Quebec has no business touting itself as a climate leader when it’s dependent on Saudi oil. But the argument simply isn’t true, according to the latest numbers.

Mike Schreiner, who became the first Green Ontario legislator after winning the seat for Guelph in the June election, said that "the Ford government is on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of the electorate" given that a majority of votes cast in that election were for parties (the Liberals, New Democrats, Greens) which included pollution pricing in their platforms.

The Trudeau government faced criticism Wednesday for a tepid response to the head of the U.S. space agency saying he wants to see Canadian astronauts walking on the moon in the near future.

On Nov. 13, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, Catherine McKenna, announced that 28 Indigenous-led projects have been selected for funding of $5.7 million, as a part of the Indigenous Guardians Pilot Program.

Toxic releases are still very common, despite provincial government promises to crack down on the problem. Local residents say the alerts and scares are far too common. “They just tell us ... to just shut your doors and your windows and shut off your air conditioning," said one resident who lives near a refinery.

Raw sewage has overflowed into Ontario’s waterways 1,327 times in the past year. More than half of those overflows were from nearly 44 outdated municipal sewer systems that combine stormwater and sewage.

Tommy Orange, an Oakland-based author, was surprised his first novel 'There There' hit The New York Times best seller list, 11 weeks in a row. In an interview with National Observer, Orange told reporter Emilee Gilpin about rarely reading as a kid, the important role of fiction in society, and how the success of his first novel rode a strange parallel to Donald Trump's presidency.

Will a price on carbon be a central issue in Alberta's 2019 election? With opinion polls that show Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party has a wide lead over Premier Rachel Notley's NDP, and signs that oilpatch leaders are undermining the government's approach to pollution, the pressure is on for Notley's team to show their work on the economy, climate change and renewable energy issues.

What is needed is leadership to ensure Albertans do not inherit the environmental liability of resource development, writes Amin Asadollahi.

Justin Trudeau says Canadian intelligence officials have listened to a recording of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Indigenous leaders wonder if new council will keep Reconciliation going.

Tim Fontaine launched the satirical Walking Eagle News site about a year ago after a lengthy career as a journalist covering Indigenous issues in Canada. Today, tongue firmly in cheek, he gives himself the titles Editor-in-Grand-Chief and Head Writer of "your finest source of Indigenous news, anywhere."