Archive for News

Just got the news.  Best wishes for a speedy recovery!

For a tiny bit of exercise this morning, I chose to walk to Broadview Station instead of taking the streetcar.  I knew it wasn’t a good sign when I saw the bouquets taped to the pole outside the Pizza Pizza at Broadview and Danforth.  I’d like to bicycle, but I’m too much of a chicken.  This was a man on crutches, with a walk signal.

I’ve wanted to write for a while about Afghan prisoner issues, but for a while every day brought new revelations.  And now for days I’ve wanted to write about the prorogation of Parliament, but I’m honestly stumped about what to say.  And obviously I’m heartily ashamed of Canada’s performance at Copenhagen, which earned us the “Fossil of the Year”  award once again.

Maude Barlow ties all this together, and more, here.

Well I got a letter published in the National Post, and to my horror, in my haste I made a mistake.     Read more »

One thing is clear from the Canadians selected to inform our negotiating team in Copenhagen — environment minister Jim Prentice has no interest in science, nor the environment.     Read more »

Canada is poised to torpedo international climate negotiations now underway in Copenhagen.  Canadians concerned about a future for the next generations can have a dramatic impact by pressing their government today.     Read more »

Mike Schreiner, new Leader of the Green Party of Ontario, was interviewed by Steve Paikin on The Agenda.

(Original broadcast: Tuesday, 2009 December 8, 8 pm.)

Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May and deputy leader Jacques Rivard are joining hundreds of Canadians in Copenhagen to press for the international treaty most Canadians voted for and to oppose the dangerous proposals Canada’s official delegation brings to the table.

Over the next 10 days in Copenhagen, the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol is to be negotiated.  This treaty will bind participating nations to emissions reductions, forest protection and economic and technology transfers over the next decade.  It has tremendous economic implications for the next few decades and overwhelming human rights implications for the next generations.     Read more »

Find out what gets Mugnatto-Hamu excited.

The Canadian Health Coalition is concerned about new threats to our universal public health care system.  They are concerned that the new head of the Canadian Medical Association, who owns private clinics himself, is promoting a mixed model of health care delivery.

I applaud the goals of the Canadian Health Coalition, which has just launched a website to address this new threat, and urge everyone to sign the pledge online, which I appear to have signed twice in my enthusiasm.     Read more »

Here’s today’s press release from the Green Party of Canada regarding the coup in Honduras:     Read more »

The stresses we put on the planet are a product of individual demands on resources multiplied by the number of us there are.  Ecologists are well aware of this and used to discuss it when I was a child.  One of the reasons these concerns were dropped politically is because population control can be used as an excuse for a lot of nasty policy — racist immigration reforms, draconian meddling in personal fertility and tax structures that punish children who are in no way to blame for being alive.

Still, plenty of sensible voices lament silencing of the issue, which is serious.  And many of these have been unhappy about the Green Party’s refusal to address this issue.  I’ve heard this concern expressed at the door at least four times while canvassing – and I’ve been proud to say that at the last Green Party of Canada AGM, we adopted a sensible population policy that recognizes the problem, yet proposes to address it in ways that are non-intrusive and which enable rather than punish the most disadvantaged people on the planet.     Read more »

With the election of Barrack Obama in the United States, they have slightly improved their climate change policy, enough for Canada to beat them out for last place among the G8 countries in a joint evaluation by the World Wildlife Fund and the Insurance giant Allianz.     Read more »

In late March 1964, my parents went to visit the newly unveiled Brazilian capital of Brasilia.  My mom, pregnant with me, returned to Uberlândia, where my father’s family lived, to their great relief.  Brazil had just suffered the military overthrow of their elected government, and my mom and dad, seeing the sights in the capital city, hadn’t even noticed.

Like the recent military coup in Honduras, Brazil’s coup was bloodless.  But it ushered in twenty years of political repression, journalistic censorship, disappearances, a pattern of torture, and even amid a time of burgeoning economic growth known as the “Brazilian miracle”, a rise in infant mortality, the collapse of the education system and the polarization of society into a small group of ultra-rich and a huge class of desperately poor.  The Brazil that I came to know as a teenager was a Brazil teeming with urban poor clustered in shantytowns of unimaginable squalor.     Read more »

In my canvassing, I’ve so far encountered three people who told me that they supported every policy of the Green Party except our opposition to nuclear, which they feel will be a necessary part of the solution to climate change.     Read more »

Former leader of the Green Party of Canada Jim Harris has a new column in the National Post about reducing energy at a profit.  It’s an inspiring message I’ve heard him talk about recently on CBC radio as well.

Adriana has been knocking on doors, her postcard in hand.  Apparently, The Star’s Linda Diebel is in our riding and took notice.

I have been waiting for the broader media to pick up on this story tucked into Embassy, a Canadian foreign policy newspaper.  I find it explosive.

Recognizing that Canada’s position on climate negotiations was toxically inadequate, government officials, rather than improving it, instead decided to attempt to divide a united Europe so that Canada wouldn’t stand out as such a lonely opponent of climate action.  It took the Suzuki Foundation unearthing memos under the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the duplicitous strategy.     Read more »

According to a study jointly co-authored by researchers at Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), the United Nations University and CARE International, the stresses of climate change could create 700 million refugees by 2050.  That’s about 20 times the entire population of Canada desperately searching for a new home.  40 countries may cease to exist altogether.

As a young woman, I heard the story of the Danish people wearing armbands marking them as Jews in solidarity with the Jewish people when their country was occupied by Nazis.  It turns out this detail is false.  Danish Jews were saved through the courage of their countrymen, primarily because a transport to neutral Sweden was arranged, not because Danish non-Jews also wore yellow stars.  But I find it inspiring to think of facing injustice by insisting on imposing the same limitations on yourself as those suffered by the people you are fighting for.  It is a powerful image.     Read more »

There was more grim news on the impacts of climate change yesterday.  A new study from the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), a group headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, estimates that climate change now kills 315,000 people annually.  This is an increase from a previous World Health Organization estimate of 150,000 deaths per year.     Read more »

Isuma TV has a Countdown to Copenhagen project that emphasizes the importance of protecting Inuit culture from the ravages of climate change.  A special programme will be aired this Friday.  We’ll be gathering to watch at Hart House.

Countdown to Copenhagen
Friday, 2009 May 29, 7:45pm
Hart House Debates Room
Hart House in the University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Contact Pieter Basedow for more information:
pbasedow@yahoo.ca
free

Just got notice today that Solar Neighbourhoods is sponsoring an information session about solar power in Withrow Park next to the Farmer’s Market.

A Solar Affair
Saturday, 2009 May 23, 10am-1pm
Withrow Park
northeast corner, near Farmer’s market and playground     Read more »

Yesterday, the Sri Lankan government celebrated the defeat of the rebel Tamil Tiger group.  Today, it is showing how hollow any hopes for a lasting peace are.     Read more »