Climate news & insights

Those opposed to the federal carbon price promise to save us money. Generally they won’t, because research shows the carbon price contributes less than 1% to our major costs of living, such as rent and food. There are better ways to improve affordability, such as policies to reduce housing, child care and other major costs of living.

Gen Squeeze Founder Paul Kershaw was on Parliament Hill this week to remind Canadians why most of us supported paying for our pollution in the first place: “[W]e pay for our pollution because we love our kids, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. We have a duty to pay for our pollution for them… because there’s absolutely no escaping that we put our kid’s health, safety, air, drinking water, and food at risk when we pollute.”

Whether to pay for pollution isn’t about consumer preferences. It’s a duty we owe to our kids. We need our politicians to recognize as much if they are to identify real solutions to the affordability crisis, and to reduce risks from extreme weather.

Federal parties have misdiagnosed the biggest changes in 2023 Fall Economic Statement. Canada needs a federal task force on generational fairness to correct these misperceptions of federal finances.

Nobody likes to be challenged about whether they earned all that they have. Some get defensive when I talk about winning the “lottery of timing” by becoming a homeowner years ago, or when I raise concerns that younger Canadians inherit unaffordability and climate problems in which I’m partly implicated. Breaking through this defensiveness is necessary if Canada is to work once again for young and old alike.

Today, November 16, 2023, is the first global Intergenerational Fairness Day. The urgent need to reverse the deteriorating well-being of younger and future generations stretches beyond Canada. Voices from the US, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Japan, Nigeria, and Australia as well as United Nations Foundation Next Generation Fellows have joined together to call on governments to preserve what is sacred – a healthy childhood, home, and planet – so that we can all be proud of the legacy we leave for those who follow. 

We’ll never be able to fix today’s affordability, housing, medical care, and climate crises without understanding and resolving the intergenerational tensions at their core. Here are five impacts a federal Generational Fairness Task Force will have on key decisions made at Cabinet and Treasury tables.

Talk of “youth issues” is distracting, drawing attention from the root causes of the problems, which have less to do with younger generations than their treatment by older ones as a result of past policy decisions. To begin to fix this, Ottawa should launch a general fairness council to investigate why Canada no longer works fairly for all generations.

The scale of damage caused by extreme weather across Canada signals that paying personally to fight climate change is no longer just a political gesture – or even optional. The questions are how much we will pay – some now, or more later? And which generations will incur the largest burdens?

For people across Canada, there’s reason to be concerned about the trajectory Alberta just locked in for the next four years, especially when it comes to climate.