After a year of disasters, where should Ottawa’s climate policy go in 2024?
Global News
According to data from Natural Resources Canada, the country saw a total of 6,174 fires as of Sept. 6. A total of 232,209 people were forced from their homes.
Even before the month of July had ended, it was already on track to be the hottest month ever recorded.
A concerned United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the era of global warming was at an end. He said the world is now in an era of “global boiling.”
Guterres said the world was seeing “children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames (and) workers collapsing in scorching heat,” and 2023 saw such climate disasters across the globe.
In July, heavy rains and flooding killed people in Japan, India, China and the United States. July 3 was the hottest day on record. That same month, the air in several major Canadian cities smelled like burning campfires. Air quality plummeted that month around the world because of wildfire smoke, made worse by the adverse effects of climate change in an “unprecedented” fire season.
According to data from Natural Resources Canada, the country saw a total of 6,174 fires as of Sept. 6, with 284 evacuation orders issued this year and 232,209 people forced from their homes.
Four provinces and one territory saw records set in terms of area burnt in wildfires, with 5.3 million hectares in Quebec, 3.6 million hectares in the Northwest Territories, 2.3 million hectares in Alberta, 1.9 million hectares in B.C. and 25,000 hectares in Nova Scotia.
The wildfires have also made greenhouse gas emissions worse, with an estimated 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted by September. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the devastation “apocalyptic.”
“That’s (what) just over one degree of warming looks like. And it really makes clear that the costs of inaction,” Julia Levin, associate director of the National Climate Program at Environmental Defence Canada, told Global News.
A federal union says hundreds of workers have been warned they may lose their jobs as the government moves to shrink the size of the public service.
Health Canada is asking diabetes patients to check if their glucose monitor is subject to an international recall that has serious health risks.
The agency says more than 22,000 people have been removed from the country in the last 12 months, and nearly 30,000 removals were "in progress" as of Oct. 31.
A problem with the signalling system caused a service interruption this morning on Montreal's light-rail network.
An Ontario lawyer accused by American authorities of advising a Canadian Olympian-turned-alleged-cocaine kingpin has had his licence to practice law suspended.
The FIFA draw ceremony will mark the first time Prime Minister Mark Carney, U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will be in the same room.
A new report finds anglophones face higher unemployment and lower wages in Quebec; gaps that researchers say carry major economic consequences.
Critics are questioning the solidity of Saab's pitch to deliver 10,000 jobs in Canada if it decides to set up shop here to assemble Gripen fighter jets.
The girl’s disappearance underscores long-standing concerns about the ease with which a parent can take a child to another country without the other parent’s knowledge or consent.
Asbestos cleanup, tight work windows and other TTC delays have slowed the build out of 5G cellular service in Toronto's subway system.
Alberta's UCP government is changing the rules to make it easier for citizens to force a referendum on issues such as the prospect of the province leaving Confederation.
An at-home DNA test given as a birthday gift solved an 80-year family mystery by revealing that a man in Quebec and a man in the Netherlands were long-lost brothers.
Lina Vargas was on the board for almost two years and told Global News that accountability and transparency are fundamental rights for all community members.