Tag Archives: Natasha Bulowski

Environment

Canada’s competition watchdog opens inquiry into Pathways Alliance ads over greenwashing allegations

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Competition Bureau is officially investigating an ad campaign that Greenpeace Canada argues is “false and misleading” because it suggests Canada’s six biggest oilsands companies are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping Canada achieve its climate targets.

The Pathways Alliance’s six members — Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil subsidiary Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor — are responsible for 95 per cent of Canada’s oil sands production. A complaint filed in March by Greenpeace Canada took aim at the group’s “Let’s clear the air” marketing campaign, which presents its members as “making clear strides toward net zero” to help Canada “achieve a sustainable future.”

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Cost of Climate Change

Canadian Labour Congress wants more ambitious climate goals from Ottawa

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada’s largest labour organization passed two resolutions Monday vowing to address climate change, a just transition to clean energy and green industrial policy in a way that’s fair for workers.

Both resolutions appeared on the affordability agenda at the Canadian Labour Congress’ 2023 constitutional convention in Montreal. The first pledges to tackle the climate crisis while ensuring workers aren’t left behind in the transition to a low-carbon economy. The second deals with industrial policy, including expanding clean energy and creating good union jobs in the process.

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Cost of Climate Change, Energy

Oil and gas, transportation remain biggest obstacles in Canada’s quest to cut emissions

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada’s progress on significantly cutting pollution by 2030 is being undermined by growing emissions from the country’s oil and gas industry, according to the federal government’s annual emissions report to the United Nations.

Overall, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. However, the federal government was quick to note emissions that year were still lower than before the pandemic.

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Energy

Challenge to federal law that poses ‘existential threat’ to Alberta goes to Supreme Court

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Supreme Court of Canada this week will examine whether the federal law that evaluates the impacts of proposed resource projects is unconstitutional.

The Impact Assessment Act (IAA) looks into the environmental, health and economic impacts of proposed resource projects — like pipelines and mines — and came into force in 2019 when the federal government passed Bill C-69.

Soon after, the Alberta government brought a legal challenge against the law and its regulations, arguing it was federal overreach encroaching on provincial jurisdiction. The Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the provincial government in May 2022, calling the IAA an “existential threat” to the provincial right to control and develop resources.

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Cost of Climate Change

Canada’s Environment Minister says the federal government will take a ‘long, hard look’ at upping its climate target following IPCC report

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As the world stares down an ongoing and rapidly worsening climate crisis, wealthy countries like Canada must hit the “fast-forward button” and push up their net-zero emissions deadlines to 2040, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said Monday.

Guterres’ remarks accompanied the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the last of this decade — which shows the goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 C “is achievable,” he said. “But it will take a quantum leap in climate action.”

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