Purported ‘reforms’ to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act amount to little more than nice words, with little to none of the material change that working Canadians need from environmental legislation. Real reform would recognize that the working class bears the brunt of industrial capital’s impact on the environment and resultantly faces disproportionately poor health outcomes.

In their attempt to please everyone, the Trudeau government is forced to lie about or downplay the severity of the climate crisis at hand. The problem is that when faced with an existential threat like catastrophic global warming, trying to please everyone—including the institutions that are causing the crisis—means the Liberals are standing in the way of necessary, systemic solutions.

Now is not the time for timidity. The NDP is ostensibly the only party willing to take on a Green New Deal and make it a part of its platform. Andrea Horwath and party insiders, however, are too afraid of the cries of populism from the Liberals and Tories to give the people what they are craving. Standing with the voters isn’t populism, it is how elections are won. And winning, well that’s good politics.

On March 1, 1954, the United States military detonated a 15 megaton thermonuclear weapon called “Bravo” (the first in the “CASTLE” test series) and exposed the residents of the Bikini Atoll to its radioactive fallout. Those down-wind of the explosions suffered severe burns and were exposed to massive amounts of radiation, irreversibly altering the trajectory of the region and its inhabitants forever.

Flying under the radar of Canadian media, Mongolia has long been one of Canada’s closest partners in Asia as a source of strategic metals and minerals, while occupying a fulcrum point between Southeast Asia, Russia and the Middle East. Yet, little light has been shed on the bleak implications of the increasing demand for lithium, and other strategic resources found across Central Asia that are essential to the energy transition.

To secure a just, people-centred green recovery, Canada needs both reactive policies to support workers and communities in affected regions, and proactive interventions to ensure an equitable zero-carbon economy. The scope of the policies must add up to the challenge. Instead of asking if we should focus on green transitions amidst the current socioeconomic disarray, the question should be if we can afford not to.

Canadians own the biggest retail network in Canada: Canada Post. Imagine if those locations could drive a post-carbon, post-COVID transition. Imagine if each of those locations were retrofitted for energy efficiency including solar panels. Every delivery vehicle was electric and there was a network of charging stations from coast to coast to coast, supporting them and the needs of our communities by providing public charging stations.

Global problems of this scale require global cooperation. Nuclear annihilation and extinction by climate catastrophe are twin threats to the planet. Meanwhile, for victims of the neoliberal assault that has plagued the past generation, the short-term problems of sustaining their mere existence displace fundamental questions about the fate of our children and grandchildren.

Why would the Canadian government choose and promote nuclear energy over other cheaper and readily available renewable technologies? It is true that there are still major flaws with renewables, but given that most small modular reactors are a decade away (at least), and the cost of solar has already dropped 89 percent in the last decade, it seems unlikely that SMRs—whenever they are ready—will be competitive.

In Canada, the lack of a coherent national green economy strategy and insufficient federal-provincial collaboration explains why we are rapidly falling behind other industrialized nations. Canada desperately needs stimulus measures to reduce our GHG emissions, foster clean technology development, and secure a just transition to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.