Canada

The Peoples for Mother Earth march is nearing the end of its 34 day cross-province journey through towns and cities in Québec which would be affected by prospective Tar Sands pipelines. In the past month, as the marchers have made their way from Cacouna towards their end-goal of Kanehsata:ke, they have taken actions and seen concrete effects beginning to emerge already.

Canadian workers have been remarkably patient. For over three decades now—a generation—their wages have been restrained, workloads intensified and social benefits eroded, the promise being that this will ultimately bring security for themselves and their families. What they got was more of the same while class inequality reached the highest levels in over 80 years. Where is the anger? When the Great Financial Crisis hit, first and deeper in the US then in Canada, the Canadian state acted decisively to subsidize banks and imposed austerity on workers to pay for this. Where was the rage?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched into a full-on attack on the "evils of communism" at a fundraiser on Friday for a monument to its victims: "During the 20th century, communism's poisonous ideology and ruthless practices slowly bled into countries around the world, on almost every continent," Harper said. The evening's event aimed help raise money for Tribute to Liberty, which aims for a permanent memorial in Ottawa to communism's "hundreds of millions" of victims. You can hear the full speech below.

Canada must consider how Alberta’s oilsands contribute to global climate change and make moves to cut its carbon emissions before it's too late, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu told reporters in Fort McMurray. “Only those who don’t want to listen, only those who want to be blind can’t see that we are sitting on a powderkeg,” he said Friday. “If we don’t do something urgently, quickly, we won’t have a world.” Tutu is in the northern Alberta city for a two-day conference on oilsands development and aboriginal treaties, was hosted by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

Weather forecasters at Environment Canada aren’t supposed to discuss climate change in public, says a Canadian government spokesman.

Environment Canada made the comments in response to emailed questions about its communications policy.

. . . the department’s communications protocol prevents the meteorologists from drawing links to changing climate patterns following extreme weather events such as severe flooding in southern Alberta or a massive wildfire in Northern Quebec in the summer of 2013.

CALGARY - Ottawa wants the Commission for Environmental Co-operation to drop its investigation into whether laws are being properly enforced when it comes to oilsands pollution.

The CEC asked the federal government in December to respond to allegations that it has failed to enforce provisions in the Fisheries Act by allowing harmful substances to leak from tailings ponds into water sources downstream of mines in northeastern Alberta.

EDMONTON - Critics say Albertans are in danger of being shut out of discussions on how the province's natural resources are developed.

Expert observers and opposition politicians worry Alberta's new energy regulator is drawing the circle of who can speak so tightly that one hearing on a proposed energy project had to be cancelled because no one was allowed to appear.

While Canada slashes budgets for research, education and public broadcasting, there is one part of our economy that enjoys remarkable support from the Canadian taxpayer: the energy sector.

The Canadian Labour Congress, the umbrella organization for most of the country's labour organizations, has chosen a new president who has vowed to make the national body more militant in confronting management and the Harper Conservatives.

The Harper government received a stark warning this week that its reliance on fossil-fuel exports to keep the economy humming is an increasingly risky gambit in a world grappling with the need to dramatically reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases.

Faced with scientific evidence that climate change is a real and growing threat, global governments, including the United States and China, are adopting clean-energy strategies to improve the efficiency of resource use and switch from fossil fuel to renewables.