By Atiya Jaffar, Senior Digital Specialist with 350 Canada

1. People power stops the last tar sands pipelines

Currently, two major (and highly controversial) tar sands pipelines are under construction: Keystone XL (KXL), stretching south from Alberta into the United States, and Trans Mountain (TMX), travelling west from Alberta to BC’s southern coastline. And their fate has never been quite so uncertain.

The writing seems to be on the wall for Keystone. President-Elect Biden has remained steadfast in his commitment to cancel the project as soon as he steps into office. Thousands of Canadians have taken action to make sure he keeps his promise.

It’s a slightly different story for Trans Mountain, which Prime Minister Trudeau still staunchly supports. His government did buy the pipeline back in 2018 after all. But now, even Trudeau’s own advisors are turning against the project. At the tail end of 2020, two government agencies, the Canada Energy Regulator and the Parliamentary Budget Office, released reports confirming that Trans Mountain is incompatible with further action on the climate emergency. The business case for TMX is getting weaker everyday. And every opposition party, except the Conservatives, is vocally critical of the project. It will only get harder and harder for Trudeau to justify spending billions of tax dollars on this project. 2021 could be the year to cancel TMX once and for all. …

By Chris Gusen, Digital Organizer with 350 Canada

2020 was tough. But, as we look back on the past year, it also brings us a tremendous amount of hope.

Seeing how the world mobilized to fight COVID-19 gave us a glimpse of what might be possible if our elected officials treated the climate emergency just as seriously. As we rest up and prepare to continue our fight for a made-in-Canada Green New Deal in 2021, here are the biggest lessons we’re taking from 2020.

1. Bold government action has always been possible

We’re organizing to win a Green New Deal for Canada because it’s the only plan that meets the climate emergency at the scale and speed that science and justice demand. Some critics have called this vision for a rapid, just transition off fossil fuels unrealistic, but the COVID-19 crisis has proved them wrong. As we saw this year, our governments are more than capable of moving quickly and boldly when faced with a crisis. …

Earlier today, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivered a fall fiscal update in the House of Commons. The update made it clear that there is so much our government needs to spend money on right now to help us build back better. And, it made it even clearer that we can’t afford to keep pumping billions of dollars into a pipeline that we don’t need.

So why is our government still planning to spend billions of public dollars on a pipeline that their own regulator said is unnecessary? Well, let’s ask them.

This Wednesday, Minister Freeland and Prime Minister Trudeau are hosting a town hall. And, they’re taking questions. If we flood the town hall with questions about the billions we’re expecting to spend on Trans Mountain, we can send this government a clear message: it’s time to defund this pipeline and put that money where it’s really needed. …

Blog by Chris Gusen

Yesterday, the Trans Mountain Crown corporation — the publicly owned company that Trudeau created when he bought the Trans Mountain pipeline back in 2018 — held their Annual “Public” Meeting. While the CEO of the Trans Mountain Crown Corporation recorded a video update on the taxpayer-funded pipeline expansion, people across the country took to the streets to make one thing clear: it’s time to defund TMX.

A not-so-public meeting

The contrast could not have been clearer. What the Canadian Development Investment Corporation (CDEV) had advertised as a public meeting turned out to be nothing more than four white men in suits, awkwardly reading statements from their nondescript offices. Meanwhile, from coast to coast people of all ages and backgrounds flexed our people power with creativity, song, noisemakers and light. …

By Jennifer Deol

As of Sunday, 4 million acres in the western US have been scorched by deadly wildfires of an unfathomable scale. These climate-fuelled blazes have created the world’s poorest levels of air quality in the Pacific Northwest, and blanketed communities across Canada.

The smoke-filled skies are a stark reminder that the climate emergency is at our doorstep. It is an emergency that compounds with a global health pandemic to force our communities into an unprecedented chokehold.

I, like so many across BC, woke up to a heavy blanket of smoke on Sunday hanging over my hometown of Kelowna, BC. With no immediate respite in sight, and another wave of smoke projected to cloud over us from the US over the coming days, I am reminded of the 2018 wildfire season. The sky was clouded with smoke for nearly three weeks that summer. …

Canada has committed to handing out $16 billion in public money to fossil fuel companies since the pandemic started. Here are 6 better ways to spend that money.

Blog by Jennifer Deol and Atiya Jaffar

A report released by Energy Policy Tracker this week revealed that, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has committed to handing out $16 billion in public money to fossil fuel companies. At a time when thousands across the country are struggling to make ends meet, it’s unacceptable for the government to pour billions into an industry that’s cooking the planet.

As governments around the world begin to lay out their ambitious recovery plans to address the unprecedented crises we are up against, Canada continues to drag its feet on investing in a Just Recovery that takes care of people and the planet. …

Blog by Jennifer Deol

As we watch people across North America rise up to confront racist police violence and white supremacy, we must grapple with Canada’s long history of state-sanctioned violence against Black and Indigenous people.

We, at 350 Canada, share the grief and outrage over the police-state violence that claimed the lives of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. Their lives were tragically cut short because of entrenched white supremacy in our society that over-polices, criminalizes, and systematically murders Black and Indigenous people.

We also acknowledge that the work of dismantling white supremacy is critical to building a climate movement that is rooted in justice. You can read more about the systemic impacts of white supremacy on Black communities in Canada in this interview with Desmond Cole. …

By Amara Possian

There are so many parallels between the climate crisis and the global COVID-19 pandemic. It’s global in scope. Historically marginalized communities are the most impacted. And corporations, including Big Oil, are trying their hardest to push politicians to put profit before people.

It’s overwhelming. But over the last few weeks, my colleagues and I at 350.org have been figuring out how we can fight these two converging crises.

We came up with an ambitious, three-phase plan to respond, recover, and rebuild through the pandemic.