Shawn Katz

I've never grasped the traditional media's fixation on politics at the expense of policy. In the storm of criticisms aimed at Valérie Plante, we see nary a word on the Big Looming Context: the climate crisis. As if reducing car dependency in our cities was some pet "ideology" and not an existential imperative dictated by science - and pursued by municipal governments across the political spectrum, and across the world. This isn't to say that pro-climate policies can't be cr...iticized where citizen buy-in is lacking. It is to say that rather than uncritically amplifying citizen discontent, the media can opt to elevate the debate with facts and proposals. That rather than fanning the flames of populism, they can foreground the impending catastrophe on the horizon and challenge critics to offer responsible alternatives. To lead, rather than follow. To be reflective, rather than reactive. Is this asking too much? Somehow, I sense that a few decades from now, today's children won't be saying so.

Excellent interview with Valérie Plante. You won't hear a trace of an ideologue in her voice. What you may hear is an honest, devoted and rational mayor who has far more common sense than the chorus of rich white men who have been using her as their punching bag.

This is a really important piece that cuts through the rhetoric of pipeline backers to expose a classic divide-and-conquer strategy. It argues that the B.C. government and gas industry have exploited the vulnerability of Indigenous communities, essentially bribing cash-strapped band councils, funding pro-pipeline factions within the Wet'suwet'en nation, and trying to sow confusion about the authority of their hereditary chiefs. The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs as the "representatives of the collective land rights holders."

This is the man Justin Trudeau rolled out the red carpet for last week, as he echoed the US-backed opposition politician's self-styling as the "interim president" of Venezuela. Behind this contentious claim lie some shaky interpretations of the Venezuelan constitution - and major economic interests. A look at Guaidó's past should send alarms ringing. In many ways, he seems a product of the same US regime change factory that's toppled countless leftist leaders throughout Latin... America since at least the 1950s, often installing brutal dictatorships friendly to the interests of American multinationals. Guaidó's been elevated into an international star, though has never been elected to anything at the national level in Venezuela. His party holds 15 seats in the country's national assembly. There's no question that President Maduro has lost all legitimacy to govern. But one usurpation does not justify another, or allow us to close our eyes to another Western intervention aimed at installing a neoliberal loyalist at the head of the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. First Bolivia, now Venezuela: Canada is fast losing all credibility in Latin America, as it backs one illegitimate putchist after the next and continues to place huge corporate interests ahead of people's fundamental human rights.

The green technology boom is contributing to a "global goldrush to claim the ocean floor," warns a new study. This is a vital read that should serve as a rejoinder to "green" capitalists who think that swapping one technology for another will save us from ecological collapse - particularly when the fabrication and deployment of these technologies are being left to the vicissitudes of the same market forces that have brought human civilization to the brink. At the root of this... is a profound crisis of governance, whereby the profit-maximizing of private corporations is systematically dressed up, sold, and bought by our governments as policy in the public interest. Until citizens reclaim their public institutions and place science, solidarity and collective welfare ahead of corporate interests, extractivism and overconsumption will remain the driving forces behind the world economy, with devastating consequences for life on Earth. See more

The expansion of public and active transit is the most powerful tool in Montreal's climate arsenal. Yet funding the necessary infrastructure is costly, and Canadian cities have limited levers for raising those funds, least of all in a way that doesn't risk exacerbating social inequities. Result: the first city government in Montreal to treat the ecological crisis as the planetary emergency it is is seeing its ambitions press up against the straitjacket of municipal finances.... Projet Montréal is being attacked for opting responsibly for a financial debt over a more dire social and ecological one in the future, and is being blamed for structural factors - whether provincial laws or market forces - that are largely outside its purview. The real problem is there. The perennial handicap is that the city has no access to revenues from progressive taxation, because the province hasn't given it any. Despite years of pressure by subsequent administrations, Montreal remains overwhelmingly dependent on property taxes, which vary in function of the value allotted to buildings by the capitalist speculative market. It's therefore a blunt and warped instrument that is impossible to wield surgically, and it can't help but hit the wrong people when Montreal, whether under Plante or her predecessors, inevitably increases them year after year to fund the necessary investments. The increase in transit investments announced in Plante's budget is, as Paul Journet observes, "nécessaire et même non suffisant" - by far. Yet already, the Plante administration is being tarred as excessively spendthrift before any of us has had the chance to feel the impacts of these investments. Cities are providing the leadership on the climate crisis that national and provincial leaders have thus far failed to provide, and are unique in possessing the necessary proximity to citizens to ensure the transition is both just and democratic. What our cities need, and urgently, is the money and powers to win this battle. Only Quebec and Ottawa can provide them.