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Heading into a pair of leaders’ debates within two weeks of election day, the federal campaign still seems in need of a defining issue. But look past all the candidate controversies, personal attacks and vote-buying “affordability” promises, and that issue is right there in plain sight.
It’s so consequential, with genuine and pronounced differences between parties’ approaches, that it renders wrong-headed and reckless the growing body of weary punditry about this being a low-stakes campaign in which all concerned have failed to distinguish themselves from each other.
On climate-change policy, the world is entering a narrow window in which it may or may not undertake the degree of economic and social upheaval needed to stave off irreversible disaster. When Canadians cast their ballots, they’ll go a long way toward determining what this country’s role in that will be.
It can be tempting, even for those who consider climate change an existential challenge, to play down Canadian voters’ ability to meet it. The pettiness of this campaign has made a relatively small country seem even smaller.
But this is not a world in which one can hunker down and avoid global trends. Even setting aside what elevated temperatures might do to Canada’s North, or rising waters to its coasts, the changing climate could cause everything from massive migration shifts to dramatically different trade patterns, not to mention the potential for international conflicts and abject suffering.
For the rest of this column: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-climate-change-is-a-defining-issue-for-canada-if-not-for-this-federal/