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Cycle Toronto has launched a Charter challenge against the Ford government’s new law that could remove three Toronto bike lanes.

The charity, along with two cyclists, Eva Stanger-Ross and Narada Kiondo, is seeking an injunction from Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice to prevent the removal of bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue.

The advocates have argued tearing the bike lanes out goes against the Charter’s guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person.

If the lanes are removed, “many thousands of Toronto cyclists will be forced to cycle in lanes shared with motor vehicle traffic” resulting in “heightened risk of injury and death,” Cycle Toronto argued in a statement of claim.

Gig delivery workers will be at particular risk because the nature of their work requires them to use the roads whether or not there are bike lanes, the cycling charity noted.

You never forget encountering your first wolverine. Mine was on the top of Grande Mountain outside Grande Cache, Alta., on a brilliant winter morning. It roared at me from the thick alpine bushes, then fled unseen into the wilderness. That exhilarating encounter was rare and is becoming rarer as Alberta and British Columbia’s wolverine populations rapidly decline.

Why do wildlife populations decline? Of all the things we do to nature, direct mortality — through hunting, trapping and fishing — lands the hardest blows. We often take too much, unaware of how much pressure populations can withstand.

In eastern Canada, past unrestricted trapping eliminated wolverines from the Maritime provinces, Québec and most of Ontario. In Alberta, the government has recently eliminated restrictions on how many wolverines, lynx, otters and fishers can be harvested in a year.

The rationale given was that too little is known about these species to justify a limit, and that unlimited trapping can provide the data needed to measure sustainability. Both of these assertions are dangerously incorrect.

The government of Canada has announced its plans for a temporary tax break by exempting GST/HST on certain items during the holiday season from Dec. 14, 2024 to Feb. 15, 2025. The legislation to enact the tax break has cleared the House of Commons and is now awaiting Senate approval.

Another key economic concern is the potential for “price stickiness,” where businesses fail to pass tax reductions onto consumers.

Some businesses will likely see a boost in sales, however. Since all types of restaurant foods — dining in, takeout or delivery — will be covered by the tax break, restaurants will have a unique opportunity to attract more customers.

There will be winners and losers from this tax policy, with the benefits disproportionately favouring higher-income earners. Wealthier households, who are less affected by inflation, are better positioned to take advantage of the tax break by spending more and saving more. These families will be able to more easily adjust their purchasing habits, such as stockpiling a year’s supply of baby diapers during the tax-free period. It’s important to note that many essential grocery items, like produce and milk, are already tax-free under Canada Revenue Agency rules. The tax break will cover taxed items like carbonated drinks, candies, snack foods and alcoholic beverages. This means higher-income households, which spend more on discretionary items, stand to gain the most from a reduction in sales tax benefits.

This holiday tax break could exacerbate economic inequity — contrary to its stated objective. Taxes play a key role in reducing inequality, and any changes to the tax systems should consider that. Unfortunately, this GST reduction appears to fall short.

Moreover, the benefits are not distributed evenly across Canadian provinces and territories. Consumers from provinces with HST will not pay any taxes for the items listed in the policy, but those with standalone provincial sales taxes will still have to pay that tax. Alberta, which only charges GST, will be tax-free.

Laurie Adkin, a professor emerita of political science at the University of Alberta, told The Maple that she regards Trudeau’s performance on climate as a “crushing disappointment.” “The idea is just to keep the economy running as it normally does, without there being any substantial cost to capitalists,” said Adkin. “I think it’s pretty clear that this is unsustainable, both socially and environmentally.”

In his November 2024 report, Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco revealed that Canada has only reduced CO2 emissions by seven per cent since 2005, meaning the government has “only six years left to do essentially 20 or 30 years worth of reductions.”

Mere months before introducing the carbon tax legislation, Trudeau purchased the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project (TMX) from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion after the company threatened to back away from the project. By the time the expansion opened in May 2024, nearly tripling the amount of tar sands bitumen shipped to the B.C. Lower Mainland for export, its price tag had increased to $34 billion.

Trudeau’s support for ongoing fossil fuel expansion, Mertins-Kirkwood added, reflects a “knot that the government’s trying to tie itself into,” in which it attempts to cut CO2 emissions for domestic consumption while expanding fossil fuel production, displacing the emissions generated from increased production onto other countries. While Canada’s domestic emissions have decreased in recent years, Canada’s National Observer recently reported that emissions from the oil, gas and coal that Canada exports, which aren’t covered by Canada’s emissions reduction commitments, have increased by 58 per cent since 2012. “We are actually fuelling climate change on a global scale through our exports,” said Adkin. “The first thing we should actually be cutting back in terms of a phase out is exports, but that’s not on the agenda.”

“Transgender people are 0.25% of the population, yet governments like the Smith government have a focus on transgender people like they’re a threat to civilization,” Brownsey told PressProgress. “Here she’s simply playing to a very right-wing religious base.”

Sweeping reforms are expected through Bill 22, The Health Statutes Amendment Act. The bill amounts to a restructuring of the Alberta health care system that will break Alberta Health Services up into four parts, each reporting to the health ministry. The new sectors are primary care, acute care, continuing care and mental health and addiction.

“I’m glad we have a Premier that thinks she knows better than the medical community,” Brownsey said. “It’s a bit disturbing that our government doesn’t run on rationality. Instead of what medical doctors say, who actually know what they’re doing, this government just wants to meddle. It’s absolutely bizarre.”

Fae Johnstone, Director of the advocacy group Queer Momentum says the new rules are an example of government overreach. “There’s a hypocrisy underneath this where on one hand Premier Smith says she wants to support the role of parents, then on the other hand she’s putting her government’s decision-making above the parent. The parents might have to leave the province,” Johnstone told PressProgress.

“They’re not targeting the care, but on the trans young folk’s ability to access that care. These interventions are provided in other circumstances and it’s fine, but it’s the fact that the patients happen to be trans that the government is taking an issue with.”

When Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government passed the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act in 2020, critics warned it would lead to more criminalization of protests in Alberta. Now the Alberta Federation of Labour says that’s happening as the government has introduced amendments that could bar health-care workers from picketing hospitals and other health centres.

“That’s significant, because at this moment there are more than 250,000 Alberta workers at the bargaining table. A large proportion of those are people who work in the health-care system.”

“We think that the UCP has introduced this legislation to make it harder for them to exercise that right,” McGowan said. “It’s clear to us that they want to stop nurses and other health-care workers from setting up effective picket lines, because we’ve received legal interpretations of Bill 31.”

The interpretations suggest that if the bill is passed, picketers could be arrested, McGowan said. But that could open the door to a legal challenge arguing the legislation violates Canadians’ constitutional right to protest, protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a Tyee interview, Alberta’s premier discusses the ‘Turkish Tylenol’ fiasco and who’s got all that public money.

Decrying deviation from social conservative ideology, 13 dissident MLAs put their leader on notice.