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Time of India
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Meet Canada's youngest candidate, Jager Rosenberg: he won hearts but lost elections
Teen NDP hopeful pushes housing, mental health, and voting reforms in West Vancouver At 18, Jäger Rosenberg wasn't just the youngest name on the ballot in West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky—he was a spark. His run for the NDP wasn't about clinching a victory but about raising issues many tend to overlook. Hailing from Gibsons, B.C., Rosenberg has been deeply involved in youth politics for years. His campaign zeroed in on what matters most to younger Canadians today: affordable housing , mental health access , and a more inclusive democracy. He called for a federal plan to build 500,000 affordable homes and extend mental health care within Canada's public health system. Plus, he championed lowering the voting age to 16, a change gathering steam across the globe. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Thailand: New Small Electric Car For Seniors. Prices Might Surprise You. Electric Cars | Search Ads Undo Youth-driven campaign sparks fresh conversation on Gen Z's role in Canadian politics Though he didn't win, Rosenberg energized a generation often left out of political chatter. His post-election piece in The Tyee pushed parties to listen closely and act swiftly on youth concerns. Observers see Rosenberg's campaign as a sign that Canadian politics is shifting. Young voters aren't content with empty promises, they want solutions. Live Events With housing prices soaring and mental health struggles mounting, Rosenberg's candidacy reminds everyone that the future depends on voices ready to demand real change. He also said the NDP will advance reconciliation on the Sunshine Coast through investments in Indigenous housing, education, and healthcare, implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action, and collaborating with Indigenous leaders. He also emphasized the need to focus more on improving democracy by adopting a more representative voting system and lowering the voting age to address rising extremism and boost representation.
Hamilton Spectator
08-05-2025
- Health
- Hamilton Spectator
Groups Warn Against Blaming Mental Illness for Lapu-Lapu Day Tragedy
Politicians and the public should be cautious about pinning the blame on mental illness as the reason behind the Lapu-Lapu Day attack, experts warn. This could further stigmatize people with mental illnesses and be used to increase policing and surveillance of already marginalized communities, they told The Tyee. Around 8 p.m. April 26, East Vancouver resident Kai-Ji Adam Lo allegedly drove an SUV through a crowd at a festival honouring a Filipino hero, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. He was arrested at the scene. A day later, interim Vancouver police chief Steve Rai said Lo had a 'significant history of interactions with police and health-care processionals related to mental health.' Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim called on the federal government to implement bail reform to keep people who are a danger to themselves or others locked up. On Wednesday Premier David Eby said the province would review the Mental Health Act after learning Lo was being treated under the act. Sim has also said a recurring pattern of people in mental health crisis becoming violent highlights a 'failure in the mental health system.' The Mental Health Act outlines how voluntary and involuntary mental health care is to be provided to British Columbians. According to reporting by the Globe and Mail, Lo was an involuntary outpatient in the care of a community mental health team at the time of the attack. He had been deemed at high risk of a decline in his mental health and his care team noted his unwillingness to take his medications for schizophrenia. People on extended leave under the Mental Health Act are assessed and approved for supervised, mandatory care in their community, which often allows them to live at home or work their regular job while receiving care. In a statement, Vancouver Coastal Health said Lo's care team didn't see any flags that would have suggested he was violent. Jonny Morris, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association's B.C. division, said that reaching for solutions to tragedies is a natural response to trauma and can be based on public safety concerns. But the public and politicians should avoid drawing conclusions as the investigation is just getting started, he told The Tyee. Blaming mental illness might oversimplify the situation and miss an opportunity to look at the bigger picture, Morris said. It could also further stigmatize mental illness and make people less likely to seek mental health care, he added. That's important because the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto reports that in any given year, one in five Canadians experiences mental illness, and by the time they reach 40, one in two has had a mental illness, he said. The quick response also allows politicians to take the easy out and propose an increase in law and order as a solution, said Ethel Tungohan, a Canada Research Chair in Canadian migration policy, impacts and activism and an associate professor of politics at York University. 'As a racialized migrant group, Filipino communities get surveilled all the time,' she said. In Toronto, 'we're hitting the 21st anniversary of the death at the hands of police of Jeffrey Reodica, the Filipino high school student. So that's not the solution we want.' Reodica was shot in the back three times while two police officers handcuffed him. The police had been called in to break up a fight. Proposing 'law and order' solutions ignores the larger history of discrimination, surveillance and targeting of the Filipino community, dismisses the incident as a one-off and allows for increased surveillance of an already over-surveilled community, she said. 'We're not talking about surveilling and policing mainstream Canadian communities,' she said. 'When people and politicians talk about that, they're thinking specifically of racialized groups who they think don't belong in Canada and are a danger to Canada.' Earlier last week BAYAN Canada, an alliance of anti-imperialist groups organizing for democracy in the Philippines, and Migrante Canada, an alliance of Filipino migrant and immigrant organizations in Canada, also condemned the blaming of mental illness for the attacks. In a press release, BAYAN Canada pushed back against the use of mental health to 'justify more state-sponsored harassment of marginalized communities and to distract from the growing racism and anti-migrant sentiment in Canada.' Instead they called on politicians to look at solutions to issues like poverty, isolation, state violence and cultural extermination faced by migrant and immigrant communities in Canada, which can contribute to mental illness. Migrante Canada similarly condemned the 'downplaying' of the attack by considering it an isolated mental health incident. 'Mental health issues are not just personal struggles but products of a society marked by exploitation, alienation and discrimination. Mental health must not be used as an excuse to erase or distract the course of justice and accountability,' Migrante Canada said in a press release. If politicians want to focus on mental health they could look at how this attack has impacted immigrant, migrant and Filipino communities' mental health, Tungohan said. 'We should think about structural supports that are needed by communities and to make sure these supports include robust protection for people facing mental health crisis and the underlying factors causing mental health distress,' she added. The Canadian Mental Health Association's Morris said the best way to respond to the attack is to let ourselves grieve and feel angry, while being cautious of jumping to conclusions or trying to push solutions that will make us feel better in the moment. 'We're in a critical moment to prioritize the care, support and resources that are required to really deal with the aftermath, the grief, loss, pain,' he said. 'That's going to be really underscored by needing to listen to and provide support and being really present in and around this.' As the investigation unfolds, people should try to remain open-minded and work to avoid drawing 'simplistic and potentially very flawed conclusions,' Morris said. This will help everyone to be able to take a really deep look at what needs to change, he said.
National Observer
25-04-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
Can we really reduce carbon emissions by sending LNG to India?
This article is part of the Reality Check series by Canada's National Observer. Have a question for us? Reach out at [email protected]. Claim: By sending our LNG to India, Canada could reduce emissions by 2.5 billion tonnes. This is a talking point that Pierre Poilievre has brought up several times over the campaign. His party's platform pledges a 'one and done' rule for new resource projects, and he's talked about approving 10 long-standing energy projects, including Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) expansion in British Columbia, uranium mining in Saskatchewan, and a nickel-cobalt mine in Ontario. During the English-language leaders debate last week, Poilievre was asked how he balances the priorities of fighting climate change and expanding energy projects. Poilievre said his government would 'bring home' jobs while also 'bringing down emissions around the world.' He explained that by approving natural gas liquefaction and export, and then sending Canadian gas to India, 'to displace half of their demand for electricity, we could reduce emissions by 2.5 billion tonnes, which is three times the total emissions of Canada.' The official party platform also mentions exporting LNG by utilizing Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. The party would 'Use Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to dramatically reduce global emissions and fight climate change by exporting cleaner Canadian resources and technologies' and 'Use Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to bring home jobs while exporting cleaner resources like Canadian liquified natural gas (LNG) and technologies to help lower global emissions.' Verdict: False Pierre Poilievre has made the claim several times during the campaign, so we looked into it in our latest fact check. There are a few aspects of this to debunk here. Let's start with Poilievre's promise to fast-track approvals on energy projects, like the LNG terminal in BC. As The Tyee reports, there's one major issue with that: It's already approved. It got the provincial permits stamped in 2015 and federal approval in 2016. What we're now waiting on is LNG Canada Phase 2. As we have reported, that would be an expansion to the already existing terminal. According to John Young, LNG senior strategist with Climate Action Network Canada, it's not federal approvals standing in the way of the terminal moving forward. It's money. 'It just doesn't add up very well for somebody who wants to be prime minister to be so factually incorrect,' Young said. Public funds were used to get the project past the first round of approvals. But in order to move forward, Young told The Tyee that further funds are needed from investors like Shell, Mitsubishi, and PetroChina. And they might need new assurances since the market is in a very different state than it was in 2016. (Girl, the tariffs.) After Poilievre announced he would approve the LNG terminal at a campaign stop in Terrace, B.C., Sven Biggs, oil and gas program director for an environmental group, released a statement, saying 'The fact is, Phase Two of LNG Canada has all the permits it needs. It isn't being built yet because Shell and the other big oil companies that own it need another handout from Ottawa to make this project viable.' But what about his claims that by shipping gas off to India, we could lower global emissions — and use the Paris Agreement to do it? That's not how any of that works. First, Poilievre is claiming that LNG is a better fuel to use over coal because it 'burns cleaner,' which is the ' bridge fuel ' argument put forward by the fossil fuel industry. But we now know better. It seems previous studies had not factored in the emissions produced during the liquefaction process. Rather than being better for the environment, LNG is actually significantly worse than coal. In 2023, 170 climate scientists signed a letter urging then-US President Joe Biden to reject plans for more LNG terminals. So, it's not true that if India swapped half of its coal for Canadian natural gas, global emissions would drop. But where does the Paris Agreement come into this? Article 6 of the Paris Agreement lays out how countries can cooperate with each other and transfer carbon credits, ostensibly in the name of meeting targets. For example, if Indonesia puts mechanisms in place that protect national forests, which absorb carbon emissions, they might be credited for those emissions. They could then sell those credits to Japan to meet its reduction targets. But to avoid double dipping, Indonesia would no longer be credited for those reductions if it sold the credit to another country. As Canada's National Observer's Natasha Bulowski reported this week, the Conservative goal seems to be to change the international framework for counting greenhouse gas emissions so that Canada can get credit for India reducing emissions by burning Canadian LNG instead of coal. That's not how the carbon credit system works. The country that makes the fuel swap — in this case, India — gets credit for lowering emissions, regardless of where that fuel was produced. And at the end of the day, carbon emissions are carbon emissions, no matter where they are released. India has committed to reach net-zero by 2070 and it's not going to achieve that goal if it gives other countries credit for its emission reductions. Using Article 6 in this way has been a dream of other Canadian politicians. In 2023, Canada's National Observer reported that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was advocating for the same goal in meetings with then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At the time, one expert said that if Canada brought the idea up with other United Nations countries, they would be 'laughed out of the room.'
