The Globe and Mail - 19.10.2019

O2| OPINION O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2019

2

here is a reason that climate change is top of

mind for voters in the federal election, and it

isn’t just because of Greta Thunberg. Citi-

zens are seeing the consequences. Hurri-

canes. Typhoons. Wildfires. Droughts. And the con-

sequences aren’t just measured in money – al-

though the losses are in the trillions. They are mea-

sured, too, in human lives. People know this, are

deeply worried, and want and expect leadership and

action.

Nationally, we haven’t seen nearly enough of ei-

ther. The current Liberal government, despite good

intentions, has made no substantial progress. The

Conservatives have proposed no goals, targets or

material actions to address climate change – unsur-

prising, given the provincialconservative govern-

ments’ actions in Alberta and Ontario. Canada is a

country with some of the largest per-capita emis-

sions in the world. We are part of the problem – and if

we don’t do our part, persuading others, such as Chi-

na and India, to do theirs will be impossible.

As a country, we are stalled. Inaction is the order

of the day. But it doesn’t need to be.

There is every sign of a federal minority govern-

ment, in which the NDP and Green Party will have

significant influence. Such a Parliament could ad-

dress climate issues with vigour. There are real ac-

tions we can take today that can materially reduce

our greenhouse gas emissions and get Canada on

track toward scientifically required targets, starting

by learning from mayors of leading global cities.

More than 30 mayors announced last week at the

C40 World Mayors Summit in Denmark that their ci-

ties have already peaked emissions – by addressing

transportation, electricity, buildings and other ar-

eas. There are Canadian best-practice examples to

learn from, too. None of these require the invention

of something new, simply doing what works some-

where, everywhere.

First is clean electricity – under the leadership of

Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles recently released its

climate plan in which it will stop the generation of

electricity through natural gas and rely entirely on

clean energy.

There is abundant clean electricity in Canada,

much of which is exported to the United States. Con-

necting these intraprovincial grids and ending the

burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal, in Canada is

technically feasible today. The only obstacles are po-

litical; in the climate emergency we face, it’s time to

find a political solution

to that political problem.

Clean buildings are

another best practice. All

new buildings should be

mandated to dramatical-

ly increase energy effi-

ciency on a path to being

carbon neutral by 2030;

existing commercial and

multiresidential units

must dramatically re-

duce emissions by the

same date.

Vancouver has used

the new B.C. building

code to create regula-

tions designed to ensure

all new buildings meet

that goal, and New York has mandated all existing

large commercial buildings to dramatically lower

emissions by 2030. Both these provisions can be du-

plicated everywhere in Canada – and have the added

benefit of creating significant numbers of jobs.

Third is clean transport: Milan, Italy, Shenzhen,

China, London and Los Angeles have made massive

progress on electric buses – part of a change move-

ment that has led to more than 66,000 electric buses

in international markets from a handful five years

ago. Ottawa should be mandating that all future pur-

chases of public transit vehicles are electric – and

building on this, all fleets. Using existing technolo-

gies, all new vehicles added to taxi (traditional or

app dispatched), post office, courier and utility

fleets could be mandated to be electric. And there

are thousands of General Motors workers in Oshawa,

Ont., who would love the chance to build those vehi-

cles.

Fourth, capping emissions: Under former pre-

mier Rachel Notley, Alberta worked with the oil in-

dustry and environmentalists to achieve a workable

cap on emissions from the province’s oil industry.

The industry was clear it could succeed economical-

ly while meeting simple and enforceable targets. It’s

time to bring it back.

And finally, a just transition for workers. People in

affected industries need jobs where they live. They

have significant skills and the government must

lead the creation of new work in those communities.

A good place to start is Oshawa. If GM won’t retool

its plant to take advantage of the highly skilled and

productive work force there, the federal govern-

ment should lead the effort to ensure that the elec-

tric buses, vans and cars we need are built there by

another manufacturer. Those workers deserve no

less.

Do these steps work? Undoubtedly. Leaders such

as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gu-

terres, Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore and Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez came to the summit in Copenhagen

to praise the efforts of leading mayors and cities, and

to learn more. These cities are already dramatically

reducing carbon emissions, while continuing to

prosper.

In Toronto, for example, by taking similar mea-

sures, greenhouse gas emissions are down 33 per

cent over 1990 levels, the base year mandated in the

original climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol.

By taking the best of these ideas and replicating

them at scale, we can help Canada to quickly get on a

path to cut emissions in line with the scientific evi-

dence, and thereby prevent climate breakdown. A

sustainable future that benefits every Canadian citi-

zen and resident is possible. We just need to choose

it.

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DAVIDMILLER

OPINION

AuthoroftheforthcomingbookSolved:Howthe

World’sGreatCitiesAreFixingtheClimateCrisis,

directorofinternationaldiplomacyattheC40Climate

LeadershipGroupandaformermayorofToronto

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today.

R

ecently, Senator Bernie Sanders asked

Americans to share their most “absurd”

medical bills, and he received a tidal wave of

ludicrous numbers in response. The obvi-

ous message was don’t get sick in the United States,

unless you’re hoarding gold under the mattress or

you run a tech startup.

Canadians responded on social media as well, let-

ting Mr. Sanders know that we occasionally have to

pay exorbitant hospital parking rates, or get hosed

when buying a muffin at the clinic coffee shop, but

that’s about it. My heart swelled reading those re-

sponses, because that’s been my experience, too:

When we need the medical system it’s there for us,

and we don’t have to sell a kidney to access it.

But as I watched the heartwarming responses roll

in, I realized that everyone was talking about the

cost of their physical health, not their mental well-

being. What would it have looked like if everyone

totted up the price of maintaining their family’s

mental health – the visits to a ther-

apist or psychiatrist, the private in-pa-

tient clinics, the monthly expendi-

tures on medication for those who

don’t have company drug plans?

We’re told, endlessly, to talk about

our mental health, but so much of it is

just hot air. For one thing, even

though a significant portion of us will

experience mental-health challenges

in our lives, we still are worried about

the repercussions of opening up, even

to colleagues. A recent survey con-

ducted by Ipsos Mori for Teladoc

Health revealed that more than 80 per

cent of respondents had not revealed

their mental-health problems to any-

one at work, worried about the possible negative

consequences for their careers.

For a country of price-complainers – did you see

how much cauliflower costs this week? – we seldom

talk about how much we shell out to keep our

minds in good running order. Maybe it’s a mis-

placed sense of shame, or a concern about privacy,

or fear of being seen as “less than” in a society that

values only triumph and success. Those are all un-

derstandable reasons.

But until we talk about how much it costs us all

individually, we’re not going to go far collectively

toward making mental-health services affordable

and accessible for all.

In my case, there were many months when my

family’s mental-health bill hit several hundred dol-

lars, mainly for therapy. I’m not complaining; in

fact, I would personally throw a parade for ther-

apists if they’d let me, and I’d buy all the balloons

and cake. My family is among the lucky ones. My

husband and I have health benefits through our

employer, which pay for drugs and for some ther-

apy, but the cutoff is quickly reached – especially if

you’re paying for more than one person’s regular

treatment. After the cutoff, we pay out of pocket.

Again, we’re fortunate that we’re able to; we can buy

our way around the endless lines for publicly sub-

sidized care. So many Canadians are not in the same

position. If our health-care system is going to seri-

ously tackle the mental-health crisis, and if it’s go-

ing to fulfill its legislated pledge of universality, that

has to change.

It’s a godawful cycle: The poorer you are, the less

likely you are to be in a position to afford private

care. The more you suffer from a debilitating illness,

the less able you are to do the grinding work of ad-

vocating for yourself. There’s a chapter heading in

journalist Anna Mehler Paperny’s invaluable new

book on living with depression that sums it up:

Mental Health is for Rich People.

“As far as national chauvinisms go, Canada loves

being The One With Universal Health Care. But if

your illness is in your brain, that universality is a

lie,” Ms. Paperny writes inHello I Want to Die Please

Fix Me: Depression in the First Person.She outlines the

ways in which Canada fails the legions of people

who need mental-health support – Indigenous

youth, those on waiting lists, children, the not-fully-

employed. “If you don’t want mental wellness to re-

main the purview of the privileged, if you don’t

want poverty to doom people to debilitating an-

guish, you need to cover pharmacotherapy and psy-

chotherapy like you mean it. Universally. For every-

one.”

The cost to individuals and families may be

quietly swept under the carpet, but

the cost of untreated mental-health

problems to society as a whole has

been widely studied. According to the

Conference Board of Canada, depres-

sion and anxiety cost a cumulative

$50-billion in lost productivity. Ac-

cording to a recent report from Chil-

dren’s Mental Health Ontario, the pro-

vincial economy loses $420-million a

year when parents stay home from

work to look after children who strug-

gle (and some of those children are on

wait lists of up to one and a half years

for treatment).

As the Canadian Mental Health As-

sociation’s research has shown, more

than half of us consider depression and anxiety to

be at “epidemic levels” and yet 1.6 million Cana-

dians feel they’re going untreated. The CMHA has

called for a federal parity act to bring mental-health

spending “into balance” with spending on physical

health (right now, only 7.2 per cent of health-care

spending goes to mental health).

This has not exactly been a hot-button issue on

the election trail, although both the Liberals and

the NDP have pledged to increase their funding

commitments, as well as supporting a national

pharmacare plan. But the evidence of crisis is there,

especially among young people. At one campaign

stop, a young woman told NDP Leader Jagmeet

Singh that she and her friends struggled with de-

pression and anxiety. He listened and told her,

“Please get the help you need.” “I can’t afford it,” the

woman interrupted. “A therapy session is $200” and

there’s “a long wait time” for publicly available sup-

port. (At this point, I was hoping the young woman

would run for office so I could vote for her.) Mr.

Singh responded that his party would make the sys-

tem work for her, with “all the checks and balances

... I don’t care what the cost is.”

It takes guts to admit these things, especially

publicly, and the young woman became emotional.

I’m glad she spoke up, because someone needs to.

Whether anyone listens is an entirely different

matter.

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ELIZABETH

RENZETTI

OPINION

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