Canada has seen a swathe of heat warnings in the past week, warning of elevated risks for heat-related illnesses and air quality. And the return of El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern, is bringing even warmer weather than the country has seen in the past seven years.
Data from Statistics Canada shows 64 per cent of Canadian households had some type of air conditioning in 2021. StatCan only listed figures for the provinces.
Amanda Griffin / Global News
According to Statistics Canada, 64 per cent of Canadian households had some kind of air conditioning in 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available.
The numbers vary by province, as low as 19 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador and as high as 90 per cent in Manitoba.
Dr. Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, told Global News those numbers were likely appropriate, based on local climates, in the past. She said they likely aren’t enough for the future as climate change brings about more heat waves.
“Our bodies are designed to operate in a really narrow temperature range,” she said, speaking from Vancouver, “and when we go past that temperature range, we start to get sick.”
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Lem said it’s important for people to have access to cool indoor environments, either in their own homes or via public transit, and to keep in contact with others.
“One of the major risk factors for death during the 2021 heat dome on the West Coast was social isolation,” she said, adding that many seniors — who are among those more vulnerable to extreme heat — are socially isolated.
With that said, how we create cooler environments matters too, she noted. Adapting in the wrong way could make things worse.
“People talk about air conditioning as being the solution, but in fact, what’s even more important is electrifying our cooling,” she said.
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Using air conditioners, depending on how the electricity powering them is generated, can create more carbon emissions and ultimately raise temperatures even further.
Lem said it’s also important to reduce fossil fuel use.
According to city data, 55 per cent of Vancouver’s carbon emissions come from heating buildings with natural gas.
“If we rapidly retrofit our buildings to electrify and install heat pumps that can cool, that will both keep us safe indoors but also tackle the climate change issue at the same time,” she said.
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Using air conditioning can pose further challenges, a University of Waterloo researcher told Global News.
Joanna Eyquem said air conditioning units pump hot air outdoors – just one of the reasons why urban areas can be between 10 to 15 degrees warmer than surrounding rural areas.
Eyquem said the artificial surfaces within cities retain heat and release it in the evening.
Moreover, if many people are using air conditioning during hot weather, the strain on the power grid can heighten the risk of blackouts, which could lead to other problems.
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Eyquem’s research showed that the National Building Code does not consider extreme heat to be an emergency. Eyquem said that means most cities or apartment buildings don’t have more than two hours of emergency backup power.
According to Eyquem, adaptation is necessary. That involves preparing homes to keep heat out and cool air in – meaning using things like more awnings and energy-efficient windows.
Outside of households, she said it requires adding more green spaces to cities, limiting the amount of heat-storing concrete and metal, as well as planting more trees that provide shade.
Both Eyquem and Lem said provincial and federal governments must update building codes to ensure living spaces are cooler.
“If we’ve only relied on air conditioning, we haven’t put any of those kinds of passive approaches that really stop heat entering our homes,” Eyquem told Global News.
Eyquem and Lem both said adaptation is ultimately about keeping people safe.
“It’s not just important to start to gradually electrify and start to introduce cooling. This has to be done at speed and scale to make sure that lives are protected,” Lem said.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
