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By: Matthew Lau
In a recent announcement, the Carney government detailed more than $14.4 million in new spending for 17 projects to “empower young Canadians to address climate change.” The $14.4 million is just the latest round of funding out of a planned $206 million over five years. The purpose of the “Climate Action and Awareness Fund,” as the government calls it, is essentially to increase public concern about climate change.
To justify this $14.4 million in spending, Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed said “At this critical juncture, when our planet is facing a climate emergency, environmental literacy for young people is essential.”
Ironically, if the goal is to improve environmental literacy, one of the first things the government should do is stop saying “climate emergency”—a wholly inaccurate phrase meant to increase alarm. The evidence simply does not support claims of a climate emergency. Indeed, relative to a hypothetical planet without climate change, even worst-case scenarios suggest climate change would likely only reduce global per-person GDP (an indicator of living standards) by something like 16.5 per cent by 2200.
To be sure, 16.5 per cent of GDP is significant. But just a 16.5 per cent cut to incomes today would still leave us far better off than people who lived 175 years ago. A 16.5 per cent cut to the incomes of people living 175 years from now would almost certainly still leave them considerably better off than we are today. That’s no emergency.
Descriptions of the 17 projects further erode claims about an emergency. One project set to receive $939,592 in taxpayer money “will provide environmental knowledge, service-learning, and leadership opportunities for young Canadians, particularly Indigenous, BPOC, 2SLGBTQ+ youth and other underserved communities. This project will engage youth in community-based actions linked to the major environmental crises and provide training for educators to best integrate environmental education into their teaching.”
Imagine a real emergency for which you dial 9-1-1—say, an apartment building consumed in fire. You simply want the firetruck to arrive and firefighters to extinguish the fire as quickly as possible. You do not care if the firefighters are Indigenous, Black or from a sexual minority. Similarly, if climate change was really an emergency, government would direct all the resources towards whoever and whatever could mitigate it most effectively, as opposed to distributing resources according to racial or other diversity targets.
Other taxpayer-funded projects include $782,922 to help children and youth in northwestern Ontario and eastern Manitoba “become climate leaders in their communities.” And $342,524 to give young people, particularly in Alberta, “perspectives to help them overcome current environmental challenges and participate in eco-advocacy.”
Another $396,213 will go towards an organization that will create “Indigenous-led environmental literacy material to support kindergarten to Grade 12 teachers in Six Nations and Hamilton schools to ground youth environmental literacy in Haudenosaunee cultural perspectives.” According to that organization’s blog, “climate resilience” demands that we should be “rejecting capitalism and heteronormativity” and “environmental racism.”
Based on the project descriptions and organizations receiving the taxpayer money, a reasonable person might deduce that at least a significant chunk of the $14.4 million in the latest funding round—and the total $206 million over five years—will pay for politically charged activism targeting young people, not actual educational initiatives. This spending should be cancelled. The last thing taxpayers need is more Greta Thunbergs and higher taxes.
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