From the Editor / L. Ian MacDonald

Welcome to our special issue on Clean Energy.

The transition from the world of GHG emissions and the road to net zero is the most compelling economic, scientific and public policy issue of our time.

From the goal of limiting emissions growth to 2 percent by 2050 in the Paris Agreement of 2015, 131 nations have since agreed to this target by 2035. This means replacing gasoline powered autos with electric vehicles (EVs) and finding clean energy ways and means of lighting and heating homes, offices and work places around the globe.

For Canada and the United States there’s a new opportunity to seize the moment and lead the world in the clean energy transition, creating the jobs and technology of the new economy, from wind to solar power, from hydro-electricity to to EVs.

Canada has the resources at hand to become a super power of the new economy. Canada is a country with the minerals, especially from lithium to that will run the EVs.  We have hydro power in abundance and megawatts in reserve in projects waiting to be built in provinces that are already world leaders in hydro.

In our sponsored Special Section on the Clean Energy Transition, GE Canada President and CEO Heather Chalmers suggests a “Team Canada” approach to clean economy leadership. And Chris Henderson, President of Indigenous Clean Energy, writes that Indigenous inclusion means a just transition to a clean energy future.

We also have an abundance of undeveloped farm land. Farmers can host wind and solar installations, while growing their crops and allowing their livestock to graze, before feeding the world.

We begin with Heather Scoffield’s informative piece on the economic challenges and opportunities for Canadian business. The business world could well be beating a path to their door. Now Senior Vice President of the Business Council of Canada, Scoffield was previously Ottawa bureau chief of The Toronto Star.

Dan Woylnillowicz, with charts updating the numbers, cuts through “the Fog of War” in the energy transition. McGill’s Jodey Nurse looks at the transition down on the farm, and the weathervanes of climate change. Elizabeth May and John Kidder recommend some disruptive options for progress. In Personal Pieces, Elizabeth recounts her story of presenting a “Peace by Chocolate” bar to Joe Biden in an Ottawa receiving line.

In Canada and the World, former Canadian Ambassador to the UN Louise Blais shares her perspective on the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the events that have since transformed the world’s military, economic and political alliances.

Former US diplomat Sarah Goldfeder, now with GM Canada, writes that the auto sector needs more Canada, And NDP MP Charlie Angus looks at the transition on the assembly lines and the mines of Ontario. Twenty-five years after the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, Lisa Van Dusen recalls the role of retired Canadian general and diplomat John de Chastelain in negotiating the deal. And in the latest dust-up over official residences, I suggest it’s time to fix up 24 Sussex. Lisa Van Dusen looks at China’s imperial ambitions, and Eddie Goldenberg writes that we also need to look after our trade agenda with Beijing.

In a Budget Aftermath package, Kevin Page looks at the numbers and the fiscal framework of Budget 2023. The current deficit of $35 billion is less than 2 percent of GDP, just one-tenth of the $350 billion peak during the pandemic relief peak in 2021, but modest by comparison to the $800 billion deficit number being posted in Washington. Page, the former Parliamentary Budget Officer and now president of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy (IFSD) at University of Ottawa, is a leading authority on budgets and fiscs.

Following Page’s roundup, I look at Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia. As a young official in the Privy Council Office, Sabia was a proponent of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), first proposed at 9 percent, later adopted at 7 percent by the Mulroney government, then reduced to 5 percent by Stephen Harper. After a career as CEO at Bell Canada Enterprises and Bombardier, Sabia is one of the authors of the “GST Rebate” in the budget, which applies to groceries that had also been included in the original GST package in 1991.  And in light of the budget, columnist Don Newman looks at Canada’s defence spending and finds that the country is in the same old quandary—lots of talk, but little new money to meet NATO and NORAD targets.

Finally, in Book Reviews, we have four titles. Désirée McGraw, Liberal environment critic in Quebec’s National Assembly, recommends Purposeful Empathy, a timely book by McGill University’s Anita Nowak on personal perspectives that that can positively influence climate change. David O. Johnston on Bill Austin and Edie Austin’s Unlikely Insider, Bob Rae on Salman Rushdie’s Victory City: A Novel and Colin Robertson on Martin Wolf’s The Crisis in Democratic Action, conclude this issue.

Enjoy.