Informing the debate | McGill News
With the final report of Canada’sEcofiscal Commissionout and its clear support for carbon pricing – most notably, a 40-cent tax hike on a litre of gas over the next decade – making headlines,Christopher Ragan, commission chairman, can’t help thinking about how the now concluded six-year project got its start. Like most origin stories, it began at a low point – at least for Ragan.
Meeting Canada's Greenhouse Gas Targets | TVO
January 27, 2020 | 㽶Ƶ economist Chris Ragan, Chair of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, and Director of the Max Bell School, explains the think tank'sfinal report exploring Canada'soptions for reducingits greenhouse gas emissions.
Sciences, Publics, Politics: Lessons From Canada’s Climate Wars | Issues
When Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau took office in 2015 as Canada’s prime minister, a top priority was to establish Canada as a global leader on climate change. At the United Nations’ climate summit in Paris that year,Trudeau pledgedto cut his country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. Four years later, having survived re-election but with a much-diminished political mandate, Trudeau’s climate ambitions have been severely curtailed.
Federal government warning of voter coercion, foreign election interference through private messaging services | CBC News
February 9,2020|The federal government is worriedabout the risk of voter coercion and foreign election interference through private messaging services — a concern that could pit the right to privacy and free expression against Canada's election laws.
Taylor Owen on deepfakes | CBC The National
January 7, 2020| There are serious concerns about how Facebook will police deepfake videos. Max Bell School professor Taylor Owen talks about why these sophisticated videos need editorial oversight.
Chris Ragan on carbon pricing | Power and Politics
November 27, 2019 | Max Bell School Director Chris Ragan discusses theEcofiscal Commission's final report on how Canada can meet its 2030 emissions goals with a carbon pricing policy.
Watch the video here.
Here’s why you should like the federal carbon tax | The Star
November 27, 2019 | In this opinion piece, it is argued howan escalating carbon price over the years accompanied by rebates, as shown by Chris Ragan,is the most transparent and the least costly for the economy and taxpayers.
Read the full article here.
Hiking carbon tax to $210 cheapest way to hit climate targets: commission | CTV News
November 27, 2019 | Chris Ragan, Director of the Max Bell School says quadrupling Canada's carbon price by 2030 is the easiest and most cost-effective way for the country to meet its climate targets.
Read the full article here.
Why Carbon Pricing Remains the Smartest Policy Tool | Policy Options
November 27, 2019 | Director of the Max Bell School Chris Ragan on why the time is right for a serious conversation about how best to bridge the gap between Canada’s current emissions and our 2030 target.
Read the full article here.
Canada needs carbon tax of $210 a tonne by 2030 to meet Paris targets, report says | National Post
November 27, 2019 |The Ecofiscal Commission saysCanada will either have to raise carbon prices to $210 per tonne or adopt more expensive policies funded by higher income taxes to meet its 2030targets.
Read the full article here.
Canada should quadruple carbon tax to meet 2030 targets, commission says | The Globe and Mail
November 27, 2019 | The Ecofiscal Commission's latest report says that if Canada were to meet its 2030 targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions through carbon pricing, it must more than quadruple its carbon tax and rebate the revenues to consumers.
Read the full article here.
Mark Jaccard and Chris Ragan: This time, let’s set climate targets — and achieve them too | Vancouver Sun
October 7, 2019 | In this opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun, Max Bell School Director Chris Ragan and Mark Jaccard, Director at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, argue: "the impacts of a changing climate — from forests fires to heatwaves to floods — are getting worse and are making life harder for Canadians. A commitment to achieve deep emissions reductions by 2050 in Canada is consistent with the scale of the threat."
19 million Canadians have had their data breached in eight months
September 2, 2019| An estimated 19 million Canadians have been affected by data breaches between November 2018 and June 2019, according to numbers obtained by "Attention Control with Kevin Newman," a new podcast that launched Monday. The numbers come from 446 breaches that were reported to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). Victims of these kinds of data breaches are vulnerable to identity theft, financial crime, even violence in some cases.
Canadian polarized, but social media use likely not the culprit: study
September 12, 2019 | Social media might not be to blame for Canadians’ ideological polarization, a new report on digital democracy in Canada finds. “A lot of people don’t use social media very actively,” said Eric Merkley, a researcher on the project. “People on Twitter are not representative of the broader population.”
Fake news preys on emotions, expert warns
August 10, 2019| Beware of things you see online that make you emotional, one media expert warns ahead of the fall election. Taylor Owen, professor at 㽶Ƶ and the co-creator of the Digital Democracy Project, says fake news often preys on feelings like anger and fear.
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