A supervised consumption site in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, in 2021. B.C. has decriminalized simple possession of drugs, including methamphetamines and opioids.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
As British Columbia begins a new era in drug policy, the drug poisoning crisis continues without an end in sight.
A driver charges his electric car at a Tesla Supercharger station in Miami, Fla. In areas where multi-unit residential buildings cannot adopt EV charging infrastructure, public vehicle charging stations are crucial.
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Canada’s zero-emissions vehicle sales target will need hundreds of thousands of EV charging points to be installed in homes, workplaces, retail spaces and along highway corridors in the coming years.
Canada has a shortage of doctors. That’s why making it difficult for internationally trained doctors to practise here is so mystifying.
(Francisco Venancio, Unsplash)
Canada is sidelining qualified doctors while many Canadians struggle to find health care. Here’s what we can and must do better for internationally trained physicians.
Montessori education encourages split grades, and as a school with low enrolment numbers, it already had teachers teaching multiple grades in a single class.
(Shutterstock)
Building trusting relations among teachers, parents, a community and school administrators is important when schools enter decision-making processes about programs of choice.
Following historic drought in 2021, reservoir levels dropped down in the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, which gets its waters from the melting snowpack from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming.
(pxhere.com)
Dec. 1 marks World AIDS Day. Canada has the tools and means to end the epidemic. The question remains, are we up to the task?
Neighbours from Tla’amin, K’omoks, Qualicum and Tsimshian Nations gather around the newly.
erected plaque on Xwe’etay honoring the ancestral Indigenous people of the island.
(Kathy Schulz)
Bats have important roles to play in ecosystems, but their populations have been declining due to disease and habitat change.
Alex Bird (second from the left) and his siblings from the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation were among the first students to attend this public school, near Prince George, B.C., in the early 1910s.
(Royal B.C. Museum, Image B-00342, British Columbia Archives)
In B.C., residential school principals sat on public school boards, and some Indigenous children even attended public schools. Understanding such links matters for truth and reconciliation.
An endangered female orca leaps from the water in Puget Sound, west of Seattle.
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
The declining salmon and whale numbers raise a critical question: Is the southern resident killer whale population solely reliant on the abundance of salmon? And, if so, since when?
Climate researchers stress that natural gas bridges can often lead to nowhere as the reliance on natural gas can lock countries into fossil fuels, crowd out low-carbon technologies and risk stranding assets.
(Shutterstock)
Fossil fuel companies are winning the battle on how we talk about natural gas expansion by referring to it as a “bridge fuel” or an essential bridge to the net-zero energy system of the future.
Housing policy-makers should pay attention not only to how much housing is available and how often rental units turn over, but to residential stability and the quality of life that homes and neighbourhoods provide.
(Shutterstock)
Unaffordability is only one type of housing vulnerability that has taken its toll on British Columbians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
British Columbian workers in the public sector, transit and transportation have voted to take job action in recent weeks to fight for their right to earn livable wages.
(Shutterstock)
The discovery of a fossil over 500 million years old reveals new information. Its brain and nervous system are remarkably preserved, filling in some gaps in what we know about arthropod evolution.
Whale art installation at the waterfront in Prince Rupert, B.C.
(Shutterstock)
The investigations of the deaths of three young Indigenous people in northern British Columbia had been inadequate. Justice demands fair and supportive death investigation procedures for all.
B.C. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Sheila Malcolmson holds a copy of exemption documents that enable British Columbia to decriminalize possession of small amounts of ‘hard’ drugs for personal use. B.C.’s bold experiment will be closely watched as a comparator with other progressive jurisdictions.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
British Columbia’s bold experiment provides an opportunity to implement more balance in Canadian drug policy, and a more principled withdrawal from the war on drugs.
Chum salmon at the end of their life cycle in Fish Creek, Alaska.
(Andrea Reid)
About 10 million people live in Canada’s earthquake-prone zones. Yet few have practical knowledge of what to do with new early warning system alerts which aim to save lives and protect livelihoods.
A woman and children who were stranded by high water due to flooding are rescued by a volunteer operating a boat in Abbotsford, B.C., in November 2021. The Insurance Institute of Canada forecasts that annual insured losses from natural disasters could increase to $5 billion within the next 10 years.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Although insurance is important in natural disaster recovery, government and property owners also play an important role in protecting Canadians against the impact of catastrophic weather events.
Rising flood waters are seen surrounding barns in Abbotsford, B.C., on Nov. 16, 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Industrial-sized confinement farming systems pose massive challenges during hurricanes, floods or wildfires, including significant public health, animal welfare and socio-economic implications.