The Growing Inequality Among Countries and the Worsening Climate Crisis

By John Feffer

March 29, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





In a fit of madness or just plain desperation, you’ve enrolled in a get-rich-quick scheme. All you have to do is sell some products, sign up a few friends, and make some calls. Follow that simple formula, and you’ll soon pull in tens of thousands of dollars a month—or so you’ve been promised anyway. If you sell enough products, you’ll be invited into the Golden Circle, which offers perks such as free concert tickets and trips to Las Vegas.

Still, you won’t be surprised to learn that there’s a catch. If you don’t sell enough products or sign up enough friends to do the same, the odds are that you’ll lose money, no matter how hard you work, especially if you take out loans to build your “business.”

The founders of multi-level marketing schemes always make significant money, and some of their friends become wealthy, too. However, 99 percent of those who sell the products, whether cosmetics or dietary supplements, lose money. That’s worse than a conventional pyramid scam, which fleeces only nine out of every 10 people involved.

Now, imagine that you’re a poor country. The international financial institutions (IFIs) promise that, if you follow a simple formula, you, too, will become a wealthy nation. You take out loans from those same IFIs and commercial banks, invest in building up your export industries, and cut back on government regulations. Then you wait for the good news.

Of course, there’s a catch. You have to sell a staggering number of exports to make money. Meanwhile, you have to repay those loans while covering the compounding interest payments that accompany them. Soon, you’re caught in a debt trap and falling further behind wealthy countries. Who are the main winners? The corporations that flooded into your country in search of tax incentives, cheap labor, and lax manufacturing and mining regulations.

The nation-states that founded the modern global economy have made tons of money, as have some of their friends and allies. Despite the devastation of World War II, for instance, Japan could scramble up the ladder again to join the treehouse club of powerful nations. Meanwhile, in a single generation, South Korea’s economy was transformed from the per capita gross domestic product of a Ghana or Haiti in 1960 into one of the world’s most powerful by the 1980s. In Latin America, Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica all managed to join South Korea in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, a collection of the planet’s 38 most prosperous countries.

But today, there’s a catch to climbing that ladder into the industrialized world. As the board of directors of the club of the wealthy points out, the classic ladder of development, industrialization itself, has become rickety and ever more dangerous. After all, it requires energy traditionally supplied by fossil fuels, now known to radically heat up the planet and endanger the very survival of humanity. Today, countries aspiring to join the charmed circle of the wealthy can no longer hope to climb that ladder in any usual fashion, thanks in part to the carbon-neutrality pledges virtually all nations made as part of the Paris Climate Accord.

Developing nations are divided on how to respond. In 2023, as the world’s second-largest consumer of coal and third-largest consumer of oil, India attempted to grow in the old-fashioned fossil-fueled way, becoming the last one up that ladder, even as its rungs disintegrated. Other countries, like renewables-reliant Uruguay and carbon-neutral Suriname, explored more environmentally sustainable paths to progress.

Either way, with global temperatures setting extreme records and inequality worsening in 2024, poorer countries faced their last shot at following South Korea and Qatar into the ranks of the “developed” world. While unable to mimic the exact footsteps of wealthier nations, with some clever negotiating, judicious resource leveraging, and a lot of solidarity, it’s just possible that underdeveloped nations could team up to rewrite the rules of the global economy and achieve a measure of prosperity for all.

Growing Inequality

The advocates of neoliberal globalization point to a steady decline of inequality among nations between 1980 and 2020, mainly because of the explosive economic growth of China and other Asian countries like Vietnam. However, those proponents often fail to mention two critical facts: in 2020, such inequality was still roughly the same as in 1900, when colonialism was in full swing. Meanwhile, inequality within countries skyrocketed in the decades before 2023. From 1995 to 2021, the top 1 percent of the wealthiest among us accumulated 20 times that of the bottom 50 percent.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2019, only made matters worse. According to one estimate, it threw 90 million people into extreme poverty while increasing the wealth of billionaires more rapidly in just two pandemic years than in the previous 23 combined.

Mind you, the super-rich don’t reside solely in wealthy, developed nations. As of April 2024, China and India have the most billionaires after the United States. The consolidation of obscene wealth alongside abject poverty is one reason inequality has risen more rapidly within countries than between them.

But something else strange is happening. In addition to making the ladder of industrialization more difficult to climb using fossil fuels, climate change has been pushing the architects of the global economy to rethink their animus toward state intervention. Accelerating due to a fundamentalist faith in markets, climate change may also be delivering the coup de grâce to neoliberalism.

Climate Debts

During the Industrial Revolution and the ensuing century and a half of global economic expansion, the rich countries became wealthy by exploiting oil, natural gas, and coal. In doing so, they pumped trillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Poorer countries generally supplied the raw materials for that “miracle of progress”—at first, involuntarily, thanks to colonialism, and then “voluntarily” through trade.

From 1751 to 2021, the United States was responsible for fully one-quarter of all carbon emissions, with the members of the European Union in second place at 22 percent (followed by China, India, Japan, Russia, and other major powers). On the other hand, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Oceania have collectively contributed only a tiny fraction of those emissions over the same period. As of 2023, the amount of carbon the world can emit without crossing the 1.5 Celsius degree red line set by the Paris Climate Agreement is only 250 gigatons. That’s approximately what China alone had emitted by 2021 while muscling its way into the clubhouse of the rich and powerful.

The wealthy club members have all now embarked on transitions to “clean energy.” The European Union’s “Fit for 55” aims to reduce carbon emissions by 55 percent by 2030. The Biden administration pushed through the Inflation Reduction Act to incentivize states, corporations, and individuals to move away from fossil fuels so that the United States could become carbon-neutral by 2050 (a goal decisively rejected by the second Trump administration). In both cases, the state has played a much more active role in guiding the transition than would have been tolerated in the heyday of Thatcherism and Reaganism.

The developing world, which bears little responsibility for the planet’s climate mess, doesn’t have the necessary billions of dollars to devote to “clean energy transitions.” Because climate change knows no borders, in 2010, the richer countries promised to contribute $100 billion a year to fund “mitigation” (emissions reductions) in the developing world. However, that promise proved to be—somewhat appropriate given the climate crisis—mostly hot air. Nearly 15 years after the initial agreement, according to Oxfam, the wealthy nations have managed to mobilize $28 billion in assistance annually.

Meanwhile, climate change is causing havoc worldwide. Though Canadian wildfires and European heat waves dominated the climate headlines in the summer of 2023, the effects of climate change were disproportionately felt in the developing world. According to one estimate, by 2030, developing countries will be hit with climate bills of between $290 billion and $580 billion annually.

In 2022, rich countries pledged another sum of money, this time to a “loss and damage fund” to compensate poorer nations for the ongoing impacts of climate change. However, as of 2025, less than $1 billion has been pledged.

At the 2023 Climate Conference in Dubai, which brought together 154 Heads of State and Governments, various nations pledged further funding to the loss and damage fund with commitments totaling more than $700 million. One year later, the representatives of the wealthy countries that gathered in Baku tripled their pledges to reach $300 billion a year by 2035. However, with much of the money going out as loans rather than grants, it only adds to debt burdens rather than really addressing the crisis. And as researchers at the Center for Global Development point out, the $300 billion is “barely above a business-as-usual scenario.”

Global Just Transition

As of 2024, the fossil-fuel-free future the rich world is touting depends on critical materials like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements to build electric batteries, solar panels, and windmills. Most of these essential assets are located in the developing world. In one of those ironies of history, the economic development of the North once again depends significantly on what lies beneath the ground (and the oceans) in the South. In this brave new world of “green colonialism,” the North is maneuvering to grab such needed resources at the lowest price possible in part by perpetuating for the poor the very neoliberal model of “less government” that it’s begun to abandon itself.

There’s also a Cold War twist to this tale. According to policymakers in Brussels and Washington, the “clean energy” transition shouldn’t be held hostage by China, which mines and processes many of its critical minerals (producing 60 percent and processing 85 percent of all rare earth elements).

China might one day decide to shut down the supply chain of such critical minerals, a foreshadowing of which occurred in the summer of 2023 when Beijing imposed export controls on gallium and germanium in response to a Dutch ban on certain high-tech exports to China. The Chinese leadership will undoubtedly continue out-negotiating the West to gain privileged access to what it needs for its own high-tech industries.

In 2023, the European Union (EU) passed a “Critical Raw Materials Act” meant to reduce dependency on Chinese inputs through more mining closer to home, from Sweden to Serbia, not to speak of more “urban mining” (that is, recycling materials from used batteries and old solar panels).

The EU is also negotiating deals with mineral-rich countries in the developing world. For example, it negotiated a trade agreement with Chile that ensures EU access to that country’s lithium supplies while making it more difficult for Chile’s government to supply its manufacturers with cheaper inputs.

Washington, meanwhile, put a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act to ensure that electric car manufacturers source at least 40 percent of their batteries’ mineral content from the United States or U.S. allies (read: not China). That percentage is to rise to 80 percent by 2027. Washington is not only scrambling to secure its own critical minerals but forcing allies to cut ties with China and compete for sources elsewhere, a strategy that the Trump administration is continuing.

Such an effort to “secure supply chains,” while a blow to China, represents a possible boon for the developing world. A country like Chile, which commands much of the lithium market, can theoretically negotiate more than just a reasonable price for its product. It could leverage its mineral riches to acquire valuable technology, intellectual property, or greater control over the overall supply chain. Collectively, those mineral suppliers could also take a page from the playbook of the oil producers. Indonesia, for instance, has already floated the idea of a nickel cartel.

Such strategies, however, face threefold challenges. First, the United States and Europe are boosting mining at home to make themselves more self-sufficient. Second, technological advances may render such minerals obsolete, much as the United States created a synthetic substitute for rubber when supplies became tight during World War II. As of 2024, there is a growing number of alternatives to batteries that don’t depend on lithium or cobalt, such as Sodium Ion Batteries.

Even more worrisome are the environmental consequences of such mining. While developing countries could indeed use “ladders” made of lithium, cobalt, or nickel to join the club of the wealthy, they would be hard-pressed to do so without creating “zones of sacrifice,” destroying communities and ecosystems around mineral extraction sites.

So, let’s take a fresh look at the cartel idea. Venezuela originally proposed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (or OPEC) as a method of reducing oil consumption. The problem Venezuela grasped 70 years ago was not just the low price of what the nation’s then-oil minister called “the devil’s excrement” but the unsustainable nature of a global dependency on fossil fuels. OPEC was to help conserve resources. Could a mineral cartel serve that very purpose?

Breaking the Cycle

The planet’s central problem in the 2020s is not just carbon emissions and climate change. In their own fashion, they’re both symptoms of an even larger crisis of overconsumption of resources, including energy. Consider one minor example: the amount of stuff Americans buy at Christmas and then return without using amounts to $300 billion a year. That’s more than the economic output of Finland, Peru, or Kenya.

That gives “shop ’til you drop” a new meaning.

Rather than building a different ladder to climb into prosperity, the countries of the developing world could take the unprecedented challenge of human-induced climate change as an opportunity to rewrite the rules of the global economy. Instead of dreaming of consuming at the same rate as the rich world—inconceivable given the planet’s shrinking resource base—the developing world could use its mineral leverage to lessen inequality planet-wide effectively. In practice, that would mean forcing the rich world’s middle class to trim its consumption by reducing the supply of fossil-fuel energy to the region.

In a referendum in Ecuador in 2023, its citizens voted to keep the oil in the Yasuni National Park beneath the ground. Several countries in Oceania—Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga—have similarly endorsed a “non-proliferation treaty” for fossil fuels that would phase out oil, gas, and coal production. The United Kingdom and the EU have considered rationing plans for fossil fuels. However, as of 2024, neither Britain nor the EU has formally committed to any plans.

Nor can the rich be allowed to sit on their billions while the planet burns. The wealth taxes some countries have implemented and others, such as the U.S., have proposed through President Biden’s “billionaire tax” would go a long way toward shifting funds from the super-rich to the greatest victims of climate change and biodiversity loss. Consider this slogan for the rapidly changing climate crisis: more butterflies, fewer billionaires.

The global economy is on a downward debt spiral for the poor and an upward consumption spiral for the rich. In short, it’s a rigged game. The solution is not to usher a few lucky countries into unsustainable excess, which would be a new version of green colonialism.

Instead, it’s time to turn the game upside down and end that very green colonialism, forcing the rich world to reduce its energy and other resource consumption to match that of the developing world. The inequality of industrialization got us into this crisis, and addressing that inequality is the only way out.


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John Feffer is the author several books including the recently published North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories). For more information about his books and articles, visit www.johnfeffer.com

Codelco sending more copper to US after tariff threat

Reuters | March 28, 2025 | 

Codelco head offices in Santiago. (Image by Rodrigo Fernández | Wikimedia Commons.)

Chile’s Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, has been redirecting some of its spot sales to the United States, CEO Ruben Alvarado said on Friday.


US President Donald Trump in February ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on copper imports in an effort to rebuild US production, a move that appeared to prompt a rush for copper.


Alvarado also said he did not see any reason for copper to be subject to a sanction or tariffs, and anticipated strong long-term fundamentals for copper demand beyond short-term swings.

“We are committing to the needs of our clients in the United States, we are redirecting part of our spot sales,” Alvarado said in a press conference to discuss Codelco’s 2024 results.

Codelco reported a swing into the black for its 2024 earnings, posting a pre-tax profit of $790 million compared to a loss of $757 million the previous year.

The state-owned miner said output totaled 1.328 million metric tons, a touch above the 1.325 million tons it reported for 2023 and within its target range.

Codelco said it began in August to post higher production figures than in the year before.

“In 2024 we succeeded in leaving the production valley,” it said in a presentation, adding it had lowered costs and resolved some long-standing issues at some of its key complexes.

The company also said production is expected to start at the Andesita and Andes Norte divisions this year.

Codelco said it expects 2025 output to reach between 1.37 million and 1.4 million tons.

The copper miner reiterated its expectation of beginning a joint venture with lithium producer SQM this year, and said it would choose a partner for the Maricunga lithium project in the second quarter.

(By Fabian Cambero, Daina Beth Solomon and Sarah Morland; Editing by Kylie Madry, Deepa Babington and Alistair Bell)

Column: Can Trump’s critical minerals drive pass the copper test?

Reuters | March 27, 2025 |

Image courtesy of The White House.

US President Donald Trump’s executive order on boosting domestic minerals production is intended to blast a path through the thicket of mine permitting in the United States.


It takes an average of nearly 29 years for a new mine to go from discovery to production in the United States, the second-longest lead time in the world after Zambia, according to S&P Global.

Permitting on Federal Land in particular is a big problem and one that the US government is uniquely qualified to solve.

The Joe Biden administration struggled to reconcile its ambition to produce more “green” metals for the energy transition with its environmental and social credentials.

Trump has no such qualms.

The Secretary of the Interior is instructed to “prioritize mineral production activities over other types of activities on Federal lands”.

But there is a danger that the political pendulum will swing too far the other way. There is also the problem that new mines still take many years to build and the US lacks the processing capacity to convert raw materials to metal.

Copper is a case in point.

Stalled copper projects

Copper is not on the US critical minerals list but gets a special mention in Trump’s executive order, along with gold, uranium, potash and, if the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council so determines, any other element “such as coal”.

Copper has come to epitomize the problem of getting new mines up and running in the United States.

Rio Tinto bets on Trump support for long-stalled Arizona copper mine

Big copper projects such as Resolution in Arizona, Pebble in Alaska and Twin Metals in Minnesota have been stalled for years at the federal permitting stage.

All three could benefit from the change of political wind in Washington.

But opposition from Native Americans and environmental protection groups is not going to magically disappear at the stroke of a presidential pen. Indeed, it might well become more entrenched.

Big mining companies such as Rio Tinto, which owns a majority stake in Resolution, have learnt the hard way that mining without community consent is highly problematic.

The company has buy-in from both Serbian and European Union policy-makers for its giant Jadar lithium mine but progress has ground to a halt due to mass protests.
Extended timeline

The Resolution mine has the potential to become the biggest copper producer in North America, capable of meeting up to 25% of the United States’ annual copper demand.

The copper will come with byproducts such as bismuth, indium and tellurium, all of which are on the critical minerals list.

But even assuming accelerated permitting, the mine will still take around 10 years to construct, meaning the first copper concentrates would be produced only around the middle of the next decade.

Resolution is located in Arizona, which has a long history of mining and associated infrastructure.


The Pebble and Twin Metals projects face extra challenges in the form of physical remoteness and potential impact on salmon spawning grounds and the Boundary Waters Wilderness respectively.

Fast-tracking permitting for such projects doesn’t mean they’ll be ready to generate copper any time soon.
Processing gap

Rio’s Resolution mine could be integrated into the company’s existing Kennecott smelting and refining operations in Utah.

Kennecott, however, is only one of two active primary copper smelters in the United States. The other one is Miami in Arizona operated by Freeport-McMoRan. There has been speculation but so far no confirmation that Grupo Mexico might re-open its Hayden smelter in the same state.

The United States is already a net exporter of copper concentrates for want of sufficient processing capacity. Some 320,000 tons of contained metal in concentrates were shipped overseas last year, according to the US Geological Survey.

The three main destinations were Mexico, China and Canada. Clearly there is enough North American smelting capacity to absorb extra US mine production but the Biden administration’s policy of “friend-shoring” has been replaced with Trump’s tariff threats against the United States’ two neighbours.

Moreover, every copper smelter is currently competing with China, where smelting and refining capacity is huge and still growing.

Smelter margins are being squeezed in the form of historically low treatment charges for converting raw material into metal at historic lows.

Building sufficient domestic capacity to process extra US mine production could be a thornier problem than building the new mines in the first place.
Urban solution

The fixation on headline-grabbing mega mine projects to reduce US import dependency misses a far easier and lower-cost solution.

US processing capacity for recycling copper is growing.

Germany’s Aurubis AG has invested $800 million in a new smelter in Georgia for treating up to 180,000 metric tons of complex recyclables such as circuit-boards.

The United States is the world’s largest exporter of copper scrap to the tune of almost a million tons each year. Much of it is sent to China for processing.

Recycling all that lost metal at domestic facilities wouldn’t eliminate US copper import dependency but it would significantly close the gap.

Recycling comes with the benefits of an existing resource, low capital expenditure relative to new mines, shorter lead-times to production and lower carbon footprint.

The Trump administration’s rush to ditch anything associated with Biden’s green agenda risks overlooking the one part of the domestic copper supply chain that is already attracting investment and increasing capacity.

If “mine baby mine” is the mantra, channelling more federal funds into “urban mining” is going to reap faster rewards than any big new conventional mine.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by David Evans)

UK

Austerity by another name: “Exceptional Financial Support”

 

There can be no resolution of the housing crisis without a break from austerity, argues Martin Wicks.

The financial crisis of local government is spiralling out of control. 30 councils have been granted “Exceptional Financial Support” which offers no support but only more debt. Does this impact on Housing Revenue Accounts, which are ‘ring-fenced’? How does the crisis of Council General Funds relate to and impact on the financial crisis of Housing Revenue Accounts?

“Councils desperately need a significant and sustained increase in overall funding in the Spending Review to meet the requirements being placed on them,” was the Local Government Association response to National Audit Office report on Local Government financial sustainability.

Council housing finance operates within a Housing Revenue Account (HRA). It sits within a council’s General Fund (GF) but is ‘ring-fenced’. Council rents can’t finance other services and council tax cannot fund council housing. Hence HRAs are not directly impacted by the crisis of council GFs. However, the financial crisis of the GF has impacted on the HRA because staff who do work related to council housing, but work under the GF, have been subject to massive cuts.

The National Audit Office reported in 2018 that spending on Planning and Development had been cut by 52% and Housing Services (GF only) by 45.6%. It’s not uncommon that when a council has a recruitment freeze it is applied to the HRA despite the fact that it is ring-fenced.

Housing functions, separate from the HRA, funded from council tax, deal with homelessness,  providing temporary accommodation and regulation of private sector housing. Austerity continues to impact on these. The freeze of Local Housing Allowance (LHA) at 90% of the 2011 LHA rate, maintained by Rachel Reeves, means that there is a growing gap between the cost of placing increasing numbers of people in temporary accommodation, and the funding the government gives councils. This gap has to be covered by the GF. It is driving some councils to the financial edge.

Some of them, especially those without council housing, are having to spend up to 50% of their income on temporary accommodation. The bigger metropolitan areas face placing thousands of people in temporary accommodation. We have highlighted the case of Newham which has more than 6,000 households in temporary accommodation. The National Audit office has just reported that the cost of temporary accommodation in 2023/24 was £2.13 billion, nearly double what was spent in 2015/16.  The number of households in temporary accommodation is still rising. There were more than 126,000 in September 2024 and 164,000 children.

Some councils are using part of their own stock as temporary accommodation, since it is much cheaper than the private sector. The more it does this then the longer people on the waiting list will wait for a tenancy.

Meanwhile the crisis of council GFs is spiralling out of control. We have just heard that 30 local authorities have been granted “Exceptional Financial Support” (EFS, see table below). Birmingham MP Preet Kaur Gill described this as “additional financial support”. It’s nothing of the sort. In the case of Birmingham Council they have been granted “capitalisation” of £490 million for 2024/25 and £180 million for 2025/26. She says this will “help the council recover from the financial challenges it faces”.

How taking on more debt because they haven’t got sufficient revenue to cover the cost of their services will help them recover, is a mystery. As the Guardian explains: “The exceptional financial support packages enable councils to take out capital loans to fund revenue spending, on the basis they will pay down the debt in future by disposing of assets and cutting back on frontline services.”

Claire Holland, the chair of London Councils umbrella group, said: “These figures show almost a quarter of town halls in London would face financial collapse without emergency borrowing.” The National Audit Office says, of ESF: “It creates longer term risks for local authorities.”

In order to balance their budgets, councils are asking for permission (some have been granted it) to raise their council tax above the limit of 4.99%. The government has allowed them to, without having to hold a referendum.

The LGA has warned of an overall funding gap by 2028/9 of £8.4 billion. In relation to children with Special Educational Needs, they say there is “a mismatch between demand and funding”. A substantial  proportion of councils now run a ‘deficit’ on these services; a situation only made possible by government permission. This override of the usual rules is due to end at the close of the financial year 2025/26. A survey by the LGA in January 2025 indicates that 53% of these councils will not be able to set a balanced budget for 2026/27 if the override is not extended or another method to address the deficit is not introduced.

While the LGA has welcomed some additional funding settlements, “they do not address the fact that the sector is increasingly reliant on ESF and temporary adjustments to accounting rules to remain solvent.” EFS is just austerity by another name.

“The government must urgently rethink its position”

CIPFA (the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) has said it is “deeply concerned” by the number of local authorities forced to seek EFS. Given the number involved, it could no longer be deemed “Exceptional”.

“Covering recurring day-to-day revenue expenditure through capitalisation directions is unsustainable and represents poor financial management and most significantly poor value for money to the taxpayer,” it said in its response to the government’s consultation on local authority funding reform.

“Our experience with the sector shows that this is leading to increased borrowing and consequently greater instability within the sector, and the government must urgently rethink its current position.” (our emphasis)

In a separate submission to Parliament’s Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry on council finances in England, CIPFA said that a fifth of local authorities now receive additional support. It identified a total of 108 current interventions across local government, with 55 councils in Delivering Better Value in special educational needs and disability programmes and 34 in Safety Valve measures because of their high-need dedicated schools grant deficits.

That figure potentially understated the scale of the problem, CIPFA said, because authorities not yet in receipt of additional support were nevertheless “severely impacted” by the current funding system.

“All local authorities are experiencing the consequences of the funding shortfall and this will continue to get worse until reforms are actioned… Being unable to pay for services and unable to produce a balanced budget is now a constant reality for many CIPFA members who are chief finance officers in local authorities, and this impacts the communities that they serve.”

It would appear that councils are now applying for EFS as a means of avoiding issuing section 114 notices, which lead to the government sending in commissioners and councillors losing control.Worcester County Council said exactly that. If they had not  been granted EFS they would have had to have issued a section 114 notice.

Housing Revenue Accounts have insufficient resources

HRAs also face an acute crisis. As we have explained before, in The case for cancelling council housing ‘debt’, the new financial system introduced in 2012, underfunded HRAs from the start. Austerity measures then made matters worse. A four year rent cut was applied to save the government money on housing benefit. Councils weren’t compensated for the loss of rental income. An increase in the discount for Right to Buy produced a fourfold increase in sales which lost HRAs a huge amount of rental income. That’s why 109 councils came together to support “Securing the Future of Council Housing”. The document warned that: “Unless something is done soon, most council landlords will struggle to maintain their existing homes adequately or meet huge new demands to improve them, let alone build new homes for social rent.”

Subsequently, a survey of those councils showed a deteriorating situation where a quarter of those who responded said they will be forced to sell some of their council homes “to get by”. The survey found that “two thirds of council housing budgets are on the brink of collapse”, at risk of being unable to set a balanced budget by the next general election. A sign of the deteriorating financial position of HRAs is Lambeth Council being granted an EFS of £40 million for its HRA rather than GF.

“Years of financial strain have forced councils across the country to reduce their maintenance of council homes, cancel new build projects and even sell off existing housing stock.” 28% of councils that answered the survey expected to have to sell off some council homes “to get by”. What sense does it make to sell off council homes when there is an acute shortage?

“Securing the Future of Council Housing” called for £12 billion over five years to bring homes up to the Decent Homes Standard and £23 billion for decarbonising existing homes. While we must obviously continue to press the government for a significant increase in funding for new build/acquisitions, we cannot accept the deterioration of existing homes. The new regime of inspections by the Regulator of Social Housing has exposed the scale of the problems. Of 35 authorities inspected and graded so far, 19 were graded C3, deemed to have “serious failings”, and two were graded C4, “very serious failings”.  We say that “there can be no renaissance of council housing if existing homes are allowed to deteriorate”.

Fiscal strait-jacket

The main obstacle to securing sufficient funding for existing council housing and the building/acquisition of additional stock is the Chancellor’s ‘fiscal rules’ and the refusal to tax wealth. To call the fiscal rules “non-negotiable” reduces them to immutable rules which should be adhered to regardless of real life experience. They are rooted in an economic approach which maintains a regressive tax system which enables the big corporations and capital gains to be under-taxed.

So long as the government carries on with austerity, councils are not going to be funded sufficiently to maintain and renew existing council housing, never mind build/acquire on the scale that is needed to begin to resolve the housing crisis. It has been reported that government departments have been told to factor in the possibility of 11% cuts. If that is applied to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, it suggests that the freeze of LHA will continue. As a consequence, the gap between the cost of temporary accommodation and funding will continue to grow.

In her resignation letter, Annaliese Dodds said that she was expecting collective discussion on the ‘fiscal rules’ and approach to taxation. These rules, and the refusal to move back to a progressive taxation system, leave the poor and the homeless to pay the price for economic orthodoxy. Ironically, while the fiscal rules mean that the national government cannot borrow for everyday spending it is allowing councils to do precisely that. Indeed they are giving them no other option save for issuing a section 114 notice (a declaration that they cannot set a balanced budget).

Spring Spending Review

The delayed Spring Spending Review has been the focus of demands for ‘social housing’. Shelter and others have been calling for funding for 90,000 social rent homes a year. However, the die may be cast before then. It looks like Rachel Reeves is going to set in stone the contours of the Review when she gives her speech on March 26th reporting on the OBR’s assessment of economic prospects.

The government is already defending cuts to benefits heavier than the £3 billion programmed in by the Tories. If they go ahead they will impact heavily on council and other tenants, many of whom are on benefits because of poverty, illness or disability. Austerity always hits the poorest people hardest. Those who need statutory services don’t get them because of insufficient funding as councils focus on “those most in need” in language borrowed from the coalition government. That means others with genuine needs, go without. Their lives are restricted, their last years made more miserable. For many people, temporary accommodation is anything but temporary. You are not even guaranteed that it will be in your locality. The Guardian has reported that London councils have spent £140 million to move homeless people out of London.

Social rent council housing

The housing crisis cannot be resolved without making social rent council housing the focus of government housing policy. It will provide security and will ease “the cost of living crisis” for tenants. It will create “growth” which is socially useful rather than merely lining the coffers of the corporations at our expense. It will help to liberate a new generation from the private sector.

Retro-fitting existing council housing will cut carbon emissions, make the cost of heating cheaper for tenants, and create socially useful jobs. If these are political priorities, then the funding can be found. There are many ways to find that funding; making pension tax relief the same for everybody at 20% (as opposed to being higher for those on a 40% tax rate) and equalising capital gains tax with income tax are just a couple of examples.

Continued austerity for local government means deepening cuts, a downward debt spiral, the continuation of the homelessness crisis and the deterioration of existing council housing. That’s why a break from it is necessary.

Martin Wicks is Secretary of the Labour Campaign for Council Housing.

Federal Election 2025

Vassy Kapelos: This isn’t just another election campaign

By Vassy Kapelos
March 23, 2025 
CTV News Channel 

Vassy Kapelos is the Chief Political Correspondent for CTV News.

'We are stronger together': Carney launches election campaign

'Change and hope are both on the way': Poilievre kicks off election campaign
Nanos: Election 'a real horse race' as Liberals close the gap with Conservatives

I was seven years old the last time an election in this country centred around a single issue. Then, it was free trade; nearly four decades later – almost my entire lifetime – it’s about freedom. Freedom from Donald Trump.

Let’s just lay it all out there. I have never seen anything like this. Not politically, or otherwise. Would you have thought a year ago we’d wake up to a nightmare wherein the president of the United States wanted to take us over and planned to do it by bludgeoning an entire nation into submissive poverty? And that those threats would coincide with the resignation of a prime minister who never wanted to go but finally did? If you had that all on your bingo card, you’re way ahead of the rest of us.U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Pool via AP) (\)

The rest of us could never have predicted the degree to or cruelty with which Trump would take aim at Canada, and that it would coincide so specifically with Justin Trudeau’s decision to exit stage left. In just eight short weeks, the combination of those two events have taken this campaign from a Conservative cakewalk to the most competitive in a generation. A double-digit lead for the Tories is no more, and every single issue driving public sentiment last year--lack of housing, immigration policy, expensive groceries--has been displaced with an entire country’s anxiety over Trump coming for us.

(Nanos Research)

In short, the world we lived in last year is no more. And the politics of last year have largely disappeared with it. Now, instead of a trouncing - public opinion polls in the aggregate have the Liberals and Conservatives within the margin of error. Their polling numbers aren’t the only thing moving closer together; the two main parties’ policies are converging like at no other point in the last decade.


For the Liberals, gone are the days of talking up NDP-driven policy (pharmacare, dental care) and gender balance. Even those policies and their politics aimed at putting Tories on the spot--the consumer price on carbon, the capital gains tax changes --gone and gone. Now it’s about (loosely defined) ‘fiscal responsibility,’ getting conventional and other types of energy to markets outside of the U.S. and breaking down trade barriers between provinces.

If that all sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The Conservatives were so successful in their opposition to the carbon tax and Trudeau, they will no longer be able to fight an entire election against them. They’ve been talking about getting oil and gas out of Canada for years, and though Tories will argue the Liberals won’t actually do it, the fact the now Mark Carney-led party is talking about it – even that is not something imaginable in this way just a year ago

.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks during a rally in Ottawa, on Sunday, March 24, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

What Trudeau’s resignation did

So where has it left the parties? And what does it mean for how they will court your vote?

Liberals I speak with are less surprised by what’s happening to them than media and the punditry class are. Of more than a dozen MPs I spoke with on background in writing this, all but one thought Trudeau’s resignation would give them a fighting chance. The difference? They thought they’d be fighting to be a bigger opposition – not in majority territory. The Trump factor, on the other hand, did surprise most of those MPs. They largely felt the party’s previous attempts to link Trump and Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre--particularly around the issue of Ukraine--had some payoff but not enough to move a campaign.

Those MPs, and a handful of staffers I spoke with, now feel it will be the deciding factor in this campaign. That despite their differences and the recent rebuke of Poilievre by Trump himself, Canadians are so consumed with their disgust of the U.S. president, even a whiff of a Musk-laced endorsement is enough to poison the well.

As a result, you’ll see an amplified version of the online Liberal Party ads running in the weeks leading up to the campaign--Trump and Poilievre side by side--sliced into mirror images. They believe they can drive up the perception Poilievre is a risk when their candidate--in their view--is the opposite.

The proposition is entirely unique to the times. A year ago, Canadians did not feel their lives were better off - they wanted to take a risk to change that. Now, in the face of Trump, they appear to just want to keep hold of what we have – blemishes and all.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, centre, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, left, and Premier of Quebec Francois Legault, right, take part in the First Minister Meeting at the National War Museum in Ottawa on Friday, March 21, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Watching Mark Carney become prime minister and take the helm of the Liberal Party, it’s hard not to be reminded of Stephen Harper. Serious, economically focused, and prickly at times. Listening to his press conferences this week I felt a distinct sense of déjà vu to more than a decade ago, listening to the then prime minister. Liberals feel like the moment was created for Carney--that his brand of “boring” as one staffer put it--is exactly what Canadians want right now, and perhaps only right now.
Poilievre ‘is who he is’: Conservative MP

Tories, conversely, cannot believe their luck. I spoke with almost a dozen Conservative MPs in writing this and none of them think they will handily win their ridings anymore – they believe any wins will be hard fought. Their leader--once revered by them for being a ‘true’ Conservative, for refusing to moderate in the name of broader public support that never materialized for his predecessors--they are less sure of.

“Pierre is who is he is,” one MP told me, with a sigh. Six months ago, the same line would have been (and was) delivered with excitement and optimism. MPs who willingly stayed away from public comment out of deference to a leader they thought would finally bring true Conservatism to the halls of government, are now resentful they aren’t allowed to speak their minds.

Those MPs are also incredulous at the thought Canadians will believe the Liberals with a new leader are different than the Liberals of the last decade. They support messaging to the contrary and they think if Canadians are reminded, they too will remember. That’s why their ads will focus on links between Carney and Trudeau and past Liberal policies.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh speaks to reporters as he leaves the Prime Minister's office in the West Block after taking part in a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and fellow opposition leaders on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

What does the NDP do?

The NDP, for its part, is harder to gauge. The half dozen members of caucus I spoke with felt deflated by their own significant losses to the Liberals in recent public opinion polls. They are worried their leader can’t get in on what seems like a two-way race. They plan to characterize the battle as two Conservative candidates versus just one progressive option. Most of those MPs admit, though, that many of their own constituents have told them in recent weeks they will vote for Carney.

The result--the ads, the mud slinging, the campaign stops--might at times feel like just another election campaign. Make no mistake: it is anything but.

This is the beginning of what will define the future for us as Canadians – and our kids. Our beautiful country, under direct threat, has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to face down that threat and become something better. I take great comfort (and I hope you will, too) in the fact every party’s leader is seized with that and understands the significance of the moment. This won’t be just another campaign – it will be the campaign of our lifetime.

CTVNews.ca will have in-depth coverage on Sunday and exclusive reporting throughout the campaign. A CTV News Special Report will be hosted by CTV News Chief Anchor & Senior News Editor Omar Sachedina and Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos on Sunday and will be streaming on all platforms.

Vassy Kapelos
CTV News Chief Political Correspondent

Election campaign begins, as leaders start making their pitches to Canadians

By Spencer Van Dyk and Rachel Aiello
Updated: March 23, 2025 

Prime Minister Mark Carney has called the 2025 federal election, sending the country into an early campaign, six months ahead of the fixed date.

Carney paid Gov. Gen. Mary Simon a visit Sunday to ask that she issue the writs of election.

It’s his second trip to Rideau Hall in 10 days, with his last historic visit happening March 14 for the swearing in of his new and now potentially short-lived ministry. Now, instead of returning to Parliament on March 24 as scheduled, MPs and the candidates looking to unseat them are off to the races, now with 343 seats up for grabs after the last electoral district redistribution.

“We’ve done a lot in the nine days to put in place many of the foundations,” Carney said from outside Rideau Hall Sunday. “But what’s important is that the government has a mandate from the Canadian people to finish the job, to finish the job of building that Canadian economy, to finish the job of diversifying our trading partners, and to have a strong mandate to stand up to (U.S. President) Donald Trump and the Americans and negotiate the best deal for Canadians.”

Making it a five-week campaign, Canadians will head to the polls April 28. The date means Carney has opted for the shortest possible campaign period allowed under Canadian law.

It also means advance polls would take place over Easter weekend.

Liberals look to leverage leadership momentum

The Liberals selected Carney as leader on March 9, after a two-month race to replace former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Without a seat in the House of Commons, the former central banker would not be able to participate in the chamber. This was seen as potential motivator for him to trigger a snap vote rather than try to navigate an already unstable minority government from the sidelines.Complete federal election coverage

One day before kicking off the campaign, the Liberal party announced what many in Ottawa long speculated, that Carney would be running for a seat in the nation’s capital. Carney is seeking his first ever seat in the House of Commons in the riding of Nepean, which neighbours Poilievre’s long-held riding.

Confirming the news in a post online, Carney said he was “honoured” to seek election in that constituency, and called this election “one of the most consequential in our lifetimes.”

Meanwhile, despite nearly two years of a Conservative double-digit lead in public opinion polling, the Liberals started to gain ground and close the gap around the end of January, following Trudeau’s resignation earlier that month.

By mid-February, data showed the Liberals and the Conservatives would be neck-and-neck if Carney were chosen as the next Liberal leader.

Now, some of those same pollsters have the Liberals pulling slightly ahead, a widely unanticipated turnaround for a party that’s been in power for nearly a decade.

In his speech outside Rideau Hall Sunday, Carney pointed to his following through on Liberal leadership campaign promises in the last week to try to make the argument that he now needs a mandate from Canadians to continue making progress.


Carney cited his pledge to scrap the consumer carbon tax and the capital gains inclusion rate increase, and to work to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers, as examples .

If he wins the election, he’s vowed to eliminate the GST for some first-time homebuyers, a move Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised last October.

The Liberal leader also announced Sunday that if he becomes prime minister at the end of April, he’ll implement a middle-class tax cut, which he says will save dual-income families up to $825 a year.
Poilievre blames Liberals for ‘lost’ decade

Opposition party leaders, meanwhile, are also launching their campaigns today.

The election is the first with Poilievre as leader of the Conservatives. He took over in September 2022, after his party’s three consecutive general election losses to the Liberals, and is now looking to end early ten years of Liberal rule.

In a press conference ahead of Carney’s trip to Rideau Hall, Poilievre pitched himself to Canadians, blaming the Liberals for the cost-of-living crisis, and referring to Trudeau’s tenure as “the lost Liberal decade.”

With some polling showing the Liberals and Conservatives in a statistical tie, the leaders of both parties took shots at the other in their speeches on Sunday, setting up the next five weeks as a potentially antagonistic race.

In his speech, the Conservative leader also laid out a slate of policy planks, including scrapping the industrial carbon tax, eliminating the sales tax on some new homes, and freeing up land and cutting development charges, among other promises.

“We don’t go looking for a fight, but we’re ready if one comes looking for us,” Poilievre said. “None of this will be easy, but making and defending Canada wasn’t easy either, and with change, there’s hope.”

“Change and hope are both on the way,” he also said. “A new Conservative government will restore Canada’s promise, the promise that anyone from anywhere can do anything, that hard work gets you a great life in a beautiful home on a safe street under a proud flag.”

He officially kicked off the 37-day campaign with an event in Manotick, Ont., in the riding he’s held for nearly 21 years.
NDP, Greens and Bloc look to improve their standings

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who launched his campaign from Ottawa today, and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet were both at the helm of their respective parties during the last two elections. Heading into this one, they — and Green party co-leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault — are all hoping to improve their standings.

Singh is campaigning on policies advanced by the longstanding supply-and-confidence agreement between the Liberals and the NDP — such as dental care and pharmacare — highlighting them as progressive moves his party “forced” the government to implement.

“You deserve a prime minister you can trust to make decisions in your best interest,” Singh said, before taking aim at Carney, Poilievre, and Trump.

“People who are afraid at a Pierre Poilievre government might think they have no choice but Carney,” Singh also said. “But this is like being told you have to pick between a house with a leaky roof or a cracked foundation, one patched together with empty Conservative slogans, the other rotting from the inside after years of Liberals protecting the most wealthy.”

In a press release Sunday, the NDP says that Singh and New Democrat candidates are ready for this election: “this time around, they’ve got more money, they’re better prepared and they’ve got strong candidates.” The release also states, “This is the first time in a decade the NDP will spend the maximum allowed under Elections Canada’s limits.”

The Bloc and the Greens launched their campaigns from Montreal.

At the start of the year, polling suggested the main rival to Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois was the Conservatives.

Trudeau’s decision, however, to step down as Liberal leader — and Carney’s rise as his replacement — coincided with a Liberal resurgence in the polls.

“What goes up goes down. If that’s good for me, that’s good for Mr. Carney. Let’s see,” Blanchet told reporters at his party’s campaign launch.

“I do not have the feeling that Quebecers trust so much Mr. Poilievre, and I do not have the feeling that Quebecers know so much about Mr. Carney,” said Blanchet.

The Bloc leaded added that while he’s not running to be prime minister, he’s running to be a strong leader to promote Quebec interests.

Also speaking to reporters in Montreal, the Green Party leaders — which held two seats in in the House Commons before dissolution — were asked directly about their electoral prospects and whether they can make any gains.

“Actually, I think (the Green Party has) done extremely well. We now have more candidates nominated than others of the main parties,” May said, adding they are aiming to win “as many (seats) as we can.”

“The role for the Green Party right now is to stand up for every single Canadian that’s having a hard time because of politicians and career politicians standing up in front of them and consistently, constantly lying to them. We’re not politicians,” Pedneault added.
Campaign kicks off amid trade tensions

This election — the first in 12 years without Trudeau at the helm of the Liberals — will get underway at a time when Canada’s relationship with the United States is being severely tested, and amid unpredictability about what the American administration might do next.

During the leadership race Carney played coy about his potential post-victory electoral intentions, noting the underlying uncertainty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats.

After taking office, the two-time central banker made it clear that he thought it was important that at a moment like this, Canadians need to have their say about the path ahead and who should be leading the way.

This campaign is being called with cross-border tariffs in place. Trump has hit Canada with 25 per cent import tariffs on non-trade-exempt goods and followed it up with further levies on steel and aluminum. The federal government has hit back with reciprocal countermeasures, targeting $60 billion worth of U.S. products.

And still looming is the president’s threat of what he has called “the big one:” reciprocal tariffs, which he says are coming April 2.

It’s set to be the big ballot question, with Canadians being asked to vote for who they think is best placed to steer the country through these choppy and chaotic waters.

Both Carney and Poilievre took aim at the commander-in-chief in their campaign-launch speeches Sunday.

“I know a lot of people are worried, angry and anxious, and with good reason, as a result of the president’s unacceptable threats against our country,” Poilievre said. “You worry about your job and the sovereignty of our nation, and you’re angry at the feeling of betrayal that these unacceptable words and tariffs have made us all experience.”

“I share your anger and I share the worry for our future, but I also draw great resolve in knowing that we can transform the anxiety and anger into action,” he added, insisting Canada will never become the 51st state, an ongoing threat from the U.S. president amid the trade war.

The Liberal leader also framed many of his policy proposals as geared at pushing back against Trump and helping Canada become less reliant on its southern neighbour.

“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” Carney said. “Our response must be to build a strong economy and a more secure Canada President Trump claims that Canada isn’t a real country. He wants to break us so America can own us.”

Poilievre, Carney, and Singh are set to host more campaign launch events Sunday night.

With files from Stephanie Ha and Brennan MacDonald

Spencer Van Dyk
Writer & Producer, Ottawa News Bureau, CTV News

Redrawn ridings could give Conservatives an advantage, say pollsters

By The Canadian Press
 March 23, 2025 

People arrive to cast their ballots on federal election day in Montreal on September 20, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Canadians across the country will be voting in new ridings in the coming election.

Pollsters say that the updated districts could give the Conservatives a slight advantage in the race, though the boundary changes shouldn’t affect the election’s overall results.
How many ridings are there?

The country has added five new ridings, bringing the total to 343.

Three of the new seats are in Alberta, one is in British Columbia and one is in Ontario.

Many ridings saw their boundaries changed and some, including one in Toronto, were eliminated completely. Of the 338 old ridings, only 48 remain unchanged.

Why were the ridings updated?

Federal electoral districts need to be reviewed after every 10-year census to reflect changes in Canada’s population, says Elections Canada.

As a result of the review, electoral district boundaries can be changed and new districts can be created. The last federal redistribution process began in October 2021.

Dan Arnold, chief strategy officer at Pollara and former pollster for the Trudeau Liberals, said that while the redistribution process is nonpartisan, one party can expect to benefit from the recent changes.

“The Conservatives will benefit from this new map, but the reason they’ll benefit is because they have more support in the parts of the country that are growing faster, and those changes should be made to our maps,” Arnold said.
How will the new boundaries affect the election results?

Two pollsters say that while there have been several changes to the map, the changes shouldn’t seriously benefit one party over the other.

Philippe Fournier, a polling analyst with 338Canada, said that while the changes to the map are “relatively minor,” there is a “small advantage” for the Conservatives because of the three new seats in Alberta.

“Every party can look at parts of the map that are better or worse for them. Overall, the changes were not that big,” said Fournier.

In some ridings, the changes will be noticeable.


Fournier said the Bloc Quebecois has an advantage in Quebec under the new map, which expands the old Gaspesie--Les Iles-de-la-Madeleine riding, held by former fisheries minister Diane Lebouthillier, and merges it with a Bloc-leaning area.

Lebouthillier defeated the Bloc candidate in the last election by only 2,618 votes.

“That’s a cabinet minister that is going from a favorite to an underdog just because of the way they drew the map,” Fournier said.

He pointed out that a seat was also added to the northern suburbs of Montreal, which went “wall-to-wall” Bloc in the last election.

The riding of Desnethe--Missinippi--Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan has been redrawn in a way that likely will benefit the Liberals, Fournier said, now that it has removed a portion that voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Conservatives.

“The riding is mostly First Nations,” Fournier said. “The Conservatives are still the favorite, of course, in Saskatchewan, but not in that riding because of the new boundaries.”

Arnold said it’s “simplistic” to just look at the results of the last election and attempt to make predictions by comparing them to the new map - because people change their party preferences, new voters are registered with every new election and people do move from riding to riding.

He noted that while Toronto is losing its Liberal-held Don Valley East seat and the suburbs around Toronto that lean Conservative are getting extra seats, a lot of people -- who tend to vote Liberal -- have moved from the city centre into those areas.

“Any shifts that happen because of boundaries are going to pale in comparison to shifts that happen because of the Trump factor or the new leaders for the Conservatives and Liberals, or other factors that are also going to come into play,” Arnold said.

Arnold said he believes the overall impact of the new map will be “minimal,” with some benefits for the Conservatives.

“No matter how you draw the boundaries in Alberta, at the end of the day more seats there is going to be good for the Conservatives, regardless of how boundaries shift and populations move and things like that,” Arnold said, noting the addition of a seat in the B.C. interior is also probably good for the Conservatives.

Arnold said the NDP may be in trouble in northern Ontario, a region the Conservatives have been targeting heavily over the past year.

He said that, based on a mathematical redistribution of 2021 results, the NDP would still win Timmins by about 10 points but MP Charlie Angus, who has said he won’t run again, “would have been a big part of that.”

“If the NDP are down nationally, if they don’t have that incumbent to anchor their vote, the riding becomes very difficult for them,” Arnold said. “Even though the board has been shaken up, losing a seat in Northern Ontario is generally bad news for the NDP, just like losing a seat in Toronto is generally bad news for the Liberals.”
How have politicians reacted to the boundary changes?

Several members of Parliament have expressed discontent with the boundary changes - including Liberal MP for Sydney-Victoria Jaime Battiste, who argued the changes were unconstitutional.

Both Battiste and Mike Kelloway, the Liberal MP for the federal riding of Cape Breton-Canso, announced plans to run in the newly created Sydney-Glace Bay riding.

In February Battiste said on social media that most of his riding will form part of the new riding and that he has satisfied the criteria for acclamation as the Liberal candidate for the riding.

In his own social media post around the same time, Kelloway said the new riding had no incumbent and called on the Liberal party to choose which candidate to nominate. He said the new riding is where his hometown of Glace Bay is located.

On Saturday, Kelloway said he’d been told by the Liberals he would be the candidate for Sydney-Glace Bay.

Battiste confirmed in a written statement posted on his Facebook page that he will be the candidate in Cape Breton-Canso-Antigonish.

Arnold said there’s always going to be “points of friction” when boundaries change.

Michael Coteau, who represents the disappearing riding of Don Valley East, said in 2023 that the redrawing process is “flawed” and the results are “inconsistent with Toronto’s economic, social and political role in Canada.”

The MP held a news conference at the time, where he raised concerns about the changes and said constituents were not happy with the decision.

The Liberal party website says Coteau is now running in Scarborough--Woburn, a new riding where no Liberal incumbent exists.
When will the full list of federal candidates be available?

Fournier said the full list of candidates isn’t usually shared until the very last day during the campaign. He said parties are still recruiting and still vetting, noting that they will have to prioritize the ridings “they have a chance in.”

As of mid-March, the Conservatives had nominated 275 out of 343 candidates. As of Friday, the Liberals had nominated 195 candidates and the NDP had nominated 230 candidates.

As of mid-March the Green Party had 208 nominated candidates. The Bloc, which only runs candidates in Quebec, had 11 candidates confirmed as of Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2025.

ELECTION CALLED

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government terminates consumer carbon price

THE CONSERVATIVES MAIN PLANK GONE

By The Canadian Press
March 18, 2025 



Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at a news conference following a cabinet swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, on Friday, March 14, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first move after taking office on Friday was to eliminate the consumer carbon price, undoing Justin Trudeau’s signature climate policy.

Carney addressed members of the media after the Friday afternoon cabinet meeting, saying the government is “focused on action.”

“We will be eliminating the Canada fuel charge, the consumer fuel charge, immediately, immediately,” he said.

The decision note Carney signed in front of cabinet ministers and the press actually stipulates that the “the fuel charge be removed as of April 1, 2025.”

That’s when the price was scheduled to rise again. Instead, it will be eliminated for consumer purchases.


The price for big industrial emitters remains in place.

Carney also said people who have been getting rebates on the carbon price will get one final payment for the next quarter in April.

Carney had pledged to end the consumer price during the Liberal leadership race and said he would bolster the industrial price paid by big polluters.

Agriculture Minister Kody Blois said he thinks “it’s a really good move” because the policy has become very divisive.

He noted the Atlantic Liberal caucus had pushed for changes to the carbon price in the past, and secured a carve-out for home heating oil in 2023.

The consumer carbon pricing policy had been the focus of Conservative attacks on the Liberals for more than two years and had become a symbol of Canadians' struggles with the high cost of living.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose rallying cry of “axe the tax” had him riding high in the polls until about six weeks ago, claimed on Friday that Carney can’t really abolish the carbon price without recalling Parliament to repeal the law.

“What he might do is hide the carbon tax by telling (the Canada Revenue Agency) to stop collecting it for two months before the election,” Poilievre said, brandishing a copy of the law at a press conference in Ottawa.

He asked reporters whether they really believe Carney’s cabinet ministers, who have voted in favour of the carbon price for years, will actually end the policy. He suggested the Liberals would bring it back “two days after the election.”

The government is able to end the consumer carbon price without repealing or amending the law.

The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, which was passed in 2019, sets out a framework for both the consumer carbon price and the industrial price.


The law allows the fuel price to be set by regulation, which means cabinet can set the price through an order-in-council, as it did over the weekend.

The federal government initially set a minimum price on carbon pollution of $20 per tonne, which rose annually. It was set to rise another $15 per tonne in April to $95.

Eliminating the charge will reduce the cost of a litre of gasoline by 17.6 cents, and reduce the cost a cubic metre of natural gas by a little more than 15 cents.

The federal government was not keeping any of the money collected through the consumer carbon price. It was being sent directly to people through the Canada Carbon Rebate, and returned to territorial or Indigenous governments or businesses and non-profit organizations.

Steven Guilbeault, who was Trudeau’s environment minister and a staunch supporter of the carbon price, was named minister of Canadian culture and identity and Carney’s Quebec lieutenant on Friday.

He told reporters the industrial price “gives us three times more emission reduction than the consumer portion of carbon pricing.”

The Liberals have insisted the carbon price is sound policy that was plagued by poor communication and Conservative attacks.

Greenpeace Canada’s senior energy strategist Keith Stewart said in a statement on Friday that Poilievre had “successfully poisoned the well on consumer carbon tax by spreading false information.”

He added that the industrial carbon price was the source of the bulk of carbon pollution reductions in Canada.

“We are pleased to see that our new prime minister has promised to strengthen it and call on him to maintain and strengthen other key climate and biodiversity protection policies,” Stewart said.

Poilievre has pledged that a Conservative government would end the consumer carbon price. He has not said what he would do with the industrial price. Last week, he told reporters they would have to wait until the election campaign begins to see detailed policies.

He has said “axe the tax” will continue to be part of his message to Canadians in the next election.

By Sarah Ritchie

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 14, 2025.

Why the fight for ‘critical minerals’ is heating up

By Bloomberg News
March 21, 2025 

Oil companies spent more than a century developing a vast industrial network to extract, refine and deliver their product to customers around the world. Sourcing the materials needed to build an alternative, less carbon-intensive economy presents a whole new set of challenges.

China has been tackling these successfully for more than a decade, making it the undisputed leader in the “critical minerals” used in equipment such as electric vehicle batteries, solar panels and wind-turbine magnets.

If other nations are going to have a chance of challenging its dominance in these clean technologies, they need to catch up fast. The race has taken on greater urgency now that China is curbing exports of several critical minerals in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
What are critical minerals?

Nations have long sought to secure supplies of materials they deem vital to their industrial and military capabilities. About 50 metallic elements and minerals have met those criteria in the U.S. and European Union, including lithium, graphite, cobalt, manganese and rare earths — elements with unique chemical behaviors that make them indispensable to the manufacture of some electrical, electronic, magnetic and optical products. Most critical minerals were chosen for their role in building the infrastructure required to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change, a mission that’s backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks. Some are also used in semiconductors for civil and military communications.
Why is sourcing them a challenge?

While many critical minerals can be found in a raw state in large quantities across the globe, extracting and refining them into a usable form can be technically complex, energy intensive and polluting. China has come to dominate the value chain for many of these products. Even in the case of more abundant metals such as copper, massive demand growth means there might not be enough to go around. In 2023, the EU categorized copper and nickel as critical raw materials for the first time, even though there are lots of places where they can be found.

Why is relying on China a problem for western nations?

Manufacturers try to avoid over-dependence on supplies from any single country because it leaves them exposed when that nation’s industrial output is disrupted by things like power shortages, epidemics or social unrest.

With China, there’s also a strained relationship with the U.S. to consider, especially now that longstanding tensions are spiraling under Trump into a deeper trade war involving punitive tariffs and tightening export restrictions.

China banned the export of antimony, gallium and germanium to the U.S. in December, citing national security concerns, after Washington restricted China’s access to some sensitive technologies. The move is likely to raise costs for some U.S. manufacturers of electronic and optical equipment. Beijing also placed tighter conditions of sales of graphite, an ingredient in EV batteries. In early February, in response to Trump’s latest tariffs, China added export controls on tungsten, bismuth and other niche metals used in electronics, aviation and defense, sending prices of some of those products soaring.
How did China get so dominant?

As early as 1992, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was highlighting his country’s potential to lead the world in critical minerals, saying “The Middle East has oil. China has rare earths.” As its economic growth accelerated, Chinese demand for industrial commodities began to far outstrip local reserves. It responded with heavy investments in mining assets overseas and came gradually to dominate the refining and processing of many industrial commodities, as well as a host of obscure byproducts. As China stepped in, Western companies withdrew, happy to outsource the production.

Today, China is the leading producer of 20 critical raw materials, as measured by its share of global mined or refined production. In the case of the rare earth element dysprosium, used in lighting and lasers, China is responsible for 84% of mined supply and 100% of refined production, according to an EU analysis. It’s also the largest producer of refined forms of cobalt and nickel, and Chinese companies have been investing heavily in cobalt and nickel mines in countries such as Congo and Indonesia.
What are China’s economic rivals doing about it?

Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 aimed to help the U.S. meet its climate goals through job-creating investments in renewables and EVs and ease reliance on unreliable or hostile overseas suppliers.


While Biden’s successor Trump has disparaged his climate policies and ordered federal agencies to stop disbursing IRA funds, a complete repeal of the legislation appears unlikely. Republican lawmakers whose districts and states are benefiting from investments spurred by the IRA have pressed the president to maintain its provisions.

In March, Trump took the Biden administration’s effort to reduce U.S. reliance on minerals from China a step further, invoking emergency powers to boost domestic production and processing of the materials.

In the EU, a Critical Raw Materials Act aims to ease financing and permitting for new mining and refining projects at home and strike trade alliances to reduce Europe’s dependence on Chinese suppliers. The bloc is also pushing through a Clean Industrial Deal that will include a mechanism enabling companies in the region to pool their demand for critical materials.

China’s rivals have been trying to strike supply deals and investment partnerships with producing nations. However, China’s established position in many of those countries gives it an early advantage. For example, more than half of the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo are owned or controlled by Chinese companies. Beijing is consolidating relationships with African nations that are set to be among the world’s biggest producers of the metal by the end of the decade.

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Mark Burton, Bloomberg News

--With assistance from Jack Ryan and John Ainger.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.