"Climate Examiner," PICS Weekly Round-up, April 7, 2016
Energy-efficient home retrofits have taken off in Ontario and Nova Scotia as a result of small tweaks to legislation in the last five years.
Month: May 2016
What does the Paris Agreement mean to me?
Image courtesy of Tom Clohosy Cole (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) via Creative Commons.
At High Ground 2016, we asked attendees to send a message to the United Nations in the form of a 30-second video that addressed the question: “What does the Paris Agreement mean for me?” We then shared these videos with our community right before the official Paris Agreement signing ceremony was held on Earth Day (April 22). Here are some of these messages:
E-Newsletter (April 2016)
Read the full Briefing Notes Space in schools is a hot topic: While BC school districts struggle to fill schools, the rules are different in Alberta, where the Calgary district is working on a plan to reduce capacity.
Change to school-leaving certificates positive but lacks oversight
By Katie Hyslop, The Tyee, April 11, 2016
Around 60 Indigenous students set to get Evergreens instead of diplomas, violating new rules.
Until this past February, any British Columbian student could be put on track towards a school-leaving certificate, also known as an Evergreen Certificate, instead of a high school diploma.
Originally intended to recognize the achievement of special needs students, whose abilities meant they were unable to earn a high school diploma, Aboriginal Grade 12 students have been receiving Evergreens at more than twice the rate of their non-Indigenous peers since 2010/11.
As a result, allegations of "racism of low expectations" have been aimed at districts with high Aboriginal Evergreen rates by the First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC), Indigenous leaders, the BC School Trustees Association and the BC Teachers' Federation.
This Green House II in PICS News
PICSnews-Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, Winter 2016
A new PICS supported report from the Columbia Institute details the minor legislative changes needed to open doors for scaling up residential energy efficiency retrofits across Canada. The report, entitled 'This Green House II' provides a valuable summary of building energy efficiency policies and financing programs across the country, identifying what works and where the barriers are.
Read more (Page 3)