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Calgary flood survivor to testify in Canada’s first youth-led federal climate trial
The 15 plaintiffs say Canada’s fossil fuel policies threaten their constitutional rights.
Sadie Vipond was 7 when her grandmother woke her in the middle of the night, and they fled their home. Outside, Calgary was in the midst of its largest flood in more than a century. They went to a friend’s place on higher ground as surging waters cut short the school year. At the city’s zoo, water rose high enough for a hippo to swim out of its enclosure — a memory that stays with her 13 years later.
Next week, she will testify in Canada’s first federal youth-led climate trial — a lawsuit she joined at 13. She’s one of 15 young Canadian plaintiffs in La Rose v. His Majesty the King, which will run for four weeks in Vancouver.
The plaintiffs from seven provinces, the Northwest Territories and Yukon were all between the ages of 10 and 19 when the case began. They are arguing that Canada is putting young people’s health, safety and futures at risk by supporting fossil fuel development while repeatedly missing its emissions targets. They want the court to require the government to develop and carry out a climate recovery plan that protects their constitutional rights.
“This was a way to share my voice, to influence our governments without having the ability to vote,” Vipond said.
The case is reaching the trial stage after seven years of legal motions and appeals, including federal efforts to have it dismissed. Many plaintiffs were barely teenagers when they joined and have grown into adulthood waiting for their day in court.
Now, they have more to lose. Some have taken outdoor jobs, where staying inside to escape wildfire smoke can mean going unpaid. East Coast plaintiffs, who had never experienced wildfire smoke when the case began, now encounter it regularly, said Andrea Rodgers, deputy director of US strategy at Our Children’s Trust, which supports the case.
One plaintiff has since become a mother and will testify during the trial’s first week. “Now, it’s not just about protecting her rights and her future,” Rodgers said. “It’s about ensuring that her son can grow up and thrive in a healthy environment.”
A generation coming of age in a changing climate
Extreme heat and wildfire smoke have limited Vipond’s ability to bike to school and exercise outdoors. Now a third-year environmental sciences student at the University of British Columbia, she said her studies have helped her recognize changes around her — from increasingly dangerous snow conditions to pine beetles destroying an entire hillside.
“A lot of people think that climate change is like a long, slow evolution of changes,” Vipond said. “However, we’re really seeing it from year to year at this point.”
Vipond’s experience reflects a broader reality for young people coming of age as climate change dictates how they imagine and plan their lives. A study published in 2023 found that nearly two in five Canadians aged 16 to 25 said climate change made them hesitant to have children.
That concern also shows up in their politics. In July, a poll found that one in four respondents aged 18 to 34 ranked climate change and the environment among their top three issues, compared with 16 per cent of those older than 55.
The climate risks extend across their lives. At 1.5 C of warming, over half of children born in 2020 would face unprecedented lifetime heatwave exposure, compared with 16 per cent of those born in 1960, a global study projected in 2025.
Rodgers has spent 15 years representing young people in US climate cases, including Juliana v. United States. Its 21 young plaintiffs spent nearly a decade arguing that federal energy policies violated their constitutional rights. The case never reached trial after an appeals court ruled that judges lacked the power to order and oversee the climate recovery plan the plaintiffs sought. She hopes Canada will deliver what those young Americans were denied.
The Canadian trial will also test how international law informs that duty. In July 2025, the International Court of Justice affirmed that governments must protect the climate system to safeguard human rights. Rodgers said the Canadian court could use that advisory opinion to help justify an order requiring climate action, and set an example for courts in other countries.
“Canada really has a choice,” Rodgers said. “Do they want to follow in the path of the United States or forge their own path, one that protects the rights of their own children?”
Vipond joined the lawsuit out of fear for her own future. As she heads to court next week, she said she now feels responsible for speaking for other children too young to vote and generations yet to be born.
People have asked whether she and the other plaintiffs would receive money if they win. She tells them they are seeking accountability rather than a payout.
“Hope is really hard to hold on to sometimes,” Vipond said. “But we’re all fighting to keep it.”
Sonal Gupta / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer.
Copyright 2026, Canada's National Observer. All rights reserved.
Sonal Gupta, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer.
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Canada working closely with EU on foreign aid as U.S. pulls back, Sarai says
Ottawa says it's working with EU on foreign aid
Canada's deepening ties with Europe could help fill some of the massive gaps left behind as the United States pulls back from foreign aid and embraces a "transactional" approach, says the secretary of state for international development.
"When we put all our heads together, I think the opportunities are endless," Randeep Sarai told The Canadian Press.
He said this effort includes recent talks with the European Union on leveraging private dollars and philanthropy for aid, while maintaining some government funding for the world's most vulnerable.
Sarai is overseeing a shift in foreign aid as the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney cuts back on global health spending and encourages more private funding in development projects.
Ottawa is cutting spending across government, seeking new trade partners and boosting the defence budget to make Canada less vulnerable to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and threats of annexation.
The Trump administration shut down the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, leading to what Harvard University researchers estimate to be hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
In April, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reported that the U.S. in 2025 accounted for 17 per cent of spending by rich countries on foreign aid, down from 30 per cent a year prior.
U.S. spending on foreign aid dropped by 57 per cent in 2025.
Most major donor states, including Canada, have cut back on aid funding. Ottawa spends about 1.6 per cent of its budget on foreign aid.
"Taxpayer dollars are very valuable. So if we can bring in the private sector along with them, the goal is (that) eventually the private sector will invest on their own. But initially, we'll use the taxpayer dollars to entice them," Sarai said.
Sarai added that Europe has looked to Carney for guidance on so-called blended finance because of his experience as a United Nations official.
Carney's UN role was to advise governments on climate finance, including ways for governments to work with the private sector and philanthropists to transition to net-zero carbon emissions.
Ireland hosted a meeting of EU development ministers earlier this month and invited Canada to attend.
Sarai said much of the discussion in Dublin was about how to leverage private capital without abandoning support for the world's most vulnerable people.
Sarai said Canada and European countries are also working with other nations with a reputation for robust foreign aid, including Japan, Korea and Gulf nations.
He said American officials have "come back, to some degree" on aid spending by funding vaccines for children in poor countries.
"Their aid has to benefit the American economy and American people," Sarai said.
"They have very clear guidelines on that and transactional nature of it, but that's their direction. So I would say it's very different from the other G7 partners, but at least we know where we're at."
The push for more private dollars in aid has many critics.
Co-operation Canada, a coalition of most Canadian aid groups operating abroad, said the sector supports innovative funding, with some caveats.
"If we are to use public funds to incentivize private capital, then there need to be some guardrails around … that we're we're using our public funds in the most efficient way possible," said Paul Farran, the group's advocacy director.
He said aid dollars shouldn't be used to subsidize endeavours that the private sector wouldn't have otherwise funded.
"Our international assistance should first and foremost be used to alleviate poverty and inequalities," Farran said.
Sarai said Canada is not going to surrender its support for the world's poorest to market forces.
He said that applies to Canada's programming in the 32 nations the UN describes as the world's least developed countries, as well as projects that focus on sexual health and reproductive rights.
He said the government has a different approach in high-growth countries, where it pursues "mutual economic prosperity" through projects that benefit Canadian companies and investors while creating jobs abroad.
"The Vietnams, Indonesias, Philippines in the world, we believe that they can now take care of those areas themselves. We don't need to invest in those particular areas for them," he said.
Sarai cited a new aid project in Thailand which will see Canada's development finance institution FinDev lend cash for microloans to women in rural areas looking to launch or expand businesses.
Canada is lending roughly $85 million, which is being matched by $280 million from the Japanese bank SMBC and the Asian Development Bank.
Last month, The House finance committee, which has a majority of Liberal MPs, called on Carney last month to provide predictable and clear aid funding in the Nov. 5 budget.
Aid groups told the committee that the federal government says its supports for refugees inside Canada amount to more than 17 per cent of its total development assistance. While that's a standard reporting practice for western countries, the aid groups said it makes it hard to tell how much Canadian cash is actually going abroad.
The MPs on the committee argued aid spending should be "guided by poverty and fragility" and should have "increasing transparency in the international assistance envelope."
The MPs also urged Canada to "reaffirm gender equality and women’s economic empowerment as drivers of poverty reduction and, therefore, as central priorities." Carney caused confusion a year ago by suggesting Canada no longer has a feminist foreign policy.
Co-operation Canada supports those calls and is urging Carney to reverse cuts to global health programs.
Farran said Canada should earmark $5.5 billion annually for "core" development aid abroad, which would boost funding for things like building schools or helping women advocate for political rights.
He also said Ottawa owes the public more clarity on how it is spending foreign aid and where it's cutting back.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Dylan Robertson | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Military could begin Arctic sensor installations next summer
Military may deploy Arctic sensor stations in 2027
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
National Defence plans to install 47 sensor stations across the North starting as early as next summer to bolster Norad’s surveillance and early warning abilities, according to recently published regulatory filings.
The planned installations would start in Yukon near the Alaskan border and follow along the Arctic coast across the Northwest Territories, reaching as far out as Alert, Nunavut, the most northern inhabited point in the world.
Called Project Crossbow, the plan involves using Hercules aircraft and Chinook helicopters to airlift passive sensor installations, which resemble large shipping containers that stand on metal legs.
The initial deployments could begin as soon as next summer with initial operating capability coming online in 2029, said Royal Canadian Air Force spokesperson Lt.-Cmdr. Melanie Aqiqi.
She said in an emailed statement that Crossbow is “part of a broader network of capabilities supporting northern air domain awareness.”
The container stations will run on solar and wind power, according to a series of National Defence documents filed with a Nunavut regulatory board.
Aside from some temporary deployments required to set them up and an annual maintenance cycle, the installations will remain unstaffed throughout the year.
"This defence capability (surveillance sensors) will operate within self-powered, autonomous, ruggedized power-generating container systems designed for continuous operations in austere environments and extreme Arctic conditions," one of the documents said.
The federal government is investing billions of dollars in a broader effort to modernize Norad's equipment.
The project was announced in 2022 by then-defence minister Anita Anand under the Northern Approaches Surveillance system, which includes the over-the-horizon radar project.
Anand said at the time the capabilities of the joint Canada-U.S. project are classified but the new network would add “another layer of detection” to Norad.
An information package submitted to the Nunavut Planning Commission said the project is of “national significance” and the “proposed sites are required for overall system network operation.”
The sites mapped out in some of the filed plans include two in Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island and four within a migratory bird sanctuary on Banks Island. The documents state the project is expected to have little to no impact on wildlife.
Two sensor systems are already stationed in Alert, Nunavut and Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, one of the documents said.
The sites were chosen so that National Defence can easily airlift the containers in just a few days — although the exact rationale for site selection remains classified.
The sensor project is expected to be complete by 2032. Once fully deployed, the project is expected to run another 20 years.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2026.
— With files from Nick Murray
By Kyle Duggan | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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People Are Roasting The New Apple Mac Pro Made In Austin
So apparently Apple is listening to the fans by giving us what we want. They are releasing a newly, re-designed Mac Pro right out of Austin, and it's super exciting. Austin, Texas is a huge tech hub now, so to have bragging rights on an Apple product is even cooler. But while many would simply nod their heads to this news and move on, others want a say in this. Reddit users have taken to their platform to give their two cents on what they want Texans to contribute, and it's making for some hilarious reactions.
Texas is a pretty easy state to make fun of. Even people who live here find jokes about one of the most prideful states in the world hilarious. That, or they make them themselves. Reddit is probably one of the greatest platforms to roast anything going viral at the moment. So when news broke yesterday that the new Mac Pro would be manufactured in Austin, Reddit users wasted no time.
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BBQ and bullets are just two of the notable mentions in the comments on one particular thread. After the iPhone 11 underwent scrutiny for the way the cameras looked, you'd think the Mac Pro would be getting made fun of for it's appearance as well. But no, the fact that it's being made in Texas is funny all on its own.
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The company is making big moves with this decision, and we can't wait to see what they continue to come out with. For now, scrolling through Reddit and even other social media platforms where jokes about Texas can be found is the move. What's that Spongebob episode again?
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