B.C. announced this week that it is ending the province’s three-year experiment with drug decriminalization. 

“The intention was clear: to make it easier for people struggling with addiction to reach out for help without fear of being criminalized,” B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne said in a statement.

“Despite the hard work and good intentions behind the pilot, it has not delivered the results we hoped for.”

Quelle surprise.

If you look at what decriminalization can and should look like, it is easy to understand why B.C.’s experiment failed. Portugal, a country that today loses fewer than 100 individuals a year to overdoses, shows what is possible with a holistic approach to decriminalization. 

B.C. drew from Portugal’s experience in designing its own decriminalization pilot, which allowed residents to possess opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA for personal use beginning in January 2023.

But B.C. only borrowed Portugal’s language of decriminalization, without creating the whole infrastructure needed to make it effective. 

Our must-read series on Portugal’s decriminalization system, launched this week, provides a full picture of the differences between their system and ours. 

At the top of the list is Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, administrative bodies that assess a person’s risk of problematic drug use, offer counselling and connect users to treatment.

In Portugal, police are required to send individuals found in possession of drugs — from cannabis to heroin — to these commissions. 

The commissions take a holistic approach to drug use, assessing individuals for common underlying drivers of addiction, including lack of housing and unemployment. Individuals are then connected to resources tailored to their specific needs.

High-risk drug users are encouraged to enter treatment, which is voluntary, long term, and publicly funded for those who need it. If there is a wait to access treatment, Portugal ensures individuals are supported during that wait. 

Could the Canadian experience be any more different? 

In B.C., decriminalization neutered police. After the province’s pilot began, B.C. police had no lawful authority to prohibit public drug possession unless someone was engaged in other unlawful activities, Chief Constable Fiona Wilson of the Victoria Police Service recently told Canadian Affairs.

Meanwhile, the province did not substantially increase access to addiction treatment or resources that would help individuals address key drivers of addiction, such as mental health challenges, lack of housing or unemployment. 

And to state the obvious, B.C. — and Canada at large — has not created anything like Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions. The reason for this, we’d argue, goes far beyond bureaucratic constraints or budget limitations.

Fundamentally, Portugal has taken a paternalistic stance on drug use. The country seeks to discourage a behaviour that it rightly recognizes as problematic. 

Canada, meanwhile, has gone the other direction. We have normalized and destigmatized drug use while allowing programs such as safer supply and safe consumption to be our primary response to a crisis that requires a systemic overhaul. 

There are legitimate origins to Canada’s turn toward normalization. Our country was one of many that recognized problematic drug use is a health issue, and that criminal law can be a poor tool for countering it. We also acknowledged that the law can be discriminatorily applied, resulting in the unfair targeting of certain racial or socioeconomic groups. 

Decriminalization rightly sought to end these harms.

But we didn’t stop there. Our cultural norms shifted. In Canada, we have become uncomfortable with saying there are behaviours we do not condone; that drug use is bad for individuals, their families and society at large, even if that is what the evidence tells us. 

If Canada wants to reduce our overdose rate from 6,000 a year to fewer than 100, it will require radical changes of the kind few politicians have floated. It will entail changing not merely our laws, social investments and bureaucratic architecture, but also our culture. 

We will need authorities and the public to discourage drug use. Encouragingly, Portugal has shown it is possible to be paternalistic without returning to the old days of criminalization and stigmatization. 

The question is: do Canadians want that? And if not now, how many lives will need to be lost before we do? 

The post Editorial: What doomed drug decriminalization in B.C. appeared first on Canadian Affairs.

Gaza entered 2026 under a fragile ceasefire, yet winter arrived as though nothing had changed. Flooded streets, tents that offer no protection from the cold, and long nights without electricity revealed a reality many prefer to ignore: in Gaza, winter is not merely a natural season or a climate-related disaster, but a condition politically produced and managed through ongoing siege and restrictions. And although the bombardment has not stopped, the conditions of life have remained the same, as if the war has not ended but has simply changed its form.

The widespread assumption after the ceasefire was that conditions in Gaza would automatically improve. But the question that imposes itself today is: what has actually changed? Border crossings remain restricted, construction materials are scarce, electricity is cut off, and even humanitarian aid and tents have become subject to decisions that obstruct its delivery and continuity. As a result, this winter has been harsh not only because of the weather, but because ongoing restrictions have turned cold and rain into additional tools of pressure on a population already living under exceptional conditions.

Fading international attention

Winter in Gaza is not a fleeting seasonal event; it is a direct extension of the siege. The unsafe, worn-out tents sheltering thousands of families are not the result of sudden poverty, but of the deliberate prevention of reconstruction or even temporary alternatives. The cold becomes deadlier when people are deprived of electricity and heating, and when the most basic necessities of life are reduced to near-impossible privileges.

What makes this reality even more dangerous is its timing. After the announcement of a ‘paper’ ceasefire in October 2025, the world began to treat Gaza as though it had emerged from war or was on a path toward recovery. Yet despite ongoing bombardment and daily targeting, international attention continues to fade, and with it the political pressure needed to force any lasting change, while life itself remains besieged and unstable.

As international attention fades and promises remain on paper, the people living here are left to judge not the authorities or committees, but the reality in front of them.

For people living in Gaza, the question of who Trump and his government will decide will govern, has become almost irrelevant. What matters most is not the names of committees or officials, but whether anyone in power can provide the rights that people deserve: electricity that works, safe shelters, access to food, water, and medicine. After years of war and siege, survival has overtaken politics, and hope now depends on tangible actions rather than promises on paper.

As humanitarian work is increasingly criminalized and organizations are accused of unsubstantiated affiliations, the last mechanisms of protection and documentation are stripped away.

The restriction of 37 international humanitarian organizations in Gaza, understood not as distant institutions but as vital survival networks, has a direct impact on people’s lives. These organizations include teams distributing food, clinics treating the wounded, and programs providing minimal access to clean water and essential services in a place where access to basic resources has become the exception rather than the rule. Removing them from Gaza’s already fragile landscape is not a neutral step; it is a political decision that translates directly into a matter of life or death. Years of siege, genocide, and the destruction of infrastructure have left Gaza unable to sustain itself: hospitals operate with severely limited capacity, safe water remains scarce, and entire residential neighbourhoods lie in ruins. Under these conditions, restricting humanitarian work means depriving millions of civilians of their most basic rights.

This reality intersects with the repeated discourse around the ‘entry of aid’ through border crossings, particularly Rafah, often presented as evidence of improvement after the ceasefire. Yet opening the crossing intermittently, or allowing a limited number of trucks to enter, cannot compensate for the absence of a humanitarian system capable of operating and sustaining itself. As humanitarian work is increasingly criminalized and organizations are accused of unsubstantiated affiliations, the last mechanisms of protection and documentation are stripped away. Gaza is further isolated, even at the very moment it is supposedly entering a post, ceasefire phase.

Clear political action

In this third consecutive winter, harshness is no longer an abstract description, but a lived reality experienced day by day across the Gaza Strip. In the camp where I live, just 17 minutes of rain were enough to flood it entirely. In that short time, water poured into the tents, and people lost most of the few belongings that had survived displacement with them. What we hear daily is no longer weather forecasts, but warnings of an approaching low-pressure system, and fear of a night in which the tents may not withstand the wind. And as we try to protect what little remains, the daily winds and storms do not stop at damaging tents; they have also caused parts of inhabited buildings to collapse, reminding everyone how fragile life here is, where a single storm can turn shelter itself into a danger.

Gaza demonstrates, day after day, that rights taken for granted in many parts of the world, such as safe housing, basic services, and freedom of movement, remain almost unattainable here. Yet people’s lives are not defined by passive waiting or helplessness, but by ongoing efforts to adapt and preserve hope. Observing this reality reveals not only the human cost of the siege, but also the forms of resistance that emerge when all other options are closed off.

However, turning this resilience into a feel-good story of inspiration carries its own danger. Admiration for people’s ability to endure must not become a justification for the conditions that force them to endure in the first place. Everyday resistance is not a substitute for rights, nor should it be used to normalize suffering or accept it as an inevitable reality.

What Gaza’s winter of 2026 exposes is this: if life remains this harsh after a ‘ceasefire on paper,’ what does the promoted notion of ‘improvement’ actually mean? And if the basic restrictions are still in place, why has international attention waned? Should the suffering of civilians be allowed to fade from view simply because mass killing is no longer dominating headlines?

The siege must be lifted to allow real reconstruction of homes, schools, and basic infrastructure, and to give people the chance to rebuild their lives through work and education.

What people in Gaza need is not seasonal sympathy, but clear and urgent political action. In the short term, border crossings must be kept open to allow fuel, food, medicine, and winter supplies to enter without restrictions. Fuel is essential to keep hospitals operating, water systems running, and families warm during winter.

There is also an urgent need to replace unsafe tents with proper emergency shelter, such as caravans and insulated temporary housing that can protect people from rain, wind, and cold. Emergency winter support should focus on children, the elderly, and the sick, while civilian shelters and infrastructure must be protected from further damage.

In the long term, preventing another winter of crisis requires more than humanitarian aid. The siege must be lifted to allow real reconstruction of homes, schools, and basic infrastructure, and to give people the chance to rebuild their lives through work and education. This must be matched with sustained political pressure and accountability to prevent the repeated destruction of Gaza.

Without these changes, each new year in Gaza will remain just a number, and every winter another season of forced survival.

In Gaza, winter is measured not only in degrees of cold, but in the capacity to endure. And while people continue to persevere, the persistence of these conditions tests not only their ability to resist, but the credibility of the entire international system and the moral bankruptcy of the world. For when winter is politically managed, it is no longer a matter of weather, it is a matter of life.

Innovations in agriculture can seem like the neglected stepchild of the climate tech world. While food and agriculture account for about a quarter of global emissions, there’s not a lot of investment in the space — or splashy breakthroughs to make the industry seem that investible in the first place. In transportation and energy, “there is a Tesla, there is an EnPhase,” Cooper Rinzler, a partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, told me. “Whereas in ag tech, tell me when the last IPO that was exciting was?”

That may be changing, however. Multiple participants in Heatmap’s Insiders Survey cited ag tech companies Pivot Bio and Nitricity — both of which are pursuing alternate approaches to conventional ammonia-based fertilizers — as among the most exciting climate tech companies working today.

Studies estimate that fertilizer production and use alone account for roughly 5% of global emissions. That includes emissions from the energy-intensive Haber–Bosch process, which synthesizes ammonia by combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen at extremely high temperatures, as well as nitrous oxide released from the soil after fertilizer is applied. N2O is about 265 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year timeframe and accounts for roughly 70% of fertilizer-related emissions, as soil microbes convert excess nitrogen that crops can’t immediately absorb into nitrous oxide.

“If we don’t solve nitrous oxide, it on its own is enough of a radiative force that we can’t meet all of our goals,” Rinzler said, referring to global climate targets at large.

Enter what some consider one of the most promising agricultural innovations, perhaps since the invention of the Haber–Bosch process itself over a century ago — Pivot Bio. This startup, founded 15 years ago, engineers soil microbes to convert about 400 times more atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia than non-engineered microbe strains naturally would. “They are mini Haber–Bosch facilities, for all intents and purposes,” Pivot Bio’s CEO Chris Abbott told me, referring to the engineered microbes themselves.

The startup has now raised over $600 million in total funding and is valued at over $2 billion. And after toiling in the ag tech trenches for a decade and a half, this will be the first full year the company’s biological fertilizers — which are applied to either the soil or seed itself — will undercut the price of traditional fertilizers.

“Farmers pay 20% to 25% less for nitrogen from our product than they do for synthetic nitrogen,” Abbott told me. “Prices [for traditional fertilizers] are going up again this spring, like they did last year. So that gap is actually widening, not shrinking.”

Peer reviewed studies also show that Pivot’s treatments boost yields for corn — its flagship crop — while preliminary data indicates that the same is true forcotton, which Pivot expanded into last year. The company also makes fertilizers for wheat, sorghum, and other small grains.

Pivot is now selling these products in stores where farmers already pick up seeds and crop treatments, rather than solely through its independent network of sales representatives, making the microbes more likely to become the default option for growers. But they won’t completely replace traditional fertilizer anytime soon, as Pivot’s treatments can still meet only about 20% to 25% of a large-scale crop’s nitrogen demand, especially during the early stages of plant growth, though it’s developing products that could push that number to 50% or higher, Abbott told me.

All this could have an astronomical environmental impact if deployed successfully at scale. “From a water perspective, we use about 1/1000th the water to produce the same amount of nitrogen,” Abbott said. From an emissions perspective, replacing a ton of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer with Pivot Bio’s product prevents the equivalent of around 11 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Given the quantity of Pivot’s fertilizer that has been deployed since 2022, Abbott estimates that scales to approximately 1.5 million tons of cumulative avoided CO2 equivalent.

“It’s one of the very few cases that I’ve ever come across in climate tech where you have this giant existing commodity market that’s worth more than $100 billion and you’ve found a solution that offers a cheaper product that is also higher value,” Rinzler told me. BEV led the company’s Series B round back in 2018, and has participated in its two subsequent rounds as well.

Meanwhile, Nitricity — a startup spun out of Stanford University in 2018 — is also aiming to circumvent the Haber–Bosch process and replace ammonia-based and organic animal-based fertilizers such as manure with a plant-based mixture made from air, water, almond shells, and renewable energy. The company said that its proprietary process converts nitrogen and other essential nutrients derived from combusted almond shells into nitrate — the form of nitrogen that plants can absorb. It then “brews” that into an organic liquid fertilizer that Nitricity’s CEO, Nico Pinkowski, describes as looking like a “rich rooibos tea,” capable of being applied to crops through standard irrigation systems.

For confidentiality reasons, the company was unable to provide more precise technical details regarding how it sources and converts sufficient nitrogen into a usable form via only air, water, and almond shells, given that shells don’t contain much nitrogen, and turning atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-ready form typically involves the dreaded Haber–Bosch process.

But investors have bought in, and the company is currently in the midst of construction on its first commercial-scale fertilizer factory in Central California, which is expected to begin production this year. Funding for the first-of-a-kind plant came from Trellis Climate and Elemental Impact, both of which direct philanthropic capital toward early-stage, capital-intensive climate projects. The facility will operate on 100% renewable power through a utility-run program that allows customers to opt into renewable-only electricity by purchasing renewable energy certificates,

Pinkowski told me the new plant will represent a 100‑fold increase in Nitricity’s production capacity, which currently sits at 80 tons per year from its pilot plant. “In comparison to premium conventional fertilizers, we see about a 10x reduction in emissions,” Pinkowski told me, factoring in greenhouse gases from both production and on-field use. “In comparison to the most standard organic fertilizers, we see about a 5x reduction in emissions.”

The company says trial data indicates that its fertilizer allows for more efficient nitrogen uptake, thus lowering nitrous oxide emissions and allowing farmers to cut costs by simply applying less product. According to Pinkowski, Nitricity’s current prices are at parity or slightly lower than most liquid organic fertilizers on the market. And that has farmers really excited — the new plant’s entire output is already sold through 2028.

“Being able to mitigate emissions certainly helps, but it’s not what closes the deal,” he told me. “It’s kind of like the icing on the cake.”

Initially, the startup is targeting the premium organic and sustainable agriculture market, setting it apart from Pivot Bio’s focus on large commodity staple crops. “You saw with the electrification of vehicles, there was a high value beachhead product, which was a sports car,” Pinkowski told me. “In the ag space, that opportunity is organics.”

But while big-name backers have lined up behind Pivot and Nitricity, the broader ag tech sector hasn’t been as fortunate in its friends, with funding and successful scale-up slowing for many companies working in areas such as automation, indoor farming, agricultural methane mitigation, and lab-grown meat.

Everyone’s got their theories for why this could be, with Lara Pierpoint of Trellis telling me that part of the issue is “the way the federal government is structured around this work.” The Department of Agriculture allocates relatively few resources to technological innovation compared to the Department of Energy, which in turn does little to support agricultural work outside of its energy-specific mandate. That ends up meaning that, as Pierpoint put it, ”this set of activities sort of falls through the cracks” of the government funding options, leaving agricultural communities and companies alike struggling to find federal programs and grant opportunities.

“There’s also a mismatch between farmers and the culture of farming and agriculture in the United States, and just even geographically where the innovation ecosystems are,” Emily Lewis O’Brien, a principal at Trellis who led the team’s investment in Nitricity, told me of the social and regional divides between entrepreneurs, tech investors and rural growers. “Bridging that gap has been a little bit tricky.”

Still, investors remain optimistic that one big win will help kick the money machines into motion, and with Pivot Bio and Nitricity, there are finally some real contenders poised to transform the sector. “We’re going to wake up one day and someone’s going to go, holy shit, that was fast,” Abbott told me. “And it’s like, well you should have been here for the decade of hard work before. It’s always fast at the end.”

Yesterday was prime minister Mark Carney’s big day in Beijing, where he met with premier Li Qiang, as well as the chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, Zhao Leji. Carney billed this as building a “strategic partnership” with China, and that he hoped this to be an “example to the world of co-operation amidst a time globally of division and disorder.”  There were high-level meetings away from journalists, and in the end, they had a big show about signing six non-binding agreements as well as two declarations to facilitate more trade, because hey, all of those ministers on the trip needed their photo-op moments. One of those agreements included the BC government and had to do with use of Canadian timber and increasing use of wood-frame construction in China, in order to expand the market beyond just pulp for paper. Another was an MOU on oil and gas—but doesn’t actually commit them to buying any more of our product.

This being said, there has been no progress on the tariff issues, though any announcement might be after the meeting with Xi Jinping today. Carney said that he is “heartened” by Xi’s leadership, which…is a bit problematic considering how much more Xi has cracked down on the country and has consolidated his own power within the Party. (Photo gallery here).

Of course, during the big meeting, Carney said that this “partnership” sets them up for the “new world order,” and hoo boy did every extremely online conservative and conspiracy theorist pick up on that one. Clearly, he meant that the shift away from American dominance was reshaping the global economy, but boy the choice of phrase “New World Order” was catnip to the absolute worst people online, and is once again an own-goal by Carney.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks have destroyed a major energy facility in Kharkiv, as the country faces blackouts in the middle of winter. President Zelenskyy insists that Ukraine is interested in peace after Trump and Putin have lied that Ukraine is the holdout. Emmanuel Macron says that France is now providing two thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, taking over from the Americans.

Good reads:

• Antia Anand says that a Canadian has died at the hands of the Iranian regime as part of the protests, and condemns the action.
• The Privacy Commissioner is extending his examination into Xitter as a result of the uproar over “deepfakes” and CSAM.
• A Competition Bureau report suggests that Canadians could save billions in time and money if we had better data portability rules.
• Cory Doctorow is warning the Canadian government against widespread digital asbestos adoption as it will inevitably lose money and be subject to enshittification.
• Here is more about EU plans to set up a “tripwire” of enhanced military presence in Greenland to deter American aggression. (Canada is not currently part of this effort).
• Trump’s proposed ambassador to Iceland “joked” about making it the “52nd state,” and the Icelandic government is fuming.
• The City of Ottawa lost their appeal of their claim that the federal government was short-changing them on payments in lieu of taxes on federal buildings.
• Supriya Dwivedi (correctly) points out that if we can’t stand up to Elon Musk’s deepfake machine, then Canada becomes a vassal state to the tech broligopoly.
• Bob Rae discusses Carney’s travels in the context of the changing global environment and how challenging it is for Canada to navigate at the moment.
• Justin Ling previews a tumultuous year ahead in Quebec politics that kicked off with François Legault’s resignation, and could result in a PQ government by year’s end.
• Ling also suggests that Canada leverage its Arctic infrastructure that America relies upon to force them to drop their Greenland ambitions. (Good luck with that).

Odds and ends:

For National Magazine, I take a deep dive into the femicide provisions in Bill C-16, and why they’re a good start but may not go far enough.

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