At a time when Human Rights are being gutted around the world, Alex Neve discusses how we have failed to make these rights truly universal and how we might renew these rights in a world filled with conflict and divisiveness. Alex Neve is a human rights lawyer who served as Secretary-General of Amnesty International Canada from 2000 to… Continue Reading Massey Lecturer Alex Neve Speaking September 19-October 30
On June 25, 2025, eleven Canadian Senators – ten of whom are women – from five provinces issued a powerful statement urging Canada to uphold international humanitarian law in Gaza. “Respectfully, we call on the Government of Canada to immediately: 1. Protect and Fund Humanitarian Relief in Gaza, including UNRWA 2. Impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel… Continue Reading 11 Canadian Senators on Gaza: “Canada must do more. We cannot look away”
G78 Board member Bruce Campbell recently wrote a commemorative article for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (https://www.policyalternatives.ca/) to mark the 12th anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. “On July 6, 2013, a train carrying 72 tank cars of toxic shale oil derailed and exploded. It killed 47 people, spilling six million litres of oil—obliterating the centre of… Continue Reading Deregulation, Privatization, and Fiscal Austerity: Remembering Why the Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster Happened
The Broadbent Institute (https://broadbentinstitute.ca/), a progressive Canadian think tank, recently published an insightful paper by Roy Culpeper, Past Chair of the Group of 78, on the current debt crisis facing low- and middle-income countries. The paper argues that the most recent wave of debt began in 2010 and has persisted for the last fifteen years, threatening the social… Continue Reading This Time It’s Worse: The New International Debt Crisis
Economic precarity, the ingenuity gap, message distortion, and fragmentation of belief communities—these are four core factors driving the decline of democracy globally and in Canada. If we’re going to save, and even deepen, Canadian democracy, we must assess and respond to these issues through three lenses: worldviews, institutions, and technologies. That was the message of Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon,… Continue Reading Thomas Homer-Dixon: New Analytic Tools for Defending Canadian Democracy
The date for the Group of 78’s Annual Policy Conference has been set for October 10, 2025. As always, you can count on lively dialog with speakers, panelists, and other guests. Registration and schedule are forthcoming.
“It’s your duty to fix Bill C-5.” On June 23, 2025, that’s what the Group of 78 told the Speaker of Canada’s Senate, the Hon. Raymonde Gagné, and a dozen sitting Senators with interests in social, environmental and Indigenous policy issues. The Senate is to review the legislation during the week of June 23-27 and has the power, opportunity… Continue Reading G78 to the Senate: It’s Your Duty to Fix Bill C-5
On June 19, 2025, G78 Vice-Chair Susan Tanner wrote to Julie Dabrusin, Canada’s Minister for Environment and Climate Change, to underscore citizens’ deep commitment to fight climate change and their skepticism of the efforts to date of governments and the fossil fuel industry. Last fall’s G78 climate conference generated a wide range of recommended citizen actions at all… Continue Reading Canadian Environment Minister Briefed on Citizen-Driven Action to Fight Climate Change
In a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Group of 78 has registered its objection to the Government of Canada’s Bill C-5 on major projects as too rushed and giving enormous power to the fossil fuel industry, the major source of the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet. We call for Bill-5 to be carefully reviewed by… Continue Reading Too Rushed, Too Much Power for Big Oil: G78 Objects to Bill C-5 in Letter to Mark Carney
On June 12, 2025, the Group of 78 wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney urging him to speak out in the strongest terms against the defence-spending target of 5% of GDP to be debated at the upcoming NATO Summit and to join with other Allied countries to collectively and assertively reject this goal, which we believe is policy… Continue Reading G78 Urges Mark Carney to reject 5% defence spending target at NATO Summit