This Week's Round-Up: July 6, 2026

• The Americanization of Canada

• How a single quote sparked a political firestorm

• She wanted to be seen as a writer
  

• The story of the 1977 Vancouver heist

• Can you be fired while pregnant?

Avi Lewis Wants to Save the Planet. It’s Tearing His Party Apart

His climate plan has provoked a furious response from NDP leaders in Alberta and Saskatchewan

BY DREW NELLES

It’s true that Avi Lewis’s platform is a threat to the oil and gas sector, which is concentrated in Alberta and Saskatchewan and is the largest single source of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions. Inconveniently for the industry, this happens to be the only rational response to the existential threat of climate change. Inconveniently for Naheed Nenshi, the NDP’s leader in Alberta, and Carla Beck, the head of the Saskatchewan NDP, Lewis’s position risks alienating the voters and interest groups whose economic fortunes remain tied to fossil fuels.

How do you combat climate change without turning off voters whose livelihoods rely on fossil fuels?

Submit Your Pitch for the Mansbridge Essay

The Walrus is partnering with Peter Mansbridge to launch a new $5,000 essay program supporting emerging writers in Canada. Writers in the first five years of their career are invited to pitch original reported essays for publication in The Walrus.

FROM THE WALRUS LAB IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ALINEA. THE PODCAST IS FUNDED BY GLOBAL AFFAIRS CANADA.

Discover the New Season of Canadian Changemakers

A podcast exploring Canada’s role in advancing climate action across Sub-Saharan Africa through two key initiatives: the Climate Action Africa initiative and the Lake Chad Basin Restoration Project. The series highlights collaborative efforts, on-the-ground impact, and approaches to building more resilient and sustainable communities.

Pink Slip

Amirah El-Safty’s “Yes, You Can Be Fired While on Maternity Leave” deeply resonated with me. In 2023, I was a senior marketing executive at a tech company in Toronto when I was fired while eight months pregnant. Skip forward to today, more than two years later, I’m still in an ongoing case with the human rights commission. In many parts of the country, the human rights complaints process is deeply flawed, and some employers seem to know this and take advantage of it. They bank on women accepting severance agreements in exchange for their silence under the threat that challenging them in court would be incredibly stressful and take years. They know that’s when women are at their most vulnerable and can’t afford the time and money required to fight back.

Beth Wanner
Regina, SK

Support humans. Support The Walrus.

I enjoy the act of writing: countless revisions and cringeworthy phrases dot the long arc to clarity. Writers, because they’re human, have to deal with “productive friction”: wrangling a draft into existence.

I’m Sheldon, the newest member of The Walrus’s board of directors. I’ve focused professionally on the ethics of artificial intelligence for a decade now. Outlets relying on AI slop are building their houses on sand and deteriorating trust with each “article.”

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