Canada’s Eastern establishment and national media seem to revel in stories asserting that Saskatchewan is the nation’s biggest polluter or emitter.
They base their belief on a measuring system designed to skew the data to fit their narrative – that the West is a problem, especially the oil industry and farming, which the East likes to target because they shift economic muscle away from the centre of the country.
The measure they use to get this finding? Emissions per capita. Because we have a relatively small population count, we emit more per person.
But a report prepared for CTV over the long weekend offers up a slightly different perspective on these data. This report looked at actual pollution and found that Montreal actually has the dirtiest air of any city in Canada. Just breathing there is the equivalent of smoking more than 120 cigarettes a year.
Windsor, Hamilton, Kitchner, Ottawa and London filled the next five spots followed by Quebec City, Mississauga and Toronto.
Not a Saskatchewan city to be found in this ranking.
