Is this Transport Canada policy too slow for at-risk whales?

Protecting the North Atlantic right whale population requires a mandatory slowdown for vessels in the Cabot Strait, says Oceana Canada.

In early 2020, Transport Canada introduced a voluntary slowdown to protect the critically endangered species, but the majority of vessels are not complying, Oceana Canada found.

There are now fewer than 366 right whales left in the world, according to researchers, and there have been 21 known right whale deaths in Canadian waters between 2017 and 2020.

“It is the collisions with these vessels that are killing these whales,” said Sean Brillant, senior conservation biologist at the Canadian Wildlife Federation. “We need to be a bit more aggressive in a situation like this with a species that is so close to extinction and that is so clearly shown to be affected by vessels and vessel traffic.”

Slowing vessels to 10 knots or less can reduce the lethality of a collision by 86 per cent, according to a 2013 study of collision-related mortality in right whales, which is why Oceana Canada is calling on Transport Canada to make the slowdown mandatory. Newer research has shown collisions with large ships are often lethal even at lower speeds, but limiting speed still helps reduce the risk, said Brillant.

Global Fishing Watch data revealed 64 per cent of vessels failed to comply with the 10-knot voluntary slowdown in Cabot Strait from April 28 to May 4, the first week the measure was in place in 2021.

In areas with mandatory speed restrictions, compliance is high, with only 44 out of 600 vessel movements exceeding the restrictions, according to Transport Canada.

There's no good reason why they shouldn't make it mandatory," said NDP fisheries critic, Gord Johns. "Timing is of the essence given the state of right whales... they're on the brink of extinction."

Transport Canada issued a statement to Canada’s National Observer saying the slowdown will remain voluntary for 2021 and that it “has increased outreach to mariners and vessels transiting the Cabot Strait.” It says making the restriction mandatory will require increased monitoring of right whales, as well as “evaluating and weighing safety considerations, economic impacts, and ongoing detection data to ensure the measure is effective at protecting the North Atlantic right whales and mariners.”

Transport Canada also noted its results of this year’s trial voluntary slowdown in Cabot Strait are indicating increased participation rates over those reported by Oceana Canada.

“The cumulative participation rate for the first three weeks of the 2021 spring trial is 52 per cent compared to a cumulative participation rate of 46 per cent in the first three weeks of the 2020 spring trial,” reads the statement.

Transport Canada said participation rates may be affected by factors like weather, vessel timetables, logistics, delivery schedules, and contractual obligations.

Oceana’s analysis doesn’t account for weather and some of these factors, said Kim Elmslie, campaign director for Oceana Canada. She said sometimes adverse weather conditions cause restrictions to be lifted for the safety of vessels, which “is understandable and unavoidable.”

“However, the risk of vessel strike to the whales remains — which makes it even more important to have strong, mandatory measures in place when vessels can safely slow down,” said Elmslie.

Although speed restrictions are important and useful, they aren’t the solution to preventing lethal strikes on whales, Brillant said. A 2020 study, which he co-authored, found large ships going 10 knots still have an 80 per cent chance of killing a whale if one is struck.

Ideally, Brillant said, we would try to move our vessels away from the whales, but this poses a challenge in the Cabot Strait.

“In this case, speed restrictions may be the best tool we have to dial down the possibility of lethal ship strikes on whales,” he said.

Transport Canada’s introduction of the voluntary speed restriction and other monitoring techniques in the area are all good steps, said Elmslie. “But we want them to go even further than what they're doing.”

Oceana Canada also wants the voluntary speed restrictions to come into effect before April 28 because right whales have previously been spotted in the strait days before the slowdown kicks in, including one sighting this year on April 26.

Oceana Canada will continue to meet with Transport Canada and the shipping industry to try to make the speed restrictions mandatory, she said. “I feel confident that we can find some common ground.”

She says Canadians can support a mandatory speed restriction by signing Oceana Canada’s petition.

“This is the critical moment where we have to pull out all the stops and do everything that we can,” said Elmslie. “We don't really have the luxury to pilot and trial and take a few years to see if we can educate and do other things. I think that those are noble efforts, but the whales just don't have that much time.”

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, National Observer

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commits $25M for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank


OTTAWA — Canada will provide $25 million to Palestinian civilians affected by a recent conflict with the Israelis in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.  

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Trudeau said in a news release that the funding will go directly to experienced organizations that will help the most vulnerable Palestinian civilians cope after the conflict.

"The recent violence in the region is alarming — we have all seen the disturbing images of displaced civilians, loss of life and pain inflicted on families," Trudeau said.

Canada's aid will include $10 million for urgent food assistance, shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as psychosocial support for children. Another $10 million will go toward humanitarian and rebuilding efforts, such as vital medical infrastructure.

Canada will also dedicate up to $5 million for peace-building initiatives between the Palestinians and Israelis.

International Development Minister Karina Gould said in an interview that "we have to deal with the immediate humanitarian situation on the ground in Gaza today."

"It means providing some psychosocial support to people who have experienced the violence over those 11 days," she said. "It means providing health services to people who have been injured, but also supporting the health facilities that have been damaged."

Last week, Canada welcomed a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that left hundreds of people dead.

At least 230 Palestinians were killed, including 65 children and 39 women, and 1,710 people wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Twelve people in Israel were killed.

Gould said there is a need to ensure there is functioning civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

"People can access health facilities, so that they can drive on roads and children can go to schools," she said. "Those repairs need to happen."

Before the conflict, the United Nations estimated that approximately 1.57 million people in Gaza, out of a total population of two million, were in need of humanitarian assistance.

In December, Canada committed funding of $90 million over three years to respond to the rising needs of vulnerable Palestinian refugees.

This report was first published by The Canadian Press on May 28, 2021.

—-

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press

Violence in Gaza has left behind a changed political landscape in Canada

Evan Dyer 

 Chris Young/The Canadian Press A pro-Israel supporter stands in front of pro-Palestinian supporters before being escorted from a demonstration by police in Toronto on Saturday, May 15, 2021.

In 2004, Paul Martin's Liberals chose to drop Jean Chretien's policy and tack in a more pro-Israel direction. The change became public when Canada voted alongside the U.S. against a motion at the UN that affirmed the right of Palestinians "to mobilize support for their cause."

Although Stephen Harper and his Conservatives would continue to claim to be better friends of Israel, it was clear from 2004 on that the differences between the parties amounted only to a matter of degree.

Differences shrank further in 2012 when Tom Mulcair, a self-described "ardent supporter of Israel in all instances and circumstances," won the leadership of the NDP.

That consensus of party leaderships began to dissolve with Jagmeet Singh's election as NDP leader in October 2017.

The latest Gaza war has shaken things up again. "I don't think Canadian politics on this particular issue is the same as it was a month ago," said Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. "And I don't know that it ever will be the same."

Today, Paul Manly represents Nanaimo-Ladysmith for the Greens, but until 2014 he was a New Democrat.

"I was one of 14 candidates that were rejected by the NDP for having said anything about Israel and Palestine," he told CBC News.

In 2012 Manly's father Jim, himself a former NDP MP and United Church minister, was detained by Israeli commandos who boarded a vessel that was attempting to break Israel's naval blockade and deliver supplies to Gaza.

"When my father was in detention in Israel, no NDP MP would speak out for him and my own member of Parliament was told that she couldn't speak about the issue," said Manly. "So to not be able to speak up for a constituent stuck in an international situation when other countries are speaking for their citizens really lays bare the hard line that was taken by Tom Mulcair at the time."
Greens divided

But Manly's new party has also experienced friction in the wake of recent events.

A statement by leader Annamie Paul calling for a ceasefire and condemning both Palestinian rocket attacks and excessive Israeli military force appeared to be an attempt to put forward a moderate position close to that of the Trudeau government.

Green MP Jenica Atwin responded on Twitter: "It is a totally inadequate statement …. End Apartheid."

Paul, who converted to Judaism 20 years ago, has spoken in Israeli media about the prejudice she faced when running for the Green Party leadership.

"It started out as innuendo, with veiled suggestions and attacks against me as a Zionist," she said. "And then because neither we nor others responded to it, people became more emboldened and more explicit.

"I was accused of the usual tropes, including being in the pocket of foreign agents, being embedded in a political party to further the goals of those foreign agents, and the usual things related to money."
The recriminations fly

This month, as tensions in the Middle East flared, it was Paul's senior adviser Noah Zatzman who charged that "a range of political actors" were disseminating "appalling anti-Semitism and discrimination ... beginning with Jagmeet Singh and [former Green leadership candidate] Dimitri Lascaris and many Liberal, NDP and sadly, Green MPs." (The entire Green caucus only has three members.)

"I think using accusations of antisemitism to shut down legitimate criticism of human rights abuses is offensive and dangerous, and it dilutes the weight that word carries when it's used to identify real antisemitism," Manly told CBC News.

Manly responded to Zatzman's claims by publishing an article by his friend and chief of staff, former Israeli soldier Ilan Goldenblatt, entitled Criticizing Human Rights Abuses Is Not Anti-Semitism.

NDP position shifting

Paul Manly would not be disqualified from today's NDP.

Singh hasn't moved the party as far or as fast as his critics on the left would like. But the party has moved beneath his feet.

Delegates to the NDP's April convention supported motions calling for "an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land" and an end to "all trade and economic cooperation with illegal settlements in Israel-Palestine."

When similar motions were proposed at the NDP convention in 2018, they failed even to come to a vote.

The motions led the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) to accuse the NDP of harbouring "a toxic obsession with Israel." It said Singh's comments on the recent conflict — by focusing on Palestinian victims while overlooking deaths and injuries from Hamas rockets — were "cold-hearted, morally reprehensible and inconsistent with his previous statements on the matter."

But Singh has continued to recalibrate his position. "If we want to achieve peace, we need to apply pressure to achieve it," he said this week, making it clear that pressure should be on Israel.
Trudeau: Harper-era policy on autopilot

Conservative Foreign Affairs critic Michael Chong gave CBC News a restrained statement just before the ceasefire:

"Canada's Conservatives have been clear that Israel is one of Canada's closest allies and we support Israel's right to defend itself. Dialogue and peaceful negotiation are the only path forward towards a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians and an eventual two-state solution. We urge calm and sincerely hope that hostilities cease."

While the Conservatives haven't changed their position on the topic, they have dialed back the volume. Support for Israel is no longer a staple of party fundraisers and the foreign policy focus has clearly shifted to China. The Conservative Party isn't really seeking to highlight differences with Trudeau's Liberals on the conflict — partly because there really aren't any big ones.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau maintained, without fanfare, Stephen Harper's pro-Israel voting record at the UN and, a few months after becoming prime minister, voted in Parliament to condemn BDS (the movement to boycott Israel) "both here at home and abroad."

© Amr Alfiky/Reuters Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has largely maintained the Harper government policy on UN votes related to Israel.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Trudeau to intercede to discourage the International Criminal Court at The Hague from investigating the 2014 Israel-Gaza War, Trudeau wrote to the court that Palestinians, as stateless people, had no right to bring cases for war crimes.

But some in his party no longer seem willing to go along with that approach.
Splits in Liberal ranks

Liberal MP Erskine-Smith said the government is too tolerant of Israeli settlements.

"For as long as I've followed politics, we haven't seen Canadian governments that have acted vocally consistent with Canadian foreign policy, which is that settlement expansion is contrary to international law," he said.

In April, Erskine-Smith presented a petition calling on Canada to oppose the pending evictions of Palestinian families from homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, an issue that helped trigger the recent deadly conflict.

© CBC

 Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith says his government should take a harder line on Israeli settlement expansion.

"There's an asymmetry to the conflict between Palestine and Israel," he told CBC News. "And pressure needs to be brought to bear upon Israel to ensure that we don't see continued settlement expansion and we do see greater concern around human rights."

The Trudeau government has voted against dozens of UN resolutions that affirm existing tenets of Canadian policy — such as UN resolution 17/96, guaranteeing the protections of the Geneva Convention to Palestinian civilians. Like the Harper government, it says it does that to protest what it calls the singling out of Israel.
Friendly criticism

Erksine-Smith said he agrees that "there are many other countries deserving of criticism on human rights bases as well. And so the singling out of Israel, I think, can be problematic.

"My overall view, though, is that for the very reason that we hold up Israel as an ally, as a democracy with an independent judiciary that shares our values in relation to human rights, it's on those grounds that we ought to criticize as a friend."

Both Liberal MP Erskine-Smith and Green MP Manly said they have been deluged with mail about events in Gaza, and both say they believe that strong reaction was conditioned by a year of protests over racial justice in North America.
Changing times

Erskine-Smith described a recent friendly conversation with an Israeli diplomat.

"My message to him was: I've not seen this level of correspondence from people who don't follow politics and aren't seized with this really complex issue," he said. "And I think those who represent the Israeli government and Canada need to know that."

The MP said he told the diplomat that current Israeli policies are "undermining Canadian support for our continued friendship."

If currents are shifting in Canada, Israeli politics are in turmoil. There is a strong chance that the Netanyahu era is drawing to an end. For those whose task it is to argue Israel's cause in Canada, a new Israeli government could make life easier. Israel's longest-running prime minister is too much of a known quantity to change many minds on either side of the debate in Canada.

© Sebastian Scheiner/The Associated Press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the NDP says it wants to halt Canada's arms sales to Israel (which are negligible anyway), what really matters to Israel is Canada's diplomatic support. Without it, Israel's guaranteed votes at the UN could shrink to only the U.S. and the handful of small Pacific Island states that vote with U.S. foreign policy.

And even Washington's support — the cornerstone of Israel's security, along with its nuclear deterrent — is looking much less certain in these changed times.

Probe ordered on California death row inmate innocence claim

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered an independent investigation into the conviction of death row inmate Kevin Cooper, who says he was framed for the stabbing deaths of four people, including two children, at a suburban Los Angeles home in 1983.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Cooper, 63, maintains he was framed and has been seeking gubernatorial clemency since 2016.

In his executive order, Newsom said he “takes no position" on Cooper's guilt or innocence or whether to grant him clemency.

Newsom appointed a law firm to review court records and all facts and evidence in the case, including those that don't appear in trial and appellate records, along with the results of DNA tests previously ordered by the governor.

The order said the tests had been completed, but Cooper’s lawyers and the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office have “starkly different views” about whether they support Cooper’s claims.

Cooper's attorney, Norman Hile, called the order gratifying.

“We are confident that a thorough review will demonstrate that Kevin Cooper is innocent and should be released from prison," he said.

Cooper was convicted of a 1983 attack in Chino Hills, east of Los Angeles. Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica and 8-year-old son, Joshua, were attacked in their sleep along with an 11-year-old neighbor, Christopher Hughes, who was a houseguest. Investigators said they were stabbed more than 140 times with an ice pick, knife and hatchet.

Joshua’s throat was slashed, but he survived.

San Bernardino County prosecutors said previous DNA tests showed that Cooper, who had escaped from a prison two days before the slayings, was in the Ryens' home and smoked cigarettes in the Ryens' stolen station wagon, and that Cooper’s blood and the blood of at least one victim was on a T-shirt found by the side of a road leading away from the scene of the murders.

Cooper claimed that investigators planted his blood on the T-shirt.

He argued that trial evidence “was manufactured, mishandled, planted, tampered with, or otherwise tainted by law enforcement," according to Newsom's order.

Cooper's supporters have said other evidence, including untested hair samples, indicated there were multiple killers who were white or Hispanic.

The case attracted national interest after New York Times’ columnist Nicholas Kristof, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California and reality television star Kim Kardashian urged officials to allow re-testing.

In December 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown ordered DNA retesting for a T-shirt, towel, and a hatchet handle and sheath. Two months later, Newsom ordered additional DNA testing of hair samples collected from the victims’ hands and the crime scene, as well as two blood samples and a green button that investigators said linked Cooper to the crime and his attorney alleged was planted.

According to Newsom's executive order, prosecutors argue that “overwhelming evidence” points to Cooper's guilt and contend that his conviction was affirmed by state and federal appeals courts after conducting “exhaustive reviews" of the evidence and Cooper's misconduct claims.

Messages seeking comment from the San Bernardino County district attorney's office weren't immediately returned after hours.

Cooper had been scheduled for execution in 2004. But a federal appellate court stayed the execution pending further review. Both the California and U.S. supreme courts rejected his appeals.

California hasn't executed anyone since 2006, and Newsom has imposed a moratorium. There are more than 700 men and women on the nation's largest death row.

Robert Jablon, The Associated Press

US court revives lawsuit against private prison in Nevada

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal appeals court said Friday the nation’s largest private prison corporation can be held liable for negligence by a man who spent almost a year in solitary confinement at a southern Nevada facility without ever seeing a judge on marijuana-related charges.

The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a jury can hear Rudy Rivera’s lawsuit claiming that CoreCivic Inc. employees failed to tell the U.S. Marshals Service while Rivera languished in custody from November 2015 to October 2016 at the Nevada Southern Detention Center outside Las Vegas.

“A reasonable jury could find that CoreCivic caused plaintiff’s prolonged detention by failing to notify the Marshals of his continued detention without a hearing and by discouraging and preventing him from seeking outside help,” a panel of three judges said.

A CoreCivic official said the company is confident a jury will find CoreCivic wasn't responsible for Rivera's prolonged detention without a court appearance.

“CoreCivic does not have legal custody of detainees and is not responsible for the arraignment or tracking the arraignment of detainees,” Ryan Gustin, company public affairs manager, said in a statement.

Rivera had “numerous resources at his disposal to challenge his legal custody,” the statement said, including telephones that he used to call family members, mail, attorney visits and legal reference materials. Rivera also "never submitted any verbal or written grievance about this issue,” Gustin said.

The resurrected case now returns to U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, where a judge in 2017 dismissed it saying that because Rivera was in U.S. Marshals Service custody, the company wasn't responsible for Rivera’s 355-day detention.

“They were basically taking the position that, ‘Eh, what were we supposed to do? Not our fault,’” said Rivera’s attorney, Mitchell Bisson.

He said damages for negligence, intentional infliction emotional distress and civil and constitutional rights violations could amount to much more than $1 million.

Rivera, 42, lives in Stockton, California. He said the ruling gave him “reason to hope the broken system we are in now will be torn down and that no one else will have to go through what I did.”

“The year I spent in there trying to plead my way out was the hardest time of my life, and I’m still struggling with the effects it had on me and my family,” he said in an email through his attorney. “I hope CoreCivic now realizes that they can’t just point their finger in the other direction and avoid the consequences of their actions and inactions.”

Rivera was arrested in California in October 2015 and appeared before a federal judge there before he was transferred in custody to Nevada on an indictment charging him with marijuana-related offenses.

The charges were eventually dropped, after a deputy federal public defender, reached by letter, informed a judge who ordered Rivera brought to court the next business day.

The judge “declared Rivera's prolonged detention ‘extreme’ and ‘egregious’ and ordered his immediate release,” the appeals court order noted.

Rivera had been separated from other detainees and inmates at the 1,000-bed prison due to a previous gang affiliation, according to court documents. Jailers were nearly the only people he encountered.

“During his detention, Rivera repeatedly told CoreCivic employees ... that he had not been to court and did not have (a lawyer),” the judges said in Friday’s ruling. “But CoreCivic employees neither informed the Marshals of Rivera’s plight nor took any other steps to remedy the situation.”

Rivera testified he was told to “just sit there and wait.”

The court noted the Marshals Service contracts with state, local and private facilities to house about 85% of the 160,000 people in federal custody nationwide, and is the primary customer at eight of CoreCivic’s 47 facilities around the country.

CoreCivic, which is publicly traded and was formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, secured its first federal contract in 1983. Nearly $400 million worth of U.S. Marshals Service business accounted for 21% of company revenues in 2020, according to the company’s annual Securities and Exchange Commission report.

The appellate judges said the Marshals Service is the primary customer at the 1,000-bed prison. The medium-security facility opened in 2010, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) west of Las Vegas.

Ken Ritter, The Associated Press

Bard timing: Argentinian TV reports death of Shakespeare after Covid jab

Sam Jones in Madrid and Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires 
THE GUARDIAN 28/5/2021

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Hemis/Alamy

In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died after receiving the Covid vaccine.

The gaffe of well, Shakespearean, proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26 mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.

William Shakespeare died in 1616, while his namesake – an inpatient in the frailty ward at University hospital, Coventry, at the time of his first vaccination – died this week from a stroke unrelated to the jab.

Sadly, the distinction was lost on Novillo as she informed viewers of the playwright’s death during the 8pm-10pm slot on Thursday.

“We’ve got news that has stunned all of us given the greatness of this man,” she said. “We’re talking about William Shakespeare and his death. We’ll let you know how and why it happened.”

© Provided by The Guardian William ‘Bill’ Shakespeare, no relation, receives the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at University hospital, Coventry. He has died of an unrelated illness. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

Over footage of Bill Shakespeare chatting as he received the vaccine, the newsreader added: “As we all know, he’s one of the most important writers in the English language – for me the master. Here he is. He was the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine. He’s died in England at the age of 81.”

With the inevitability of a tragic hero succumbing to his fatal flaw, the gaffe soon went viral.

“There were only a few years between them,” wrote one Twitter user.

“Let us not weep for William Shakespeare,” urged another. “He lived his life and enjoyed people’s affection for centuries.”

Another added: “Such a fuss over William Shakespeare’s death but they didn’t mention that he was in such a bad way that he hadn’t produced a hit in centuries. Over-rated.”

All fired up but nowhere to charge: Alberta's lack of infrastructure zaps electric vehicle enthusiasm
Scott Stevenson 1 day ago

© Submitted by Chandresh Patel Chandresh Patel and his wife Sneha stop to charge their Tesla. They hope to see more of these charging stations between Edmonton and their home in Fort McMurray.

The introduction of Ford's new all-electric F-150 Lightning truck has some Albertans looking at whether electric vehicles might work for them, but the lack of charging stations might continue to be a turn-off.

The F-150, set to hit the market in 2023, is one of several electric trucks and vans that could appeal to Canadians who use their vehicles for work or recreation.

Despite the hype, there are still concerns about whether there are enough public charging stations to keep the batteries going for extended travel.

Those who already own electric vehicles (EVs) are familiar with the challenges.

 

© Submitted by Chandresh Patel Chandresh Patel and his wife Sneha pose with their new Tesla in the showroom.

Chandresh Patel is a new Tesla Model Y owner who lives in Fort McMurray and works in the oil and gas industry. He loves his car and regularly uses it for daily commutes in and around the community.

"But I also have another vehicle for the longer travels down to the south," Patel said.

That vehicle has an internal combustion engine powered by the fuels Patel works to extract from the ground for a living. He'd like to ditch it and go full electric but that's not practical — yet.

"When I drive from Fort Mac to Edmonton, which I have done a couple of times, there is only one charger on the way, in Athabasca," he said.

That charger is off the main highway and it's not a fast one, meaning a recharging stop of up to three hours, he said.

"It would be a huge difference if there was a Tesla Supercharger or a DC fast charger," Patel said.

Those types of fast chargers, which would cut wait time to less than 30 minutes, are few and far between in Alberta

.

© CBC News/PlugShare The network of electric vehicle charging stations is quite robust in Alberta cities as well as along highways 1 and 2, but once you head north, east or west of Edmonton the options are limited.

On the highways north, east and west of Edmonton, there are only about two dozen chargers in total.

Andrew Batiuk with the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta says it's a chicken-and-egg kind of problem.

"EV infrastructure is not inexpensive and it's not super-easy to deploy, so people don't want to invest in it until there's a reason to do so — and that reason is having EVs in the marketplace," Batiuk said.

"But then those owners of those potential EVs want to be able to travel, and they don't want to get that vehicle until they can travel. So you do get into this interesting situation of which comes first — the EV and the ownership of it or the charging network that supports it."

Companies that operate the charging stations appear to be taking notice of the increasing demand and interest in EVs.

FLO, the Quebec-based company that calls itself Canada's largest electric vehicle charging network, plans to expand, said Michael Pelsoci, the company's Western Canada sales director.

The company already has 114 public charging stations in its Alberta network, including 26 with fast chargers.

"FLO expects to have more DC fast chargers on the network in northern Alberta, working with Epcor, in addition to new stations along Highway 16," Pelsoci said. "The key for successful mass adoption of electric vehicles is to build a charging infrastructure that is always one step ahead in its development."

Atco, which has been involved in the design, construction and operation of more than two dozen stations in Alberta, said it doesn't have current expansion plans but continues to explore potential opportunities around the province.

Six Petro-Canada charging stations in Alberta are part of its coast-to-coast EV fast-charge network. A spokesperson for Suncor, which owns Petro-Canada, didn't provide specifics but said the company is looking at sites for future opportunities.

#NOTOKYOOLYMPICS

Scott Stinson: As calls to scrap Olympics grow, Tokyo presents safety plans with a very 2020 feel

If you find yourself believing that governments of all types have proven to be uniquely bad at learning from their mistakes over the course of a global pandemic, and of failing to make adjustments as new evidence is discovered, I give you the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee.

 Provided by National Post Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games mascot Miraitowa poses with a display of the Olympic symbol after an unveiling ceremony of the symbol on Mt. Takao in Hachioji, west of Tokyo, Japan, April 14, 2021.

These are delicate times for the would-be Games of the XXXII Olympiad, with many of the conditions that were assumed to be achieved by punting them back a year having very much failed to materialize. Aggressive vaccination campaigns have allowed a small number of countries to wrestle COVID-19 under control, while others, Canada included, appear to be on a similar positive track. But positive cases have surged in much of South America, as well as parts of Africa and the Middle East, raising fears in Japan that they are poised to import a rash of infected people as travelling parties arrive for the Games. And Japan itself, which has largely avoided the various COVID surges that have been a public-health disaster in other parts of the world, is dealing with a recent rise in positive cases while rolling out a puzzlingly slow vaccination campaign. Those vaccination rates have increased in recent days, but Japan is now about where Canada was in mid-March in terms of percent of its population having received at least partial protection.

Perhaps not surprisingly, polling suggests a large majority of the Japanese public wants Tokyo 2020 to be scrapped, while medical groups, a leading newspaper (and Games sponsor) and some prominent citizens like billionaire businessman Masayoshi Son have called for a cancellation. The head of a doctors’ union said on Thursday that bringing thousands of people from around the world — the total number of visitors would be close to 25,000 — is not something that has been attempted since the pandemic began more than a year ago. “It’s very difficult to predict what this could lead to,” he said, according to The Associated Press. There were warnings of possible new mutant strains, which is a phrase that would cause many to tug nervously at their collars.

The response from Tokyo 2020, the IOC, and the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has been to insist that the Olympic environment will be “safe and secure.” So, far two “playbooks”, documents that outlines the procedures for visiting athletes and support staff, and a separate one for travelling media, have been released, with final versions of each expected next month.

They are, at the least, puzzling. The media playbook has some expected countermeasures: visitors must have proof of negative tests upon arrival to Japan, they will be tested again at the airport, and then will quarantine for three days and be tested daily in that time. Media members must also submit a two-week “activity plan,” which is presumably for contact-tracing purposes in the event of a positive test. They are also encouraged to limit interactions to those within Olympic facilities and essentially live within a Tokyo 2020 bubble. It will enforce this, as far as I can tell, via the honour system. There will also be daily self-assessments in which you must declare yourself symptom-free.

Elsewhere, it explains that access to Games venues will require temperature checks, and that facilities will have the highest of sanitation standards. There will be physical distancing requirements in places like press boxes and the normally-bustling Main Press Centre, and masks will be required at all times. If that seems like a paragraph that might have been written for a Games that was actually going to be held in 2020, that’s because it might have been. Temperature checks? Surface cleaning? Spacing out desks even in an indoor facility? These are the infection-control measure of more than a year ago, before it was learned that asymptomatic carriers were a risk and before it was clear that aerosol transmission indoors meant that being six feet away from someone was still risky if they were sharing the same air for a sustained period of time. There is meanwhile no acknowledgement that outdoors is dramatically better than indoors and no suggestion of, for example, outdoor dining areas. The playbook simply advises that people eat alone.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some experts are issuing warnings about this. The New England Journal of Medicine said this week that the Tokyo playbooks “are not built on scientifically rigorous risk assessment” and that they “fail to consider the ways in which exposure occurs” and “the factors that contribute to exposure.” Those sound like considerable oversights. The Journal also notes that there is a lot of potential for holes in contract-tracing nets if they require human input. Other sports events have used things like wearable technology to track movements, as was the case in last year’s highly successful NBA bubble.

The most likely explanation for the Tokyo 2020’s less-than-ideal countermeasures is that an international event of its size requires some corners to be cut. Indoor facilities that were built with a hot Tokyo summer in mind, from athletes’ accommodation to venues to media facilities, can’t all be turned into outdoor tents. There is, meanwhile, no acknowledgement of vaccinations, or the fact that a considerable proportion of attendees will be inoculated by the time they arrive in Japan. Instead, the playbooks treat everyone the same, perhaps because as they were developed there was no guarantee that vaccinations would ramp up at the speed, at least in some countries, at which they have.

And while certain events over the course of the pandemic have created tight bubbles for participants, the sheer size of an Olympics that is taking place in the middle of a big city makes that impossible.

The best case for the organizers is that vaccination rates among visitors, and in Japan itself, are high enough by late July that the concerns of today will be much less of a problem. As it stands, implicit in the playbooks is the hope that all Olympic visitors will follow the rules and take responsibility for keeping themselves and others safe. A year-plus into this thing, it has not proven to be a winning strategy.

Postmedia News

sstinson@postmedia.com

#NOTOKYOOLYMPICS

Bob Costas,  Former Longtime NBC Host, Says Tokyo Olympics Should Be Pushed To 2022

By Dade Hayes

May 28, 2021 

Bob Costas, who was the lead host of 12 Olympic Games telecasts for NBC, believes the Tokyo Olympics should not go forward due to risks from Covid-19.

Appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, Costas said the Games should be “postponed, not canceled. If they postponed it until the summer of 2022, then as a one-off it would go back to the way it was prior to the ’90s,” he said. Winter and summer Games used to be held in the same calendar year before shifting to an every-two-years, alternating cycle.

Already, the pandemic forced them from 2020 to 2021, with the July 23 opening ceremonies now under a dark cloud of doubt due to the dire Covid-19 situation in Japan. Just 4% of residents have been vaccinated and most oppose the idea of athletes from 200 countries coming in for the event, and doctors and other officials have voiced strong objections.

“You’ve got to understand, the International Olympic Committee holds all the cards,” Costas said. When Maher said he often sees the IOC name connected to “something shady” and asked Costas if that was wrong, his guest said, “It’s not wrong. They have an affinity for authoritarian regimes. They’ll be back in Beijing for the Winter Olympics. They were in Sochi (Russia) in 2014. They were in Beijing in 2008.”

Costas hosted Games on NBC from 1988 to 2016. He is still active as a sports TV personality but left the network in 2019 after four decades of service. The settings for many Olympics, he said, require “a particularly difficult tightrope walk for NBC.” NBCUniversal signed an extension in 2014 for $7.75 billion for U.S. rights to the Olympics through 2032.

“Unlike other entities that cover it, the network that carries the Olympics or any sports event has invested a lot of money in the rights,” Costas said. “And they want people to feel good about watching it. But my feeling always was, you have to at least acknowledge the elephants in the room. I tried as best I could to tug on the other end of that rope. But they were always very very touchy about offending the IOC.”

As far as Tokyo, Costas noted that polls have shown 70% of Japanese people are against the Games happening this year due to soaring infection rates in the country. The New England Journal of Medicine weighed in today for the opposition, as have other medical entities., However, “all of the contracts are written in favor of the IOC,” Costas said. “So, if the Olympics are held, all the losses, all the cost overruns, they fall on the Olympic organizing committee of Tokyo. None of that is borne by the IOC. Plus, if the Games take place and NBC televises them, the IOC collects every last penny of the broadcast rights. So you can’t expect them to have the same view as everyone else.”


Costas was appearing on Real Time to plug his forthcoming return to HBO in Back on the Record with Bob Costas.

Climate Change: Oil sands producer aims at net zero with carbon capture

Kieron O'Dea and Farah Nasser 

GLOBAL NEWS

28/5/2021

As the world economy accelerates in the long race to decarbonize, Canada is quietly becoming a leader in carbon capture — a technology increasingly seen as indispensable in bridging the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

© MEG Energy

The head of an Alberta oil sands company hopes that the end of the political impasse on the carbon tax will help realize its ambition of utilizing carbon capture as a means to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Derek Evans, CEO of MEG Energy, says that carbon capture and storage could effectively erase the emissions from its Christina Lake oil facility, south of Fort McMurray. While the timeline and projected costs of the plan have not been released, he says the project could sequester emissions from other oil facilities nearby as well.

Carbon capture and storage involves chemically isolating carbon dioxide (CO2) that's released when fossil fuels are burned. The captured CO2 is then sent via pipeline to be permanently stored deep underground.

Read more: Suncor and Atco working together on potential hydrogen project near Edmonton

While critics point to the high costs and long timelines of the technology, there's also a growing awareness that Canada, as an oil producing nation, has no realistic path to achieve its emissions targets without some form of carbon capture. Beyond the oil sector, there are the heavy-emitting industries of steel, cement and fertilizer production — all of which lack viable renewable energy options to power their operations and stand to benefit from carbon capture and storage infrastructure.

In recent years, some of the world's largest and most advanced carbon capture projects have been developed in Canada — projects like the Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Shell's Quest facility near Edmonton and Alberta's Carbon Trunk line, which spans 200 km through central Alberta.

Read more: Canadian oil drilling contractor association changes name to reflect energy transition

As Canada continues to fall far short of its emissions targets under the Paris Accord, giant projects like these are leading a new wave of proposed developments attracting funding from the federal and provincial governments. This year's Federal Budget included new tax incentives for companies to pursue the technology. It's just a fraction of the $30 billion in carbon capture funding Alberta is seeking from Ottawa — funding that MEG Energy would seek to access for its project.

Derek Evans, president and CEO of MEG Energy, sat down with Global National's Farah Nasser to discuss his vision for the future of the sector in a decarbonizing world.

Farah Nasser: Why would an oil company CEO want to go net zero by 2050?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: That's a great question and probably the easiest one to answer because it's absolutely critical to get to net zero from from a number of perspectives — but most importantly, from a shareholder perspective — to ensure that we're going to continue to have the social license to continue to operate the resources and and do it in a way that is going to be environmentally acceptable and sensitive. So to me, it's a natural step in the evolution of the oil and gas business and one that you could argue is somewhat overdue.

Farah Nasser: Can you outline your vision to get there?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: MEG Energy has a very long history of reducing its intensity of carbon emissions. Since we've been in existence, we've got one of the lowest greenhouse gas or CO2 emissions intensities in the business — 20 per cent below everybody else's. And we've managed to be able to do that with advocating and using a bunch of different types of technologies. But a while ago, we realized you can only take the intensity reduction to so far. You're going to have to decarbonize... After some investigation, we determined the single easiest way to do that, the technology that had the biggest impact and could be put to work in in short order was really carbon capture and storage.

Carbon capture involves three different types of technologies. The first is the actual capture where you're taking the CO2 out of the flue gas, or the combustion products, and you're taking it and concentrating it up to a pure CO2 liquid form. You're taking that pure liquid CO2 liquid form, you're putting it into a pipeline and you're transporting it to a reservoir deep underground where you can sequester it or store it for eternity. So three different types of phases. The first phase, the capture phase is the most expensive. It's about 70 to 80 per cent of the total cost. And the pipeline phase is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 per cent. And the sequestration phase is approximately 10 per cent as well.

Farah Nasser: So what are the biggest challenges and obstacles to this?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: So the biggest challenge is... What is the price of carbon going to be? Today, the price of carbon in various jurisdictions is probably about $40 a tonne. There's quite a distance between $120 or $170 per tonne and $40 a tonne. So one of the obstacles is the price of carbon. The second [challenge] would be who is going to provide the consistency on that price? We have had sort of political squabbles going on provincially and federally with respect to who is going to price carbon and what different prices of carbon could exist in different jurisdictions.

For anybody to undertake a carbon capture and storage project, they're going to want to know that there is going to be a contractually set price of carbon that they can take to the bank and say, look, we want to build this project. And the bank is going to say, 'well, do you have a contract?' And you're going to go, 'yes.' And then the next thing the bank is going to say is 'what price is it at?' And is that economic for you to undertake these activities and generate a rate of return? So you can't have a situation that we've had in the past where one government comes in — or one provincial government comes in — and changes the price of carbon or changes the method in which carbon prices are determined. That sort of uncertainty has been a big, big problem for people in the business that wanted to move forward on carbon capture and storage.

Farah: When we talk about the carbon tax, the oil and gas sector has been kind of sitting back while politicians duke it out over the carbon tax. What has that done to the sector?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: It's been particularly frustrating. I mean, we get painted as being slow to adopt the reality of the new carbon economy... We are all about bringing our carbon intensity down. And we'd like nothing more than to have the appropriate economic incentives to be able to get after decarbonizing the remainder of our production. What has been frustrating is watching decarbonization or CO2 policy get batted around in elections, or people having turf wars over who has jurisdiction or responsibility. We're keen to get on with what we think is the next and natural evolution of our business and getting rid of the carbon. But it's been particularly hard to watch as it became a political issue as opposed to a technological and cost issue that we know that we can get after and manage. Now, all that being said, it looks like we've had some progress with the Supreme Court ruling in terms of [it being] a federal jurisdiction. That will will definitely help. But we've got to get out of the way of ourselves. I mean, this is a pressing global issue. We need to stop talking about it and get to work to decarbonize our future.

Farah Nasser: Do you think that there's been a real shift [in thinking] when it comes to the oil and gas sector in Alberta?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: There's a palpable shift... I'd say in the last three or four years, the urgency to get after doing more on the carbon file has has definitely increased. You're seeing large portions of the oil and gas sector, and particularly the oil sands sector saying this is something we need to turn our attention to and we need to agitate and get in front of government and say, this is how we can achieve your Paris Accord goals, as opposed to standing back and waiting for the government to come and provide incentives. We need to be proactive in terms of how we're how we're presenting ourselves and how and laying out the plans that we do have and how they can be beneficial. So there has been a massive change in terms of not only the sense of urgency that we see with respect to decarbonizing, but also how proactive we have become as an industry in terms of working with all levels of government to achieve these goals.

Farah Nasser: Was there something specific that changed your view?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: I'd say the specific piece was frustration. It was frustration that we have continued to talk and talk and talk about this, and our children are going to hang us up by the thumbs for our lack of action on this file. So the frustration with respect to lack of activity, lack of action — that's been the single biggest challenge we had reaching a tipping point with myself and I think others in the business that we can't rely on others. We need to chart that path forward, and we need to chart it in an aggressive fashion. That's a large part of the reason why you're seeing oil and gas companies leading industries across the country with a net zero commitments.

Farah Nasser: Can you paint a picture as to what Alberta will look like in your mind in 2030?

Derek Evans, CEO MEG Energy: It's going to be an extraordinarily exciting place... In 2030, I think we are going to be a high tech sector. Oil and gas production will not be the biggest part of the economy. I think in 2030, you'll see carbon capture and storage hubs just outside of Calgary and Edmonton. We will be storing five to 10 million tons of of CO2 in each of those. And you'll start to see primary industries such as steel, fertilizer companies, power companies, all developing around those hubs. And my basis in belief for that is we have the technology, we have the understanding, we have the storage reservoirs. But most importantly, we have the entrepreneurial spirit and innovative sort of genetic material inside of our bones that is going to make that all possible.

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