Alberta government names five new members to Preston Manning-led COVID review panel
PRIVATIZE HEALTHCARE PANEL
Fri, February 17, 2023 



EDMONTON — The Alberta government has named five members to a COVID-19 review panel led by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, one of whom was recently fired along with the rest of the governing board of Alberta Health Services.

Jack Mintz joins Dr. Martha Fulford, Michel Kelly-Gagnon, Dr. Rob Tanguay and Jack Major on the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review panel.

“Albertans can have confidence Alberta’s pandemic response will be reviewed by these medical, policy, legal and economic experts so our province can better respond to the next public health emergency,” Smith said in a statement Friday.

MR. NEOLIBERAL
Mintz is the president’s fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and advises and writes on tax, business and health policy.

He and the board were fired by Smith in November. She said they failed Albertans during the pandemic by failing to scale up hospital capacity as promised, forcing the government to impose what Smith has termed freedom-busting health restrictions.

The board members were replaced by an administrator. In an opinion piece published in the Financial Post in November, Mintz wrote that he was OK with the firing because the changes represent a necessary jump-start to achieve true reform in health-care delivery.

Major is a former Supreme Court judge and Kelly-Gagnon is president of the Montreal Economic Institute. RIGHT WING THINK TANK LIKE FRASER INSTITUTE

Tanguay is a psychiatrist and University of Calgary professor focusing on disability and rehabilitation.

Fulford is chief of medicine at McMaster University Medical Centre in Hamilton and focuses on infectious diseases. She challenged the efficacy of some health restrictions during the pandemic.

The panel is not only looking at government decision-making, but also its effects on jobs, children, mental health and protection of rights and freedoms. It is to report back by Nov. 15.

The bulk of the panel's work will be reviewing legislation, regulations and ministerial orders, but it will also take feedback online.

The budget is $2 million. Manning, who was announced as chair a month ago, is to be paid $253,000.

Manning and Smith have been critical of government-imposed health restrictions such as masking, gathering rules and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.

Smith has questioned the efficacy of the methods and their long-term effects on household incomes, the economy and mental health. She has promised health restrictions and vaccine mandates would have no role in any future COVID-19 response in Alberta.

The Opposition New Democrats have labelled the panel a political sop to Smith’s far-right supporters angry over COVID-19 restrictions, and have promised to cancel it should they win the May 29 provincial election.

“This panel is a brutal waste of Alberta taxpayers’ money," said NDP health critic David Shepherd.

"Preston Manning has already reached his own conclusions, and based on the panellists, it looks like it’s headed toward whatever outcome Danielle Smith and the UCP are looking for. An Alberta NDP government will put an end to this sham panel."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2023.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

Canadian CEO Blinks Earns $38,000

Top CEOs outearn average Canadians by January 2nd.

Hey that's today. It took less than 24 hours for Canada's fat cats to earn what you and I make in a year.

And the average worker has not made ANY real gain in wages for the past decade, which just adds insult to injury.

While the corporate elite got a 262% wage and bonus increase between 2005 and the end of 2006.

Perhaps we should declare January 2 the official Canadian Piggie Day for how much the boss class makes off our backs, while barely blinking an eye, or lifting a pen, or doing anything really productive besides lining their own pockets and those of their shareholders, who are all major pension funds, our pension funds in fact.

By the time the average Canadian grudgingly drags his or her still-hungover body into work Tuesday, swaps holiday tales with the stiff in the next cubicle, and hunkers down to work, the country's highest-paid CEOs will have already earned the worker's annual salary.

Minimum-wage workers would have barely rolled out of bed on New Year's Day by the time the country's top earners pocketed the $15,931 that will likely take the low-paid workers all of 2007 to make.

A study released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the 100 highest-paid private-sector executives will have earned an average Canadian's salary of $38,010 by 9:46 a.m. Tuesday.

That's not comforting news to the many Canadians whose primary motivation for heading back to work after the holidays is being able to start paying off their Christmas credit card bills.

"When you say that the average CEO made $9 million in 2005 and the average Canadian made ($38,000), the comparison between those things is so far into the stratosphere that I think people have trouble just coming to terms with what the comparison means," said Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the independent research institute that focuses on issues of social and economic justice.

"Converting it into time sort of puts it into a frame that people can get their heads around."

Mackenzie crunched the numbers based on 2005 salary figures from Statistics Canada and Report on Business magazine's most recent listing of the 100 best-paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded companies.

According to his figures, by the time Canadians flick on the 6 p.m. news Tuesday, the average CEO will have pocketed a staggering $70,000.

"I was kind of hoping it would get into the second week of January. As it turns out, it was not even close," Mackenzie quipped. "Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people's minds."

"How can somebody possibly be worth that amount in income and ... if those people are taking that much money out of the company or out of the economy, what does that mean for what's left for the rest of us?"

And don't forget these fat cats are a minority in Canada.

Wealth survey highlights include:

- The concentration of wealth at the high end continued to grow from
1999 to 2005.
- The wealthiest 20% families held 69.2% of the total net wealth in
Canada, up from 68.5% in 1999. That increase in share was entirely at
the expense of the middle 20%, whose share dropped from 8.8% to 8.4%.
- The net worth of the 20% of families at the bottom of the wealth
scale was negative again in 2005.
- Debt increased at a faster rate than net worth. More than 6.5% of
families literally operate under water -- with negative net worth.
- Between 1999 and 2005, the median debt load for families rose 38%,
from $32,300 in 1999 to $44,500 in 2005.

While the Fraser Institute declares Tax Freedom Day in June to show
how much government taxes us, the fact is that their prescription for tax cuts
have NOT benefited working class Canadians.

Canada is falling behind a number of OECD nations in a wide range of social and economic areas, and a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points to tax cuts as the culprit.

The study, by Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong, compares high-tax Nordic countries and low-tax Anglo-American countries on 50 social and economic measures and finds the high-tax Nordic countries score better in 42 categories.

According to the study, tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation’s citizens. For example, the high-tax Nordic countries have:

• lower rates of poverty, more equal income distribution, and more economic security for their workers;
• a higher GDP per capita;
• higher rates of household saving and net national saving;
• greater innovation, including a higher percentage of GDP spent on research and development;
• a higher ranking on their growth competitiveness by the World Economic Forum;
• higher rates of secondary school and university completion; and
• less drug use, more leisure time, and higher life satisfaction.

A tip o' the blog to Jacobs Super Patented Brain Thoughts

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Torys Slime Graham

Blogging Tories that is. In a reprehensible piece of trash blogging, Ottawa Core writes Bill Graham Interim Leader of Pedophile Cult?

He gets his link from a spurious posting by Proud To Be Canadian (I am not proud this creep is Canadian) who uses inuendo in a clever way and leaves a link to google stories on Graham.

Both of them use out of date information and doubtful allegations that Bill Graham now the Liberal Leader, had a sexual relationship with a fifteen year old boy back in the eighties. This is a slimy attempt to out Graham who has never come out as a gay man in public.

So I checked out the links provided by PTBC and OC. The original allegation was posted on Fab. But it no longer exists.

Lifesite the Anti-Abortion Anti-Gay site ran this story based on the spurious report in Fab and Frontpage magazine.

MAGAZINES SAY CANADA'S FOREIGN MINISTER HAD SEXUAL AFFAIR WITH 15-YEAR-OLD MALE PROSTITUTE

Claim Canada's Foreign Minister Is An Admitted Bisexual

OTTAWA, February 19, 2002 (LSN.ca) - Canada's newly appointed Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, is a darling of the homosexual activist community having constantly supported pro-homosexuality initiatives including homosexual marriage. However, last year a Toronto-based homosexual magazine called Fab published an interview with Lawrence Metherel, a former male prostitute, who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with the Graham, dating back to 1980 when Metherel was 15.

This is the old right wing ploy where a story is posted by one right wing site, and then repeated as authoritative by another right wing site. The Fraser Institute does this by quoting the Cato Institute, both are right wing think tanks.

In this case Frontpage magazine which Lifesite quotes from is run by Right Whingnut David Horowitz. His Canadian editor published his attack on Graham based on an article in the satirical magazine Frank. That article is no longer on line because Frank died. And with Frank it was a rumour that had originated, once again with the defunct Fab.

The only source for this story that still exists online is from the Eye magazine in Toronto which said this at the time and is still right on.

You see, fab (the magazine for homosexuals who hate themselves) published an interview with an ex-boyfriend of Graham's last year, featuring the spurned lover's lurid accusations against the respected MP. In my opinion, this was a disgusting piece of yellow journalism. I remember thinking -- after using the article to drain the grease off my breakfast bacon -- that fab had finally sunk as low as any supermarket tabloid. And Frank, true to sleazy form, reprinted fab's bilge after Graham's appointment.

Atypically, Frank (which rarely exhibits remorse) made a pathetic attempt to justify its release of the tawdry details: "Now that he's a federal cabinet minister and a security risk, shouldn't the rest of the country get the story?" The Globe and Mail echoed Frank's sentiments. After Graham (the "flamboyant" new minister) recently deflected questions about the "rumours" concerning his private life as irrelevant, the Globe editorialized, "It is relevant, of course, if it makes him politically vulnerable."

So two of the supposed original sources for this story are no longer on line. And all these stories occurred in 2002! Four years ago. And let us remember this that the 'Flamboyant" Bill Graham has never admitted to being gay. Regardless of the speculation and clever innuendo by the press about his sexuality. Despite the fact he is married and a grandfather.This doesn't stop the renewal of this attack on Grahams character by these blogging gay bashers of the right.

So while the Blogging Tories and the other rightwhingnuts whine about how gays flaunt their sexuality, with gay pride parades, and demands for their human rights, it is for this very reason they do. Silence is death as the AIDS acitivists say. The closet is not safe.
For that very reason being in the closet has been a security risk, while coming out opens one up to gay bashing. Heck being "flamboyant" opens one up to gay bashing.

Think I am being to harsh calling the creep Ottawa Core a gay basher.

Here is how Ottawa Core ends his article: Kill all the lawyers. Oh, did I mention Bill Graham is a lawyer and law professor? Can you see him eyeing your child?

This is hate speech pure and simple. And it is an open threat of violence against a public figure. And we have laws about this in Canada.

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Anarchism and the Left

I will limit my comments to the current state of anarchism in Canada, as our anarchism is more closely associated with socialism of the European left than with the libertarian/liberal right wing individualist traditions coming out of the United States.

And it is here we must make a differentiation, because while in the US the Libertarian movement is identified with republican liberty, individualism and the free market, with a corresponding development in the American anarchist movement with a heavy emphasis on Nietzche, Stirner and individualistic anarchism. Such has not occurred in Canada to the same degree. So American libertarianism, right and left, has had little impact in the Great White North.

Oh sure there is a Libertarian Party of Ontario, and various neo-conservative pseudo libertarian think tanks, the Fraser Institute, the National Citizens Coalition, Market Institute of Atlantic Studies, etc. but you cannot separate these from their business class interests and their political party; the Canadian Alliance.

Objectivism and Ayn Randism, is a miniscule movement on University Campuses. It appeals to Engineers who believe Rand is a philosopher of some renowned because they failed to take any philosophy courses, they believe she is a great novelist, because they didn’t take any English classes either. An equal amount of Engineers that read Rand read Technocracy.

However during a recent anti-war demonstration in Edmonton the capitalist libertarians clustered to denounce War and Socialism! Considering they were less than a handful, in a sea of 20,000 mostly social democrats, those that believe in Socialism pitifully outnumbered them. And they were even outnumbered by members of the IWW as well as the Anarchists who carried the banner: No War but Class War. A statement more startling to the mass of demonstrators than the Libertarians presence, this was because it was an Anti-War march, with hippie feel good pacifism as ideology.

On the left in Canada we have a mish mash of so called anarchists and anti-authoritarian socialists, and I think it is here we need to clear up who is calling themselves what these days and see if they really are anarchists or just non aligned leftists.

We have the anti-capitalist /anti-globalization movement, which has ties to NGO’s and unions. Many self-described anarchists are also members of one of these NGO’s the nationalistic statist Council of Canadians. This anti globalization organization was founded by Mel Hurtig, a nationalist Liberal, and is run today by his heir apparent the non elected Maude Barlow, she too is a nationalist Liberal. It was to be the nucleus of a new Nationalist Social Democratic political party much like the New Political Initiative (NPI). The lack of democratic organization and top down personality cult does not hinder the involvement of young activists.

In relation to the anti-capitalist movement these activists are not really anarchists as much as non-aligned leftists. They have no party to join so they start their own. Complete with mutual inter personal ground rules and common ideological viewpoints, the non-aligned leftist is not an anarchist as much as a consumer of left wing viewpoints, many undeveloped and undefined.

This was clear from the Sven Robinson NDP Leadership campaign and in some aspects the recent Layton leadership campaign. In the case of Sven Robinson, thousands of young activists, many calling themselves anarchists mobilized in support of Sven’s leadership. They swelled the NDP ranks with young people, who were then smashed and disenchanted when Sven without the courtesy of ‘consulting’ with his troops, crossed the floor and admitted defeat. The impact of this sellout was enormous and created an atmosphere of alienation and disenchantment with social democratic electoral politics that created the New Politics Initiative. But again the NPI while relying on these young activists, relies on a self appointed hierarchy of leaders, Judy Rebick, James Staford and yes Sven Robinson. These media stars are professional paid agitators promoting direct democracy, while practicing politics as usual.

Pierre Ducasse the Quebecois candidate for NDP leadership spoke from a left libertarian position, shocking many, especially with his call to end the parties focus on statist solutions and look at the libertarian alternative of worker/producer, consumer cooperatives. Here was a libertarian candidate for Leader of the NDP, one who faced opposition from the trade union and left establishment in the NDP.

Within the New Socialist Group (NSG) the anarchist milieu did not arise as a left wing critique of founding theoretician Dr. David McNally and his criticisms of anarchism, but as direct action anarchists who support black bloc actions at demonstrations.

Another common thread amongst these self-described anarchists, is that of a fetish for Direct Action and Consensus politics. Were the recent black bloc attacks against the Gap, in Montreal during the August WTO meeting, a protest of their use of Sweat Shop labour or because the Gap is merchandising the circle A and protestor chic clothing. It has its own line of protest chic which happens to be exactly what wearing black and covering your face with a balaclava has become. The social image of the black bloc is too reminiscent of the black shirts of Germany, and in many ways its anonymity and tactics are more akin to fascism then anarchism.

The black bloc vandalism is not followed by any communiqué, we are supposed to telepathically grok what the meaning of their actions are. And in media-ated society this image is that of the old style anarchist bomb chucker. This was also the case of the three activists who pied Ralph Klein, of course this was no Riechstag fire, but like their predecessor Milus Van der Lube, they too failed to issue a communiqué as to what precipitated their actions.

While Cesar may deserve his due, the masses side with the leader when he is attacked which is why fascists engage in armed actions, to increase the calls for law and order and the fuerher principal. Let us not forget the French fascist movement of the 1970’s was known as Action Direct.

Fascism is reactionary content combined with revolutionary emotion. Wilhelm Reich

The fact is that the black bloc is imitating the 1970’s autonomists, who themselves degenerated into Laroucheite style attacks on workers on picket lines. The Italian autonomists attacked striking workers claiming they were the labour aristocracy and the autonomists were the voice of the unemployed, the lumpen, Negri’s “new class” not the mass worker but the social value worker.

Direct Action is not vandalism or destruction of property during demonstrations to make the demonstrations more radical, it is the use of the sit down strike, the use of occupations and squatting, the taking of action, the wild cat strike. If Starbucks workers walked out in a wild cat strike that would be direct action, the trashing of the storefront window is mere vandalism.

Amongst the self-defined anarchist youth are several tendencies, the individualistic, ironically tend to see process as most important, as well as lifestylism. All the old shit of the New Left seventies is back again, communal love fests, white skin privilege, and the need for a nudist vegan bicyclist lifestyle, with a dash of consensus building.

Ah consensus, the anarchists answer to the tyranny of parliamentary procedure, consensus versus Roberts rules. Again we return to the seventies, with this Anti-Mass critique. These anarchists insist all meetings must drag on for hours as each person is asked their opinion, fingers waving in the air in silent appreciation of a point well made, looking a lot like a born again revival meeting only lacking the whoo whoo sound effects of the three stooges. The only problem is that every political point is heard and never critiqued. The local anarchists are great at building united fronts with disparate nationalists, patriarchal religious view, liberals and leftists, but never have their own political position.

The popular Consensus process is not left wing but actually arises from the work of Edward Demming and the Team Management theories of the eighties that were imposed on the working class in order to dumb down and multitask work. There is the rub, the consensus model is used to get workers to buy into being part of a team, a team that opps has to cut back hours of work, numbers of workers, workers self management subverted by capitalism becomes the self management a thousand cuts, but hey we all feel good because we all had input and we reached consensus. Fingers wave whoo whoo.

So where do we go from here? In the anarchist milieu in the US the debate is on that anarchism is anti politics, anti-organization. With the recent anti-war movement the right wing libertarians are suddenly abandoning their neo-conservative/neo-liberal allies, and wanting a dialogue with the anarchist left.

Since Canada is a social democratic country, with a philosophy of social justice, collective as well as individual rights, the appeal of libertarianism comes up when some one tries to tell us where we can smoke, or tries to impose their rules on us. For most of the time, we are in many ways indistinguishable from the rest of the left, except during elections, and even then many anarchists, non-aligned leftists, still hold their noses and vote for the NDP, or Greens, or CP. Anarchists are involved in the NPI but the contradiction of a self appointed leadership of the same old leftwing professional revolutionaries still has not been confronted by those participating in this project.

We need a debate and a dialogue as to what the hell it means to be an anarchist in these movements, what direct action really is ( a good example would be the wave of sit down strikes that spread across North America in 1937, rather than the current tendency to trash the G@P).

We need to look at the appeal that Pierre Ducasse had with his libertarian economic proposals of worker/consumer coops within the NDP milieu.

Where anarchists belong to existing political parties, socialist, green, NDP, etc. and in the unions, we need to ask what it is we are doing and why.

Within the broader social movements, struggles against poverty and homeless activism, animal rights, feminism, gay rights, paganism, etc., again we need to articulate what anarchism means in these movements.

So far the articulation of anarchism on the left has been the nihilist response of Marlon Brando in the Wild Ones; “What’cha rebelling against Johnny?”
“ I dunno, what’cha got?”

Published in Any Time Now, Winter 2003 as part of a larger discussion on
Anarchism and the Left.


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BC MORE FLOODING EXPECTED
When Surging Floods Meet Expanding Pipelines

The impact of last week’s deluge sends a sobering message, say engineers and activists.

Zoe Yunker 23 Nov 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Zoë Yunker is a Vancouver-based journalist writing about energy and environmental politics. She works with The Tyee as a Tula Foundation Immersive Journalism fellow. Follow her on Twitter @zoeyunker.

Construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline near Hope, BC, in October. The pipeline is currently shut down due to massive floods and landslides that hit the province last week. Photo by Jonathan Hayward, the Canadian Press.


Romilly Cavanaugh stood at the edge of the Coquihalla River north of Hope, watching big trees snap off the bank like blades of grass in a lawn mower. Some of those not swept away held dead fish in their branches three metres off the ground — a reminder of what came before.

Cavanaugh and her fellow engineers had been sent into the chaos for a sole purpose: to watch the Trans Mountain pipeline through the flood of 1995.

Over that week they held vigil in torrential rain because the pipe, usually buried in a thick blanket of soil and rock, was bare and moving up and down in the river “like a piece of cooked spaghetti.”

That was new to her. “You don’t expect metal structures to be moving.”

On the other side of the river was a less visible danger. Enbridge’s Westcoast gas pipeline also had escaped its casing, leaving it at the mercy of rushing water.

Cavanaugh left her job at the company decades ago and now works as an independent environmental engineer. But such memories worry her. “I’ve been watching the news for the last couple days, just praying that we don’t see an oil spill on top of everything else we’ve already seen.”

“It was chaos. And it’s even worse now.”

After massive floods and landslides hit the province last week, the Trans Mountain and one of three Enbridge pipelines were shut down, although oil and gas continued to sit in the pipes.

So far, neither company has reported a leak, but Trans Mountain confirmed in a statement yesterday that the pipeline has sustained damage.

“There are some areas where Trans Mountain will need to restore or cover over the pipe or make other repairs to ensure integrity of the line where it has been exposed due to flooding,” the company said in a statement.

It added that in some areas, rivers began flowing over the pipeline right of way. Workers are now attempting to redirect rivers into their normal channels.

“If all planning and work continues to progress and no further issues with the pipeline are assessed, Trans Mountain is optimistic that we can restart the pipeline, in some capacity, by the end of the week,” the company stated on Monday.

The restart would depend on access to equipment, weather and there being no new “findings of concern,” it added.

The Enbridge pipeline affected by flooding resumed operations yesterday.

Trans Mountain has said its pipeline expansion now being constructed is designed to withstand a 10-per-cent increase in flood activity to account for climate change. Research suggests that will likely be insufficient.

The Trans Mountain pipeline that is being twinned traverses one of the country’s main drainage basins — and flooding hotspots — in the Fraser-Lower Mainland region.

The Coquihalla and Coldwater rivers, which Trans Mountain follows, “are the most dangerous spots for a potential spill from a flood like this,” said Cavanaugh.


“The rivers are really fast moving, and the pipeline is super close to the river — it goes under it in several locations.”

When completed, Trans Mountain’s expansion project will triple the amount of oil flowing through its pipes to over 890,000 barrels per day.

Mayuk Manuel, a member of the Tiny House Warriors, a movement resisting the Trans Mountain expansion project, reports seeing Trans Mountain construction sites abandoned on the highway driving up to Hope.

In some regions, empty pipeline trenches had been turned into muddy rivers.

“There was so much erosion from how fast the water was moving,” she said. “How risky is this? Are we willing to take that risk?”

Kai Nagata, energy and democracy director at the Dogwood Initiative, said the construction zone has sustained damage. “The path of construction has been just hammered by debris slides and covered in mud in a bunch of different places, and the access roads are washed out.”

The government-owned project has faced three delays in just over a year, pausing for safety incidents, COVID and wildfires. That’s upped an already-dubious investment, said Nagata.

“The whole equation around using public money to build Trans Mountain deteriorates every time the project encounters a delay, and this is a significant delay with no end date in sight.”

Crews working on the project in the Coquihalla and Merritt regions have been redeployed to get the existing line back into operation, said Trans Mountain in an emailed statement, adding that it had not evacuated any of its work camps.

‘We account for this’

Dharma Wijewickreme, a professor in geotechnical engineering at the University of British Columbia and founder of the Pipeline Integrity Institute, is firm in stating, “Based on the available information, I think it’s fair to say pipelines are one of the safest ways of transporting fluid over long distances.”

But Wijewickreme also acknowledges the risks that floods pose to pipeline infrastructure.

Key among those issues is the power of soil, which under landslide and flood conditions can push the pipeline in different directions from underground.

“When that happens, the pipelines will be subjected to deformations,” he said. Such pressures can cause the pipe to pop up or bend.

The type of soil also presents a risk factor, said Wijewickreme. Areas with soft sedimentary soils, like the Fraser Valley, can increase risks to the line.

And when buried underneath rivers, pipelines are at risk of “scouring,” as fast-moving rivers scrape off the rock and topsoil meant to keep pipelines buried underground.

Concrete river weights were placed above Trans Mountain pipeline exposed in the Coquihalla River after flooding in 1995.

None of these dangers are new, said Wijewickreme. “When you design pipelines, normally as engineers, we account for this.”

He described a number of new methods he and colleagues use, including burying pipes deeper underneath waterways and reinforcing pipeline walls. Engineers also design pipelines so that they’re thicker in areas where the pipe has to withstand greater pressure, like under river crossings.

Still, flood-related spills happen.

In June 2013, Alberta suffered a major flood, triggering two spills linked directly to the disaster. That included a sour gas leak on Legacy Oil and Gas’s company’s line, caused by a puncture from floating debris to an exposed pipeline. The leak led to evacuation of 2,100 residents living nearby.

Later, a spill in northeast Alberta on Enbridge’s Wood Buffalo pipeline system spilled around 750 barrels of crude oil. At the time, the company pointed to heavy rainfall that led to the kind of underground soil movement that Wijewickreme highlighted.

When floods block access

Back at the riverbed during the flooding of 1995, Cavanaugh and her team watched with trepidation. If they did witness a leak, there would be little to do but warn those downstream.

That’s the danger of compound disasters like oil spills and floods happening simultaneously, she said. Clean up crews are subject to safety precautions and won’t be sent into a disaster zone to quell an oil spill.

“If there’s a spill, an evacuation, or if the spill occurs in a fast-moving river, no amount of equipment will help you if you can’t get there,” she said.

Road access presents another issue. Although Trans Mountain has access to networks of back country roads and bridges leading to the pipeline right of way, those roads can easily become obstructed.

In the 1995 flood, Cavanaugh said damage to roads and bridges “took years for them to recover.”

During the National Energy Board hearings for Trans Mountain expansion project, the Sto:lo Collective raised concerns about the risks of natural hazards such as flooding and landslides in the Fraser Valley, citing incidents like the floods on the Fraser over the decades.

Trans Mountain responded saying that the project was designed to withstand hazards and would “implement mitigation measures where avoidance was not possible.”

But Cavanaugh questions the power of cleanup measures. An effort that managed to salvage 10 to 15 per cent of leaked bitumen mixed with toxic diluting agents would be considered “successful spill response in a river,” she said.

So far, B.C.’s devastating flood hasn’t triggered any pipeline ruptures, but the climate crisis promises to make floods more severe, and more frequent.

As Tara Troy, associate professor in hydrology at the University of Victoria, puts it, “If a flood is bad luck, then climate change increases your probability of bad luck.”

In seeking approval of its pipeline expansion, Trans Mountain committed to meeting provincial requirements that the pipeline be designed to withstand a level of flooding at one-in-200-year levels on water crossings, with higher standards on three individual rivers.

Flooding in the Merritt region last week likely surpassed that level, said Brett Eaton, a fluvial geomorphologist at the University of British Columbia.

It’s also unclear whether those design standards apply to sections of pipeline that don’t cross water bodies, but may run alongside them, and became inundated by water in the floods Cavanaugh witnessed, and last week.

Trans Mountain was not able to provide clarification by press time.

And the company’s proposed design fix to account for a 10-per-cent increase in flood activity from climate change might not be sufficient.

A 2021 study of the climate impacts of flooding in Canada found that the Fraser-Lower Mainland region would see a 20-per-cent increase in 200-year floods in the near future, and a 30-per-cent increase in such floods from 2061 to the end of the century.

Nagata says there’s an obvious need to reassess risks posed by the Trans Mountain pipeline and expansion.


What’s at Stake with the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion?

READ MORE

“Nobody expected the Coquihalla to just melt,” he said, “All of the concerns that have been raised by critics of the project over the last 10 years I think have to be looked at again and taken seriously.”

Wijewickreme remains optimistic that pipelines can be the safest way to transport fossil fuels and other chemicals, as long as those who design and build them pay attention to climate science.

The way weather is trending, he said, damages “could be more than anticipated at the time of design.”

Cavanaugh is less sanguine. The engineer watches the current devastation and reflects back to the flood of 1995 that left her shaken. Last week’s deluge is “on a completely different scale,” she said, not only in terms of levels but areas affected.

“Instead of funding the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion we should be reinforcing infrastructure and planting trees and looking for jobs and things for people to do,” she said. “It’s very frustrating.”

New discovery of sunscreen-like chemicals in fossil plants reveals UV radiation played a part in mass extinction events

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

 

IMAGE: ALISPORITES TENUICORPUS THE POLLEN GRAIN USED IN THIS WORK. NOTE A HUMAN HAIR IS APPROXIMATELY 70M SO THE SAMPLES ANALYSED ARE ABOUT HALF THE WIDTH OF A HUMAN HAIR. view more 

CREDIT: PROF LIU FENG FROM NANJING INSTITUTE OF GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY

New research has uncovered that pollen preserved in 250 million year old rocks contain compounds that function like sunscreen, these are produced by plants to protect them from harmful ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation. The findings suggests that a pulse of UV-B played an important part in the end Permian mass extinction event.

Scientists from the University of Nottingham, China, Germany and the UK led by Professor Liu Feng from Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology have developed a new method to detect plant’s sunscreen-like compounds in fossil pollen grains. The research has been published today in Science Advances.

The end-Permian mass extinction event (250 million years ago) is the most severe of the big five mass extinction events with the loss of ~80% of marine and terrestrial species. This catastrophic loss of biodiversity was a response to a palaeoclimate emergency triggered by the emplacement of a continental-scale volcanic eruption that covers much of modern-day Siberia. The volcanic activity drove the release of massive amounts of carbon that had been locked up in Earth’s interior into the atmosphere, generating large-scale greenhouse warming. Accompanying this global warming event was a collapse in the Earth’s ozone layer. Support for this theory comes from the abundant occurrence of malformed spores and pollen grains that testify to an influx of mutagenic UV irradiation.

Professor Barry Lomax from the University of Nottingham explains “Plants require sunlight for photosynthesis but need to protect themselves and particularly their pollen against the harmful effects of UV-B radiation. To do so, plants load the outer walls of pollen grains with compounds that function like sunscreen to protect the vulnerable cells to ensure successful reproduction.” 

Professor Liu Feng adds: “We have developed a method to detect these phenolic compounds in fossil pollen grains recovered from Tibet, and detected much higher concentrations in those grains that were produced during the mass extinction and peak phase of volcanic activity.”

Elevated UV-B levels can have even further-reaching and longer-lasting impacts on the entire Earth System. Recent modelling studies have demonstrated that elevated UV-B stress reduces plant biomass and terrestrial carbon storage, which would exacerbate global warming. The increased concentration of phenolic compounds also makes plant tissue less easily digestible, making a hostile environment even more challenging for herbivores.

Summarising the groups findings Dr Wes Fraser based at Oxford Brookes University commented: “Volcanism on such a cataclysmic scale impacts on all aspects of the Earth system, from direct chemical changes in the atmosphere, through changes in carbon sequestration rates, to reducing volume of nutritious food sources available for animals.”

  

Photograph of the field area the fossil samples come from.

CREDIT

Prof Liu Feng from Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology

JOURNAL

Science Advances

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Dying in the Sun: direct evidence for elevated UV-B radiation at 2 the end-Permian mass extinction

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Jan-2023

Fossil pollen 'sunscreen' proves role of ozone depletion in largest mass extinction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

 

IMAGE: THE IMPACTS OF OZONE DEPLETION AND ELEVATED UV-B LEVELS ON THE TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEM view more 

CREDIT: CONOR HAYNES-MANNERING, UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Scientists from China, Germany and the UK led by Prof. LIU Feng from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) have revealed that pollen preserved in 250-million-year-old rocks contains abundant compounds that function like sunscreen but are produced by plants to protect themselves from harmful ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation.

The presence of these compounds suggests that a pulse of UV-B played an essential role in the end-Permian mass extinction event.

The study was published in Science Advances on Jan. 6.

The end-Permian mass extinction event (250 million years ago) is the most severe of the big five mass extinction events, with the loss of ~80% of marine and terrestrial species. This catastrophic loss of biodiversity resulted from a palaeoclimate emergency triggered by continental-scale volcanism that covers much of modern-day Siberia. The volcanic activity drove the release into the atmosphere of massive amounts of carbon that had been locked up in Earth's interior, thus generating large-scale greenhouse warming.

Accompanying this global warming event was a collapse of the Earth's ozone layer. Support for this theory comes from the abundant occurrence of malformed spores and pollen grains that testify to an influx of mutagenic UV irradiation.

Plants require sunlight for photosynthesis but need to protect themselves and particularly their pollen from the harmful effects of UV-B radiation. "To do so, plants load the outer walls of pollen grains with compounds that function like sunscreen to protect vulnerable cells to ensure successful reproduction. Without the 'sunscreen' compounds, forests could have been sterilized, leading to the collapse of the terrestrial ecosystem," said Prof. Barry Lomax from the University of Nottingham.

"We have developed a method to detect these phenolic compounds in fossil pollen grains (Alisporites-type) recovered from southern Tibet and detected much higher concentrations in those grains that were produced during the end-Permian mass extinction and peak phase of volcanic activity," said Prof. LIU.

The researchers found an increase in UV-B-absorbing compounds (UACs) that coincided with a spike in mercury concentration and a decrease in carbon isotopes in the latest Permian deposits, suggesting a close temporal link between large-scale volcanic eruptions, global carbon- and mercury-cycle perturbations, and ozone-layer disruption.

Elevated UV-B levels exerted far-reaching and long-lasting impacts on the entire Earth system. Recent modelling studies have demonstrated that elevated UV-B stress reduced plant biomass and terrestrial carbon storage, thus exacerbating global warming.

In addition, increased concentration of phenolic compounds also makes plant tissue less easily digestible, making a hostile environment even more challenging for herbivores.

"Volcanism on such a cataclysmic scale influences all aspects of the Earth system, from direct chemical changes in the atmosphere, through changes in carbon sequestration rates, to reducing the volume of nutritious food sources available for animals," said Dr. Wes Fraser from Oxford Brookes University.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abo6102 

ARTICLE TITLE

Dying in the Sun: direct evidence for elevated UV-B radiation at the end-Permian mass extinction

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Jan-2023