Independent scientist resigns from pesticide regulator over transparency concerns

Story by David Thurton • CBC -  Thursday, July 20,2023

Scientists who have advised Ottawa's pesticide regulator say it could be exposing Canadians to chemicals at unsafe levels — and one has resigned from the agency, citing concerns about transparency.

Both researchers told CBC News they're calling for changes at Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA). They say the agency relies on an "obsolete" system that could be allowing pesticides with worrisome impacts on nature and human health to remain in use.

"I am not 100 per cent confident that all the pesticides (that were approved), that they are all safe," said Valerie Langlois, a researcher and professor at the University of Quebec's National Institute of Scientific Research.

Langlois studies the impacts of pesticides and plastics on the health of fish, frogs and birds. She also co-chairs the PMRA's science advisory committee.

The federal government set up the committee in 2022 in response to pressure to reform the PMRA. Environmental groups had argued the agency was relying on outdated science and was being unduly influenced by the pesticide industry and food producers.

Health Canada defended the reputation of its pesticide regulator.

"(The) PMRA has a robust pesticide regulatory system, which is globally recognized. It takes its role as a regulator seriously and the pesticide review process used by the PMRA remains fully rooted in science," spokesman Mark Johnson said.

Regulator's scientific advisor resigns

Bruce Lanphear shares Langlois' views. Until June, Lanphear and Langlois co-chaired the PMRA's science advisory body.

Lanphear, a public health physician who studies fetal and early childhood exposure to environmental toxins at Simon Fraser University, said he became frustrated with how the regulator withheld information from the scientists on the committee. He resigned from the advisory panel in June and his resignation letter was shared widely by the non-profit Centre for Health Science and Law.

"I have little or no confidence that the scientific advisory committee can help PMRA become more transparent or assure that Canadians are protected from toxic pesticides," Lanpher wrote in that letter.

Speaking to CBC News, Lanphear said the regulator's methodology for assessing pesticides is "obsolete" because it relies on old assumptions that are no longer valid.

Among other things, he said, it assumes there are safe levels or thresholds for chemicals that increase the risk of cancer.

"What we now know for some of the most widely studied and widely disseminated chemicals, like lead … like asbestos, is that there aren't safe levels," Lanphear said. "And yet we continue to regulate chemicals as though there are."

"I don't have confidence because PMRA is relying on obsolete methods. They aren't being transparent on how they're regulating chemicals.

"Stuff that should have been banned ten years ago and only were slated for a full ban this year indicates we aren't keeping up the with the science."

Lanphear said studies show that chronic low-level exposure to harmful chemicals increases the risk of children being born premature and developing leukemia, and of autism-related behaviour and ADHD.

"What's at stake here is increased risk of various chronic conditions," he said.

Langlois sais she remains on the committee and is working with the regulator to help it reform.

Is industry controlling the regulator?

Lanphear and others worry the pesticides industry is exerting undue influence on Canada's pesticide regulator.

A group representing Canada's food producers, pesticide makers and plant biotech firms denies that suggestion.

"It's disappointing to see the former co-chair of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency's Scientific Advisory Committee making unfounded allegations about industry influence on the regulation of pesticides in Canada," said Crop Life CEO Pierre Petelle in a statement sent to CBC News.

"As an industry, we hold ourselves to the highest standards when it comes to the integrity of scientific data we provide to regulators around the world."



Bottles of Roundup herbicide, a product of Monsanto

 (Jeff Roberson/Associated Press)

Radio Canada reported in 2021 that Health Canada proposed to increase the permitted amount of glyphosate that can be detected in food after manufacturers Bayer and Syngenta requested it. The outcry that followed prompted the government to bring independent scientists into the agency.

"What we are facing right now is a regulator that is heavily dominated by industry actors, especially chemical companies and pesticide user groups," said Laura Bowman, a lawyer with the environmental law group Ecojustice.

On Wednesday, Health Canada announced it has appointed a new co-chair for its science advisory committee to replace Lanphear.

Eric Liberda, a professor at the School of Occupational and Public Health at the Toronto Metropolitan University, will join Langlois in leading the independent advisory committee.

Despite agreeing with Lanphear's stance, Langlois said she is not leaving the committee because she believes change is still possible at the regulator.

"I would say that PMRA is changing for the good, and we, as the members of the committee, will make sure of it," Langlois said. "And if I am resigning too, it's because there is no action that are being taken."

She said she hopes to see changes at the regulator within the year.

Canada wants US skilled workers - and they are interested

Sam Cabral and Nadine Yousif - BBC News, Washington and Toronto
Wed, July 19, 2023 

Leon Yang says the US needs to update its immigration policies if it wants people like him to stay.

When Leon Yang was 16, he moved by himself from Xi'An, China to the US, to study in a country where he believed that, if he worked hard every day, he could get where he wanted.

Fascinated by airplanes and everything else that flies in the air, he developed a passion for aerospace that took him from high school in Greenville, South Carolina to New York University (NYU).

With a mechanical engineering degree under his belt, he is now responsible for the soil compactor line at a construction equipment company in Atlanta, Georgia.

But nine years on from his life-altering decision, he has lost faith that he is still competing on a level playing field.

"For the past three years, I've had recruiters from major companies reach out to me, 10 to 20 a week," he claims.

As soon as they find out he is on a visa in the H1-B specialty occupation category, however, "most of them walk away", he said.

The H1-B allows foreign-born, US-educated individuals to work in the country for three to six years, but requires sponsorship by an employer and often provides no meaningful path to permanent residency.

This week, Mr Yang, now 25, submitted his application for a new Canadian programme that offers open work permits, for up to three years, to H1-B visa holders and their immediate family members.

The measure, a temporary effort to attract skilled and high-tech US workers to the country, only opened on Monday morning. By Tuesday, it had already reached its initial cap of 10,000 applicants.

Canada's immigration minister Sean Fraser announced the new work permit programme in June.

The burst of applications is a sign of mounting frustrations among skilled workers in the US who feel trapped in the limbo of a legal immigration system that they see as outdated and unfriendly.

When his visa expires, Mr Yang says he will have few options. He fully intends to move to Canada if he is accepted by the programme.

"I will be treated not equal, but fair compared to other competitors in the job market and that's one of the things I've missed so much in the past three years," he told the BBC.

Mr Yang is hardly alone in feeling that way. Thousands of skilled foreign nationals either fail to make the cut for the H1-B visa or, when chosen, spend years waiting for a chance at the permanent residency green card.

Demand for the visa category "massively" outstrips supply, said Madeline Zavodny, a University of North Florida economics professor who studies immigration and the future of the US labour market.

When it was established by the US Congress in the year 1990, only 65,000 foreign nationals could apply for the visa each year.

That limit has since been raised only once - to 85,000 - which Ms Zavodny says is "way too small".

"Employer demand has risen, immigration has become much more common and the US workforce hasn't grown enough to keep up with employer demand," she said.

The crush of applicants also prompted US immigration authorities in 2014 to switch from a first-come, first-serve process to a randomised lottery system.

The result, according to Ms Zavodny, is that the US is losing graduates of its own universities who want to stay but are forced to return to their home countries or go elsewhere for employment.

"The impressive thing about Canada is how nimble and flexible they are," she said. "They are constantly innovating their immigration policies, while the US has not for decades."

Why Canada aims to bring in 1.5m immigrants by 2025


Canada adds million to population inside a year

It remains to be seen whether Canada will extend the cap for its work permit programme or seek to make it permanent.

But a spokesperson for its ministry of immigration told the BBC it believed there were likely more than 400,000 eligible applicants at any given time.

"This temporary policy is intended to facilitate career development and mobility for tech workers, expanding the range of opportunities available for skilled workers to advance their career in the North American tech sector," communications advisor Julie Lafortune said.

"The immense interest in Canada's new H1-B application stream is a strong indication of just how competitive Canada is on the global stage."

Ron Hira, a research associate with the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute think tank, says the H1-B programme is "a mixed bag" that sometimes rewards "the best and brightest" but largely benefits workers with skills already abundantly available in the US.

His research also suggests employers, like technology and outsourcing companies, are exploiting the visa category to hire migrant workers they routinely underpay and place in poor working conditions.

And if terminated, workers on the visa have only 60 days to secure new employment.

"It's not a big surprise that some H1-B workers want to escape and maybe think that Canada will be a better option for them," Mr Hira said.

"If we want immigrants," he added of the US, "we should be offering them green cards, not placing people in situations where the employer controls them."

A Canadian citizenship ceremony

He warns that it is far too early to know if Canada has made a good decision, in spite of the optics, and points to its lack of screening criteria for the open work permit as well as mass layoffs in the US tech industry.

"We don't know what mix of workers have applied," he said.

"It could be that some of them are very highly skilled. It could be that some of them have ordinary skills and they're just trying to escape a bad situation."

In fact, the longer that H1-B visa holders remain in the US, the more their concerns of getting a raw deal may intensify.

Those who seek green cards run up against the limited quotas allotted by nationality.

"The wait is so long now that, functionally, a new applicant from India is not going to get a green card in their lifetime," said David Bier, the associate director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank.

The problem is compounded for those with families, as their children lose eligibility for the green card as dependents when they reach the age of 21 and must leave the country.

"If your kids are having to leave the country, you might want to consider going to a country that would welcome you and your family," said Mr Bier.

"The Canadian offer is: you come, immediately get to work for any employer you want and you're going to have a clear path to permanent residency to stay. That is a very attractive offer."

Soumya, 42, a financial services employee in New Jersey, is one Indian national who has applied for the Canadian work permit.She claims the stress and anxiety borne out of the green card "waiting game" is "killing a lot of the enthusiasm that people initially came [to the US] with".

"If people live in a country for 10 years, and they're still not sure whether they'll get to stay, that's not the feeling someone should have," she said.

Immigration detention continues in Canada despite the end of provincial agreements


Linda Mussell, Lecturer, Political Science and International Relations, University of Canterbury  Jessica Evans, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan University

THE CONVERSATION

Wed, June 14, 2023 a

The peace arch monument on the Canadian side of the Canada-U.S. border crossing, in Surrey, B.C. Several provinces will no longer allow the CBSA to detain immigrants in provincial jails. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Despite its reputation as a refugee-welcoming and multicultural country, Canada imprisons thousands of people on immigration-related grounds every year. Many of these people are held in provincial jails under agreements between the provinces and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Several Canadian provinces are terminating their immigration detention agreements with the CBSA.

In 2022, British Columbia became the first province to review the immigration detention system and end its agreement with the CBSA. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia have since followed suit. Québec and New Brunswick have also recently announced they’re ending their agreements.

Provincial jails are notorious for their poor conditions. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have found the detention of persons without criminal charges in these jails is unjust.

According to the CBSA’s data, the majority of immigration detainees posed no risk to public safety in 2021-22 .

Read more: The detention of migrants in Canadian jails is a public health emergency

Facilities where immigration detainees are held across Canada. (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International)

While these provincial terminations signal a move in the right direction, they do not mean an end to immigration detention in Canada.

We’ve been studying the recent regional shifts in immigration detention in North America. Advocates have worked hard to place pressure on provincial governments to end their agreements with the CBSA. To maintain this momentum, action is needed at the federal level.
Immigration detention

The CBSA makes contracts with provinces to deliver immigration detention under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This means the agency can detain permanent residents, foreign nationals and refugee claimants and has sole discretion over where detainees are held.

That might be a provincial prison, immigration detention centre, RCMP detachment, a port of entry, inland enforcement cell, immigration holding centre or federal prison.

The CBSA has sweeping powers including arrest, detention and search-and-seizure without a warrant. It is the only major law enforcement agency without independent civilian oversight to review policies and investigate misconduct.

Figures from the CBSA show that the number of immigration detainees in Canada has increased every fiscal year between 2016 and 2020. More than 32,000 people were detained during that time period. Between 2019 and 2020, 8,825 people were detained, including 136 children, 73 of whom were under the age of six.

In many cases, the CBSA has separated children from their detained parents. This is a violation of international law and goes against the best interests of the child. The CBSA does not track how many children are separated from parents.

A protest at the Surrey Immigration Holding Centre in April 2020 calling for detainees to be released during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Prisoners’ Justice Day Committee Vancouver)

Research has found that even brief amounts of time imprisoned is associated with increased stress, depression and anxiety. Migrants with mental health conditions are more likely to be detained in provincial jails and in isolation, where their conditions tend to worsen. Mental health issues become a barrier for release and are then used to justify continued detention.

Immigration detainees endure harsh conditions including solitary confinement and no set release date. Since 2013, more than 1,623 detainees have been held for longer than a year.

People from racialized communities, particularly people who are Black, are subject to profiling by the CBSA and imprisoned for longer periods.

With provinces ending agreements, the CBSA has indicated it will transfer more detainees to immigration holding centres operated by the CBSA. In our research, we have found that the CBSA is considering building more holding centres to expand its capacity to imprison people across Canada.

A graph showing where immigration detainees in Canada come from and how long they have been detained. (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International)

Federal government must also act

New rules under the Safe Third Country Agreement came into effect in March 2023. These rules bar migrants seeking entry to Canada via the U.S. from claiming asylum after crossing the land border. They make it more dangerous for people to cross and increase the risk of being detained.

The end of provincial agreements is not the end of immigration detention. Rights violations will continue regardless of where people are held. The ability to detain people for administrative purposes, the lack of a legal limit for detention and absence of oversight are all problems that remain in place.

Importantly, this change may provide impetus for the privatization of immigration detention, something that has been raised as a concern south of the border.

Federal changes are needed to end immigration detention, including practices like solitary confinement, imprisoning families and indefinite sentences.

The CBSA released imprisoned people at unprecedented rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is already an Alternatives to Detention program. While the current alternative is not without problems and continues the surveillance of migrants, it’s a step in the direction of humane treatment.

There must be greater community-based case management and funding for community supports as an alternative to detention. Through community engagement, we can prioritize housing, health care and education, and help migrants and asylum-seekers navigate the bureaucratic and legal systems. The focus should be on providing support, rather than policing and imprisonment.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.

It was written by: Linda Mussell, University of Canterbury and Jessica Evans, Toronto Metropolitan University.

Read more:

Roxham Road: Asylum seekers won’t just get turned back, they’ll get forced underground — Podcast

How smaller cities can integrate newcomers into their labour markets

Montreal refugee advocacy groups, migrants begin 3-day protest march to Roxham Road

CBC
Sat, June 17, 2023 

Protesters in Montreal took off for Roxham Road on Saturday. They will walk in three 25-kilometre stretches and are expected at the border on Monday. (Rowan Kennedy/CBC - image credit)

Despite the rain trickling down Saturday morning, about 100 protesters gathered at La Fontaine park in Montreal with plastic rain ponchos, umbrellas, signs and flags to set off on a three-day march toward Roxham Road, in the Montérégie.

Refugee advocacy groups, migrants and supporters will be walking 73 kilometres to protest the recent closure of Quebec's irregular border crossing to asylum seekers arriving in Canada from the U.S.

"It's a symbolic walk for us," said Maryne Poisson, the director of social initiatives at Welcome Collective, a group that helps asylum seekers in Montreal.

Poisson says she meets families every day that walked or hitchhiked from places like Brazil, Chile and other countries in "horrible conditions," suffering relentlessly along the way.

"So this is a super small walk, but we're doing it thinking about them," she said.

Refugee advocacy groups and migrants delivered speeches at La Fontaine park Saturday before taking off.

 (Rowan Kennedy/CBC)

Claudia Aranda claimed asylum in Canada after fleeing persecution in Chile. She says refugee rights are a matter of life and death.

"I walk because human rights are rights of all people … human rights are not relative," she said.

Protesters will walk in three stretches, roughly 25-kilometres each. They will stay under church roofs overnight and are expected at the border on Monday.

Supreme Court upholds controversial agreement

The start of the journey comes a day after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is constitutional — at least as it relates to the right to life, liberty and security.

The agreement, which came into force in 2004, stipulates that asylum seekers must make their claims in the first safe country they reach, allowing Canada to turn back most asylum seekers coming from the U.S.

Roxham Road, a well-travelled unofficial border crossing for asylum seekers, was previously exempt from this treaty, which only covered official border crossings. A renegotiation of the agreement expanded the pact in March to cover the entire land border, closing the loophole.

Lauren Lallemand, co-director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, argues the situation will only get worse now that the border is closed. She wants to see the agreement withdrawn altogether.

"We've seen that there are people who have died trying to make irregular crossings. So this isn't just a matter of an agreement, it's really a matter of life and death for vulnerable migrants," she said.

Before the new treaty went into effect, the Canadian government reported that since December of 2022, about 4,500 people were crossing through Roxham Road every month.

On Friday, the top court sided with the Canadian government which argued the U.S. is a safe place for migrants, despite groups saying they face deportation and detention there.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court did not, however, rule on whether the STCA violates Section 15 of the Charter of Rights — the section that guarantees equality under the law.

Refugee groups have argued the U.S. often denies refugee claims that cite gender-based violence as the reason for the claim.

The case was ordered back to Federal Court for a review of the policy in light of equality concerns. Poisson says there's still hope the agreement will be scrapped when it's back in court.

'Closing our borders is not the solution'

Marisa Berry Mendez, a campaigner with Amnesty International who left for Roxham Road Saturday, argues Canada must step up.

"We have international human rights obligations to respect the right to asylum," she said.

"Closing our borders is not the solution; it doesn't stop people seeking protection. It just makes them take more dangerous routes to get there."

In a statement following the Supreme Court's decision Friday, Canada's immigration minister said the government will continue to promote safe and regular pathways.

"We will continue to work with the United States to ensure that the STCA reflects our commitment with respect to our domestic and international obligations in its application," said Sean Fraser.

For her part, Poisson is hoping asylum seekers are given the opportunity to plead their case in Canada.

"We don't want them to have status right away; we want them to have a chance to be heard, to have a chance to explain why they need protection," she said.

Explainer-How a Canada Supreme Court ruling could affect U.S.-Canada refugee flows


FILE PHOTO: Roxham Road, an unofficial crossing point from New York State to Quebec for asylum seekers in Champlain

Sat, June 17, 2023 
By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Supreme Court on Friday upheld a border pact under which Canada and the United States send back asylum seekers crossing the land border, finding the agreement does not violate asylum seekers' right to life, liberty and security of the person.

But it sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether the contested agreement violates asylum seekers' right to equal treatment under the law.

The ruling came as Canada was taking steps to more tightly manage its border with the United States. In March the two countries amended the Safe Third Country Agreement so it applies to the length of the 4,000-mile (6,440-km) land border, rather than just at formal crossings.

WHAT DOES THE RULING SAY?

The Supreme Court found that built-in "safety valves" that allow some asylum seekers to avoid being turned back in certain circumstances mean the agreement does not violate their right to life, liberty and security of the person under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But the court also found an unaddressed question when it comes to whether the agreement violates equality rights.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The agreement stands and the case will return to federal court to determine whether the agreement violates asylum seekers' right to equal treatment under the law.

Refugee advocates claimed the agreement violates that right because they argue the United States is less receptive to refugee claims predicated on gender.

A lower court could find in favour of refugee advocates or the government, a decision that could be appealed either way. The case could wind up back at the Supreme Court, lawyers told Reuters.

WHAT PRECEDENT DOES THE RULING SET?

It could prompt courts to pay closer attention to challenges under the equal treatment section of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, said lawyer Jamie Chai Yun Liew, who represented some of the parties intervening in this case.

"Now the court is saying, 'You should do the work.' ... By ignoring it, you're dismissing very important claims."

HOW HAVE MIGRANT MOVEMENTS CHANGED?

The expansion of the Safe Third Country Agreement is already having an impact on migrant flows into Canada. In March, Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted 4,173 asylum seekers on their way to file refugee claims in Canada after crossing irregularly. Last year, almost 40,000 people crossed into Canada between formal crossings to file refugee claims.

Between March 25, when the amendments took effect, and May 28, 618 asylum seekers crossed between ports of entry and were referred to the Canada Border Services Agency, according to agency figures. As many as 283 were sent back to the U.S., 247 were allowed to file refugee claims in Canada under exceptions to the agreement, and another 88 were being processed.

At the same time, the number of people caught crossing southbound into the United States spiked in March to 992 from 630 in February and stayed high in April, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol figures show.

The number of people apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol near the northern border in the first seven months of fiscal 2023, which began in October, is more than double the total for fiscal 2022, the figures show.

A Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson could not give a reason for the increase.

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Denny Thomas and Jonathan Oatis)

Biden's plan to fix a broken border? Asylum seekers should remain in Canada


Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY
Sat, June 17, 2023 

President Joe Biden's plan to fix a broken border just got the green light in Canada.

For months, Biden and his Canadian counterpart Prime Minister Justin Trudeau relied on their recently-hatched plan to restrict asylum seekers entering either country. But in Canada, the plan, a renegotiated Safe Third Country Agreement, faced a court challenge on the basis of whether the U.S. was in fact a safe country to return people due to its dysfunctional immigration system.

On Friday, Canada's highest court unanimously upheld in part that the agreement was safe to send asylum seekers back to the U.S., but the unanimous decision kicked back the issue of gender-based persecution, which the U.S. has not recognized in asylum claims, to a lower court.

The decision comes as liberal governments in both countries have sought to limit migrants amid mounting pressure from conservatives, while Biden has tried to walk a fine line on immigration – between opening legal pathways and border enforcement – in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets President Joe Biden as he arrives at Parliament Hill, Friday, March 24, 2023, in Ottawa, Canada. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The agreement with Canada better aligns the northern border with the asylum process at the southern border after Biden ended the pandemic-era Title 42 policy, once invoked by former President Donald Trump, in May. At the same time, Biden implemented new measures to stem the flow of migrants. Now, for people seeking to enter the U.S. from Canada or Mexico, they must seek asylum in the first country they set foot in, either in Canada or Mexico.

“We now have consistency between our policies at the northern and southern borders,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a U.S. think-tank, told USA TODAY.

Chishti called the agreement a “Biden-Trudeau success,” with negotiations occurring in 2022 that now largely survived Supreme Court of Canada scrutiny with Friday’s ruling. Biden and Trudeau unveiled their agreement in late March, during Biden’s first official visit to Ottawa, to clamp down on immigration in both countries.

Still, the debate around immigration won’t end especially as people flee from their homes in Venezuela, Haiti and other parts of Central and South America, said Christopher Kirkey, the director of the Center for the Study of Canada and Québec Studies at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

“This Supreme Court ruling may say this agreement is valid and is consistent with the Canadian Constitution, but the truth is that’s a bit of a snapshot,” he said

“This is going to continue to be a vexing public policy issue for Ottawa and Washington,” he said.

FILE - In this Aug. 7, 2017, file photo, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers greet migrants as they enter into Canada at an unofficial border crossing at the end of Roxham Road in Champlain, N.Y. A Canadian court on Wednesday, July 22, 2020, invalidated the country's Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. Under the agreement, immigrants who want to seek asylum in Canada at ground ports of entry from the United States are returned to the U.S. and told to seek asylum there. But if they request asylum on Canadian soil at a location other than an official crossing, the process is allowed to go forward.

 (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

What's the Safe Third Country Agreement between US and Canada?

The 2004 Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) allows the U.S. and Canada to turn away asylum seekers from either country because both were designated as “safe” countries to send people. Under the agreement, Canadian officials could return asylum seekers seeking to enter their country from the U.S., and vice versa.

For two decades, the agreement had a loophole that allowed asylum seekers to enter Canada from the U.S. via irregular ports of entry, such as at Roxham Road, a remote path in Upstate New York that passes forests and farms leading to Quebec. Roxham Road became a pathway for tens of thousands of people for two decades to cross into Canada, which led to upsurges in people crossing at the rural road from the U.S.
Why are migrants headed to the northern border?

The Trump administration enacted hardline immigration policies such as moving to end Temporary Protected Status, resulted in thousands of people – many from Haiti – heading to Canada for asylum. The waves of asylum seekers have shifted from continents and countries, though many have chosen to leave a backlogged U.S. immigration system that takes years to get in front of an immigration judge.

In contrast, Canada has been seen as more welcoming and easier to resettle in the diverse country of 40 million people.

Migrants gather in an informal camp in El Paso, north of the Rio Grande and south of the border wall near Gate 40, on May 5.

During Biden's visit to Canada, he and Trudeau announced they would tighten the agreement to turn away irregular crossings, forcing people to regular ports of entry to make their claims under limited exceptions allowing them to enter. Under the new deal, Canada agreed to offer 15,000 more people from Western Hemisphere countries to seek asylum.

The agreement took effect March 25 at midnight, a day after Biden and Trudeau announced their new deal, officially closing Roxham Road. However, the two countries signed the expanded policy a year ago, as early as March 2022, per U.S. Federal Register rulemaking.

In 2022, close to 40,000 people crossed into Canada from the U.S. seeking asylum, according to Royal Canadian Mounted Police figures. Experts have noted nearly all came via Roxham Road, into Quebec.

In 2023, crossings into Canada, nearly all through Quebec, totaled more than 4,000 each month. But by April, the first full month the new agreement took effect, it dropped to 85 people.

Early in 2023, the U.S. saw increases in people crossing from Canada near a remote stretch of border from New Hampshire to New York, prompting outcries from House Republicans who formed the Northern Border Security Caucus.

Observers have warned that the new agreement, in closing Roxham Road, will force people to make more dangerous treks into either country, much like the border with Mexico.

The numbers at the northern border are far fewer than the southern border. The 2022 fiscal year saw U.S. border agents encounter 109,000 people at the northern border, compared to 2.3 million at the southern border.

How was the agreement challenged?

Canadian immigrant advocates and some left-leaning politicians questioned whether the U.S. was indeed a safe country under Canadian law because of the American process to claim asylum and the conditions of immigration detention systems that migrants often face when they’re rejected from Canada.

Conservative Canadian politicians and officials in French-speaking Quebec, meanwhile, have sought to clamp down on border crossings. Quebecois officials have complained about the disparate burden their province faced in accommodating asylum seekers.

The agreement faced court challenges for violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by sending people to the U.S., which often places migrants in immigration detention or deports them to the country they fled. The Supreme Court of Canada heard oral arguments in October.

“The Supreme Court holds the regulations designating the United States as a safe third country do not infringe refugee claimants’ rights to liberty and security of the person,” the Supreme Court's brief read.

The court upheld the basis that the U.S. was a safe country, though allowed the appeal in part, which said “refugee claimants may be exempted from return to the United States” if their charter rights for liberty and security were at risk.

Families of asylum seekers are led into the Ramada hotel in Yonkers May 15, 2023. The families were being housed in New York City.

What else did the court decide on?

In the unanimous court decision, Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote that designating the U.S. as a safe third country doesn’t breach the charter. However, he did agree with the risk of detention of migrants returned to the U.S., and with some aspects of detention conditions. The court returned the issue of gender-based persecution, which advocates say the U.S. flouts international refugee standards, back to the lower federal court.

“We have to ensure this is not a race to the bottom,” said Maureen Silcoff, a Toronto immigration attorney who co-counseled to intervene in the case on behalf of the Canadian Association for Refugee Lawyers. “We see in multiple countries and regions that the door is being sealed, but we have to act in accordance with international standards, not what’s politically expedient at the moment.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) speaks on border security and Title 42 during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 11, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Biden restricts asylum claims at both borders

The updated agreement complements Biden administration policies at the United States’ other border, which has seen an influx of people seeking asylum, many from Venezuela and parts of South America.

In May, the U.S. ended Title 42, a public health law implemented by Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict people from entering the U.S., including with asylum claims.

For two years, Biden kept the policy in place before recently returning to prior immigration law that allows asylum seekers to present credible fears with asylum officers or before an immigration judge. The administration also now uses expedited removal for people who enter the U.S. without permission. Now, people seeking asylum are expected to use an app to schedule an appointment at ports of entry.

Eduardo Cuevas covers race and justice for the USA TODAY Network of New York. He can be reached at EMCuevas1@gannett.com and followed on Twitter @eduardomcuevas.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden's deal to keep migrants out of US greenlit by Canada court

Mass Immigration Experiment Gives Canada an Edge in Global Race for Labor

Randy Thanthong-Knight
Sun, June 18, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- At a time industrialized countries around the world are confronting declining birth rates and aging workforces, Canada is at the forefront of betting on immigration to stave off economic decline.

A country about as populous as California has added more than all the residents in San
Francisco in a year. Last week, Canada surpassed 40 million people for the first time ever — with growth only expected to continue at a rapid pace as it welcomes more immigrant workers, refugees and foreign students across its borders.

For Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration, the massive immigration experiment is a way to broaden the labor market as global competition for skilled workers intensifies. It also reflects a longer-term ambition for Canada to expand its international presence and emerge from the shadow of the neighboring US — similar in size by land, but home to about eight times the population and almost 12 times the gross domestic product.

“We have lots of space for people to come and occupy,” said Usha George, a professor in Canadian immigration policy at Toronto Metropolitan University. “In order to expand our agricultural, industrial and technological base, we need more people to come here.”

Now, as people flow into the country like never before, Canada has an immediate challenge: how to propel growth in rural regions in dire need of newcomers while minimizing the strains to urban centers already bulging with people.

The rewards are apparent. Population gains have boosted hiring and consumption, helping the economy withstand a rate-hike campaign by the Bank of Canada — so much so that the central bank this month had to resume tightening after a pause. Yet in a country that’s long been home to one of the world’s hottest housing markets, the government’s plan has drawn criticism that increasing immigration targets merely boosts economic output without raising living standards for individuals.

Real GDP per capita has been little changed over the past decade, and is expected to fall from its 2022 peak, based on Bank of Canada output forecasts. Productivity growth has been stagnant, and disposable income hasn't kept up with home prices.

Even some prominent, pro-immigration economists are now saying Canada is going too far, too fast.

“It doesn’t make sense in this very short period of time to make such a rapid increase,” said David Dodge, a former Bank of Canada governor who decades ago worked on a system that’s a genesis of the current immigration program. “The speed of that adjustment exacerbates the costs and reduces the additional productivity because there’s less time for people to get adjusted.”

Fastest Growth

The Trudeau administration has set a target of adding about half a million permanent residents each year. Last year, foreign students, temporary workers and refugees made up another group that’s even larger, bringing total arrivals to a record one million. The inflow pushed Canada’s annual population growth rate to 2.7%, the fastest pace among advanced economies and rivaling developing nations Burkina Faso, Burundi and Sudan.

“You have to realize that if you don’t embrace immigration, there are whole hosts of social and economic consequences that will impact your community negatively,” Sean Fraser, Canada’s immigration minister, said in an interview. “The ability to successfully integrate people in large numbers doesn’t demand that you welcome fewer people, it demands that you advance smart immigration policies.”

Nearly one in four people in Canada are now immigrants, the largest proportion among the Group of Seven nations. At the current pace of growth, the smallest G-7 country by population would double its residents in about 26 years, and surpass Italy, France, the UK and Germany by 2050.

The looming threats of an aging population — leading to dwindling tax revenue and shrinking budgets — are playing out in different ways around the world. France’s plan to raise the retirement age by two years to 64 led to nationwide protests. Germany risks having 5 million fewer workers by the end of the decade, and already is struggling with strains in its industrial-heavy economy. Japan, where the government has long resisted immigration, is facing acute labor shortages, a rapid population decline, and dying rural towns.

In the US, immigration is a divisive political issue that’s becoming even more polarizing as thousands of migrants traverse the Mexican border daily.

By contrast, Canada’s residents have long been welcoming of newcomers, thanks to the country’s framing of immigration as an economic policy and a relatively isolated geography that limits illegal crossings. Since 1967, it has relied on a system where immigrants are assigned points based on their age, education, employment opportunities and English or French abilities, allowing the country to target skilled workers.

But immigration has largely tilted toward Canada’s larger cities, which have developed strong ethnic communities that have in turn attracted more newcomers seeking a sense of belonging. Over a one-year period to July 1, the largest population centers had a net gain of more than 600,000 people from international migration, compared with just 21,000 settling in smaller communities.

That’s only strengthened real estate demand in cities where housing was already in short supply, raising homeownership barriers and pricing millions out of the market — hurting both international migrants and current residents, especially younger generations.

“We’re a free country. We’re not going to direct migration patterns to say you have to move to remote places,” said Bob Dhillon, founder and chief executive officer of Calgary-based real estate company Mainstreet Equity Corp., who’s a Sikh immigrant. “But we can encourage new immigrants and give them incentives to go to different parts of Canada other than big cities.”

His city exemplifies some of the strains. Even after a rise in interest rates last year, a benchmark measure of Calgary home values climbed almost 3% in May from a year earlier to a record. Prices are up almost 28% from just five years ago.

That’s in part because of a sudden surge in residents in Calgary’s home province of Alberta: Last year’s 3.7% jump in population — matching the pace of Niger, the world’s fastest-growing country — was unexpected even for a region known for its oil boomtowns.

Mortgage broker Matt Leggett said he has never seen this much housing demand since moving to Calgary nearly two decades ago. Leslie Echino, owner of Annabelle’s Kitchen, has spent months looking to add a third location in one of the city’s fast-growing suburbs, but newly empty commercial spaces are usually snapped up within days.

Rental-property builder Bucci Developments went from offering a month of free rent two years ago to now having a wait list for its units. The company is trying to catch up with soaring demand, doubling its construction target with plans to add four more towers near downtown.

“It’s these unexpected surges that force us to retool,” said Mike Bucci, the company’s vice president. “I want boring predictability. If you’re consistent, the industry can catch up. But it’s going to take us at least three years to do so,” he said, referring to the time it takes his firm to build an apartment building.

Those type of real estate shocks risk eroding support among Canadians for immigrants, said David Green, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics.

“We’re opening the door to the same kind of problems that we see in other countries,” Green said. “The hard-right wing is going to pick this up and run with it, and at least a modicum of what they’re going to say on the housing market strains is going to be true. That’s going to give credence to the rest of their narrative. This is a very dangerous game.”

A Canadian Value

Fraser, the immigration minister, said the government is trying to address the strains with measures such as regionalizing immigration programs to allocate people to areas that have more capacity, and a program to bring in more people who have skills that are in great demand, such as health-care workers and homebuilders.

“This is going to help us bring the skills that we need into the economy to help alleviate some of the social pressures rather than exacerbate them,” he said.

Public support also is holding strong. Canadians look at immigration “as a value and not a policy,” said Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, which conducts an annual survey on the subject. In the most recent one, almost 70% of respondents said they disagree with the statement “overall, there is too much immigration to Canada,” the highest since the poll began in 1977.

Among the 27% of survey respondents who agreed there’s too much immigration, the most common reason they gave was a threat to culture.

Concerns about the changing demographic are playing out in Quebec, Canada’s second-most populous province. The French-speaking region has resisted raising its permanent resident targets, keeping the pace at just half that of the federal government on a per capita basis. Premier François Legault has said that the province wouldn’t accept large increases of newcomers like the rest of the country on concern it would lead to a decline in French language, even though that could mean further losing its demographic weight within Canada.

At the same time, industry groups have repeatedly called for higher immigration to add more permanent workers to the economy. Quebec businesses are increasingly turning to temporary staff to fill jobs, with the number of temporary foreign workers jumping 65% in just three years.

Across all provinces, many accreditation and job processes can’t expand fast enough to cope with or take advantage of the rapid increases in newcomers. That has resulted in many skilled immigrants being forced to work at entry levels or wait around for their foreign qualifications to be recognized.

More than half of recent immigrants were admitted under the economic category — meaning skilled workers and entrepreneurs who are “selected on the basis of their ability to become economically established in Canada.” While these people are a key focus of the policy, alongside refugee resettlement, the number of temporary workers has soared in recent years, leading to criticism that they will hurt wage growth and increase income inequality.

But both high- and low-skilled jobs are needed throughout Canada, where the job market remains tight. The “vast majority” of immigrants are contributing to the economy, said Kevin McNichol, CEO of Prospect Human Services, which helps Albertans and newcomers get jobs.

“This isn’t a deficit game,” he said. “They’re not taking stuff away. They’re adding, and in adding then our economy grows for everybody, which means more work, more jobs, more money.”

Embracing Change

Those types of benefits are becoming clear in Nova Scotia, which knows the pains of a shrinking population. Up until about a decade ago, communities were slowly dying after key industries like steelmaking and coal mining shut down, taking working-age people with them. They left behind an older population and towns that struggled to support themselves.

The biggest Atlantic province now wants to double its residents to 2 million by 2060 — an ambitious target considering it took more than 150 years for Nova Scotia to reach a million people, in 2021.

In Pictou County, where Fraser is from, the influx of foreign business owners, health-care professionals and factory workers have changed the area dramatically. In less than a decade, the county added a mosque, Syrian restaurants and an Asian grocery store. It's also getting a Mexican restaurant later this year, to be run by former temporary worker Anabel Cameron.

“We as Canadians have a very wealthy neighbor to the south of us, and we want all the things that they want, but their population and tax base allow them to have really good roads, really good services and all these wonderful things,” said Jim Fitt, founder and CEO of Velsoft, an e-learning and training software company based in the county, which relies on immigrants to help serve its clients worldwide. “The only way we’re going to be able to achieve that is if we have a bigger tax base.”

Nova Scotia also is at the forefront of breaking down barriers for newcomers to work in jobs that match their potential. When Bahati Maganjo arrived in Pictou County from Kenya in 2021, she could only work as a continuing care assistant at a retirement home despite having been trained as a nurse. She is now part of the pilot fast-track program to integrate internationally-educated nurses, and is expected to start working in her profession by July.

“With my colleagues and patients, I see the appreciation for what I’m bringing to the table,” said Maganjo, who was born in Rwanda. “I can’t imagine having to wait years before I could make a contribution here.”

The provincial capital of Halifax, with a population of about 480,000, has set a target to increase its residents by 10% in 2027 and by 35% in 2037. Its expanded talent pool was key in attracting companies like Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., HuMetis Technologies Inc., Avanade Inc., and Wattpad Corp. in recent years.

The population gains contributed to a 9.3% annual jump in Halifax’s rents for a two-bedroom apartment as of October, the largest increase of any major Canadian city. But to Mayor Mike Savage, the strains are worth it.

As he put it: “Problems of growth are easier to manage than problems of stagnancy.”

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Canada Wildfires Heat Up Climate Change Pressure on Trudeau


Laura Dhillon Kane, Kendra Pierre-Louis and Kevin Orland
Sat, June 17, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Canada’s enormous wildfires and the acrid haze they’ve spread across North America have widened a schism in the country’s politics.

While politicians in Alberta and Saskatchewan — Canada’s oil-producing heartland — and Conservatives in Ottawa can no longer deny climate change, they continue to stand in the way of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitions. That could leave one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers without a credible pathway to reduce carbon emissions at the same time that the impacts of climate change send its forests up in smoke.

The fires have burned through more than 13 million acres, an area twice the size of Massachusetts, putting this year on track to be the worst on record. As the blazes force tens of thousands from their homes and cloud the air with toxic smoke, Canada’s opposition leader has called for an end to the country’s carbon tax. Trudeau’s chief rival, the populist Conservative Pierre Poilievre, spoke for hours in Parliament last week in an attempt to stall the ruling Liberal Party’s budget. During his speech, he reiterated one of his signature promises should the Tories regain power: “Technology, not taxes.”

The pledge, which resonates deeply with Poilievre’s base in the Prairie provinces, illustrates the challenges ahead for Trudeau as he attempts to neutralize the country's carbon emissions by mid-century. Canada has the world’s third-largest nationally proven crude reserves, and oil and gas represent as much as 7% of the country’s GDP and a fifth of its goods exports. While the record-breaking wildfires have driven home the costs of climate inaction, politicians are still seizing upon the fears of Canadians about the short-term costs of action.

Because Canada has a very carbon-intensive economy, many voters, carbon-producing industries and the politicians who are allied with them have been resistant to climate policy, said Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor who studies environmental policy at the University of British Columbia.

Trudeau has pledged to cut emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by the end of this decade and reach net zero by 2050, but Harrison sees two major political barriers to reaching those goals. The first is that she doesn’t see how the targets can plausibly be achieved without a cap on oil and gas production. Trudeau’s government, under intense industry and political pressure, has refused to entertain a production cap. Instead, it has pledged C$12.4 billion ($9.4 billion) in tax credits for building carbon capture systems, even though most efforts to scale up the technology to date have not been successful.

The second challenge is Trudeau’s carbon price. The system imposes fees on major polluters and fossil fuel sales. The federal government then returns 90% of the revenue from the fuel levy to Canadians through rebate checks.

Harrison said that she expects Canadians to become accustomed to the rebate checks and eventually bristle at Poilievre or a future Conservative leader threatening to axe the tax. A recent report from Parliament’s spending watchdog found that most households will get back more than they pay in 2030 even though the levy is slated to rise. But in the meantime, the policy is not well-understood, and many Canadians who are already struggling with inflation recoil at anything that increases the already high cost of gas.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in an interview that Canadians want his government to take action on climate change in a way that is mindful of affordability while creating jobs and economic opportunities for the future.

“It certainly can’t all be about sacrifice,” he said. “But I think Canadians also are cognizant of the fact that the costs associated with climate change are becoming more apparent every day — the costs of the wildfires, the costs of the floods, the emerging costs as we see the glaciers recede. We must address climate change or the costs of climate are going to be enormous and at some point they're going to be undefeatable.”

The Canadian Climate Institute, an environmental policy nonprofit that receives federal funding but does independent research, released a report last year chronicling the economic impact of climate change. It found that GDP could fall by 12% and incomes could drop 18% by century’s end if emissions continue to rapidly rise, among a slew of other dire economic impacts.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been reluctant to tie the fires to climate change. When asked at an event last week whether she accepted that climate change is driving the worse wildfire season, she largely deflected the question and instead spoke about how human carelessness — such as cigarette butts tossed from car windows — has caused many of the province’s fires.

She said she’d work with Trudeau on reducing emissions, but that his current plans, including the goal of a net-zero electrical grid by 2035, are “unachievable.” Alberta’s oil sands represent about 97% of Canada’s oil reserves, producing about 3.25 million barrels of crude a day, more than the output of Kuwait. Current oil-sands production is up about 40% from a decade ago, and though it has fallen from a peak in 2020, it may begin increasing again next year after the completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Smith’s office didn’t respond to a request from Bloomberg to discuss the matter further. Conservative politicians at the federal level declined requests for comment. Yet even some of Smith’s cabinet ministers have acknowledged the role that climate change is playing in the worsening fire season.

“We look at the number and intensity of the fires this year and the widespread fires that we have — it’s something that we haven’t seen before,” Forestry Minister Todd Loewen said in response to a reporter’s question at a briefing in May. When pressed on what’s causing those changes, he added: “Definitely man has had an effect on our environment.”

Lynn Johnston, a forest fire research specialist with Natural Resources Canada, was even more blunt: “This is climate change action.”

Beyond the scope of the fires, perhaps the most shocking hallmark of this year's fire season has been the sheer number of fires happening simultaneously. A study published earlier this year links the expansion of fires in Western Canada, including in British Columbia, to greenhouse gas emissions.

“In the case of Alberta and Nova Scotia, they do typically have a spring fire season,” said Johnston. “However, that fire season is slowly creeping earlier and earlier. And under human-caused climate change, we're predicting that there's going to be a couple more weeks to a month, longer fire seasons in a lot of these areas.”

The blazes have hit during a crucial year for the trajectory of the country’s emissions targets, said Anna Kanduth, a research lead at the Canadian Climate Institute. The country is expected to unveil draft regulations for a number of policies that are a major part of its climate plans, including ones aimed at reducing oil and gas emissions, increasing access to clean electricity and stronger methane rules.

While the wildfires have pushed climate to the top of the agenda right now, momentum could dissipate when the smoke recedes. The University of British Columbia’s Harrison noted that 600 people in her province died during an extreme heat wave in 2021, which also saw wildfires consume the town of Lytton, B.C. But two years later, the national debate about climate policy remains largely where it was.

“Everybody said, ‘This will be the wake-up call.’ And maybe this one will be,” she said. But there's no way to slow climate change without some sacrifice, she added. “I think voters have to have an honest conversation that there is no magic here.”

Bloomberg Businessweek

Canada’s fires are getting fiercer – and rebuilding is becoming a challenge

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, June 18, 2023

Mona Crowston had only minutes to gather her belongings before the wildfire which had been burning for days at the edge of her town swept down towards her house. The 84-year-old already had a suitcase packed, just in case.

Related: Burned to the Ground: the Canadian village incinerated by record temperatures

“I made sure to tidy up what I could before we left. The last thing I wanted was to return home and have a messy room,” she said.

She and her husband left on June 30, 2021. Months later, when they finally returned to the site of their home of 47 years, all they found was charred and crumbled foundation.


Most of the Canadian town of Lytton had also been destroyed.

This year’s spring wildfire season has been the worst on record in Canada, with more than 5m hectares of land burned – a figure higher than the entire 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022 seasons combined.

Already this year, more than 200 homes have been destroyed. And with warmer and drier months are still to come, the experiences of those who saw their lives destroyed in previous wildfires raise larger questions about both Canada’s ability to rebuild after disaster, and its commitment to victims in the months and years after the flames are extinguished.

A wildfire seen from a Canadian forces helicopter surveying the area near Mistissini, Quebec, on 12 June. 

Photograph: Canadian Forces/Reuters

In the days leading up to the Lytton fire, the surrounding region of British Columbia had broken heat records – at one point nearly reaching 50C (122F) – and the arid land was more parched than normal.

“The wind that day was all just tremendous,” said Crowston. “And then there was the heat. Everything was so dry.”

When winds finally whipped the fire into Lytton, it only took 30 minutes for most of it to be destroyed. When residents returned briefly to tour the damage, they found the main commercial strip had been turned to dust. Homes and vehicles had seemingly vaporized.

Nearly two years after the fire, similar conditions have set in across Canada, with typically damp regions left bone-dry. Unseasonably hot weather has shattered records in dozens of communities And areas that typically don’t experience roaring blazes – from Vancouver Island in the West and Quebec in the west – and have been left charred.

JR Adams, a member of the Lytton First Nation, bore witness to the destruction of his own community.

And when he saw the recent news coverage of wildfires in Nova Scotia, painful memories came flooding back.

“My heart dropped. I knew there was nothing I could do at that moment, except just feel for the people who lost their homes. I was there. I know. I know how they’re feeling. And to see it on the news again, oh God.”

Crowston, Adams and scores of others were displaced and homeless for months.

Flight, loss and homelessness exerted a heavy toll on Adas’s mental health.

“For months, I’d wake up in a room that wasn’t my home. It took a lot of time to accept this. It made facing every day difficult. I didn’t know how to sleep. Even today, I’m scared to sleep,” said Adams.

Earlier this year, the Fraser Valley Current reported on the slow efforts to rebuild Lytton. The village “remains a flattened heap of dirt and concrete”, it reported, with much of the space fenced off. Residents complained of bureaucratic delays and a feeling among they had been forgotten. Work crews have found Indigenous artifacts at excavation sites, further slowing the process. As a result, next to nothing has been rebuilt yet.

With hotter and larger fires projected to sweep across the Canada in the coming years, the collective failure to rebuild in Lytton raises questions about the preparedness of governments to respond to large crises.

“I spent 62 years in Lytton. And I was hoping to rebuild. I just wanted to get home and get on with my life. I miss it terribly,” said Crowston.

Related: ‘Like Nagasaki’: devastating wildfires will only get worse, new book warns

A few months before the fire struck, the couple had replaced their bathroom – part of a bigger plan to renovate the property. Just days before the blaze, they had installed a new stained glass front door. “At least we got to enjoy that door for a few days,” she said.

But as the months in temporary accommodation dragged on – one elderly resident died still hoping to return home – Crowston and her husband eventually came to the sad conclusion that there was no going back.

In November, they bought a home in the town of Ashcroft, an hour north of Lytton in a region still within the range of wildfires.

“I’m trying to get settled. But you build your life somewhere. You have community, memories,” said Crowston. “When I looked out the windows of my home in Lytton, you saw mountains. Here, all I see are hedges.”

Glenn McGillivray, the managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, said that Canada no longer had systems in place to help speed up rebuilding efforts after natural disasters.

“That’s not happening anymore. We’re getting really big events, costly events, and they’re coming really, really close together. And in some cases, they’re overlapping,” he said.

Canada’s climate means that the country’s construction season is relatively short, and reconstruction is often complicated by the logistical challenges of bringing large crews to isolated communities. Wildfires also pose unique challenges, such as the way vinyl siding and plastics melt into the ground, turning the soil toxic.

In Halifax, where 200 buildings were recently destroyed by wildfires, contractors warn it could take three years to rebuild.

“We just cannot keep this up. Disasters are getting larger and more costly. We’re hitting a point where we’re going to spend more on recovery than we are on building new construction in Canada. That’s the trend and we just can’t keep it up. Something has to happen,” McGillivray said.

While the community of Lytton is under the jurisdiction of the province, the Lytton First Nations reserve is under federal oversight, speeding up elements of the rebuilding process. In September, Adams got word that the modular homes on the Lytton First Nations reserve were ready.

“The moment I got the key, I instantly packed up everything in my room. I left my hotel that night with my car packed with everything. And coming back, it was a rush. I was able to restart my routine again, to be with my family and after a year and a half, to almost feel home,” said Adams. “We’re finally all together, back on our reserves. And I feel like watching the progress happen. It’s like we’re taking our land back. And it’s exciting to watch.”

But widespread news coverage of fires blazing across the country means the looming threat of future wildfires is never far from Adams’ mind.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize how quickly things can change and how it can change your life,” said Adams. “People need to understand how fast Mother Nature can take control.”

Europe and Asia Remain Oceans Apart – At Least on Security

European officials came to the SLD with two goals: to garner regional support for Ukraine and portray Europe as a reliable security partner in the Indo-Pacific. One was notably more successful.

By Dominique Fraser
June 13, 2023

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, June 4, 2023.

Credit: Flickr/ IISS

This year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security conference, featured the most high-level European delegation in the conference’s 20-year history. In addition to Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, six European defense ministers were in attendance.

European participation was driven by two objectives: to garner regional support for Ukraine and portray Europe as a reliable security partner in the Indo-Pacific.

On the first, the Europeans hoped for increased condemnation of Russia’s invasion and buy-in to Ukraine’s peace plan, which boils down to a full Russian retreat to pre-2014 borders and retributive justice. They also hoped to convince South Korea and Japan to send lethal equipment to Ukraine, and perhaps even to broaden the number of countries in the region willing to implement sanctions – although chances of that have always been slim.

The message they tried to impart was clear: What happens in Europe has security implications in Asia. Kallas warned that “aggression by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council against its neighbor is a threat that has global implications. That is why Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not only a European issue or a regional conflict.”

The reality remains that many in the region – particularly in Southeast Asia – simply do not agree. When they look at Ukraine, they see a regional European war without wider security implications and wish Europeans would stop trying to sell their internal issues as the world’s problems. Japan, which has long stated that Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow and which has expanded its cooperation with NATO, is the exception rather than the rule.

Indonesian Defense Minister and presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto’s peace plan for Ukraine could not be further from what Europe supports: neither a ceasefire and the start of negotiations, nor a demilitarized zone and formal U.N. referendum are on the table. While the under-consulted proposal raised more than one amused eyebrow, it nonetheless shows that Europe and much of the region remain oceans apart on the issue. While Europe frames the conflict as a global fight against tyranny and promises support for Ukraine “as long as it takes,” the transatlantic partners’ refusal to encourage peace negotiations is seen by many in the region as unrealistic and stubborn.

The second objective of the European delegation to Shangri-La was to sell Europe as a reliable security partner, to “build strategic trust.” This was favorably received even if Europe remains peripheral to the larger regional security debate. At the conference, the European message was one of multipolarity, offering to be an additional prong to avoid a bipolar region dominated by great power competition: “We are not a classic military alliance; we are not a traditional great power throwing its weight around,” Borrell said.

But Europe wants to expand its security footprint in the region. Germany, France, and the Netherlands have pledged to send vessels to the Indo-Pacific next year. Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius used his speech to sell Germany’s Zeitenwende, which he said includes taking more responsibility for the security of Germany’s partners. Heading from Singapore straight to New Delhi, Germany is close to sealing a deal to build six submarines for the Indian Navy in a bid to lessen the country’s military reliance on Russia.

These actions demonstrate just how uneven Europe’s twin goals in the region are. While Asian governments largely do not buy the argument that they have a direct stake in European security, a free and open Indo-Pacific is in Europe’s self-interest. In its 2022 Strategic Compass, the EU affirms that the bloc “has a crucial geopolitical and economic interest in stability and security in the region.”

This reflects a world whose center of gravity has shifted from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. For those based in the region, this has been self-evident for a while. For Europe, used to being the geostrategic focal point and embroiled in security issues from Ukraine to Kosovo, it’s worth experiencing in forums such as the Shangri-La Dialogue.

To be sure, for all the increased military ties, Europe’s stake in the region remains more about economics than security. Outside of its relationship with Russia, China simply isn’t seen as a direct military threat. But for countries in the Indo-Pacific, the fact that the world’s third largest economic power is looking for greater engagement is positive, especially as the EU wants to deepen and diversify its partnerships as part of a “de-risking” strategy away from China.

While the EU’s Global Gateway is seen as little more than a paper tiger, Europe’s interests are in part driving progress on a number of free trade agreements with Australia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, and recently relaunched talks with Thailand. Another upside is that a part of the transatlantic alliance can still talk to China, including on security issues: while snubbing U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu was willing to meet bilaterally with Borrell, Pistorius, and U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, reflecting Europe’s balancing act between its major security guarantor, the United States, and important economic partner China.AUTHORS

GUEST AUTHOR
Dominique Fraser is a research associate at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) in Australia. Her work focuses on the geopolitical relationship between Europe and Asia. She has published extensively in Nikkei Asia, The Diplomat, The Straits Times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and elsewhere.