It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Researchers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have devised a better way to measure how fast sediment flows in rivers—information that can help scientists and planners better prepare for flooding and weather-related events, understand salmon activity and even restore rivers.
“Sediment transport controls the morphology of the Earth's surface—that includes the physical environments of all ecosystems, the beds of rivers and the ocean, and even terrestrial environments,” says SFU professor Jeremy Venditti, founding director of the School of Environmental Science, whose team carried out the study’s research activities in SFU’s River Dynamics Lab.
“Despite this, accurately predicting sediment transport remains a stubbornly difficult problem. Our work examines the granular dynamics of sediment transported by fluid flows, and shows that grain shape plays an important role in sediment transport rates. The model we developed substantially improves our ability to predict sediment transport.”
Bed load sediment transport involves wind or water flowing over a bed of sediment, causing grains to “roll or hop” along the bed. The researchers say sediment is critically important to the life cycle of rivers and understanding its movement has been “notoriously imprecise.”
Researchers decided to look beyond size and density and focused on two particular properties connected to a grain’s shape – its resistance to flow, or its drag, and its internal friction, which plays a part in its ability to slip past other grains.
Both factor into a new mathematical formula which provided predictions that were successfully matched during a series of flume experiments in the SFU lab.
During the experiments a current of water was pumped into a small wooden flume to flow over a bed of sediment with various grain shapes, from round glass beads and chips, rectangular prisms and natural gravel. Measurements of sediment transport, drag, and internal friction of the bed were recorded.
In their paper, the research team notes: "Sediment transport is a part of life on Earth's surface, from the impact of storms on beaches to the gravel nests in mountain streams where salmon lay their eggs. Damming and sea level rise have already impacted many such terrains and pose ongoing threats. A good understanding of bed load transport is crucial to our ability to maintain these landscapes or restore them to their natural states."
Venditti has been leading research into the 2018 Big Bar Landslide that prevented salmon from getting to their Fraser River spawning grounds, to map its effects and mitigate future risks.
IMAGE: ALISPORITES TENUICORPUS THE POLLEN GRAIN USED IN THIS WORK. NOTE A HUMAN HAIR IS APPROXIMATELY 70M 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
IMAGE: THE IMPACTS OF OZONE DEPLETION AND ELEVATED UV-B LEVELS ON THE TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMview 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 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.
As a Red River Métis person and a researcher on freshwater fish futures and Indigenous sovereignty, I believe that these top-down targets and public-private partnerships could do more harm than good to First Nations, Inuit and Métis here, who deserve honest and true recognition of our sovereignty across Canada.
Funding with strings attached
In a report titled We Rise Together, the Indigenous Circle of Experts define IPCAs as “lands and waters where Indigenous governments have the primary role in protecting and conserving ecosystems through Indigenous laws, governance and knowledge systems.”
According to the report, IPCAs can be governed under a spectrum of approaches ranging from one that fully affirms the sovereignty of First Nations, Inuit and Métis as sole rights-holders of a territory to so-called partnership approaches that include hybrid, crown-Indigenous or industry-Indigenous partnerships.
Canada’s combined funding of $1.14 billion for Indigenous-led conservation — and its vocal support of the 30x30 plan — seems progressive, until we look at the federal government’s other investments.
The federal government has simultaneously invested billions in resource extractive industries in Canada, including the $4.5 billion spent to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018.
The Cash Back report published by the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research and education centre, revealed Alberta’s $200 billion debt to the First Nations in the province. This shows that the federal and provincial debt owed to First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Canada far outpaces the pittance offered to support their land protection and to remunerate Indigenous land protectors. Conservation at a cost
Canada’s heavy reliance on officially-supported Indigenous-led conservation to meet its targets further complicates things as these targets could significantly impact human rights.
Some of the world’s most marginalized communities, including Indigenous and local communities in Africa and Asia, face threats of dispossession, lack of access to their rightful natural resources and further impoverishment.
Canada’s reliance on IPCAs to meet its 30 per cent targets, could risk aiding land grabs and human rights violations in the Global South.
On the eve of COP15, a consortium of non-governmental organizations representing Indigenous Peoples in the Global South issued a damning plea about the 30x30 plan, urging policymakers not to fetishize a quantified protected area approach. They pointed out that this would come at the cost of addressing the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss, including colonial capitalist extraction and overconsumption. Tackling the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss
This being said, we must ensure that these IPCAs are not weaponized by states and environmental groups to silence the concerns about the 30x30 plan from Indigenous communities in the Global South who are not necessarily guaranteed the same legal protections that the federally-supported Indigenous-led conservation in Canada pledges.
At a time when public-private partnerships are facing scathing scrutiny in Canada and internationally, the conservation approaches and policies offered to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities by the government also need to be scrutinized.
These approaches and policies should fully acknowledge the sovereignty of Indigenous communities without pressure to exchange autonomy for limited funding and partnership support.
We deserve better than 30x30. We deserve our land back. We deserve honest and true recognition of First Nations, Inuit and Métis sovereignty across Canada. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Canadians are waiting longer than ever for medical treatments, data reveals Yahoo Canada December 9, 2022 A nurse tends to a patient in the Intensive Care Unit at the Bluewater Health Hospital in Sarnia, Ont., on Tuesday, January 25, 2022. Personal support workers in Ontario hospitals were promised last spring that a wage increase introduced during the pandemic would remain permanently on their paychecks. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young (The Canadian Press)
An annual survey of physicians reveals that Canadians have waited longer than ever before for medical treatment this year.
A study from the Fraser Institute, with data collected between Jan. 10 to Sept. 15, 2022, from 855 respondents across 12 medical specialties, found that the median wait time for medical procedures was 27.4 weeks, the longest ever recorded.
Ontario had the shortest wait time at 20.3 weeks while Prince Edward Island had the longest wait time in Canada at 64.7 weeks.
“Excessively long wait times remain a defining characteristic of Canada’s health-care system,” a statement from Mackenzie Moir, Fraser Institute policy analyst and co-author of the report reads.
“They aren’t simply minor inconveniences, they can result in increased suffering for patients, lost productivity at work, a decreased quality of life, and in the worst cases, disability or death.”
It's estimated that across the 10 provinces the total number of procedures people are waiting for in 2022 is 1,228,047.
"This means that, assuming that each person waits for only one procedure, 3.2 per cent of Canadians are waiting for treatment in 2022," the report states. "Physicians report that only about 11.03 per cent of their patients are on a waiting list because they requested a delay or postponement."
October data released by Health Quality Ontario (HQO) on Thursday reveals that patients spend an average of 2.2 hours waiting for their first assessment by a physician in provincial emergency departments.
For patients with a low-urgency medical condition, 72 per cent finish their emergency visit within the target time of four hours. For high-urgency patients, 88 per cent finish their emergency visit within the target time of eight hours.
Monday, December 12, 2022
MINING IS NOT GREEN
Canada’s mining minister wants minerals projects built within a decade Bloomberg News | December 12, 2022 | Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson.
Canada’s mining minister wants critical minerals projects built in less than a decade — spurred on by government efforts to cut red tape.
“We need to get to the point where we can get these mines from concept to production certainly within a decade, and ideally less than that,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a Monday phone interview.
Wilkinson’s comments come days after his ministry published a critical minerals strategy that pledged to review Canada’s approval process for developing mines. Government estimates show it can take up to 25 years for a mining project to become operational. Wilkinson said he expects policy recommendations on streamlining processes within the next 12 months.
The time it takes to build a mine has been a source of concern for mining companies worldwide, given that lengthy approval processes pose investment risks and heightened costs, and is top of mind for many mining CEOs. The head of Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., for instance, said last week that the Canadian government could help the industry with an approval process that ensures projects get done in a timely fashion.
“If we are going to bring supply online at the pace that the world needs to electrify, we need to shorten those timelines,” Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Price said in a Thursday interview. “Getting the approvals pathway right is very important, but we have to look for opportunities to accelerate so we can bring new production to market more quickly.”
(By Jacob Lorinc)
Western countries forge green alliance for getting electric vehicle minerals
Reuters | December 12, 2022 | The founding members of the Sustainable Critical Minerals Alliance. Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson’s official Twitter page
The United States and other western countries on Monday announced an alliance to produce and buy critical minerals from countries with stronger environmental and labor standards, a move that could reduce business with market leader China.
Announced at the COP15 talks on biodiversity in Montreal, the Sustainable Critical Minerals Alliance would support these standards for elements like lithium, cobalt and nickel, Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said.
“Unless China and Russia are willing to put in place … measures required to be able to legitimately say that they are supporting these kinds of standards then it would essentially mean … we will be buying alternatives as we can,” Wilkinson said in an interview.
Wilkinson acknowledged that the voluntary alliance of the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom would not shun China which dominates the market for the minerals used in EV batteries.
“Obviously right now there are some critical minerals that are processed in large measure in China so this will be something that will need to happen over time,” he said.
Western countries have been trying to wean themselves from dependence on authoritarian regimes for strategically important materials. Canada last week unveiled a strategy to ramp up production and processing of critical minerals. In June, the United States and allies set up a partnership aimed at securing supplies.
China said it has taken steps to curb pollution in its mining sector, but has faced criticism.
Mining, along with other sectors are under scrutiny at the Montreal talks due to their impact on nature.
“China is actually free to up its game with respect to environmental standards and with respect to labor standards and eventually join the alliance,” Wilkinson said. “But it would have to make those kinds of changes.”
A strategist from environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the alliance’s support for higher environmental, indigenous rights and labor standards but questioned how it would be enforced.
“Will there be teeth to that? For the moment it’s more like a memorandum,” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist, Greenpeace Canada.
(By Allison Lampert; Editing by David Gregorio)
Canada has dozens of critical minerals. Here are the key ones and how they are used
While the strategy unveiled Friday lists 31 minerals it classified as “critical,” the six that are under the spotlight — lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements — hold “the most significant potential for Canadian economic growth,” according to the federal government.
Those mining sectors will also be the initial focus of the nearly $4 billion in federal investments under the new plan.
Here’s a closer look at those materials, what they’re used for, and where Canada currently stands with each of them.
Lithium
Lithium is currently one of the most sought-after materials in the world. Not only is it a key component in rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, smartphones and computers, it is also contained in metal alloys used in military armour, aircraft, and train components, as well as hydrogen fuel storage containers.
But its use in batteries makes lithium a key mineral for the global clean energy transition.
Although Canada does not produce lithium, it has “large hard rock spodumene deposits and brine-based lithium resources,” from which lithium can be extracted. The new strategy seeks to introduce domestic production facilities that take advantage of those resources.
Canada’s lithium reserves were the sixth-largest in the world as of 2020, but they only account for 2.5 per cent of the global supply. Australia and Chile lead the world in both reserves and production.
“We shouldn’t get too excited that we’re going to be one of the big producers around the world when it comes to mining,” said Jack Mintz, who heads the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
“Hopefully we’ll have enough production that will just satisfy our own needs, but we’re certainly not a big producer by any means compared to other countries like Australia.”
The strategy identifies other ways to extract lithium, including through recycling of lithium-ion batteries via domestic recycling facilities.
Graphite is found in rechargeable battery anodes as well as electric vehicle fuel cells and vehicle brake linings. It is also used in electrical motor components and frictionless materials — key components of wind turbines and other clean technologies.
Canada is among the top global producers of graphite, with several mines in Quebec and Ontario either running, newly approved or under environmental assessment. The Black Crystal Quarry and Plant in British Columbia also mines graphite. Nickel
Another rechargeable battery component, nickel can also be found in solar panels as well as aerospace and military aircraft.
Canada has nickel production facilities in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, making the country one of the leading global producers and suppliers. The country is home to nearly 3 million tonnes of nickel reserves.
Cobalt is primarily found in battery electrodes but is additionally used in turbine engine components, vehicle airbags and magnets. Along with lithium, graphite and nickel, cobalt is among the four main minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries.
The mineral is actually mainly produced as a by-product of nickel mining in Canada, but new projects seek to change that and ramp up production, including a primary cobalt mine in the Northwest Territories and North America’s first cobalt refinery in northern Ontario.
Canada is already a top-five cobalt producer globally, according to the government.
A key wiring material, copper is essential for powering buildings, vehicles, telecommunications and other electrical components. It’s also used in solar panel cells and electric vehicles.
Copper is produced in provinces across the country, unlike many other critical minerals that are primarily found in Quebec and Ontario. Canada is a leading global producer, accounting for nearly three per cent of all copper production in 2020.
Rare earth elements
A group of 15 elements known as lanthanides, rare earth elements are found in some of the most widely-used electronics in modern society, including touch screens, televisions, LED lights and speakers. They are also a key component of permanent magnets, including those used in electric vehicle motors and wind turbines.
Canada has some of the largest known reserves and resources rare earth elements in the world, according to the government, estimated at over 14 million tonnes as of 2021.
In addition to boosting production, the new strategy is also eyeing the potential to extract rare earth elements from recycled magnets.
Although these six minerals will be focused on first, the strategy also mentions a series of other materials that “present notable prospects for the future.”
Those minerals — including vanadium, gallium, titanium, scandium, magnesium, tellurium, sinx, niobium and germanium — can all be found in various clean technologies and other modern equipment. Potash, uranium and aluminum are also highlighted.
The government says the list of 31 minerals will be reviewed and updated every few years.
— With files from Global News’ Saba Aziz and Bryan Mullan
Friday, December 09, 2022
Supreme Court admissions case could upend environmental justice laws
by Alex Brown
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
In recent years, more states have crafted environmental justice policies to help communities of color plagued by polluted air and water, poor health outcomes and limited access to green space.
But now they fear that work could be upended by a pair of pending U.S. Supreme Court cases examining affirmative action admissions policies at universities. If the court strikes down affirmative action, many state lawmakers believe, the ruling could open legal challenges to "race-conscious" laws that seek to help marginalized communities.
"State laws are very explicitly self-aware in acknowledging the past explicit racism that underlies the environmental injustice that we continue to see," said Emily Hammond, an environmental law expert and professor at the George Washington University Law School. "That's heartening, but it's worrisome to see those on a crash course with a different policy agenda to make race neutrality the explicit law of the land."
State lawmakers who have backed such measures say they're carefully watching the Supreme Court cases, and many Democrats worry they'll have to revise a whole slew of state laws to help them survive legal challenges. There's not yet a clear consensus on whether the environmental justice proposals that legislators will consider in their 2023 sessions should be written to exclude race.
"Do I think our environmental justice law hangs in the balance? I do," said New Jersey state Sen. Troy Singleton, a Democrat. "This could have a seismic impact on how public policy is crafted. I would be naive to tell you I'm not concerned about it."
Singleton was among the sponsors of a law, passed in 2020, that requires New Jersey state regulators to consider the environmental and public health effects of facilities proposed in overburdened communities. Among the qualifiers for the "overburdened" label are communities with 40% of residents who are racial minorities or tribal members.
Republicans have largely opposed efforts to address environmental issues through the lens of race, with many characterizing systemic racism as a thing of the past.
"It's just a dangerous trajectory for us to continue to force this conspiracy of racism on all of these decisions," U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican, said last year during a hearing on a federal environmental justice bill, E&E News reported.
Environmental justice advocates note that communities of color face numerous health disparities and outsize exposure to pollution, because of the racist legacy of practices such as housing segregation and the siting of highways, industrial facilities and waste dumps. They've pushed state lawmakers to address those imbalances with investments in air quality monitoring, permitting safeguards, regulatory changes and funding to prepare for the effects of climate change.
Many of those policies, which have passed largely in Democratic-led states in recent years, target such efforts at communities with large minority populations or tribal membership, among other factors such as income and health disparities.
"If you look at which communities are getting dumped on, getting the greatest share of pollution impacts, race is the most potent predictor," said Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who has been dubbed the father of the environmental justice movement. "If somehow you don't take race into account, you are not creating a tool that can get at the heart of the problem."
Legal challenge
The Supreme Court is expected to rule next year on a pair of cases questioning admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Opponents of the policies argue that race-conscious admissions violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law.
Supporters of affirmative action counter that the 14th Amendment was crafted to secure equality for victims of discrimination, noting that the same Congress that drafted the amendment passed its own race-conscious legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration released its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool to steer federal funding to disadvantaged communities. The tool's 21 indicators notably omit race, Grist reported, a calculation that seeks to protect the effort from legal challenges.
Administration officials argued that the factors it included would still send money to communities of color without explicitly naming them. Grist's analysis confirmed that, noting that "many of the criteria that the tool uses—proximity to hazardous facilities, linguistic isolation, and proximity to traffic, among others—are effectively functioning as proxies for race."
A similar approach has been taken in California, which is bound by a 1996 ballot measure that bans affirmative action and considerations of race in public employment and contracting. The state requires that 35% of the revenue raised under its cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases be reinvested into disadvantaged communities, but does not use race in its methodology to identify those communities.
The ballot measure did not explicitly outlaw race considerations in environmental law, said Alvaro Sanchez, vice president of policy at the Greenlining Institute, an inequality-focused nonprofit, but the "shadow" of a potential lawsuit caused its omission. He said the state's screening tool has largely been able to steer funding to communities of color.
Lawmakers prepare
In other states, Democratic lawmakers said they intend to defend the legality of the environmental justice laws they've passed. But some also plan to begin working on alternative wording if race-conscious language becomes unviable.
"Proxies may be the only approach, because it's dead on arrival otherwise," said Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat. "It's infuriating, because there should be no dispute that racism is at the heart of this inequality. When you look at where investment and divestment happens, it's overwhelmingly along racial lines."
Pennsylvania Democrats will take a narrow majority in the state House next session, but with Republicans holding the Senate, it will be an uphill battle to pass environmental justice legislation, Rabb said. Still, he pointed to proposals, such as a bill to require environmental impact assessments for facility permits in burdened areas, that may stand to get more consideration in the House.
Washington state lawmakers passed a pair of laws last year that require state agencies to factor environmental justice into their strategic plans and set up an air monitoring network in overburdened communities. The state's new cap-and-invest program for carbon emissions requires that 35% of revenue be directed to projects in overburdened communities, and 10% of projects must have tribal support.
Democratic state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, a member of the Tlingit tribe and a key backer of the state's environmental justice efforts, said the Supreme Court cases could threaten a broad swath of state laws, as well as tribal sovereignty.
"It just affects every policy across the state that we've developed that targets those who are in critical areas," she said. "We think it's scary for the state of Washington. There will be a heavy lift of going through all of these policies and making proxies to ensure that these laws can still move forward, but if this goes a bad way, that is a step we'll have to work on."
In Maryland, Del. David Fraser-Hidalgo, a Democrat who serves on the Environment and Transportation Committee, is working on legislation related to air quality monitoring, electric school buses and equitable access to electric vehicles. The pending court decision could affect how those bills are written.
"The last thing you want to do on the state level is pass a bill and have it declared unconstitutional," he said. "From the drafting perspective, you're going to have to very closely define economically challenged as opposed to losing X number of years going through the process and then starting all over again."
Some lawmakers remain hopeful that their policies will hold up.
"I'd like to think that we're going to be OK, but I can't really say," said Maine state Rep. Vicki Doudera, a Democrat and member of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee. Doudera helped pass a bill earlier this year that requires state regulators to incorporate equity considerations into their decisions, and to define "environmental justice populations" with factors that include race and ethnicity.
In North Carolina, state Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Democrat who serves as vice chair on the House Environment Committee, plans to propose legislation that would require state regulators to analyze whether permits related to solid waste, air emissions, water quality and animal waste would have a disproportionate impact on communities of color and low-income communities. While the bill is unlikely to earn support from the Republicans who control the statehouse, Harrison said the bill still will be written with the legal threats in mind.
"If the Supreme Court undermines the ability to take race considerations into account when engaged in government action, that's a real problem," she said. "We'll make sure to put protections in place in case the court does something."
Looking ahead
As states begin their 2023 legislative sessions, policy trackers again expect environmental justice proposals to be a major area of focus. Some legal experts think lawmakers should craft those bills with an eye toward potential court challenges.
"The United States Supreme Court has steadily, over decades, limited government power to define harms in race-conscious ways and remediate them in race-conscious ways," said Toni Massaro, constitutional law professor at the University of Arizona. "The legally safest path for states today is to craft laws that redress environmental harms without using race or even tribal status per se."
But Bullard, the environmental justice icon, called on states to redress environmental racism explicitly until a court rules otherwise. And he expressed hope that states would carry on the work even if a ruling went against them.
"I applaud those states that have stepped up to really capture what's happening on the ground," he said. "I'm hoping they will be adaptive and creative and try to get at these problems in some way and not just throw it out the window."
Sean Fraser: 'Unacceptable' that immigrant surgeons are working as taxi drivers
Story by Naimul Karim • Financial Post Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser says Canada’s new immigration plan aims to accept in a record 1.45 million newcomers in the next three years.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said changes to Canada’s immigration program next year will rebalance the world’s “most powerful economic migration system” in a way that will help hospitals, builders and other employers address chronic labour shortages, as opposed to focusing mainly on “highly skilled workers.”
Fraser revealed that he plans to introduce new selection tools earlier this month while unveiling Canada’s new immigration plan , under which the government aims to accept in a record 1.45 million newcomers in the next three years. This is linked to a change in rules made under the express entry system through the Budget Implementation Act that was adopted in the House of Commons in June.
“This is a completely different approach than what has been the case historically, which simply did a draw for the highest scoring people in the system regardless of which sector they were going to work in or which region they are destined to,” Fraser said in an interview on Nov. 23.
The new selection tools will allow Fraser and future ministers to select immigrants to fill job gaps in specific industries and regions. By way of example, Fraser said he can now sift through applications to address New Brunswick’s shortfall of French language educators, Nova Scotia’s chronic lack of nurses, or Ontario’s constant struggle to find enough carpenters.
Economists and business associations mostly lauded Ottawa’s pledge to use immigration to address the labour crisis, as employers went into the summer with a record one million job vacancies, according to Statistics Canada.
Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada governor, said earlier this month that if Canada’a labour pool was larger, he probably wouldn’t have needed to raise interest rates as aggressively as he has this year to contain inflation. That’s because the shortage puts upward pressure on wages and hinders the ability of companies to keep up with demand.
The issue is bigger than volume. While technology companies are generally complimentary of Ottawa’s immigration efforts, other industries complain that the government became too enamoured with recruiting coders and software engineers. At the same time, non-tech immigrants who make it to Canada struggle to have their skills recognized by various professional associations, which hurts productivity because workers are blocked from meeting their full potential.
Fraser vowed to resolve both problems.
“The idea that we have neuro and dental surgeons who are working as taxi drivers … is unacceptable,” the minister said. “It’s really frustrating for me when I meet talented people who have arrived in Canada but are not able to contribute at their full potential.”
One of the professions most in need of workers is home builders, which according to BuildForce Canada , a national organization representing all sectors of the construction industry, are in high demand. The Ontario government last month said the province will need about 100,000 more construction workers this decade to meet its goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031.
An argument against elevated immigration levels is the strain an influx of people could put on cities that are already short of housing stock. Critics argue that increased targets should align with infrastructure plans to ensure that the necessary services are in place to welcome everyone.
Fraser makes the point that by recruiting more construction workers, he can help accelerate the building of more homes, describing the labour shortage in the trades as “greatest bottleneck” to more supply.
When asked about specific plans on the roadmap that links immigration to Canada’s housing growth in the near future, the minister said that would be revealed by the housing ministry and that he didn’t want to “broadcast decisions” that the government hasn’t formally disclosed as yet.
There’s a risk that worries about whether communities can handle a sharp increase in newcomers will test favourable attitudes about immigration. A survey conducted by researchers Leger and the Association of Canadian Studies on 1,537 Canadians two weeks after the release of the government’s immigration plan said about 75 per cent were either somewhat or very concerned about the impact of the increased targets on the housing sector, which saw a steep rise in prices in the last three years, and social services.
A poll conducted by Environics Institute for Survey Research prior to the release of the new immigration plan, however, said that 85 per cent of its respondents felt that welcoming newcomers would lead to economic benefit, which is the highest number recorded by the group in 30 years.
Fraser, who has seen schools and mental health units close down in his home province of Nova Scotia due to depopulation, said he believes that most Canadians support immigration.
“I have seen a number of different polls that indicate a variety of different outcomes,” Fraser said. “Despite the fact that we need to continue to watch closely things like housing and the capacity of our … public services, we also need to be live to the fact that there are very real and severe economic and demographic consequences to not continuing to grow our population.”
Fraser added that aside from the housing and healthcare industries, technology firms were also “singing the same song” of needing more labour. “There is not a tech company that is positioned for growth in this country that I have spoken to, who has access to all of the talent that they need to grow,” said Fraser.
Aside from tackling labour shortage the minister pointed out that there are just three workers for every retiree today, compared seven about 50 years ago, a number that’s likely to decline if Canada doesn’t pursue growth through immigration.
To be sure, that argument is contested by some economists, including Mikal Skuterud, a professor at the University of Waterloo, who said the number of retirements impacting the labour pools has been “overplayed” and that the impact of aging was more of a trend line that led to tighter market conditions rather than a sudden glut of grey-haired workers leaving the workforce in droves. According to Skuterud, immigration is an effective way to dampen the nominal wage growth to keep the wage pace from accelerating too quickly and triggering a wage-price spiral.
Fraser, though, said that at a macro level across the economy, there’s an urgent need to embrace immigration. “T he cost of choosing not to fill those vacancies is enormous to the Canadian economy,” he said.
Canada’s health-care system is under siege. The country is still grappling with an acute crisis in our hospitals stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic while the slow-moving quagmire caused by the country’s aging population threatens to become a larger disaster. Can our system handle it? This joint five-part series produced by the National Post and The Hub looks deep into the world of Canadian health care, not just to identify problems, but to offer solutions for the future.
Efe Türker received his third dose of the COVID vaccine in February and quickly realized he was in for a rougher bout of side effects than he endured from his first two shots.
Türker developed a fever in the evening that got progressively more severe until he fell into a fitful sleep. At 5 a.m., he woke up, shivering in a pool of his own sweat. When he went to wash his face, Türker lost consciousness and collapsed in his apartment, banging his head on the floor as he went down. His dog found him lying there a few minutes later, and was able to wake him up.
Head trauma can result in anything from an uncomfortable bruise, an excruciating concussion or a deadly brain hemorrhage. But Türker did not seek serious medical attention, or even a checkup. Not worth the trouble, from his perspective.
“There’s absolutely no way you see a doctor at any logical time in Victoria, be it a general practitioner, or anything,” says Türker. “I have never seen a doctor since I arrived in Victoria.”
Medical Meltdown
A shortage of practitioners, and laborious wait times, are not a new problem in Canada, but they are especially acute in Greater Victoria, where news reports of walk-in clinics closing down have become a frequent occurrence. Walk-in clinics in the Victoria-proper neighbourhoods of James Bay , Cook Street , as well as the nearby municipalities of Colwood and View Royal , have closed, leaving as many as 3,000 more people per closure without a go-to medical facility.
An estimated quarter of Greater Victoria’s nearly 400,000 residents did not have a family doctor in February. In April, the wait times to see a doctor at a walk-in were the highest in Canada, at 161 minutes .
The story is beginning to look the same across the country. In Hamilton , the city’s hospitals are short 675 workers, in Toronto , paramedics are practising “hallway medicine” in the ERs and in Airdrie , just outside Calgary, staffing shortages are keeping the urgent care centre closed overnight for at least the next eight weekends. Local news broadcasts across the country are packed with stories about wait times, staffing shortages and the frustration these problems are causing Canadians.
Patients wait in hallways due to an at-capacity emergency room during the pandemic at the Humber River Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on Tuesday, January 25, 2022.
Victoria is no longer a cautionary tale, but a microcosm of the rest of the country. Especially frustrating is that Canada once had one of the highest ratios of physicians to population in the developed world.
Canada’s universal, taxpayer-funded, health-care system remains a pillar of national pride, but when compared to the country’s peers in Western Europe, it now ranks near the bottom of the pack. The favourite solution of the federal government and provincial premiers has been to boost funding, but it has created an expensive system that consistently underperforms in delivering quality health care when compared to similar countries.
The Commonwealth Fund’s 2021 report comparing the health-care systems of 11 developed countries, put Canada in 10th place, just ahead of the United States. Canada placed 10th in equity and health-care outcomes, 9th in access to care, 7th in administrative efficiency, and 4th in care processes.
According to the World Health Organization’s pre-pandemic rankings of global health systems in 2015, Canada ranked 30th out of 190 countries. France is ranked number one, while the United States comes in at 37, making Canada out as a lubber, rather than a leader, in providing health care for its citizens among its peers.
According to a 2015 Commonwealth Fund Report , 38 percent of Canadians felt the system worked well, 51 per cent wanted fundamental change, and 10 per cent believed it needed to be totally rebuilt. It would be quaint to still believe nearly 40 per cent of Canadians feel the system worked well in 2022.
As waiting times continue to lengthen , and the number of doctors plummets in many of the country’s leading cities, both the health-care system, and its cherished status among Canadians, is waning. Shortages
Camille Currie is the organizer and founder of BC Healthcare Matters , a grassroots advocacy group that emerged as a result of the province’s medical shortages. Currie says doctors in B.C. face several unique challenges when compared to the rest of the country.
“We have the highest cost of living in Canada,” said Currie in an email. “Our family doctors can’t afford to stay in business here while making the lowest median salary in the country, while 30-50 percent of their pay goes to overhead costs, which are higher here than anywhere else due to our cost of living.”
In 2019, B.C. doctors were described by the CBC as being paid the third-least after their counterparts in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Victoria is annually ranked as one of Canada’s most expensive cities in the country, with higher costs for everyday needs like groceries and energy . High commercial rents are driving long standing businesses out of the city’s downtown.
Currie says the province continues to fund urgent primary care centres, but they are being used as walk-in clinics due to the shortages.
“The people using these facilities are citizens without family doctors and without access to walk-in clinics,” says Currie. “The B.C. government has wasted millions of dollars on these facilities, and still claims they are also the answer to our family doctor crisis.”
In February, the provincial government committed $57 million for 10 more urgent and primary care centres in the province by 2025, increasing the total number in the province to 50. Just six will be on Vancouver Island.
“Overhead is higher than anywhere else, doctors can only bill the government for $31 per patient, the lowest in the country,” says Currie. “Doctors can only see a maximum of 50 patients a day and can’t bill for countless tasks that use up their time, like checking labs, writing referrals, doing full physical exams.”
Federal and provincial politicians in Canada often respond to surges of complaints regarding health care by promising to funnel millions or billions of dollars to the provinces to help alleviate the shortages. Currie says this does not solve the issue.
“Our problem isn’t a federal funding issue, our problem is an effective use of health care funds,” says Currie. “Alberta has a similar health ministry budget as B.C., so how are they able to provide for all their citizens and we aren’t?”
For many Albertans, however, the situation is not optimal either. Alberta’s residents have complained about their own long wait times, and many have opted for out-of-province treatment.
B.C. continues to place highly in provincial health-care rankings , largely due to the overall health of the population. However, that could change, especially as the population of Canada continues to age , and current trends continue.
Shirley Bond is the B.C. Liberal MLA for Prince-George Valemount, and once served as the minister of health during her party’s 16 years in government from 2001 to 2017. With the B.C. NDP now governing the province, Bond is the health care critic, and is aware of the pressures facing walk-in clinics, such as the costs of overhead.
Regarding federal funding, she says it continues to play an important role in improving B.C. health care, especially in the province’s more rural regions. Her riding of Prince George-Valemount, located almost 800 kilometres away from Vancouver, is serviced by the University Hospital of Northern British Columbia and lacks many vital facilities.
“It is a regional centre, and we have no cardiac care,” says Bond. “We need enhanced surgery, surgical capacity, we need significant investment in my community.”
Nonetheless, Bond acknowledges the need to re-examine the health-care system in B.C.
“We do need additional resources, and we also need to look at how we utilize those resources and are there ways that we need to consider a more innovative approach,” says Bond. “We certainly need to have more dialogue with the people who actually can operate the system, they’re the experts.” Credentialing
Bond says she is looking at the Ontario government’s recently announced plans to revamp the province’s health-care system, which includes additional training spots for nurses , and removing barriers for foreign-trained medical professionals to begin practising.
Ontario’s plan for credentialing foreign doctors has been slow and controversial , but Bill Tholl says the provinces can provide templates for each other when formulating policy, due to Canada’s decentralized health-care system.
“Historically, one of the big upsides of having a decentralized system is we learned from one province to another,” says Tholl. “It’s kind of a natural experiment, in fact, our national Medicare program might be referred to as kind of a provincial experiment in my home province of Saskatchewan.”
Tholl is one of Canada’s leading health-care policy analysts, an author, and has served on numerous health care-related committees and organizations.
“I’d say the fundamentals are still pretty darn good, but the rest of the world is changing and we’re not keeping up,” says Tholl, regarding Canada’s medical delivery. “We really haven’t taken up the challenges of change very well in the Canadian health-care system.”
Tholl says many of the problems with Canadian health care can be traced back to the 1990s. Following the 1980s, Canada was racked with fiscal chaos, chronic budget deficits and inflation. It prompted a major policy shift towards balanced budgets and getting government spending under control.
Tholl says the federal government prioritized costs over care as part of its program of austerity and fiscal rebalancing, resulting in a reduction of enrolments in medical and nursing schools, by respective rates of 15 per cent and 50 per cent.
“I know it sounds odd to say, but we’re still recovering from that shock to the system,” says Tholl.
Tholl says that while the federal government subsidizes both undergraduate and residency training programs, they remain below their pre-1990s ratios, keeping not only the number of homegrown surgeons and family doctors capped, but also residency training spots.
When asked why the federal government would not simply increase the number of spots to generate more medical professionals, Tholl says the pandemic may spur those changes.
“I think they’re realizing just how much the pendulum swung too far in terms of constraining physician supply and nursing supply,” says Tholl. “God only knows the pandemic has shown just how fragile….how we were operating beyond the capacity limits of the currently available doctors and nurses.”
Even if changes were to be made, Tholl says it could take anywhere from six to 12 years for new professionals, such as cardiac surgeons, to enter the system.
Nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapist prepare to intubate a COVID-19 patient as Omicron puts pressure on Humber River Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada January 20, 2022.
Tholl cites the “South African Solution” as a way to help alleviate health-care shortages in the short term. It’s a policy developed by Saskatchewan’s government to enable the province to effectively lure South African doctors, who undergo similar training to their Canadian counterparts and push them into the province’s medical workforce. In 2016, more than half of Saskatchewan’s doctors had been trained outside Canada, with most coming from South Africa, Nigeria, and India.
Immigrant doctors would be a welcome addition to Canada’s medical workforce in 2022, as many medical professionals across Canada are retiring due to burnout from the pandemic, lessening the already short supply.
“You’re seeing a lot of concern in the health-care sector about the ‘Great Resignation,’ that those that can’t afford it, those that have had enough,” says Tholl.
Tholl mentions the Ontario government is resorting to awarding thousands of dollars in individual bonuses to nurses to remain on the job. The purpose is to stave off resignations and retirements as a short-term fix until nursing schools can begin producing more graduates to replace the retiring ones.
However, Tholl points out that medical school is still an expensive and a highly competitive process.
“It’s always been competitive, but I suspect it’s more competitive now than it’s ever been,” says Tholl.
Tholl explains that the competition continues past medical school, and affects how graduates can obtain residency training spots. The already-subsidized cost of medical school cost $17,000 CAD per year on average in 2021, and nearly $30,000 per year in Ontario.
Tholl says that once students graduate, often with significant debt, they go into specializations that pay more than a general practitioner, such as becoming a dermatologist. While dermatology may be a huge help for acne-ridden teenagers, they do not surgically repair injured knees or perform heart transplants. Federal funding
“If you got in a car and drove yourself from St. John’s, Newfoundland, all the way to Victoria, British Columbia, you would find yourself in 10 very different provinces with 10 different realities,” says Nadeem Esmail, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. “The decentralization of health care and giving the provinces the ability to determine health-care policy allows them to tailor their system to their provincial realities.”
Like Tholl, Esmail says the decentralized approach could allow the provinces to individually experiment with different health-care policies being undertaken around the world, if only the federal government would give more autonomy to the provinces.
“The involvement of the federal government is in fact, holding the provinces back from setting optimal health-care policy or ideal health-care policy for the population,” says Esmail.
Esmail says the Canada Health Act is limiting policy innovation because it governs what provinces can and cannot do in terms of health-care policy in return for federal health transfer payments. He says that the provinces are dominated by government-run monopolistic hospitals, and a health-care system that precludes any cost-sharing of user fees.
“We’re not able to encourage more informed decision-making among those who can afford it,” says Esmail. “We’ve trapped ourselves in this very ineffective set of health-care policies as a result of federal interference and provincial policy making.”
One common practice of federal and provincial governments when addressing health care is to pledge further funding, especially during election seasons. Like Camille Currie, Esmail does not consider federal funding to be the problem, or the solution.
In March, Ottawa announced an additional $2 billion would be delivered to the provinces to help alleviate pandemic-related medical backlogs. This is on top of the $4.5 billion that was already given to the provinces during the pandemic to assist in handling the crisis.
Bill Tholl says it can’t always be known if the provinces are actually spending the transfers on health care as intended. The federal government and the premiers are currently locked in a dispute over future transfers, with Ottawa demanding guarantees it be spent on healthcare.
“It’s literally a transfer from a federal banking account that goes across the street to a series of provincial accounts,” says Tholl. “With no accountability attached to those funds, they become general revenue for the provinces, indistinguishable from all the taxes that the provinces raised.”
Tholl says the transfer payments not only perpetuate problems in the health-care system, but also widened interprovincial disparities in aspects like waiting times, and the ability to attract doctors.
“I think we have to focus on what is important here, and that is delivering the best possible universal access health-care system to the population,” says Esmail. “In that regard, allowing the provinces to experiment, allowing the provinces to learn from one another, to try policies that have been successful elsewhere has incredible power.”
Esmail says that Canadians want a comprehensive, affordable and universal health-care system, but the way it has been structured ties the provinces to a system that monopolizes the delivery of both medical treatment and health-care insurance.
“This disallows cost-sharing for universally accessible services, which is unfortunate because those are the very policies employed by 100 per cent of the developed world’s most effective, highest-performing universal access health-care systems,” says Esmail.
Esmail advises understanding what countries like Australia , France , Germany , or Japan have done, all of whom deliver high quality, but faster health care at lower costs than in Canada, while allowing for cost-sharing between public and out-of-pocket spending.
In France, for example, state-run health care remains the backbone of medical delivery, while the smaller private options help to alleviate the pressure of costs and backlogs.
“It’s private alternatives to the publicly funded health-care system, or to the government-run health-care system,” says Esmail. “Allowing that project competition in encouraging more informed decision making through cost sharing creates a better universal access health-care system for everyone.” Private alternatives
Efe Türker says going back to Turkey would be a preferable option if he needs medical attention, rather than stewing on waiting lists in Victoria, or seeking private treatment elsewhere.
“It is easier, simpler, and in most cases cheaper, for me to literally buy a ticket, fly across the world to my home country, to see a doctor and get free treatment and fly back,” says Türker.
One of Türker’s friends has made the trip back to Turkey after being injured, and received both treatment and physiotherapy before his scheduled appointment in Canada. When Türker is sick and needs medical advice, he calls his uncle, who is a practising physician in Turkey.
“It would get diagnosed from an 11-hour time zone away,” says Türker. “This shouldn’t be the case for anyone.”
The solution may be found by a nationwide imitation of a successful provincial health-care policy innovations, which was the genesis of Canada’s universal system in the first place. Whether the new solution is re-funding medical and nursing schools, nationalizing the South African Solution or expanding access to private alternatives, boosting provincial autonomy on health-care policy, or all of those combined, the headlines across the country show that Canadians need solutions fast.
“At the end of the day, provinces are too busy shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, implementing small adjustments here and there without recognizing, or at least while deliberately avoiding, the larger picture for political reasons,” says Esmail.
