KENNEY HAS A STUPIDER IDEA EVAN THAN A SALES TAX

Alberta risks ‘double jeopardy’ if it exits Canada Pension Plan, leading expert warns
Provincial plan could burden future generations with falling contributions and declining assets

A supporter attends a rally for Wexit Alberta rally in Calgary.

 The province is exploring withdrawing from the Canadian 

Pension Plan.Reuters/Todd Korol/File Photo

Victor Ferreira
January 8, 2020


One of Canada’s leading pension experts is warning Albertans to consider the “double jeopardy” of falling contributions and investment asset values they might be subjecting future generations to if they replace the Canada Pension Plan with a provincial alternative.

In a report published on Wednesday, Keith Ambachtsheer, president of KPA Advisory Services and director emeritus at the International Center for Pension Management, said that a potential switch to a provincially run pension plan could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to establish and would also put its contributors in danger of facing serious underwriting and investment risks.

Primarily, Ambachtsheer is concerned an Alberta Pension Plan could be used to double down on the oil and gas industry.

“It’s a simple diversification argument: If your underlying economy is to a significant degree dependent on the health of a particular industry that if you also put your retirement savings into that industry, it’s double jeopardy,” said Ambachtsheer. He added that Norway avoided making the same error with its fossil fuel industry by ensuring its pension plan’s investments are all international and beginning the process to divest from oil and gas.

Why AIMCo taking over Alberta’s pension scheme could be a high-risk, high-reward gambit
Alberta to study ‘compelling case’ of withdrawing from Canada Pension Plan, Jason Kenney says

An Alberta exit from Canada’s pension plan would cost the rest of the country big time

In November, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney floated the idea of pulling the $40 billion Alberta has in the CPP and putting it under the management of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation amid frustrations that the province’s economic interests were being neglected by Ottawa. A “fair deal” panel made up of former politicians and business leaders has since been created and has been consulting with Albertans through town halls about withdrawing from the pension, among other issues. The panel will present its report to the government by March 31.
An Alberta Treasury Board and Finance spokesperson said it welcomes all submissions about the potential creation of an Alberta Pension Plan to the panel, including Ambachtsheer’s.

“It is worth noting that there have been a variety of views expressed by experts on this topic, including those from the Fraser Institute, the CD Howe Institute and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, all of which highlighted potential benefits of an Alberta Pension Plan,” the spokesperson said.

Some of the appeal surrounding a withdrawal is centered around the potential for Albertans to make lower contributions than the current 9.9 per cent of pay. Studies from the Fraser Institute and C.D. Howe suggested that an Alberta Pension Plan could cut contributions to the six-to-eight-per-cent range while providing the same benefits. This is mostly due to the fact that the majority of Alberta’s contributors are much younger and higher-paid than the rest of Canada’s.

That younger population — the median age, according to Statistics Canada, is 37.1 years old and the youngest in the country — has led to Albertans contributing more than they otherwise would to the plan, Kenney argued in November.

Ambachtsheer questioned the legitimacy of a lower contribution rate due to the potential of Alberta’s younger citizens leaving the province for greener pastures should the oil and gas industry continue to decline.

Should the industry continue to struggle, Ambachtsheer said he worries there could be fewer jobs available in the province, especially those that pay well. That could impact the total contributions made to the APP and the only way to make up for the lost capital would be to raise the rate.

Building out and administering the plan could also lead to a exorbitant bill for taxpayers to front. Ambachtsheer points to the $70 million Ontario spent developing a potential pension plan of its own between 2014 and 2016, before joining the CPP expansion instead.

As for the costs to operate it, Ambachtsheer uses the example of the Alberta Pension Services Corporation, which provides pension administration services to 375,000 public sector employees in the province. It pays $175 per person, per year to do so. Using that math, it would cost $525 million to administer the plan to the three million Albertans currently making CPP contributions.

The process has yet to be tested, but no province has ever withdrawn from the CPP.

• Email: vferreira@nationalpost.com 

RELATED STORIES


Jack Mintz: An Alberta Pension Plan could be a slam-dunk

Canada ranked among top 10 pension systems in world — but we only got a B

Everything you need to know about the enhanced CPP — from how much you'll pay to how much you'll get

ARACHNOPHOBIA TRIGGER

Man finds giant spider dragging his pet goldfish out of pond https://trib.al/VVhY8FM

10:05 AM · Jan 2, 2020·SocialFlow

A tour guide in Barberton, South Africa, wanted to show his date his pet goldfish, Cleo, which he kept in the pond by his house. To the man's surprise, Cleo wasn't in the pond when he got there; she was hovering in midair, caught in a spider's fangs. 

The tour guide (a man named Jérémy Schalkwijk) knew he was witnessing something remarkable when he pulled out his camera and began cataloging Cleo's final moments. Sadly for the fish, her demise was just part of a typical day for the eight-legged assassins known as nursery web spiders — a family of semiaquatic arachnids than can walk on still water, dive beneath the surface to evade predators and even "fish" for prey many times their own size.

How common is spider-on-fish predation? According to a 2014 study in the journal PLOS ONE, spiders in eight of the world's 109 arachnid families can catch and eat small fish, and do so on every continent but Antarctica. Rather than building webs to catch prey, these arachnids hunt for their meals in person, on land and in the water. (Tellingly, some spiders within this family are also known as "fishing spiders," "dock spiders" and "raft spiders.")

They do this by lowering their front legs down to rest on the water's surface while anchoring their hind legs to an adjacent stone or plant. The water acts like a web, with the spider able to detect minute ripples created, for example, when an unlucky insect falls in and gets trapped by the water's surface tension. 

When something yummy passes by the spider's perch — be it a fallen bug or passing fish — the spider lashes out with its front legs and brings the prey to its jaws. The spider bites down with flesh-piercing fangs, injects its prey with a lethal, neurotoxic venom, then finally hauls its dead quarry back to dry land.

In an interview with The Sun, Schalkwijk estimated that Cleo must've been double the length and weight of her octopedal attacker. While this may seem like an incredible load to bear, it's actually below average for fishing spiders. In the 2014 study, which surveyed 89 incidences of spider-on-fish predation, the ensnared fish was about 2.2 times as long as the spider on average, with some spider species ensnaring fish five times their size. 

That's pretty freaky — but not nearly as freaky as the Goliath "birdeater" spiders of South America, which can grow to up to 1 foot (0.3 meters) long. What do Goliath birdeaters eat? We'll let you figure that out for yourself.

• In Photos: The Amazing Arachnids of The World
• Weird and Wonderful: 9 Toxic Spiders
• Goliath Birdeater: Images of a Colossal Spider

INFLUENZA THE WORST KILLER PANDEMIC IN NORTH AMERICA

Child Flu Deaths Hit Record High for This Time of Year

By Rachael Rettner - Senior Writer

This year's flu season is shaping up to be a severe one, particularly for children.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

This year's flu season is shaping up to be a severe one, particularly for children.

So far this season, 27 U.S. children have died from the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That's the highest number of pediatric flu deaths reported at this point in the flu season since 2003, when the CDC started tracking child flu deaths, according to CNN. 

For comparison, during the 2017-2018 flu season, which was one of the worst flu seasons in recent years, 13 pediatric flu deaths were reported at this point in the season, according to CDC data. (By the end of the 2017-2018 season, 187 children had died from the flu, making it a particularly deadly flu season.)

Flu season is notoriously unpredictable, but the trajectory of this season (2019-2020) is worrying — the season started early and does not appear to have reached its peak. It's unclear when cases will start to go down.

"Hopefully, this turns around and comes down, but if it continues on the trajectory it's on, it's not going to be good," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN. 

The trajectory of this flu season (2019-2020) is worrying — the season started early and does not appear to have reached its peak. Above, a graph comparing doctors' visits for flu during this season (red line, with arrows) with other recent seasons. (Image credit: CDC)

During the last two weeks of December, the percentage of people visiting the doctor for flu-like illness jumped from 5% to 7% of all doctors' visits. This uptick in flu-related visits could be due, in part, to a decrease in routine doctor visits for other conditions during the holidays, the CDC said.

Still, this data indicates high flu activity. For comparison, during the 2014-2015 flu season — another bad year for flu — the percentage of flu-related doctors' visits peaked at 6%; and during the 2017-2018 flu season, it peaked at around 7.5%.

Another odd thing about this year's flu season is that it has been dominated by a type of flu virus known as influenza B. That's pretty unusual — typically, influenza B does not cause as many cases as influenza A strains (H1N1 and H3N2); and influenza B tends to show up later in the flu season rather than at the beginning. Influenza B may be more deadly in children than adults, according to a 2012 study.

What's more, although influenza B remains the dominant strain this year, cases of influenza A are starting to increase. Some experts have speculated that there could be a second peak in flu activity with influenza A later in the season, Live Science previously reported.

The CDC estimates that there have been at least 6.4 million flu-related illnesses, 55,000 flu-related hospitalizations and 2,900 deaths from the flu so far this season.

But it's still not too late to get a flu shot, the CDC said. Quadrivalent flu vaccines protect against two strains of influenza A virus and two strains of influenza B. Flu shots are recommended for everyone ages 6 months and older.

•  27 Devastating Infectious Diseases 
•  6 Winter Woes to Watch Out For 
•  5 Dangerous Vaccination Myths 

DUNKLE MUTTER

It's Official: Vera Rubin Observatory Named to Honor Dark Matter Scientist

By Meghan Bartels - Space.com Senior Writer a day ago

HONOLULU — A U.S. facility designed in part to solve the mysteries of dark matter now officially carries the name of Vera Rubin, the scientist who concluded that the elusive substance must exist.

That announcement came Monday (Jan. 6) here, at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, during an open house devoted to what to date has been called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). However, the name change had been in the works since the summer, when Congress began discussing a bill that would create the new moniker. That bill became a law on Dec. 20.

"We're here today to focus on the major renaming of the facility after a pioneering astronomer, that is intimately tied to one of the key focus science areas for this project," Ralph Gaume, Director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences, said during the event. "I'm pleased, very pleased, beyond how much you all know and may recognize, to today officially rename the LSST observatory as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory."

Video: NSF Vera C. Rubin Observatory Will Be Revolutionary
Related: Vera Rubin: The Astronomer Who Brought Dark Matter to Light

(Image credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Gaume's comments were met by applause from the gathered astronomers. Observatory director Steve Kahn and other team members soon donned T-shirts sporting the new name.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a federal project run by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Its first 10 years of work will be dedicated entirely to a project now known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. "Because we know you're all in love with the four letters LSST, we figured out a way to preserve that," Gaume said.

Until her death in 2016, Rubin was frequently listed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in physics. Her most consequential realization was that galaxies rotate so quickly that they ought to fly apart. The fact that they don't, she reasoned, is proof that there is a massive amount of, well, something in the universe that humans cannot yet study directly — what we now call dark matter.

But Rubin, who was born in 1928, struggled throughout her career to convince others to treat her based on the merits of her work, rather than on her sex. When she did make traction in the community, she worked to share that acceptance with others.

"She has multiple legacies of, of course, the major science work, the major discoveries and the major legacy of paving way for young people and especially women," Kathy Turner, program manager of the Department of Energy's Office of High Energy Physics, said during the presentation. "Speaking especially as a woman and as a physicist, I feel honored to be part of this project."

Another new name is also in the works, that one for a specific instrument in order to honor the private donation that kickstarted the LSST project before it was adopted by the federal government. The presentation included a thorough primer on how to use each of the names in scientific writing. "We'll all get used to this as we go along," Kahn said.

The panel also included an update on the facility's construction, given by project manager Victor Krabbendam. "The summit facility is looking really good," he said, sharing images of optical equipment at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory site, which is located on a mountain ridge called Cerro Pachón, in Chile. However, he did add that some aspects of the project have been progressing more slowly and at a higher cost than previously expected, and that the team is pushing the schedule to meet its goal of taking "first light" data with its full-observing capacity in November 2021.

That first data could be a vital step toward solving the dark-matter puzzle that Rubin discovered on her way to becoming a major figure in astronomy. Turner recounted that her initial encounter with Rubin's research, as a college student, was a crucial moment on her own path to becoming a physicist, and the way her respect for Rubin has deepened over time.

"[I remember] thinking, yes, science is a field that women have a right to be in and a right to pursue, and we don't have to take no for an answer," Turner said. "Her dogged determination to be recognized for her work was really something that stood out to me when I read more detail about her."

• This Year's Nobel Prize in Physics Mixes 2 Research Fields — And Politics
• 'We Don't Planet' Episode 4: What's the Evidence for Dark Matter?
• What's 96 Percent of the Universe Made Of? Astronomers Don't Know

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

This 23-Foot-Long Fish May Be First Official Extinction of 2020

By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 

One of the largest freshwater fish in the world may be extinct.

The Chinese paddlefish is one of the world's largest freshwater fish.

In a new paper, scientists led by Hui Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences in Wuhan, China, argued that the Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) is no more, probably having gone extinct sometime between 2005 and 2010. The fish was once common in the Yangtze River in China, the researchers wrote, but overfishing and habitat fragmentation sealed the species' doom. And there is no hope for bringing it back. 

"As no individuals exist in captivity and no living tissues are conserved for potential resurrection, the fish should be considered extinct according to the IUCN Red List criteria," Zhang and his colleagues wrote in a paper published in the March 2020 issue of the journal Science of the Total Environment, referring to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's list of threatened and endangered species.

Related: See Photos of the Largest Fish on Earth

The Chinese paddlefish was an impressive creature, with a large, protruding snout. This nose gave the fish one of its nicknames, xiang yu, or "elephant fish" in Mandarin. The paddlefish could grow as long as 23 feet (7 meters), putting it among sturgeon and alligator gar as the largest freshwater fish in the world. Paddlefish were caught regularly in the Yangtze River as late as the 1970s, according to Zhang and his colleagues. In 1981, a major dam, the Gezhouba Dam, was built in the river and split the Chinese paddlefish population in two. 

The dam also prevented fish trapped below it from swimming upstream to tributaries where they could spawn. The species was listed as one of China's most threatened animals in 1989, but the population continued to decline despite that listing. The last sighting of a Chinese paddlefish was in 2003. 

Now, Zhang and his team wrote, the paddlefish is gone. The researchers scoured records of sightings dating back to 1981 and conducted field surveys in 2017 and 2018 of the Yangtze and its tributaries and lakes: the Yalong River, the Heng River, the Min River, the Tuo River, the Chishui River, the Jialing River, the Wu River, the Han River, Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake. The researchers set up fishing nets to capture species in these waterways and surveyed local fish markets, looking for evidence that this paddlefish species might still be caught. 

They found 332 species of fish but not a single Chinese paddlefish. The historical sighting data suggested that few of the paddlefish were seen after about 1995. The evidence suggested that the fish upstream of the dam became functionally extinct — unable to reproduce in the natural environment — by about 1993. The species hung on until around 2005, or perhaps 2010 at the latest, the researchers said. 

"Based on the weight of the evidence, the species can be declared as extinct with high certainty," the researchers wrote. 

The loss of the Chinese paddlefish holds lessons for how to ensure the survival of other threatened Yangtze species, the researchers wrote. First, more-frequent surveys of the river basin would allow scientists to keep closer tabs on what species are struggling. Before the 2017 survey conducted by Zhang and his team, the last comprehensive fish survey of the Yangtze and its tributaries occurred in 1975. Second, rescue efforts should begin much more quickly, the researchers wrote. Most of the intense work done to save the Chinese paddlefish started after 2006, likely after the fish was gone. To prevent the species' extinction, rescue efforts should have started before 1993, when the fish became functionally extinct, the researchers said. 

Many Yangtze species, such as the Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), are hanging by a thread, Zhang and his team wrote, but might still be saved. Prioritizing their survival now, before they pass the point of no return, may be the only way to save the enormous river's biodiversity, the researchers said.