Trans Mountain races to the finish line as two other pipeline projects near completion

Trans Mountain CEO says pipeline will be full of oil when construction wraps in 2022, despite drop in global oil demand

Author of the article:Geoffrey Morgan
Publishing date:Sep 15, 2020 •

The 590,000-barrel-per-day Trans Mountain Expansion project that will be 30 per cent complete by the end of this year. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA NETWORK


CALGARY — Despite the drop in global oil demand and declines in upstream energy investment, the head of the company developing the Trans Mountain expansion expects the pipeline to be full of oil when construction wraps up in 2022. But he acknowledged the pipeline may find itself competing for shipper attention from two other pipeline projects that are also under way.

“We remain bullish on the future. We think demand will stay there. The expansion was not predicated on significant new oilsands investment,” Trans Mountain Corp. president and CEO Ian Anderson said in an interview Tuesday, marking the one-year mark of construction re-starting on the $12.6-billion expansion.




Anderson said the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from Alberta to Burnaby, B.C., has been running full because there’s demand in the Pacific Basin for heavy oil and which would support the 590,000-barrel-per-day Trans Mountain Expansion project that will be 30 per cent complete by the end of this year.


We remain bullish on the future. We think demand will stay there
IAN ANDERSON, TRANS MOUNTAIN PRESIDENT AND CEO

“During this COVID period, we’ve been full every day. We’ve been apportioned every day. That speaks to the optionality of the markets that we serve,” Anderson said of the existing 300,000-bpd pipeline, adding that none of the oil producers that have committed to ship crude on the line for the next 20 years have attempted to back out.

“They remain just as bullish as they ever were. Their commitments are not in question,” Anderson said.

Currently, 5,000 people are working on the large-diameter pipeline project in Alberta and British Columbia, with work ramping up in the metro Vancouver area and other parts of B.C. next year.

At the same time, rival Enbridge Inc. is trying to complete its Line 3 replacement pipeline this year and TC Energy Corp. is building the Keystone XL pipeline project to the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is expected to be complete in 2023.

How quickly oil producers fill the Trans Mountain Expansion, which is underpinned by long-term take-or-pay contracts on 80 per cent of the line’s volume, will depend on whether the other pipeline projects are built in the same time frame, Anderson said.

“We’re confident those barrels will move once we come into service. It will depend somewhat on the status of other pipes and when they come into market,” he said.

This week, the International Energy Agency and British oil major BP Plc released bearish oil market outlooks. After posting its worst-ever quarterly results this summer, BP released an energy outlook Monday that, in the most bullish scenario, predicts oil demand peaking by 2030 at just over 100 million bpd — similar to where it was earlier this year before the pandemic crushed demand.

In a scenario where governments pursue net zero emissions policies, BP expects oil demand could plunge as low as 30 million bpd by 2050.

Currently, 5,000 people are working on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. 

PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA NETWORK

AND WHEN IT IS FINISHED THEY WILL BE UNEMPLOYED

Similarly, in a report released Tuesday, the IEA expects oil demand to decline from 101 million bpd last year to an average of 91.7 million bpd over the course of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic forced lockdowns in major economies this spring and continues to threaten to derail the recovery with a second wave.

“The economic slowdown will take months to reverse completely while certain sectors such as aviation are unlikely to return to their pre-pandemic levels of consumption even next year,” the report noted, adding that global oil demand next is projected to reach 97.1 million bpd.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Tuesday there are projections of an oil price recovery in 2022 and, “there will be a huge demand for oil and gas well into the future.” As a result, there is a continued need for new pipelines exiting Alberta.
THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN ALBERTA, REGARDLESS OF NAME RULED A ONE PARTY STATE FOR 44 YEARS, AND THE FEDERAL CONSERVATIVE PARTY RULED FOR A DECADE AND THEY COULD NOT GET PIPELINES BUILT.

His government took a stake in TC Energy’s 830,000-bpd Keystone XL pipeline project to the U.S. Gulf Coast earlier this year.

Kenney said the projections released this week show robust oil demand in the future and despite assumptions that “we can flick a switch and airplanes will operate on unicorn farts or something, but in the real world we’re going to be consuming hydrocarbon based energy for a long-time to come.”

There will be a huge demand for oil and gas well into the future
ALBERTA PREMIER JASON KENNEY

Both the IEA’s projection Tuesday and the revised demand outlook released by the OPEC Secretariat on Monday reflect new expectations of a meaningful market downturn this year, Enverus chief economist Judith Dwarkin said.

“The penny is dropping that the demand outlook is gloomy. We’re moving toward a world where demand will be lower for longer strictly related to COVID,” Dwarkin said, noting that the IEA and OPEC projections of demand from earlier this year were too optimistic.

“What COVID has done is basically knock back five years of oil demand growth from the market,” she said.

Dwarkin said she expects oil demand will recover but that could take as long as four years.

“Even if you’re in a 60 million-barrel-per-day market, you’re still going to need to be investing and finding oil. There will be demand for it. It’s just a question of who will be supplying it,” Dwarkin said.

Financial Post

• Email: gmorgan@nationalpost.com | Twitter: geoffreymorgan

Climate change largely missing from U.S. presidential campaigns as fires rage

Aamer Madhani, Kathleen Ronayne and Will Weissert
The Associated Press
 Friday, September 11, 2020 


In this Sept. 7, 2020, file photo a firetruck drives along state Highway 168 while battling the Creek Fire in the Shaver Lake community of Fresno County, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

WASHINGTON -- Historic fires are raging across the western United States ahead of what scientists say is the typical peak of wildfire season. Hurricane Laura devastated parts of the Gulf Coast last month, while swaths of Iowa are recovering from a derecho that brought hurricane force winds to the Midwest.

The streak of disasters has left millions of Americans reeling. But it's barely had an impact on the campaign for the White House, in part because of the vulnerabilities it highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

The president is already facing multiple challenges, including the pandemic, joblessness and social unrest, and can ill afford another one. When he talks about California, where fires have killed at least a dozen people and threatened thousands of homes, it's mostly to blast the state's Democratic leaders.

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And for Biden, the spreading fires are a reminder to the party's progressive base that he doesn't embrace some of the most liberal elements of the Green New Deal, the grand plan for tackling climate change.

"The Biden campaign understands that a full embrace of an aggressive climate change agenda could create problems for them in Upper Midwest," said Dan Schnur, who served as an adviser to former California Gov. Pete Wilson and Arizona Sen. John McCain. "Trump has shown no desire to talk about California beyond using it as a liberal punching bag to make his case to his conservative base."

Still, climate activists say the moment underscores the need for Washington to support the Green New Deal, an ambitious -- and likely costly -- plan to wean the U.S. from fossil fuels and drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's no surprise that Trump isn't talking about the fact that America is literally in flames on his watch -- but why isn't Biden?" said Rebecca Katz, a political strategist who has worked with Democratic congressional candidates supporting the measure. "For Democrats to not connect what's happening on the West Coast to Trump's failure on climate change is just political malpractice."

The Biden campaign's response to the fires is especially notable since his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, represents California in the Senate. She was campaigning in Miami on Thursday, but her spokesperson, Sabrina Singh, said Biden and Harris "have been closely monitoring the wildfires raging across the state and highlighting the urgent need to address the threat of climate change."

Biden tweeted that climate change "is already here -- and we're witnessing its devastating effects every single day."

"We have to get President Trump out of the White House and treat this crisis like the existential threat that it is," he said.

While Biden hasn't embraced the full Green New Deal, he has promised to make creating new green jobs and drastically reducing U.S. carbon emissions part of a larger recovery plan designed to revive the economy after the coronavirus abates. Biden's top advisers note that many of his proposals will move the country toward the Green New Deal, but some activists worry it is not ambitious enough.

"I'm looking outside my window right now. Literally the world looks like it's on fire. For young people across the board, but especially young Latinos, we also care very deeply about climate change, not just like immigration," said Christian Arana, policy director for the California-based Latino Community Foundation. "This is a perfect moment to get on TikTok or do an interview with Teen Vogue or whoever to talk about these issues."

Trump spoke with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday "to express his condolences for the loss of life and reiterate the administration's full support to help those on the frontlines of the fires," according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.

But the president has a history of criticizing California's response to wildfires and threatening to withhold federal funding.

In 2019, months after the deadliest wildfire in California history tore through the town of Paradise in Northern California, Trump said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should stop giving the state money and blamed the fires on poor forest management. Fire scientists say climate change, not forest management, is a driving factor behind the state's fires becoming worse and more deadly.

Still, Trump has always approved California's request for major disaster declarations, as he did Aug. 22 as the state battled blazes across Northern California.

That approval came a day after he again blamed California for mismanagement and Newsom hit back in a video that aired during the Democratic National Convention in which he highlighted Trump's threats.

"Just today the president of the United States threatened the state of California, 40 million Americans who happen to live in the state of California, to defund our efforts on wildfire suppression because he said we hadn't raked enough leaves. You can't make that up," Newsom said.

Trump visited Iowa last month to meet with officials there about the derecho, and he surveyed damage on the Louisiana-Texas border following Hurricane Laura.

Trump visited California in November 2018 after Paradise was ravaged by the most deadly wildfire in state history. But he currently has no plans to visit areas on the West Coast impacted by the fires, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official, who was not authorized to speak about the president's travel plans, said it would be unwise for Trump to visit while the fires are still active as it would divert key first responder resources away from the fire fight.

Scientific American magazine issues first presidential endorsement in 175-year history by backing Biden

Veronica Stracqualursi CNN Tuesday, September 15, 2020 


U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event on manufacturing and buying American-made products at UAW Region 1 headquarters in Warren, Mich., Sept. 9, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP/CNN)


The magazine Scientific American announced Tuesday that it was endorsing former U.S. vice president and Democratic candidate Joe Biden-- the publication's first endorsement in its 175-year history -- over U.S. President Donald Trump, who it criticized for dismissing science.

"The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people -- because he rejects evidence and science," the publication's editors wrote. "The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September."

"He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges," wrote the editors of the science magazine which was founded 1845 and is one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the country.

Scientific American's editor in chief Laura Helmuth told CNN on Tuesday that the editorial board felt a responsibility to make an endorsement in this election and "use what reputation we have to help people understand that this is the most important election of our lifetimes."

Trump has frequently amplified false and misleading information throughout the coronavirus pandemic, while downplaying advice issued by his government's top medical experts on how to combat the virus' spread.

During a visit Monday to California as the state battles wildfires, Trump abruptly shut down an official who warned that climate change was fueling the flames and pleaded with the President to follow the science, by saying, "I don't think science knows, actually."

He told the official: "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch."

J. Marshall Shepherd, Director of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Georgia, told CNN, "people at all levels struggle with the difference between weather and climate. One of the most common science literacy mistakes is to assume a cold day or seasonal transition somehow describes climate. That's like saying a baseball player getting one hit is now leading the league in batting average."

Climate experts tell CNN due to human-caused climate change, temperature extremes are climbing higher and the vegetation is drier, which affects fire behavior.

In its endorsement of Biden, Scientific American argued that while the coronavirus pandemic would strain any nation, Trump's "rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic" in the United States.

It pointed to Trump's opposition to providing US$25 billion for increased testing and contact tracing, his decision to flout mask mandates while in public, and his downplaying of the virus despite acknowledging its dangers and deadliness in interviews with journalist Bob Woodward.

"At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery," the magazine's editors wrote, adding, "His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods."

The publication argued that Biden "comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making."

It lauded Biden's proposals to deal with the pandemic which includes plans to hire 100,000 people for a national contact tracing effort, and his environmental plans, including his proposed spending of $2 trillion over four years on clean energy projects.

"It's time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science," the magazine's editors wrote.

The magazine had published an editorial during the 2016 campaign, warning that Trump "repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science."

Helmuth told CNN that in planning the magazine's 2020 election coverage, they decided to "be more explicit and that we say that Biden is the right candidate if you care about science, healthy environment."

Asked about criticism that the endorsement potentially further politicizes science, Helmuth said, "The choice was just so clear that we felt like we needed to use what reputation we have to help people understand that this is the most important election of our lifetime."

"We don't want to make our readers angry, but we also feel it's our mission to help people understand science," she said.

Helmuth pointed out that the editorial excluded the words "Republican" and "Democrat" in hopes that their readers will understand this election is different.

"Trump has been so dismal for the scientific enterprise that the things we all care about are just so directly under threat by his administration, and have been harmed by his administration, that we think it fits our mission to say clearly that people who are interested in and care about research, and knowledge, and expertise and making good decisions about policy. We hope that they understand that's a large part of our mission and Donald Trump is in direct conflict with our mission."

 OUR CANADA PENSION PLAN

SINGAPORE SUMMIT

Canada’s massive pension fund is reviewing its bond holdings in light of near zero interest rates, CEO says

PUBLISHED  WED, SEP 16 2020


Saheli Roy Choudhury@SAHELIRC




KEY POINTS

Low interest rates are proving to be a challenge for investors, even ones who have long-term, multi-generational views on investments such as Canada’s massive pension fund. 

CPPIB President and CEO Mark Machin said the fund is reviewing if holding large size of government bonds is the right thing to do when interest rates are near zero. 

CPPIB manages about 434.4 billion Canadian dollars as of June 30 and a bulk of its investments are in North America — a little over 34% of total assets are allocated in the United States — followed by Asia.


Mark Machin, president and chief executive officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB)
Cole Burston | Bloomberg | Getty Images


SINGAPORE — Central banks have slashed interest rates this year in an effort to revive economies ravaged by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. But low interest rates are proving to be a challenge for investors, even ones who have long-term, multi-generational views on investments such as Canada’s massive pension fund.

While the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s (CPPIB) long-term game plan hasn’t changed much in light of the virus outbreak, the one thing that’s challenging the fund is the zero-bound, according to Mark Machin, president and CEO.


“The fact interest rates are now zero-bound – does that change the diversification benefit of bonds in the long term? I think we, like a lot of long-term asset owners, are looking at reviewing that,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday. Machin is an attendee of the Singapore Summit, which is being held virtually this year.

Zero-bound refers to an expansionary monetary policy tool used by central banks to lower short-term interest rates to zero to stimulate the economy by reducing the cost of borrowing. But for bond investors that would mean they may receive less than their initial investment at maturity despite paying a large premium as bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

For example, a week and a half after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate to near zero in March, yields on both the 1-month and 3-month Treasury bills dipped below zero.

“We have a lot of other fixed income alternative in our portfolio so we have things like infrastructure, power renewables, we have credit exposure, we have hedge fund exposure — we have a lot of other things in that space but that holding government bonds in large size is something that we will continue to examine, whether that’s the right thing to do at the zero-bound,” Machin added.

CPPIB manages about 434.4 billion Canadian dollars ($329.75 billion) as of June 30 and a bulk of its investments are in North America — around 34% of total assets are allocated in the United States — followed by Asia.


The fund is heavily invested in both the technology and health-care sectors and continues to invest, according to Machin. Companies in both industries have benefited from a change of consumption and corporate habits due to the pandemic.

“Digitization is a massive theme across the world, it is being talked about — it’s probably a five to 10 year acceleration across many sectors,” he said. He pointed out how online education has taken off in Asia due to more specialized companies dealing with the changing trends and predicted that adoption would pick up over time in Europe and the U.S.
Sustainable investing


CPPIB on its website says it factors in environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities into its investment analysis and actively engages with companies to promote “improved management of ESG.”

“We think no company can survive and thrive in the long term if they are not considering their impact on the environment, if they are not considering their impact on the communities they are in, if they are not considering the quality of the governance that they are running their companies with,” Machin said.

U.S. reacts angrily to losing WTO ruling on China tariffs

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Claims that $200 billion US worth of goods had benefited from illegal practices not proven, WTO says

The Associated Press · Posted: Sep 15, 2020 2:13 PM ET | Last Updated: September 15

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, seen during congressional testimony earlier this year, cited the decision as proof that the World Trade Organization isn't equipped to deal with what he characterizes as China's unfair trade advantages. (Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press)

The decision marks the first time that the Geneva-based trade body has ruled against a series of high-profile tariffs that U.S.President Donald Trump's government has imposed on a number of countries — allies and rivals alike. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the WTO treats the U.S. unfairly.

In its decision, the WTO's dispute settlement body ruled against the U.S. government's argument that China has wrongly engaged in practices harmful to U.S. interests on issues including intellectual property theft and technology transfer.

The ruling, in theory, would allow China to impose retaliatory tariffs on billions' worth of U.S. goods.

But it is unlikely to have much practical impact, at least in the short term, because the U.S. can appeal the decision and the WTO's appeals court is currently no longer functioning — largely because of Washington's single-handed refusal to accept new members for it.

• ANALYSIS
  Is the global trading system unravelling before our eyes? Here is where things stand

• U.S shuts down World Trade Organization appeals court

The appeals court issues final rulings in trade cases and stopped functioning last year when the terms of two of its last three judges expired with no replacements. That means the United States can appeal the decision "into the void," said Timothy Keeler, a lawyer at Mayer Brown and former chief of staff for the U.S. Trade Representative.

"This panel report confirms what the Trump administration has been saying for four years: The WTO is completely inadequate to stop China's harmful technology practices," said U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer in a statement. He said the U.S. had presented "extensive evidence" of China's intellectual property theft and the WTO has offered no fixes for it.

"The United States must be allowed to defend itself against unfair trade practices, and the Trump administration will not let China use the WTO to take advantage of American workers, businesses, farmers, and ranchers," he said.

Abolish the WTO: Republican senator

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the prominent China critics in the Republican Party, said it was "more evidence that the WTO is outdated, sclerotic, and generally bad for America. USA should withdraw and lead the effort to abolish it."

The Chinese ministry of commerce said the ruling was "objective and fair" and called on the U.S. to respect it.

The U.S. tariffs target two batches of Chinese products. Duties of 10 per cent were imposed on some $200 billion worth of goods in September 2018, and were jacked up to 25 per cent eight months later. An additional 25 per cent duties were imposed in June 2018 against Chinese goods worth about $34 billion in annual trade.

• Buy American policies will live on — even if the Trump presidency doesn't

• U.S. calls off tariffs on Canadian aluminum — for now

The Trump administration has justified the sanctions under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, once a common tool used by the U.S. government to impose sanctions — and recently revived by Trump. The U.S. argued that China's actions had amounted to "state-sanctioned theft" and "misappropriation" of U.S. technology, intellectual property and commercial secrets.

The WTO panel ruled that the U.S. measures violated longstanding international trade rules because they only applied to products from China, and that Washington had not adequately substantiated its claim that the Chinese products hit with the extra duties had benefited from the allegedly unfair Chinese practices.

With files from CBC News

U.S. blinks in trade dispute with Canada, drops tariffs on Canadian aluminum

 The United States has suddenly called a tariff truce with Canada, lifting its 10 per cent aluminum levy Tuesday just hours before Ottawa was to unleash a suite of countermeasures.

The tariffs on Canadian aluminum will be lifted retroactive to Sept. 1 because Canadian exports are expected to “normalize” over the remainder of the year, the U.S. trade representative’s office said in a statement. Abigail Bimman explains why a trade threat still looms. For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/7336417/us-standing-down-aluminum-tariffs-canada/

CBC

The United States hit the pause button on tariffs on Canadian aluminum today, agreeing to withdraw current penalties — at least until after the presidential election in November. To read more: http://cbc.ca/1.5724391

Virtual schools face rocky start — with delays, confusion and technical problems

'We're flying the plane as we build it,' says Regina school official

WE HAVE ONLY HAD COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET IN SCHOOLS SINCE THE NINETIES

Jessica Wong · CBC News · Posted: Sep 16, 2020 

Getting virtual schools off the ground this fall has proven to be a significant challenge across provinces, with parents feeling left in the dark, enrolment lists in flux, technical issues and teachers still being hired or reassigned as classes get underway. (Shutterstock)


Some Canadian parents might have looked longingly at neighbouring provinces getting the option of distance learning this school year, but getting virtual schools off the ground has proven to be a tricky undertaking.

With many parents feeling left in the dark, postponements, enrolment lists in flux, technical hiccups and teachers still being hired or reassigned as classes begin, heading back to school online this fall has gotten off to a bumpy start during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There's a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of 'I don't know' and 'We'll figure it out as we go.' I'm a planner, so that kind of stuff makes me very anxious," said Ashley St John, a Toronto mother of a blended family of five children between two months and 12 years old.

Because St John is currently on maternity leave, she said she feels lucky to be able to choose online learning for her school-aged children — a decision made because two members of her multigenerational household are immunocompromised.

But school-related emails being sent to an outdated address and no followup phone calls forced her to rush around to confirm that her kids had indeed been enrolled in virtual school this fall.

"I have zero faith that they're organized.... The feeling I get is that they don't have a plan, they're not prepared," she said.

WATCH | Parent reacts to Toronto school board's latest postponement:


Watch

Toronto District School Board (TDSB) delays on-line learning again
21 hours ago
Ashley St John speaks to Dianne Buckner about the postponement and what this means for her blended family. 6:58

Parents in Calgary are also decrying a lack of key information and details about the Calgary Board of Education's Hub online learning program, which was slated to begin as early as Monday.

"We just don't have any information as to what time we need to be home and in front of our computers to be able to let the kids connect with their teachers," said Tamara Rose, who is working from home full time because of multiple autoimmune diseases.

Rose said she feels frustrated: She wants to be able to schedule her video meetings for work apart from the time her daughter, Scarlett — who had expected to start Grade 2 virtually this past Monday morning — will need the computer for school. She also needs to juggle the times her seven-year-old will join her grandfather outdoors for some physical activity, like hiking.

"We're kind of all just in the dark right now," she said.

Tamara Rose, with her seven-year-old daughter, Scarlett, is among the Calgary parents who are waiting to receive details about their children's online learning classrooms. 'We're kind of all just in the dark right now," she says. (Submitted by Tamara Rose)

Though some parents have received emails identifying their children's Hub teachers, what school supplies will be needed and details of their kids' virtual school day, others — like Rose — are still waiting.

"Some moms are sitting there hitting refresh [on their email] all day," she said.
'A monumental task'

Creating virtual classes for so many students — and then staffing and supporting them accordingly — has been "a monumental task," Toronto District School Board chair Alexander Brown said Tuesday morning, a day after Canada's largest school district announced it was once again delaying the start of its virtual option.

The TDSB has begun a staggered entry for in-class learning this week, but its virtual school will now start on Sept. 22, with the latest postponement due to a large influx of families — about 72,000 students from the board's roughly 250,000 total enrolment — opting for online learning.

The 72,000 students in the Toronto District School Board's virtual school this fall represent an enrolment bigger than most school boards in Ontario, says Carlene Jackson, the board's interim director of education. Tuesday was the deadline for parents to enrol their children in virtual school. (CBC)

"That's bigger than most school boards in Ontario. We've seen increases of over 6,000 in just the last couple of days, and we are expecting that to grow," said Carlene Jackson, the board's interim director of education.

"We did decide to allow parents to have choice and flexibility in terms of whether or not they wanted to send their children in person or do online learning," she said, clarifying that Tuesday was the deadline for virtual school.

"We do need the additional time to get the additional teachers in place and to develop those timetables."

The Toronto public board isn't alone: School boards in Peel Region, Hamilton-Wentworth and Waterloo region were among the other Ontario districts that announced delays to the start of virtual learning in recent days due to a significant last-minute uptick in sign-ups, which has required reassigning or hiring many more teachers.

Excitement, delays, cancellations and questions on 1st day of school in Hamilton during COVID-19
Local school boards hiring 165 teachers to help with online learning

"It's a buyer's market right now for teachers. They're needed all over the place.... There's a huge teacher shortage right now," said Patrick Etmanski, head of the Waterloo unit of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association.

"They've delayed the online stuff because they can't find people to do the work."
E-learning can overload internet

Getting the Calgary Board of Education's massive virtual effort ready has taken a Herculean effort over the past weeks — from finalizing the student registrations to reallocating existing teachers and hiring new ones, said Joanne Pitman, the board's superintendent of school improvement.

She said that earlier communication from the board — which included a link to some independent assignments to familiarize students with online learning — had indicated that real-time instruction would begin sometime this week.

'There is nothing going on with Hub': CBE parents, students still waiting to start online classes

"We're actually, in under two weeks, reassigning and building in over 700 teachers to be able to support the just under 20,000 students who have registered for Hub," Pitman said.

Anticipating the complexity of a brand-new virtual offering was why Regina Public Schools chose to start its e-school program the week after beginning a staggered in-class return, said Terry Lazarou, the board's supervisor of communications.

"We have to build infrastructure. We have to get it staffed. We have to do all of the stuff necessary to have that work successfully," he said Tuesday. This initial week would be "very much a 'getting to know you'" experience for elementary students, but "actual learning" for high-schoolers, he said.

On the first day of the e-school program at Regina Public Schools on Monday, a server exceeded capacity and prevented anyone from logging in for about 20 minutes before being quickly resolved, spokesperson Terry Lazarou says. 'The internet is a lovely thing, but it's not magical.' (Kirk Fraser/CBC)

"There were obviously hiccups," Lazarou said about Monday's inaugural day of e-school, which has about 2,000 students enrolled. A server exceeded capacity and prevented anyone from logging in for about 20 minutes before being quickly resolved, he said.

"We're very reliant on infrastructure that everyone else in the province is also using. The internet is a lovely thing, but it's not magical. When volume goes up or when other things happen, it's susceptible to overuse sometimes."

First day of secondary school marred by confusion, technical difficulties and students sharing obscene content
Hamilton's Catholic school board delays start of virtual school due to power outage

Moving forward, Regina Public Schools is focused on improving its offering, Lazarou said. Key will be ensuring that technological systems stay "robust enough to be able to handle the need" and that all families in e-school continue to have the equipment and internet access required to participate online. Officials are also making the necessary accommodations for students with intensive needs.

"There is a lot more work that needs to be done," Lazarou said. "We're flying the plane as we build it.... This is going well, but everything can go better. And we're working on ensuring that it does go better."

Thousands of Sask. students flocking to online learning during COVID-19

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce urged patience as "tens of thousands" of students get started virtually from kindergarten to Grade 12 this school year.

Referring to the fact that even without COVID-19, class numbers typically fluctuate somewhat before settling later in September, Lecce told a daily Ontario press briefing on Monday that there will indeed be consolidation — and perhaps reorganization — of classrooms in some regions this fall.

"While we're seeing the migration of tens of thousands [of students] ... it creates operational challenges for boards," he said. "It's not an excuse, but it's important context for families to understand."


With files from Deana Sumanac-Johnson, Lucie Edwardson, Jacqueline Hansen and Kate Bueckert.

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Top image: OECD Chart (data.oecd.org) of United States and South Korea harmonized unemployment rates, Oct. 2019-July 2020

by Ryan Zamarripa

September 15, 2020 
 
The United States is closing in on 200,000 COVID-19 deaths and has surpassed 6.5 million infections—two bleak milestones in a battle that President Donald Trump, in important ways, chose not to fully fight. With the new revelation in Bob Woodward’s book, Rage, that the president understood how deadly the virus was on February 7th—and likely even earlier—but chose not to act in the manner one would hope with that information, there is little comfort to offer the families, friends, and loved ones of the tens of thousands of Americans who should still be alive today.

Instead of putting forth a national strategy to combat the pandemic or issuing guidelines for states on how to curb the virus’s spread, the president actively sowed confusion and downplayed the severity of the situation. Americans were left largely in the dark about the virus’s lethality. Accompanying this carnage is catastrophic economic fallout, which too can be attributed to the president’s inaction and misdirection.

As a result, the United States has been plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Annualized gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by a crushing 31.7 percent in the second quarter of 2020—easily the largest recorded drop in American history. 11.5 million jobs have been lost since February, and slowing job growth is pointing to a stalled recovery. Communities of color are bearing the brunt of the economic fallout, with Black, Latino, and Asian unemployment rates consistently higher than that of their white counterparts.

With no end in sight to the recession, it is worth remembering that this economic crisis was not inevitable. Had President Trump taken steps to curb the coronavirus’s spread within the United States sooner, the economy might be back to normal by now.

International comparisons, while imperfect, can illustrate just how much worse the recession is in the United States compared to other countries. As demonstrated by the experiences of peer nations, a rapid and coordinated public health response could have contained the pandemic more effectively and reduced the mounting economic losses.

South Korea, which recorded its first case of COVID-19 on the same day as the United States, largely avoided shutting down its economy due to its early and aggressive actions to counter the spread of the coronavirus. In July, South Korea’s harmonized unemployment rate, a metric calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to enable the comparison of unemployment figures across countries, was 4.2 percent—just 0.9 percentage points higher than it was in February. The United States, on the other hand, registered an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent in July—higher than any point reached during the Great Recession and 6.7 percentage points higher than where it was in February. Every OECD country with published July harmonized unemployment data (aside from Colombia) was performing markedly better than the United States relative to pre-pandemic levels.


The president, of course, argues that the economy is in shambles not because of a failed public health response on his part, but instead due to the lockdowns implemented in most states across the country. These measures, he argues, are the real reason consumer demand has crumpled. The president believes that economic activity would roar back to its pre-pandemic level if only the United States were open again for business.

That’s a false hope built on mistaken empirical assumptions. There is strong evidence suggesting that the fear of the virus’s spread (perhaps compounded by an inadequate policy response) led to an economic slowdown before stay-at-home orders were even in place. As early as February, real-time economic data show a marked decline in spending on high-contact activities. From mid-January to mid-March, consumer spending on (i) transportation, (ii) entertainment and recreation, and (iii) restaurants and hotels declined by 24 percent, 24 percent, and 9 percent, respectively. Spending on groceries, on the other hand, surged by 43 percent over the same time period, indicating a clear public acknowledgement of the health risks of venturing out of the home and economic belt-tightening.

This phenomenon also holds true across states. Analysis shows that states with more serious restrictions did not see worse economic outcomes than states with more lax ones. In many cases, the economic outcomes in states with longer stay-at-home orders improved after lockdowns ended. States that gambled with their residents’ lives by not shutting down or by reopening too quickly ended up with nothing to show for it economically.

This patchwork of lockdowns has only compounded the confusion. Since the beginning of the pandemic, states have been in a constant shuffle of reopening and shutting back down based on caseloads within their borders. Yet there are serious problems with delegating lockdowns to states, the most obvious one being that Americans are mostly free to move between them. Even the most diligent state can have its progress in combatting the virus erased by an inflow of infected guests or a transient mask-weary population.

While the implementation of a national lockdown may be unconstitutional, the president could have taken significant steps to encourage people to stay home and adopted other mitigation measures, and then collaborated with states to enforce such policies. Instead, he offered conflicting messages on wearing masks, downplayed the risks, pushed fake cures, and tried to turn state lockdowns into partisan issues.

Now, the United States is virtually alone among wealthy countries in its mounting death count. Other countries sacrificed economic activity for a short period to bring the pandemic under control, and the results have been mostly positive. Over the month of July, the United Kingdom registered an increase of 12 deaths per million residents. Over August, that figure had dropped to 5, indicating a decreasing rate of growth. Canada’s monthly increase in deaths per million residents dropped from 9 to 5 from July to August. Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, New Zealand, and Singapore registered no change over the same period.

The United States, on the other hand, saw its monthly increase in deaths per million residents surge from 78 to 91 between July and August—a significant and non-trivial acceleration. In August, the United States overtook France in total deaths per million residents. Projecting each country’s growth rates reveals that we will soon pass Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

Much of the evidence available suggests that the economic recovery is consequently stalling in the United States. Consumer spending dropped 33 percent at the end of March compared to pre-pandemic levels, and over the subsequent months it gradually recovered. Since the middle of June, however, consumer spending has remained around 7 percent below its February level. Similar trajectories have been observed in small business revenue, new job postings, and the overall employment level.

Many of the provisions in the CARES Act aimed at helping the most economically vulnerable have expired, subjecting tens of millions of Americans to intense economic hardship and beginning the process of erasing the progress made thus far. The $600 weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payments ended at the end of July, squeezing the finances of over 10 million unemployed Americans. The eviction moratorium has also expired, which has already led to millions of evictions nationwide and is expected to lead to millions more.

The HEROES Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives in May with bipartisan support, would have likely been sufficient to keep the economy afloat at the time it was passed, and in the process it would have provided the country enough time to get the pandemic under control. Unfortunately, the HEROES Act was not considered in the Senate, and the pandemic is still raging across the United States. Now, with the Senate still unable to pass its own bill and negotiations stalling yet again, the prospect of a new round of relief is starting to slip away. There is a real possibility that we won’t see a new aid package until the 117th Congress is sworn in next January. Until a substantive and comprehensive bill becomes law, COVID-19 will continue to kill Americans, and the economic recovery will likely continue to stall.

President Trump could change this trajectory. If he were to unveil a national plan to ramp up testing, work with states to minimize transmissions, and engage in negotiations with Congress to pass a new round of relief, it is still very possible that our country could get the pandemic under control and follow in the economic footsteps of some of our international peers.

It seems though that the president is instead placing all of his faith in the successful development and wide distribution of a vaccine, which would surely lead to an economic rebound. Yet the public health community is not expecting to see widespread vaccination until the middle of next year, and there are mounting concerns that some of the candidate’s clinical trials are not going as well as initially hoped. Even if one of the vaccines successfully passes trials and is approved, there are already significant challenges to distributing and administering it to over 300 million Americans.

For now, it is important to remember that many of the deaths and much of the economic hardship could have been avoided had President Trump acted on the intelligence and public health information he received before the coronavirus crisis began. His repeated abdication of responsibility has led to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and his continued refusal to lead is only lengthening and deepening the economic damage he has caused. The COVID-19 pandemic was the first real exogenous test President Trump has faced in his role, and it has become clearer than ever that he has failed. Unfortunately, things will likely get much worse before they get better.

TO SEE OTHER EMBEDED CHARTS

https://www.justsecurity.org/72434/mass-job-losses-and-other-economic-costs-of-president-trumps-inaction-on-coronavirus/

Voter to President Trump: Let me finish, sir

CNN's Don Lemon reacts to some moments from ABC's town hall with President Donald Trump where he was confronted by voters about a variety of issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic and healthcare.

 

COVID: Which side are we on?

August 16, 2020

Length:1357 words

Summary: An examination of how class divisions and opposed concepts of freedom underpin the radically divergent approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and the U.S. — Editors

On whose side do we stand in the face of this horrible epidemic which, in my country of the United States, causes at least a thousand deaths a day (a total of 155,000 certified deaths, not counting thousands of poor, undocumented people who die without a trace) and which resumed in July to double its national extent? With the neo-liberals denying the danger in order to bring in the salaried workers without taking health measures and risking their lives to produce profits and inflate the stock market? Or with the resistance of emergency workers, teachers and frontline workers who want to protect themselves and others by strengthening public health measures?

The two camps

The class line is clearly drawn. On the one hand, neoliberal and fascist governments, such as those of Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil, both of which are denialist, minimize in their massive propaganda the danger of Covid-19, refuse to wear masks, denigrate science, and discourage any effort to control the virus. Their objectives?

For Bolsonaro, it is the genocide of the indigenous people of the Amazon in order to open it up to agricultural exploitation by cutting down and burning the trees that give the planet a large percentage of its oxygen). Trump was already a denier of global warming, which he dismissed as a “Chinese myth.” As soon as he came to power, he took away all the laws that protected the environment to benefit his buddies in the oil industry.

As for COVID, Trump denied it from the beginning (“a bad cold”) and refused to wear a mask. Every day, in Tweets and press conferences, Trump spreads false statistics and ridicules science by dismissing Dr. Fauci, the official head of public health of the Republic. This denialist propaganda is quickly taken up by the Republican party (in power in the Senate and in many federal states), by the mass media such as FOX News, and it floods the Internet.

Christian-fascist militias armed with semi-automatic rifles organize threatening anti-mask demonstrations under the protection of the police, normally so brutal against the demonstrators, but who sympathize with Trump.

Result? The USA, the richest country in the world, has the most sick and dead people on the planet. Thanks to Trump’s policy, which only thinks about his re-election and the stock market, with 4% of the world’s population the US has more than a quarter of the population affected. (“We’re Number One!”) Compared to France, an American, like my daughter Jenny in NY, is much times more likely to die from the virus than a Parisian. And I don’t count her autoimmune condition, severely declared, which could multiply this danger a lot. As for New Yorkers my age, it’s dropping like flies.

Same phenomenon in Germany, where the neo-Nazis, who are becoming more and more numerous and active, are using the idea that they are defending “freedom of expression” by rejecting masks to mobilize the masses. Far from defending freedom, these Nazis are part of an international right-wing negationist movement financed by neoliberal right-wing groups of which Trump and Bolsonaro are champions.

Between these deadly neo-fascist movements and the revolt of the nurses and teachers who defend human life and the public health service, I have no difficulty in choosing my side.


An explosive video

A propos of Germany, I just watched a video in German language (with titles) entitled “2,000 doctors explode governments on coronavirus management” recommended by Gilet Jaunes [ort Yellow Vest] comrades here in France who consider it a “bomb”. (Time bomb: if you don’t know German, you have to be patient and read tiny subtitles).


Far from criticizing the lack of tests, masks, respirators, and hospital beds typical of the neo-liberal management of this public health crisis, which has long been starved for credits, the consensus of these German experts (not all doctors) is that the danger of the pandemic is being scandalously exaggerated in order to impose liberticidal laws. (Here in France, we have been flanked by liberticidal laws to crush the Yellow Vest revolt just before COVID, but it doesn’t matter).

This impression is supported by a few examples that are probably authentic (no notes). Federal governments in Germany exaggerating their controls, examples of deaths falsely attributed to COVID, comparisons with the Black Death (surprise! It was much worse) and predictions that there will not be a “second wave” (as was the case with the Plague, “Spanish” flu and other epidemics). We’ll see in 2021, but in the meantime why not produce tests, masks, respirators as a precautionary principle?

Worse still, for these experts, the scientific journal The Lancet is accused of having published an article denying the usefulness of CLOROCOQUINE. For German experts, this is an indication of a conspiracy among specialists. But The Lancet had to withdraw this article under the criticism of other scientists, which seems rather to confirm that the international scientific system knows how to correct itself.

I am willing to accept that these German experts are bona fide with their open secrets, and not puppets of the neo-fascist deniers demonstrating in Berlin. But what can we do politically with their message?

Organize real scientific experiments with control to demonstrate the usefulness of CLOROCOQUINE used in the right doses and at the right time? Yes!

Join forces with Donald Trump, Jair Bolosonaro? Join the ranks of neo-fascist gangs who demonstrate against masks, divide the masses, and put at risk thousands of innocent people like my daughter and I who need to breathe? No!

I’ve been fighting for individual freedom for over 60 years and I ask myself, “Do certain forms of confinement violate human rights?” It’s not impossible, but most of them don’t. On the contrary, they assert people’s right to live, which Trump and the neo-liberals neglect. I don’t have the right to put a neighbor’s life at risk by walking into a store without a mask. I don’t have the right to force my employees to put their lives and the lives of their families at risk in order to make a profit.

Oppressed communities know how to put the community first. Those who define “personal freedom” as freedom from responsibility to others follow a totally bourgeois conception of freedom. Especially since Donald Trump, a racist and misanthropist, knows perfectly well that the poor, the oppressed, the racialized, the immigrants, the workers die in greater numbers than the white petty bourgeois. He does everything he can to divide. I do not have the right to ignore the problem of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and continue to consider myself a Yellow Vest.


The role of the Yellow Vests

I have always understood that the role of the Yellow Vests was to give an authentic voice and a rallying point to the 99% independents from parties, unions and sects in order to change the system, establish direct democracy and defend public services, especially health, by supporting the resistance of workers, for example nurses and emergency doctors who, poorly paid and overworked, are still demanding protective equipment and masks that can be changed while they risk their lives to save ours.

Our class role is to attack our billionaire governments who, for “economic” and profit reasons, are closing hospital beds and cutting budgets in the face of a global pandemic of a new virus that we don’t yet know when (or if) it will stop.

The neo-liberals in power are taking advantage of this crisis to privatize public health and get rid of the duty to protect the population. On the contrary, they minimize the gravity of the situation to force poor workers to risk their lives, often without adequate protection (it’s expensive!), to run their machines for profit.

And to “free” the parents of wage-slaves, the neo-liberals want to open schools in September without installing adequate protection, especially rapid and frequent testing to isolate those who are contagious. In the U.S., teachers’ unions are already planning a strike under the slogan “I love to teach but if I’m dead I can’t teach.” You have to be with them.