WestJet Warns Workers Their Pay Will Be Cut In Half Due To Wage Subsidy Changes

The maximum weekly pay for employees on CEWS will drop to $400 per week, down from $847, WestJet said.

IN KENNEY'S ALBERTA CALGARY BASED WESTJET BLAMES OTTOWA

Canadian Press

XINHUA NEWS AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

A traveller checks in at the WestJet check-in counter of Pearson International Airport in Toronto, March 24, 2020. WestJet has announced major pay cuts for its employees, saying it's due to change in the federal government's pandemic wage subsidy.


CALGARY ― WestJet Airlines Ltd. is warning workers receiving the federal wage subsidy they will see their pay cut by up to 53 per cent starting Sunday.

A company memo sent to WestJetters on Wednesday states that the maximum weekly payment for employees on the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy will drop to $400 per week, down from $847.

In the message, vice-president Mark Porter attributes the change to the federal government aligning a newly extended wage subsidy with employment insurance, which is expanding as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit expires on Sept. 27.

WestJet flight attendants are calling on the government to clarify when and how much money will arrive in company coffers via the federal subsidy in order determine whether wages can return to current levels.

Chris Rauenbusch, who represents about 4,000 WestJet flight attendants with the Canadian Union of Public Employees ― nearly two-thirds of whom benefit from the subsidy ― says the airline cannot float worker wages until the federal government specifies the amounts payable to WestJet and “fills in the blanks” around the program.

Rauenbusch says employees have called him in tears at the prospect of failing to make rent, and that the federal government has created a “frustrating″ situation.

The WestJet memo followed the Liberal government’s throne speech Wednesday night, which extended the wage subsidy into next summer.

WestJet spokeswoman Morgan Bell says the Calgary-based company is administering the program based on the details and guidance currently available.

The federal finance department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Furloughed WestJet workers demand clarity on wage subsidy program amid pay cut

© Provided by The Canadian Press

WestJet Airlines Ltd. is warning furloughed workers their pay will be cut by up to 53 per cent starting Sunday due to changes in the extended federal wage subsidy, prompting flight crews to call on Ottawa for action.

The maximum weekly payment for more than 3,200 employees on furlough — a mandatory leave of absence — who rely on the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) will drop to $400, down from $847, according to a WestJet memo sent out Wednesday.

In his message, vice-president Mark Porter attributed the decision to changes by the federal government to the newly extended subsidy program.

"With the (Canada Emergency Response Benefit) program coming to a close at the end of September, the objective now is to ease the transition off of the CEWS program by aligning CEWS benefits with those offered specifically by an expanded EI program," the memo reads.

"We understand that the significance and irregularity of changes to these programs has been incredibly difficult for WestJetters."

Affected flight attendants called on the government to clarify when and how much money will arrive in company coffers via the federal subsidy in order determine whether wages can return to current levels.

“WestJet can't float our wages until Ottawa fills in the blanks, so our members are seeing their cheques cut in half," said Chris Rauenbusch, who represents about 4,000 WestJet flight attendants — 2,500 are furloughed — with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

"It is so frustrating to see the government touting CEWS while bureaucratic bumbling and ever-changing rules leave us wondering what to expect next," he said in a release.

“Many employees have called me in tears at the prospect they might not make rent."

Effective Sept. 27, the pay cut applies to all furloughed cabin crew, corporate employees and 700 pilots.

"A lot of these pilots are the primary wage earners in their family, and any reduction in the take-home pay is very worrisome to us," said Capt. Dave Colquhoun, who chairs the Air Line Pilots Association's WestJet contingent.

The union called on the Trudeau government this week to come forward with targeted financial support for the aviation sector.

"We see that other sectors of the economy are in recovery, but the airline industry is not," Colquhoun said.

"That uncertainty wears on people that are sitting at home. It’s tough."

The federal finance department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The WestJet memo came days after the Liberal government pledged to extended the wage subsidy into next summer.

The program currently covers 75 per cent of a worker's normal hourly wages, up to $847 per week. For airlines, the vast majority of employees remain furloughed or laid off, as passenger levels remain below 10 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Unlike WestJet, Air Canada opted not to administer the wage subsidy to the bulk of its 38,000 employees, more than half of whom were laid off in June.

"No one inactive is on it, meaning members are either flying (so the company would be able to collect CEWS for these members) or they are laid off, and not CEWS applicable," said Wesley Lesosky, who heads Air Canada's CUPE component.

"We have raised the recent announcement of an extension to CEWS with the employer yesterday and are hoping for further discussions on this early next week."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2020

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

Furloughed WestJet workers demand clarity on wage subsidy program amid pay cut


18 hrs ago

Do you need COVID insurance for out-of-province travel?

Opinion: President Trump, here are three tips for besting Biden at the debate

Samuel L. Jackson Explores The Lost History Of The Slave Trade In New Docuseries ‘Enslaved’



Samuel L. Jackson is hosting a new six-episode series that delves back into what is arguably the most shameful period in American history.

The EPIX channel's "Enslaved" (airing in Canada on CBC) finds Jackson tracing his ancestral journey from the African nation of Gabon to America for the new series, which looks at 400 years of human trafficking for profit.

Joining the "Avengers" star are British author/broadcaster Afua Hirsch and Canadian investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, with each episode tracking three individual story lines: searching for a sunken slave ship, Jackson's personal journey of discovery (which includes his induction into a local Benga tribe in Gabon) and a historical look at what took place.

RELATED: Samuel L. Jackson Teaches Fans To ‘Swear In 15 Languages’ After Achieving Voter Action Goal

“When the project was presented to me they told me that they identified these ships that were in the Atlantic that were ships that were taking enslaved people all the way to the New World and they sank,” Jackson told IndieWire. “And that’s a story that we’ve never talked about: Who were these people? Where did they came from? Who commissioned the ships? Those were the kinds of questions I needed answered.”

In the trailer for the series, Jackson points out that more than 12 million people were trafficked, with 2 million dying during the perilous sea voyage from Africa to the U.S.

“We never talk about the ships that did not make it and what that meant, or what the profitability of that was for the people that sponsored the ships — because even though people didn’t make it, someone still made a profit off them,” Jackson said. “I mean how did they still profit from those ships going down?”

RELATED: ‘Kimmel’ Guest Host Samuel L. Jackson Says Trump ‘Is Dangerous For Our Country’ In Scathing Monologue

As Jackson explained, slavery may have been abolished by the racism that drove it has yet to be eradicated. “The business of our bodies continued and still continues,” he said. “We were considered property at one time, and you look at what’s happening now, the argument can be made that not a lot has changed," he said. "This is important American history that has resonance today.”

"Enslaved" premieres in Canada on Oct. 18.

Canadians can now see conflicts of interest declared by COVID-19 vaccine task force


Amanda Connolly
3 days ago

  

© (AP Photo/Hans Pennink) FILE - In this Monday, July 27, 2020 file photo, a nurse prepares a shot as a study of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., gets underway in Binghamton, N.Y. Who gets to…

Conflict of interest disclosures made by members of the government's COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force are now available for the Canadian public as the country continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

The move follows reporting by Global News into the fact that although the government acknowledged it was deliberately seeking out vaccine experts who could have a real or perceived conflict of interest to sit on that advisory board, none of their conflict of interest disclosures were being shared with Canadians.

READ MORE: COVID-19 vaccine task force members have declared 18 conflicts of interests so far

That meant that while members of the task force had recused themselves 18 times from discussions since June, none of the details of those recusals or the reasons given were public.

That came amid the rising spread of misinformation online from anti-vaxxers and data suggesting skepticism among some in the country about whether to get a vaccine if one becomes available.

READ MORE: Safety of COVID-19 vaccine concerning some Canadians, StatCan survey shows

The COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force is an advisory body set up to provide recommendations to the government about which coronavirus vaccine research is promising and which deals to pursue. It includes 12 experts from the medical research and development industry along with four ex-officio members of the federal public service.

In order to have people considered “leading experts” in the field involved, the government says​ “the deliberate decision was made to include individuals who may have a real or perceived conflict of interest (COI) with respect to one or more proposals to be evaluated by the (COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force).”

Each individual was required to fill out a conflict of interest disclosure form and bureaucrats were tasked with monitoring and enforcing their observance of avoiding conflicts of interests — for example, by recusing themselves from deliberations where they had a conflict.

But unlike with politicians and public servants, whose conflicts of interest disclosures are registered publicly with the ethics commissioner, none of the disclosures of the experts recruited to the COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force were being listed publicly.

A government official said earlier this month there were no plans to change that.

But on Tuesday, the government appears to have reversed course.

Global News reached out asking whether two members of the vaccine task force who previously worked for Sanofi Pasteur recused themselves from deliberations on a deal announced on Tuesday to secure 72 million doses of the firm's coronavirus vaccine candidate.

READ MORE: ‘Canada is at a crossroads’: Federal health officials warn coronavirus habits must change

In response, a spokesperson for the National Research Council shared a copy of a list of the members' conflict of interest disclosures for each meeting of the task force about a vaccine deal current to Sept. 22.

Another official confirmed the new information was published on Sept. 22 and will be updated going forward.

"Given the significant interest in the vaccine task force’s process, the task force is taking the exceptional step of publishing a registry of declared interests," said John Power, press secretary for Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains in an email to Global News.

"The registry will be updated on the [National Research Council]’s website following each vaccine announcement that is based on a task force recommendation."

That means there will still be meetings where Canadians do not know what was discussed or who may have recused themselves, but that any meetings leading to actual vaccine deals will be listed so the public can see who made what declarations.

The list outlines the topic of each of the five meetings held so far along with the names of each member, any previously declared conflicts of interest, and what action was taken if required to prevent the individual from being in a conflict of interest.

READ MORE: Widespread coronavirus vaccine not expected until mid-2021: WHO

For the most recent meeting on Sept. 3 at which the task force discussed the Sanofi vaccine deal, task force co-chair and former Sanofi Pasteur president Mark Lievonen is listed as having recused himself because of his previous work with the firm and the fact he still owns "modest" shares in it.

Michel De Wilde, who was previously a vice president of research and development for Sanofi Pasteur, did not attend that meeting while Dr. Joanne Langley, also a co-chair, disclosed that the university where she works has received research funding from Sanofi Pasteur, among other sources.

READ MORE: Task force worries Trump’s rush to approve COVID-19 vaccine will cause concern in Canada

The norm in the medical research field is for individuals publishing work in any kind of credible, serious medical journal to disclose and publish any conflicts of interest at the same time.

Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of The BMJ — formerly known as the British Medical Journal — said this has become standardized in an effort to maintain trust in medical research and that vaccine research, in particular, is an area where it is difficult to find experts without some kind of conflict of interest.

“I think it’s a basic issue of trust that people want to see what’s gone into decisions or recommendations, and that includes both the person’s expertise and the potential or real influences on any recommendations or decisions they may make,” she said in a previous interview with Global News.

“It’s become a standard thing.”

Prosecute Donald Trump for coronavirus crimes? No, but maybe Jared Kushner


J.M. Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill University

© (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) White House adviser Jared Kushner listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus at a White House briefing in April 2020.

He knew. He lied. People died.

This is the general argument for a potential criminal prosecution of U.S. President Donald Trump in light of journalist Bob Woodward’s recent revelations in his new book Rage about the president and COVID-19.

“This is deadly stuff,” Trump noted in a February interview with Woodward. “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed.”

Unable to stop talking, the president blathered on about his intention to “play down” the threat so as not to scare people — that is, the stock market.

Could these conversations become Exhibit A in a formal prosecution of Trump? Does his handling of the pandemic constitute criminal negligence rather than garden-variety incompetence?

Criminal negligence

Federal and state laws in the United States define criminal negligence as a gross or reckless disregard for human life, resulting in serious injury or death. The prosecution must show that the defendant wasn’t just careless or mistaken, but that he acted in ways that no reasonable person ever would, with clear and deadly consequences for others.

A classic example — and, in the U.S., an all too common one — is that of a parent leaving a loaded gun within easy reach of a child.

This spring and summer, Trump’s repeated statements about the coronavirus were in direct conflict with information that he knew to be true. His manifest disdain for safety measures certainly put people in danger; indeed, his recent rally in Nevada violated that state’s pandemic guidelines.

And yet the fact that he’s president also gives Trump some get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Criminal prosecutions generally require clear, one-to-one relationships between perpetrator and victim. Prosecutors would need to show that Trump himself caused the deaths of specific other persons. It’s much harder to establish guilt for collective suffering, especially with all the variables of COVID-19 infections.
Wide range of responsibilities

In his capacity as chief executive, Trump also receives a daily briefing about a huge range of national security threats. Whether he listens is unclear, but he could plausibly claim that being president involves a unique range of responsibilities and decisions — that he’s less akin to a negligent parent leaving a pistol next to his kid’s tricycle than to a fireman who confronts many fires at once.

He could also point to his early ban on travel from China as evidence that he acted on his information. 

© (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Trump speaks during a news conference on COVID-19 at the White House in July 2020.

Finally, government officials in general, and the president in particular, are often immune from prosecution for their actions in office. That principle isn’t as bad as it sounds.

After all, constitutional government depends on peaceful transitions of power, which in turn require that former office-holders live without fear of state sanction. Imagine a precedent that could enable a Republican administration, through the Attorney General’s office, to pursue Barack Obama for the deaths of U.S. personnel in Benghazi in 2012.

In short, Trump’s actions here were morally repellent, but they would be very hard to prosecute as criminal. In legal terms, he should be more worried about the more than two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault, not to mention further accusations of sexual misconduct, in ways he boasted about in 2005.
A civil action?

But the law offers another path to justice when it comes to the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On April 2, 2020, shortly after Trump’s conversations with Woodward, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, announced that he would be helping Vice-President Mike Pence’s coronavirus task force with supply issues. Kushner also pledged to “think outside the box.”

He did deliver a cache of N-95 masks to New York City. Yet Kushner’s outside-the-box thinking also brought a sudden shift in pandemic responsibilities from the national government to the various states. The task force also seems to have nixed its own plan for nationwide testing.

These decisions were objectively disastrous. Unable to draw on federal resources, states competed with one another for equipment. Testing lagged for crucial weeks, resulting in more infections and dead Americans

.  

© (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Kushner speaks at a news briefing at the White House in August 2020.

At the time of these events, Kushner and some other members of the task force —among them a Morgan Stanley executive and a Silicon Valley billionaire — were not elected officials. They were private citizens who, despite having no public health expertise, had assumed a specific responsibility to protect American citizens from the pandemic. They failed to do so.

According to a health official who worked closely with Kushner’s team, this failure was deliberate:


“The political folks believed that because [the pandemic] was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that will be an effective political strategy.”

We may never know for sure. But we don’t have to.
Monetary damages

The relatives of people who died due to the wrongful or neglectful behaviour of other parties can bring a civil suit, seeking monetary damages rather than prison time.

In these “wrongful death suits,” the plaintiffs don’t have to prove evil intent and deadly action beyond a reasonable doubt. They have to show a “preponderance of evidence” in support of the claim that another party is responsible for their loved ones’ death.

© (AP Photo/John Minchillo) In this April 2020 photo, workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in the Bronx borough of New York, where thousands died of COVID-19 infections.

So the relatives of dead COVID-19 patients from those Democratic states could allege that Kushner’s team mishandled their specific responsibility. They could argue that the task force behaved in a negligent, careless or even malicious manner — that they were derelict in the performance of their duties — and that this resulted in the loss of a mother, a son, a sister, a father.

Monetary damages alone cannot set the world to rights. But by reminding us that many COVID-19 deaths in the United States were wrongful as well as tragic, they might also remind the American people that, against all the evidence from the past four years, justice can still be served.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

J.M. Opal receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Ford to invest $1.46 billion in Canada plants as part of Unifor union deal
22/9/2020
  

© Reuters/Chris Helgren A Ford logo is seen on a wall of the Oakville Assembly Plant as workers with UNIFOR attended a ratification vote nearby

(Reuters) - Ford Motor Co will invest C$1.95 billion ($1.46 billion) in its Oakville and Windsor plants in Canada as part of a tentative deal with Canadian autoworkers, Unifor union National President Jerry Dias said on Tuesday.

The deal includes retooling the Oakville plant to build five electric vehicle (EV) models between 2025 and 2028, with the first EV rolling off the assembly line in 2025, Dias said.

The federal government, along with the Ontario government, is willing to invest in turning the Oakville plant over to the production of EVs, an investment that could keep the facility open for years, a government source confirmed on Tuesday.

"We're in the midst of negotiation" of how much money the Ontario government would contribute to the Ford plant's electric car production line, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Tuesday.

He did not say how much the province was considering to contribute.

The Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp have reported that the two governments could pitch in up to C$500 million.

Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy said the deal is beneficial for Ford as it averts a strike at the U.S. automaker's Canada plants and addresses spare capacity.

(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Sriraj Kalluvila)

Young Afghan women, men perform whirling Sufi dance together

 © Provided by The Canadian Press

KABUL — A group of young Afghans – both women and men – is coming together in the country's war-torn capital to practice a mystical Sufi Islamic dance.

The group’s founder says she sees their whirling dance, known as Sema, as a way of carving out a space in the country’s deeply conservative society, particularly when it comes to expectations about gender discrimination and dancing in mixed groups.

“I just wanted to express myself and my feelings with Sema dance,” said Fahima Mirzaie, a 24-year-old economist.

She recently danced alongside male members of her troupe at a cultural event hosted in a somewhat incongruous setting – an Italian restaurant in central Kabul. That night, she was the only women from her group dancing, although other women watched and read poetry.

As she spins, one hand reaches toward heaven and the other toward the earth, her white robe flowing, in the familiar image of a so-called “whirling dervish” seen across the Middle East and Central Asia. Dancers spin repetitively in prayer, chanting Allah and gaining in speed, seeking to lose themselves in a spiritual trance that they believe unites them with God.

But Afghanistan is not widely accepting of this mystical interpretation, and Sufism as well as dancing and singing were both rejected by the Taliban. Many Afghan women are wary of the Taliban returning to power in some form as part of a future peace deal, recalling the years of oppression under a strict form of Islamic law. But even in today's Afghanistan, women and men dancing together in public is mostly rejected as being against the country's culture, traditions and religious beliefs.

Most of the members of Mirzaie's dance group, which features men and women performing in public, are Shiite Muslims. They're a minority in Afghanistan that's been targeted for attacks by the Islamic State group, which considers Shiites — Sufi or otherwise — to be heretics. There are other Sufi dance groups scattered across the country's provinces too, primarily men but some women, who perform in front of mixed audiences.

Mirzaie says she’s unfazed by what people may say about her dancing. As part of the generation that's grown up during Afghanistan's latest war, she’s concerned about the violence in her society. She hopes she can change it through Sufism and the poems of Rumi, who's possibly the most well-known Sufi mystic.

Afghanistan has been at war for more than four decades, first against the invading Soviet army, then warring mujaheddin groups in a bitter civil war, followed by the repressive Taliban rule and finally the latest war that began after the 2001 U.S.-led coalition invasion that toppled the Taliban government.

Her group has also used Sufi dance to help them get through the coronavirus pandemic. During a lockdown earlier this year, Mirzaie closed her centre and provided training to her students online.

Now, she’s back whirling in person. At the Italian restaurant, Abdul Ahad, a civil society activist, said he’d been to a few Sufi events in Afghanistan that perform in private, but this was the first time he’s seen women doing it.

Mirzaie’s mother Qamar says she's worried for her daughter. “There’s no security and girls are taunted on their way out to work.”

She says she stays awake at night, waiting until Mirzaie returns home after dancing.

Mirzaie’s father, an ex-colonel in the traffic police, her sister and her mother are among her few supporters.

But despite these concerns, she says she cannot live by someone else’s rules.

“I never asked anyone’s permission for starting it and I will not need anyone’s permission to end it, so I will never stop or surrender to anyone.”

Tameem Akhgar, The Associated Press

Trump Claims Canada Wants Border Reopened. Canadians Disagree.

U.S.-Canada border restrictions were just extended again until Oct. 21.

 09/18/2020 

Canada and the United States announced this week that restrictions on non-essential border travel would remain in place until at least Oct. 21, with public safety minister Bill Blair saying the feds will continue to make the best decision to “keep Canadians safe.”

But according to U.S. President Donald Trump, Canadians actually want the border reopened as soon as possible.

ALEX WONG VIA GETTY IMAGES

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press prior to his departure from the White House Sept. 18, 2020.

During remarks to reporters on Friday, Trump claimed Canada is actually pushing to reopen the border, despite absolutely no evidence to suggest that.

“We’re looking at the border with Canada. Canada would like it open, and you know we want to get back to normal business,” Trump said.

Canadians, for the record, disagree.

The U.S. has the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths out of any country in the world, with more than 6.5 million cases and nearly 200,000 deaths reported. The per capita rates between our countries are vastly different to — the U.S. has reported around 19,000 cases per one million Americans, compared to just 3,750 cases per one million Canadians. 

A July Ipsos poll found that the majority of Canadians wanted border restrictions in place until at least the end of the year. And a poll released this week from Halifax-based Narrative Research found that 70 per cent of Canadians are in favour of the border remaining closed

And mayors of Canadians cities near the border are also keen to keep restrictions in place. Last week, a group of border mayors urged public safety minister Bill Blair to keep the border closed until at least the end of the year.

“The situation in the United States is getting worse,” Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop told CTV this week. “At this stage of the game, it doesn’t make sense to be lifting the border restrictions.”

So no Trump, Canada is in no rush to reopen.

• Melanie WoodsAssociate Editor, HuffPost Canada

Majority of Canadians support wearing masks during COVID-19, oppose protests: poll

© Provided by The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — A new survey suggests the recent rise in new COVID-19 cases across Canada comes with a similar increase in support for the mandatory wearing of masks in public places.

The online survey by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies says 83 per cent of respondents feel governments should order people to wear a mask in all indoor public spaces.

That represented a 16 per cent increase from July, before the recent rise in COVID-19 cases has sparked concerns many parts of the country are entering the dreaded second wave of the pandemic.

Even more — 87 per cent — felt wearing a mask was a civic duty because it protects others from COVID-19 while 21 per cent felt it was an infringement on personal freedoms, a decline of six per cent from July.

As for the anti-mask protests that have happened in various parts of the country in recent weeks, 88 per cent of respondents said they opposed the demonstrations while 12 per cent supported them.

The online poll was conducted Sept. 18 to 20 and surveyed 1,538 adult Canadians. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.

"In a way, again, the anti-maskers are a minority and not a growing minority in Canada," said Leger executive vice-president Christian Bourque.

"The fear of catching it is on the rise. People believing there will be a second wave is on the rise. And now people saying we should make the masks mandatory is on the rise."

Fears of contracting the novel coronavirus that causes the illness known as COVID-19 have indeed been steadily growing since the end of June.

Sixty-one per cent of respondents in this latest poll worried about catching the illness that has infected more than 145,000 Canadians, killing more than 9,200. That compared to 51 per cent in mid-June.

Two-thirds believe it is likely Canada will enter another lockdown in the next three months, while 83 per cent thought the country would experience a second wave of COVID-19 — three per cent more than last week.

Yet the poll also found more respondents had relaxed over the past month when it came to diligently following public health guidelines in terms of physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand washing.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 22, 2020.

Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press

LES SCANDALE CANADIEN 

PMO failed to check with key former employers before Payette's appointment as Governor General: sources

Ashley Burke, Kristen Everson

Canadian Governor General Payette


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his officials never conducted checks with Julie Payette's former employers at the Montreal Science Centre and the Canadian Olympic Committee that might have raised red flags about her behaviour with co-workers and subordinates before her appointment as Governor General, sources tell CBC News.

Multiple sources have told CBC News they were stunned by Trudeau's decision to appoint Payette in 2017. They have questioned the prime minister's judgment.

"A number of us were blown away when she got appointed," said a former board member at the Canada Lands Company (CLC), the self-financing Crown corporation that owns and operates the Montreal Science Centre. Payette was vice president of CLC and chief operating officer of the Montreal Science Centre from 2013 to 2016.

"This is a Crown corporation owned by the government," said the former board member. "You would have thought they'd call to check out her credentials."

Payette and her Rideau Hall office are now at the centre of an unprecedented third-party investigation launched by the Privy Council Office. In July, a CBC News report quoted a dozen confidential public servants and former employees who claim the Governor General belittled, berated and publicly humiliated Rideau Hall staff.
Payette received severance in 2016: sources

Payette was given severance of roughly $200,000 when she resigned from the Montreal Science Centre in 2016 following complaints about her treatment of employees, say multiple sources. In 2017, Payette left the Canadian Olympic Committee after two internal investigations into her treatment of staff, sources said.

CBC News spoke to 15 confidential sources who worked with Payette, including current and former employees and board members at the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Montreal Science Centre, the Canada Lands Company and the Canadian Space Agency. They spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, could lose their jobs, still work in the industry or, in some cases, continue to interact with Rideau Hall.

The Prime Minister's Office would not say if it was aware of the complaints made against Payette at these institutions.

"The Governor General is recommended on a broad range of factors and done with the appropriate due diligence," said press secretary Alex Wellstead in a statement to CBC News. "Any questions about previous roles should be directed to the organizations in question."

A spokesperson for the Governor General's office issued a statement to CBC News calling Payette an "outstanding Canadian" and "a trailblazer for women" and pushed back against the reports of workplace harassment.

"Over the course of her career, no formal complaint has ever been filed against her, nor has she ever resigned from a board of director position, including at the Canadian Olympic Committee, where she finished her term," said the statement from Payette's press secretary, Ashlee Smith.

"She has served on more than a dozen boards over the years in an exemplary manner," the statement said.
Payette accused of berating staffer at 2016 Olympics

In April of 2016 — the year Payette left the Montreal Science Centre — she was appointed to the board of the Canadian Olympic Committee. That same year, two employees of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) complained to the committee about Payette's treatment of staff, triggering internal HR investigations.

The COC board spoke to Payette about the complaints, said the sources. Payette did not apply for an extended term.

In one case, Payette was accused of berating a young female employee to the point of tears while at the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio in August, according to several current and former Canadian Olympic Committee staffers.

Payette is alleged to have screamed at the employee over having to wait with her son for a Canadian Olympic Committee vehicle to pick them up from an event they attended privately in Copacabana, the sources claimed. Payette complained it wasn't healthy for them to be standing on the street breathing in pollution for that long and called the situation "ridiculous," the sources claim.

In the second instance of a COC employee filing a complaint against Payette, say sources, Payette was accused in November of 2016 of overstepping her authority by threatening to fire an employee during a meeting for not having ready answers to her questions.

"Staff couldn't do anything to make her happy," said one former COC employee. "She would erupt out of nowhere. What she chalked up to appropriate behaviour would under every circumstance be inappropriate behaviour. We were all just supposed to sit there and take it."

When contacted about this story, Payette's press secretary suggested CBC News speak to John Furlong to provide balance to the unnamed accounts of Payette's conduct. Furlong worked with Payette on the board of Own the Podium, a not-for-profit organization that supports Canadian Olympic athletes, for several years before she joined the COC.

Furlong, the former chair of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), said he witnessed no incidents of harassment involving Payette during that time and called her "an exemplary board member.

"She had a perfect attendance record. She did her homework and read the material, which was extensive," he told CBC News.

"She was very engaged, collaborative [and] involved. I would give her a very high mark for her performance there."

(Furlong is himself no stranger to controversy. He was accused in 2012 of verbal and physical abuse of First Nations students in northern B.C. decades ago, allegations Furlong has consistently and strenuously denied. The RCMP investigated and concluded there were no grounds for charges, and civil claims were either dropped or dismissed.)

In her media statement, Smith pointed out that, "shortly before her term was completed, [Payette] was appointed as a member of the International Olympic Committee Women in Sport Commission on which she still serves."

Payette became a COC board member in April 2016 after the former president Marcel Aubut resigned over a sexual harassment scandal in 2015. In the wake of the controversy, the organization vowed to make sweeping changes to prevent similar issues in the future.

In a statement issued to CBC News, the Canadian Olympic Committee said it "is not appropriate for us to make public comment on any former or current Board member on such matters and leave this to the mandate of the Office of the Privy Council." Instead, the organization pointed CBC News to its conduct policy, which states that harassment is not tolerated and says that even "one incident could be enough to constitute harassment."

"Harassment includes bullying, and can take many forms but often involves conduct, comment or display that is insulting, intimidating, humiliating, hurtful, demeaning, belittling, malicious, degrading, or otherwise causes offence, discomfort, or personal humiliation or embarrassment to a person or group of persons," reads the policy.

A former Canada Lands employee with direct knowledge of the matter said the Crown corporation could have warned the Prime Minister's Office had it reached out before Payette's appointment.

"The red flags were her relationship with her employees, her controlling attitude and her resistance to administrative authority," said a former board member.

The board of directors at Canada Lands met Payette at an annual gala in 2013. Bowled over by her charisma and celebrity status in Quebec, they rushed to hire Payette without the normal due diligence or evaluation process, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The board members hoped Payette would woo donors and boost fundraising. But it quickly became clear Payette lacked experience in managing staff and was learning on the job, multiple sources claim.
A 'tense' and 'painful' time

The National Post documented Payette's tumultuous time at the science museum and how her behaviour foreshadowed issues later reported at Rideau Hall. Radio Canada also reported on claims that Payette had created a toxic climate there by subjecting employees to unjustified criticism.

CBC News spoke to several people who worked with Payette at the Montreal Science Centre, including former employees who claim they were victims of verbal harassment. One former staff member described it as a "tense" and "painful time" and said staff members never knew who would be the target of Payette's criticisms at a meeting.

"HR was aware," said a different source with direct knowledge. "Everyone was aware. HR were witnessing it because they were in the same meetings. Some colleagues complained directly to HR."

Senior management at Canada Lands also saw Payette sulk and turn teary-eyed in meetings if she didn't get her way, said a source. In one case, said a source, Payette pushed back against a plan for Canada Lands to commission a routine survey of employees to improve the working environment at its properties.

"Julie fought it tooth and nail," said one former Canada Lands employee. "She strongly resisted wanting it done at the Montreal Science Centre."

Canada Lands went ahead with the survey. Payette was still so upset with the project that, when an HR consultant arrived to give a presentation about the survey, Payette pointedly ignored them, according to two sources who say they witnessed the interaction first-hand.

The Canada Lands Company quietly awarded Payette a year's salary as severance when she resigned in Oct. 2016, said multiple former employees and former board members. Sources said she was paid the severance so that the federal Crown corporations managing the science museum — Canada Lands and the Old Port of Montreal — could protect their reputations.

Canada Lands said that for privacy reasons, and out of respect for current and past employees, it "will not discuss personnel matters." It did say it has a "comprehensive" policy on respect in the workplace that applies to all staff.

"Ms. Payette's departure was her decision after serving three years at the Montreal Science Centre," said Canada Lands' VP of corporate communications Marcelo Gomez-Wiuckstern in a statement to CBC News. "She contributed greatly to the Science Centre's success and we appreciated her ideas and vision."

'I don't want to be in a room with her'

Complaints about Payette's workplace behaviour date all the way back to her years at the Canadian Space Agency in the 1990s and early 2000s. Some who worked with her there say they have no wish to interact with her again.

"I don't want to be in a room with her, unless she wanted to apologize," said one former Canadian Space Agency employee. "She would comment on people's work in a very negative and demeaning way. There is Julie Payette's way or it's not good."

Sources report Payette would lash out at staff by calling them at home during off-hours to denigrate their work.

"For me leadership is about helping others grow. She's the other way around," said one former employee. "She didn't want to help others shine."

Others describe a more professional, collegial workplace relationship with Payette.

Fabienne Lebranchu worked at the agency on Payette's second mission to space, booking her travel tickets and expense claims. She said that when she travelled to Houston for work, Payette would invite her to her house for a glass of wine so that she wouldn't be stuck alone in a hotel room.

Lebranchu said Payette has a type-A personality, like other astronauts, and had a stressful job at the Canadian Space Agency, but she never saw her treat her colleagues poorly.

"She was very nice," said Lebranchu, adding she'd like to work with Payette again at Rideau Hall. "She appreciated the work we did for her, she would thank us and always asked us if she needed anything else for her expense claims."

Maclean's magazine has reported that, for two years in a row, Payette's office at Rideau Hall ranked among the worst in the public service for harassment complaints. An annual government survey conducted last year showed 22 per cent of respondents working for Rideau Hall claimed to have experienced harassment. Of those employees, 74 per cent attributed the harassment to individuals with authority over them.
Trudeau defended vetting process

Trudeau is now facing renewed criticism over his approach to choosing Payette for the job — selecting his personal pick for the role rather than using former prime minister Stephen Harper's advisory committee process to suggest suitable candidates.

For months, Trudeau skirted the controversy over Payette's relationship with Rideau Hall staff. He came to her defence early this month, calling Payette an "excellent" Governor General and saying he had no intention of replacing her right now. That comment upset the whistleblowers who claimed harassment — one said Trudeau's words felt like a "kick to the stomach."

In 2017, the online political news outlet iPolitics reported that police had charged Payette with second-degree assault in 2012 while she was living in Maryland; the charge was later dismissed and expunged from her record and Payette herself called the charge "unfounded".

The Toronto Star also reported that Payette had struck and killed a pedestrian while driving in Maryland in 2011. Police subsequently found Payette was not at fault.

Trudeau defended his vetting process In 2017 and said nothing in Payette's past disqualified her from the job of Queen's representative.

"I assure everyone that there are no issues that arose in the course of that vetting process that would be any reason to expect Mme. Payette to be anything other than the extraordinary governor general that she will be," he said in July 2017.

Barbara Messamore, a history professor at the University of the Fraser Valley and fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada at Massey College, said the advisory board is a recent innovation and Trudeau didn't abandon a time-honoured tradition. She said there's still a strong argument for using it now, in light of the recent controversy.

And if the government didn't ask the Montreal Science Museum and Canadian Olympic Committee for references, she said, it "suggests a failure of the vetting process."

"The process that was used was evidently not entirely adequate," said Messamore. "It didn't uncover some things that ought to have been known. If they did indeed know those things, I would have described them as a deal-breaker."

Ashley Burke can be reached at ashley.burke@cbc.ca. Kristen Everson can be reached at kristen.everson@cbc.ca.

Critics condemn Egyptian highway project through pyramid plateau


Mike Armstrong

© AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty 

A man walks under a new highway flyover under construction through the Southern Cemetery, part of the City of the Dead, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Cairo, Egypt, on July 28, 2020. The sprawling necropolis has been the burial place of nobles, holy men, scholars, poets and commoners for some 1,300 years as well as a place of life, with tens of thousands of residents and bustling markets. Authorities say no ancient monuments were damaged in the construction, but preservationists say it tears through an urban fabric that was intact for centuries.

Critics say an Egyptian infrastructure project through an area south of Cairo could threaten pyramids in the region and mean undiscovered treasures may never be found.

Two new highways are being constructed across a pyramid plateau, cutting through some of the most important ancient sites in the world.

“It’s as though anywhere you dig there, you’re going to find something,” says Gayle Gibson, one of Canada’s leading Egyptologists.

READ MORE: (Nov. 2, 2017) Secret chamber found in Egypt’s Great Pyramid, purpose is unknown

One new road runs about 2.5 kilometres south of the Great Pyramids, including Giza and the Great Sphinx.

The second new highway is further south, through the desert, linking Helwan to the east and the new settlements of Sixth of October City to the west.

In the 1990s, the Egyptian government suspended a similar project after an international outcry.

Former senior UNESCO official Sail Zulficar fought against that project and says he was flabbergasted to hear it was going ahead again.

“It’s as though all the work I had done 25 years ago is now being put into question,” Zulficar says.

The pyramid fields were declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1979.

Critics say the new highway will mean more vehicles and an increase in air pollution that could affect the pyramids. They also say it could mean undiscovered archaeological sites could be covered up.

According to UNESCO, it has requested information about the project from the Egyptian government repeatedly, but has heard nothing.

Zulficar says there is a buffer zone around world heritage sites that allow some construction, but that there’s a protocol to follow.

“There’s an environmental impact study made before,” he says. “And if the environmental study is negative, and says that it might impair the site, it should be stopped.”

READ MORE: (Sept. 10, 2018) Inside the 4,000-year-old Egyptian tomb now open to the public

One section of the new highway runs south of the Saqqara necropolis, the burial ground for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. It passes less than 3 km from the Step pyramid, the oldest of all pyramids, built about 4,600 years ago.

The highway passes to the north of the Dahshur necropolis, a burial ground that includes the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid.

“Memphis was the seat of government until the 18th dynasty, which was less than 2,000 years BC,” Zulficar says. “It was a thriving city and it was the largest city in Egypt at the time.”

The eight-lane highways are part of an infrastructure project meant to open up new areas and combat congestion. Cairo, a city of 9.1 million, is one of the world's most congested urban centers.

The country’s minister of tourism and antiquities says the archaeological sites are being protected.

“There isn’t a single artifact in Egypt that anyone can harm, or demolish, or build next to,” says minister Khaled El Anany. “Any bridge, any project in Egypt, takes permission of the antiquities ministry first, to make sure the area doesn’t include antiquities.”

While some critics have gone public, others have not. Some Egyptologists fear if they speak out, the Egyptian government could refuse to give them permits to work in the country in the future.