"THE THING DREAMS ARE MADE OF..."
Owner of missing diamond-covered eagle loses latest round in insurance fight

© Provided by The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — A legal battle over a missing diamond-encrusted eagle statue valued at nearly $1 million will continue, more than four years after the artwork was stolen during a robbery in Delta, B.C.

In a unanimous ruling issued Monday, the B.C. Court of Appeal has sided with Lloyd's Underwriters and agreed that a default judgment against the insurer should be set aside.

Ron Shore, president of a company called Forgotten Treasures International, won the judgment in 2018 requiring Lloyd's to pay a claim for the loss of the sparkling statue.

Court documents show Lloyd's denied Shore's claim, arguing he violated conditions of the insurance policy, including that the statue be constantly safeguarded by two people.

The eight-kilogram gold creation studded with 763 diamonds and appraised at $930,000 was going to be the final prize in an international cancer fundraiser.

Justice Peter Voith agreed with a B.C. Supreme Court decision that set aside the default judgment, saying the insurer appears to have solid evidence to oppose the claim.

On its website, the Supreme Court says default judgments can be filed against defendants if they fail to respond to the notice of a civil lawsuit, do not comply with the rules or a response to a civil claim is withdrawn.

With the default judgment set aside, the matter may return to Shore's civil claim filed in May 2018, alleging breach of contract and failure to investigate the insurance claim in a timely manner, among other things.

The statue remains missing after Shore reported it was taken in May 2016 by what the court describes as "unknown assailants'' as he placed a knapsack carrying the statue in the trunk of his car.

Shore made an emotional plea for the return of the statue at a news conference shortly after it was taken, saying two men ambushed him, hit him over the head with a large flashlight and stole the eagle, plus a less-valuable decoy.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2020.

Canadian actor Elliot Page announced that he's transgender in a heartfelt, sincere social media post on Tuesday.

© Amanda Edwards/WireImage 

Elliot Page attends the 'There's Something in the Water' premiere during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2019.


Before transitioning, the 33-year-old was one of the most vocal and actively "out" gay members of Hollywood.

"Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life. I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey. I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community. Thank you for your courage, your generosity and ceaselessly working to make this world a more inclusive and compassionate place. I will offer whatever support I can and continue to strive for a more loving and equal society," he wrote.

Elliot Page: Canadian actor announces he’s transgender

He asks for "patience" while he embarks on his journey, and proceeds to list disturbing statistics about transgender murders in the U.S., as well as astronomically high suicide rates in the trans community.

"I love that I am trans," he continued. "And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive. To all the trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse, and the threat of violence every day: I see you, I love you, and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better."

Page emerged onto the scene in 2005 in Hard Candy, and was then nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the much-beloved independent film, Juno.

His other notable roles (as of this writing) include Kitty Pryde in X-Men and a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Inception. He also appeared in Netflix's The Umbrella Academy.

Read more: Eric Clapton, Van Morrison under fire for anti-lockdown song, ‘Stand and Deliver’

As of late, Page has been heavily involved in environmental issues. His documentary There's Something in the Water, released on Netflix in March of this year, highlights the stories of Indigenous and Black Nova Scotian communities that have been disproportionally affected by decisions to place hazardous waste sites near their homes.

Page would end up pouring approximately $350,000 of his own money into the project in order to get it off the ground and completed as soon as possible.

"What's happened in these communities for decades and decades has caused extraordinary trauma and illness and loss and pain and the change needs to happen right now," said Page to Global News at the time.

— With files from Alexander Quon

Review finds no evidence of alcohol game at B.C. ERs, but vast Indigenous profiling

VICTORIA — A former judge says she found widespread systemic racism in British Columbia's health-care system where extensive negative profiling of Indigenous patients affects treatment and care.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said Monday she could not confirm allegations of an organized game to guess the blood-alcohol level of Indigenous patients in B.C. emergency departments, but found extensive harmful profiling of patients based on stereotypes about addictions and parenting.

The former Saskatchewan provincial court judge and one-time children's advocate in B.C. was appointed by Health Minister Adrian Dix in June to investigate the guessing-game allegations and conduct a broader examination of Indigenous racism in provincial health care.

"Indigenous people consistently told us, and this was confirmed by the health-care workers who responded and the cases, that they are subjected to negative assumptions, negative assumptions based on prejudice, based on racism, based on beliefs that should not exist in our health-care system," Turpel-Lafond said at a news conference.

She said 84 per cent of the review's Indigenous respondents reported some form of discrimination in health care and 52 per cent of Indigenous health-care workers said they experienced racial prejudice at work, mostly in the form of comments.

"Among the top negative assumptions that are circulating in our health-care system today is that Indigenous patients and people are less worthy," Turpel-Lafond said. "That they are alcoholics. That they're drug seeking."

These negative assumptions lead to the denial and delay of patient services, and cause some people to stay away from hospitals to avoid further incidents of discriminatory treatment, she said.

Video: Report released on investigation into B.C. health-care racism (Global News)

Indigenous people told the review they feared hospitals and would rather face uncertain health than return to get care, said Turpel-Lafond.

The review heard from nearly 9,000 Indigenous patients, family members, third-party witnesses and health-care workers. It also examined the health-care data of about 185,000 First Nations and Metis patients.

Turpel-Lafond's report makes 24 recommendations. They include bringing in measures and legislation to change behaviour and the appointment of three new positions to focus on the problem, including an Indigenous health officer and an associate deputy minister of Indigenous health.

The report also said the government should work with Indigenous organizations to improve the patient complaint processes to address individual and systemic racism specifically experienced by Indigenous people, as well as create a new school of Indigenous medicine at the University of British Columbia.

Dix said B.C. will work to implement the recommendations and the review's findings will be felt across the country.

"Racism is toxic for people and it's toxic for care," he said. "I want to make an unequivocal apology as the minister of health to those who have experienced racism in accessing health-care services in B.C., now and in the past."

The First Nations Leadership Council, comprising several B.C. Indigenous organizations and Metis Nation B.C., called on the government to act.

"These are the voices of our families and our relatives and they have to be heard," Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said in a statement. "They can no longer be silenced by a narrative of indifference and negligence and a culture of low expectations."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2020.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press

FIFTY YEARS LATE
Liberals take step on national child-care system, promise plan coming in 2021 budget

OTTAWA — The federal government is proposing millions of dollars in new spending as a down payment on a planned national child-care system that the Liberals say will be outlined in next spring's budget 

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

As a start, the Liberals are proposing in their fiscal update to spend $420 million in grants and bursaries to help provinces and territories train and retain qualified early-childhood educators.

The Liberals are also proposing to spend $20 million over five years to build a child-care secretariat to guide federal policy work, plus $15 million in ongoing spending for a similar Indigenous-focused body.

The money is meant to lay the foundation for what is likely going to be a big-money promise in the coming budget.

Current federal spending on child care expires near the end of the decade but the Liberals are proposing now to keep the money flowing, starting with $870 million a year in 2028.

The Canadian Press has previously reported that the government is considering a large annual spending increase as it contemplates how to work with provinces to add more child-care spaces while ensuring good learning environments and affordability for parents.

"I say this both as a working mother and as a minister of finance: Canada will not be truly competitive until all Canadian women have access to the affordable child care we need to support our participation in our country’s workforce," Freeland said in the text of her speech on the fiscal update.

Calling it an element of a "feminist agenda," Freeland added that spending the money makes "sound business sense" and has the backing of many corporate leaders.

Freeland has been among a group of female cabinet ministers who pushed child care as a federal priority even before the pandemic.

A national system won't likely be a one-size-fits-all program, experts say, but it would be federally funded, modelled on the publicly subsidized system in Quebec.

A Scotiabank estimate earlier this fall suggested that creating nationally what Quebec has provincially would cost $11.5 billion a year.

A report on prospects for national daycare last week from the Centre for Future Work estimated governments could rake in between $18 billion and $30 billion per year in new revenues as more parents go into the workforce.

Freeland has made a note in recent days about the need to do something on child care given how many women fell out of the workforce when COVID-19 forced the closures of schools and daycares in the spring.

Many have not gone back to work.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which has promoted a long-term plan on child care as an economic necessity, said the Liberals still need to provide immediate help to parents and daycare providers.

"The rate at which women are being forced to leave the workforce because of child-care gaps continues to undermine Canada’s economic recovery and requires emergency funding," said chamber president Perrin Beatty.

Dec. 7 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which at the time called for governments to immediately get going on a national daycare system.

As Freeland noted during a virtual fundraiser last week, many women who were toddlers then are mothers now and the country hasn't moved far enough on child care.

"Many smaller things are happening from province to province that when we look at those things, put them together, we'd have a lot of the elements for building a national system," said Monica Lysack, an early-childhood education expert from Sheridan College in Ontario.

"We just need to make sure that in the end every parent who needs it can get it and that it's affordable."

The $420 million in to train and retain them was seen by many as a key investment toward that end to deal with what the executive director of Child Care now noted were "very low wages and difficult working conditions" in the sector.

"But we must also see significant, long-term federal funding in the 2021 federal budget so that we can replace short-term repairs with robust infrastructure,” Morna Ballantyne said.

Her group and others have called for an extra $2 billion in child-care funding in next year's budget, with $2 billion more added on top in each subsequent year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2020.

Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

Ottawa beefs up loans for hard-hit sectors — but big airlines not included for now

Ottawa is rolling out a wave of new funding for pandemic-battered industries including tourism, the arts and regional aviation, with smaller companies top of mind — and large airlines notably absent.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Liberal government's fiscal update sketches out a program that will provide low-interest loans of up to $1 million for badly hurt entrepreneurs.

The aid, dubbed the Highly Affected Sectors Credit Availability Program (HASCAP), comes on top of a newly expanded emergency loan program already in place for small businesses, and technically is not limited to certain industries.

Meanwhile the devastated tourism sector will have access to one-quarter of the more than $2 billion that Ottawa is doling out to regional development agencies through June 2021, including a $500-million top-up announced Monday.

The move aims to bolster an industry made up largely of small and medium-sized businesses and that accounts for roughly 750,000 jobs and two per cent of GDP, according to the government.

Another $181.5 million will flow to show business and performers via the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts, the fall economic statement says.

Rent relief and nearly $700 million in capital investments are en route to airports over six years. About $206 million in further support is bound for regional aviation, including smaller airlines, via a new "regional air transportation initiative" overseen by development agencies.

But an aid package targeting big players such as Air Canada and WestJet Airlines remains in the works as talks with Ottawa drag on, with the lack of specifics in the fiscal update frustrating industry leaders.

“We had hoped to get a better sense of where the government was going. Instead they repeated the line that they've repeated several times over the past several months — that they’re ‘establishing a process with major airlines regarding financial assistance,’ ” said Mike McNaney, head of the National Airlines Council of Canada.

Countries around the world have given carriers US$173 billion in support, he said. Many have also required airlines to offer refunds for cancelled flights, something Ottawa says will be a condition of any bailout.

"We are very much a global outlier and are ostensibly stuck at Stage Zero on the government planning process," McNaney — whose industry group represents Air Canada, WestJet, Transat and Jazz Aviation — said in a phone interview.

The regional aviation support comes with question marks, as well.

"A regional initiative, what’s that?" asked John McKenna, CEO of the Air Transport Association of Canada, which represents some 30 regional airlines.

"We have no idea. We have not been consulted," he said in a phone interview. "Never mind new initiatives, try to support the existing services so they survive."

In a speech to the House of Commons, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland stressed the benefits of the broader government-backed loan program for smaller companies.

"We know that businesses in tourism, hospitality, travel, arts and culture have been particularly hard-hit," Freeland said.

"So we’re creating a new stream of support for those businesses that need it most — a credit availability program with 100 per cent government-backed loan support and favourable terms for businesses that have lost revenue as people stay home to fight the spread of the virus."

The HASCAP credit program will offer interest rates below the market average, according to the fiscal update, with more details coming "soon."

It also said the government is "exploring options to enhance" a federal loan program for big companies, little-loved by industry since its inception in the spring.

The Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF) offers loans of $60 million or more to large businesses facing cash problems, but comes with an interest rate that jumps to eight per cent from five per cent after the first year — far above typical private-sector lending rates.

Only two firms have been approved for LEEFF loans since the Liberals announced the program on May 11, according to the Canada Enterprise Emergency Funding Corporation: a casino company and a producer of metallurgical coal.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh criticized the government for failing to offer industry aid that includes explicit job protections.

"They have not rolled out any sector-specific supports, meaningfully, that are tied to jobs," he said.

Bloc Québécois Yves-François Blanchet slammed the lack of "precision" in the fiscal snapshot.

"They basically say that there is no limit to what they will spend, without saying or without admitting how badly you spend it," he said.

The $686 million in airport aid includes $500 million over six years, starting this year, to back infrastructure spending at large airports that would include massive transit projects, such as the new light-rail station at the Montreal airport.

The government is also proposing to extend $229 million in additional rent relief to the 21 airport authorities that pay rent to Ottawa, with "comparable treatment" for Ports Toronto, which operates Billy Bishop airport in downtown Toronto.

The supports unveiled Monday come on top of Ottawa's pan-sectoral announcement to raise the wage subsidy to 75 per cent of company payroll costs — it was reduced to a maximum of 65 per cent in October — as well as an extension of the rent subsidy to mid-March from the end of 2020.

David Chartrand, Quebec coordinator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, applauded the wage subsidy, but lamented the radio silence on large airlines.

"After almost 10 months of crisis, still nothing," he said in a release in French.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2020.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

'The blob': Scientists confirm discovery of a completely new undersea species
Devika Desai 

Deep in the dark, murky waters of our oceans, a gelatinous blob, shaped like a dislodged human molar, floats along the seabed.

© Provided by National Post

 Meet Duobrachium sparksae – a strange, gelatinous species of ctenophore, encountered during a dive off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Thanks to its love for extreme depths and remote oceanic corners, no one had ever seen the blob, or even knew it existed, until a team of scientists accidentally discovered it during a deep-sea dive off the coast of Puerto Rico in 2015, with help from an underwater, remotely-operated vehicle called ‘Deep Discover.’

Five years on, in a paper published this month, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have confirmed that the blob is an entirely new species of undersea creature, Duobrachium sparksae – a never-before-seen species of jelly-like ctenophore. It’s also the first time that researchers have discovered a species using high-definition video footage only.

“It’s unique because we were able to describe a new species based entirely on high-definition video,” explained NOAA marine biologist Allen Collins in a release.

“We don’t have the same microscopes as we would in a lab, but the video can give us enough information to understand the morphology in detail, such as the location of their reproductive parts and other aspects.”

Ctenophores, also known as comb jellies, have bulbous, balloon-like bodies, from which protrude two tentacle-like strings, known as cilia. There are between 100 and 150 species of comb jellies, according to the NOAA, and despite their name, they are not at all related to jellyfish. Ctenophores, the group explains, are carnivorous, and many are highly efficient predators that eat small arthropods and many kinds of larvae.

Three different specimens were filmed by the vehicle at depths around 3,900 metres, in an underwater area called the Arecibo Amphitheater, which lies within a trench known as the Guajataca Canyon, off Puerto Rico. One of the animals appeared to use its tentacles to touch the seabed, scientists said.

“It was a beautiful and unique organism,” oceanographer Mike Ford was quoted as saying in a release.

“It moved like a hot air balloon attached to the seafloor on two lines, maintaining a specific altitude above the seafloor. Whether it’s attached to the seabed, we’re not sure. We did not observe direct attachment during the dive, but it seems like the organism touches the seafloor.”

Identifying a new species solely via photographic and video evidence has often yielded contentious results, the scientists explained in their paper, as natural classification “relies heavily” on the physical specimen samples preserved in museums “to serve as references to which other material can be compared.”

“Indeed, the idea of using photographic evidence to establish new species has been highly contentious in recent decades.”

In this case, however, the team was able to avoid any pushback due to the high-definition quality of the footage they recorded of the three observed specimens. The team hopes to collect real-life specimens on future dives, but fears it may be decades before they run into the species again.

“Even if we had the equipment, there would have been very little time to process the animal because gelatinous animals don’t preserve very well,” Collins said.

“Ctenophores are even worse than jellyfish in this regard.”

Tory MPs keep talking on assisted dying bill as clock ticks down to Dec. 18 deadline

TORIES TELL CANADIANS THEY DON'T TRUST THEM TO BE ABLE TO KNOW WHEN TO END THEIR LIFE

OTTAWA — Conservative MPs are refusing to be rushed into a vote on assisted dying legislation, despite a looming court-imposed deadline.

© Provided by The Canadian Press 

COVIDIOT TORIES NOT WEARING MASKS

The Liberal minority government has until Dec. 18 to pass Bill C-7, legislation intended to comply with a Quebec Superior Court ruling that struck down a provision allowing only individuals who are already near death to receive medical help to end their suffering.

The government had hoped to wrap up debate on the bill in the House of Commons on Monday, paving the way for a final vote Tuesday and leaving just over two weeks for the Senate to deal with it before time runs out.

But Conservative MPs talked out the clock, with a number of them calling the deadline "artificial" and the urgency "manufactured."

The government is expected to rejig its agenda to resume debate on the bill on Wednesday and could yet try to impose time allocation to cut the debate off, a move that would require the support of at least one opposition party.

A spokeswoman for Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole was unable to say how many more Tory MPs still want to speak on the bill but, given that it literally involves a matter of life and death, she said anyone "who wants to speak to the bill is free to do so."

The bill would drop the proviso that only those whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable are entitled to seek medical assistance in dying (MAID). But it would retain the foreseeable death concept to set up two different eligibility tracks, one that makes it easier for those near death to receive MAID while those who are not near death would face more restrictive criteria.

Conservatives were the only MPs to give speeches during debate on the bill Monday and all but one of them — Toronto MP Peter Kent — were opposed to it. All of them, including Kent, slammed the government for rushing the bill through the Commons without adequate consultation.

They argued that the government should have appealed the Quebec court ruling to the Supreme Court and should not be making changes to Canada's MAID law until Parliament conducts the legally-mandated five-year review of the law.

That review was to have started in June but has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Conservative MPs noted that the government further delayed matters by proroguing Parliament in August for six weeks.

"Why rush to pass this flawed legislation when it truly is a matter of life and death?" asked Ontario Conservative MP Michael Barrett.

"We do many things in this place quickly but we can certainly agree that this step too far is not one that needs to be done in such a hasty way."

At one point, Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, asked if it was the Conservatives' intention "to see us continuing to debate this indefinitely."

"It is very clear this legislation was rushed through to try to comply with an arbitrary date that was set by that lower court judge," retorted British Columbia Conservative MP Ed Fast.

"This deserves a full airing and review at the highest court of the land and, sadly, the current Liberal government refused to do that for Canadians."

Alberta Conservative MP Damien Kurek said he finds it "troubling that they seem to have manufactured a level of urgency."

Justice Minister David Lametti has said the court ruling striking down the foreseeable death requirement applies technically only in Quebec. Thus, if the government does not meet the deadline, which has already been extended twice, he has warned that intolerably suffering Quebecers who are not near death will have access to MAID while those in the rest of the country will not.

Among other things, Conservative MPs complained that Bill C-7 goes well beyond the court ruling, relaxing some of the rules for those near death to receive MAID. And, in expanding MAID to those who are not near death, they argued that the government is telling Canadians with disabilities that their lives are not worth living.

The Conservatives proposed a number of amendments when the bill was scrutinized by the Commons justice committee but they were all rejected.

They are reviving two of them for consideration by the House of Commons.

One would restore the required 10-day reflection period, which the bill proposes dropping for people who are near death. The other would increase the proposed 90-day period for assessing requests for MAID from individuals not near death to 120 days.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 1, 2020.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

FCC Chief Who Ended Net Neutrality Says He’ll Quit Jan. 20
Todd Shields

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he’ll leave the agency Jan. 20, eliminating the possibility of a holdover Republican majority at the agency that could have temporarily stymied changes sought by the incoming Biden administration.

© Bloomberg Under Ajit Pai the FCC in 2017 revoked so-called net neutrality rules put in place by the Obama administration that barred broadband service providers from interfering with web traffic.

Since being elevated to the chairmanship by President Donald Trump in 2017, Pai, a Republican, has led the commission in dismantling net neutrality regulations and pushed for fast wireless broadband service.

Pai’s term as a commissioner extends to July 2021 and he could have stayed on as a commissioner, without the chairman’s power to set the agency’s agenda, but has opted not to.

With another Republican leaving after his term expired, the FCC will have a 2-to-1 Democratic majority on Inauguration Day unless the Senate confirms Nathan Simington, a Republican whose nomination is to be considered Dec. 2 by the Commerce Committee.

Simington has backed Trump’s bid to rein in social media companies, and it’s not clear he has enough support among senators to succeed. If he is confirmed, Pai would have three Republican votes until he leaves. After that the agency would be left to operate under a Democratic chair, but at a 2-to-2 partisan deadlock, until a Biden nominee is confirmed.

Under Pai the FCC in 2017 revoked so-called net neutrality rules put in place by the Obama administration that barred broadband service providers from interfering with web traffic -- for instance by slowing competitors’ content.

Pai’s change gutted the FCC’s authority over internet service providers. It was welcomed by carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.

Since the vote, Pai has pointed to increased broadband availability as vindication. Critics have cited competing data and insisted rules are needed. The debate is likely to continue into the term of President-elect Joe Biden.

Pai pressed to assign more airwaves for high-speed mobile broadband. The FCC sold airwaves in an auction that attracted more than $4 billion in bidding that concluded in August, and has scheduled a sale for December.

Pai, 47, promised “light-touch” regulation, and he used his time in office to reduce FCC rules. He has been a member of the five-person commission since 2012.

DR.QUISLING
Public health must balance science and society: former top doctor

EDMONTON — A retired top doctor says public health orders have to balance science with society if they are to be effective.

©Provided by The Canadian Press

"(Measures) will only work if you have a majority of the population that supports it," said Andre Corriveau, who was Alberta's chief medical officer of health from 2009 to 2012.

"You can't pass measures that a majority of the public is not supportive of, because it's not enforceable."

 BULLSHIT PEOPLE OBEY THE LAW PERIOD ONLY A MINORITY DO NOT AND THATS WHY THEY GET FINED

Corriveau, speaking from Iqaluit, Nunavut, where he was advising that territory on how to deal with its COVID-19 cases, spoke after recordings were released that appeared to show Alberta's current chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, expressing concern about politicians watering down her recommendations.

That just goes with the job, said Corriveau, who also served until last year as the top public health official in the Northwest Territories.

Experts such as himself or Hinshaw are responsible for winnowing through scientific evidence — often thin on the ground or hot off the research presses — to come up with the best advice they can. But, said Corriveau, judging what's acceptable or how something should be implemented is a political decision.

"There's a point beyond which you can't enforce any more," he said. "That's the role of the politician — to gauge that."

Nor is it appropriate for the chief health officer to advocate for measures not approved by the government, said Corriveau. The two sides have to trust each other and undercutting political decisions would damage that.

"There's always other people who can advocate," Corriveau said.

"Our effectiveness is built upon trust. If you turn around and you're doing public advocacy, then you've lost the trust and you're not effective any more."

Alberta has plenty of other voices for that, he said.

Doctors in the Edmonton zone recently formed a group to provide what they see as unbiased, arm's-length COVID-19 advice. Members of the Edmonton Zone Medical Staff Association felt people were losing trust in officials.

"There's many considerations when you make these decisions — health ones, economic ones, capacity of hospitals," said association president Dr. Ernst Schuster. "There was a feeling that the political considerations were stronger than some other considerations."

The committee is to hold its first meeting Tuesday.

The legal powers of a chief medical officer of health are delegated by the minister and may not be absolute, Corriveau said.

Hindsight is easy, he noted, and added that everyone involved in the fight against the pandemic is doing it for the first time.

Corriveau said he ran into situations where the final decision diverged from his advice, but he saw it as his job to make it work.  THE BANALITY OF EVIL HE WAS JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS

"It's a fine line to travel but I think it can be done.

"It's not necessarily ideal, but I understand the context and why at the political level they might have decided otherwise."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 1, 2020.

— Follow @row1960 on Twitter

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

QUISLING a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country.

How South Asian American socialists are helping lead the left


When Zohran Mamdani, a housing foreclosure counselor, became one of the first two South Asians elected to the New York state Assembly this month, he felt pride — but also anger.

© Provided by NBC News

Claire Wang 

“It’s both an extremely exciting feeling and an extremely infuriating one,” said Mamdani, an Indian Ugandan immigrant set to represent the Queens neighborhood of Astoria. Given that South Asians have lived in the city for more than a century, he said, the milestone is an “indictment of a political system that has not only ignored the South Asian community but actively worked to erase it.”

The 29-year-old decided to run for office to better serve the people who he said have been “left behind on the basis of their race and class.” This cohort includes many of his low-income South Asian and Indo-Carribean clients at Chhaya, a housing and social services organization.

“My job as a counselor was to put people’s lives back together after they’ve been broken into a million pieces by the multiple failures of capitalism,” he said. “Being a legislator comes with the opportunity to ensure people’s lives are not torn apart in the first place.”

In addition to public housing and single-payer health care, Mamdani said he’ll also advocate for causes specific to South Asian constituents, such as solving the taxi medallion loan crisis, expanding language access and advocating for making Diwali a school holiday.

Mamdani is one of three South Asian members of the Democratic Socialists of America who won historic down-ballot races earlier this month. In Pennsylvania, former magazine editor Nikil Saval became the first Asian American elected to the state Senate. And in Los Angeles, urban planner Nithya Raman will be the first Asian American women elected to city council. As first-time Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates, they unseated Democratic incumbents while espousing progressive policies such as "Medicare for All," the Green New Deal and defunding the police.

Their wins point to the growing prominence of young South Asians on the left, many of whom, in the past half-decade, have transitioned from community activism to electoral politics.

“These candidates are successful not only because of the work they’ve done in South Asian communities,” Abdullah Younus, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America's national leadership body, said, “but also because the issues that they’re campaigning on — around housing, education and climate — cut across age divides and diaspora divides.”

Compared to East Asian and Latin American immigrants, the term “socialism” tends to hold less stigma among many South Asians, particularly those from India, since their home country has not had extended periods of communist or socialist rule, said Sangay Mishra, an assistant professor of political science at Drew University in New Jersey and the author of “Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans.”

While the explicit embrace of socialism is a more recent phenomenon, he said, South Asian Americans have long participated in progressive activism, working alongside Black civil rights leaders in the 1960s to desegregate schools and organizing taxi drivers in the 1990s against unfair regulations and rampant racism. (Shyamala Gopalan, the mother of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, was an active participant in the mid-century civil rights movement.)

The inflection point, though, was 9/11.

“In the last 20 years, we’ve seen more South Asian groups engaging with the targeting of Muslims,” he said, noting that pervasive racial profiling and bigotry propelled many young people to public service. “You came to terms with the fact that you’re likely to face hostility even if you live a comfortable life,” he said.

Saval, who’s set to represent a highly diverse district in south Philadelphia, said it was partly this shattering of the model minority myth that pushed him toward socialism.

“A notion that’s prevalent in the South Asian community is that if you work very hard, your talents will help guarantee you a place on the class ladder,” said Saval, 37, who secured the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., before his primary contest.

He said he grew up with a deep faith in meritocracy only to learn through lived experiences that it offers little protection against exploitation, and no guarantee of social mobility. When he was working in the publishing industry in New York, he saw his employer doling out multimillion-dollar book contracts while paying him a salary that barely covered his rent.

This year wasn’t the first time South Asian socialists found success in local elections. In 2013, Kshama Sawant, an Indian immigrant and member of the Socialist Alternative party, became the first socialist in a century to win a citywide race in Seattle when she was elected to the city council.

Young South Asians have since risen to the forefront of the progressive and democratic socialist movements, not just as candidates but also as campaign strategists and thinkers.

Bhaskar Sunkara founded Jacobin Magazine, one of the country’s leading socialist publications. Saikat Chakrabarti co-founded Justice Democrats, a political action committee that recruits progressives, including some democratic socialists, to run for office; he later served as chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who is a member of Democratic Socialists of America. And Faiz Shakir served as campaign manager for the country’s best-known democratic socialist, Sanders, becoming the first Muslim and first Pakistani American to assume the role for a major party’s presidential primary candidate.

Progressive Congress members Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who won their seats in 2016, are also emblematic of a burgeoning South Asian presence in left-wing electoral politics. Though neither identifies as a democratic socialist, Khanna, the national co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, and Jayapal, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, both have connections to the movement.

Some South Asian Democratic Socialists of America candidates pitched long-shot bids this year, and even in defeat, they’re laying the groundwork for the future.

Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, 38, a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a public school teacher, ran for a seat in the California State Assembly from a district in South Los Angeles. A win would have made the Sri Lankan immigrant the first Muslim and South Asian woman elected to the lower chamber.

With endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America and Sanders, she campaigned on an ambitious climate platform, but lost in the general election to another Democrat. She's already gearing up for another run in 2022.

And in Georgia, Nabilah Islam ran for Congress, seeking to become the first nonwhite representative from a district that’s one of the most racially diverse county in the Southeast and has one of the fastest growing South Asian populations in the country. The 30-year old, who was backed by the Metro Atlanta chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, said her politics, such as support for single-payer health care, are heavily influenced by her upbringing as a daughter of working-class Bangladeshi immigrants.

Her mother broke her back from working grueling hours at the warehouse — an outcome that could have been prevented with stronger labor laws, she said. And like a quarter of the residents of Gwinnett County, where she lives, she was uninsured when she ran for office this year.

“I know what it’s like to watch your mom and dad struggle to pay the bills,” she said.

The novelty of her campaign, Islam said, was one reason she came up short in the primary, despite winning endorsements from Khanna, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.

“There’s a myth of electability,” she said. “When I launched my campaign, I was a 29-year-old, first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant. Even though I was born and raised here, it wasn’t enough for a lot of folks because they had never seen anyone like me succeed before.”