Federal prison chaplains reach first contract agreement, 

union says

OTTAWA — The union representing federal prison chaplains says it has reached a tentative contract agreement with their employer that includes wage increases and improved benefits.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The United Steelworkers union represents about 180 chaplains from a variety of faiths and spiritual practices who provide care to federal inmates.

The union says chaplains had not seen improvements to wages and working conditions since at least 2016.

Chaplaincy services were curtailed last year due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19 in prisons; as a result, chaplains turned to government-assistance programs for income support.

In 2012, the Correctional Service of Canada outsourced management of chaplaincy services to Bridges of Canada, a private charity.

The tentative agreement, the first contract for the chaplains, follows a year of negotiations.

The agreement includes major wage increases, pension and extended health-care benefits for full-time staff, protections around hours of work and anti-harassment and anti-discrimination provisions, the union said.

A mail-in vote on ratification will be held in coming weeks.

"This agreement comes at a critical time for Canada's prison chaplains and the inmates for whom they provide spiritual care," said Ken Neumann, national director of the United Steelworkers union.

"This agreement recognizes the important contribution chaplains make under difficult working conditions," he said.

"The system has unfortunately undervalued the critical role played by chaplains in the rehabilitation process."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 5, 2021.

The Canadian Press

NDP makes preemptive strike with election pledge on long-term care

OTTAWA — The NDP is calling for the elimination of for-profit long-term care by 2030 in a multibillion-dollar plan presented as a potential election promise.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh says an NDP government would convene provincial and territorial leaders, experts and workers to set national standards for nursing homes, and tether those benchmarks to $5 billion in federal funding.

The proposal is the latest move in anticipation of a possible election campaign as parties vet candidates and rev up fundraising.

In a release Friday, Singh accuses the minority Liberal government of underfunding health care and protecting the profits of large companies and shareholders.

"Justin Trudeau made a promise to long-term care workers, residents, and their families to better fund long-term care and seniors care before he was prime minister. He broke his promise," Singh said.

The NDP's pre-emptive platform plank would see a national task force charged with crafting a plan to transition all for-profit care to a not-for-profit model in less than 10 years.

It would also follow through on New Democrats' calls to immediately transform Revera from a for-profit long-term care chain owned by a Crown pension fund into a publicly managed entity.

The company runs more than 500 seniors' residences in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. It is owned by the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, which bought it out in 2007.

Several studies over the past six months have found that for-profit care homes were likelier to see more extensive COVID-19 outbreaks and more deaths, exposing cracks in care models across the country.

Trudeau has reiterated that he respects provincial jurisdiction while seeking to protect seniors' rights through billions of dollars in extra support funds transferred to the provinces over the past year.

Ottawa asked the Canadian Red Cross to send workers into some care homes in Ontario facing outbreaks last fall, after sending in the military to help out in homes in Quebec and Ontario in the spring.

Health Canada has referred questions about ending Revera's for-profit model to the provinces, given their constitutional jurisdiction over health care.

Singh's pledge on long-term care builds on past demands to remove the profit element from the health-care system, and fits into a broader progressive push by the NDP since he took the party helm in 2017.

Singh has continued to call for a tax on the "ultra-rich," criticize how wage subsidies found their way into shareholder bank accounts and chip away at the Liberals for sluggish progress on national pharmacare and child-care programs.

He has also made a renewed push for voters under 35, advocating for cancelled interest payments on federal student loans, now part of the government’s fiscal update.

Under the new NDP proposal, funding for provinces and territories would be tied to principles of accessibility and public administration in the Canada Health Act, legislation that currently does not cover long-term care.

Nursing homes, unlike hospitals, are excluded from provincial and territorial public health systems, which critics say leads to under-training of workers, substandard facilities and — particularly in some for-profit homes — overcrowding.

More than a quarter of Canada's 2,039 long-term care homes are for-profit, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Recent outbreaks at several homes have set off alarm bells after the first wave saw more than 80 per cent of COVID-19 deaths occur in long-term care facilities.

As of Thursday, 66 of the 127 residents of the private Roberta Place care home in Barrie, Ont., who were infected with a highly contagious COVID-19 variant have died, according to a spokesperson.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 5, 2021.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

Senior bureaucrats managing problem-plagued Phoenix pay system received nearly $2M in bonuses

© Provided by National Post Public servants protest over problems with the Phoenix pay system in Ottawa on Feb 28, 2019.

This story has been corrected to say that the Phoenix system was launched in 2016 under Justin Trudeau’s government, not Stephen Harper’s as was previously written.
— — —

Executives managing the federal government’s pay service for public servants, which has been plagued with problems for years, received nearly $2 million in bonuses and performance pay over the past five years, according to a government document.

The Phoenix pay system, launched in 2016 under Justin Trudeau’s government, was troubled from the start. While many of the kinks have been ironed out, unions say there are still problems. A document, dated November 2020, obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, shows that under the Liberals, executives managing the Phoenix system continued to receive performance pay and bonuses in the intervening years.

“Government executives working on the Phoenix pay system shouldn’t be receiving any kind of bonus while federal public service workers continue to be paid incorrectly,” said Chris Aylward, national president of the Public Sector Alliance of Canada, in a statement.

In 2019-2020, 38 executives involved with the Phoenix pay system were paid $554,749 in performance pay or bonuses. In 2018-2019, 32 executives were paid $479,641.

In 2017-2018, 24 executives were paid $341,795, while in 2016-2017, 12 executives were paid $175,202 and in 2015-2016, 10 were paid $143,508. The document notes that executives were not paid performance pay in 2015-2016.

“Ensuring public servants are paid accurately and on time is a top priority,” the document says. “Pay and pension services are essential and we have the resources in place to make sure they are operating without interruption.”

Workers affected by Phoenix pay woes to get $350 million in compensation

Phoenix pay problem backlog declines, but half of workers still impacted

The failures of the Phoenix pay system, launched in 2016 across 34 government departments, were at their worst in early 2018, when the backlog of requests to fix pay mistakes, such as too much or too little pay, was at 384,000 requests. By June 2020, those requests had dropped to 125,000.

The auditor general, in 2018, called Phoenix an “incomprehensible failure of project management and oversight.”

There have also been controversies over performance pay in the past. But the government has defended them as being linked to targets in fixing the problems with the Phoenix pay system, which led to tens of thousands of federal public servants being paid improperly since its implementation.

In an odd quirk, the government, at present, is proceeding with a new system to replace Phoenix, which should be ready to go by 2023, even as Phoenix’s problems are on their way to being solved.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, in 2019, estimated that getting Phoenix functional would cost some $2.6 billion, and a replacement system would cost $57 million to put in place, plus $106 million to operate each year.

The federal government did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

With files from the Ottawa Citizen

Cities may be underestimating their carbon footprints, study warns

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions plays a vital role in fighting climate change. And while many cities are tracking their carbon footprint in an attempt to cut back, new research suggests that some are underestimating their emissions by as much as 145%.

© / Getty Images Days Of Extreme Cold Weather From Polar Vortex Tests Energy Grid Of Midwest

The study, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, analyzed greenhouse gas emission data that 48 U.S. cities self-reported between 2007 and 2017. The researchers compared that data to emissions estimates from the Vulcan carbon dioxide emissions data project, a NASA- and Department of Energy-funded initiative that measures fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.

The researchers found a dramatic difference between the self-reports and the Vulcan estimates.

Thirty-seven of the 48 cities reported lower emission levels than the Vulcan project. Torrance, California, underestimated its emissions by 145.5%, followed by Blacksburg, Virginia, at 123.2%, the study said. Several major cities, including New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., underestimated by more than 20%.

On average, the study found that cities underreported greenhouse gas emissions by 18.3%. The gap between the self-reports and the Vulcan estimates exceeds all of the 2015 greenhouse gas emissions from California, the study said.

Researchers did find that some cities, including Seattle, San Francisco and Austin, overestimated their emissions. But lead researcher Kevin Gurney told CBS News that this simply means "what's happening is clearly not systematic." Instead, he said, the problem is the lack of a national or international standard that cities can rely on to accurately measure emissions.

"This is not a criticism of cities because they are really actually trying to do a very hard thing, and they did it because nobody else was doing it for them," Gurney said. "...That's great. But it's probably not the most efficient way to tackle this problem. Every city devoting all this time and energy to building something is admittedly a difficult thing to do. We [researchers with the Vulcan project] have the luxury of 15 years and research funding from federal agencies to just spend all day every day with a team of us tackling this problem, something cities just don't have the luxury of doing."

"I make the analogy to the weather forecasting system in the United States," he continued. "We don't expect every city to collect weather data, run a weather model, and come up with an estimate of their own weather. That would just be the most inefficient thing to do."

The study specifically focused on fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, which according to Gurney is the "single most important greenhouse gas," as it is the most abundant in the atmosphere.

"It's the 800-pound gorilla," Gurney said. "It's the biggest and most dominant greenhouse gas, and until we tackle it, we really won't get to the emission reductions that we're going to need to, for example, stay below the two-degree benchmark or the 1.5 degree benchmark that's been put out by the international community."

Scientists have warned that if global temperatures increase by more than 2 degrees celsius, the world will see devastating natural disasters.

In 2019, the global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration hit its highest level at any point in the past 800,000 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, are the primary reason the concentration has become so high, NOAA said. Nearly three-quarters of these emissions is believed to come from cities — and the U.S. emits the second-most carbon dioxide in the world annually, according to data by the International Energy Agency.

Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity "are the most significant driver of observed climate change since the mid-20th century," according to the EPA. Emissions lead to an increase in global temperatures because they trap heat from the sun within the atmosphere, which among other effects, causes ice to melt and sea levels to rise.

Scientists have said they expect that sea level rise could exceed current projections if global warming continues at its current pace. Another new study this week suggests that the predictions are "at best conservative" and underestimate how much the ocean levels will rise by the end of the century.

The International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that sea levels will likely rise 1.1 meters by 2100. But Aslak Grinsted, associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute and lead researcher for the study, said many agencies, including the IPCC, produce reports that are a "jigsaw puzzle" of models based on limited data. He said the metric his team created, known as transient sea level sensitivity (TSLS), is more accurate because it relies on more historical data.

"The models we are basing our predictions of sea-level rise on presently are not sensitive enough," Grinstead said in a press release. "To put it plainly, they don't hit the mark when we compare them to the rate of sea-level rise we see when comparing future scenarios with observations going back in time."

In his interview with CBS News, Gurney stressed that it's crucial that the world develops a system to accurately measure the impacts of climate change.

"The sooner we know this and we get a system in place — a scientifically-driven, rigorous system — the better shape we're going to be in to tackle mitigation," Gurney added. "The worst outcome would be we lead ourselves to thinking we're reducing emissions when indeed we're not...then we'll find out too late."

 

Pulling carbon from the air, Canadian clean energy company partners with big names

Duration: 01:52 

Pulling carbon from the air, Canadian clean energy company partners with big names

More from The Weather Network

Suncor, Imperial scramble to make contingency plans in case Michigan's order cuts off Ontario's oil supply

© Provided by Financial Post Michigan’s governor ordered Enbridge to shut down the 540,000-barrels-per-day Line 5 pipeline by May, which would affect gasoline prices and jet fuel availability in Ontario.

CALGARY – Canada’s largest oil companies plan to use the St. Lawrence Seaway to ship crude oil into Ontario as a contingency plan in case Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is successful in shutting down the Line 5 pipeline that supplies the province’s fuel

In November, Whitmer ordered Calgary-based pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. to shut down the 540,000-barrels-per-day Line 5 pipeline by May, which would affect gasoline prices and jet fuel availability in Canada’s most populous province by cutting off oil to refineries in Sarnia, Ont.

Enbridge has said it would defy the order, which it is fighting in U.S. federal court, but oil companies with refineries in Ontario and Quebec have been scrambling to make contingency plans. Line 5 is the main conduit to move oil and products like propane from Alberta to refineries in Ontario, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, Suncor Energy Inc.’s CEO Mark Little revealed that the company has purchased the stake it didn’t previously own in the Portland-Montreal pipeline and plans to import oil from Maine to Quebec and Ontario through the pipeline if Line 5 is shut down.

“We have this Portland-Montreal pipeline, which we now own exclusively, that allows us to bring water-borne crude into Montreal,” Little said on an earnings call, adding that he believes Suncor is “much stronger positioned” than competing refinery operators in Central Canada.

Suncor operates a 137,000-bpd refinery in Montreal and an 85,000-bpd refinery in Sarnia, which the company believes it can fill with oil delivered via the 223,000-bpd Portland-Montreal pi

peline, which carries oil from Portland, Maine into Quebec, but hasn’t been fully utilized for years.

Suncor did not respond to a request for comment on how it would ship oil from Montreal to Sarnia to ensure its refinery in southern Ontario was fully supplied if Line 5 were to shut down.

Other oil companies are also making contingency plans that include ships through the St. Lawrence Seaway and railway cars to bring oil into Ontario.

Line 5, which brings oil and products such as propane from Alberta to southern Ontario and the U.S. Midwest,” is a “critical piece of infrastructure” for Imperial Oil Ltd., the company’s president and CEO Brad Corson said on a Tuesday earnings call.

Imperial operates a 120,000-bpd refinery and petrochemical complex in Sarnia and a 113,000-bpd refinery in Nanticoke that rely on Line 5 for feedstock.

“We are developing appropriate contingency plans that would allow us to supply our refineries in Ontario, that being Sarnia and Nanticoke, with alternate sources of crude both through the Seaway, as well as through other pipelines and rail alternatives that are available,” Corson said.

Corson said he believes there’s a low chance Line 5 is shut down in May but noted, “We’re watching that very carefully.”

Shell Canada Ltd., which operates an 85,000-bpd refinery near Sarnia, did not respond to a request for comment

.

© Tim Ruhnke/The Recorder and Times A ship on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Calgary-based oil companies are particularly concerned about having well-supplied refineries in the region as demand for fuel is recovering and the so-called “summer driving season” is generally a period that buoy refinery earnings.

Suncor said Thursday the company’s refineries processed 438,000-bpd in the fourth quarter, meaning they were roughly 95 per cent utilized, up from 87 per cent utilization in the third quarter when demand for fuel was hampered by the pandemic.

Little said the company’s Canadian refineries, however, were 100 per cent utilized in the fourth quarter. Suncor also operates a refinery in Colorado but did not indicate how busy that refinery was in the fourth quarter.

Scotiabank analyst Jason Bouvier said he expected Suncor’s refineries to operate at 92 per cent of capacity this year.

Suncor produced 769,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the fourth quarter, down roughly 1 per cent from 778,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day a year earlier. The company also reported a $168-million net loss in the fourth quarter of 2020, which is smaller than the $2.3-billion net loss it posted in the same quarter a year earlier.

The loss included a $142-million charge stemming from the cancellation of TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project, which Suncor had planned to use to send crude from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The company also announced plans to pay down between $1 billion and $1.5 billion in debt this year and buy back up to $1 billion of its own shares. But the company did not hike its dividend, which was cut when oil prices plunged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

Suncor shares dipped on the day, closing 1.2 per cent lower to $21.97 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

“This was a solid finish to an otherwise choppy year for Suncor,” Raymond James analyst Chris Cox wrote in a research note Thursday, adding that “it will be a wait-and-see story on the dividend increase.”

Cox upped his price target on the company from $32 to $33 per share.

Financial Post

Sarnia fears thousands of job losses if Michigan blocks Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline
Enbridge sets high bar to build pipelines as big projects get riskier
New legal challenge to Enbridge pipeline in Michigan threatens higher gas prices in Ontario
‘It’s going to be felt at the pump’: Ontario could see gas price hikes if Enbridge’s Line 5 stays shut

Every vaccine maker was asked to make their doses in Canada and all said no: Anand


OTTAWA — Every COVID-19 vaccine maker Canada signed a contract with last summer was asked if they could make the doses in Canada and all of them concluded they could not, Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Thursday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Anand told the House of Commons industry committee that her department "proactively and repeatedly approached leading vaccine manufacturers" about the matter.

"We took this issue up with suppliers at every turn at the negotiating table to discern whether they would come to the table with this possibility of domestic biomanufacturing," Anand said.

"The manufacturers reviewed the identified assets here in Canada and concluded that biomanufacturing capacity in this country, at the time of contract, which was last August and September, was too limited to justify the investment of capital and expertise to start manufacturing in Canada."

Many of the COVID-19 vaccine makers sought partners to help produce their product. Moderna signed a 10-year exclusivity agreement with Swiss manufacturer Lonza to make its vaccine. AstraZeneca sought deals with multiple countries to produce its vaccine last summer and fall, including China, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India and South Korea.

NDP MP Don Davies questioned why Canada isn't among them, and Anand said "I raised this issue personally with AstraZeneca last August."

A spokesman for AstraZeneca confirmed Anand's statements related to its vaccine, known as AZD1222.

"During the course of our discussions with the Canadian government, we reviewed in-country manufacturing capability and available capacity against the technical requirements for AZD1222," said Carlo Mastrangelo, AstraZeneca's director of corporate communications and sustainability.

"After discussion with the government and our technical experts, we agreed that the fastest and most effective option to ensure timely Canadian supply of AZD1222 was to leverage an existing supply chain that was already established and beginning the qualification process."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced earlier this week Canada has a new contract with Maryland-based Novavax to eventually make doses of its vaccine at a new National Research Council facility going up in Montreal.

Novavax CEO Stanley Erck said in a statement his company sees the deal with Canada as "an important step forward in our quest to deliver an urgently needed safe and effective vaccine.”

"The memorandum of understanding also includes a broader intention for the government of Canada and Novavax to work together to increase the company’s Canadian presence," he said.

But the new NRC building won't be finished until the summer and the new doses are not likely to start being pumped out until late fall at the earliest, long after Canada expects to import enough doses to vaccinate the entire population.

Vaccine manufacturing will be newly available at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan next year, and at Precision Nanosystems in British Columbia in 2023. But none of that helps Canada make doses of COVID-19 vaccines today, and the delays to Canada's shipments continue.

Delays getting Lonza's second and third production line up and running in Switzerland is blamed for Moderna's smaller deliveries this month. Moderna was to deliver 230,000 doses to Canada this week, but 180,000 arrived Thursday morning instead.

A spokeswoman for the company says it will still deliver two million doses total by the end of March. The company has delivered about half a million thus far, leaving 1.5 million for the only two shipments planned after this week before that deadline.

But Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander managing logistics of vaccine deliveries for the Public Health Agency of Canada, said Thursday Canada doesn't expect to get the 249,600 doses it was initially allocated for the Feb. 22 shipment either.

That comes after a month of smaller shipments from Pfizer-BioNTech, which was supposed to deliver more than 1.1 million doses between Jan. 18 and Feb. 14, and instead is delivering fewer than 340,000.

Fortin said Pfizer is resuming more normal shipments on Feb. 15, with 335,000 doses coming that week, and almost 400,000 the week after.

Provincial governments are expressing their exasperation with the vaccine supply shortages and the lack of clear information from Ottawa about what is coming and when.

"I have advocated for both a consistent supply of vaccines and a consistent supply of information," Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said

"Unfortunately, we continue to get neither."

He said he would push Trudeau to do better during the weekly first ministers' phone call later Thursday.

After that call, a federal official said Trudeau assured premiers that despite the uncertainty over the supply of vaccines from week to week, Pfizer and Moderna continue to promise that Canada will receive six million doses by the end of March, as they contracted to do.

He also told premiers that the federal government is sharing all information it gets from the companies about the vaccine supply as soon as it receives it and is holding nothing back, according to the official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the call.

Canada's reliance on foreign production of vaccines came to the forefront in the last week when Europe — where all of Canada's current vaccines are made — imposed export controls to protect their own supplies. Europe has assured Canada it won't affect Canada's shipments and Anand said so far that is true.

Canada's shipments from Pfizer and Moderna this week were allowed to go out, and Anand said next week's Pfizer shipment has been approved as well.

Canada is also going to get fewer than 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine this winter, after believing just two days ago it could be more than twice that. Those doses are coming from the global vaccine initiative known as the COVAX Facility but can't be released until the World Health Organization approves AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Dr. Seth Berkley, the CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, which is one of the COVAX's coordinators, said some doses are now not coming until the summer because of a delay getting that approval from WHO.

Canada should get about 475,000 doses before the end of March, and another 1.4 million by the end of June, pending approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine by WHO and Health Canada. Both are expected imminently.

Canada has also ordered 20 million doses from AstraZeneca directly, but Fortin was tight-lipped about when any of those doses will arrive.

"We are planning a number of contingencies," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Leaders of the anti-vaccine movements used 'Stop the Steal' to crusade to advance their own conspiracy theories

As the Trump faithful gathered around the Capitol on January 6, two conspiracy theories peddling in government mistrust converged: The fraudulent belief that the election was stolen, and the dangerous narrative that Covid-19 vaccinations are wildly unsafe

.

© Samuel Corum/Getty Images Pro-Trump supporters gather outside the US Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.

"We're being led off of a cliff," Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, told the crowd at the "MAGA Freedom Rally D.C." about a block from the Capitol.

"I wish I could tell you that Tony Fauci cares about your safety..." he said. "I wish I could believe that voting machines worked... but none of this is happening."

In the wake of Trump's electoral defeat, some leaders of the anti-vaccine movement latched onto the "Stop the Steal" crusade, advancing their own conspiratorial claims and, in some cases, promoting private business ventures, CNN has found. Some prominent anti-vaxxers say they directly coordinated with organizers of the DC rallies in January and pushed their message at other MAGA demonstrations, and on pro-Trump podcasts and social media platforms.

The anti-vaccine message may have found a particularly receptive audience among some fervent Trump supporters, many of whom flout wearing masks and contend the lethality of the virus is overblown.

"It's marketing at a basic sales level," said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has analyzed the strategies of anti-vaccine advocates. "Conspiracism that allows you to connect anything together if you want to, because it doesn't require fact."

Contrary to the statements of vaccine critics, the two vaccines authorized for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration have been shown to be safe and effective.

But public health experts warn that anti-vaccine messages now pose a unique threat to the nation's health given the urgency for widespread coronavirus vaccination.

"One of our big concerns is that because people are seeing this anti-vaccine rhetoric we may not be able to reach levels of herd immunity we really need to stop virus proliferation," Tara C. Smith, an epidemiology professor at Kent State University, told CNN.

A national poll published this week from Monmouth University found 24% of people in the US will avoid getting the coronavirus vaccine if they can help it. The poll also found that willingness is driven more by political leanings than demographics.

The rally at the US Capitol featuring Bigtree, advertised as "The MAGA Health Freedom Event of the Century," included other notable vaccine conspiracy theorists such as Mikki Willis, the filmmaker behind "Plandemic," which falsely suggests Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was responsible for the creation of the coronavirus.

Bigtree, who says he's "not anti-vaccine" but rather "pro-science" and neither a Republican nor a Democrat, told CNN he did not speak at the rally to promote or benefit from "Stop The Steal" but rather to share his own message. "Wherever there is an audience, I want to get the message across that our bodies are ours. We should be in control of what's injected into them," he said.

The event was organized in part by a political action committee run by Ty and Charlene Bollinger, a married couple who run websites and sell documentaries that claim to reveal "the truth about vaccines" and range in price from $199 to $499. They also market alternative health books and other products.

The Bollingers have engaged for years in what they describe as health-freedom activism. But in recent months they took up another cause.

In early November, they co-authored a post about "voter fraud and election meddling" for the website of political operative Roger Stone, who has taken credit for coining the phrase "Stop the Steal" to help then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Last November, Stone wrote in a webpost that he "strategized" with the Bollingers.


Blending conspiracy theories

On November 21, the Bollingers spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Nashville and blended election conspiracy theories with claims that then President-elect Joe Biden planned to force vaccinations.

"There is no pandemic. It's all BS," Ty Bollinger told onlookers.

In a video posted on January 4, Charlene Bollinger said she was working with other organizers on plans for the January 6th protests including "Ali" -- an apparent reference to Ali Alexander, a leader of the broader "Stop the Steal" movement.

Two days later, Charlene Bollinger introduced the speakers at her group's rally near the US Capitol, plugged her documentaries and blasted what she called, "the forced Covid vaccine, such a scam." She also told attendees that her husband Ty wasn't with her because he had gone to join the siege.

"I told him... they are storming the Capitol, and he looked at me and said, 'Do I need to stay here?' I knew he wanted to go. I said, 'Honey go,' so he did," she said.

Charlene Bollinger added that Ty texted her and said he was "outside" the Capitol. She then prayed "for the patriots that are there now inside. They're trying to get inside that Capitol. Lord, use these people to eradicate this evil, these swamp creatures."

The Bollingers did not respond to CNN's phone calls and emails that requested comment.

While outlandish claims of a stolen election may appear disjointed with vaccine fearmongering, their union at recent political rallies does not surprise Ahmed, of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Ahmed said fulltime anti-vaccine advocates often search for new audiences within other fringe movements with which they can build alliances. And he said it's not a coincidence that some of these professionals sell products like health supplements.

A July report by Ahmed's organization CCDH unpacked what it described as the "Anti-Vaxx Industry." The report noted that fulltime anti-vaccine campaigners expand their reach by appearing on conspiracy-theory-based YouTube channels and also lend their audiences to anti-vaccine entrepreneurs who seek to sell them products.

"What you're talking about is old fashioned snake-oil salesmen," Ahmed said.


Alex Jones and InfoWars

Another promoter of the stolen-election conspiracy theory is Alex Jones, who has long peddled falsehoods about vaccines and mainstream medicines on his show InfoWars. The show frequently advertises Jones' dietary supplements and survival products.

In April, the FDA warned Jones to take down a number of products marketed on his site as possible coronavirus treatments, such as "Superblue Fluoride Free Toothpaste." Those products no longer appear on his site.

Jones, who previously said a "form of psychosis" made him believe events like the Sandy Hook massacre were staged, has continued to promote other supplements next to segments on his show that stoke fears about coronavirus vaccines.

In recent months, he has woven in false allegations of widespread election meddling.

On January 3, Jones referenced "pure evidence of election fraud" just before a "news" alert about "forced inoculations" and other coronavirus claims. The video remains online next to an ad for "DNA Force Plus" supplements. The InfoWars Store includes a disclaimer that the products are "not intended for use in the cure, treatment, prevention or mitigation of any disease..."

Jones also traveled to Washington and spoke at a pro-Trump rally on the eve of the Capitol siege. There, he blasted what he falsely described as the "engineered virus that Bill Gates owns."

InfoWars did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

Spreading theories on social media

Other vaccine skeptics have promoted election conspiracy theories on social media.

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a physician, supplement salesperson and author of the books such as "Saying No To Vaccines," repeatedly promoted the January 6 Washington protests on Telegram. A January 5 post, for example, included a "call to action" and quoted the founder of the Oath Keepers extremist militant group as saying, "Get to DC and STAND!" Those posts were interspersed among her more usual anti-vaccine content.

Tenpenny also shared the "Stop the Steal" hashtag on Twitter in a quote tweet of a post about the DC rally from Dr. Simone Gold.

Gold, who founded the group America's Frontline Doctors, made headlines last summer for her appearance in a video that was later removed from social media for coronavirus misinformation. Trump retweeted the video, which also featured Stella Immanuel, who said in the past that DNA from space aliens is used in medicine.

On January 5, "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander introduced Gold at a Washington rally and reminded attendees that they weren't just fighting for the election but also against "medical tyranny."

Gold then took the stage and told the crowd, "If you don't want to take an experimental biological agent deceptively named a vaccine, you must not allow yourself to be coerced!"

The next day, Gold and her colleague entered the Capitol building during the siege, according to an affidavit for a criminal complaint against her. She was later arrested, according to the Department of Justice.

America's Frontline Doctors told CNN in a statement that Gold is not a political organizer and "did not participate in any incident that involved violence or vandalism and has categorically rebuked any such activity" by others. The statement added that America's Frontline Doctors' physicians have recommended vaccines to patients but said the organization believes "more study and greater transparency are needed with respect to COVID-19 vaccines."

Since the riot, she has continued to spread her message.

"Definitely you should not be calling this the Covid-19 vaccines. The reason is, whatever you call it, it's experimental. It's not been approved as a vaccine," Gold said in a video posted January 14 that showed a talk she gave at a Tampa, Florida-based church led by a pastor who has appeared on Alex Jones' show.

While some audiences may have concerns after hearing anti-vaccine messages that reference actual instances of allergic reactions or other anecdotes, context is key, says Smith of Kent State University.

"You've had a handful of allergic reactions as compared to 4,000 people dying a day from actual coronavirus infection," she said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that severe allergic reactions to Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccines are rare.

Smith said that when anti-vaccine activists' claims about coronavirus vaccines are put in the larger context of scientific literature, "all of those concerns are just dwarfed."

While the momentum of the "Stop the Steal" movement may have died down, vaccine skeptics and far-right political groups will likely continue to trade audiences and ideas, which could translate into more public demonstrations, says Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.

Burghart, who tracks far-right groups, said he has watched these two movements develop an increasing symbiotic relationship during the coronavirus pandemic.

"There is a larger constituency that is mobilized and they have adopted a far more destructive view of vaccines than they had before, and they have united with far-right paramilitaries and others," he said.

 

Alex Jones, the founder of right-wing media group Infowars, addresses a crowd of pro-Trump protesters after they storm the grounds of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC

 

Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, speaks at "MAGA Freedom Rally" on January 6, 2021.
 

Ty and Charlene Bollinger sell documentaries that claim to reveal the "truth about vaccines."

Dr. Simone Gold speaks at pro-Trump rally on January 5, 2021.

Texas temporarily blocked from kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid
By Shannon Najmabadi, The Texas Tribune

Planned Parenthood asked for a six-month delay to help its Medicaid patients find new doctors, citing the ongoing pandemic. File Photo by Erin Schaff/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A state district judge in Travis County has temporarily stopped Texas from kicking Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program, after the health provider filed an emergency lawsuit in a bid to keep providing non-abortion services to thousands of low-income patients.
In a last-minute proceeding on Wednesday, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble granted a temporary restraining order and set a hearing for Feb. 17.

The state had given Planned Parenthood's Medicaid patients until Wednesday to find new doctors after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas officials who have long sought to block the health provider from participating in the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor.

It is difficult to qualify for Medicaid in Texas, which has the highest uninsured rate nationwide. A single parent with two children cannot make more than $230 a month.

A lower court blocked the state from removing Planned Parenthood from Medicaid in 2017 but was overruled by the 5th Circuit in November, in a development cheered by state officials including Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Planned Parenthood asked for a six-month delay to help its Medicaid patients find new doctors, citing the ongoing pandemic. The state health commission granted a 30-day grace period that was scheduled to end this month.

Texas does not pay for abortions through its Medicaid program except in extremely limited circumstances, such as rape or incest.

Dyana Limon-Mercado, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, the health provider's political arm in Texas, said the governor's "attempts to block Medicaid patients from getting care at Planned Parenthood health centers is the latest in a long history of Texas politicians trying to score points with relentless attacks on Planned Parenthood patients."

Gov. Greg Abbott's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the health commission said it was not appropriate for them to comment on pending litigation.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. Read the original here. The Texas Tribune is a non-profit, non-partisan media organization that informs Texans -- and engages with them -- about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Texas accidentally issues Amber Alert for cursed doll Chucky


Feb. 1 (UPI) -- The Texas Department of Public Safety said an Amber Alert that was issued for the cursed doll Chucky from the Child's Play horror films was a test that was accidentally sent out.

The Amber Alert message that was sent out to subscribers of the Texas Alerts System three times on Friday describes the suspect, Chucky, as wearing "blue denim overalls with multi-colored striped long sleeve shirt" and says he was last seen "wielding a huge kitchen knife."

Chucky was suspected of abducting "Glen Ray," the cursed doll's son from the film Seed of Chucky. The alert included photos of both movie characters.

The Texas Department of Safety said the fake Amber Alert was set up as a system test and was never meant to be seen by the public.

"This was actually a test we were running on a dev server and it accidentally went out," DPS spokesman Ruben Medina told KPRC-TV.

Medina said DPS would like to "apologize for this inconvenience."