'This war has to end': Biden pulls US support for Saudi-led offensive in Yemen

Issued on: 04/02/2021 - 

US President Joe Biden speaks about foreign policy at the State Department in Washington, DC, on February 4, 2021 AFP - SAUL LOEB

President Joe Biden announced Thursday the United States was ending support for a grinding five-year Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen that has deepened suffering in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, calling the move part of restoring a U.S. emphasis on diplomacy, democracy and human rights.


“The war has created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe,” Biden told diplomats in his first visit to the State Department as president. ”This war has to end.”

The Yemen reversal is one of a series of changes Biden laid out Thursday that he said would be part of a course correction for U.S. foreign policy. That’s after President Donald Trump — and some Republican and Democratic administrations before his — often aided authoritarian leaders abroad in the name of stability.

The announcement on Yemen fulfills a campaign pledge. But it also shows Biden putting the spotlight on a major humanitarian crisis that the United States has helped aggravate. The reversing of policy also comes as a rebuke to Saudi Arabia, a global oil giant and U.S. strategic partner.

The ending of U.S. support for the offensive will not affect any U.S. operations against the Yemen-based al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, group, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

Biden also announced an end to “relevant” U.S. arms sales but gave no immediate details on what that would mean. The administration already has said it was pausing some of the billions of dollars in arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s main partner in its Yemeni offensive.

FRANCE 24 in Washington: 'The messaging is clear'



While withdrawing support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, the Biden administration said it intends to help the kingdom boost its defenses against any further attacks from Yemen’s Houthis or outside adversaries. The assurance is seen as part of an effort to persuade Saudi Arabia and other combatants to end the conflict overall.

Saudi Arabia’s top officials made no immediate public response. They have offered a series of conciliatory gestures and remarks since Biden’s election, seeking to soothe the 75-year-old relationship with the United States.

Yemen, the biblical kingdom of Sheba, has one of the world’s oldest constantly occupied cities — the more than 2,000-year-old Sanaa — along with mud brick skyscrapers and hauntingly beautiful landscapes of steep, arid mountains. But decades of Yemeni misgovernment have worsened factional divisions and halted development, and years of conflict have now drawn in intervention by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, which officials say has lent increasing support to the Houthis.

The Obama administration in 2015 gave its approval to Saudi Arabia leading a cross-border air campaign targeting the Houthi rebels, who had seized Sanaa and other territory and were sporadically launching missiles into Saudi Arabia.

U.S. targeting assistance to Saudi Arabia’s command-and-control was supposed to minimize civilian casualties in airstrikes. But Saudi-led strikes since then have killed numerous Yemeni civilians, including schoolboys on a bus and fishermen in their boats. Survivors display fragments showing the bombs to be American-made.

The Saudi-led campaign, joined primarily by the United Arab Emirates, another Gulf country, has only “perpetuated a civil war in Yemen” and “led to a humanitarian crisis,” Sullivan said. U.S. officials have already notified senior officials for those two countries to explain the rationale for the withdrawal of support, he said.

The stalled war has failed to dislodge the Houthis and is helping deepen hunger and poverty. International rights experts say both the Gulf countries and Houthis have committed severe rights abuses.

Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Yemen’s unsuccessful Arab Spring popular uprising, urged Biden to stay involved in Yemen peace efforts.

“Deeper U.S. engagement — and a refusal to side with dictators who have chosen bloodshed over democratic change — is vital so that the Yemeni people can return to the project of democracy” that warring parties inside and outside of Yemen interrupted, Karman said in a statement.

Biden called Thursday for a cease-fire, an opening of humanitarian channels to allow more delivery of aid, and a return to long-stalled peace talks.

The weeks-old Biden administration has made clear that shifting its stance toward the Yemen war, and toward Saudi Arabia over the Yemen offensive and other rights abuses, was a priority. Other measures have included a review of the Trump administration’s categorization of the Houthis as a terror group. Critics say the designation hinders delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemenis.

Biden also announced the choice of Timothy Lenderking as special envoy to Yemen.

Lenderking has been a deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Middle East section. A career foreign service member, he has served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

(AP)

Indonesian bans mandatory Islamic 'hijab' scarves for schoolgirls

Issued on: 05/02/2021 -

Indonesia says public schools can no longer force girls

 to wear the "hijab" headscarf
ADEK BERRY AFP/File

Jakarta (AFP)

Indonesia has banned schools from forcing girls to wear Islamic "hijab" headscarves after the case of a Christian pupil pressured to cover up sparked outrage in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

The move was applauded Friday by rights activists, who say non-Muslim girls have been forced for years to wear a hijab in conservative parts of the country.

State schools across the Southeast Asian archipelago of nearly 270 million will face sanctions if they fail to comply with the edict from education minister Nadiem Makarim.

On Wednesday he said religious attire was an individual choice, and said schools "cannot make it compulsory".

Schools that violate the rules could see their government funding cut, he added.

"The decree is a positive step to protect women's rights in Indonesia," said Andreas Harsono, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Jakarta.

He said public schools had forced millions of girls and women teachers to wear a hijab, prompting "bullying, intimidation, social pressures -- and in some cases, expulsion and forced resignation" if they didn't.

There have been concerns about growing religious intolerance in a nation where nearly 90 percent of the population follows Islam.

The headscarf issue grabbed headlines after a Christian student in West Sumatra's Padang City was pressured to wear a hijab.

She refused, and her parents later secretly recorded a meeting with an official who insisted that school rules required all girls to wear a hijab, regardless of their religion.

The school later issued an apology after the video went viral.

Religious affairs minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas described the Sumatra case as the "tip of the iceberg".

"Religion is not supposed to be a reason for conflict or a justification to act unfairly towards those with different beliefs," he said.

The new regulations will not apply to conservative Aceh province, which follows religious law under a longstanding autonomy deal.

© 2021 AFP

Immigrants in sanctuary in churches hope Biden offers relief




BEDFORD, Mass. — For over three years, Maria Macario has been too afraid to leave the white steepled First Parish church just outside Boston.

The 55-year-old Guatemala native moved in to avoid deportation, living in a converted Sunday school classroom with a kitchenette.

Her isolation has only been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Gone are the regular church gatherings and volunteers stationed around the clock in case immigration officials come. To keep her spirits up, singers gather outside to serenade her.


She hopes things change with Joe Biden in the White House. He set out to pause most deportations for 100 days and pitched a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people without legal status — an ambitious and dramatic reversal from former President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies.

“It’s a relief,” Macario said. “It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”

She's among dozens of people from Colorado to North Carolina who have taken sanctuary as a last resort to stay in the country. Their actions have been extreme, particularly those who have declared their whereabouts. Many immigrants without legal status, who were increasingly fearful and anxious during the Trump years, upended their daily routines to evade detection, including avoiding driving.

Newly hopeful, they're trying to capitalize on the moment, even with setbacks like a ruling blocking the Biden administration from enforcing its deportation moratorium and uncertainty over whether Congress will tackle immigration reform.

Those who have taken sanctuary have enlisted lawmakers to ask Biden for relief, pushing to cancel deportation orders and reviving the use of private bills — measures to protect a person or group. Sanctuary activists also have sued the federal government.

“These past four years have been a collective holding of our breath and just waiting for the next horrible thing to happen,” said Myrna Orozco-Gallos with Church World Service, a co-operative ministry that helps prepare churches to house immigrants.

The organization estimates at least 38 immigrants are taking sanctuary. At one point under Trump, the group estimated there were more than 70.

The modern sanctuary movement began in the 1980s as Central Americans fleeing war and poverty came to the U.S. and churches stepped in to offer protection. It was revived in 2006 when Elvira Arellano, a Mexican immigrant, moved into a Chicago church, where her portrait still hangs near the altar.

It was long an unwritten rule that churches, playgrounds and schools were off-limits to immigration agents. The Obama administration put it to paper in 2011, largely prohibiting arrests and searches there.

The Trump administration was more hardline, taking an Indonesian immigrant into custody on church grounds last year. The administration also fined several people taking sanctuary up to $500,000, citing violations for failing to depart the U.S.

Emboldened by Trump's departure, four sanctuary activists in Texas, Ohio, Utah and Virginia sued the Department of Homeland Security over the fines, alleging they were “selectively targeted” because of their activism. The fines were reduced to about $60,000 each, but the women say they can't pay.

Several others in sanctuary appeared with Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas at a recent event urging Biden to lift their deportation orders and bolster the use of private bills, a last-ditch effort for legal status.

Alex Garcia, a native of Honduras who's lived at a suburban St. Louis church for over three years, was one of the few with a private bill before it died in the last Congress. Growing up in violence and poverty, he crossed illegally before being detained in 2015 while accompanying his sister to an immigration office so she could seek asylum.

“We all need protection to be able to stay here with our families without the threat of deportation," Garcia said.

Francisca Lino thought that threat was over when Biden's deportation moratorium took effect Jan. 22.

After spending more than three years in sanctuary at a storefront Chicago church, the Mexican mother of five U.S. citizen children packed up and left for her family’s suburban home the next day.

Lino was there just three nights when a judge temporarily blocked the moratorium. She cried. She had already missed the birth of her grandson, graduations and her son’s surgery while living above Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church.

She went back into sanctuary.

“My kids deserve their mom in the house,” Lino said in Spanish. “I’m not a criminal. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just want to find a better life for my family.”

While the ruling was a setback for her and others, Biden has ordered a review of deportation criteria and told authorities in the meantime to focus on people with serious criminal records or who are national security or public safety threats.

So people in sanctuary are biding their time.

At First Parish outside Boston, Macario takes English lessons from church volunteers on Zoom nearly every morning. She's started to learn the piano and has become a proficient knitter. Beside her armchair is a large bag filled with winter hats and other accessories she's made for charity.

“It’s hard," said Macario, who crossed the border illegally in the 1990s with a wave of migrants during Guatemala’s yearslong civil war. “It’s different than a jail, but in some ways, it’s also very similar.”

She often wonders whether she failed her three U.S.-born sons by going into hiding.

Her youngest, Saul, says he doesn’t resent her choice. The 19-year-old dropped out of high school during the family’s upheaval, which included the deportation of his father and oldest brother after their family's asylum case was denied.

He moved into the church during the pandemic to keep his mother company and get his life back on track. He's since earned his GED and found a job at Whole Foods.

“She’s my rock,” Saul Macario says of his mom. “That’s what I needed, her by my side.”

Maria Macario hopes her family will be reunited — including her deported husband and son. Her lawyer has filed paperwork to have her asylum case reopened.

But she says she knows better than to put too much hope in a new president. After all, her family was ordered to leave when Biden was vice-president.

“My lawyer says I could leave the church today, but I just don’t trust things,” Macario said. “It feels too fresh. I don’t want to take the risk.”

___

Tareen reported from Chicago, and Salter from St. Louis.

Philip Marcelo, Sophia Tareen And Jim Salter, The Associated Press

Biden delays Trump rule that weakened wild bird protections

BILLINGS, Mont. — The Biden administration said Thursday it was delaying a rule finalized in former President Donald Trump's last days in office that would have drastically weakened the government's power to enforce a century-old law protecting most wild birds.© Provided by The Canadian Press

The rule could mean more birds die, including those that land in oil pits or collide with power lines or other structures, government studies say. But under Trump, the Interior Department sided with industry groups that had long sought to end criminal prosecutions of accidental but preventable bird deaths.

© Provided by The Canadian Press


While the new rule had been set to take effect Monday, Interior Department officials said they were putting it off at President Joe Biden's direction and will reopen the issue to public comment.

The migratory bird rule was among dozens of Trump-era environmental policies that Biden ordered to be reconsidered on his first day in office. Former federal officials, environmental groups and Democrats in Congress contend many of the Trump rules were meant to benefit private industry at the expense of conservation.

“The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a bedrock environmental law critical to protecting migratory birds and restoring declining bird populations," Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said. “The Trump administration sought to overturn decades of bipartisan and international precedent in order to protect corporate polluters.”

A federal judge in August had blocked a prior attempt by the Trump administration to change how the bird treaty was enforced. But the administration remained adamant that the law had been wielded inappropriately for decades to penalize companies and other entities that kill birds accidentally.

The highest-profile case brought under the law resulted in a $100 million settlement by energy company BP after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill killed about 100,000 birds.

Hundreds of other enforcement cases — including against utilities, oil companies and wind energy developers — resulted in criminal fines and civil penalties totalling $5.8 million between 2010 and 2018. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said relatively few cases end in criminal prosecutions.

More than 1,000 North American species are covered by the law — from the fast-flying peregrine falcon to numerous tiny songbirds and more than 20 species of owls. Non-native species and some game birds like turkeys are not on the list.

In 2017, the government stopped enforcing the law against companies and others in accidental bird deaths.

The move drew backlash from organizations advocating for an estimated 46 million U.S. birdwatchers. It came as species across North America already were in steep decline, with some 3 billion fewer birds compared with 1970, according to researchers.

A Trump administration analysis of the rule change didn't put a number on how many more birds could die. But it said some vulnerable species could decline to the point they would require protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Former federal officials and some scientists had said billions more birds could have died in coming decades under Trump's new rule. Advocacy groups, including the Audubon Society, had lobbied the Biden transition team to block it. They want the administration to set up a permitting system instead, so that wildlife officials can more closely regulate bird deaths.

“All indications are the birds need more protections and that the public strongly supports protections and loves birds,” said Steve Holmer with the American Bird Conservancy. “There has been great progress in finding solutions to bird mortality, and we're hopeful the administration will create a process to start implementing those solutions."

Industry sources and other human activities — from oil pits and wind turbines, to vehicle strikes and glass building collisions — kill an estimated 460 million to 1.4 billion birds annually, out of an overall 7.2 billion birds in North America, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recent studies. Researchers say cats kill the most birds; more than 2 billion a year.

Virginia’s Democratic governor blamed the Trump administration decision to end enforcement of the migratory bird law for the 2019 destruction of a nesting ground for 25,000 shorebirds to make way for a road and tunnel.

Many companies have sought to reduce bird deaths in recent decades by working with wildlife officials, but the incentive drops without the threat of criminal liability.

Industry groups that supported the Trump rule declined to say if they will fight to keep it.

“Our focus remains on working with the Biden administration in support of policies that support environmental protection while providing regulatory certainty,” said Amy Emmert, a senior policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute.

Brian Reil with the Edison Electric Institute said utility companies that the trade group represents have a record of taking steps to protect wildlife and plan to work with the Biden administration.

The 1918 migratory bird treaty came after many U.S. bird populations had been decimated by hunting and poaching — much of it for feathers for women’s hats.

___

Follow Brown on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewBrownAP.

Matthew Brown, The Associated Press

A year after Wet'suwet'en blockades, Coastal GasLink pipeline pushes on through pandemic

© Coastal GasLink Coastal GasLink lays pipe along its 670-kilometre route from northeastern B.C.'s gas fields to an LNG export terminal in Kitimat, on the province's North Coast.

In the year since a high-profile conflict over Indigenous land rights led to RCMP raids on a pipeline construction route and sparked rail blockades across the country, the Coastal GasLink project has pushed ahead, with more than 140 kilometres of pipe now laid in contested ground in northern B.C.

The $6.6-billion pipeline is designed to carry natural gas, obtained by hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — in northeastern B.C., to a $40-billion LNG terminal on the province's North Coast for export to Asia.

The project moving energy resources to tidewater represents one of the largest private sector investments in Canadian history, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

But construction temporarily stalled in early 2020, when several Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs opposed the pipeline's route through disputed land — sparking a nationwide discussion about who gets a say in resource development on land claimed as traditional territory

One year later, the hereditary chiefs still oppose the pipeline — but their priorities have shifted to caring for their elders during the pandemic.

"We haven't forgotten [about land rights], but I don't want to be burying any more of our people. I don't want to bury anyone from our village," Wet'suwet'en hereditary Chief Na'moks told CBC News.

In B.C.'s north, First Nations people have been disproportionately hit with COVID-19, with double the confirmed cases as the rest of the population. Data is not available for the Wet'suwet'en specifically.

Several First Nations communities, including Wet'suwet'en villages, have set up checkpoints to try to control the spread of the disease.

© Betsy Trumpener/CBC News Numerous First Nation villages in northern B.C. have set up roadblocks, like this one in Gitanyow, as they try to keep COVID-19 out of their communities.

Na'moks says talks with the provincial and federal governments have slowed but haven't "fallen off the rails," and the chiefs remain determined to uphold their rights.

"They can't just come in and say, "Oh, what you have, we want, and we're taking it," said Na'moks.

"Talk to us. Involve us. We'll tell you what's important. There should be entire places on this planet that shouldn't be touched."

The hereditary chiefs say supporters who call themselves land defenders are still staying in camps close to the pipeline route, near Houston, B.C., where RCMP arrested several people for defying a court injunction last year — and where police, too, still have a presence.

B.C.'s representative in talks with the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, lawyer and former MP Murray Rankin, said there has been progress, but the pandemic has been an obstacle to a "lasting agreement on rights and title."

"There has been the loss of elders and the mourning process," Rankin said. 

Pipeline slowdown

The pandemic has also slowed the pace of construction at Coastal GasLink. Last March, the company scaled back to essential service levels to comply with provincial health rules. Before the pandemic, around 4,000 people were working on the project; now, about 600 workers are on the job.

In December, there were several COVID-19 outbreaks among employees at two pipeline work camps and at the project's export terminal. The Northern Health Authority says a total of 71 workers tested positive for the coronavirus.

© Betsy Trumpener/CBC Workers construct a Coastal Gaslink work camp for hundreds of crew. This camp is about 100 kilometres west of Prince George.

Coastal GasLink said it's improved its COVID-19 prevention efforts and will now be seeking permission from health authorities to "safely increase the number of personnel" to complete critical work before the spring thaw.

Despite the delays, Coastal GasLink says the project is one-third complete. With almost a quarter of the pipeline in the ground, another 500 kilometres of pipe has been delivered to storage facilities, ready for installation.

When finished, it will cross 622 rivers, creeks, streams, and lakes, the company says.

'The industry puts food on the table'

While the project has faced opposition from some Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, all 20 elected band councils along the Coastal GasLink route support the pipeline and have signed benefits agreements with the company.

Wet'suwet'en member and former elected band councillor Gary Naziel is one of the workers who has been kept on the project during the pandemic. He works for a pipeline contractor, operating a grader and an excavator to keep a winter road open for pipe trucks.

Naziel welcomes the jobs and benefits the pipeline has brought. He says local workers laid off during the construction slowdown have taken a big hit.

"This community will be benefiting from these pipelines," Naziel said. "The industry puts food on the table, clothes on our back."

Calgary business analyst Deborah Yedlin says the pipeline's completion is key to getting Canada's natural resources out to markets, particularly in light of the recent cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline by U.S. President Joe Biden.

"We are a trading nation. And Coastal GasLink is a conduit," Yedlin said.

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

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