CP Rail's purchase of U.S. rival is a bet on production moving out of China in COVID-19 aftermath

The reshoring phenomenon in global manufacturing is often exaggerated.

© Provided by Financial Post The Canadian Pacific railyard is pictured in Port Coquitlam, B.C. The proposed merger of CP and Kansas City Southern is being touted as a 'stabilizing' deal for the sector.

The Bank of Canada surveyed business leaders last fall and policy-makers heard that “having shorter supply chains with localized parts closer to Canada is an ongoing topic of discussion,” but the majority were focused on adopting digital technology to stay competitive.


“In the near term, most firms do not expect to pivot away from their existing processes and relationships,” the autumn Business Outlook Survey reported in October.

The findings were out of step with headlines about embarrassing shortages of personal protective equipment and other vital goods in Canada and other rich countries that had allowed their manufacturing bases to erode over the past few decades as production shifted to China and other low-cost jurisdictions.

Clearly, there was a disconnect between opinion writers and politicians talking about “shock-proofing” the economy and those who actually had skin in the game. It will take more than the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, four years of Donald Trump at the White House, and a global pandemic to reverse decades of rapid globalization.

Still, there might be something to all the hype. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.’s purchase of Kansas City Southern is a US$25-billion bet that the future of trade in North America is north-south, not east-west.

Canadian oil producers see new route to Gulf Coast refineries coming from CP Rail deal

CP deal could be easier sell in wake of continental trade deal and pandemic's economic shifts

The combined company would still be the smallest of the six big North American railways, but it alone would be able to offer a direct link from the northern reaches of British Columbia and Alberta to ports in southern Mexico, while at the same time touching the Pacific via the Port of Vancouver and the Atlantic through Saint John, N.B.

“The pandemic has taught us that global, extended supply chains involve greater risk than perhaps a lot of industrial companies are willing to take,” KCS chief executive Patrick Ottensmeyer said on a conference call with analysts on March 21. “There is a trend in supply-chain strategy to shrink and de-risk those supply chains and North America is going to continue to be a very attractive source of investment and growth, particularly in manufacturing and industrial activity.

He added: “This network is not only going to be in a position to benefit from those trends, but to help drive those trends.”

There isn’t much data evidence yet of such a shift. The United States posted a record trade deficit in goods in 2020, despite the former president’s aggressive use of tariffs and his bully pulpit.

Something similar happened in Canada. The value of goods imported from China increased to an unprecedented $76 billion in 2020, while exports to China jumped eight per cent to $25.1 billion, the second-highest on record, according to customs data collected by Statistics Canada . The tightening of the two countries’ commercial relationship occurred while they were engaged in a tense diplomatic feud over the jailing of each other’s citizens, showing that economic forces are a match for political headwinds.

Still, backward-looking data might not be the best guide of where trade is headed, given all the questions raised by the COVID-19 crisis and the unpredictable state of play between the U.S. and its allies and China, which appears ready to punish any country that does something its government dislikes.

As the pandemic drags on, the value of a resilient supply chain could be rising. CP Rail chief executive Keith Creel, who will lead the combined railway if regulators approve the purchase of KCS, told analysts last fall that his customers weren’t talking about “near-shoring.” Less than six months later, he was back on the phone with analysts, justifying a multi-billion-dollar cash outlay on the prospect of factory production returning to North America from Asia.

Mark Barrenechea, chief executive of Open Text Corp., the Waterloo, Ont.-based maker of information-management software, said a resetting of trade patterns is already showing up in his company’s order book. Open Text sells technology that helps companies keep their supply lines straight, and it seems its customers are attempting to become less reliant on a single source.

“We predicted that the pandemic, and the shortages, and the disruptions would lead to localized supply chains and we are seeing the work begin now,” Barrenchea said in an interview earlier this month. “We’re seeing work in Germany around auto. We’re seeing work in the U.S. around raw materials. We’re seeing in China, if you manufacture for China, you are staying in China, but if you manufacture in China for non-China, work is migrating out.”

All this change could be an opportunity for Canada. Policy-makers and think-tankers like to point out how trade agreements with the U.S., Europe and much of Asia could make Canada an ideal place to supply the world. A shift in emphasis from cost to stability in production would work in our favour.

But it probably won’t be as easy as that. Manufacturing has suffered a long decline and Canada may now lack the required talent and infrastructure. The country’s inability to manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine was a reminder of what happens when you ignore erosion.

“Canada has really decreased its finished-goods manufacturing and outsourced it,” Barrenechea said. “Some of those fissures have shown themselves over the last year.”

Kevin Carmichael

3/23/2021
Email: kcarmichael@postmedia.com | Twitter: carmichaelkevin

NY Times estimates wealthy Americans are refusing to pay $1.4T in uncollected taxes

By Joseph Guzman | March 22, 2021

The New York Times editorial board laid out a plan for how the U.S. could recover $1.4 trillion in taxes that would otherwise go uncollected. 

The Times op-ed notes that the W-2 reporting system has largely prevented American workers from lying to the federal government about their income, while there’s been no comparable system for verifying income from businesses. 

The piece cites a 2019 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) analysis that estimates less than half of all income that is not subject to third-party verification, like a W-2, gets reported to the agency. Meanwhile, more than 95 percent of wage income is reported. Unpaid federal income taxes could amount to more than $600 billion this year and more than $7.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

“The result is that most wage earners pay their fair share while many business owners engage in blatant fraud at public expense,” the op-ed said. 

To address this, the editorial board put forth a proposal from Charles Rossotti, who led the IRS from 1997 to 2002, that would increase the amount of taxes paid by those who are currently cheating the system. 

Rossotti argues Congress should create a third-party verification system for business income, where banks would be required by the federal government to provide “an annual account statement totaling inflows and outflows, like the 1099 tax forms that investment firms must provide to their clients.” 

“Individuals would then have the opportunity to reconcile what Mr Rossotti dubs their ‘1099New’ forms with their reported income on their individual tax returns. One might, for example, assert that a particular deposit was a tax-exempt gift,” the piece states. 

The piece cites an analysis done by Rossotti, Harvard economist Lawrence Summers and University of Pennsylvania law professor Natasha Sarin published in November that argues investing $100 billion in the IRS to shore up technology, personnel and other resources over the next 10 years, coupled with increased transparency on business income, would result in the collection of $1.4 trillion in taxes that would have otherwise gone uncollected. 

“There are many proposals to raise taxes on the rich. Let’s start by collecting what they already owe,” the editorial board said.

B.C. mining laws raise questions as province looks to implement UN declaration


VANCOUVER — The relationships between Indigenous nations and British Columbia's mining sector are set to change as the province works to match its laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mining Minister Bruce Ralston says B.C.'s "formal relations" with Indigenous nations and their participation in the sector are already a "strong asset" for companies and investors considering mineral operations in the province.

"Investors are looking for signs that things are being done right, things are being done fairly," he told a news conference earlier this month.

However, details of when and how B.C.'s mining laws may change because of the declaration aren't yet known. It's expected to take years to fully implement the act adopting its 46 different articles, which was passed in the legislature in November 2019.

In the meantime, companies must chart their own path to comply with the declaration or risk legal uncertainty, said Merle Alexander, a Vancouver-based lawyer whose work focuses on Indigenous nations and resource-based sectors including mining, forestry, oil and gas, and hydropower.

Under B.C.'s Mineral Tenure Act, for example, it costs just $1.75 per hectare to register a mineral claim through an online portal.

"I could go and just randomly choose 50 different territories to stake claims in right now and I would have never even had any engagement with any First Nation, and I'd already have an interest in their land," Alexander said.

"You get the ability to sort of literally go out there and start, like, digging holes and trenching without really any consultation whatsoever."

The UN declaration requires governments to obtain free, prior and informed consent before taking actions that affect Indigenous Peoples and territories.

"You'd be pretty hard pressed to argue that this online click of a mouse exploration mining tenure system ... is somehow compliant with a free, prior and informed consent process," said Alexander, who is a member of the Kitasoo/Xai'xais First Nation on B.C.'s north coast.

Once companies decide a mineral claim is worth exploring further they usually recognize the importance of engaging with First Nations, he said.

The Supreme Court of Canada has already established the duty to consult, meaning lawmakers must have dialogue with Indigenous governments about proposed decisions that could negatively impact their rights and title.

But Alexander likened the Crown to an absentee parent, often leaving it up to First Nations and companies to figure out consultation processes and agreements before the province approves permits for proposed projects.

"Most companies have advanced to at least realize that they have to sort of pick up the ball where the Crown has left it," he said in an interview.

"They take the delegated duty to consult and they get into the community and start fulfilling it themselves," he said, pointing to contractual solutions to legal uncertainty such as benefit agreements with First Nations.

The Crown's failure in its duty to consult affected First Nations can sink a project, said Alexander, noting that's what sent Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline back to square one in 2016 before it was shelved permanently by the federal government later that year.

But the duty to consult leaves room for interpretation, he said, while the declaration is a statutory requirement for the province to ensure its laws align with the different articles in the UN Indigenous rights declaration.

Designed to facilitate consent-based agreements between the province and Indigenous nations whenever their rights are affected, B.C.'s act will likely lead to clearer and stronger standards around obtaining consent, he said.

It should create a path to greater certainty — one that's outside the courts — for industries, such as mining, forestry, and natural gas, he said.

B.C.'s environmental assessment process for mines and other major proposed projects is further along than the mineral tenure and exploration system for compliance with the UN declaration, Alexander noted.

But it's not in complete compliance, he said, because the 2018 Environmental Assessment Act requires that officials seek to achieve "consensus" with affected nations rather than work toward consent.

Under the act, the government is required to consider a nation's consent or lack of consent and must publish its reasoning for issuing an environmental assessment certificate for a project if a nation does not consent.

The Mining Association of B.C. issued a statement when B.C.'s declaration act was tabled in legislature, saying it was optimistic that with proper implementation, adoption of the act would "support and advance reconciliation and may lead to greater certainty on the land base."

B.C. is currently in talks with Indigenous groups about the implementation of the declaration act. The province aimed to release a plan identifying priority areas for legal reform last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some delay and it now expects to have a draft ready for feedback this spring, Indigenous Relations Minister Murray Rankin said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 28, 2021.

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press

UK retail now employs just over 3m people – 67,000 fewer than before the Covid-19 pandemic started

23 Mar 2021by Chloe Rigby

Image: Adobe Stock
UK retail now employs just over 3m people – 67,000 fewer than before the Covid-19 pandemic started

The retail industry now employs just over three million people – 67,000 fewer than at the same time last year, according British Retail Consortium analysis of official statistics.

The Labour market overview UK: March 2021 from the Office for National Statistics, estimates that the UK unemployment rate stood at 5% in the three months to January 2021 – 1.1 percentage points (pp) higher than a year earlier. At the same time, 75% of UK adults are employed – 1.5pp lower than a year earlier. The UK economic inactivity rate stands at 21%(+0.6pp). The analysis found that there are now 693,000 fewer people on payrolls in February 2021 than in February 2020, although there are 68,000 more people employed than in January – showing that a recovery may be in progress as non-essential retailers approach reopening April 12.

The BRC analysis of supplementary information on employee jobs by industry found that 2.9m are employed in the retail trade, while 0.2m are self-employed in the retail industry. Of those three million retail jobs that still exist, 600,000 retail workers are now furloughed – 200,000 more than in December, according to the BRC. It adds that while jobs have been created in online delivery and distribution over the last year, there were fewer people working in retail in the final quarter of last year than at any time since 1999.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, says: “While the second wave of the pandemic swept away tens of thousands of retail jobs, many more were saved by the government’s furlough scheme, which is now providing support for 600,00 retail workers, a rise of 200,000 since December. This is likely to get worse if the third lockdown wears on, and while new jobs were created, focused in grocery and driving online capacity across the market, as well as many temporary jobs in the run up to Christmas, town and city centre stores continue to employ fewer and fewer people.”

She says the biggest potential threat to jobs and to shops would be if the economy returns to lockdown after April 12 - and that the government must take “all necessary precautions” to ensure that does not happen.

“Any delays to the Prime Minister’s roadmap will undoubtedly result in more store closures and threaten the livelihoods of the retail workers currently furloughed. Retailers are working incredibly hard to ensure stores and operations are safe and ready for reopening, and it is essential that all retail is open and remains open if it is to unlock the demand that will kickstart our economic recovery.”

Climate change activists shut down major Vancouver roadways

Duration: 02:08 5 hrs ago


Vancouver's Cambie street bridge was temporarily shut down this afternoon, as about 150 environmental activists took over the span. They then moved on to block a major intersection. As Emad Ahahi reports, six people were arrested for their attempt to protect BC's old-growth forests.

ETR USED IN A MSM HEADLINE

'Eat the rich': Backlash after Kylie Jenner asks fans to donate to injured makeup artist

Kylie Jenner has come under fire — not for her skincare products, or a shocking episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians , but, for asking for donations.

The 23-year-old cosmetics entrepreneur drew backlash after posting an Instagram story asking fans to help cover makeup artist Samuel Rauda’s medical expenses. As many social media users pointed out, Jenner’s net worth was estimated by Forbes to be US$700 million in October.

Rauda has done work for Jenner, Chrissy Teigen, Bebe Rexha, Bella Thorne and Khloe Kardashian, among others.

“May God watch over you and protect you @makeupbysamuel,” Jenner wrote on her Instagram story, along with a black-and-white photo of Rauda. “Everyone take a moment to say a prayer for Sam who got into an accident this past weekend. And swipe up to visit his (family’s) go fund me.”

According to the GoFundMe page , Rauda underwent “major surgery” earlier this month after he was in an unspecified accident. His family is currently asking for $120,000 to help cover his medical expenses.

Their initial goal was $60,000, according to Newsweek , but “sources close to” Jenner told TMZ that the original target amount of the GoFundMe was only $10,000, and the star’s donation pushed it over the edge.

As of Monday morning, they’ve received just under $100,000.

“ Kylie Jenner, a billionaire whose toddler has purses from Hermès, Chanel and Vuitton, wants you to donate the $60k her makeup artist needs for brain surgery,” tweeted @goldengateblond in response to Jenner’s Instagram callout.

As Insider reported , between June 2017 to June 2018, Jenner made about US$19,000 an hour, or about half-a-million dollars a day.

“Kylie Jenner makes almost half a million dollars everyday and she is still asking her relatively poor fans to pay for her friends $60,000 medical bills? Eat the rich,” user @JohnPangarakis1 wrote.

The GoFundMe page shows Jenner contributed only $5,000 to Rauda’s expenses, while rival beauty entrepreneur Huda Kattan, of Huda Beauty, donated $10,000.

According to Forbes , Kylie earned US$540 million, pre-tax, for selling 51 per cent of her company Kylie Cosmetics to Coty, a multinational beauty brand whose “portfolio” includes brands like Calvin Klein, Gucci, Marc Jacobs and Tiffany & Co.

Originally, the publication claimed that Jenner was the youngest “self-made” billionaire in 2019. But, later corrected itself in 2020, and claimed that Jenner was not actually a billionaire. But, w hether she’s a billionaire or not, Jenner certainly has the funds to cover Rauda’s surgery — or at least donate more than $5,000 — say social media users.

“Her makeup artist apparently needs $60k. Kylie Jenner paying that would be like someone with $100k net worth sparing $6.72 to pay off a friend’s medical bills,” writer Charlotte Clymer said on Twitter . “In other words, paying off her friend’s medical bills would be like buying a premium latte for Jenner.”

Jenner also owns her own private jet, which was estimated to cost between $50 million to $70 million, as well as a $36.5 million mansion.

“It’s not even about the fact that she won’t pay for the surgery herself. Every single last one of Kylie Jenner’s sisters is a millionaire. Her parents are millionaires. Her friends are millionaires. But she asked the MIDDLE CLASS for money,” tweeted @Princess_Mia_95

Amazon Illegally Interrogated Worker Who Led First COVID-19 Strikes, NLRB Says

The state of New York is also suing Amazon for alleged health and safety violations at the same Queens warehouse where workers led the first COVID-19-related walkouts.

By Lauren Kaori Gurley
22.3.21
On the Clock
On the Clock is Motherboard's reporting on the organized labor movement, gig work, automation, and the future of work.

In March 2020, the first COVID-19 cases at an Amazon warehouse in the United States were reported at a delivery depot in Queens, New York City. At the time, Amazon warehouse workers at the facility staged two walkouts in protest of Amazon's handling of the outbreak, kicking off a wave of COVID-19-related protests and strikes at Amazon facilities across the United States.

A National Labor Review Board (NLRB) investigation has now found that Amazon illegally interrogated and threatened Jonathan Bailey, a lead organizer of the Queens Amazon walkouts, and has issued a federal complaint against Amazon, according to official NLRB documents obtained by Motherboard.

The case was settled before it went to trial, but the issuing of the complaint means that an NLRB investigation found Amazon broke the law.

"Amazon did its best to keep everybody working while simultaneously crushing our effort to fight back," said Bailey, who was interrogated and written up by Amazon management after leading a walkout at the Queens facility on March 20, 2020, according to his NLRB testimony and the federal complaint.

On March 18, Amazon warehouse workers shut down the Queens facility after one of their coworkers tested positive for COVID-19, the first Amazon warehouse worker reporting a positive case in the United States. Two days later, on March 20, Bailey led a second walkout with 13 workers. It was planned during a lunch break after Amazon sent a second worker home sick but did not close the warehouse.

The following day, a regional manager who introduced himself as a former FBI agent pulled Bailey aside into management's offices and interrogated Bailey about his role in the walkout, told him his behavior might be harassment, and demanded Bailey contact him before any future walkouts, according to Bailey's NLRB testimony.

"He interrogated me for an hour and a half," Bailey told Motherboard. "A week later I was called into the office again and they wrote me up for harassment, saying people felt hurt by what I did." Motherboard obtained an audio recording of that meeting.

Motherboard also obtained a copy of an NLRB settlement agreement, dated March 3, 2021, that requires Amazon to post information about workers rights to organize at the entrances to break rooms, including, "WE WILL NOT ask you whether or not you support employee walk-outs, or about any other protected concerted activities." Motherboard reached out to the regional NLRB attorney on the case for comment and they directed us to public information about the case on the NLRB’s website.

“While we disagree with allegations made in the case, we are pleased to put this matter behind us," Leah Seay, a spokesperson for Amazon told Motherboard. "The health and safety of our employees is our top priority and we are proud to provide inclusive environments, where employees can excel without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment.”

“Amazon fabricated false and unjust disciplinary measures to build bogus cases against workers leading the fight to be treated as more than grist in Amazon’s profit mill,” Amazonians United New York City told Motherboard in a statement. “We thank the NLRB for putting in countless hours and validating what we already knew to be true. Ultimately, it is our solidarity that protects us and will win us a better world.”

The news coincides with heightened scrutiny on Amazon's anti-union practices, as the company campaigns to defeat a historic union election at its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse, where workers could form the first Amazon union in the United States when votes are counted on March 30.

It comes in the midst of a high profile lawsuit in New York focused on the Queens Amazon warehouse. In February, New York's attorney general sued Amazon, arguing that the company "failed to comply with requirements for cleaning and disinfection" and retaliated against workers who raised concerns about health and safety conditions at the Queens warehouse and another Amazon facility in Staten Island.

Documents obtained by Motherboard show the NLRB found that management at Amazon's Queens delivery depot violated workers right to engage in labor organizing activity on four accounts in March 2020. Amazon's management told employees not to organize in collective activity "without first notifying [them]," threatened discipline to workers who spoke to employees about a walk-out, and "interrogated employees about their participation" in the walkout, according to the federal complaint.

Under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, it is illegal for employers to retaliate against workers who organize to form unions or who engage in collective action to improve their working conditions.

The board dismissed three other allegations related to labor organizing.

Last year, Motherboard published leaked handouts and communications from the Queens warehouse that showed that the company was ill-prepared to respond to early COVID-19 cases and implement safety protocols despite having a comprehensive global security team that identifies threats to the company. Documents show that Amazon failed to comply with New York City paid sick leave laws resulting in what Amazonians United NYC, the group of workers who led the walkouts, said were wrongful terminations. Managers also used grainy video surveillance footage to conduct contact tracing, often struggling to identify workers.

The warehouse was so short on supplies that managers went to 7-Eleven and Costco to buy out entire stocks of hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, disinfectant, and water for workers experiencing "heat stress." Amazon also passed out talking points to managers that explained how to discuss organizing at their facility, which noted that the company would protect workers from "retaliation" from Amazonians United NYC.

In late 2019, Bailey, a sortation associate, began meeting with his Amazon coworkers at a Lutheran church and his apartment in Queens to discuss concerns related to Amazon's failure to comply with New York City paid sick leave laws, according to Bailey's testimony provided to the NLRB. But in March 2020, those concerns escalated into demands related to COVID-19 protections.

Using the name Amazonians United NYC, the group wrote a petition eventually signed by more than 5,000 Amazon warehouse workers worldwide in which they demanded that Amazon stop shipment on all non-essential items and provide paid sick leave to all its employees at a time when COVID-19 tests were still scarce.

"As the pandemic unfolds, the demand for home-delivery is increasing, leading to near peak-level volume across the network," they wrote. "We must ensure that we are adequately protected."

Do you have a tip to share with us about organizing at Amazon? We’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch with the reporter Lauren by emailing Lauren.gurley@vice.com or on Signal 201-897-2109.

This isn't the first time the NLRB has found evidence of Amazon violating workers' right to organize free from retaliation. Last week, the Intercept reported that NLRB notified Amazon workers in Chicago, who organize under the name Amazonians United Chicagoland, and led four COVID-19-related strikes in April 2020, that Amazon had illegally retaliated against them for protesting. In December, Motherboard reported that the NLRB found that Amazon had illegally fired a Staten Island Amazon warehouse worker who led a protest outside the warehouse on his day off in March 2020.

Since 2019, Amazonians United groups have also formed Sacramento and Chicago. Though they haven't received formal recognition from the NLRB, they consider themselves a union, along with the workers at the Queens facility.

Scientists shocked to discover plants under mile-deep ​Greenland ice

Isabella O'Malley 

Cold War discoveries and climate change don’t always intersect, but when they do, scientists improve their ability to predict how much sea levels will rise as global temperatures warm.



Play Video
Soil found in ice cores extracted from Greenland in 1966

During the late 1950s, the U.S. Army built a nuclear-powered Arctic research centre called Camp Century in northwestern Greenland. This military base became the headquarters for a top-secret mission called Project Iceworm, which appeared as a polar science station but actually hid 600 nuclear missiles under the ice. The mission was eventually cancelled, but a scientific team at Camp Century was able to carry out Arctic research and collect ice samples when it was operating.

© Provided by The Weather Network

Extracting ice cores at Camp Century during the 1960s. Credit: Army Corps of Engineers

A 1,600 metre-long ice core was extracted at the base in 1966 and nearly four metres of soil was found at the bottom. Scientists weren’t able to do much with the ice core, as the technology at the time couldn’t determine how old the soil was, so it was left in a Danish freezer and was forgotten for several decades.

The soil samples were accidentally found in 2017 when the contents of the freezer were being transferred to a different location. Given the samples’ unique history, they were shipped to the United States so they could be studied by an international team gathered at the University of Vermont in 2019.

State-of-the-art technologies, such as atom counting, were used to analyze the soil and scientists were surprised to discover twigs, leaves, and mosses, indicating that an entire ecosystem was once flourishing where the Greenland Ice Sheet now resides, which is over 3,200 metres thick at its highest point.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkCredit: Dorothy Peteet, Columbia University

The researchers’ findings were published in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which says their discovery reveals the Greenland Ice Sheet has completely melted at least once in the last million years.

The ice sheet melted when carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were significantly lower than present-day, which the researchers say is an indication that there is the potential for human influence to melt the ice again.

© Provided by The Weather Network

A winding river in Greenland. Credit: Joshua Brown

“Ice sheets typically pulverize and destroy everything in their path, but what we discovered was delicate plant structures — perfectly preserved. They’re fossils, but they look like they died yesterday. It’s a time capsule of what used to live on Greenland that we wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else,” says Andrew Christ, University of Vermont scientist and lead author of the study, in the university’s press release.

© Provided by The Weather Network

A pool of melting ice in Greenland. 

Credit: Joshua Brown

The researchers say that Greenland’s ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by six metres, which would flood some of the most populated coastal cities in the world, including Boston, Miami, and London. Several island nations, such as the Marshall Islands and the Maldives, and Kiribati are all less than two metres above sea level and face total submergence by the end of this century if the predicted climate impacts occur.

“This is not a twenty-generation problem,” says Paul Bierman, a geoscientist at the University of Vermont, in the press release. “This is an urgent problem for the next 50 years.”

Thumbnail credit: Joshua Brown

NEITHER STR8 NOR GAY WE ARE ALL BISEXUAL

Bisexual Erasure: What It Is, Why It’s a Threat to Health, and How to Put an End to It
Duration: 00:59

 

The number of people in the US who identify as bisexual is increasing. But bisexuality continues to be overlooked and ignored, and that has consequences.

DID  APACHE ORIGINATE IN NUNAVUT

Moccasin mystery: How did centuries-old footwear from Canada end up in the American Southwest?

When archeologist Julian Steward first found what are known as the Promontory Caves on the north shore of Great Salt Lake in Utah in the 1930s, he couldn’t have known that he would be excavating an area that not only contained an incredible amount of organic remains – rare finds in archeology – but also raised a question that would not be answered until 2021.

The world of archaeology now has a better understanding of these caves and the people who used them, and it all came down to a moccasin.

The people who inhabited the Promontory Caves did so approximately 800 years ago.

They left behind them an abundance of materials available for research, but it was their moccasins (among other things) that provided a key clue that they were actually Dene ancestors. The moccasins were in a Subarctic style, consistent with those used by Dene people farther north.

“Steward noticed that the moccasins that were found were in a style that was really different than anything local groups in Northern Utah used for their footwear,” said Dr. Jessica Metcalfe, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University.

They were found in another place though, the Subarctic. In case you’re unfamiliar, Metcalfe specifies that subarctic is “the Yukon and Northern Alberta, all the way over to Northern Ontario.”

The question is, why are these moccasins 1,500 kilometres from where they should be?

It took a little while for technology to catch up of course, so it was almost 100 years later that a re-excavation of the area took place, but when it did, Metcalfe was a part of a research team that offered a chemical answer to that question.

It’s the first time that human migrations have been reconstructed using chemical traces in footwear.

If you have any interest in science, or really, ever watched science-ish fiction on television, you have likely heard the term ‘carbon dating,’ a shortening of the actual term, radiocarbon dating. It is a method that establishes age estimates for carbon-based materials that originated from living organisms.

“It’s used if you are looking to get an idea of ‘when’,” said Metcalfe, “Radiocarbon dating looks at carbon-14, which acts like a clock.”

Carbon-14 degrades over time. If you measure how much is left compared to how much should be there, you get an answer. Not so simple, of course, but that’s the gist.

However, Metcalfe works with something that is also revealed when examining carbon-based material. She examines stable isotope composition; she’s not looking at carbon-14, she’s looking at 12 and 13.

“They don’t decay,” says Metcalfe, “It’s a record that exists in the tissue and doesn’t degrade.”

The archeologists who were engaged in the excavation of the Promontory Cave site, as well as the other members of the research team began radiocarbon dating when they found a very different stable carbon isotope on a piece of moccasin, specifically on the ankle wrap. (The ankle wrap is often reused, while the moccasin bottoms would need to be replaced more often.)

Because Metcalfe is a geochemical archaeologist, she was brought in to help understand this unusual result. Again, stable isotopes are different specifically because they do not decay, they paint a clear picture.

“It’s kind of like a fingerprint,” said Metcalfe, “It’s a record that remains in an animal’s tissue and skin and hair, so we can measure isotopes and get an idea of what the animal is eating, where they’re living.”

Metcalfe was enlisted to use her work measuring stable isotopes in animals and plants, to this piece of moccasin. After a larger study of the vast amount of organic material available, there needed to be a “solid baseline of the local bison, in order to determine how much of a variation of carbon isotope values is expected in this place.” They even did testing to ensure that this wasn’t an anomaly of some kind.

In the end though, and that’s literal as Metcalfe examined bone, skin, hair and feces for the research, the research proved that not only were these people extraordinarily talented large animal hunters, but their understanding of the land was exceptional.

For so much of colonial periods (after the arrival of settlers), the people who speak the Dene language in the American Southwest and those in Canadian Subarctic were seen as ‘geographically separate,’ and thought to have no connections with each other, but Metcalfe’s research suggests that Dene groups travelled great distances to gain and utilize landscape knowledge.

“The carbon isotope value suggests the Promontory people not only had origins in the Subarctic, but they had also travelled to a place hundreds of kilometres to the south or east of the caves in Utah, much further south than Great Salt Lake,” said Metcalfe. “Potentially into the territory occupied by the southwestern Dene (Navajo, Apache). Julian Steward suggested that the Promontory people might be Apachean ancestors, and our results are consistent with that interpretation.”

The research of Dr. Metcalfe and her colleagues, along with genetic, linguistic, and oral history evidence, demonstrates that Dene connections are not a recent phenomenon – long-distance migrations and meetings of Dene peoples have been occurring for many hundreds of years.

Metcalfe also notes that of late, Dene people from northern, southern, and coastal nations have gathered at workshops and conferences held in Tsuut’ina territory (southern Alberta) to share their interconnected languages and cultures.

Metcalfe’s research was recently published in North American archaeology journal, American Antiquity. 

Jenny Lamothe, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Sudbury.com

3/23/2021