University Health Network Cannot Continue to Exploit Women and Racialized Workers, Say Toronto Labour Council, Black Trade Unionists

July 15, 2021 11:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--What seems like a deliberate workforce policy of exploiting racialized women as cheap labour by the University Health Network (UHN) is being roundly criticized by many Toronto/GTA labour and community groups advocating for economic justice for new immigrants.

UHN is avoiding the direct employment of patient rehabilitation care staff at its Hillcrest site who earn wages far below other hospital personal support workers and nurses. The hospital has also left part-time clerical without a first contract, for several years. Both are “inexcusable” practices seen as a growing blemish on the reputation of UHN, the largest hospital system in the country, said the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and Toronto & York Region Labour Council at a noontime rally on Toronto’s University Ave., hospital-row.

“When I look at these two groups of workers, the part-time clerical staff at UHN and the contract employees at Hillcrest, I see the biggest hospital in North America, wealthy and privileged exploiting women and racialized workers and refusing to pay them the same salary it pays its own staff. They are treated like cheap labour. That despite them battling COVID-19 and providing skilled compassionate care,” Andria Babbington the new president of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council.

At the Hillcrest Reactivation Centre, UHN has contracted out what until recently have been direct hospital patient care supports, to a home care company that pays PSWs and registered practical nurses (RPNs) sub-par wages. These workers and several hundred part-time clericals are paid as much as $7.00 less an hour than people doing the same work at UHN.

“That a hospital with the stature of UHN would engage in labour practices that exploit a racialized workforce, is inexcusable and shames UHN, says Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE), secretary-treasurer, Sharon Richer. Both the part-time clerical employees of the University Health Network and the people working at the Hillcrest hospital site of UHN are almost all women and most are racialized. These workers are paid as much as $15,000 a year less than other employees of at UHN hospitals who do the same work.”

The practice of outsourcing hospital patient care to home care providers is a relatively new idea roundly criticized by many public health care advocates, who argue that in addition to avoiding direct employment of care staff like the PSWs and registered practical nurses at UHN-Hillcrest, it is a backdoor privatization of hospital care.

“UHN can get personal support workers to do the same work for $7.00 less an hour than it pays PSWs working at the General or the Western hospitals,” says CBTU president Yolanda MacLean. “And, instead of the sick plan provided to UHN employees, full-time staff at Hillcrest get only three paid sick days a year. No one can live on $16.50 an hour in Toronto supporting families as these workers are doing. The refusal to pay part-time clerical staff the same wages as full-time staff doing the same work, is incomprehensible and unacceptable. A world leading hospital cannot have labour policies based on exploitation and privatization of hospital care.”

lf/cope 491

N.B. advocacy group calls for improved workers' rights after COVID-19

Group says essential workers deserve special attention in COVID-19 recovery

Vanessa Balintec · CBC News · Posted: Jul 18, 2021 

New Brunswick Common Front for Social Justice is calling for a number of changes to labour legislation to protect workers who are not unionized or earn minimum wage. (Common Front Facebook)

Forty-three-year-old Terri-lyn Ward has been working minimum-wage jobs for over two decades.

From fast food to restaurant work, call centres and cashier posts, she's done it all.

"I'm what they call a float girl — I know how to run the whole aspect of the store, so if somebody didn't come in one day or they got short-handed, then I can jump and fill in," Ward said. "That's basically what I do with almost any job I have.

"And, I mean, you still get looked down on and treated like you could be let go tomorrow."

Oromocto resident Terri-lyn Ward has worked in restaurants, call centres, grocery stores and other customer-service related jobs in the past two decades. Ward believes Common Front's recommendations would mean the most to women and mothers working low-income jobs. (Submitted by Terri-lyn Ward)

After being diagnosed with narcolepsy last year, Ward was forced to stop working.

She said she often just scraped by making minimum wage, barely qualified for overtime pay and was afraid to call in sick for work for fear of losing her job.

"Something's got to get done, it's got to get done soon," said Ward, a resident of Oromocto.

"It can't be another five to 10 years waiting for statistics and things to come in and whatnot — we need it now."

More than a million Canadians are still under- or unemployed as a result of COVID-19, but the crisis also allowed others, who were easily able to work from home, save more money. 2:34

Now that she is no longer working, she isn't afraid of speaking out about the difficult working conditions she faced for years. Ward says many don't have the same luxury.

"I can say what I need to — there is nothing that can come back to me to ruin anything."
Post-pandemic working conditions

The New Brunswick Common Front for Social Justice is calling on the province to improve rights and protections for people like Ward.

The group recently released seven recommendations for the province, including an increase to a $15/hr minimum wage, 10 paid sick days per year and more accessible vacation pay.

About 20,000 people, or six per cent of the New Brunswick workforce, are paid the minimum wage, which currently stands at $11.75/hr, the lowest of all Atlantic Canada provinces. The provincial minimum wage, which is tied to the consumer price index, is higher than only one province in the country, Saskatchewan, which is set to raise its minimum wage to $11.81 in October.

New Brunswick's minimum wage increase 'so small,' social justice group says

"We've had a lot of conversations about the importance of essential workers during this pandemic," said Abram Lutes, Common Front provincial coordinator. "If we're going to have an equitable recovery, they should be front and centre."

Abram Lutes believes Common Front’s recommendations for change are needed now more than ever as the province moves out of the pandemic. (Submitted by Abram Lutes)

Other recommendations call for equity, stricter regulations around overtime pay, uniform compensation and better job security.

These policies are mainly targeted toward amending the Employment Standards Act, of ESA, which Lutes said is the main legislation that dictates standards and protections for low-wage and non-unionized workers in the province.

Low-wage earners hit hardest by pandemic job market

"If you have a union, usually your union negotiates more benefits and more protections under a collective agreement, but if you don't have a union, the ESA is what rules at work," said Lutes, who says restaurant, gas station and even some long-term care workers fall into this category.

"Contrary to a lot of assumptions, not all of them are teenagers looking for part-time jobs."

Lutes says these policies would especially help women in the workforce, who are more likely to work low-income jobs or leave the labour market completely due to personal and family responsibilities.

Furthering the conversation

Lutes said this initiative has support from the New Brunswick Union of Public and Private Employees, Coalition for Pay Equity, NB Federation of Labour and CUPE New Brunswick, among other non-profit and advocacy groups across the province.

Common Front met with MLAs to discuss these recommendations last month. Lutes said Green Party MLA Kevin Arseneau for Kent North is one of their biggest supporters.

"It's just issues that are very close to me, close to my constituents," said Arseneau to the CBC. "I represent, I think, the poorest riding in the province in terms of median income, [with] lots of shop workers, lots of manufacturer workers. It's natural for me to embrace those kinds of issues."

He said now those issues need to be kept in the forefront.

Why Canada's low-paid, precariously employed essential workers need a better deal

"The easy answer would [be] if we want to get these implemented, we need a change of government," said Arseneau. "We're definitely there, wanting to push those kinds of issues."

"But inside the legislature, it's always a game of putting pressure at the right time at the right place and getting the issues in the public eye."

In a written response to CBC News, the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour said it has reached out to the Common Front For Social Justice "in the interest of discussing the issues that have been brought forward."

NOT VERY WELCOMING

Staff at Winnipeg's Welcome Place back at work after months-long lockout

Staff with newcomer settlement agency can go back to work after union applied for binding arbitration

CBC News · Posted: Jul 14, 2021

Staff at Welcome Place were locked out on April 27. (Walther Bernal/CBC)


Employees with the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council — also known as Welcome Place — are heading back to work after being locked out by their employer for nearly three months.

More than 20 casual and full-time employees at Welcome Place, an agency that provides settlement services for refugees and newcomers, were locked out on April 27.

Under current labour laws, parties involved in a labour dispute can apply for binding arbitration if a strike or lockout continues for 60 days.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 2348, which represents the workers, said in a news release on Wednesday that it filed a request to the Manitoba Labour Board for arbitration after the Welcome Place lockout stretched to 60 days. That means staff are allowed to return to work while an arbitrator is appointed to help settle the dispute.

"We are disappointed that this employer chose to lock out its own staff in the middle of the pandemic," CUPE 2348 president Vivienne Ho said in the release.

"Our members are relieved that they can return to helping refugees and newcomers settle in Manitoba."

The lockout came after more than 13 months of collective bargaining between CUPE and Welcome Place, which lost a major contract two years ago that resulted in a 50 per cent staffing cut.

Fadel Alshawwa is seen picketing outside Welcome Place on April 28. Workers are now able to go back to work after their union applied for binding arbitration. (Lyzaville Sale/CBC)

CBC News reached out to the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council for comment on Wednesday afternoon, but didn't immediately receive a response.

The agency said in April the delay in reaching an agreement with its workers has "had a negative effect on MIIC's ability to accurately and effectively develop proposals to secure funding going forward."

"We need to realign our employee operational costs to match the internal changes made thus far and the continuing need for cost containment to ensure that Welcome Place can continue its mission to provide services to the refugee community," MIIC said in a news release at the time.

Frustrations mount as locked-out workers picket refugee settlement office in downtown Winnipeg

Workers at Welcome Place at risk of lockout without labour agreement

CUPE says the remaining workers had to take pay cuts and a number of non-monetary issues like banking vacation time were also sticking points in the negotiation of the collective agreement.

The union also claimed in its Wednesday news release that the process that requires binding arbitration is being threatened by the provincial government's proposed Bill 16, which the union warns could result in prolonged lockouts or strikes.

The province plans to pass the bill this fall, making changes to the Labour Relations Act that would eliminate the requirement for binding arbitration after a 60-day dispute between a union and employer.

Union leader labels Manitoba Tories vengeful for bill that he says undercuts workers' rights

Manitoba nurses reach agreement with province, won't go on strike

The province has previously said the bill will improve financial transparency and that eliminating the requirement for binding arbitration would put Manitoba in line with other Canadian jurisdictions.

With files from Rosanna Hempel, Stephanie Cram and Ian Froese

Beyond the picket lines and dead animals: What's behind the labour strife in Quebec's meat packing plants
PROFIT OVER RIGHT TO FOOD
1 million chickens euthanized and thousands of pigs facing same fate, producers say

PRODCUERS ARE MILLION DOLLAR CORPORATIONS

Verity Stevenson · CBC News · Posted: Jul 15, 2021

A striking worker outside an Olymel meat plant in Quebec's Beauce region holds a sign that says, 'We are not slaves.' Workers decry bad working conditions and low salaries in the strike that has lasted more than two months. (Sebastien Vachon/Radio-Canada)

When a poultry plant near Quebec City announced last month it had euthanized one million chickens because of an ongoing strike, it prompted indignation from the public and politicians alike.

Within days, the workers and the employer, Exceldor, came to an agreement, but only 66 per cent of those workers voted in favour.

"That's not a victory. It means a third of the workforce is unhappy," said Roxane Larouche, who is a spokesperson for the union representing the workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, known by its French acronym, TUAC.

Now, pork producers say if another strike in Quebec's meat industry lasts any longer, thousands more animals may have to be put down. The chickens were sent to a rendering plant to make animal feed.

Industry leaders say having two strikes, with so much potential for food waste and so close together, is unprecedented and should lead to changes in an industry long beset by some of the worst working conditions in the economy.

But a serious labour shortage in the province may be giving workers more leverage in their demands.

Workers at Quebec chicken processing plant vote to end strike

"If you take slaughterhouses, for example. You've got workers, who, day after day, work with living animals who are going to be slaughtered. You have to desensitize yourself to this violent part of the job," Larouche said.

"It's not pleasant at all."

The repetitive movements, cold temperatures, strong smells, and close quarters in another sector of the meat industry — processing plants — don't make it any more appealing to work in.

"Everywhere in the production chain of food processing, there are labour shortages because the salaries just don't cut it. And there needs to be better working conditions," Larouche said.

The pandemic has also highlighted the hardships faced by workers in those jobs, with some of the largest workplace COVID-19 outbreaks occurring in meat processing facilities, including the one facing a strike in Quebec's Beauce region.

66 per cent of workers at the Exceldor poultry plant south of Quebec City voted in favour of the new collective agreement. (Jean-François Blanchet/Radio-Canada)

A months-long strike at Olymel's Beauce facility

The strike, which is at the Olymel pork slaughterhouse in Vallée-Jonction, began at the end of April and has hit several standstills. Union representatives and management are back at the negotiating table this week, but salary remains a sticking point.

That factory is one of the largest in the province, receiving between 35,000 and 37,000 pigs every week. About 1,150 people work there, while 550 work at the Exceldor poultry plant.

An Olymel spokesperson, Richard Vigneault, has blamed the drawn-out strike on the union.

"It's too bad. A factory is meant to be in operation," Vigneault told Radio-Canada earlier this week. "The union is the one that decided to have an unlimited strike."

The union is quick to rebut that assertion.

"With the labour retention problem we have, the employer has to realize it has to pay people properly if it wants to keep them. For that, we need to be talking dollars, not cents," said Martin Maurice, the union representative for Olymel Vallée-Jonction employees.

On that point, Vigneault says, "there's a gap between what they're asking and what we can offer while remaining competitive."

Olymel has estimated the salary increase requested by the union to be about 35 per cent for the first year of an agreement and 51 per cent for three and a half years after that.

In May, the Quebec government invested $150 million in Olymel, an incentive to keep the Saint-Hyacinthe-based company operating in the province.

Larouche, the TUAC spokesperson, believes the deaths of the one million chickens at Exceldor could have easily been avoided because of the advance warning the union gave the co-operative of its intention to strike.

"Our belief is that this was a strategic decision by Exceldor to kill that many chickens to put pressure on the workers," she said.

A United Food and Commercial Workers spokesperson believes Exceldor could have avoided euthanizing one million chickens because the union warned it would go on strike. (Jean-François Blanchet/Radio-Canada)

Larouche believes Olymel has handled its strike better, noting politicians haven't had to come out with statements saying, "the waste has to stop," as Quebec Premier François Legault did last month in the Exceldor case.

1 million chickens wasted in Quebec slaughterhouse as labour dispute drags on
Psychological impact on producers

Whether the union or the employer is to blame for the waste matters little to producers, for whom the ordeal has been agonizing, according to Marcel Groleau, the president of the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), Quebec's largest farmers' union.

"The psychological impact — the producers found it really difficult," Groleau said of the dead chickens at Exceldor.

"The damages [of the strikes] are to the industry overall, though. It gives consumers a bad image of the sector and how it's working."

L'Union des producteur agricoles says poultry producers may have been compensated for their chickens, but that they were deeply distraught they had to be euthanized instead of slaughtered for food. (Pascal Poinlane/Radio-Canada)

Automation has led to the consolidation of meat plants across North America. But with fewer yet bigger plants, there leaves little room for contingency plans when something goes wrong.

Groleau says the merging of plants is a "natural phenomenon" that is tough to stop from happening. Meat-processing and slaughtering plants want to keep up with industry demands and need to upgrade equipment to do so.

To make those upgrades profitable, they need to produce more, so smaller plants merge or get bought by bigger plants.

Companies have to come up with plans for transporting animals elsewhere, even if that means bringing them to another province or even the United States, Groleau said.

"Until now, though, we hadn't seen these kinds of impacts. It's going to have to teach us a lesson. We need to be able to prevent what's just happened."

ADVISORY: TODAY

July 19 Solidarity Event to Support Toronto Steelworkers Locked out by NRT

Author of the article:

Business Wire

Publishing date:

Jul 16, 2021  •  

Article content

TORONTO — Labour union leaders will be joining the picket line at National Rubber Technologies (NRT) on Monday, July 19, to show support for the workers who were unfairly locked out by the employer on July 2.

WHO: Labour leaders and supporters
WHAT: Solidarity Event Supporting United Steelworkers union Local 3950 members locked out by NRT
WHEN: Monday, July 19, 2021, 12:00 p.m.
WHERE: National Rubber Technologies (NRT), 35 Cawthra Ave., Toronto, ON M6N 5B3 (north of Dundas St. W., east of Keele St. off Junction Rd.)

Three Innu First Nations say they are ready to take measures to stop Quebec pipeline

VIRGINIE ANN
MONTREAL
THE CANADIAN PRESS
PUBLISHED JULY 17, 2021

A Greenpeace banner reading "No GNL’" is shown hanging from a building under construction on the site of the MIL campus of the University of Montreal in Montreal, Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020.

GRAHAM HUGHES/THE CANADIAN PRESS

There won’t be any more negotiations over a proposed natural gas pipeline crossing Indigenous lands in northern Quebec, say Innu leaders who oppose it.

The Innu First Nations of Mashteuiatsh, Pessamit and Essipit say they are ready to take measures — even legal action — to stop GNL Quebec’s Énergie Saguenay project from being built on their territories.

The statement released on Friday was a response to comments from GNL Quebec president Tony Le Verger, who said last weekend he wanted to continue negotiations with the Indigenous communities.

Charles-Édouard Verreault, vice-chief of Mashteuiatsh First Nation and spokesman for the three Innu First Nations, said in an interview on Friday that GNL Quebec won’t receive their consent.

The Innu First Nations had previously expressed opposition to the multibillion-dollar plan in May, following the publication of Quebec’s environmental review board report on the project.

“We listened, we did our own researches on the project, and following the conclusions of the BAPE report, it is clear that our position will remain the same,” Verreault said. “This project won’t be happening on our territories.”

The 500-page BAPE report, by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement, said the benefits from the 750-kilometre-long gas pipeline would not outweigh the environmental costs associated with it. The project’s review drew the greatest response to any BAPE report with more than 2,500 briefs presented, 91 per cent of which were against the idea.

“As mentioned in the report, GNL Quebec has no way of ensuring that liquefied natural gas would effectively serve as a substitute to polluting fuels already used in targeted export markets,” Verreault said. “It’s impossible for the company to meet its commitment in terms of reducing greenhouse gases.”

GNL Quebec spokesman Louis-Martin Leclerc said in an interview the company remains open to negotiations with the communities in order to explain the project’s benefits.

“We are and remain open to dialogue in order to have the opportunity to explain our commitments and demonstrate that the Énergie Saguenay project will provide liquefied natural gas with the lowest carbon footprint in the world, thus making an important contribution to the fight against climate change,” said Leclerc.

The Énergie Saguenay project was first introduced to the Indigenous communities in 2014 as a measure to fight climate change, Verreault said.

The proposed route would carry liquefied natural gas from Western Canada to a liquefaction plant in Port Saguenay, Que. However, Verreault said the route would cross Indigenous lands.

For the Innu First Nations, accepting a project that could pose environmental threats would go against ancestral values, he said.

“This territory is where our ancestors have been settled for centuries and where we hold ancestral rights and Innu titles,” Verreault said.

The Innu First Nations ancestral rights, however, have yet to be officially recognized by the Quebec government.

Quebec’s Indigenous Affairs Minister Ian Lafreniere said on Friday he was aware of the Innu position but was awaiting Environment Minister Benoit Charette’s decision on the project.

Quebec’s government said in April it would make a decision on whether to give the project the green light by the end of the summer.

“All the options are on the table, in terms of the actions we could take (to stop the project) if the government goes ahead with it,” Verreault said.

“There is no way that GNL Quebec sees the light of the day on the Innu territory.”

 

The American Pipeline War Is Only Just Beginning

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jul 15, 2021, 4:00 PM CDT

It is not a great time to be an oil pipeline developer or operator in North America these days. Policymakers are canceling projects and threatening to close operational pipelines. Environmental groups are becoming more vocal in their opposition to any form of fossil fuel production in Canada and subsequent plans for the transportation of crude from Canada’s oil sands sites to U.S. refining hubs.  And this increased pressure on pipelines may change the course of the industry forever.

Oil pipeline developers and operators continue to defend their (remaining) projects, saying that their plans will bring a reliable supply of North American crude oil to U.S. markets that will continue to need fuels for the foreseeable future. Pipelines are a safer and cheaper mode of transportation than crude-by-rail transportation, they say. 

Environmentalists and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are having none of it. And the state of Michigan is trying to have Enbridge’s Line 5 through the Straits of Mackinac shut down. 

Faced with opposition to oil pipeline projects, energy infrastructure operators are now vying to offer alternative ways of transporting oil from Canada’s oil sands. They are also studying ways to build hydrogen pipelines, as well as carbon capture and transportation systems to help oil sands production—one of the world’s most carbon-intensive ways to pump oil—to reduce its carbon footprint.  

Oil Pipeline Demise

The biggest victim among the Canada-U.S. oil pipeline projects this year was the Keystone XL pipeline project. The pipeline had its presidential permit revoked on the first day in office of U.S. President Joe Biden in January. Five months later, the pipeline proponent, TC Energy, definitively abandoned all efforts to fight for the resurrection of the pipeline and officially canceled the project in June, after having announced thousands of job cuts earlier this year.  

Another operator, Enbridge, is currently engaged in a mediation with the state of Michigan, which wants the operational Line 5 pipeline through the Great Lakes shut down. 

The state and Enbridge expect to complete the mediation by the end of August, the warring parties told a federal judge last week. 

Related: Oil Falls As Saudi Arabia And UAE Compromise On DealOpposition to another critical pipeline, the Trans Mountain expansion project, was also part of the reason why Kinder Morgan sold the project to the federal government of Canada in 2018. 

All in all, pipeline projects that would carry Canadian crude oil to refining and/or export hubs have seen growing opposition in recent years. This opposition has come not only from green groups, but also from local governments, as is the case with British Columbia vs Trans Mountain, or Michigan vs Line 5. 

What’s The Alternative?

Even with the net-zero by 2050 pledges by Canada and the United States, Midwest and Gulf Coast refiners will continue to need Canadian heavy oil because the energy transition isn’t happening overnight. 

“If we land-lock the province (Alberta) with a product that the world needs and the ability to produce it, where does that get you?” Richard Masson, an executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, told Financial Times’ Charlie Mitchell.

The most obvious alternative to oil pipeline transportation is crude-by-rail. Yet, this is not only less safe than pipelines, but also more expensive for refiners which would pass the higher costs on to consumers, brokerage Eight Capital’s analyst Phil Skolnick told FT.

Regardless of these considerations, opposition to pipelines in North America, especially those carrying or designed to carry Canadian oil to the United States, is only growing louder. Faced with growing hostility, energy infrastructure operators are proposing what they describe as safer and more environmentally friendly ways to ship Canada’s bitumen. 

For example, Gibson Energy has a project to remove the diluent from bitumen at a Hardisty terminal to make it a more concentrated heavy oil specifically designed for rail transportation. Gibson Energy maintains that the thicker crude is a non-flammable and non-hazmat commodity, which increases the safety of transportation. 

Indigenous-owned Wapahki Energy is blending high-quality Alberta bitumen with recycled waste plastic, creating a material that it calls Green Asphalt. It can be transported safely via rail in bulk and represents an “environmentally sustainable method of building roads to, and of, the future,” the company says. 

Net-Zero Oil Sands Operations?

Canada’s oil sands—being one of the most emission-intensive crude resources in the world—couldn’t just sit idle as governments and nearly every major European oil corporation pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Last month, the biggest oil sands producers in Canada announced a net-zero collaboration initiative to achieve net-zero emissions from oil sands operations by 2050. The Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero initiative includes companies that operate some 90 percent of Canada’s oil sands production: Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy, and Suncor Energy. 

Related: China Oil Imports Fall To Lowest In 2021

The initiative is ambitious and “will require significant investment on the part of both industry and government to advance the research and development of new and emerging technologies,” the group said. 

Last week, the CEOs of Suncor and Cenovus put the price tag at as much as US$60 billion (C$75 billion). The government would need to step up and likely fund up to two-thirds of that cost, Suncor CEO Mark Little and Cenovus Energy’s CEO Alex Pourbaix told Bloomberg in an interview.  

Separately, Canadian pipeline operators announced in June plans to develop a massive carbon transportation and sequestration system. TC Energy has partnered with Pembina Pipeline Corporation to jointly develop a carbon transportation and sequestration system, the Alberta Carbon Grid.

These plans are just the start of an upcoming massive allocation of capital and planning in the efforts to reduce emissions, officials in Alberta say.

Anti-pipeline activism has spurred energy producers and energy infrastructure developers to look at different ways to transport the oil sands and make production as low-carbon as possible.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Michigan, Enbridge say Line 5 mediation efforts likely to wrap up by end of August

By James McCarten The Canadian Press
Posted July 15, 2021 

The two sides in the ongoing dispute over the Line 5 pipeline say they expect their mediation efforts to conclude before the end of August _ just as opposition to a second cross-border energy conduit is ramping up.


A court-approved mediator says in court documents he will meet again Aug. 11 with officials from the state of Michigan and Enbridge Inc., Line 5’s Calgary-based owner.

The documents, filed late last week in Western District Court in Michigan, offer no added clues as to the state of the dispute, which has been raging since November.

READ MORE: Line 5: Michigan says Canada has no legal basis to invoke cross-border pipeline treaty

That’s when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, citing the risk of a spill in the Straits of Mackinac, where the line crosses the Great Lakes, abruptly revoked the easement that had allowed it to operate since 1953.

Enbridge insists the pipeline is safe and has already received the state’s approval for a $500-million effort to dig a tunnel beneath the straits that would house the line’s twin pipes and protect them from anchor strikes.

The company has made it clear it has no intention of shutting down the pipeline voluntarily.

While the dispute centres on whether the pipeline can continue to operate safely, the court case in particular is focused on matters of jurisdiction. Enbridge wants the case heard by a federal judge because a shutdown would raise “substantial federal questions,” while the state insists it is for Michigan to resolve alone.

In a court filing of its own, Canada’s federal government tried to up the ante, warning of damage to its relationship with the U.S. and the risk of undermining the future credibility of American foreign-policy decisions.

The court should instead set aside the case and give the two countries a chance to negotiate a settlement under the terms of a 1977 treaty that specifically governs pipelines that cross the border, Canada argued.

READ MORE: Line 5 pipeline: How did we get here and what it means for Canada

Michigan’s attorney general has rejected that argument, casting doubts on whether any substantial bilateral discussions have even taken place. That prompted lawyers for the federal government to write to the court last month to insist that such talks are indeed ongoing.

“Representatives of the two countries are meeting bi-weekly to address the potential shutdown, including in the context of the 1977 treaty,” wrote Gordon Giffin, a former ambassador to Canada himself who is serving as the federal government’s lawyer in the case.

“Canada continues to believe that it would be contrary to the interest of both Canada and the United States, and contrary to the intent of the treaty, for court proceedings relating to the shutdown to proceed while this diplomatic process is ongoing.”

Advocates, including Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan, say Line 5 delivers more than half the propane and home heating oil consumed in Michigan, and is a vital source of energy for Ohio and Pennsylvania as well, to say nothing of Ontario and Quebec.

Shutting it down would be an environmental disaster in its own right, they argue, resulting in gasoline shortages, price spikes and some 800 additional oil-laden railcars and 2,000 tanker trucks per day on railways and highways throughout Central Canada and the U.S. Midwest.

As Line 5 has receded from the spotlight, however, environmentalists, activists and Indigenous communities in nearby Minnesota have set their sights on Enbridge’s efforts to upgrade and expand Line 3, which carries heavy and crude oil 1,765 kilometres between Edmonton and Superior, Wis.

READ MORE: U.S. Army Corps plans extensive review of Line 5 tunnel plan

Opponents asked the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn the regulatory approvals that allowed construction to begin last year. Protesters have been flocking to the Minnesota construction site ever since, hoping to conjure the same public outrage that helped to doom the defunct Keystone XL expansion project.

Enbridge is spending US$7.5 billion on the project, including $2.6 billion on the American leg. The company says the expansion would increase capacity by the equivalent of 10,000 railcars or 24,000 tanker trucks each day.

Opponents have long argued that expanding and upgrading cross-border pipelines will lead to more dependence on crude oil from Alberta’s controversial oilsands, exacerbating concerns about climate change and the risk of spills in ecologically sensitive areas and Indigenous lands.

 

How climate change transformed the world's highest ski resort into a ghost town

By Rina Torchinsky, AccuWeather staff writer

Updated Jul. 17, 2021 

Felipe Kittelson remembered playing in Bolivia’s snow for hours on end. He’d play until his eyes and ears ached from the cold and the altitude, he told the BBC in 2016. He recalled the treats he and others would shape from the snow in Chacaltaya -- a cup of ice topped with sticky syrup. 

For seven or eight months in a year, folks would glide on the icy mountains with sleds or skis, Kittelson told the BBC. 

People walk on a glacier in the Cordillera Real of the Andes mountains on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

“This all was absolutely white. You could see tourists and also Bolivians skiing here,” Moises Mullisaca, a former worker at the Chacaltaya ski resort, told Ruptly in Spanish.

But what was once the world’s highest-altitude ski resort is now a ghost town. The snowy slopes in the Bolivian Andes melted after climate change took its toll. 

This Oct. 8, 2018 photo, shows the entrance to the Chacaltaya atmospheric observatory, at Chacaltaya mountain, Bolivia. The station is an important place to collect data samples partly due to its location on the remnants of a glacier. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Bolivian scientists began studying the Chacaltaya glacier in the 1990s. Over the years, the level of snow on the 17,785-foot ski resort dwindled. They predicted the glacier would only survive through 2015 due to climate change, the BBC reported. 

But the scientists overestimated. In 2009, the glacier, which was estimated to be 18,000 years old, was gone. A study by the Stockholm Environment Institute suggested that the region’s temperature increased by half a degree centigrade from 1926 to 2006. 

Brothers Adolfo and Samuel Mendoza, who worked at the resort for 70 years, watched the glacier disappear before their eyes, according to a 2016 BBC report. 

"It's extremely sad to see it this way. We warned people about this in the eighties, but nobody listened to us. Every year we could see it getting worse,” Samuel told the BBC.

A man walks with a chunk of snow in his hand along the Cordillera Real of the Andes mountains on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday, June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Adolfo cited the toxic fumes emitted by the diesel vehicles in the nearby capital city La Paz but added that Bolivia is not an industrial country. Chacaltaya is seeing the impacts of the rest of the planet, he said. 

When it does snow, Adolfo described it as a “greasy black substance, full of filthy grit.” With everyone staying home during the pandemic, the year has brought some snow, as if it “recovered,” Mullisaca added.

As the glaciers melted, water supplies became scarce. Water rationing has become the norm in La Paz, where residents line up for hours to fill pots, pans and plastic bags with water, according to the BBC.

Protesters hold signs that read in Spanish "Climate Change," "Action Now!," and "Remember Copenhagen" as they demonstrate on Glacier Chacaltaya in the Andes mountains in Bolivia, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009. Glacier Chacaltaya was famous for being the world's highest ski run, but since the mid-90s has not had enough snow for skiing. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

“The water is drying up, the water wells are drying up. There is no water anymore,” Norberta Choquehuanca, an indigenous resident in the area, told Ruptly in Spanish. “That's why I, who live off these cattle, find it very difficult to find drinking water.”

Aleah Taboclaon traveled to Bolivia in 2015, and included a stop at the ski resort in her itinerary. The tip of the Chacaltaya mountains offers one of the best views in the country, Tabocloan told Insider.

When she visited, Taboclaon’s tour bus dropped her off at the bottom of the mountain where the abandoned ski resort sits, she told Insider. Visitors could step inside, but the only thing left was a toilet, she said. There were patches of snow on the mountain here and there, but not nearly enough to ski. 

“All the glory of the ski resort is gone and will never return,” Taboclaon told Insider.

In this Oct. 8, 2018 photo, an air collector of the Chacaltaya atmospheric observatory stands in the outskirts of El Alto, Bolivia. In 2012, the site became an atmospheric station used to measure greenhouse gases, reactive gases and particles that can spread all the way to the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles away. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Taboclaon hiked up the mountain, running into abandoned pieces of weather equipment on the way up. Among them was a glass pyramid that was once used to track the weather on the mountain, according to the High Altitude Pathology Institute. 

Taboclaon, who runs a travel blog, told Insider that she felt sentimental at the end of her visit. Her journey to Chacaltaya solidified the climate crisis, she said.

“It seems that the frost does not come strong anymore, the temperatures are rising,” Choquehuanca told Ruptly in Spanish. “There will be no more snowfall, everything will melt.”

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