MANITOBA

Schools to close Sept. 30 in observance of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

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Flags will be lowered and non-essential government services and offices closed

CBC News · Posted: Sep 03, 2021 2:10 PM CT | Last Updated: September 3

Residential day school survivor Ray Swan is comforted by his wife, Doreen Bunn, in May. The couple were at the Manitoba Legislature to grieve after hearing news from B.C. that what are believed to be the remains of children were discovered in Kamloops on the site of a former residential school. (Austin Grabish/CBC)

The Manitoba government is formally recognizing the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a day of observance to encourage reflection and meaningful discussions about the impacts of residential schools.

Schools will be closed and no classes will be held on Sept. 30, Indigenous Reconciliation and Northern Relations Minister Alan Lagimodiere announced in a news release on Friday.

All non-essential provincial government services and offices will also be closed for the day and flags on all provincial government buildings will be lowered to half-mast.

In June, the House of Commons unanimously passed legislation to make Sept. 30 a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to commemorate the history and ongoing trauma caused by residential schools and to honour the survivors, families and communities who continue to grieve for those who were lost.

Bill C-5 was passed swiftly in both the House of Commons and Senate in the wake of the discovery of remains of what are believed to be Indigenous children in unmarked graves at former residential schools.

• Royal assent given to bill creating national day for truth and reconciliation

• National Day for Truth and Reconciliation may be Canada's next new statutory holiday

Sept. 30 was formerly observed unofficially as Orange Shirt Day.

It was held at that time of the year because it was when government agents would take First Nations children from their families and force them into residential schools.

The colour orange refers to the new shirt worn by six-year-old Phyllis Webstad on her first day at a residential school in Williams Lake, B.C., in 1976. The shirt, a gift from her grandmother, was taken from her by school officials and never returned. 

The passing of the federal bill in June officially made it a federal statutory holiday. That means employees in federally regulated workplaces will have the day off, but several provinces have decided against making it a provincial holiday. 

Manitoba has not made it a statutory holiday, which means employers are not obligated to give workers the day off. 

ONLY THE BANKSTERS PROFIT OFF STUDENT DEBT

Are Trudeau and the Liberal government profiting off student debt?


Solarina Ho

CTVNews.ca Writer

@shtweet ContactPublished Wednesday, September 1, 2021 8:33PM EDTLast Updated Friday, September 3, 2021 6:42PM EDT

TORONTO -- NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who has promised to “immediately and permanently” get rid of charging students interest on federal student loans, has accused the Liberal government of profiting off student debt.

Already, five provinces no longer charge interest rates on these loans -- British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island -- and Singh wants the federal government to do the same.

The New Democrats, who have been attracting younger voters according to polls, have highlighted affordable post-secondary education as a key area of their platform messaging. In addition to eliminating interest charges, they have also pledged to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt and double non-repayable Canada Student Grants.





Go to election.ctvnews.ca for all our federal election updates


THE CLAIM

“Since coming to power, Trudeau has profited off of student debt, to the tune of nearly $4 billion in interest payments,” Singh wrote on Twitter this past weekend.

"It is a fact that in the six years that Justin Trudeau has been prime minister, if you look at the federal interest that’s been collected for student debt, that has been a $4-billion cost for students. And the prime minister has been responsible for that," he told reporters during a campaign stop earlier this week.

CTVNews.ca digs into whether this statement is accurate or not.

CONTEXT AND ANALYSIS

This is not a new claim by the NDP, which also made the charge in 2019 ahead of the last federal election. At the time, Singh said Trudeau’s government was “raking in billions of dollars in interest from young people” and that “making a profit off student loans is wrong.”

“Profit” is defined by how much has been earned or gained after expenses and other costs have been deducted. As Investopedia defines it, “the financial benefit realized when revenue generated from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs, and taxes involved in sustaining the activity in question.”

To test the validity of Singh’s statement, we looked at the numbers: how much does the government spend on the program, how much it makes, and other related details.

During the previous election, the total amount of student debt at the federal level was estimated at close to $17 billion, with nearly $3 billion in interest charged since 2015. The total amount of student debt owed now stands at $22.3 billion as of July 31, 2020, according to information CTVNews.ca requested from the Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).

The government handed out $1.63 billion in Canada Student Grants to more than 528,000 students during the 2019 to 2020 loan year, more than double the amount granted between 2015-2016, according to the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program Statistical Review. It also made loans totalling $3.45 billion to nearly 608,000 students.

When combined with the previous three years, the government issued a total of more than $13 billion in loans and about $5.6 billion in student grants. The amount spent on student grants over four years already exceeds the amount of interest the government recorded over the last five years.

The average Canada Student Loan balance at the time of leaving school in the 2019-2020 academic year was $13,549, according to figures provided by the ESDC. Over the last 10 years, on average, it took a little less than six years for a student to pay off their Canada Student Loan, while 25 per cent paid off their loans within three years, the agency added. That loan average jumps to $28,000 at the end of an undergraduate or master’s degree, according to a Statistics Canada survey published November 2019, and the figure cited by the NDP.

But the government also writes off hundreds of millions of dollars in loans each year for a number of reasons, including bankruptcy, extreme financial hardship, and settlements. The majority comes from loans that have not been paid or acknowledged for six years, the Canada Student Loans Program annual report for 2018 to 2019 states. For the 2020-2021 fiscal year, $185.5 million in Canada Student Loans were written off, according to figures provided by the ESDC. In 2018, Ottawa wrote off more than $200 million in outstanding student loan payments.

These figures also do not account for other costs incurred by the government, such as their repayment assistance plans, which gives some borrowers a reprieve from repaying the loan until they have earned a certain minimum amount. This means the government covers the interest portion, or may contribute toward both the principal and interest, depending on the various factors.

In addition, the government has suspended the accumulation of interest on Canada Student Loans for two years, starting from April 2021 and ending March 31, 2023. Prior to this, the government had already lowered interest rates with the variable rate set to prime, instead of prime plus 2.5 per cent, and the fixed rate set to prime plus two per cent, from prime plus five per cent.

The interest also does not accumulate on the loans while the borrower is in school, or even during the first six months after they leave. Meanwhile, the eligibility criteria to qualify for loan forgiveness was also expanded so that more students with severe, permanent disabilities may be eligible.

These are all “costs” incurred by the government. Throw in administrative expenses, that’s another $137.1 million in 2018-2019. In the annual report for that year, loan expenses totalled $2.66 billion, while interest revenue was $841.4 million.

That year, the government also gave $492.3 million to Quebec, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories to support their own financial assistance. These three jurisdictions do not participate in the Canada Student Loans Program, which uses a single application process for students looking to receive federal and provincial aid for post-secondary schooling.

What about the $4 billion figure Singh used? If we add the amount in the “Interest on Canada student loans” line from the Public Accounts of Canada from the last five years (2016-2020), the total amount of interest collected comes to $3.63 billion. If we include 2015, the total is $4.25 billion.

However, that figure is the total amount of interest charged or recorded on the student loans, which, according to the ESDC, is different from the amount that is actually collected by the government. Since 2015, only $1.87 billion – or an average of $373.7 million each year -- in interest payments were actually received or collected from borrowers on student loans, the ESDC told CTVNews.ca. That works out to less than half the amount that is recorded on paper.

“Interest is recorded as revenue the moment is it owed by a borrower …However, some interest never gets paid by the borrower for different reasons,” Saskia Rodenburg, a media spokesperson for the department, said in an email.

“Some interest is waived/forgiven through measures such as the Repayment Assistance Plan, the Severe and Disability Benefit, loan forgiveness for family doctors and nurses, or in the case of the death of a borrower. Also, some interest is written off once all measures to collect on a loan have been exhausted.”

Finally, the amount the government receives in interest is put back into the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the ESDC says, and is not allocated to any area. All funds paid to the federal government are held in this central account at the Bank of Canada. Trudeau and the Liberal government do not benefit from the interest collected.

CONCLUSION

While the government does collect a very hefty amount in student loan interest each year, it is already significantly less than what it spends on student grants – which has also increased. Even excluding grants, the amount the government spent on bad debt, borrowing expenses, interest subsidies, repayment assistance programs, administrative costs, totaled more than $1.1 billion for the 2018-2019 loan year. That’s higher than the $841.4 million it charged in interest payments or the actual figure collected.

“[It’s] hard to make the case that the government makes money,” Kevin Page, the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa and Canada’s first Parliamentary Budget Officer, said in an email.

Whether student loans should incur interest is its own issue, but it is clearly false to say that Trudeau, or the Liberal government, is “profiting” from that interest.

Edited by CTVNews.ca Michael Stittle
RELATED IMAGES



In this Friday, June 1, 2018, file photo, graduates are silhouetted against the green landscape as they line up to receive their diplomas. 

(Gillian Jones/The Berkshire Eagle via AP, File)

POOR OLD USA

THE RIGHT-WING TAKEOVER IS ALREADY UPON US

With an unprecedented abortion ban in Texas, a new effort to curtail voting rights in Georgia, and a coordinated, cross-country culture war brigade, the right is gaining ground on all fronts.

BY ERIC LUTZ

SEPTEMBER 2, 2021

A demonstrator protests against Texas' draconian anti-abortion law in May.

SERGIO FLORES/GETTY IMAGES

In early 2016, when the prospect that he could actually become president was still the stuff of late night jokes and distant nightmares, Donald Trump stirred outrage when he suggested that women who seek out abortions would face criminal consequences under his administration. “There has to be some form of punishment,” he told Chris Matthews. This wasn’t his first controversy as a candidate; by that point in the campaign, he’d already called Mexican immigrants “rapists,” mocked John McCain’s war service, and demanded a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. And his comment to Matthews wasn’t exactly out of step with what the so-called pro-life contingent of his party had been working toward for decades. If abortion was to be made illegal, punishment would seem to be the logical conclusion.

But at the time, saying stuff like that out loud could still provoke a scandal, and Trump quickly went on defense—which, for him, meant taking as many positions as possible, many of them contradictory, until pinning him down was near impossible—not that it was seen as important to do so in spring 2016. By the time October rolled around, however, his actual positions on issues like abortion had become far more important to the national interest. He was officially the GOP’s guy, and while Hillary Clinton seemed poised to wipe the floor with him, the notion that Trump could bullshit his way into the presidency was no longer something that could be laughed off. So, in the third presidential debate, just a couple weeks out from Election Day, moderator Chris Wallace attempted to finally nail him down. “Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade?” Wallace asked.

“Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that’s really what’s going to be—that will happen,” Trump said, after some dithering. “And that’ll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.”

Trump told a lot of lies, but in this case he followed through. He went on to muscle three justices onto the bench: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last fall, Amy Coney Barrett. And while Roe wasn’t obliterated while he was actually president, Mitch McConnell—the architect of the conservative court—and the relentless anti-abortion movement has now gotten their return on investment: In a 5-4 shadow docket opinion Wednesday, the Supreme Court’s conservatives—with the exception of Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the liberal dissent—allowed an extreme anti-abortion law in Texas to stand, effectively ending most abortions in the state and opening the door for other states to enact their own restrictions.

The law—which, as my colleague Charlotte Klein pointed out Wednesday, amounts to a near-total ban on abortions in the state—essentially does what the anti-choice movement has been trying to do for half a century. “The Supreme Court has ignored 50 years of precedent and set back the hands of time, essentially allowing Texas to be a pre-Roe state,” Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement. “This is the loudest alarm yet that abortion rights are in grave danger, in Texas and across the country.”

Of course, this dramatic setback for reproductive rights didn’t happen in a vacuum. It came after a decades-long campaign by conservative activists and politicians, who are using the same tactics on other fronts in the culture wars. In states across the country, Republican legislatures have proposed and enacted draconian voter-suppression laws based on Trump’s bogus election fraud claims. (Texas was the latest to pass voting restrictions, following a fight with state Democrats.) They’ve also sought to exert more control over the election process itself, working to do away with the guardrails that kept Trump from overturning his loss in 2020. “It’s hard to see how this isn’t just a cursory act before the takeover,” Democrat Erick Allen, a state representative in Georgia, where Republicans have established an election review panel in Atlanta’s Fulton County, told Politico Thursday. “I don’t know anyone that’s thinking that this is not going to lead to what we think.”

Conservatives are beginning to apply that same intensity to other fights, including in America’s schools, where they’re warring against mask mandates, efforts to reckon with racism and inequality, and other measures opposed by the right—all with the support of the GOP establishment. “It seems very Tea Party-ish to me,” Dan Lennington of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which is counseling parent groups that have worked to recall school board members, including over one district’s decision to hire a diversity consultant, told the Associated Press. “These are ingredients for having an impact on future elections.”

Democrats may hold both the White House and Capitol Hill right now, but on multiple fronts, it is hard not to feel as though Trumpism is winning. The movement he set in motion, the movement that capitalized on his demagoguery, seems to be gaining momentum, its investments paying off. Its vision for the country may not be the one most Americans want to live in, but that’s beside the point: The GOP is betting that minority rule is possible, as long as they are organized enough.

What’s essential for the Democrats, if they want to preserve Americans’ rights, is to match their counterparts’ intensity. Joe Biden is vowing to do so, saying in a statement that the Texas abortion law “unleashes unconstitutional chaos” and ordering his administration to “launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision” and “ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions.” But Biden and the Democrats have struggled to combat the GOP on other fronts, including voter disenfranchisement, thanks to a lack of urgency among some in the party and disagreements over things like the filibuster. The issue, then, isn’t just whether the Democrats can defend Americans’ rights; it is whether they all, as a party, can recognize that those rights are under assault and prioritize protecting them.

EXCLUSIVE FedEx faces labor union challenge over billionaire CEO's pay
By Jessica Dinapoli


Fedex CEO Fred Smith is pictured at a business roundtable meeting of company leaders and U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Washington, June 13, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed


Sept 3 (Reuters) - FedEx Corp (FDX.N) shareholders should reject founder and CEO Fred Smith's $54 million pay package because the logistics company gave him stock options after scrapping a cash bonus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, only to reinstate it later, the Teamsters labor union said on Friday.

Smith, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $5.8 billion, was given a special option award "for motivation and retention purposes" in June 2020 after FedEx canceled a $3.4 million cash bonus for him, citing uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those options were worth $6.4 million as of the end of May, the close of FedEx's fiscal year, more than doubling in value since Smith received them. As more people shipped and received items during the pandemic and FedEx's business rebounded, the Memphis, Tennessee-based company reinstated Smith's $3.4 million cash bonus in December, but also allowed him to keep the special stock options.

This amounted to "double-dipping" that undercuts the pay-for-performance structure of Smith's compensation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is bargaining on behalf of FedEx employees at a freight facility and is an investor in FedEx through pension and benefit funds, argued in a letter to shareholders on Friday, which was seen by Reuters.

"Having founded the company, been chief executive since 1998 and holding an 8% equity stake, surely CEO Smith has the appropriate incentives to drive shareholder value," the Teamsters general secretary-treasurer, Ken Hall, wrote in the letter.

The union is urging shareholders to vote against the company's executive pay plan at the company's annual meeting on Sept. 27. As with most companies, the vote at FedEx is non-binding.

FedEx declined to comment beyond what it has disclosed on executive pay in securities filings. In its informational disclosure to investors, FedEx said a significant portion of executive compensation is "at risk" and dependent on the company hitting performance goals and share price targets.

FedEx Chief Operating Officer Rajesh Subramaniam, the company's highest paid executive after Smith, also had his $2 million cash bonus reinstated after he received a similar special option award and stock grant worth approximately $6 million at the end of May.

Many U.S. companies tweaked the pay of executives during the pandemic, easing performance targets and even giving them pay rises. Investors then voted down a record number of CEO pay packages at their annual shareholder meetings earlier this year. L2N2NL2O2

Although most shareholder votes on pay are non-binding, some companies have tweaked executive pay when faced with investor opposition. For example, in 2018 Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) renegotiated the compensation of its chief executive at the time, Bob Iger, to toughen performance targets after shareholders voted down his pay.

The Teamsters acknowledged in the letter that Smith's options had yet to vest and that there was still uncertainty over the value of that grant. Smith also accepted a 91% cut in his annual salary during some of the last fiscal year. His salary was $966,125.

Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Leslie Adler

 

PNNL team develops new low-cost method to convert captured CO2 to methane

03 September 2021

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a new method to convert captured CO2 into methane, the primary component of natural gas. By using a water-lean post-combustion capture solvent, (N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine) (2-EEMPA), they achieved a greater than 90% conversion of captured CO2 to hydrocarbons—mostly methane—in the presence of a heterogenous Ru catalyst under relatively mild reaction conditions (170 °C and <15 bar H2 pressure).

Technoeconomic analyses (TEA) showed that the proposed integrated process can potentially improve the thermal efficiency by 5% and reduce the total capital investment and minimum synthetic natural gas (SNG) selling price by 32% and 12% respectively compared to conventional Sabatier process, highlighting the energetic and economic benefits of integrated capture and conversion. A paper on the work is published in ChemSusChem.

Methane derived from CO2 and renewable H2 sources is an attractive fuel, and it has great potential as a renewable hydrogen carrier as an environmentally responsible carbon capture and utilization approach.

—Heldebrant et al.

Earlier this year, PNNL researchers revealed that using EEMPA in power plants could slash the price of carbon capture to 19% lower than standard industry costs—the lowest documented price of carbon capture.

Different methods for converting CO2 into methane have long been known. However, most processes rely on high temperatures and are often too expensive for widespread commercial use.

In addition to geologic production, methane can be produced from renewable or recycled CO2 sources, and can be used as fuel itself or as an H2 energy carrier. Though it is a greenhouse gas and requires careful supply chain management, methane has many applications, ranging from household use to industrial processes, said co-author and PNNL chemist Jotheeswari Kothandaraman.

To explore the use of EEMPA in converting CO2 to methane, Kothandaraman and her fellow authors studied the reaction’s molecular underpinnings, then assessed the cost of running the process at scale in a 550-megawatt power plant.

Conventionally, plant operators can capture CO2 by using special solvents that douse flue gas before it’s emitted from plant chimneys. But these traditional solvents have relatively high water content, making methane conversion difficult.

Using EEMPA instead reduces the energy needed to fuel such a reaction. The savings stem partly from EEMPA’s ability to make CO2 dissolve more easily, which means less pressure is needed to run the conversion.

The authors’ assessment identified further cost savings, in that CO2 captured by EEMPA can be converted to methane on site. Traditionally, CO2 is stripped from water-rich solvents and sent off site to be converted or stored underground. Under the new method, captured CO2 can be mixed with renewable hydrogen and a catalyst in a simple chamber, then heated to half the pressure used in conventional methods to make methane.

The reaction is efficient, the authors said, and EEMPA captures more than 95 percent of CO2 emitted in flue gas. The new process gives off excess heat, too, providing steam for power generation.

Resources

• Heldebrant, D., Kothandaraman, J., Lopez, J..S., Jiang, Y., Walter, E..D., Burton, S..D. and Dagle, R..A. (2021), “Integrated Capture and Conversion of CO2 to Methane using a Water-lean, Post-Combustion CO2 Capture Solvent.” ChemSusChem. doi: 10.1002/cssc.202101590

RBC headquarters for sale as Oxford, CPPIB seek $1B-plus



Natalie Wong, Bloomberg News

Oxford Properties Group and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are exploring the sale of Toronto’s Royal Bank Plaza in a deal that could be worth more than US$1 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the plans.

The site at 200 Bay Street is one of the largest office complexes in Toronto’s financial district and includes two towers and a retail concourse with roughly 1.5 million square feet.

Built in the 1970s, the towers feature windows that are covered with 24-carat gold coating, making them two of the most distinctive office buildings in Canada’s largest city. Royal Bank of Canada leases 40 per cent of the complex and says it intends to stay even as most of its employees continue to work remotely.

A spokesman for Oxford confirmed it has hired CBRE Group Inc. and RBC Capital Markets to work on the sale but declined to comment on pricing.

The potential sale is part of a strategy by Oxford, the real estate arm of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, to unload some office assets and increase exposure to life sciences, logistics and apartment properties. Oxford sold an office tower last month that’s leased to Microsoft Corp. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for US$825 million.

The proceeds from any sale of Royal Bank Plaza would be used to fund Oxford’s development pipeline in the greater Toronto region, which is more than $10 billion (US$7.9 billion), the Oxford spokesman said.

The firms are “exploring the opportunity to capitalize on the strong institutional demand for well-let and well-located prime office assets,” Randy Hoffman, senior vice president for Canada at Oxford, said in an emailed statement. “We’re seeing examples of this strong demand across global gateway markets, including our recent sale of One Memorial Drive in Boston that achieved record pricing.”

Oxford has owned the site since 1999. CPPIB, which bought a stake in 2005, didn’t reply to a request for comment.

PANDEMIC VACANCIES

Office vacancies in downtown Toronto jumped during the pandemic to 10 per cent, the highest since 2008, with most office workers working remotely, according to CBRE. While executives on Wall Street have pushed to return more employees to the office, their Canadian counterparts have been less aggressive in bringing back staff, citing the success of remote work.

Still, there are signs that demand is rebounding in the city. In May, prospective tenants touring downtown Toronto offices hit the highest level since the pandemic started, CBRE said.

An RBC spokesman said the bank remains committed to staying at the plaza, where it has a long-term lease.

“We are continuing to invest in this important, sought after and ideally situated property, which has been our head office in Canada since 1977, including refreshing our main branch,” the spokesman, Andrew Block said in an emailed statement.

Meet the Batistas: the global beef barons battling for control of Australia’s meat

JBS, which is trying to take over pork producer Rivalea, now finds itself in a stoush*** with Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest over Tasmanian salmon farmer Huon
Brazilian billionaire Joesley Batista, who runs JBS with his brother Wesley. In Australia, the meat empire is embroiled in takeover battles and litigation with the tax office. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters


Ben Butler
Sat 28 Aug 2021 21.00 BST

In the end, it wasn’t the bribery of Brazilian government officials that put the Batista brothers, who own Australia’s biggest meat processor, in jail.

The authorities never actually brought the brothers, Wesley and Joesley, to trial over allegations they engaged in the large-scale corruption of the country’s politicians. Instead they agreed a plea deal with them.

Instead what led to the Batistas, the country’s most powerful businessmen, spending several months in 2018 behind bars while awaiting trial were allegations of insider trading – using the privileged information of that very plea deal for their own financial benefit.

These days the brothers are back in full control of their global meat empire, JBS. And they have big plans for Australia.


Environmentalists call on treasurer to reject Brazilian meat giant’s bid for Tasmanian salmon farmer

Their company is in the middle of taking over Australia’s biggest pork producer, Rivalea, and in the past fortnight has become embroiled in a public stoush with the mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest over control of Tasmanian salmon farmer Huon.

These deals are huge, worth a total of close to $700m, and have also ignited a fierce debate over who should control much of the meat Australians eat every year.

JBS Australia is a subsidiary of JBS in Brazil, where the brothers are the founders and biggest shareholders. It already controls about a quarter of Australia’s meat market, including the country’s biggest ham and smallgoods manufacturer, Primo, while Huon is the nation’s second-biggest salmon farmer.

Competition watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is investigating the Rivalea takeover, with an eye on whether allowing JBS to add more pork to its existing operation, which currently concentrates on lamb and beef, would stifle competition.

Forrest has used full-page newspaper ads to call on JBS to treat animals better in the slaughterhouse while at the same time attacking the Batista brothers over JBS’s corruption record in Brazil through the press.
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Environmentalists are also unhappy with the takeover, calling on treasury’s Foreign Investment Review Board to block it.

“During its rapid rise to become the world’s biggest meat packer, JBS and its network of subsidiaries have been linked to allegations of high-level corruption – including the biggest fine in corporate history, $3.2bn, after bribing hundreds of politicians – modern-day slave labour practices; illegal deforestation, particularly in the Amazon; animal welfare violations; major hygiene breaches and price fixing, including fines,” the Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson told parliament earlier this month.

“I warn JBS that they won’t be expanding in Tasmanian waterways without a fight, a significant community fight.”

Takeover fights are not the only battles JBS is fighting in Australia. It is also embroiled in litigation with the Australian Taxation Office over the use of legal privilege to avoid disclosing documents.

File photo of a Rivalea pork processing and packaging area in Corowa. The ACCC is investigating if allowing JBS to add more pork to its operation would stifle competition. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meanwhile, there remain questions about the bona fides of the conglomerate’s entry into Australia in the first place.

JBS came to Australia in 2007, indirectly, by buying US group Swift, which already had operations here.

The US$1.4bn purchase was partly funded by a US$362m loan from Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES).

This loan was part of a “sequence of reckless and/or fraudulent acts” that demonstrated “a fraudulent management of the public institution with the sole purpose of giving privileged treatment” to J&F Participações, the Brazilian company through which the Batistas control JBS, Brazilian prosecutors said in their criminal complaint against Joesley Batista. The allegations never went to trial.

It is not suggested that JBS Australia is implicated in any wrongdoing.

To settle separate bribery charges brought by Brazilian prosecutors, in 2017 J&F agreed to pay US$3.2bn. Brazil gave the company generous terms – it got 25 years to pay.

The Batista brothers, meanwhile, entered into a plea deal that saw them avoid prosecution in a deal that included Joesley agreeing to spill the beans on his corrupt dealings and secretly record a meeting with the then president, Michel Temer – an event dubbed “Joesley Day”.

Having avoided that prosecution, Brazilian authorities claimed the brothers set out to financially benefit from the plea deal. They are said to have sold US$87.5m worth of JBS stock before it was announced, avoiding the fallout from a 30% fall in the company’s share price when the deal with prosecutors was made public.


Cyber-attack on JBS, world’s largest meatworks, temporarily shuts Australian operations

The plea deal was revoked and each brother spent about six months in jail before being released into house arrest – Wesley in February 2018 and Joesley in March 2018. The case remains unresolved.

As a result of the brothers admitting to bribery, in 2019 the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office re-examined JBS Australia’s purchase in 2015 of Kiwi company Scott Technology, which makes factory machines.

The deal had been approved on conditions including that Joesley and Wesley remain of good character.

It concluded that the bribery they had admitted to meant they no longer met the bar, and obtained assurances JBS Australia was not in their control. Anna Wilson-Farrell, the head of regulatory practice and delivery at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, said the settlement with JBS was still current.

“We would consider taking action if the settlement agreement conditions were breached,” she said.

Legal stoush with ATO

JBS’s sprawling company structure, which involves subsidiaries everywhere from Australia to Russia, Hong Kong and Kuwait, has also drawn close attention from banks and the Australian Taxation Office.

JBS’s bankers, Deutsche Bank, has repeatedly filed suspicious transaction reports related to the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars around the empire with the US equivalent of Austrac, Fincen. Fincen requires financial institutions to file suspicious activity reports in a range of circumstances and the filing of a report does not necessarily mean anything improper has occurred.

Reports, obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, show Deutsche Bank reported a flurry of transactions in late 2015, saying it was making the reports as a consequence of the ongoing investigations into the company in Brazil.

Back in Australia, the ATO also has JBS under a lens.

It has launched legal action in the federal court seeking access to a large number of documents JBS and its adviser, big accounting firm PwC, refused to hand over during an audit.


Brazil meat giant JBS vows net zero by 2040 amid record profits

JBS claims the documents are subject to legal professional privilege, which protects advice from lawyers being used as evidence.

Little information is publicly available about the legal stoush, which is due to go to trial next month.

However, the ATO has told the court LPP does not apply because “non-legal practitioners” were involved in creating the documents and because they were “not provided pursuant to a relationship of lawyer and client sufficient to ground a claim for legal professional privilege”.

JBS also told the court the ATO’s legal action should be put on hold because it feared being prosecuted for failing to hand over the documents during the audit.

However, the ATO told the court it had no intention of doing so and was prepared to provide an undertaking not to.

The ATO has been targeting what it says are invalid claims of LPP by big accounting firms for about two years – in December 2019, Guardian Australia reported that second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn had travelled to the offices of accounting firms, including PwC, warning them that it would closely scrutinise privilege claims.

The battle for Huon

The ACCC is expected to decide next month whether or not to oppose JBS’s takeover of Rivalea.

But the company hasn’t waited before pushing ahead with its attempt to buy Huon.

It is offering $3.85 a share, 60% more than stock was fetching on the ASX in February, when Huon decided to put itself up for sale.

The offer, which values Huon at more than $420m, is endorsed by the salmon farmer’s board but Forrest has accumulated a blocking stake of 18.5%.

File photo of Huon’s salmon farm at Hideaway Bay. Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has questioned if JBS adheres to the concept of ‘no pain no fear’ for animals in the slaughterhouse. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

If it can defeat Forrest, JBS will then have to deal with Firb, which has shown itself more ready to knock back deals in the past 18 months, although it seems largely concerned with Chinese state influence.

In the battle for Huon, Forrest questioned whether JBS adhered to the concept of “no pain no fear” for animals in the slaughterhouse.

JBS rejects the criticism.

“JBS unequivocally supports the concept of no pain, no fear and upholds the highest standards of animal welfare in this country,” Brent Eastwood, the chief executive of JBS Australia, said in a statement.

“JBS has zero-tolerance for animal abuse from our own employees and third parties in our transport supply-chain, processing plants or feedlots.”

He said the company would “apply its uncompromising commitment to animal welfare and sustainability” to build on the legacy of Huon’s founders, the Bender family.

Guardian Australia also put detailed questions about the behaviour of the Batista brothers, its tax affairs and its international transactions to a JBS representative. They did not respond.

***STOUSH | Definition of STOUSH by Oxford Dictionary on ...

1. https://www.lexico.com/definition/stoush

   informal Australian, New Zealand A brawl 

WWF Australia admitted Tasmanian salmon farms ‘not sustainable’, campaigner says

Geoff Cousins says head of WWFA made the comments privately, despite the organisation having certified a major operator in the past

Salmon pens in Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania. A prominent environmentalist claims WWFA has privately admitted salmon farming in the state was ‘not sustainable’. Photograph: crbellette/Getty Images/iStockphoto


Royce Kurmelovs
Fri 3 Sep 2021 

The head of World Wide Fund for Nature Australia admitted in private that Tasmanian salmon farming was “not sustainable”, despite WWFA having endorsed the industry’s practice through its certification program until 2019, environmentalist Geoff Cousins has said.

Cousins said the chief executive of WWFA, Dermot O’Gorman, made the comments last month after Cousins challenged the organisation over whether its former certification program had worked to protect the marine environment or wildlife.

WWFA confirmed to Guardian Australia that conversations took place, but did not immediately respond to questions about what was said.

The year after the 2018 Macquarie Harbour fish kill, when about 1.35m salmon and trout died, WWFA cut ties with Tassal, its industry partner, and commissioned Seafood Advisory Ltd to investigate the causes of the kill.

Its report, released on Wednesday, said the certification scheme had been successfully implemented over the six-year partnership between the organisations, but it had failed to prevent “adverse ecological outcomes”.

“The [Aquaculture Stewardship Council] standard has not been set up to ‘prevent’ adverse situations occurring in the first place, and the outcome-focused metrics are not flanked by requirements for mechanisms to address identified potential impacts before they ‘become established’,” the report said.


Tasmania’s salmon industry expansion has no sound scientific basis, expert who quit review panel says

While the WWFA released a public statement, it was not as strident as the private comments reported by Cousins, who kept notes from his conversations.
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“I would have preferred they say it was unsustainable publicly,” Cousins said. “It did finally publish the report, it did finally issue a reasonably comprehensive statement and it was honest in saying there are major problems there.”

O’Gorman said on Friday: “This independent report makes it clear that the Tasmanian government must play the central role in addressing these issues to achieve the industry-wide reform.”

Tassal directed all questions to the Tasmanian Salmon Growers Association, whose spokesperson, Julian Amos, said the industry rejected the findings of the report “in the strongest possible terms”.

“Accreditation involves a rigorous process,” Amos said. “It is passing strange that the WWF took no action for more than three years and left it for five years before making any comment, and has not acknowledged action taken since that time.”

Jilly Middleton from Environment Tasmania said the report meant the industry could no longer “greenwash their product”.

“There were local groups of just one or two people that were passionate about their local waterway being trashed, who were organised and coordinated to speak up and lobby WWF,” Middleton said.

The Bob Brown Foundation and the Tasmanian Alliance for Marine Protection also welcomed the news and called for supermarkets to stop stocking the fish.

Booker prize winning author Richard Flanagan, whose book Toxic has galvanised the campaign against the industry in recent months, said the pressure was now on the RSPCA to withdraw certification from Huon, another major fish farming operation.

“The industry cannot go on as it is and needs to fundamentally transform – or it will collapse,” Flanagan said.

Few details exist about the RSCPA’s certification scheme, though its financial reports show it generated $1.57m from its approved farming endorsement scheme.

An RSCPA spokesperson said in a statement that the organisation’s certification scheme cost $1.8m to run across all species and that the licensing fees supported their independent monitoring.

“Robust animal welfare certification schemes are expensive to run due to the high costs of conducting regular assessments,” it said. “Compared to other schemes internationally and nationally, the assessment frequency of the RSPCA Approved Farming Scheme is very high.”

Huon’s RSCPA certification is a point of pride for the company, with the founder and chief executive officer, Peter Bender, telling investors in its end-of-financial year reporting last week that it “ensures best practice”.

“The RSPCA accreditation is one that I am most proud of because Huon is the only seafood producer in RSPCA’s approved farming scheme,” Bender said.

Huon rejected any suggestion its farms were not meeting RSPCA standards and said in a statement it shared concerns about why the WWF had “endorsed sub-standard salmon farming operations in Macquarie Harbour in the first place”.

“The RSPCA subjects Huon Aquaculture to rigorous and ongoing assessment to ensure it is meeting the highest animal welfare standards,” it said.

Salmon farming in Tasmania is undergoing a massive expansion, with plans by the state government to double the industry by 2030.

The industry has met sustained opposition from environmental groups over what they say is the significant environmental impact on the state’s sensitive waterways and sheltered river estuaries from the concentrated effluent produced by the fish pens.

Canada's waning water supply sows division in farm belt

Rod Nickel and Jeff Lewis
Reuters

Staff
Thursday, September 2, 2021 


CROWSNEST PASS, ALTA. -- Where fly fisherman Shane Olson once paddled summer tourists around in a boat, he now guides them by foot – carefully navigating shallow waters one step at a time.

“Every year, these rivers seem to be getting smaller, faster,” Olson, 48, said, whipping a gleaming fishing line over the Crowsnest River about 70 kilometres from the U.S. border.

It is an alarming trend in Canada’s breadbasket, and a sign of water scarcity to come as climate change speeds the melting of Rocky Mountain glaciers feeding rivers that deliver water to some seven million people across the Prairies.

“We are pushing it to the absolute breaking point,” Olson said.

The province of Alberta could face a $22.1 billion loss, or roughly 6% of its gross domestic product, as Saskatchewan River Basin flows drop, according to a study last year in the journal Ecological Economics.

At the same time, water demand is growing, sparking competition among miners, farmers and First Nations.

A seven-hour drive downstream from Olson's fishing spot, the province of Saskatchewan is planning a $4-billion expansion of its irrigation system. Upstream in the Rockies, developers have proposed eight new steel-supplying coal mines.

In an interview with Reuters this year, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson called rising Prairie water demand amid climate change “a major source of concern.”

While Canada is the world’s third most water-abundant nation, the Prairies are prone to both flooding and drought. Their water supply depends on how much snow collects in the Rockies – known as the region’s “water towers” - and how quickly it runs off as it melts.

But water abundance is a Prairie myth, scientists say.

During the second half of this century, most glaciers in the Canadian Rockies will melt, according to a 2019 study in Water Resources Research. The region’s water outlook will be “bleak” long before then, said University of Lethbridge geographer Christopher Hopkins.

Warmer temperatures are causing mountain snow and ice to melt earlier in the year, increasing the likelihood of summertime water shortages, according to research published last year in Environmental Reviews.

As the climate changes, winter precipitation falls more frequently as rain than snow, leaving less water stored in the mountains, hydrologist John Pomeroy said.

Water conditions over the last 20 years have been especially volatile, according to tree ring data that record annual water and temperature conditions dating back 900 years, said Dave Sauchyn, director of the University of Regina's Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative.

That period saw both a prolonged drought in 1999-2003 and the 2013 flood that wrought $6 billion in damages.

“That these two events occurred within 10 years of each other is extraordinary, and very likely a manifestation of increasing extremes from climate change,” said Pomeroy, who heads the University of Saskatchewan's Global Water Futures Program.

‘IF YOU DON’T HAVE WATER, YOU DON’T HAVE NOTHING’

In June, a record heat wave seared Western Canada that scientists said would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. Wheat crops shriveled and cattle-grazing pastures turned brown.

As of Aug. 30, Alberta had issued 18 low-water advisories for rivers.

As water demand grew in dry southern Alberta, the province stopped issuing new water licences there in 2007.

It held in reserve 11,000 acre feet of water from the Oldman River flowing eastward from the Rockies.

The reserve is a drop in the bucket compared to Alberta’s total surface water allocations of 7.5 million acre feet. But Alberta has floated the idea of lifting the reserve's limits by sector, a move that has stirred up fears that it could divert scarce water to coal mines.

Unlikely partnerships formed among environmentalists, ranchers, and country singers to fight the mines, underscoring how taut tensions over water use have become.

“It is clear that amending this regulation is directly linked to the coal companies' need for water licenses,” said Katie Morrison, conservation director at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

The government has yet to decide the issue, spokesman Paul Hamnett said.

Ottawa rejected one coal proposal in August, citing the potential for water contamination and harm to plants and animals.

Some proposals for coal mines in the Rockies’ sensitive eastern slopes are on hold pending a review of Alberta’s coal development policy due in November.

During 2019-20, Alberta’s Environmental Appeals Board handled 20 appeals of water licence decisions – the busiest two-year period since Alberta capped water licensing in 2007.

In one case, farmers appealed a golf club’s water diversion application out of fear it would deplete the aquifer. Another complaint took issue with water allotment for washing gravel.

Water scarcity has already forced a shift in Canada's oil sands mines, which in 2019, recycled 78% of the water they used, according to the Alberta Energy Regulator.

John Smith, who runs a ranch near Nanton, Alta., worries that a coal mine on a peak overlooking his farm could soak up the water his family has relied on for three generations.

"Our dads told us, our grandads told us, 'If you don't have water, you don't have nothing,’” Smith said. "It really is our greatest resource, and it's only going to become more scarce.”

Saskatchewan’s plan to quintuple its irrigated land to 500,000 acres would enable farmers to grow higher-priced crops such as potatoes and sugar beets.

"This is what we consider climate change adaptation," said Patrick Boyle, spokesman for the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency.

But First Nations fishing and hunting in the downstream Saskatchewan River Delta, near the Manitoba border, see the plan threatening their way of life.

"We're messing with nature," said Vice Chief Heather Bear of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations.

"Everything that happens upstream will affect us downstream."



A drought-struck tree is seen growing   DYING   in the Cowichan Valley area of Duncan, B.C., on Saturday, July 31, 2021. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / Chad Hipolito)

Nunavut's only humane society closes as building set to be demolished


Tom Yun

CTVNews.ca writer
 Friday, September 3, 2021 


The Iqaluit Humane Society had occupied a building owned by the City of Iqaluit for the last 15 years. But the building was condemned by the city due to a mould problem and is slated to be torn down this year. (Iqaluit Humane Society)

TORONTO -- Nunavut's only humane society announced on Wednesday that it has closed its doors because its current home is set to be demolished.

The Iqaluit Humane Society (IHS) had occupied a building owned by the City of Iqaluit for the last 15 years. The modest space is about the size of a bachelor apartment and can house up to 30 animals.

The humane society rehomed up to 700 pets every year, often to other parts of the country. In the last two years, it had expanded to also offer veterinary services and education programs for pet owners.

Related Links
The Iqaluit Humane Society's GoFundMe fundraiser

But last fall, the building was condemned by the city due to a mould problem and is slated to be torn down this year.

"For the last 15 years, we’ve had the honour of caring for the most wonderful animals," the Iqaluit Humane Society wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday. "Although this is our life’s work we have volunteered for through thick and thin, sometimes the best decisions are the toughest.

The city had offered to let them stay for an extra month, but the humane society opted to move out before the start of winter.

"Although a month extension was offered, we needed to move our items before winter weather made that impossible and while helping hands were still available," the humane society said.

All of the animals that had been at the humane society were either put in foster care, adopted or sent to a boarding kennel in Ottawa right before the closure, Iqaluit Humane Society president Janelle Kennedy told CTVNews.ca.

The humane society has a temporary trailer that was donated by a local construction company. But they don't have anywhere to place the trailer as they don't own any land. They're hoping to acquire some land where they can not only place the temporary trailer, but also build a brand-new facility.

"We've spent the last year trying very, very hard to secure a piece of property that will work for a new animal shelter that can service all of Nunavut and continue the great work that we do," Kennedy said over the phone on Friday.

So far, the humane society has raised more than $519,000 of its $1-million goal on GoFundMe, all of which is being held in trust. Nearly half of this money came from a $250,000 donation from the Eric S. Margolis Family Foundation.

The humane society plans on using the money to fund construction costs for a new facility. However, Kennedy says the cost of purchasing privately held land alone can be as high as $1 million. She's keeping her fingers crossed for a local business to offer the humane society a land lease at little to no cost.

"We're currently kind of regrouping to find out what private land is possibly available and how much it would cost, and if there's any possible way that we can have a building fund and raise enough money to purchase the property as well," said Kennedy.

Even without a building, Kennedy says the Iqaluit Humane Society will still be around to help local pet owners as much as they can.

"If someone's looking to surrender an animal, we may not be able to take it right away, but we can help them as much as we possibly can to rehome the animal, help with some training that they might need, or potentially transfer the animal south or to a new home," Kennedy said.

With files from CTVNews.ca writer Jeremiah Rodriguez