It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, September 20, 2021
Sun., September 19, 2021
There's a rural/urban digital divide when it comes to internet access — and advocates say the pandemic has made it an even more pressing issue for federal parties to address. (Budimir Jevtic/Shutterstock - image credit)
Paul McLauchlin says as president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, he'd expect to spend all of his time talking about agriculture.
But another topic is front of mind (he's had five meetings about it this week) — internet access.
"There's literally people in this province that do not have access to any broadband," McLauchlin said.
The RMA has listed rural broadband access as its first priority for federal candidates to address. It's listed as serious of a concern as implementing drought and severe weather recovery programs or addressing crumbling infrastructure.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's broadband fund has set a goal of ensuring everyone can access download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) or upload speeds of 10 Mbps.
At that speed, it takes less than a second to load an email and just under an hour to download a two-hour-long, 4K HD movie. But that can slow down based on several factors, like if multiple people in a home are streaming or downloading files.
Just 45.6 per cent of rural communities currently meet that threshold. The number is even lower in rural Alberta — 37 per cent of households — according to the Alberta Rural Connectivity Coalition. Indigenous communities face the poorest access, at just 24 per cent of households.
'Digital poverty'
McLaughlin says in Alberta's most remote communities, his organization has found only 10 per cent are meeting that goal.
"I've been using the term digital poverty. That's what we're experiencing. And this is not just rural Alberta, this is rural Canada, and we need to bridge the gap," said McLauchlin. "What we're experiencing, boots on the ground, is really a detriment to the economy, education and the ability for rural folks to participate in the economy."
Canadians also pay among the highest internet prices in the world.
Sheila Juhlin, who lives in Crowsnest Pass, says while she's been able to access internet that meets her needs in recent years, a neighbour just a 12-minute drive away in Blairmore doesn't have a reliable connection.
And, she said despite it being such a vital service for accessing employment, education, health care or information, it hasn't always been taken seriously.
"I was complaining to my [previous internet provider] … and I said, 'well, why can't we have such and such?' And he says 'Well, that's the price you pay for living in paradise," Juhlin said. "I found that really rude."
What the parties are promising
The Liberal, Conservative and NDP platforms and leaders have all made various promises when it comes to internet access:
"The NDP is taking kind of a more interventionist approach and more consumer rights approach. The Conservatives are taking more of a competition approach … and then the Liberals are kind of focusing on the funding they've already done," said Imran Mohiuddin with ARCC, a coalition advocating for internet access which is funded by not-for-profit tech accelerator Cybera.
The problem, Mohiuddin said, is that all of the party platforms lack detail as to how they'll fix the problem, especially when it comes to increasing affordability.
And, he said detail is vital when it comes to an issue that's complicated by factors like a monopolized sector, rapidly developing technologies like low Earth orbit satellite broadband and the complications of bringing infrastructure to distant and sparsely populated regions.
"We would like to see a more comprehensive approach under the umbrella of something you could call a national broadband strategy, with aspiration targets for hitting connectivity [and] proper funding. And then, as well, a package of legislative and regulatory changes," he said.
Those changes could include looking at the telecommunications act to see how policy objectives could be changed to drive investment, looking at the CRTC's approach to wholesale broadband access or committing proceeds from spectrum auctions — sales of the frequencies companies use to deploy services — directly to rural development, Mohiuddin suggested.
McLaughlin said he thinks some blend of the party's promises would be ideal.
"I think that the intent of the NDP resonates in some areas, especially those really sparsely populated parts of Canada. But I think that you also need to push for a little bit of competition too, because that makes for better quality."
He also thinks the Liberals' promised rollout of connecting all Canadians to high-speed internet by 2030 needs to be accelerated, sooner even than the Conservative and NDP targets.
"It needs to be done in the next two years and it needs to have … performance measures tied to [those goals]. We're going to miss out on the change in the economy," he said.
Internet access is also a factor that could prevent migration to rural areas, McLauchlin said. He said as Reeve of Ponoka County, his office has received daily phone calls from people considering moving to the area from urban centres during the pandemic.
"They don't ask about tax rates or anything else. Actually the first, number one question we're getting is broadband access — whether they can get internet," he said.
Businesses are also looking to move to more inexpensive locations, he said, and internet is key to bringing those investments in.
Charlene Smylie, who is running as councillor for Parkland County's Division 5, said during the pandemic she's seen local students without good Internet access sitting in school or library parking lots to access WiFi for remote schooling.
"If they didn't have internet … their education suffered," she said. "We do have [the Alberta SuperNet] that goes to municipal offices and schools and libraries and most towns, but it ends there. And why don't we just take it a little bit further?"
She said all three levels of government will have to collaborate to connect households to the network, from municipal rollouts, to a provincial broadband strategy, to targeted federal funding.
"We are going to be using digital methods to continue to drive our economy and provide access to ideas and innovation. And if some child in some remote community doesn't have access to great quality internet, we're really losing the ability for that child or that family or that entrepreneur to have that access to innovative ideas," McLauchlin said.
"I think it goes beyond essential service, and it's my belief it should be a Charter right, that everybody should have access to the access to broadband at a quality and speed that allows them to access this great, fantastic world we live in."
'Perfect storm' for power outages brewing in B.C., hydro report says
Nathan Howes
Sun., September 19, 2021,
Thousands of B.C. residents lost electricity as a result of this weekend's potent storm, a situation that is likely to become more frequent this fall and winter, the provincial hydro agency warns.
A new BC Hydro report states that drought-weakened trees and stormy weather during the anticipated La Niña may result in more power outages this fall and winter. The examination, The perfect storm: How summer drought could mean severe fall storm fallout, highlights the risk to electrical infrastructure as a result of dead and weakened trees brought on by the summer's record-breaking heat and extreme drought.
Visit our Complete Guide to Fall 2021 for an in-depth look at the Fall Forecast, tips to plan for it and much more!
"La Niña is predicted to bring colder, wetter and windier weather to the West Coast this fall and winter. The inclement weather coupled with drought-weakened trees could result in the ‘perfect storm’ for outages," the agency said in a news release.
For much of B.C., summer 2021 was the hottest on record. This included the community of Lytton setting new all-time Canadian highs three days in a row. The end result was severe drought that weakened tree roots, wood and soil, leaving them more vulnerable to failure.
According to BC Hydro, its two most damaging storms were a result of a drought in the summer of 2015 and a drought followed by abnormally heavy rainfall in 2018. The 2015 summer storm caused over 710,000 outages and lasted multiple days.
Similar to what occurred in 2015, B.C. received less precipitation in most areas this summer. Abbotsford, Vancouver and Comox experienced some of the driest conditions from April to July, the company says, with Abbotsford seeing the lowest rainfall recorded in the Fraser Valley in more than 60 years.
Even with the increasing number of storms, the duration of power outages for BC Hydro customers is diminishing. At the moment, it is below the five-year average and service is restored for most customers within the first few hours of an outage occurring.
The weather-related challenges that were generated from the intense heat and drought this summer has prompted BC Hydro to ramp up its vegetation management program this year. The agency frequently examines vegetation to find potential problems.
According to BC Hydro, the province has some of the highest densities of trees per kilometre of power line compared with most jurisdictions in North America.
"Trees and adverse weather are the single biggest cause of power outages in B.C., and vegetation that grows too close to or into BC Hydro’s transmission or distribution lines poses a safety hazard as it can conduct electricity," the crown corporation said in the release.
SEE ALSO: How to stay safe after a live power line falls on your car
The provincial hydro company recommends customers prepare for what it says could a challenging storm season. A part of the preparedness is having a well-stocked emergency kit that includes:
flashlight
extra batteries
first aid kit
non-perishable food
water
If you come across a downed or damaged power line, assume the line is live and stay back at least 10 metres, and promptly call 911 to report. Click here for outage and safety information from BC Hydro.
Thumbnail courtesy of BC Hydro.
Follow Nathan Howes on Twitter.
Aria Alamalhodaei
Mon., September 20, 2021,
Just like that, they came back.
The Inspiration4 crew made a triumphant splashdown on Saturday evening off the east coast of Florida, marking the close of the first completely private, all-civilian space mission. SpaceX’s Go Searcher recovery ship hauled in the Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, a little less than an hour after splashdown. The crew was then ferried via helicopter to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where they received standard medical checks.
The successful completion of the mission is a major triumph for Elon Musk and SpaceX (and, more peripherally, NASA, which funded the development of the tech), which conducted the entirety of the mission. It’s also perhaps our clearest signal that a new dawn of space travel is officially here.
Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director for human-spaceflight programs, told reporters that the company is seeing an increased number of inquiries from potential customers for private missions. The company could fly “three, four, five, six times a year at least,” he said.
Of course, mission commander Jared Isaacman is not the first billionaire to go to space. This summer, both Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos conducted their own orbital joy-rides in vehicles developed by their respective companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. But those trips were significantly shorter -- Bezos and his three crewmates went to space and back in less than 15 minutes, essentially traveling in a long parabolic arc.
In contrast, the Inspiration4 crew spent three days orbiting Earth at an altitude that went as high as 590 kilometers -- that’s higher than the International Space Station, meaning they were the most "outer" of all the people in space. Over the course of their mission, they traveled around the Earth an average of 15 times per day.
While in orbit, the crew conducted a handful of science experiments, mostly capturing data on themselves with the aim of furthering our understanding of the effects of spaceflight on the human body. The crew also spent some time in the large glass domed window, which SpaceX calls the “cupola,” snapping pictures of space.
Other than Isaacman, who made his fortune from his payment processing company Shift4 payments, the crew included physician assistant and childhood cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux; geoscientist Sian Proctor; and Lockheed Martin engineer Chris Sembroski. Among the other firsts for the crew, Arceneaux is the youngest American to go to space and the first person with a prosthesis to go to space; Proctor is the first Black woman to pilot a space mission
Axiom Space and NASA detail first fully private human launch to the Space Station, set for January 2022
The historic mission was paid for entirely by Isaacman, though both he and SpaceX are staying mum on how much it cost in total. Instead, the mission was being framed as a $200 million fundraiser for St. Jude Research Hospital, to which Isaacman donated $100 million and Musk donated $50 million. The fundraiser received an additional $60.2 million in public donations.
This is the second time the Resilience spacecraft has safely carried humans to and from space. The first mission, Crew-1, carried four astronauts (three from NASA, one from the Japanese space agency) to the ISS and returned them to Earth in May. SpaceX will be conducting another handful of crewed missions over the next six months, including another mission to the ISS on behalf of NASA and the European Space Agency, as well as the private AX-1 mission on behalf of Axiom Space.
“Thanks so much SpaceX, that was a heck of a ride for us,” Isaacman said moments after the capsule landed. “We’re just getting started.”
Watch a full stream of the splashdown here:
youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpFKNNl47AM
Rod Mcguirk
The Associated Press
France's Ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault arrives at Sydney Airport, Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/David Gray)
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA -- French and Australian officials said Monday that France's anger over a cancelled submarine contract will not derail negotiations on an Australia-European Union free trade deal.
France withdrew its ambassadors to the United States and Australia after U.S. President Joe Biden revealed last week a new tripartite alliance including Australia and Britain that would allow Australia to amass a fleet of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines.
The deal sunk a 90 billion Australian dollar (US$66 billion) contract for French majority state-owned Naval Group to provide 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines for Australia. The money would have been spent over 35 years.
French Ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault denied media reports that France was lobbying the European Union not to sign the trade deal with Australia that has been under negotiation since 2018.
"At this stage, negotiations do continue and there is a strong interest ... for Australia to have a free trade agreement with the EU," Thebault told Australian Broadcasting Corp. from Paris.
Such a deal "has the potential to deliver a huge amount of benefits for Australia," Thebault added.
Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan said he would travel to Paris within weeks for trade negations and was "very keen to touch base with my French counterpart," Franck Riester.
"There's a strong understanding from my recent trip to Europe to discuss the EU free trade agreement this is in the mutual interests of both Australia and of Europe," Tehan said, referring to an April visit.
"I see no reason why those discussions won't continue," Tehan added.
The European Commission, the executive branch of the 27 EU nations, said it was analyzing the U.S., British and Australian deal.
French President Emmanuel Macron will speak in the coming days with Biden in their first contact since the diplomatic crisis erupted.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison flew to the United States on Monday for a meeting with Biden and the leaders of India and Japan that make up the Quad security forum.
"This is all about, always about ensuring that Australia's sovereign interests will be put first to ensure that Australians here can live peacefully with the many others in our region, because that's what we desire as a peaceful and free nation," Morrison said before departing Sydney.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who is acting prime minister in Morrison's absence, said his country had proven its support for France's freedom through Australian lives lost in two world wars.
"Australia doesn't need to prove their affinity and their affection and their resolute desire to look after the liberty and the freedom and the equality of France," Joyce said.
"I can understand how the French are upset and we obviously want this to pass and to us to work closely again. But let's remember, tens of thousands of Australians died on French soil over two world wars protecting France in France, and protecting France from the enemy that was going to invade France," he said.
For Australia, First World War was the costliest conflict in terms of deaths and injuries. From a population of fewer than 5 million, 416,809 men enlisted, of whom more than 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded or taken prisoner, according to the Australian War Memorial.
French Ambassador to the United States Philippe Etienne said bilateral relations were strained but not severed by the submarine deal.
"It's not a rupture (in relations with the U.S.), but the moment was serious enough to make this kind of diplomatic gesture," Etienne told French radio RTL.
"We in Europe need the Americans, but the Americans also have the desire to continue working with us," he said.
French Defence Minister Parly visits the soldiers of Sentinelle security operation, in Paris
Sun., September 19, 2021, 2:22 p.m.
PARIS (Reuters) - France has cancelled a meeting between Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly and her British counterpart planned for this week after Australia scrapped a submarine order with Paris in favour of a deal with Washington and London, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Parly personally took the decision to drop the bilateral meeting with British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, the sources said.
The French defence ministry could not be immediately reached. The British defence ministry declined comment.
The sources confirmed an earlier report in the Guardian newspaper that the meeting had been cancelled.
The scrapping of the multi-billion-dollar submarine contract, struck in 2016, has triggered a diplomatic crisis, with Paris recalling its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra.
France claims not to have been consulted by its allies, while Australia says it had made clear to Paris for months its concerns over the contract.
French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden will speak by telephone in the coming days to discuss the crisis, the French government's spokesman said on Sunday.
(Reporting by John Irish and Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Writing by Gus Trompiz; Editing by Edmund Blair and Diane Craft)
New Zealand grapples with Delta – and Tucker Carlson
Despite domestic and foreign criticism, the Ardern government’s early lockdown strategy works and enjoys New Zealanders’ support.
OPINION
Glen Johnson
A New Zealand reporter
20 Sep 2021
On August 17, a 58-year-old man from Auckland became symptomatic and tested positive for COVID-19. It was New Zealand’s first community case of the coronavirus in almost six months.
Within hours, the nation of five million moved into alert level four, part of its “go hard, go early” approach. All travel outside of people’s homes was forbidden, except to fetch supplies, visit pharmacies or exercise.
The country largely ground to a halt.
“We have seen the dire consequences of taking too long to act in other countries, not least our neighbours,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, while announcing the cabinet’s decision to impose a lockdown that evening.
Within a few days, one case had grown to 21 cases. After a week, to 148 cases. By August 31, the cluster contained 612 cases.
One month after imposing the snap lockdown, New Zealand has bent the curve and may be able to eliminate an outbreak of the potent Delta variant of COVID-19 – though it is no sure thing.
As of September 20, some 1,051 people in Auckland and 17 people in the capital city, Wellington, have been infected with the virus, of whom 694 have recovered. Contact tracers have methodically identified tens of thousands of contacts – and hundreds of locations of interest – part of an updated track-and-trace system repurposed to cast a much wider net around the far more transmissible Delta variant.
The outbreak, now spread across 20 subclusters, 10 of which have been epidemiologically linked, presents the most serious challenge to elimination that New Zealand has faced so far. With its fragmented public health system under intense strain from decades of under-funding, any unchecked spread of the Delta variant would see hospitals rapidly overwhelmed.
But New Zealanders rallied behind the restrictions, sticking to their “bubbles”, masking up and watching patiently as cases peaked, then began to decline – though the outbreak’s tail is proving persistent.
If the country does eliminate this outbreak, it would once again validate the “go hard, go early” approach that officials have taken over the past 18 months. With Auckland set to move to the more permissive alert level three at 11:59pm on September 21, case numbers over the coming weeks will be closely watched for any sign of uncontained spread.
Entitlement and denunciation
Yet, as with previous outbreaks, the clamour from critics of the government started almost immediately, a chorus of whinge.
Business special interests laundered their messaging through an uncritical media – “certainty” they chanted, while pressuring for a move down alert levels.
“We also know that in lockdown Treasury has forecast it to cost the country NZ$1.45 billion [$1.02bn] per week – and that’s just the economic impact,” Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce chief executive Leeann Watson told broadcaster Newstalk ZB.
Incredibly, less than a week into lockdown, Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard complained to Stuff, the country’s most popular news website, that the business environment was getting “tough” for exporters, while lobbying for more managed isolation spots for business travellers – or self-isolation. “Some of these are multimillion-dollar deals, so the situation is very stressful,” she said.
Some in the hospitality sector complained about limits on gatherings and threatened to withhold tax, while demanding “targeted” assistance from the government.
“Now it’s 100 per cent [Ministry of] Health running the show,” said Hospitality New Zealand chief executive Julie White, according to Stuff. “No one is advising them commercially.”
Most New Zealanders would, presumably, prefer that the Health Ministry – as opposed to hospitality interest groups – responds to the threat presented by a lethal, airborne pathogen.
The “glacial” pace of the country’s vaccine rollout was also riffed off in headline after headline.
Perhaps, as the political opposition and reporters contend, the rollout has been “sluggish”.
Perhaps the government could have instructed the medical regulator Medsafe to conduct a less rigorous assessment of the Pfizer vaccine, under emergency protocols.
“Another [possibility] is,” Craig McCulloch, Radio New Zealand’s deputy political editor speculated, “that the government’s negotiators came late to the party, did a poor job and got a raw deal.”
Or perhaps soaring global demand amid the pandemic, Pfizer’s finite ability to supply vaccines to a vast suite of countries and New Zealand’s limited purchasing power and largely COVID-free status explains the “delay”. Certainly, the World Health Organization has described vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations as approaching a “catastrophic moral failure”.
When Pfizer became able to deliver large shipments midway through July, New Zealand saw a dramatic scale-up in the vaccination programme, as officials had promised for months.
If anything, the nation’s rollout – a massive logistical undertaking – has largely been a success story, conducted in an environment of incredible uncertainty and reliant upon an already stretched workforce. It has additionally played a key role in supporting vaccination efforts in the Cook Islands.
As of September 20, some 4,711,410 doses of the vaccine have been administered, tracking close to supply, with 1,618,673 people now fully vaccinated.
Amid the rising racket, the entitlement and denunciation, even commentators from abroad got in on the act.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson – agitating anti-lockdown sentiment – suggested that New Zealand provided a model for how his viewers would be subjugated by Joe Biden’s administration.
“How far can they go? […] A single COVID case in New Zealand, not a death from COVID, but a case of COVID has shut down the entire country.”
Writing in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, one commentator called the outbreak “poetic justice” and claimed a “once-welcoming nation is turning into an isolated dystopia, where liberties are taken away in a heartbeat and outsiders are shunned”.
While these criticisms are couched in the language of defending civil liberties, they reduce to variants of the “learn to live with COVID” argument.
Or put another way: “the cure cannot be worse than the disease”.
The economy must reign supreme, after all.
Sound familiar?
‘Needles in my eyes’
New Zealand’s elimination strategy relies on public buy-in. Recent polling shows that some 84 percent of the public supports the latest lockdown.
As with previous outbreaks, Ardern has used clear, empathetic language to reassure and unify an often politically divided nation. These briefings are held in parliament’s theatrette and usually feature the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
For many in New Zealand, the daily press briefings provide a detailed window into how authorities manage outbreaks and have been the most visible key to the elimination strategy’s success.
“To all Aucklanders, you have done an amazing job so far protecting yourselves, your family and your community,” Ardern said on September 13, while announcing that Auckland would stay in alert level four for another week. “We owe you a huge debt of gratitude … but the cases are telling us we have additional work to do.”
Voters rewarded Ardern’s Labour Party for this kind of humane approach and its exceptional management of the viral threat in the national elections last October, granting it an outright majority.
The political opposition judges these briefings a political threat, and routinely denigrates them as Ardern speaking from “The Podium of Truth”.
With the return of daily briefings on August 17, right-wing broadcasters and some journalists began to deride the briefings, at exactly the moment when trust in the authorities needed to be reinforced.
There is a difference between “holding power to account” and deliberately attempting, for purely partisan political reasons, to undermine public perceptions that the COVID-19 response is being well managed.
“I tried, I really did, but I wanted to stick needles in my eyes by about four minutes in,” said Newstalk ZB’s Kate Hawkesby, the day after the return of the 1pm press conferences. “I’d forgotten how soul-destroying it is to be spoken to like a three year old.”
On the same station, Hawkesby’s husband, Mike Hosking, overdubbed turkey “gobbles” and truck horn sound effects onto an interview recorded with Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall.
Newstalk ZB’s political editor, Barry Soper, in a report about an Auckland man whose kidney surgery was postponed due to staffing shortages, loaded his story’s preamble with phrases like “their altar” and “practise what they preach”.
He also issued a remarkable dog-whistle to New Zealand’s far-right, the kind of people who believe Ardern – a fairly mild political centrist – is turning the country into a communist dictatorship.
“If you have ever wondered what it must have been like to live in a totalitarian state, then perhaps wonder no more.”
This nonsense went on and on.
Some press gallery reporters began to complain about the length of Ardern’s introductions, while Jason Walls, a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, took to Twitter to moan about Bloomfield saying “finally” two times.
This speaks to how the media has fundamentally misunderstood what the briefings are: public service announcements.
They are for the public. Reporters are invited as a check and, as such, should resist the urge to demand a say in how these announcements are structured.
Even the New York Times managed to launder messaging that targeted the briefings, quoting former National Party staffer and political commentator Ben Thomas – who appears fixated on denigrating Bloomfield.
“He [Bloomfield] has … a cult-like following,” said Thomas. “The country has a huge kind of parasocial devotion to him, which is very new to New Zealand.”
Apparently, Thomas has not heard of Michael Joseph Savage, who founded New Zealand’s welfare state in the 1930s and whose framed photo hung in homes throughout the country for decades.
Regardless, all of this is a fairly obvious partisan political effort, driven by both ideology and market dynamics.
Many reporters and commentators at New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), which owns the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB, seem unable to accept that their preferred political tribe is no longer in power.
More critically, in an age where the news media increasingly attempts to attract subscribers by catering to their social and political values, NZME appears to be ring-fencing centre-to-far-right eyeballs.
It is, essentially, becoming New Zealand’s Fox News.
A brave new world
The sense in New Zealand is that this may be the last of the nation’s sledgehammer-style lockdowns, though one hopes officials do not retire lockdowns altogether.
The goal is to get as many people as possible vaccinated, assess the impact of opening up, and then tentatively start easing some border restrictions, if possible. No doubt, certain industries – tourism, hospitality, horticulture, media – will continue to apply relentless pressure.
Yet, when the nation reconnects more fully to the networks of global trade and travel, the super-highways of hyper-globalisation that have spread disease and death around the world, when the inevitable outbreaks come, there will be a toll.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Glen Johnson
A New Zealand reporter
Johnson is a New Zealand reporter who worked as a foreign correspondent for more than a decade, mostly out of the Middle East and North Africa.
PORTUGAL
Workers strike over layoffs
Workers at BCP and Santander will be on strike on October 1st, against the layloffs at the two banks, according to a joint statement from six unions.
By TPN/Lusa,
After a meeting with the management of Santander Totta, in which organizations say the bank was “irreducible” in the dismissal of 210 people, the unions decided to go ahead with a strike, which will also cover BCP.
In the same note, the Mais Union, SBN - Union of Financial Sector Workers, Union of Central Bankers (affiliated with UGT), Synaf (linked to CGTP), National Union of Banking Staff and Technicians and Independent Banking Union (independent) they indicated that “in view of the position taken today by the administration of Banco Santander Totta (BST) regarding the collective dismissal, in everything similar to that of the BCP, the six unions of bank workers decided to call a simultaneous strike in both banks”.
This stoppage also counts on the solidarity of the STEC – Union of Workers of the CGD Group Companies, according to the union structures.
"From now on, the law establishes that the Workers' Commissions are legally competent to participate in the current stage of the process, and all questions must be addressed to them", reads the statement.
Even so, "the unions are prepared to intervene, so and if the process moves forward", they indicated, adding that "members must send to the respective legal services all the formulations that are sent to the CNT, so that they can be provided with the essential elements to the full knowledge of the process”.
“These unions call on all BST and BCP workers to participate in the strike to be held at the respective institution. This is a cause that concerns all bankers. It doesn't just affect some of us. The time has come for bank employees to make their voice heard in the uncompromising defense of their rights and jobs”, they concluded.
Santander Totta wants 685 workers to leave. The bank's official source told Lusa last week that the departure with more than 400 workers has already been agreed (early retirements and terminations by mutual agreement). There were 230 employees with whom it had not reached an agreement, so they could be covered by dismissal, but the number is not definitive as the process is not closed.
On the other hand, BCP announced last week that it will make a collective dismissal of 62 workers, according to a message from the executive president to the bank's employees, which Lusa had access to.
As for other exits, the bank reached an agreement with around 700 workers to leave for termination by mutual agreement, early retirement and pre-retirement.
The unions have accused the banks of labor repression and blackmailing workers, considering that they are forcing them to leave through terminations (without access to unemployment benefits) or through early retirement. This while having high profits, they add.
BCP had profits of 12.3 million euros in the first half (84% less than in the same period in 2020) and Santander Totta 81.4 million euros (52.9%) less.
If Nestlé wants to reach net zero, farming has to change
CNBC gets an inside look at how Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, says it will use regenerative farming to reach net zero by 2050.
SUN, SEP 19 2021
Agriculture is one of the world’s top polluting industries, accounting for up to one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Ahead of COP26, many major food groups have committed to slashing their carbon emissions and reaching net zero in the coming decades.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, says it is going to the source, working with several of the 500,000 farmers in its supply chain to develop more sustainable agricultural practices.
The goal is to bring the food giant’s agricultural greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 and make “regenerative” farming the norm.
Places like pubs will have to shut down their indoor service on Monday unless they offer the vaccine passport requirements.
on September 19, 2021
By Western Standard
Opposition NDP leader Rachel Notley wants Albertans to give a helping hand to businesses who may be hard hit after bringing in vaccine passport policies.
“Give Alberta small businesses that are introducing a vaccine passport some love!” Notley tweeted Saturday.
“They are being intimidated by a small minority of people. Vaccine passports are supported by the vast majority of Albertans. They protect people, hospitals and our economy.”
This week Premier Jason Kenney brought in his fourth set of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.
And this time, after vowing to never do so, Kenney brought in a vaccine passport requirement.
Places like pubs will have to shut down their indoor service on Monday unless they offer the vaccine passport requirements.
“To all business owners and employees introducing a passport, you are doing the right thing. Thank you so much.”
NOTLEY TWEET
BY JOSH RITCHIE AND SAIF KAISAR
Posted Sep 17, 2021
CALGARY — After being down for two days due to server issues, the Alberta United Conservative Party AGM 2021 page is up and running.
The new tagline for the AGM: “Alberta is on the rise.”
The event is slated to take place over the weekend of Nov. 19 to 21, with an address from Premier Jason Kenney, Election Readiness Training and Policy Debates among other things.
This year’s AGM will not allow people to attend or vote virtually, meaning, under the government’s current COVID-19 health measures, every members’ vaccination status would need to be checked at the door.
Full registration information and the schedule for the AGM can be viewed here.