Jagmeet Singh's priorities are now the wealth tax and adding nurses

Anja Karadeglija 13 hrs ago

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says his party will have the leverage to pressure the minority Liberal government on priorities like a wealth tax and support for health workers, despite a disappointing election result Monday that saw the party’s seat count stall

.

© Provided by National Post Jagmeet Singh during an NDP election night event in Vancouver.

“I’m ready to get back to work. We had the same position in the last Parliament and we were able to secure a lot of really important victories,” such as forcing the Liberals to increase pandemic wage supports, Singh said in a press conference Tuesday.

“We’re going to continue to do that work. And we’re confident that we’ll be able to do that.”

But it’s not quite clear how leverage will work out when Parliament resumes, according to polling analyst Éric Grenier of the website The Writ. The Liberals don’t want to call another election anytime soon, and that could mean they’re “more willing to put the ball in the court of the opposition to kind of get behind them or be the ones who caused the election.”

Alternatively, the Liberals could be “humbled” if there are questions around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership.

Analysis: The least consequential election has come and gone with deeper political divisions

Peter Graefe, an associate political science professor at McMaster University, said Singh could have more bargaining power this time around. Post-election, it may be harder for the Liberals to find common ground with the Bloc, making the Trudeau government “a bit more necessarily reliant on the NDP this time.”

“Coupled with the fact that the NDP seems to be more organizationally solid than they were coming out of the 2019 campaign, and financially capable … those are all features which would lead you to believe that Mr. Singh may have a bit more leverage, and negotiations probably will be a bit more tense,” Graefe predicted.

Throughout the election, the NDP hovered at around 20 per cent support, and ahead of voting day Monday, projections showed they could pick up a dozen seats. Instead, the party received just under 18 per cent of the vote. Late Tuesday, the NDP had been elected in 24 ridings — the same number as in 2019 — and was leading in one more, again putting them in fourth place behind Bloc Québecois.

Singh told reporters that he feels secure in his leadership of the party, despite the lacklustre results, and that he doesn’t feel like he’s hit his ceiling as a leader.

Grenier said Singh’s leadership seems to be “not really in any danger,” adding former NDP leader Jack Layton also only made incremental gains in his first couple of elections.

Graefe noted the NDP “generally seems to be a party that’s happy to keep leaders on for a while,” and said Singh actually looks to be a better position now than he was in 2019, when he “was felt to have run a campaign where he kind of saved his bacon.”

At the time, there was a “fair bit of grumbling” about Singh from some factions in the party, but there seems to be “much less” of that this time around, Graefe said. “So in that way, I believe, they probably have a more united party behind him, and one that’s able to read the polls, which show that he is in many ways more popular than the party.”

Singh said Tuesday one immediate priority heading back to Parliament will be support for overworked, burned-out health care workers such as nurses. Nurses across the country held a “day of action” the Friday before the election to call attention to what they say is a chronic nursing shortage that has now reached a tipping point, a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Nurses have been crying out for a long time that the situation is really bad; it’s at a disaster point. And so that’s going to be something we’ll work on right away,” he said.

Asked whether he was disappointed in the NDP’s performance in the election, Singh maintained the party is “in a great position to continue fighting for people.” But he did acknowledge he was dismayed by some of the losses, including star candidate MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau narrowly losing her bid in Berthier-Maskinongé.

“Of course I’m disappointed that incredible candidates that we have are not returning as MPs, or are not coming to Ottawa as MPs. I think that’s a loss for our team, but it’s also a loss for Quebec and for Canada and for the Parliament,” Singh said.

Grenier said the reason for the NDP’s lacklustre showing could be strategic voting, in which progressive voters opted for the Liberals instead of the NDP, lower turnout among younger voters, who are “more likely to vote for the NDP but less likely to turn out,” or a combination of the two. The NDP was targeting the youth vote in this election and put a lot of resources into social media, including TikTok.

Singh was asked whether that was a mistake in strategy, given that it didn’t translate into votes. “I think it’s important to be able to reach out to people and using the tools that we have to connect with people where they are,” he responded.

Federal election: Battleground riding of Edmonton Centre still up in the air with special ballot count carrying over to Wednesday

Edmonton Centre

Elected

* Previous member

Polls: 208/209
Voters: 81,766
Turnout: 46,534 (56.91%)

LIB: Randy Boissonnault
15,454

CON: James Cumming *
15,318

NDP: Heather MacKenzie
13,363
PPC: Brock Crocker
2,037
LTN: Valerie Keefe
256
CPC-ML: Merryn Edwards
106

Dustin Cook

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Edmonton Centre Liberal candidate Randy Boissonnault in his campaign office on Monday. A final result still hasn't been declared in the tight race Tuesday as special ballot counting is expected to carry over to Wednesday.

The tightly contested race in the federal riding of Edmonton Centre remains up in the air as the count for a record number of special ballots is expected to carry on into Wednesday.

As of Tuesday morning, Liberal candidate Randy Boissonnault had a razor-thin lead of 136 votes over Conservative incumbent James Cumming with more than 2,200 special ballots still needing to be counted.

Special ballots that were submitted by voters living in their riding started being counted Tuesday morning across the country, but results haven’t been finalized for the riding as of press time. Elections Canada media adviser Leanne Nyirfa initially told Postmedia the expectation was that most results would be reported by end of day Tuesday, but then said the results for close races likely wouldn’t be released until Wednesday.

A record number of special, or mail-in, ballots were issued this election as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which led to a longer verification process before the ballots could be counted to ensure residents didn’t already cast their vote in person, Nyirfa said. More than one million mail-in voting kits were issued this election for voters living within their own riding who decided not to vote in person, a drastic increase from only 5,000 in 2019.

“The count can only begin after the verification process is complete. We’ve always said two to four days for the results to be posted. With the numbers here in Alberta, we’re thinking two is more accurate,” she said in a statement to Postmedia.

With the mail-in ballots still being tabulated, Boissonnault said he is waiting patiently for the results and looking forward to getting more details Wednesday.

“We are very excited and very confident about what we have seen in the results so far,” he said on social media. “Thanks to everyone whose hard work has gotten us this far.”

If Boissonnault holds onto the lead, he will be Edmonton’s only representative in the governing Liberal party that won a minority Monday night.

Responding to the election results Tuesday, Mayor Don Iveson said Edmonton would continue to be at a disadvantage without a voice at the cabinet table, or at least in government, as has been since 2019.

“I am concerned about the prospect of the city not having a voice at the table again for some number of years in Ottawa at the cabinet level,” he said. “It has been challenging for the City of Edmonton to not have that voice at the table.”

The race in one other Edmonton riding is still mathematically close enough to change hands on the special ballot count, but has been declared by news outlets. In Edmonton Griesbach, NDP challenger Blake Desjarlais was declared the winner by The Canadian Press with a 1,017-vote lead over two-term incumbent Kerry Diotte.

Desjarlais didn’t speak to media Tuesday, but issued a statement on social media about what the preliminary results show.

“I’m deeply honoured by the confidence that the voters of Edmonton Griesbach have shown in me and in the NDP,” he said. “I will always fight for you. I will always show up.”

The special ballot vote count in Edmonton Mill Woods wrapped up Tuesday with incumbent Tim Uppal officially declared the winner with 1,759 more votes than Liberal challenger Ben Henderson.

Henderson, four-term Ward 8 city councillor, will return to his city hall post until the municipal election next month.

MAYOR IVESON; Edmonton could again be without a voice in federal cabinet if no ridings turn Liberal

Dustin Cook 

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson.

Edmonton may again be without a voice at the cabinet table if a riding doesn’t turn Liberal.

No candidates representing the elected Liberal party in Monday’s federal election were declared elected in Edmonton as of press time. If nothing changes, this will be the second-straight race the governing party is shut out of Alberta’s capital. Edmonton hasn’t had a seat at the cabinet table since the 2019 election when the two Liberal seats in the city turned blue.

Ward 1 Edmonton Coun. Andrew Knack said a lack of representation in cabinet is concerning, but he said this makes electing a strong voice for mayor in the upcoming municipal election all the more important. Mayor Don Iveson has served as the chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Big City Mayors’ Caucus for the past few years, which Knack said was key in advocating for important issues in Edmonton, such as transit and affordable housing.

“You think about the last few years while there hasn’t been a Liberal member of Parliament in Edmonton, we had a mayor who was the chair of the Big City Mayors’ Caucus and was able to really advocate for critical issues within the city of Edmonton and I think that will likely reinforce the importance of having people who are able to be vocal to the other orders of government to help bring the Edmonton issues to the forefront,” Knack said in an interview with Postmedia Monday evening.

“If we don’t have a voice in government, we as a council need to continue to be that voice for the people of Edmonton and quite frankly more broadly even across Alberta.”

Iveson didn’t comment on the election results as of press time but has been championing the Vote Housing campaign, asking federal parties to support ending homelessness and increasing the supply of affordable housing. The Edmonton mayor also endorsed Liberal candidate Ben Henderson in Edmonton Mill Woods, but said the endorsement was specifically for Henderson, who he has served on council with since 2007, and not for the party as a whole.

In a statement Monday evening, Edmonton Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Jeffrey Sundquist said the chamber looks forward to working with the Liberal government on revitalizing the country’s economy through the COVID-19 pandemic and make advancements on issues such as climate change and trade barriers.

“Businesses demonstrated their resilience during some of the most challenging economic times in recent history,” Sundquist said in a statement. “Our priorities reflect a need to keep Canadians safe, stimulate our economy, and ensure investment in Alberta that allows us to use our strengths, resources and innovation to lead the way in achieving a more prosperous and sustainable future.”

There was still a close race in Edmonton Centre as of Tuesday morning with the Liberal challenger Randy Boissonnault ahead of Conservative incumbent James Cumming by a thin margin with mail-in ballots still needing to be counted. Conservative incumbent Tim Uppal was declared the winner in a tight race in Edmonton Mill Woods against Liberal candidate and four-term city councillor Ben Henderson.

duscook@postmedia.com

WHINEY OPPORTUNISTS
Blasting 'pointless' election, premiers press Trudeau for greater autonomy, more health-care funding

Nick Boisvert 18 hrs ago

© Michael Bell/The Canadian Press

  Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who has frequently squared off against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, delivered the sharpest criticism of any premier.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's strained relationship with several of Canada's premiers appears to have taken an even sharper turn downward following the results of Monday's federal election.

Premiers reacted to the election results today with outrage, apathy and calls for unity following a divisive campaign.

Some are also renewing their demands for greater financial assistance and autonomy from Ottawa, suggesting they may feel emboldened now to seek greater concessions from Trudeau.

The Liberals will return with another minority government and the makeup of this Parliament is projected to be remarkably similar to the one that was dissolved when Trudeau called the snap election last month.

The strongest criticism of Trudeau's election gambit came from Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, one of Trudeau's most prominent foes at the provincial level.

"This was the most pointless election in Canada's history," Moe told reporters at the Saskatchewan legislature in Regina.

"The prime minister spent over $600 million of your dollars, taxpayer dollars, and five weeks further dividing the country to arrive at almost the same result that we had two months ago in the House of Commons."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford struck a more conciliatory tone.

"This has been an extremely difficult and divisive election and I would like to take this opportunity to urge unity," Ford said in a media statement, pointing to pandemic policies and vaccine certificates as the source of those divisions.

Ford was among four premiers who reached out to Trudeau following the election, the prime minister said in a Tuesday evening tweet.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who became a focal point of the campaign in its final days due to his government's handling of COVID-19, urged the Liberal government to step up health care funding as Alberta faces its worst stretch of the pandemic.

"One key lesson of the COVID era is that we must expand the capacity of Canada's health-care system," Kenney said in a media statement.

Premiers renew demands for health care funding

Moe said that instead of triggering an election, Trudeau should have instead focused on strengthening Canada's health-care system and helping the provinces deliver vaccines to control the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He repeated calls by the Council of the Federation — a group composed of Canada's 13 provincial and territorial premiers — for Ottawa to increase health transfers to the provinces by $28 billion this year.

The council's chair, British Columbia Premier John Horgan, echoed that demand in his own news release today.

"I look forward to working in collaboration with the other premiers and the prime minister to address the challenges the pandemic has placed on our people, our economy and our health care system," Horgan said.

Trudeau promised $25 billion in new health-care funding during his campaign. The money would come with some strings attached, such as hiring targets for new health care workers and higher wages for personal support workers.

Legault still 'hates' plan for national LTC standards

Conditions like those have irritated Quebec Premier François Legault. He said during the election campaign that his preferred result would be a Conservative minority government, since Erin O'Toole did not include similar conditions in his funding offer to the provinces.

Legault said this morning that he's already spoken with the re-elected prime minister and that nothing essential has changed in the relationship between his government and Ottawa.

Legault said Quebec's demands for greater autonomy from Ottawa remain and include the long-term care sector — for which Trudeau has proposed new national standards of care.

"There's nothing new. He knows that I hate the conditions that he wants to put, for example on our [long-term care]," he said.

Legault and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet have rejected the prospect of national standards, despite shocking reports from some of Quebec's LTC facilities during the pandemic.

"He knows very well that I want him to respect Quebec jurisdiction, so there's nothing new and nothing that was not said many times before," Legault said of his brief conversation with Trudeau.

'Kenney effect' hurt federal Conservatives on Alberta election night, experts say

CBC/Radio-Canada 11 hrs ago

 Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced new public health measures last week — political scientists say that may have played a part in Monday's election results.

Political scientists say the Tories' commanding grip on Alberta was weakened on election night by Premier Jason Kenney's controversial response to the devastating fourth wave of COVID-19.

The "Kenney effect" was in full force at the polls, said Lisa Young, a political scientist with the University of Calgary.

Conservative support in Alberta fell by nearly 14 per cent in Monday's federal election, allowing the NDP and the Liberals to gain a foothold in some ridings.

Many Albertans voted in protest against COVID-19 restrictions or a lack thereof, Young said Tuesday.

"I think we saw a few things that sort of speak to the Kenney effect," she said.

"The fact that the Conservatives didn't do as well in terms of the popular vote as they have in the last couple of elections is probably a case of the traditional Conservative supporters not going up to vote, or voting for another party as a protest."

As Canadians elected a Liberal minority government for the second time since 2019, Alberta remained a largely uninterrupted sea of blue.

The Conservative Party of Canada dominated in Alberta, especially in rural ridings, but there were notable exceptions in ridings that instead went orange or red.

The NDP held on to Edmonton Strathcona, and by early Tuesday, NDP candidate Blake Desjarlais was declared the winner over Conservative incumbent Kerry Diotte in Edmonton Griesbach.

George Chahal won for the Liberals in Calgary Skyview. In Edmonton Centre as of Tuesday afternoon, Conservative incumbent James Cumming remained locked in a see-saw battle against Liberal Randy Boissonnault in a still undeclared race.

The Tories were left with 55.4 per cent of the vote in Alberta. In 2019, the party garnered 69 per cent.

Public health divide

Young said Kenney's divisive approach to the pandemic has Tory voters breaking off on both of the left and right side of the conservative camp.

Increasing support for the People's Party, particularly in Alberta's rural ridings, points to a splinter on the far right, one borne out of frustration and distrust over a recent COVID clampdown in Alberta.

"That speaks to a different kind of Kenney effect from people who object to what the provincial government is doing in terms of COVID," she said, adding it is a reminder that there are people disaffeced with the Alberta political system.

Calgary pollster Janet Brown said Albertan unhappiness with Kenney's handling of the pandemic surged in the final weeks of the campaign.

© Evan Mitsui/CBC Erin O’Toole's federal Conservative party lost support in Alberta in comparison to previous elections.

Many Tories will now blame the premier for Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole's losses on the Alberta campaign trail, she said.

"When you look at the overall national popular support for the Conservatives, it's not far off the last election, but there's been this big drop in Alberta," Brown said.

"O'Toole was able to make some good progress outside of Alberta but troubles in Alberta sort of undermined him.

"There's going to be a lot of conservatives who are angry about how the last week of the campaign played out. And we'll be looking for Jason Kenney's role in that."

Brown said Alberta remains a conservative heartland but the Kenney government's handling of the pandemic influenced perceptions of the federal Conservative party.

O'Toole had previously praised the Alberta government's pandemic response. But as election day approached, the province was in the grips of a surging fourth wave that threatened to push the health-care system to its breaking point.

"The Conservatives got 14 per cent lower in this election than they did just two years ago ... That's a huge shift," Brown said.

"There's no key beneficiary of that drop, which again, makes you wonder what was going on in the minds of voters."

 

Ancient Mayans built pyramid partly from ash after catastrophic volcanic eruption

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Credit: Antiquity (2021). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.21

Akira Ichikawa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, has found evidence of Mayans returning to a part of Central America that was destroyed after a catastrophic volcanic eruption, much sooner than previously thought. In his paper published on the Cambridge University Press site Cambridge Core, he describes his study of the area around what was once the site of San Andrés in the Zapotitán Valley, in what is now El Salvador.

Prior research has shown that in AD 539, the Ilopango volcano erupted in an event now known as the Tierra Blanca Joven eruption, and it was a really big one—the largest in Central America over the past 10,000 years, and the largest on Earth over the past 7,000 years. The blast was so powerful that it covered the area around the volcano in waist-high ash for 35 kilometers. It also blew itself apart, leaving behind a deep gash that is now a crater lake.

The eruption also greatly impacted the Mayan civilization, sending it into a period of decline due to the loss of nearby settlements and cooler temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere. Due to lack of evidence, historians have debated for years about how soon the Maya returned to the area, with most suggesting it likely took hundreds of years. In this new effort, Ichikawa describes evidence of the Mayan people returning to a site 40 miles west of the volcano between 30 and 80 years after the eruption. And not only did they return; they built a large pyramid using ash and dirt.

Credit: Antiquity (2021). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.21

To learn more about what went on in the area around the site, over the years 2015 to 2019, Ichikawa collected and analyzed samples from the ground and from the Campana structure, a pyramid resting atop a large platform. He found that work on the structure appears to have begun approximately 30 years after the eruption, though it could have been as long as 80 years.

Credit: Antiquity (2021). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.21

Either way, the data suggests that the Mayan people returned to the area quickly—soon enough that some could have been survivors of the blast. Ichikawa suggests it is likely the people built the pyramid as a way to appease the gods who had shown their anger by setting off the eruption.

Credit: Antiquity (2021). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.21

Degassing data suggests Mt. Etna began showing signs of pressure buildup months before 2018 eruption

More information: Akira Ichikawa, Human responses to the Ilopango Tierra Blanca Joven eruption: excavations at San Andrés, El Salvador, Antiquity (2021). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.21

Journal information: Antiquity 

© 2021 Science X Network

Roman-era mixers and millstones made with geology in mind  

by University of Texas at Austin

An olive millstone in Volubilis. Research assistant Drew Messing holds a tool for scale. 

Credit: Jared Benton.

A study on stone tools from an outpost of the Roman Empire has found that for ancient bakers and millers, having the right tools was a matter of geology.  

A team of geoscientists and archaeologists made the discovery by analyzing samples of the tools at a University of Texas at Austin geology lab, finding that dough mixing vats and millstones from Roman-era ruins of Volubilis, a city in Morocco, were made from specific rock types that probably improved each tool's function.  

Furthermore, the researchers determined that the stones were sourced locally, a discovery that challenges a theory that some millstones had been imported from afar. It also means that the craftspeople who made the tools may have received input directly from the workers who used them.  

"It is interesting because it is a very local source and seemingly from one source," said Jared Benton, a study co-author and an assistant professor at Old Dominion University who studies trade between Roman-era workshops. "One wonders if there's not a group of bakers that are coming together and saying let's buy our stuff from this one quarry, or maybe there's just one guy who [sells the stones], and that's it."  

The results were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 

Derek Weller, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute, led the study. Additional co-authors include Omero "Phil" Orlandini, research associate and manager of the Electron Microbeam Laboratory at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences; Lauren LoBue and Scott Culotta, both undergraduates at the Jackson School; and Christy Schirmer, a graduate student in UT's Department of Classics.  

The study got its start in early 2020, when Schirmer showed up at Orlandini's lab with a box of rocks. They were pieces of the stone tools that she and Benton had collected from the tools in Volubilis – and they were curious about where learning more about their geological makeup could lead them.  

"They sort of look the same when they're in tool form, but as soon as we started looking, it was clear that they were completely different," Orlandini said.  

Olandini got LoBue and Culotta on the case. The undergraduates put all 16 samples through a detailed scientific workup to determine their composition at the geochemical level.  

Their research revealed a rock type for each tool type. Grain millstones were made from vesicular basalts (a volcanic stone full of sharp-edged pores); olive mills were made from clastic, fossiliferous limestone (a limestone containing fragments of other rocks and small fossil shells); and dough mixers were made from limestone with no clastic material or fossils.  

The study notes how the rocks' attributes relate to each tool's function. For example, the pores in the basalt may have helped provide fresh edges that could help grind wheat into flour as the stone was worn down.  

Weller also used the geochemical data to determine that all the stones came from sources near Volubilis. Limestone is plentiful in the region, and two limestone quarries were already known to be active during the Roman era near Volubilis. But archaeologists previously thought the basalt – which Weller found came from the nearby Middle Atlas Mountains – was imported from Italy.  

In addition, the research found that each rock type came from a single location rather than sourced from different places around Volubilis. Benton said this suggests that a single supplier for each stone type might have been meeting all demand in the city and getting input from local people.   

Elizabeth Fentress, an archaeologist specializing in Roman settlements in North Africa, said that the study is a great example of collaborative research.  

"It is hardly the only collaboration between geologists and archaeologists, but an excellent one," she said. "The key is, as here, that the archaeologists ask the right questions and use their knowledge to interpret the answers.

Late Neanderthals used complex tool-making techniques

More information: Derek Weller et al, Provenancing the stone tools of Volubilis, Morocco: A Socio-economic interpretation of stonework lithologies, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103105

Provided by University of Texas at Austin 

AUTUMN FALLS TODAY DECLARED REYNARD

Reynard the Fox - Wikipedia

From "Wet End'' to "Coquitlam Island": New map shows the future of sea-level rise in BC

Sarah Anderson
Sep 21 2021, 11:02 am

Courtesy of Jeffrey Linn

An artistic and futuristic map of Vancouver has been making waves.

The engaging map is creating conversations around how rising sea levels will affect where Vancouverites will live on the heels of an election where climate change has been a top concern for many Canadians.

Jeffrey Linn, the artist behind the map, told Daily Hive Urbanized about its meaning and inspiration.

The piece is an original work inspired by both “Ursula K. LeGuin’s vision of a future California in her book, Always Coming Home, and A map of San Francisco made by Burrito Justice,” said Linn via email. He’s originally from San Francisco but lives in Seattle now and has created many similar maps of the West Coast.

All his sea-level rise maps show what it would look like when all the ice sheets in the world have melted 1,000 years in the future.


“These maps can highlight a lot of the landforms we take for granted in the places we live,” he said.

“I hope they think the place names are funny, but also see the seriousness behind the puns and the extreme scenario. Our climate, and our world, is changing.”

The Vancouver map is full of new reimagined place names and some are darkly humourous like “Drowntown” and “Seamount Pleasant.”

But Linn says that there are other climate chance consequences happening right now that aren’t so easy to make corny puns about.

“Drought, displacement, and of course extreme heat waves, are all things that are happening now, and may be more dangerous than sea-level rise.”

He posted his first sea-level rise map on the University of Washington’s website in 2014 and his maps have evolved significantly since.

“I revised the sea levels I model based on more up-to-date information from the IPCC, and I’ve made a lot of updates to the colour and style,” he said. “Snopes did a write-up based on my Los Angeles map, saying that if anything, the sea levels in my maps are conservative.”

Next, Linn is working on a new retro-future series that will use antique maps as a base and then showing sea-level rise on top. “These show places simultaneously in the past and the far future,” he said.

You can see the Vancouver map and follow his work on Conspiracy of Cartographers and look out for his next project.

Percy vs Goliath review – Christopher Walken battles Big Agriculture

The New Yorker makes no effort to sound Canadian or look like real life Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser, but he still steals the show

Charisma … Christopher Walken in Percy vs Goliath

Leslie Felperin
Mon 20 Sep 2021 

3 STARS 

A dispute between a Canadian farmer and an agribusiness behemoth over intellectual property rights might sound a trifle dull, but Percy vs Goliath just goes to show casting can make all the difference. That’s not to say the film has necessarily made a convincing casting choice by hiring New Yorker Christopher Walken to play real life Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser. Unlike Matt Damon, say, who put on weight and nailed a midwestern accent for his turn as another guy mixed up in a dispute with a sinister agricultural organisation in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (which this overlaps with somewhat), Walken makes no effort to sound Canadian or even look like the real-life figure he’s playing. Nevertheless, Walken keeps you watching thanks to his inherent charisma, still undimmed in his late 70s.

For those not up to speed on the news story and legal case that inspired this, the film does a reasonably competent job of outlining the basics. Being the sort of farmer who saved his seeds, just like his pappy told him to, Percy preserved some of one particular crop that turned out to be contaminated with a new genetically modified strain that Monsanto had recently created and sold to one of Percy’s neighbours. He couldn’t prove that he hadn’t misappropriated the seeds, so they took him to court for patent infringement and the fees he would be liable for keep racking up as he works his way through the many tiers of legal appeal, right up to the supreme court. En route, we see him become something of a folk hero, who gradually comes to understand how important his case is to others who have been ploughed under by the machinations of Big Agriculture, particularly in places such as India, which he visits for an epiphany two-thirds of the way into the film.

Should you grow a little weary of watching Walken look aw-shucksy and noble, there are a few other fine performances to enjoy, including Zach Braff as Percy’s country mouse lawyer and Christina Ricci as a peppy environmentalist who persuades Percy to keep fighting. Roberta Maxwell is less well served as Percy’s longsuffering wife Louise, who mostly stands around looking worried when she’s not going to church. In truth, the whole this is a bit boilerplate – but it has its heart in the right place.

Percy vs Goliath is released on 27 September on digital platforms.

CANADA NEEDS AIRSHIP INFRASTRUCTURE

LONG READ

In a Tiny Arctic Town, Food Is Getting Harder to Come By

For her new book, Devi Lockwood traveled around the world gathering stories of how people are being directly affected by a warming planet.

PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES


DEVI LOCKWOOD
SCIENCE 09.21.2021

This story is adapted from 1,001 Voices on Climate Change: Everyday Stories of Flood, Fire, Drought, and Displacement From Around the World, by Devi Lockwood.

IGLOOLIK, NUNAVUT, 1,400 miles south of the North Pole, is an umbrella town. The only way to get in or out is by passenger plane, dog sled, snowmobile, or—for a few weeks in summer when the sea ice melts—boat. Around 1,700 people live there. The few stop signs in town have words in both English and Inuktitut. People say yes by raising their eyebrows, and no by scrunching their noses.

When I visited in July 2018, with support from a National Geographic Early Career Grant, the sun was eternal: more than 21 hours of it. If I had arrived in June, near the solstice, the sun would never set at all—just circumambulate around us, a bright yellow juggling ball, always above the horizon. In July, there were a few hours of sunset and sunrise all at once. It never got fully dark. I learned to turn off my eyes to fall asleep.
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Life in the north is expensive. Fruits and vegetables are flown in; a 2-pound bag of grapes can cost more than 20 Canadian dollars. Earlier that summer, there had been a spate of polar bear attacks in communities nearby. People were on edge.



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There were also beautiful things. I arrived to the sound of ice melting on the beach, when a few flowers were blooming. There were insects on the hillside by the cemetery. Mosquitoes: one. Spiders: two. Sheryl, my host for the first two weeks, went to collect her water as ice or frozen snow in 5-gallon orange paint buckets. She scooped the ice with a saucepan and boiled it back home for consumption.

I visited the Igloolik community radio station, Nipivut Nunatinnii “Our Voice at Home,” and had them run an announcement that I was in town and looking for stories about water and climate change. Then, I listened.

The month I spent in Nunavut was part of a five-year journey that took me to 20 countries on 6 continents. I wore a cardboard sign around my neck that said “Tell me a story about water” on one side and “Tell me a story about climate change” on the other. My goal was to put stories of climate change in dialog with each other, giving names and voices to those impacted. I wanted to humanize an issue often discussed in terms of numbers: millimeters of sea level rise or degrees of temperature change. In Igloolik, many of the stories I heard were related to hunting and food security.
Disappearing Walrus

Marie Airut, a 71-year-old elder, lives by the water. We spoke in her living room over cups of black tea. “My husband died recently,” she told me. But when he was alive, they went hunting together in every season; it was their main source of food.

“I’m not going to tell you what I don’t know. I’m going to tell you only the things that I have seen,” she said. In the 1970s and ’80s, the seal holes would open in late June, an ideal time for hunting baby seals. “But now if I try to go out hunting at the end of June, the holes are very big and the ice is really thin,” Marie told me. “The ice is melting too fast. It doesn’t melt from the top, it melts from the bottom.”

A few years ago, she went seal hunting by boat, and brought the animal onto the land to eat fresh seal meat with her family. The skin looked “really old, and it was very easy to break,” she said. She blames this on increasingly warming water temperatures. Caribou hunting has also changed. In the 1970s and ’80s, she went caribou hunting on Baffin Island in August. Back then, it was “very, very hot, with lots and lots of mosquitoes. Now it doesn’t have any mosquitoes. The water looks colder at the top, but it’s melting from the bottom. The sea is getting warmer,” she repeated.

When the water is warmer, the animals change their movement. Igloolik has always been known for its walrus hunting. But in recent years, hunters have had trouble reaching them. “I don’t think I can reach them anymore, unless you have 70 gallons of gas. They are that far now, because the ice is melting so fast,” Marie said. “It used to take us half a day to find walrus in the summer, but now if I go out with my boys, it would probably take us two days to get some walrus meat for the winter.” Marie and her family used to make fermented walrus every year, “but this year I told my sons we’re not going walrus hunting. They are too far,” she said.

“I read my Bible every day, and I know things will change. And I believe both of them are happening now, what is written and what I see with my own eyes.”
Warming Water

Theo Ikummaq has worked as a wildlife officer in Igloolik since 1982. When Theo was a child, his family was nomadic. In the wintertime they lived in a sod house. In the spring and summer, they followed the animals: caribou, narwhal, walrus. He grew up learning how to hunt and navigate. “I was brought up to care about the environment,” he told me.

When it comes to climate change, he said, “The big thing that nobody is really aware of is the temperature change of the water. That’s what is creating climate change. Not the sky. Not the land. Water,” he said. Theo pointed out to the bay and told me that the ocean floor, 15 to 20 years ago, was averaging −2 degrees or −2.5 degrees Celsius. (Salt water doesn’t freeze until roughly −2.) “Today, any time during the year, it’s above zero,” he said. “Everything at the ocean floor is thawing.”

While people in town might not notice these changes, the hunters do. New birds come to Nunavut annually, and the diversity of sea creatures is shifting, too. “Seals are scarce,” Theo said, which tells us that “the food source of the seal is somewhat diminished.” Humans, polar bears, foxes, and wolves all rely on the ringed seal for food.

“Whatever happens in the sea affects the land. Whatever happens on the land affects the sea,” Theo said. “If you look after the whole system, the whole system looks after you. That was the theory the Inuit had at one point. We’re somewhat removed from that because we had to become like the rest of the world, to a certain degree. Other cultures coming in affected our culture. The culture coming in was stronger. We had to follow it. It was forced upon us, more times than not.”

Theo described climate change by saying, “The world shifted.” He started to notice this shift in the early 2000s. One example is the wind. When he was a child, the northwest wind was predominant, and it created a pattern of distinctive ridges that people could follow in navigation. Hunters would leave camp and follow patterns created by the wind in the snow. Later, when the wind had erased their tracks, they could return to camp by following the pattern of the ridges in reverse.

But now, the winds are less predictable. Starting about 15 years ago, “when our elders were navigating by snowdrifts only, they were getting dislocated. They ended up at the wrong place. They weren’t lost. They just ended up at the wrong place and then corrected their bearing,” he said. “The youngsters, with their GPS, were getting to the place where they had to go.”

Sightings of killer whales have increased throughout the territory in recent years. “Because the ringed seals have never seen a killer whale before, they don’t look at it as a predator, the ultimate predator,” he said. “They’re not even afraid of it.” As a result, killer whales go from bay to bay, wiping out everything. “It’s one killing machine that’s coming into our neighborhood,” he added. “It’s not just the humans; the animals aren’t aware of what’s happening out there.”
Encroaching Polar Bears

Francis Piugattuk has worked for 20 years as a wildlife technician at the Igloolik Research Center, a government-owned building on top of a hill that resembles a giant white mushroom. It was built in the early 1970s as a place to bring together Inuit knowledge and Western science. As a wildlife technician, Francis processes samples of polar bear bones and tissues and produces research permits. In the lab, he analyzes fat samples, ear tags, and tattoos to help track polar bear hunting throughout the territory. Polar bear teeth, Francis told me, “have growth rings like trees,” Suctioning out a tooth and counting the lines helps age the bears.

When Francis was a child, polar bear sightings were infrequent. “Even seeing tracks was an anomaly, a cause for excitement. And if people wanted to harvest polar bears, they would have to go long, long distances,” he said. Up until 20 years ago, the only animals attracted to walrus meat caches were arctic foxes. Now, the community is setting up electric fences and trying to extract the fermenting meat before the polar bears can get to it. While the population of polar bears hasn’t technically increased, they are moving closer to human settlements as ice patterns change. About 16,000 of the 20,000 to 25,000 bears in the world’s polar regions live in Canada.

Francis acknowledges that Western science and traditional Inuit knowledge are two systems that “seem to be at odds continuously.” When he was young, his parents waited until the last day of school in June to bring him from Igloolik onto the land for the summer. Then they followed the hunt until school started again in September. His elders would pass on lessons about which water was safe to drink—free-flowing was better than still. “Even though they did not learn what they knew in school, like we did, they learned. They had years of existence to learn,” Francis said.

Elders, Francis told me, were able to live sustainably off the land by selling fox or seal pelts in exchange for rifles, boats, and other materials. Today, it’s only those in the wage economy who can afford to buy an outboard motor or ammunition. “The cost of living is so great now that it’s not even viable to try to exist as a hunter,” he explained. “Those of us that do not hunt live on pasta and macaroni, rice, soup: food that is not as nutritious. Those that are still able to afford it are now going out and acquiring country food.” Country food, I had learned, includes traditional food such as bannock, arctic char, eggs, and muktaaq; it is often shared as a gift between families and in the community.


Climate change, Francis told me, is already here. “The ice used to stay longer,” he said.
Less Country Food, More Groceries

Terry Uyarak, a hunter in his early thirties, has deep tan lines around his eyes in the shape of his sunglasses—the sign of a summer spent out on the land. He invited me into his kitchen, where we ate muktaaq, frozen pieces of whale skin and blubber, and tuktu, caribou meat. Terry’s wife, Tanya, cut the meat with an ulu, a knife with a semicircular blade and a handle that is the sole province of women. I liked the rhythm of its rocking, the rounded edges.

Every season brings something new: beluga, narwhal, caribou, arctic char, walrus. Terry works for the government of Nunavut, coordinating programs that teach hunting to youth and document elders’ hunting methods. He is a leader in his community. “Usually in early summer, there’s no wind,” he said, noting that hunting is easier when the water is calm and there is less ice. The high winds that day had prevented him from going out fishing. He also noted that when he was younger, the ocean would freeze in late September. Now, come Halloween, he can still go boating. In the past he would be driving a snowmobile in late October.

“It’s changing quite rapidly. And I’m not old at all. I’m 31, and I can tell very much how it changed,” he said. Terry told me that polar bears are also coming closer than they used to, a threat to stored food. “Now we have to be armed all the time on our camping trips,” he said. He tries to be careful, even in the winter, to observe the ice and make sure that it is not too thin.

When hunting is less reliable, his family has to buy more groceries from the stores. “It’s very expensive, very, very, very expensive for us here.” Later, I rode on the back of Terry’s Honda ATV to the place outside town where he keeps his dog team. We tossed them pieces of raw fish: arctic char, the leftovers from his most recent catch. Terry’s face looked more complete with his sunglasses on. As we watched the dogs eat, I thought about the delicious caribou meat we had shared, still fresh on my tongue. Terry had warned me that I would crave the meat later, and he was right. The animal ran through me. All I wanted was more.

Country food is very nutritious, and also expensive to harvest. Consider 10,000 Canadian dollars for an outboard engine, then add a boat, snowmobile, bullets, gun, the cost of gasoline shipped in from the south, an ATV.

Many people can no longer afford their traditional lifestyle. Sharing the bounty is the norm and a necessity. Once the meat is distributed, it is time to harvest more.
A Shorter Seal Hunt

I spoke with Leah Angutiqjuaq, age 42, in her relative’s home in Igloolik. We had just boiled water for tea. The most pronounced climate impact, for Leah, is in the timing of the seal hunt. “The weather is changing,” she told me. “We used to go out seal hunting for one to two months. It’s only three weeks now.” When she was younger, her family camped and spent time on the land. “Now it’s different, because we need money and we hardly have any dogs. We have some, but only as pets now.”

“Our older people have passed away,” Leah added. “We can only buy food now. We used to share. If we went out camping, the family would come. Now it’s different.” Without a dog team, hunting is prohibitively expensive. “They try and let young ones go out camping, but they need money,” Leah said. “Many years ago, they used to help each other without money.” In a town where many people make minimum wage, a subsistence lifestyle is often out of reach. “Too much money now, maybe,” she said.

Before I left town, Leah sold me a white ring carved from a walrus tusk. The carving was in the shape of an owl, its wings spread wide around my finger. After I paid her, Leah went straight to the grocery store, cash in hand, to buy food.
A Fraying Food Web

When we met in Igloolik in 2018, Marie-Andrée Giroux was an assistant professor of environmental sciences at Université de Moncton in New Brunswick. She first visited the island in 2011 and lived in Igloolik for two years continuously. Since then, she has returned to the Arctic for a few months each summer to conduct research. Climate change is more pronounced in the poles than it is in lower latitudes. For Marie-Andrée, melting sea ice is the most pressing concern in the circumpolar region related to climate change. In the north, sea ice isn’t just a natural element—it’s also an infrastructure used for traveling to hunting grounds. “When the sea ice melts earlier or the conditions are not as stable as usual, it’s like the roads being unstable and unpredictable. So it has a big influence on traditions,” she said.

Wildlife has the same problem. Many species, like arctic foxes, cross between islands and the mainland using sea ice. In the winter, an arctic fox can travel for thousands of kilometers across the region, often following polar bears who prey on seals. After a polar bear leaves the seal carcass behind, a fox will scavenge and eat what remains. If sea ice conditions are unpredictable or melt earlier than usual, a fox’s access to food, water, and ability to reproduce is limited.

It’s easy to think that sea ice would impact only the ocean, but there are many energy exchanges between the terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Seabirds, for example, nest on an island, forage in the water, and then come back on the land, where their guano fertilizes plants. The tundra, as a low-productivity area, relies on energy inputs from the marine environment. This means that when sea ice dynamics change, not only marine food resources but also terrestrial resources change. And because people depend on terrestrial resources, whether by picking eggs or eating caribou, what happens to the sea ice impacts the human population, too. Everything is interconnected.

Still, the specifics of climate impacts on this system are difficult to predict without further study. “Right now it’s pretty hard to predict based on all those intricate relationships which are just being described right now,” she said.

One key species that is being affected by climate change in the tundra is the lemming. Lemmings are small rodents that spend the winter under the snowpack, where it’s warm enough for them to survive and reproduce. The snowpack, in addition to insulating their food, also protects them from predators.

Climate change wreaks havoc on this delicate balance. When the melting and freezing cycles change, the snowpack that lemmings rely on becomes less predictable. In a rain-on-snow event, the water percolates through the snow and freezes the vegetation underneath, rendering the lemmings’ food supply inaccessible. Many predators in the Arctic eat or select their breeding ground based on lemming abundance, and those same predators also eat birds and bird eggs. On Igloolik, when there are more lemmings, Marie-Andrée has observed that arctic foxes and avian predators (such as long-tailed jaegers, parasitic jaegers, gulls, ravens, snowy owls, and other raptor species) are more abundant. When climate change impacts the lemming, it indirectly impacts other species in ways that are not yet fully understood.

Marie-Andrée is most energized by climate solutions that take into account the needs and interests of different groups involved. Snow geese, which migrate to the Arctic from the United States and Canada to breed, have increased exponentially in the last four decades due to an increase in the amount of agricultural land where they feed during the winter and along their migratory path. “They have increased to a level where they are detrimental to Arctic ecosystems. When they come here to reproduce, they overbrowse the vegetation,” Marie-Andrée said. This destroys the habitat and forces predators to eat other birds at higher levels.

One approach to this problem is to implement snow goose harvesting programs—not only through a spring hunt in the south, but also by encouraging egg collection and harvesting of adults in the north at their breeding ground.

“If we can work toward supporting harvesting programs which are beneficial for conservation issues at the same time, I think that’s really good,” she said.
Sasquatch Sightings

The vast majority of Canada’s population, two out of three people, live within a hundred kilometers of the US border. In Nunavut, a territory with a population of just under 40,000 people, anyone who lives south of the Arctic Circle is considered a “southerner.” I met one of these southerners, Hunter McClain, on the street in Montreal.

Hunter is from a small town in northern British Columbia, close to the Hudson Bay Glacier. The glacier, which used to be visible on the mountain, has been receding to the point where it’s nearly invisible in summer and spring. “People who live out in the country are pretty in tune with the seasons, and we noticed changes in the wildlife,” she told me. “The wildlife has been going a bit nuts.”

One year, the bears didn’t hibernate because they couldn’t find enough food. “All the juvenile bears over the winter were running around town looking for food. You could see them losing hair, and they looked so thin,” Hunter said. “I had never seen a really skinny bear before, but when you see a skinny bear loping around and standing up, you really realize that that’s Sasquatch.” The bears on their hind legs looked like the legendary monster. Hunter was terrified, and equally “weirded out by people who live in that area who are climate change deniers.” To her, the connection to climate change was indisputable.

Adapted from 1,001 Voices on Climate Change, by Devi Lockwood. Copyright © 2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Tiller Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.