SAME IN BC

Raging wildfires and 'burn scars' threaten the West's drinking water

This is a Kaiser Health News story.

Colorado saw its worst fire season last year, with the three largest fires in state history and more than 600,000 acres burned. But some of the effects didn’t appear until this July, when heavy rain pushed sediment from damaged forests down mountainsides, causing mudslides that shut down sections of Interstate 70 for almost two weeks.

Immense quantities of sediment choked the rivers that supply most of the state’s water. In western Colorado’s Glenwood Springs, the water became so murky that the town twice had to shut off the valves that pump water from nearby rivers to avoid overwhelming its filtration system. City managers sent alerts to the town’s 10,000 residents, telling them to minimize water use until the sediment moved downstream.

Wildfires and their lasting effects are becoming a way of life in the West as climate change and management practices cause fires to increase in number, intensity and acreage burned, while extending the length of the fire season. In “burn scars,” where fires decimated forest systems that held soil in place, an increase in droughts followed by heavy rainfall poses a different kind of threat to the water supplies that are essential to the health of communities.

© Eric Lutzens/Denver Post via Getty Images, FILE

“You know about it; it’s in the back of your head,” said Glenwood Springs resident Paula Stepp. “But until you face it, you don’t know how it’s going to impact your town.”

Dirty, turbid water can contain viruses, parasites, bacteria and other contaminants that cause illness. But experts say turbid water from burn scars is unlikely to make it to people’s taps, because water utilities would catch it first.

Still, the cost to municipal utility systems — and the residents who pay for water — is immense. Rural small towns in particular face the choice between spending millions of dollars to try to filter turbid water or shutting off their intake and risking shortages in areas where water may already be scarce.

And as fires move closer to communities, burning synthetic materials from houses and other buildings can create toxic compounds that leach into water supplies, which is what happened in California after major fires in 2017 and 2018.

“When we put [fires] out, we become less aware of them,” said hydrologist Kevin Bladon, of Oregon State University. But from a water perspective, “that’s when all the problems start.”

Montana’s capital city, Helena, gets its drinking water supply from the Upper Tenmile Creek watershed in a forest thick with trees killed by beetle infestations. City leaders worry a fire would quickly chew through that dry fuel and leave the watershed exposed to sediment contamination. Despite a logging project that cleared many of those trees two years ago, the fire threat remains and city leaders worry the resulting sediment would overwhelm the water treatment plant and shut down the primary water source for 40,000 people.

“If we had a fire up there, depending on where it is and how big it is, it could put the Tenmile plant out for a season or two,” Helena Public Works Director Ryan Leland said.

To protect against that happening, the city is in the early phases of designing a basin that can trap sediment before the water reaches the plant, Leland. The city also recently announced plans to drill three groundwater test wells, which would give them another drinking water supply option if something happens to the Upper Tenmile watershed. Treated water from the Missouri River is the city’s current backup supply.

The Rocky Mountains and about 200 miles separate Glenwood Springs from Greeley, in northeastern Colorado. But the 2020 fire season caused similar problems in both cities, creating burn scars that later flooded, contaminating water sources.

So far this year, Greeley has had to shut off its intake from the Cache la Poudre River for 39 days because the water was contaminated with sediment, ash and organic matter. “Normally we would never turn it off,” said Greeley water and sewer director Sean Chambers.MORE: Young people experiencing 'widespread' psychological distress over government handling of looming climate crisis, researchers say

To cope, the city has been trading water with a nearby agricultural company that owns reservoirs used for irrigation. The swap gives the turbid water to farmers and redirects the reservoir water to Greeley. “If we didn’t have the trade in place, the cost [of buying water] would be astronomical,” Chambers said.

But Chambers admitted this system is a luxury that smaller towns may not enjoy. Greeley is 10 times the size of Glenwood Springs and has spent more than $40 million this year recovering from the Cameron Peak Fire — the largest fire in Colorado history, which burned for four months in 2020. Those costs may climb as rain continues, he said. Larger towns also tend to have better filtration systems that can handle more sediment, which clogs up filters and requires utilities to add chemicals to remove contaminants before the water is safe to drink.

While dry states like Colorado expect fires each year, recent blazes in wetter places like western Oregon have caught researchers off guard. Last September, fires scorched about 11% of the state’s Cascade mountain range, leaving burn scars above rivers and reservoirs that supply much of the state’s water.

“We have to be very proactive,” said Pete Robichaud, a research engineer with the U.S. Forest Service in Moscow, Idaho

After a wildfire is extinguished, Robichaud’s agency and others send teams of specialists to evaluate the risks that erosion and ash pose to water supplies. Their data can help land managers decide whether to take actions like thinning forests above rivers, dredging contaminated reservoirs, covering the area with mulch or seeds to reduce erosion, or forming a plan for alternative water sources.

Even advance notice of a flood could help immensely, said Stepp, the Glenwood Springs resident. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Middle Colorado Watershed Council, which recently worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to install rain gauges along Glenwood Canyon. These monitor weather upstream and notify downstream water users that a sediment-laden flood could be coming.

She said it is crucial for small communities in particular to partner with state and federal agencies. “Basically, we work with everybody,” she said.

Although debris flows can bring soil bacteria into water supplies, city utilities can disinfect them with chemicals like chlorine, said Ben Livneh, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. But those disinfectants can themselves cause a problem: Organic matter from sediment can interact with these chemicals and create carcinogenic byproducts that are difficult and expensive to remove.

Another waterborne danger comes from chemical byproducts and heavy metals from burned structures. “Those would be potentially really problematic to treat,” Livneh said.MORE: Eating sustainably is one of the easiest ways to combat climate change, experts say

After the 2017 Tubbs and 2018 Camp fires that devastated the Northern California communities of Santa Rosa and Paradise, researchers examining the tap water of nearby homes found benzene and other carcinogens. Public health researcher Gina Solomon at the Public Health Institute in Oakland, California, said the contamination likely came from plastic pipes that melted and leached chemicals into the water.

Smoke and ash from burned structures may also add toxic chemicals to water supplies. “The smoke from the fires is a truly nasty brew,” Solomon said.

California has been relatively lucky when it comes to sediment flow. The years-long drought in most of the state means burn scars remain intact — though a heavy rain could wash down years of debris.

It’s unclear how long burn scars continue to pose a landslide risk, said Bladon, the Oregon hydrologist. But parts of Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, for instance, continued to see extremely turbid water for a decade after a 2003 fire.

“My fear is we may not have seen the worst of it yet,” Solomon said.

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Native Women's Shelter splits with Quebec youth protection agency, citing racism

MONTREAL — The Native Women's Shelter of Montreal said Tuesday it has suspended meetings with health officials overseeing the province's English-language youth-protection system because of the agency's alleged failure to address systemic racism.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“It’s almost like history keeps repeating itself," said Nakuset, the shelter's executive director, who only uses one name. "We keep bringing it to the table, to the attention of upper-level management, but it goes to the void."

The shelter informed regional health authorities in August about why it was refusing to meet with representatives of Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, Nakuset said, adding that Indigenous youth in the system wouldn't be impacted.

"It's important to note (while) we are suspending meetings with upper management, we are 100 per cent committed to the Indigenous children," Nakuset told reporters during a virtual news conference.

"What we need is for the institution to make some changes because it's like running into a wall."

Nakuset said the problems inside Batshaw have been noted in multiple reports, including a 2019 study called "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back," produced by her group and a research team at Concordia University. That report said Inuit children and families had been told not to speak Inuktitut while on supervised visits, adding that there had been no dedicated group to study concerns from Montreal's Indigenous communities.

Some of those issues were echoed in a May 2021 report by Quebec's human rights commission, which noted that encouraging people against speaking their native languages runs contrary to cultural safety practices.

The recommendations from the two reports were also included in reports from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and from Quebec's Viens and Laurent commissions, which studied Indigenous services and youth protection.

Mel Lefebvre, who is on the shelter's board of directors, said that despite all the reports and recommendations on how to improve services to Indigenous children in the province, Batshaw Youth and Family Centres has not changed.

"At this point, we are at a loss at what more youth protection needs to make substantial changes," she told reporters Tuesday.

In a statement Tuesday, the regional health authority that oversees Batshaw said it regretted the departure of the shelter from the awareness committee. It said its goal was to support "adapted services that meet needs and that are offered in an environment where Indigenous people feel completely safe, on all fronts."

The health authority also said it was working to implement the recommendations of the Viens and Laurent Commissions.

Nakuset turned to the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRAAR), a Montreal civil rights group, whose executive director told reporters Tuesday that the shelter might need to file a complaint with the province's human rights commission.

Fo Niemi said that sometimes the legal route is the only way to break down systemic barriers.

“Unless the complaints and lawsuits come, things don’t change,” Niemi said. "This situation has to be faced in a very firm and concrete manner so as to avoid this ongoing denial and trivialization of many of these concerns that have been identified in commission after commission."

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

The Canadian Press

Erin O'Toole's climate policy contradictions could end up taking his party backward
Aaron Wherry 2 hrs ago

© Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press Conservative Party of Canada Leader Erin O'Toole announces his party's climate change policy during an event in Ottawa, Thursday April 15, 2021.

On the campaign trail, Erin O'Toole created his own contradictions. He shouldn't be surprised if the discrepancies between who he was during the Conservative leadership campaign and who he wanted to be during the general election have caught up with him now.

But Conservatives — and the wider political debate in Canada — will be worse off if unhappiness with O'Toole results in the party going backwards on climate change policy.

The 2021 election might otherwise be remembered as a turning point in the Conservative Party's approach to climate change. The party may have lacked ambition; O'Toole would only commit to a 30 per cent reduction in national emissions by 2030. And the party's sincerity was open to question after delegates to the Conservative convention in March rejected a motion that would have acknowledged that "climate change is real."


But the Conservative Party's 2021 platform still marked the first time the party delivered a credible plan to achieve any of Canada's international targets. It was also the first time in a decade that the Conservative Party acknowledged that putting a price on carbon is smart policy.

"We recognize that the most efficient way to reduce our emissions is to use pricing mechanisms," the Conservative platform stated.
The journey from 'True Blue' to carbon pricing

The vast majority of economists and climate policy experts would agree — even if many of them would add that complementary policies can be added to target specific sources of emissions.

But the language of the 2021 platform ran counter to what Canadian Conservatives had been saying for years — when they were loudly opposing Liberal and NDP proposals to price carbon.

Worse, it contradicted what O'Toole said when he was running for the party leadership as a "true blue" Conservative in 2020.© Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press Conservative Party of Canada Leader Erin O'Toole fist-bumps former leader Andrew Scheer after O'Toole's win at the 2020 leadership election in Ottawa on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.

"A carbon tax is not an environmental plan, it is a tax plan," O'Toole said at the time. He vowed to scrap "Trudeau's carbon tax." He proudly signed a public pledge — sponsored by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an anti-tax advocacy group — that stated he would "immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax ... and reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme."

Such disavowals probably explain why O'Toole's climate proposal ended up being needlessly convoluted: a private consortium of companies would be enlisted to track consumer fuel purchases and credit personal savings accounts that could be then used for government-designated "green" purchases, like zero-emission vehicles or bicycles.
Winning the election might have settled the argument

Whatever the shortcomings of that approach, it certainly amounted to a government-mandated fee on carbon emissions. And Conservatives who listened to O'Toole during his leadership run could be forgiven for failing to see the difference between that and a carbon tax.

So now, in the wake of this fall's election, anonymous Conservatives are telling reporters about the anger caused by that flip-flop (among others).

O'Toole's real problem is that he didn't win. If the Conservatives had come away from last week's election with the most seats (or even more seats than they had before the vote), he could point to those gains and make the case to his party that his sudden shift was worth it. And Conservative supporters probably would be happy to forget about their feelings of betrayal.

In 2019, the Conservatives won 121 seats. In 2021, the Conservatives won 119 seats. Under Andrew Scheer in 2019, the Conservatives won 36 seats in Ontario and 10 seats in Quebec. Under O'Toole's leadership, the Conservatives won 37 seats in Ontario and 10 seats in Quebec.

But that status quo result doesn't mean O'Toole was mistaken when he decided his party needed to move on after a decade of opposing meaningful climate action.
Did the climate plan lift Conservatives in the East?

It's difficult to tease out simple cause-and-effect conclusions from election results. Voters can be motivated by any number of factors, from policy differences to idiosyncratic judgments of the leaders.

But the Conservative Party did manage to make small improvements in its popular vote in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. And if you were speculating about the reasons why the party did better this time in the eastern half of the country, a more credible climate plan would be as plausible an explanation as any.

New polling supports that thesis. In a survey conducted by Leger and commissioned by Clean Prosperity — an organization that supports carbon pricing — 21 per cent of respondents said O'Toole's carbon-pricing policy made them more likely to vote Conservative, compared to eight per cent who said it made that less likely.

Forty-one per cent of Conservative voters said the party should do more on climate change, compared to ten per cent who said the party should do less.
Climate action depends on political consensus

Conservative opposition to carbon pricing was always destined to come to a messy end. Sooner or later, the party was going to have to get serious about climate change — and the alternatives to pricing carbon are more expensive and disruptive.

But the consequences of this moment are not limited to the Conservative Party's internal unity or future electoral hopes. The durability of public policy depends on political consensus.

"Getting to net zero is a 30-year journey and the Conservatives are going to be leading the country for parts of that journey. So it's really important that the Conservative Party have a positive climate agenda," Stewart Elgie, founder of Smart Propserity, said in an interview last week.

"If they have different views about how to reach the targets, that's a healthy thing in democracy — as long as they agree on the destination and are serious about getting there. It's really important that Conservatives see that having a credible climate platform isn't just good policy, it's good politics for them as well."

If it's possible to have a credible climate plan without putting a price on carbon, pricing opponents are welcome to offer one. But it's also probably fair to assume that opposition to a carbon tax has something to do with a general reluctance to take meaningful action against climate change.

O'Toole's path to a more credible climate plan may have been imperfect. Ideally, he would have levelled with Conservatives about what he thought was necessary and right. Conservatives might be within their rights to hold that against him.

But whatever they decide to do about their leader, the next question for Conservatives is whether they think they would really be any further ahead right now with anything less than the climate plan they took into the campaign.

Leger polled 2,337 respondents across Canada, using an online panel, between September 21 and 23. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of the same size would yield a margin of error of ± 2.1%, 19 times out of 20.

Family of Canadian Uyghur advocate held in China upset, outraged he remains detained

OTTAWA — It wasn't until Tuesday morning, when Kamila Telendibaeva saw the footage and pictures of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor landing in Canada, that she started to picture her own reunion with her husband who has been in a Chinese prison for 15 years.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

As she watched the joyful scene, Telendibaeva said she was happy to see Spavor and Kovrig freed after a years-long ordeal, saying it was great for the two men and the country.

But thinking about a reunion with a husband she hasn't seen in years, and a father who has never met his youngest son, now a teenager, Telendibaeva raised her voice and raced over her words.

"Honestly, my blood is boiling," she said, adding that she felt the Liberals are ignoring Huseyin Celil's case, and wants to see a harder push to secure his release.

Telendibaeva believes winning his freedom is possible after seeing how Canadian officials worked with international counterparts, including the United States, to pressure the Chinese government to release Kovrig and Spavor.

"They should sit at the table with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping or any Chinese authority, or a special envoy to bring him back," Telendibaeva said in an interview.

"I'm not saying what kind of deal they're going to do for my husband's case, but they have to bring Huseyin back now."

Celil has been detained in China since 2006, after he was arrested in Uzbekistan and sent to China after his long-standing advocacy for the human rights of his Muslim ethnic Uyghur minority.

Telendibaeva said the family's overtures to Chinese officials to see Celil in-person have been unsuccessful. Their period visits to him in prison were cut off about five years ago when Beijing first cracked down on Muslim Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province, rounding them up into prison camps, citing the need to fight terrorism.

Telendibaeva added she hasn't heard much recently from Canadian officials about the state of her husband's case.

Celil's supporters had hoped he would be part of a deal to free Kovrig and Spavor and ahead of election day called for the winning party to appoint a special envoy to win his freedom.

Speaking Tuesday afternoon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked the public servants, diplomats and officials who "worked unbelievably hard" to secure the release of the two Michaels, and gave a nod to other countries who lined up to pressure the Chinese government.

Among those nations was the United States. Days before their release, President Joe Biden pressed Xi in a phone call to release Spavor and Kovrig.

Asked why the government hasn't been successful at securing Celil's release, Trudeau said Spavor and Kovrig were detained for political reasons, which galvanized public opinion in Canada and around the world.

"We were able to demonstrate that we are a country of the rule of law, and we never flinched on applying the fundamental rules of our justice system," Trudeau said.

"We will continue to advocate for people who are wrongly imprisoned around the world as we have for many years as we will continue to."

Unlike Spavor and Kovrig, Canadian consular officials haven't been able to meet with Celil because China doesn't recognize his dual Canadian citizenship, obtained in 2005.

Jeremy Paltiel, an expert on Canada-China relations from Carleton University in Ottawa, said Celil's case would be tougher to resolve because China isn't detaining him as a Canadian.

Some Uyghur activists have been paroled from Chinese prisons, but subject to strict conditions, Paltiel said. The same could happen to Celil, he said, but it is unlikely he would be free to speak or even come home to Canada.

"I'm not optimistic on that score, and in fact, we don't even know if he's alive," Paltiel said. "That's the sad tragedy."

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

Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

Canadian indigenous rights campaigner among winners of "Alternative Nobel"


COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The Right Livelihood Award — known as the “Alternative Nobel” — was awarded Wednesday to three activists and an organization working across the globe to empower communities in areas ranging from child protection to environmental defense.


The Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation, which awards the prize, said that “in the face of the worsening climate crisis, powerful governmental and corporate interests, and even a terrorist threat, the 2021 Laureates prove that solidarity is key to a better future for all.”

The winners include Indigenous rights campaigner Freda Huson of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in B-C, who was awarded for "her fearless dedication to reclaiming her people’s culture and defending their land against disastrous pipeline projects.”

The foundation also recognized Marthe Wandou, a gender and peace activist who has worked to prevent sexual violence against girls since the 1990s in the Lake Chad area of Cameroon, and to care for its victims.

Russian environmental campaigner Vladimir Slivyak was honored for helping to ignite grassroots opposition to the coal and nuclear industries in the country. He co-founded Ecodefense, which it described as one of Russia's leading environmental organizations.

Finally, the India-based Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment, or LIFE, uses the law and legal processes to empower often vulnerable communities and help them stand up against powerful interests and have a voice in the decision-making process, the foundation said.

In a statement, Ole von Uexkull, head of the Right Livelihood, said the four laureates “are courageous mobilisers who show what peoples’ movements can achieve.”

Created in 1980, the annual Right Livelihood Award honors efforts that the prize founder, Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, felt were being ignored by the Nobel prizes.

The winners will each receive prize money of 1 million kronor ($115, 520) and will be honored during a virtual award ceremony on Dec. 1.

The foundation said that a record number of 206 nominees from 89 countries were considered in 2021. Recipients of the Right Livelihood Award in recent years have included Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, U.S. civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson and imprisoned Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.

The Associated Press

Annamie Paul leaves a struggle ‘for the soul’ of the Green Party

Annamie Paul says there’s a fight over the future of the Green Party, and she’s not up for any more punches.


On Monday morning, after months of infighting and a federal election campaign that saw the party’s support drop to 2.3 per cent of the popular vote from the 6.5 per cent it recorded in 2019, Paul announced she would begin the process of stepping down as leader.

“Please know this was not easy. It has been extremely painful, it has been the worst period of my life in many respects,” Paul said Monday.

Paul said she broke the glass ceiling but didn’t realize how much glass she’d have to crawl over as a result. She said by the time she reached the debate stage, she was “spitting up blood.”

“There is a struggle that is going on for the soul of the party,” she said, following months of infighting that led to accusations of racism and sexism, and eventually spilled into the courts, reportedly costing the party about $100,000 in July, and another $100,000 set aside for August’s legal fees.

Speaking to her detractors, Paul said they may take comfort in her departure, but that there were “many more people like me than there are you … and I will look to those other people to take up the baton, and to move the party in the direction that I still believe it can go in.”

University of Prince Edward Island political science professor Don Desserud says it’s important to keep in mind that a small party taking a big tumble isn’t as bad as it looks.

“The 'collapse' of the Green Party is not equivalent to what would happen if the NDP collapsed or the Conservatives or the Liberals,” he said. “There's a huge difference, and the huge difference is the psychological blow that comes from when you're a major party — or even a strong opposition party — and you believe that in one more election or two, you're going to get back in power.

“The overall vote looks much worse, but they didn't have that far to fall, and so, therefore, the pain is not nearly as strong.”

When the dust settled, the Greens’ seat count held at two, but with significant asterisks. Elizabeth May was the only incumbent Green to be re-elected. Paul Manly lost his re-election in Nanaimo-Ladysmith, and Mike Morrice of Kitchener Centre won his seat in a contest where the incumbent Liberal candidate stepped down over sexual harassment allegations.

On top of that, nationally, the Green Party didn’t crack 400,000 votes with Paul steering the ship, representing a far cry from the nearly 1.2 million Green votes in 2019. It didn’t help the party fielded only 252 candidates out of the 338 it could have.

In 2019, climate advocacy group 350 called for an alliance between the NDP and the Greens to elect climate champions, and this year, it endorsed candidates it believed to be strong on climate. May, Manly, and Malpeque candidate Anna Keenan were the only Greens to land an endorsement from 350 this year, leaving Paul noticeably absent.

The group’s Canada campaigns director Amara Possian said the Green Party should use this opportunity to reorient itself around realistic goals.

“They aren't going to become the governing party, certainly not on the timeline that's needed to tackle the climate emergency,” she said. “So whoever runs (for leader) needs a plan for how to advance their agenda that goes beyond electing just a few more MPs.

“The Green Party needs to be looking at the kind of power they have access to. What are their resources? Who are their people? Where do they have influence?

“This is an opportunity to sit down and say … How can we turn what we have into the power that we need in order to make the change that we want?” she said.

Pointing to the recent German election where the Greens are expected to play kingmaker in a coalition government, Possian said the Canadian Greens need to be realistic that that type of opportunity is unlikely to be available in a first-past-the-post system.

“What if they stopped trying to win in this game that is rigged and instead turned their entire movement into a mass movement pushing for climate action and proportional representation?” she said.

A similar question was on the mind of Green Party members during last year’s leadership race that saw Paul narrowly beat Dimitri Lascaris, a Montreal-based eco-socialist.

“Even if we hadn't gone through this very difficult period where we've seen a precipitous drop in our support nationally … we would still be a long way away from having any realistic prospect of even being part of a coalition government, let alone winning a majority of the seats,” Lascaris said. “So, as Greens, we must ask ourselves this question.”

He says the main contribution the party can make in the time frame to meaningfully deal with the climate crisis is expanding the boundaries of political debate. By that, he largely means challenging the capitalist economic system.

“One thing that's abundantly clear is a system … designed to maximize the profits of a small number of persons, at the expense of the planet and the vast majority of the human population, is going to end up destroying the planet,” he said. “So we have to have a conversation in this country about a dramatic transformation of the economic system.

“I have no illusions just expanding the boundaries of political debate is enough, but if we're not even starting with that, it's a certainty reforms will never occur.”

John Woodside, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

After government pledge of 'best summer ever,' COVID swamps Alberta hospitals, premier

THE UNITED CALGARY PARTY  OPENED ALBERTA FOR THE CALGARY STAMPEDE A SUPER SPREADER EVENT

By Nia Williams and Rod Nickel 1 day ago

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Premier Jason Kenney promised Albertans the "best summer ever" when he lifted most COVID-19 public health restrictions on July 1, but a surge in infections has overwhelmed the province's hospitals and left him fighting to save his political career.

The western Canadian province is often called "the Texas of the North" for its oil and gas wealth, cowboy culture and conservative, independent mindset.

As in Texas, COVID-19 has run rife in Alberta, which has the highest rate of active infections among Canada's 10 provinces, at nearly four times the national average. It and neighboring Saskatchewan also have the country's lowest vaccination rates.

The fourth wave of the coronavirus has left Alberta's healthcare system teetering on the brink of collapse, with little respite in sight.

Intensive care units in Alberta are 84% full, according to the latest update, even with nearly 200 "surge" beds added, close to the 90% level at which critical care triage protocols kick in, forcing doctors to ration patient care and prioritize those with the best chance of survival.

"Our job is to save lives, not choose who gets to live and die," said Shazma Mithani, an emergency doctor at Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital and the Stollery Children's Hospital.

"We are in the absolute worst situation we have ever been in, and it was entirely preventable, all of it."

The only reason intensive care units have room for new patients each day is because people already there are dying, said Verna Yiu, chief executive of Alberta Health Services.

Kenney apologized on Sept. 15 for mishandling the pandemic and imposed a requirement for proof of vaccination to enter certain businesses. He got Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a frequent political foe, to agree to provide military help to airlift patients to other provinces.

POPULIST SENTIMENT

Kenney, 53, tapped into Alberta's populist streak when after years as a Cabinet minister in Ottawa, he returned west to lead the newly created United Conservative Party (UCP) and win the 2019 provincial election.

In July, the province lifted nearly all restrictions in time for the Calgary Stampede rodeo, one of Canada's most popular tourist draws. The following month, the UCP printed "Best Summer Ever" ball caps, even as cases spiked and Kenney disappeared on vacation.


He returned in September to offer unvaccinated Albertans a C$100 cash incentive to get inoculated and unveil a vaccine passport system, despite previously promising that would never happen.

Kenney replaced his health minister, but many Albertans remain furious.

Some political commentators blamed a dip in Conservative support in last week's federal election on frustrations with Kenney, once tipped as a potential federal leader of the party.

"I think the only way for the UCP to survive is for Jason Kenney to go," said Drew Barnes, an independent member of Alberta's legislative assembly, who was kicked out of the UCP caucus in May after calling for the premier's resignation.

Last week, a number of UCP lawmakers publicly criticized Kenney. Facing a caucus revolt, he agreed to a leadership review in the spring, bringing it forward from next autumn. The next provincial election is in 2023, but many voters want Kenney gone before then.

Kenney did not respond to a request for comment but told a radio show on Sunday: "We have been hit hard with this fourth wave primarily because we went into this with the lowest vaccination rate in Canada." He also rejected calls for a "hard lockdown" to stem the rise in cases.

"Kenney has bought himself some time but he's now operating with a sword over his head," said Tom McIntosh, professor of political science at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan.

SASKATCHEWAN ALSO STRUGGLING

Alberta and Saskatchewan fueled skepticism about the seriousness of the pandemic from the start, with mixed messages that sometimes urged people to stay home and at other times urged them to go out and support local business, said McIntosh.

Saskatchewan, whose right-leaning premier, Scott Moe, has mirrored Kenney's approach to the pandemic, is also buckling under a fourth wave as intensive care beds filled up and its only children's hospital began admitting adult COVID-19 patients.

But Moe is not facing similar backlash within his party. His Saskatchewan Party formed 24 years ago, unlike the UCP, which is only 4 years old and prone to conflicts between its center-right moderates and far-right rural members.

Moe has blamed unvaccinated people for driving up infections.

During the spring wave, Alberta and Saskatchewan pulled out all the stops to manage patients, recalling retired medical staff and double-shifting others, before vaccines were expected to end the pandemic.

Now staff are burned out, said Alexander Wong, an infectious disease physician at Regina General Hospital.

"That is just soul-crushing for a lot of people," said Wong, who is calling for a lockdown. "We're basically right up to our chins now."

(Reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary, Alberta, and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Poll suggests most Canadians pessimistic about fighting climate change

Most Canadians aren't optimistic about humanity's chances of fighting climate change, a new survey suggests.

But that attitude has to change before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, said Megan Leslie of the World Wildlife Fund, which commissioned the online Environics poll.

"That's what keeps me up at night," said Leslie.

"People in Canada have environmental anxiety but a lot of them think we've gone too far, that we can't reverse those impacts. People don't understand what solutions look like."

The poll, which queried 1,000 Canadians in late August, found that they worried about their environmental future.

It found 67 per cent of respondents were at least somewhat pessimistic about the planet. Almost as many — 65 per cent — believe the Earth's climate is at a tipping point and that time to act is short.

Fourteen per cent believe it's already too late.

The polling industry's professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

Sarah Roberton of Environics said respondents in its survey reflected the overall Canadian population as closely as possible.

She also said that while the survey echoed other work the company has done in the past, the pessimism of the responses stood out.

"That really struck me," Roberton said. "In general, what we see is that Canadians tend toward optimism."

Roberton suggested that while environmental challenges such as climate change and species loss are front and centre with the public, talk about solutions isn't. She said the survey also showed that 80 per cent of Canadians couldn't say what a nature-based solution — planting trees to absorb carbon, for example — consists of.

"Canadians see the challenges of climate and biodiversity in high relief," Roberton said. "They don't see the solutions with that same degree of focus."

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, Leslie admitted — pessimists don't act, but action reduces pessimism.

"It's incredibly important that we take action. It's equally important to show Canadians the possibilities, to show the solutions that are possible."

Leslie said she hopes to use the survey to steer the conversation to what can be done. Measures such as planting trees, restoring and protecting wetlands and bringing depleted landscapes back to life can help, she said.

"Nature is a solution. One-third of our global greenhouse gas emissions come from the destruction of nature — when we drain those wetlands or dig up that coastline."

Her group plans to restore at least one million hectares of damaged landscape to its former state, bringing back habitat for wild animals and sequestering carbon in the soils and plants. It plans to help "steward" another million hectares, doing what it can to keep that landscape healthy.

The World Wildlife Fund said it can reduce Canadian carbon emissions by 30 million tonnes just by supporting and implementing nature-based climate solutions.

It can be hard to imagine that individual actions add up to much, said Leslie. But that's the only thing that ever does.

"There are a lot of things chipping away at that sense of 'we' and weakening those bonds," she said. "It was important to us to send that message that you can be a part of something bigger."

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

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Amazon plans a pay cut of up to 23% for hourly workers who guide trucks in and out of its UK delivery stations

insider@insider.com (Isobel Asher Hamilton) 1 day ago

 Amazon's yard marshals in the UK are facing a big pay cut. Ronny Hartmann/picture alliance via Getty Images

Amazon is set to cut pay for some UK yard marshals, the people who guide vehicles in and out of Amazon facilities.

Insider spoke to four yard marshals who said they were facing hourly pay cuts of up to 23%.

Amazon said the marshals had a "number of options," including taking supervisor jobs.

Amazon is set to slash pay by as much as 23% for some of its UK yard marshals, the people who manage the hundreds of trucks and drivers that arrive at Amazon delivery stations and warehouses every day.

Insider spoke to four yard marshals in three UK locations who face the pay cut. Three of them requested anonymity, fearing reprisal from Amazon.

Two of the marshals said they were told in July that their hourly wage would drop from £13 ($17.80) to £10 ($13.70) per hour, starting in October - a 23% cut. A third worker also said their hourly wage would fall by £3 ($4.11).

Owen Williams, a night-shift yard marshal at Amazon's delivery station near Bristol, UK, told Insider he had worked for Amazon since 2019. He said his colleagues told him in August that his pay would soon be slashed from £15.45 ($21.15) an hour to £12.40 ($16.98) an hour - a cut of nearly 20%.

Williams told Insider that a manager didn't confirm the cut until he demanded a one-to-one meeting.

One of the marshals Insider spoke to said their current pay was just enough to pay for food, car insurance, and their phone bill. "I'm looking to save to get a mortgage and I'm getting married as well. So that has to be put off for this."

An Amazon spokesman said the company was discussing the proposed pay cut with yard marshals at delivery stations, where items are loaded up and shipped out on last-mile delivery.

Marshals at fulfilment centres, which are Amazon warehouses, or sorting centers, where Amazon orders are sorted by destination and loaded onto trucks, were already paid less and would not be affected by the proposed pay cut, he said.

He said Amazon permanently employed more than 200 yard marshals at UK delivery stations. He did not say how many temporary yard marshals worked for the company. Two of the people Insider spoke to were temporary agency workers.

The proposed cut would align the UK with the company's pay structure in the rest of Europe, where yard marshals make the same as warehouse workers, he said. All affected marshals were being offered a "number of options," including supervisor jobs at their current pay rate or alternative roles, he said.

Amazon's spokesman said temporary workers had the option to apply for permanent roles, too. "The options available to them also include the new supervisory role, Yard Marshalls in the revised role, or an alternative role within Amazon, at sites where vacancies exist," he said.

The yard marshals Insider spoke to said Amazon wasn't offering enough supervisor roles to go around.

Williams, who was made a permanent employee in February 2021, told Insider that out of more than ten marshals at his facility, only two supervisor roles were on offer. Anther yard marshal in a separate location said that out of ten yard marshals, three were offered the supervisor role.

Williams added that the supervisor roles on offer at his facility were only for day shifts, and would pay less than his current night-shift role.

Amazon's spokesman said that although Williams was a permanent employee, his yard marshal role was a rolling "step-up" contract that ended on October 3. Williams told Insider his contract lasted three months at a time, and that he'd been a yard marshal on this contract since May 2019.

"I used to love the place, and now I hate it," he said.

GOOD NEWS

All miners safe after rescue out of mine near Sudbury, Ont.

SUDBURY, Ont. — Thirty-nine miners who had been trapped underground in northern Ontario have returned to the surface safe, the company that owns the mine said Wednesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Vale said the rescue operation at Totten Mine near Sudbury, Ont., is complete.

"I'd like to congratulate our rescue team," said Vale CEO Eduardo Bartolomeo in a statement.

"Bringing our 39 employees home safe and healthy was our top priority and we're glad that our emergency plans and procedures worked to deliver that outcome. All the employees are safe now and deserve our deep respect for their perseverance and strong will."

The workers became trapped in the mine on Sunday when a scoop bucket being sent underground detached and blocked the mine shaft.

Some of the miners were trapped as deep as 1,200 metres below the surface, the company said.

They had to scale a series of ladders to climb out of the mine and were helped along by a rescue crew.

The rescue operation began on Monday night.

A team of 58 responders from the company's rescue team and the Ontario Mine Rescue agency helped the trapped workers through their long trek up the ladder system, the company said.

"This is tremendous news flowing from very difficult circumstances," Bartolomeo said from the mine.

"All of us at Vale were focused on and committed to the safe return of our employees underground."

Bartolomeo said the company will launch an investigation into what happened "so that the company can learn from it and take steps to ensure it never happens again."

Vale said the workers stayed in underground "refuge stations" and had access to food, water and medicine before climbing out.

The province's Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development said an inspection team will investigate the incident.

Totten Mine opened in 2014 in Worthington, Ont., and produces copper, nickel and precious metals. It employs about 200 people.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2021.