As misinformation campaign against transgender rights intensifies, Ottawa must act

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The federal government needs to turn to Supreme Court to  counter anti-transgender activism

Charlotte Dalwood · for CBC Opinion · Posted: Oct 14, 2021 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a ceremony in which the transgender and pride flags were raised on Parliament Hill in 2017. According to law student Charlotte Dalwood, Trudeau's government needs to act to counter an attack on the rights of transgender Canadians. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

This column is an opinion from Charlotte Dalwood, a juris doctor student at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Law. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

There is an increasingly public campaign underway to strip transgender Canadians of their constitutional and human rights. The newly re-elected Liberal government needs to make countering it a priority.

Charter protects trans rights

Canada's gender minorities currently benefit from a wealth of legal protections.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees to "every individual" equality "before and under the law" and freedom from discrimination "based on … sex." 

Both courts and human rights tribunals have long recognized that anti-transgender discrimination is a form of sex-based discrimination because it targets people who experience discontinuity between the sex they were assigned at birth and the sex with which they identify. This means that governments cannot act in a way that unfairly disadvantages transgender Canadians without running afoul of the charter's equality provisions.

Federal and provincial human rights legislation extends these protections to the private sector. For example, the Alberta Human Rights Act prohibits landlords in the province from refusing a prospective tenant on the basis of that person's "gender, gender identity, and gender expression." And the Ontario Human Rights Code similarly prohibits employers in provincially regulated industries like retail from targeting employees for harassment because of their "gender identity [or] gender expression."

Misinformation campaign

But these protections are under attack.

Across the country, anti-transgender rights advocates are trying to convince Canadians that guaranteeing equality to gender minorities is not only unconstitutional, but it also discriminates against and harms cisgender women — that is, women who were assigned female at birth. And their misinformation campaign, disguised as a defense of women's "sex-based rights," has become especially intense in the past year.

The national organization "Canadian Women's Sex-Based Rights" (caWsbar) is representative of the arguments being made against transgender-inclusive laws and policies.

They falsely claim that the charter's equality provision covers cisgender but not transgender women because it lists "sex" and not "gender" as a protected ground. They then argue, on this basis, that the inclusion of "gender" in human rights legislation is unlawful; indeed that governments have a duty, instead, to preserve and promote sex segregation.

Translating these assertions into action, four anti-transgender rights groups staged protests in Edmonton and Calgary on May 2 and June 13, respectively, against efforts to uphold the rights of transgender women.

Under the leadership of groups like caWsbar and We the Females, protests have also occurred at prisons across the country (most recently on Sept. 18) against Correctional Service Canada's policy of taking transgender inmates' gender identities into account when deciding where to house them.

Pedestrians cross a transgender pride crosswalk in Charlottetown. According to law student Charlotte Dalwood, it's time for the federal government to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether the charter protects transgender Canadians’ rights to equality and freedom from discrimination. (Tom Steepe/CBC)

These groups are deliberately misreading the charter in an effort to legitimize their legally baseless assault on human rights legislation and the transgender people that legislation protects.

Allowing this misinformation campaign to proceed unchecked has two main risks.

The first is that members of the gender minorities under attack will become less likely to access the legal supports to which they are entitled when their rights are violated, out of the mistaken fear that the justice system will not be on their side.

The second is that anti-transgender discrimination will increase in frequency and intensity because those opposed to transgender rights will wrongly believe that such discrimination is consistent with constitutional law.

Neither risk is tolerable if transgender people are to be assured of their full and equal place in Canadian society.

Time to engage reference procedure

Fortunately, the federal government already has a way to limit the potential damage of legal misinformation campaigns.

The reference procedure allows the federal cabinet to obtain the Supreme Court's opinion on "important questions of law or fact," including questions about how to interpret the charter and whether particular pieces of federal or provincial legislation pass constitutional muster. Parliament does not need to be consulted before cabinet poses its questions to the court, an advantage during periods of minority rule.

This means that the newly re-elected Liberal government could easily ask the Supreme Court to weigh in on the two questions that anti-transgender rights advocates have raised, namely: whether the charter protects transgender Canadians' rights to equality and freedom from discrimination, and whether similar protections in human rights legislation are constitutionally sound.

Given prior jurisprudence, there is little doubt that, if the Supreme Court took up these questions, its answers to both would be a resounding "yes." 

This response would, technically speaking, be merely advisory. Practically speaking, however, Supreme Court reference decisions are treated as binding by governments and lower courts.

The legal value of having such a ruling on the books would thus be significant, not least because it would ward off potential future attempts to enshrine anti-transgender interpretations of the charter into law.

But so, too, would be the symbolic value of having the country's highest court declare unequivocally that transgender people can count on the justice system to guarantee their place in Canadian society. It would send a clear message to anti-transgender rights advocates that, while they are free to hold whatever views they like, their campaign to weaponize constitutional law against gender minorities has no place in Canada's courts.

The newly re-elected Liberal government just needs to give the Supreme Court the opportunity to do so.

ABOT THE AUTHOR

Charlotte Dalwood

Charlotte Dalwood is a juris doctor student at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law.

The largest copper mines in the world by capacity
Govind Bhutada - Visual Capitalist | October 13, 2021 | 

The Largest Copper Mines in the World

Copper is one of the most-used metals in the world, for good reason.


Global copper production has expanded with populations and economies, especially in China, which consumed 54% of the world’s refined copper in 2020. Copper’s demand comes from various industries, ranging from construction to renewable energy.

But before copper reaches its array of end-uses, miners have to extract and refine from deposits within the ground. So where are the world’s largest copper mines, and just how large are they?

Types of Copper Deposits

The location of mines ultimately depends on the occurrence and discovery of copper deposits. There are two main types of copper deposits:

Porphyry deposits:
These are copper ore bodies formed from hydrothermal fluids from magma chambers that lie deep below the deposit.

Sediment-hosted deposits:
These deposits are formed when copper-bearing fluids mix with permeable sedimentary and volcanic rocks.

Copper is primarily sourced from porphyry deposits, which are concentrated in the Americas. Therefore, many of the world’s largest copper mines operate in this region.
Top 20 Copper Mines by Capacity

North, South, and Central America collectively host 15 of the 20 largest copper mines. These three regions combine the capacity for nearly 36% of global copper production in 2020.

The Escondida Mine in Chile is by far the world’s largest copper mine. Its annual capacity of 1.4 million tonnes means that it can produce more copper than the second and third-largest mines combined.

Porphyry copper deposits are often characterized by lower grade ores and are mined in open pits. As a result, some of the top copper mines are also among the world’s largest open pits. The Bingham Canyon Mine (seen below) in Utah, United States, is the deepest open pit with a depth of 1.2 km. It’s also the largest man-made excavation on Earth, spanning 4 km wide.

Chuquicamata and Escondida are the second and third-deepest open pits, respectively.

Indonesia’s Grasberg Mine is another notable name on this list. It produces both gold and copper on a massive scale and has the world’s largest known reserve of gold and the second-largest reserve of copper.

Overall, the top 20 mines have the capacity to produce nearly nine million tonnes of copper annually—representing 44% of global production in 2020. However, with demand for refined copper expected to rise 31% between 2020 and 2030, these existing sources of supply might not be enough.
Falling Grades, Rising Demand: New Mines on the Block?

According to the International Energy Agency, average copper ore grades in Chile have declined by 30% in the last 15 years. Since Chile’s mines produce more than one-fourth of the world’s copper, these falling ore grades could be a cause for concern—especially with a deficit looming over the market for refined copper.

New copper mining projects are becoming more valuable and it wouldn’t be surprising to see fresh names on the list of the largest copper mines. For example, the Kamoa-Kakula Mine, which started production in May 2021, is expected to churn out 800,000 tonnes of copper annually after expansion. That would make it the second-largest copper mine by capacity.

(This article first appeared in the Visual Capitalist Elements)

Methane plume above New Mexico gas wells spotted from space

by Josh Saul and Gerson Freitas Jr.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A large cloud of planet-warming methane was detected in the natural gas-rich San Juan Basin in New Mexico by geoanalytics company Kayrros SAS.

A large number of gas companies operate wells and pipelines in the area where a satellite saw the billowing greenhouse gas. The plume's shape indicates that it may come from several mid-sized sources rather than a big one, according to Kayrros.

The methane appeared to be above a gas well operated by Hilcorp Energy Co. as well as near gas pipelines operated by companies including Enterprise Products Partners LP and Kinder Morgan Inc. There are also coal mines in the area that could be a source of the plume, Kayrros said.

Kinder Morgan said it can't verify the plume is due to a release on its system, and that it has "practices in place to limit natural gas releases that occur during planned and unplanned maintenance activities." An Enterprise representative said the company didn't have any assets at the coordinates provided by Kayrros. Hilcorp didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Stopping intentional releases and accidental leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas, could do more to slow climate change than almost any other single measure. Two dozen countries on Monday joined the U.S. and the European Union's pact to pare global methane emissions by 30% before the end of the decade. Methane has more than 80 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over the short term.

Kayrros relied on a Sept. 21 observation from the European Space Agency and estimated an emissions rate of 39 tons of methane an hour was needed to generate the release.

Representatives for the New Mexico Environment Department and the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department didn't have immediate comment.

Monitoring methane emissions from gas pipelines

ANCIENT ENGINEERING MARVELS | CULTURAL TRADITIONS | CANADA | NORTH AMERICA

An underwater mystery on Canada's coast

(Image credit: Diane Selkirk)


By Diane Selkirk

BBC

14th October 2021

Tens of thousands of wooden stakes poking up from British Columbia's shoreline have smashed a long-held stereotype of Canada's First Nation people.

At the lowest tides, Canada's Comox estuary exposes a nearly forgotten story: the nubs of more than 150,000 wooden stakes are spread out across the intertidal zone, forming the remnants of hundreds of ancient fish traps. At peak use, it's believed the industrial-level installation provided food security for an estimated 10,000-12,000 K'ómoks People, the traditional inhabitants of the bountiful, mountain-fringed Comox Valley, located on the east side of Vancouver Island on the edge of the Salish Sea.

Until recently, the sophisticated technology had been overlooked by Western science. Even though the stakes, which are thumb-sized in diameter in the shallows and increase to the size of small tree trunks in deeper water, are visible from busy shore-side roads, no-one thought much about them. For Cory Frank, manager of the K'ómoks Guardian Watchmen, a role that oversees all aspects of environmental stewardship for the coastal Nation, the stakes were just something he grew up with, playing and fishing among them at low tide.

When he asked elders about them, they didn't have much information.

Frank says this began to change almost two decades ago. In 2002, Nancy Greene, then an undergraduate anthropology student, began researching the stakes for her senior thesis. Greene (now a research archaeologist) wanted to know what they were for. So, working with a team of volunteers, she began heading out at low tide and spent months recording the locations of 13,602 exposed tips of Douglas fir and western red cedar stakes. At the same time, she began asking the K'ómoks elders what she was looking at.

When she plotted them out, taking into account the oral history, the results were astounding. The stakes formed a constellation outlining one of the most extensive and sophisticated Indigenous fishing operations ever found.


Since 2014, members of W̱SÁNEĆ Nations have been restoring two clam gardens in partnership with the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve (Credit: Ian Reid)

Greene realised that the 150,000 to 200,000 stakes, representing more than 300 fish traps, filled the shallow wetland. Radiocarbon dating placed the ages to range from 1,300 to just more than 100 years old. For Frank, the most impressive thing about the system is the precision of the designs. "My ancestors were amazing engineers," he said.

He explained that once he started studying how it all worked, he realised the traps are based on a deep knowledge of fish behaviour and the region's large tidal ranges. Laid out in two styles – one heart shaped and one chevron shaped – the traps were lined with removable woven-wood panels that let water through but not the fish. During a rising tide, the fish followed the centreline of the trap, which mimicked the shoreline they'd naturally follow, through an entrance and into the enclosure. When the tide receded; the fish inside the trap were stranded in shallow pools.

Depending on the trap style and season, the stewards of the traps could target either herring or salmon, and manage how many salmon went on to spawn in the local creek systems. By doing this they were able to ensure they only took enough fish to meet community and trade needs. If a fish run looked weak, they could opt not to fish it at all.

Answering the question about how such an elegant and sustainable fishing technology fell into forgotten disuse requires an understanding of some of the darkest parts of Canadian history. In what's now known as British Columbia, dozens of coastal nations thrived for thousands of years. But with the arrival of explorers, traders and settlers, disease and law were used to forcibly separate Indigenous people from their culture and land.

"When 80 to 90% of the population died, they lost their knowledge holders and the intricate skills and protocols that made these technologies work," said Anne Salomon, an applied marine ecologist who has been working alongside coastal Indigenous communities for 15 years.

Over thousands of years, they'd developed complex food production systems requiring the understanding of ecology, oceanography and geomorphology

Salomon explained that the Indian Act of 1876 forcibly removed people to reserves and cultural practices were outlawed. People lost physical access to their fish traps and sea gardens. "Over thousands of years they'd developed complex food production systems requiring the understanding of ecology, oceanography and geomorphology," she said. "When they lost agency over their land, they lost part of their identity."

Beaches with lots of shell fragments or white shell middens are signs of nearby clam / sea gardens (Credit: Diane Selkirk)

While the scientific community has been expressing surprise over the extensive nature of traditional coastal mariculture (information that's smashed the long-held stereotype that this was a population of unsophisticated hunter-gathers), Nicole Norris, a knowledge holder for the Hul'q'umi'num Nation and an aquaculture specialist, says the communities themselves had never forgotten. "These were our grocery stores," she said.

What has surprised Norris over the years she's spent exploring the British Columbia coast is how the technologies differ from nation to nation yet are perfectly adapted to each location. While the K'ómoks People used stakes with lattice fences to manage and sustain what was once one of the region's most productive fish runs, in her own territory around the Gulf Islands, the Hul'q'umi'num and W̱SÁNEĆ People stacked rocks "like Tetris" to build low walls running parallel to the shore. These walls were designed to trap silt, which changed the slope of the beach to create "sea gardens" – large, flat inter-tidal areas that, once cleared of large rocks, were carefully tended to create the ideal habitat for clams, crab, sea cucumbers, rockfish, octopus, whelks and other marine life.

In the winding inlets and islets of the Broughton Archipelago Provincial Park, the technology changes again. Here, the Kwakwaka'wakw People built monumental rock walls, large enough to be seen from space, to create the ideal water depth to encourage clam growth in the shallow bays. Norris says they also built the rock walls into spiral-shaped gardens that created flattened areas that could take advantage of the region’s unique swirling currents.

Still further north, in the inner waterways and islands that make up part of Heiltsuk territory, Haíɫzaqv archaeologist Q̓íx̌itasu, also known as Elroy White, says his ancestors built stone-walled sea/clam gardens (called λápac̓i) and a wide variety of stone fish traps (called Ckvá) that were specifically designed depending on if they were "on a tidal flat, or in a creek or at the mouth of a river".

"They were built so solidly that they wouldn't fall apart by actions of a river, or by the tide or if a canoe hit it," he said.

For his thesis, "Heiltsuk Stone Fish Traps", White combined archaeology with oral history to gradually unravel the interconnection of rock-walled fish traps and his ancestors' relationship to salmon. He explained that when he began visiting the sites, he saw how the ancient fish trap technology and resource management system didn't just shape the tidal landscape, they shaped his culture and heritage.

A Haida Gwaii sea garden has two rock mounds in its centre that attracted octopus and made it easy for Indigenous people to collect dinner (Credit: Diane Selkirk)

"I noticed a difference between archaeological and Heiltsuk views of the trap sites," he wrote in his thesis. He says traditional scientific research emphasised empirical data such as length, width and height and missed the human element; "the important relationships my ancestors had with the environment, with salmon and with the fishing technology designed to capture them."

The idea that you can't separate Indigenous culture from the lands that shaped them has been slowly taking hold in the scientific community on British Columbia's coast. Norris says that for a long time her people had no access to part of their lands because "an arbitrary line was drawn making it a national park". But after several rock walls were spotted at low tide in the Gulf Island National Park Reserve (GINPR) and the decision was made in 2014 to restore a couple of the gardens, Norris says that Parks Canada did something profound: "They asked for guidance from the First Nations."

In our tradition when you are learning something, you start with the oldest way possible

The abundance of even long-abandoned gardens found on British Columbia's coast is staggering. Research shows that the terraced gardens, which Indigenous people have been building for at least 5,000 years, are 150 to 300% more productive than wild beaches in producing littleneck and butter clams, as well as other marine organisms. Erin Slade, a marine ecologist with the GINPR's sea garden restoration project, says this indicates that the techniques once used to steward the gardens have a lot to teach us. While national park scientists, like Slade, could have attempted to reverse-engineer the sea gardens through science alone, they opted to reinstate traditional management and stewardship practices by inviting the W̱SÁNEĆ and Hul'q'umi'num Nations back to their lands.

"In our tradition when you are learning something, you start with the oldest way possible," said Norris. So on the first gathering at a clam garden just off of Salt Spring Island, she told everyone to put their science away, asked for guidance from the ancestors and started at the beginning: "This is how far you put your rake in. This is how wind or salinity or time of year affects the clams."

The moment Indigenous people returned to their sea gardens and fish traps was the moment the technology stopped being about the past and became about the future. In Heiltsuk territory, the fish traps are starting to support local tourism as a stop on virtual and in person cultural tours and there are plans to integrate more traditional fishing methods into community life. Today, Haíɫzaqv visit the sites as a sacred reminder of their grandparents and great grandparents' strong connection to the land and sea and all it has to teach them.

In the GINPR, Slade says other communities have begun using their research to reestablish their own gardens – an ecological boost not just for the beaches being managed, but for the overall abundance of sea life on the coast that the biomass in the gardens can support. Slade says the expected increase in marine life is important, but the most significant part of restoring sea gardens has been in reinvigorating the teaching relationships between elders and youth. "This knowledge has been generated over millennia of stewarding these places; it's something that was always meant to be passed on generation through generation."

Ancient Engineering Marvels is a BBC Travel series that takes inspiration from unique architectural ideas or ingenious constructions built by past civilisations and cultures across the planet.

 

Millstone operation is critical factor for zero-carbon goals

12 October 2021

The continued operation of Dominion's Millstone nuclear power plant beyond 2029 is a critical factor in how much more and how quickly Connecticut needs to procure new clean energy additions, the state's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has told policymakers in the state's newly released 2020 Integrated Resources Plan (IRP).

Millstone (Image: Dominion)

The latest IRP, a statutorily required recurring assessment of Connecticut's future electric supply needs and potential means to meet those needs, is also the state's first assessment of pathways to achieve a 100% zero-carbon electricity supply by 2040, as directed by Governor Ned Lamont in a 2019 Executive Order. There are  "multiple achievable pathways " to meet that target, it says in its Key Findings.

The two-unit 2088 MWe Millstone pressurised water reactor plant generates about 47% of Connecticut's electricity - and 90% of its carbon-free electricity - but had been at risk of retirement until the signature in 2019 of a long-term contract with state utilities for 9 million MWh of energy - until 2029. Preventing the retirement of the plant "saved the region from significant negative impacts on the region's electric grid with respect to fuel diversity, energy security, and grid reliability; avoided an estimated USD1.8 billion … in replacement costs that would have been borne by Connecticut ratepayers, and prevented regional carbon emissions from increasing by 20%," the IRP notes.

DEEP's IRP tests five scenarios against two different forecasts of electricity consumption trends: a Base case, in which electricity consumption continues on the existing trajectory based on current energy policies, and an Electrification case, in which the deployment of electric vehicles and building heating technology are assumed to triple by 2040. Four of the scenarios assume that Millstone will continue to be at risk at the end of its current contract and will retire when that contract ends in 2029, while one assumes that the state's contract with Millstone is extended.

The IRP scenarios in which the nuclear plant continues to operate in the period to 2040 - the so-called Millstone Extension scenarios - show continued operation of the plant would: reduce the total cost of meeting the 100% zero carbon target by offsetting the need for new incremental resources; allow the state of Connecticut to meet emissions reductions targets in all of the modelled years; and allow greater fossil fuel retirements across the region than other scenarios. Continued operation of Millstone would see 8.3 GW of regional fossil fuel retirements by 2040 under the Base case, and 8.7 GW regional fossil fuel retirements by 2040 under the Electrification case.

"Establishing a regional mechanism for valuing the reliability and zero carbon aspects of Millstone's electricity generation is one alternative to provide for the continued operation of this resource beyond 2029," the plan says.

If Millstone were to continue to operate beyond 2029, it should be supported regionally through a reformed wholesale market, or by "some other regional mechanism", the report notes. Although the modelling of the Millstone Extension scenarios assumes the current contract is extended, "this IRP does not recommend that Connecticut's electric ratepayers should take on that burden on behalf of the region again."

"Current energy markets are not producing significant investment in clean energy resources, causing Connecticut to have to procure, through state jurisdictional markets and mechanisms, the resources needed to meet the State's Renewable Portfolio Standard and other GHG emission reduction goals," the plan notes. "The wholesale market's overreliance on natural gas generation has placed Connecticut ratepayers at risk of paying unreasonable and duplicative costs for clean energy supply, and taking on additional costs to preserve fuel security in the region." It calls for Connecticut and the other states in the New England region to "drive" reform in the regional wholesale markets "to ensure they are meeting the needs of the states and their ratepayers, including Connecticut's need to meet emissions reduction goals and provide reliability at the lowest cost to ratepayers."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

CANADA

Is the solution to our labour shortage more foreign workers? Businesses say yes, others say it’s a way to fill vacancies without raising wages

By Jacob Lorinc

Business Reporter
Wed., Oct. 13, 2021

As worker shortages persist and government subsidies approach their end, a growing number of industry groups — largely in food services — are asking the federal government to let them host more temporary foreign workers to fill jobs.

Last month the Canadian Meat Council began lobbying the federal government to relax its limit on how many temporary foreign workers can work at a Canadian meat processor, asking for the current cap of 10 to 20 per cent of workers to be raised to 30 per cent.

Restaurants Canada, the national food-services industry association, has called on the government to increase federal funding for immigration of potential restaurant workers, and to extend work visas under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.


Already, in Quebec, the federal government has agreed to expand the program in certain hard-hit sectors, where employers will be allowed to increase their intake of temporary foreign workers in low-wage positions to 20 per cent, up from 10 per cent.

Economists and labour experts expect to see this kind of pressure grow in the coming months as employers with high job vacancies look to stay afloat post-pandemic.

The federal government’s key pandemic support programs are set to expire in a week, including the widely used Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy for businesses to cover worker salaries. Meanwhile, businesses in sectors like food services are facing a chronic shortage of workers that has pushed some employers to raise their wages to fill positions.

Soon enough, businesses that typically rely on cheap labour to fuel their operations could find themselves filing for bankruptcy if they can’t cover worker costs, said Philip Cross, a senior economist at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute.


“Those low-wage business models just aren’t going to work in this current environment. If wages go up, then prices are going to go up, and some of those businesses will go under,” Cross said.

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program has long been used as a controversial work-around for low-wage businesses to keep job vacancies low without raising wages. The program offers temporary, closed employment permits to a capped number of foreign workers who occupy low-skilled jobs in sectors where job vacancies are high, before returning to their country of origin.

The system has been the subject of several audits and investigations that have found rampant workplace abuse and safety hazard concerns that have brought into question the basic human rights afforded to migrant workers.

A federal audit in 2017 found that the program was rife with oversight problems that let lower-paid international workers take jobs that unemployed Canadians could fill, effectively allowing companies to build a business model on lower-than-legal wages.

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, says the program permits workers to be subject to exploitative conditions by tying their right to be in the country with an annual contract from a single employer.

“You can’t speak out against a bad boss without risking being made homeless, being kicked out of the country, or not being able to work for anyone else. The laws have constructed this precariousness,” Hussan said.

A recent analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that the sectors with the highest job-vacancy rates during the pandemic are also those with the lowest hourly wages. That includes food services and drinking places, accommodation services, crop production and the amusement and gambling industries.

“Those might be the sectors that turn to temporary foreign workers as a way of filling jobs without having to increase wages,” said David Macdonald, a senior economist with the CCPA and author of the analysis.

Canada’s meat processors are facing an average job-vacancy rate of more than 10 per cent, according to the Canadian Meat Council, as more than 4,000 butcher stations sit empty at production facilities countrywide.

The latest labour-force survey shows that employment in food services is 14.8 per cent below its pre-pandemic level, amounting to 180,000 workers who left their food-service positions in February 2020 and never returned.

The same CCPA analysis found that many of those workers left the industry altogether, opting for jobs with higher pay and stable hours in professional-services jobs in accounting offices or law firms.

“It’s more evident that the workers who used to work in food and accommodation simply aren’t there anymore. It’s not that they’re staying at home, it’s that they’ve moved onto other industries, and that could lead some of those employers to want to expand the temporary foreign workers program,” Macdonald said.

Jacob Lorinc is a Toronto-based reporter covering business for the Star. Reach him via email: jlorinc@thestar.ca

MORE GOOD NEWS NOT

Arctic Ocean's 'last ice area' may not survive the century

by Earth Institute at Columbia University

The Arctic Ocean and its projected Last Ice Area (outlined in red), north of Greenland and

 the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Purple cross-hatched portion of the Last Ice Area is

 Canada’s Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area. Black lines delineate exclusive economic 

zones of the Arctic nations. Credit: Adapted from Newton et al., Earth’s Future, 2021

With warming climate, summer sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking fast, and now consistently spans less than half the area it did in the early 1980s. This raises the question: It this keeps up, in the future will year-round sea ice—and the creatures who need it to survive—persist anywhere?

A new study addresses this question, and the results are daunting. The study targets a 1 million-square kilometer region north of Greenland and the coasts of the Canadian Archipelago, where year-round sea ice has traditionally been thickest, and thus likely to be most resilient. It says that under both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, by 2050 summer ice in this region will dramatically thin. Under the optimistic scenario, if carbon emissions can be brought to heel by then, some summer ice could persist indefinitely. However, under the pessimistic scenario, in which emissions continue on their current path, summer ice would disappear by 2100, along with creatures such as seals and polar bears. The study appears in the journal Earth's Future.

"Unfortunately, this is a massive experiment we're doing," said study coauthor Robert Newton, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "If the year-round ice goes away, entire ice-dependent ecosystems will collapse, and something new will begin."

Scientists have been pondering the fate of Arctic sea ice for decades. Around 2009, researchers including Newton's coauthors Stephanie Pfirman and L. Bruno Tremblay first coalesced around the idea of what they have called the Last Ice Area—the region where summer ice will likely make a last stand.

In winter, most of the Arctic Ocean surface freezes, and probably will for the foreseeable future, even as climate warms. Ice can grow up to a meter thick each winter, and if it survives one or more summers, it can reach several meters. In summer, some melting usually occurs, and scattered open-water areas appear. This helps winds and currents carry floating ice great distances in various gyres, including the overarching Transpolar Drift, which carries ice clockwise from off Siberia toward Greenland and Canada. Each year, some ice is expelled into the North Atlantic via straits between Greenland and Norway. But much of it gets driven against the Arctic's farthest-north coasts, along Greenland and the Canadian islands. Here, repeated inflows of ice can build layers and pressure ridges as high as 10 meters. Much of it will remain for 10 years or more before eventually breaking off and moving back off.

The result is a rich marine ecosystem. Along the edges and bottoms of multiyear ice, photosynthetic diatoms bloom and build up thick mats over time. These feed tiny animals living in and near the ice, who feed fish, who feed seals, who feed polar bears. Among other things, the thick, irregular topography provides ample hiding places for seal lairs, and ice caves for polar bears to winter over and raise their young. It also provides safe haven from humans, who can barely navigate here, even with icebreakers.

Sea ice north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. This photo was taken from an ice breaker

 just outside the projected Last Ice Area, which is almost impossible to navigate by ship. 

Credit: Robert Newton/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

Historically, most of the ice that ends up in the Last Ice Area has come from the continental shelves off Siberia via the Transpolar drift. Siberian ice also mixes with ice formed in the central Arctic Ocean, which also may travel into the Last Ice Area. But the ocean is now forming progressively thinner ice, which is melting faster in summer's increasingly open waters. As this trend progresses, the researchers say, this will starve the Last Ice Area in the next few decades. Some ice will continue to drift in from the central Arctic, and some will form locally, but neither will be enough to maintain current conditions.

By mid-century, under the researchers' low-emissions scenario, even ice from the central Arctic will wane, and thick, multiyear ice will become a thing of the past; locally formed summer ice will persist in the Last Ice Area, but only a meter thick. The good news: at least some seals, bears and other creatures may survive, as they currently do under similar summer conditions along western Alaska and parts of Hudson Bay. The bad news: under the higher-emissions scenario, by 2100, even the locally formed ice will give up the ghost in summer. There will be no more summer ice anywhere, and no ice-dependent ecosystems.

"This is not to say it will be a barren, lifeless environment," said Newton. "New things will emerge, but it may take some time for new creatures to invade." Fish, diatoms or other biota may come up from the North Atlantic, but it is not clear if they could survive there year round; it may be getting warmer, but the planet's rotation around the sun will not change, and any new occupants including photosynthetic organisms would have to deal with the long, sunless Arctic winter.

A bit of open water on the outskirts of the Last Ice Area; in background, the U.S. ice breaker

 Healy. Credit: Robert Newton/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

The researchers look on the bright side. Newton says that if the world can make enough progress toward curbing carbon in the atmosphere during the 21st century, the region could hang on long enough for temperatures to start going down again, and the Last Ice Area might start to regrow. One hopeful sign: in 2019 Canada established the 320,000-square kilometer Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area in the Inuit territory of Nunavut, spanning the middle third of the Last Ice Area. This protects against mining, transport and other development for five years while Canada considers permanent protection. The rest of the region lies within Canada's mining-friendly Northwest Territories, which so far has resisted declaring protection, and off Greenland, which has so far been noncommittal.

In any case, if the last ice area is to be preserved, say the researchers, it will require the formation of other marine protected areas across the Arctic. This, because the Arctic Ocean and its coasts are home to many billions of dollars in oil reserves and mineral deposits such as nickel and copper. As summer waters open up, there will be increasing pressure to dig, drill and open up transport corridors, and this might well export pollution, not ice, to the last ice area. Already the Russian oil company Rosneft has leases on some areas that traditionally have fed ice to the Last Ice Area.

"Spilled oil and industrial or agricultural contaminants have been identified as potential hazards," the researchers write.

Coauthor Stephanie Pfirman, previously at Lamont-Doherty, is now at Arizona State University; L. Bruno Tremblay is at McGill University. The study's other coauthor, Patricia DeRepentigny, is at the University of Colorado, BoulderLast ice-covered parts of summertime Arctic Ocean vulnerable to climate change

More information: Robert Newton et al, Defining the "Ice Shed" of the Arctic Ocean's Last Ice Area and Its Future Evolution, Earth's Future (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021EF001988

Provided by Earth Institute at Columbia University 

B.C. support for Canada’s oil pipeline project may be waning
By Cloe Logan | News | October 13th 2021

The federal government purchased the Trans Mountain Pipeline in 2018 for $4.5 billion. Photo by David Stanley via Wikimedia Commons

The public’s support for one of the federal government’s largest projects is diminishing, according to a new poll.

Over the past year, support for the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline has dropped seven per cent, says the poll by Vancouver-based polling firm, Research Co. Forty-five per cent of British Columbians said they agree with the federal government’s move to reapprove the project compared to last year when it was at 52 per cent.

The pipeline, built in the 1950s, was taken over by Texas-based Kinder Morgan in 2015, which then made plans to triple the exports of the existing operation, upping production to 890,000 barrels each day flowing from Alberta to the B.C. coast. The federal government purchased the pipeline in 2018 for $4.5 billion. The Trans Mountain expansion (TMX) is projected to cost $12.6 billion.

The interesting piece of the poll for Mario Canseco, president of Research Co., is that although support has gone down, opposition has remained almost the same as its poll results in 2020 and 2019. Thirty-four per cent of British Columbians say they oppose the project — the same as when Canseco and his team asked in 2019.

Recent news around TMX includes two dozen environmental groups calling on the pipeline’s remaining insurers to drop the project after 16 other insurers pulled out.

However, Canseco said TMX is not on the political stage like it used to be.

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Pandora Papers’ bombshells have MPs calling for action
By Natasha Bulowski | News, Politics, Ottawa Insider | October 12th 2021

“It's almost as if people are saying, ‘Is this thing still around? We haven't really heard much about this.’ And the activism is moving to other fronts — Site C, LNG, old-growth logging,” he said.

“It's kind of like we went from people who were moderately supportive to people who thought, 'I haven't heard anything about this project in a year, so maybe I'm undecided.'”

Fifty-five per cent said they didn’t think the federal government has been handling TMX well since purchasing it, but the majority (almost two-thirds) still think the project will create hundreds of jobs for British Columbians.

However, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation Sacred Trust Initiative found “British Columbia does not rely on the jobs created through the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. (TMX) promises that the pipeline would create 50 permanent jobs in British Columbia, and 40 in Alberta.”

Poll results are based on an online survey of 800 adults in British Columbia from Oct. 1 to Oct. 3. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender, and region in British Columbia. The margin of error — which measures sample variability — is plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Forty-five per cent of British Columbians said they agree with the federal government’s move to reapprove the Trans Mountain Pipeline, compared to last year, when it was at 52 per cent. #TMX

California to ban gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chainsaws, generators

One hour's use of a gas-powered leaf blower is equivalent to driving a car 1,700 kilometres in terms of emissions

Author of the article: Lynn Chaya

Publishing date: Oct 13, 2021 •

In an attempt to curb carbon emissions, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Oct. 9 outlawing the use of gas-powered lawn equipment, which is categorized as small off-road engines (SORE).

This includes lawn mowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers, pressure washers and generators.

The bill, AB 1346 , orders state regulators to halt the sale of new gas-powered SORE equipment by Jan. 1, 2024. Purchases made before the deadline may still be used by property owners and professional landscapers.

According to the California Air Resources Board (CARB), there are more small gas-powered off-road engines in California than cars, and they create more pollution. The number of them — 16.7 million — is approximately 21.9 per cent greater than cars, contributing more total nitrous oxide (NOx) and reactive organic gases (ROG) than passenger vehicles

Operating a commercial lawn mower for one hour emits as much pollution as driving a passenger car for about 483 kilometres. Similarly, an hour use of a leaf blower emits pollution comparable to driving a car for about 1,770 kilometres according to CARB statistics.

Due to regulations the agency put in place starting in 1990, small engines are 40 to 80 per cent cleaner today than they were before the start of the program. However, “total smog-forming emissions from small engines are projected to exceed those from passenger cars in the South Coast Air Basin because passenger car emissions will continue to decrease,” the board noted.

“By 2031, small engine emissions will be more than twice those from passenger cars.”

“It’s amazing how people react when they learn how much this equipment pollutes, and how much smog-forming and climate-changing emissions that small off-road engine equipment creates,” Assemblyman Marc Berman, author of the legislation said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“This is a pretty modest approach to trying to limit the massive amounts of pollution that this equipment emits, not to mention the health impact on the workers who are using it constantly.”

Berman added that the state has allocated $30 million to incentivize landscaping businesses to transition towards zero-emission equipment. The bill reassures the public that there are good zero-emission replacements for these engines, available at low cost.

ALBERTA   VOTES

Support for LIBERAL Amarjeet Sohi more than double other contenders in Edmonton mayor's race: Leger poll

UCP Mike Nickel continued to poll in second place with 16 per cent support and former city councillor CONSERVATIVE Kim Krushell trailed not far behind with 12 per cent

Author of the article: Dustin Cook
Publishing date:Oct 14, 2021 • 

Edmonton mayoral candidate Amarjeet Sohi. In a recent poll by Leger, Sohi has 34 per cent voter support, more than double the next closest contender in Mike Nickel with 16 per cent. 

PHOTO BY SHAUGHN BUTTS /Postmedia

Amarjeet Sohi has emerged as the frontrunner in the race for Edmonton’s open mayor’s chair with more than double the support of the closest challenger, according to a new Leger poll.

In the poll conducted for Postmedia over the Thanksgiving long weekend, 34 per cent of respondents said they are most likely to vote for the former councillor and federal cabinet minister in Edmonton’s municipal election on Monday. This is an increase from 29 per cent support in Leger’s July survey.

Mike Nickel, current Ward 11 city councillor, continued to poll in second place with 16 per cent support and former city councillor Kim Krushell trailed not far behind with 12 per cent. Krushell had the largest increase in support since the July poll where she tallied only five per cent.

Leger executive vice-president Ian Large said the wide lead for Sohi isn’t surprising because of his recognition at the political level, but noted there are still many variables at play before the ballots are counted Monday night. Sohi has the most support from those aged 18-34, at 40 per cent, and Large said typically voter turnout is lower amongst the younger population. As well, 20 per cent of respondents remain undecided on who they would cast a ballot for.

“Age is a really important factor and this is the one that’s utterly unpredictable in all of these polls because it’s about voter turnout. Historically, younger people vote in much lower numbers than older people. Non-ratepayers also don’t tend to vote in the same numbers because they don’t have as much skin in the game,” he said in an interview with Postmedia Wednesday afternoon. “But the fact that Sohi is leading in all the age groups is a very strong indication of the support for him.”

One reason for Sohi’s success could be his differing political views from Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party government, Large said. In Edmonton, 60 per cent said they are more likely to vote for a mayor who opposes the policies of the provincial government. Only 14 per cent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports the government’s actions.

With many high-profile conflicts between municipalities and the province as well as widespread public anger in the Alberta government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Large said many voters are keen to see the next mayor and council continue to pushback against the province.

“I’m not surprised to see that in Edmonton more of the voters don’t support the policies of the provincial government and so they’re going to support a mayoral candidate that’s going to continue that opposition,” he said.

Other mayoral candidates also saw an increase in support from the July survey, but not as much as the three leaders. Former one-term city councillor Michael Oshry had six per cent of support and Cheryll Watson followed just behind at five per cent. The six other candidates had one per cent support or less. Three per cent of respondents said they wouldn’t be voting.

Top priorities for voters

Issues focused on fiscal restraint and spending are top of mind for Edmonton voters, according to the poll, which highlighted a post-COVID economic recovery as the top priority amongst residents with 29 per cent support. Lowering taxes and reducing the cost and size of the city’s workforce also ranked high among fiscal priorities.

But in Edmonton, reducing poverty was the third-most selected priority with 21 per cent in favour, significantly higher than the 14 per cent in Calgary. Improving and expanding transit infrastructure was also significantly higher in Edmonton than Calgary with 19 per cent support as a top priority compared to 14 per cent.

Although social issues weigh heavily in Edmonton, Large said it’s the fiscal policies that usually garner more weight from residents in making their voting decisions. Only six per cent of respondents said building a stronger relationship with racialized communities is one of their three most important priorities for the next council to address.

“Those social issues are just being eclipsed by the much more obvious ‘where is my next paycheque going to come from’ or ‘how is the next council going to affect my standard of living,’ ” he said. “It’s important to voters because that’s money out of their pocket.”
As a non-random internet survey, a margin of error is not reported. If the data were collected through a random sample, the margin of error would be plus or minus 4.4 per cent, 19 times out of 20. A total of 503 Edmontonians were polled between Oct. 8-11.

Wednesday marked the final of 10 days for advance voting in the Edmonton election. Advance voter turnout already doubled the 2017 total as of Tuesday’s vote count with more than 55,000 residents already casting a ballot. Last election, overall voter turnout was 31.5 per cent. Election day is Oct. 18.



duscook@postmedia.com

twitter.com/dustin_cook3

New poll suggests mayoral race shaping up for nail-biting finish

The Leger poll found the front-runners are statistically tied, with 27 per cent favouring Gondek and 24 per cent supporting Farkas

Author of the article: Meghan Potkins • Calgary Herald
Publishing date: Oct 14, 2021 

Campaign signs showing three of the frontrunners in the race for Calgary’s next mayor are seen along 66th Avenue S.W. in Lakeview on Tuesday, October 12, 2021. 

Councillors Jyoti Gondek and Jeromy Farkas are in a statistical dead heat in Calgary’s mayoral race with just four days remaining until election day, according to a new poll conducted for Postmedia.

The Leger poll found the front-runners are statistically tied, with 27 per cent favouring Gondek and 24 per cent supporting Farkas, with 17 per cent of respondents still undecided on who they would like to replace outgoing Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

The two front-runners have solidified their lead at the head of a pack of 27 mayoral candidates, though Gondek has the momentum having more than doubled her support since Leger’s last municipal poll in July.

“That’s a big jump. She’s obviously taking up a significant number of undecideds, those fence-sitters, since July,” said Ian Large of Leger, whose firm conducted the online survey between Oct. 8 and 11.

“Whereas (Farkas), who is statistically tied with Gondek at 24 per cent, has only increased his support by four per cent.”

In third place is Ward 6 Coun. Jeff Davison with 11 per cent — up from five per cent in July — followed by Brad Field with six per cent and Jan Damery with four per cent.

Large said while Gondek has a slight lead, it’s within the margin of error and she is neck and neck with Farkas heading into the final stretch of the campaign. “It’s too close to call,” he said

.

Mayor candidate Jyoti Gondek speaks as Calgary Chamber held a mayoral debate with the top five candidates Jan Damery, Jeff Davison, Jeromy Farkas, Brad Field and Jyoti Gondek at the Hyatt hotel in Calgary on Wednesday, October 6, 2021. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA

Farkas’ support remains concentrated among older, male voters, according to the poll, with 36 per cent of those age 55 or older in his favour and just 16 per cent of 35- to 54-year-olds.

“The older voters coalesced early around the conservative candidate,” said Large. “They went early and they went in a group and they haven’t moved. But that demographic is not growing, either.”

However, Farkas’ core voters tend to be the ones that come out to vote, added Large.

Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt says Farkas might have a “highly committed floor of voters” but he hasn’t benefited from the fact the campaign has solidified into a two-horse race.

“He needed it to be three, four or five front-runners. He needed a much stronger Jeff Davison, for example, and that’s not happening,” said Bratt.

“And I think there’s been other things that have hurt Farkas since the spring and summer.”

Bratt pointed to Farkas being the sole vote against the city’s vaccine passport bylaw last month, and said Farkas’ ties to Alberta’s unpopular premier have also hurt him.

“The anti-vaccine (passport) vote, I think is haunting him. Even (councillors) Chu and Magliocca voted for the vaccine (passport) mandate and Farkas went out on a limb and opposed it,” said Bratt.



Leger’s survey — which included responses from municipal voters in both Calgary and Edmonton — found that 54 per cent said they would vote for a mayor who opposes the policies of Premier Jason Kenney and the UCP.

“Because the party and party platform from the provincial government is so unpopular, I was interested to see if that would in fact influence the voter and it seems that it does,” said Large. “It seems that the mayoral candidates who say, ‘we’re going to go our own way and damn the provincial government, we’re going to do what we think is the right thing to do’ — that seems to be carrying some weight.”

Perhaps not unrelated is data that suggests Gondek continues to be the preferred candidate among former supporters of Calgary’s outspoken mayor: with 44 per cent of former Nenshi voters suggesting they would cast a ballot for the Ward 3 councillor.

But Bratt said Gondek’s challenge will be mobilizing her supporters on election day.

“Nenshi got the young people out but there was enthusiasm for Nenshi that I’m not seeing with Gondek,” said Bratt. “I think they see her as similar, but she doesn’t have the dynamism, the charisma, the newness that Nenshi had in 2010.

“Do her voters come out? We know Farkas’ voters will.”

The poll collected the responses of 502 Calgarians of voting age who are part of Leger’s representative online opinion panel. Technically, the margin of error cannot be determined for an online panel. If the data had been collected through a random sample, the estimated margin of error would be plus or minus 4.4 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

mpotkins@postmedia.com
Twitter: @mpotkins