It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, October 31, 2021
La Palma volcano update: Volcanic lightning becoming more frequent
Sun, 31 Oct 2021
Volcanic lightning at the eruption on La Palma
(image: INVOLCAN)
Scientists from INVOLCAN documented several volcanic lightnings seen in the eruption column.
Over the past days, these have become more frequent. This goes along with the observed increase in explosive behaviour at the vents - more material is being fragmented into ash (as opposed to liquid lava fountains) and the resulting particles are probably finer as well.
Such volcanic "thunderstorms" are often seen during explosive eruptions producing large quantities of ash, although the details are still poorly understood. In a simplified model, the lightnings are the result of electric charges accumulating in different parts of the eruption cloud, where friction between the ash grains rip of electric charges (electrons) from each other. The more quantity of ash emitted, the faster and more turbulent it is moving and the finer the ash grains, the more likely this process occurs. Video of the explosive activity yesterday: All news about: La Palma volcano Information about: La Palma volcano
Volcanic rocks cover water off Japan's Okinawa after 1,500km journey – video
Play Video 1:02
A Japanese artist has filmed herself trying to swim in a sea with a layer of pumice rocks about 30cm deep in the water. The stones are believed to have travelled almost 1,500km from an eruption in the Pacific's Ogasawara Islands in August
Rescuers race to reach 9 firefighters in Brazil cave
Issued on: 31/10/2021
A handout picture released from Sao Paulo state's Military Police shows firefighters working to rescue other firefighters buried in a cave after a collapse near the Brazilian city of Altinopolis - Sao Paulo State's Military Police/AFP
Brasília (AFP)
First responders on Sunday were racing to rescue nine Brazilian firefighters who remained trapped in a cave after its roof collapsed while they were training inside, authorities said.
The accident occurred as a group of 26 firefighters were on a training exercise in a cave near the city of Altinopolis, the Sao Paulo fire department said on Twitter.
"The roof of the cave collapsed," trapping part of the group, it said.
According to a statement from the Altinopolis mayor's office, "currently nine victims remain underground."
A previous report said 15 were still buried, and that three of the victims who were rescued suffered fractures and hypothermia.
Five people in total were taken to a local hospital and discharged, according to the mayor's office.
Police and emergency health teams have joined firefighters in a desperate effort to free those still trapped, but the work has been hampered by heavy rains.
Access to the remote site is difficult and threats of new collapses have complicated the rescue.
Speaking to GloboNews, Cristina Trifoni, mother of one of the instructors participating in the training, explained that the group had planned to spend the night inside the cave.
"What happened is that the entrance to the place they were in collapsed. I'm desperate," she said next to relatives of other firefighters who anxiously awaited word on the rescue effort.
Altinopolis is known for its caves, a major regional tourist attraction.
RECENT REPORTING IS THAT THE NINE REMAINING TRAPPED ARE DEAD
Sometimes you've just got to take matters into your own hands.
Gambling is rife. House taxes are break-your-back expensive. A recent gold exploitation glitch has injected thousands of gold into the economy, and that's without even mentioning the fishing bots. You pay taxes in New World - which is more than Bezos does. You’ll work five days a week to pay them, then get taxed on crafting and trading, too. All that gold is given to one company (or sometimes, just one player) on the server. Everything costs money, and yet you hardly make any. Welcome to Amazon’s capitalist hellhole.
What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.
Take this as an example. The leader of one of the largest companies on my server, no names here, sucked up the one hundred thousand gold in their company treasury and booked it to another server. All that money, all those hundreds of hours played by their underlings to stock the company’s coffers, vanished in a moment. People were pissed off. It all felt a bit too ‘real life’ - some caviar-sniffing folk making off with all their hard-earned gold. Cheers, Jeff.
Beyond the exploits, deflation is hitting New World’s economy hard. The prices of materials drop by up to 50 percent with each week that passes. It’s now pretty much impossible to make money from the auction house. You need to pay taxes on your homes and you need to repair your armour when it breaks. Even the cheapest house is around 500 gold a week and armour costs only increase the higher your level. How is anyone meant to pay for anything? Cheers, Jeff.
I wasn’t going to take this, not from a tax-dodger like Jeff. In an attempt to bring economic balance to our server, I teamed up with my company mates to do something about the awful economy. We’d heard stories from other servers about gambling rings, fight clubs, and a glitch that let you set up camps in the middle of town. But all of these didn’t really seem like what we wanted to achieve. We hold Windsward. We make a ton of gold. What can we do with it to make our server a better place?
So began the long process of wealth distribution. It started with handing out potions to the low-level players we saw wandering around Windsward. We produce hundreds of mana potions and health potions anyway, so why not share them? When we started getting thanks we were like “Hey, this feels pretty neat”, so we started giving out rawhide, wood, and other materials to players we saw at the workstations.
We also began funneling resources to the most hardcore crafter in our company. This guy is at level 200 in furnishing and cooking, which means he can pump out some of the best items in the game. Bring him the resources and he’ll make it for you. I make the potions, my pal crafts armor, and everything is divided up without a penny spent. We love collaborating, sharing, and providing gear for new faction members.
We run a lottery in Windsward two or three times a week. Lotteries aren’t socialist, in fact, they’re pretty much the opposite, but ours are a little different: all of our earnings go right back into the community. You always walk out with a prize, even if it's just a couple of hundred rawhide. It’s a one gold entry fee and you might win a tier 5 bag. We get maybe 50 entrants from all three factions, so we’re hardly making anything, and the odds of winning something expensive are pretty good.
We’re not in it for profits though, just the experience is fulfilling enough. It brings the server together. You can stop for a minute and hang out in a busy square before heading out into the wild to spend the next few hours killing monsters and cutting down trees. This emergent experience is what MMOs are all about.
Our positive energy has spread around the server. Other players in our faction have started to share resources. We hardly use the auction house anymore. Regular DMs appear from newer players asking if we can craft their weapons and tools if they bring us the resources. Sure, why not?
New World is a game, and we like making it better for people. You don’t need a Prime subscription, and you definitely don’t need to give all your gold to a company leader who might disappear overnight. We’re not grinding to buy a superyacht, Jeff. We’re grinding so the other people on our server can chill out and play the game without the virtual tax man (dressed in an Amazon uniform) knocking down their door. Now we’ve just got to see about actually paying those housing taxes...
About The Author Harry Alston is a writer based in the UK. He was once number one in the world on Call of Duty: Black Ops and now spends his days chasing that past glory.
New Zealand's bird of the year may actually be — a bat?
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The long-tailed bat, or pekapeka-tou-roa, is critically endangered
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The pekapeka-tou-roa, or long-tailed bat, is one of New Zealand's only land-based native mammals. (Ian Davidson-Watts)
For 16 years, birds across New Zealand have battled each other in a gripping competition to be named Bird of the Year. But this year's front-runner is the native bat — a fact that has ruffled some feathers.
"It's true. There is a sneaky mammal who only comes out at night and has snuck its way into the bird list," Bird of the Year spokesperson Laura Keown told As It Happens host Carol Off.
Bird of the Year is a fun competition in which politicians get involved and people make memes and even fake Tinder accounts on behalf of the birds to garner votes, Keown says.
In the course of that process, she says people also get to learn about the many species that are in danger of becoming extinct.
Hunters and predators, often mammals, have long threatened New Zealand's native birds, which is why the long-tailed bat, or pekapeka-tou-roa in Maori, one of New Zealand's only land-based native mammals, is a controversial contender.
But Keown defended the bat's inclusion. She says it's unfortunate that bats now remind some people of the global pandemic, as the coronavirus may have have spread from bats to another animal before affecting humans
"Hopefully, if our bat kind of makes history by winning a bird contest, they can get famous for that instead," she said.
The kākāpō is a large, flightless parrot that won New Zealand's Bird of the Year last year and is now trailing behind the bat in second place. (Kimberley Collins)
Plus, she says, the bats are at risk of habitat loss, as they roost inside the nooks and hollows of New Zealand's old growth trees.
"It's a pretty special little species and it doesn't get much attention all on its own in its own category over there," Keown said.
"Mammal of the Year was going to be a really boring competition, so we thought it was a great awareness-raising opportunity ... and they just jumped on the list with the rest of the birds."
Laura Keown is the spokesperson for New Zealand's Bird of the Year. (Submitted by Laura Keown)
Once, there were three species of bats native to the New Zealand: the long-tailed bat, the short-tailed bat and the greater short-tailed bat, which is believed to have gone extinct. The long-tailed bat is classified as "nationally critical" while the short-tailed bat is vulnerable, but recovering.
By including pekapeka-tou-roa, Keown says the contest hopes to raise awareness about the threats facing both long- and short-tailed bats.
New Zealand bats roost inside large, hollow trees and sometimes caves when they rest or hibernate. (Ian Davidson-Watts)
Pekapeka-tou-roa bats are quite small, with a wingspan around the size of an outstretched hand, and a furry body about the size of a thumb.
When they wake up at dusk, they fly up to 60 kilometres an hour and use echolocation calls to hunt for moths, mosquitos and other crawling insects.
"They're really great for controlling insects," Keown said. "And they're also really cute."
Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview with Laura Keown produced by Ashley Fraser.
Macron says Morrison lied to him about AUKUS submarine deal French President Emmanuel Macron said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison lied to him over the cancellation of a submarine building contract in September, and indicated more was needed to be done to rebuild trust between the two allies.
French President Emmanuel Macron looks on at the end of the annual Bastille Day military ceremony on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, on July 14, 2020. - France holds a reduced version of its traditional Bastille Day parade this year due to safety measures over the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic, and with the country's national day celebrations including a homage to health workers and others fighting the outbreak.
(Photo by Ludovic Marin / POOL / AFP)
Story by Reuters and Angus Watson, CNN
Macron and Morrison were in Rome for the G20 summit, the first time they had met since Australia scrapped a multibillion dollar submarine deal with France as part of a new security alliance with the United States and Britain announced in September.
The new security alliance, dubbed AUKUS and which could give Australia access to nuclear-powered submarines, caught Paris off guard and saw the French ambassadors recalled from Washington and Canberra amid accusations France had been betrayed.
"I have a lot of respect for your country. I have a lot of respect and a lot of friendship for your people. I just say when we have respect, you have to be true and you have to behave in line and consistently with this value," Macron told a group of Australian reporters who had traveled to cover the G20.
Asked if he thought Morrison had lied to him, Macron replied "I don't think, I know."
"I was very clear that what was going to be provided to us was not going to meet our strategic interests, and there was still a process we were engaged in, and we then engaged in, over the months that followed. And then we communicated to him (Macron) our ultimate decision," Morrison said.
Morrison repeated the acquisition of at least eight nuclear propelled submarines in a new deal with the US and UK was preferable to the 2016 agreement with France.
"The Australian Government secured this, something that no previous government has been able to secure in 50 years, and this has well-positioned Australia to defend ourselves into the future. So I make no apologies for getting the right result from Australia. And we knew it would be a difficult decision."
Asked about how his administration would move forward with France, Morrison said that his administration has begun to fix relations on projects of shared and mutual interest, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, but admitted that "these things take time."
On Friday, US President Joe Biden said he had thought France had been informed of the contract cancellation before the AUKUS pact was announced, and said that the handling of the new security agreement had been clumsy.
Are Arab Americans people of color? Mayor vote raises issue
The question has been bubbling beneath the surface of Boston's historic mayor's race, where one of the two candidates, Annissa Essaibi George, has found herself challenged on the campaign trail about her decision to identify as one.
On Tuesday, Essaibi George faces off against fellow Boston City Councilor and Democrat Michelle Wu, a daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. Whoever wins will be the first woman and first person of color elected to the city's top political office.
Essaibi George, who describes herself as Polish-Arab American, acknowledges she hasn’t always identified as a person of color — in part because Arab Americans don’t fit neatly into the boxes Americans are typically asked to check off on official forms, including on the U.S. Census.
“We have found ourselves in this weird position where there isn’t a place for us to identify as Arab," Essaibi George said in a recent interview on GBH News. “It’s unfortunate that Arabs don’t have that proverbial box to check and it is important for the Arab community to be counted, to be seen, to be heard and to be recognized."
She has identified as a person of color during her years in elected office, Essaibi George said.
Essaibi George has frequently talked about the obstacles faced by her father, a Muslim immigrant from Tunisia, and the challenges he believed she would also face as his daughter. Her mother, a Catholic, immigrated from Poland.
In a city like Boston with its long history of electing white men, particularly of Irish and Italian descent, a girl with an Arab name could never be successful in politics, her father warned, with no chance of becoming mayor.
But the 47-year-old Essaibi George, a lifelong Boston resident and former public school teacher, went on to win an at-large seat on the Boston City Council in 2015 and came in second in a September preliminary election, setting up the head-to-head match with Wu, who won the preliminary.
Although she identifies as a person of color, Essaibi George acknowledges her physical presence — including a heavy Boston accent — allows her a certain amount of privilege as “a woman who can maneuver in different rooms in different spaces."
She has also said that while her father's family came from North Africa, she doesn't consider herself African American, a term meant to refer to Black people.
The question of whether Arab Americans should identify as people of color extends to the Arab American community itself.
Nuha E. Muntasser, who describes herself as an Muslim Arab American or Muslim Libyan American, said she cringes whenever she has to check the box for “white” instead of being given the option of identifying as North African or Middle Eastern.
“I do not identify as white and it’s frustrating when I have to identify as that,” she said.
The choice is all the more discouraging because many Arab Americans don’t share the same experience as white Americans, she said. That sense of otherness can be even more pronounced among Arab or Muslim American women who wear the hijab, she said.
“People like me, we have to prove our Americanness,” said the 26-year-old, who lives in Sudbury, 45 miles west of Boston, and serves on the town’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.
Muntasser also hesitates to call herself a person of color. “Because I understand the difference of what Black women experience in this country, I am not comfortable with saying I am a person of color,” she said.
The lack of a box to check for Arab Americans can also limit economic opportunities, said former Cambridge City Councilor Nadeem Mazen, an Arab American and an American Muslim.
That’s particularly relevant when dealing with possible business contracts, especially with the federal government.
“When you’re a minority- or veteran- or women-owned business, that’s important,” Mazen said. “People make a lot of assumptions about which boxes you can check.”
Mazen, who lives in Cambridge, said he doesn’t look like a Black person but also isn’t seen as white, occupying what he described as a kind of moving window.
“I don’t go around saying I’m a person of color or not a person of color, but I know someone like me faces a lot more discrimination than your average upper class white Cambridge resident,” Mazen said.
A pivotal moment in the trajectory of the lives of many Arab Americans came with the Sept. 11 attacks, with many still feeling singled out and under suspicion 20 years later.
A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted ahead of this year’s 9/11 anniversary found that 53% of Americans have unfavorable views toward Islam, compared with 42% who have favorable ones.
Mohammed Missouri, 38, executive director of Massachusetts-based Jetpac, a nonprofit seeking to build political power among American Muslims, said earlier generations of Arab Americans tended to focus on assimilation rather than leaning into their identity.
“With younger people in the Arab American community, you’re seeing people whose goal is to build actual power and not just power for themselves but for the community at large,” said Missouri, an Arab American. “Younger Arab Americans are very proud of their heritage and see that as integral to their identity as Americans.”
Missouri also said that while he’s forced to check “white” on Census forms — defined as “all individuals who identify with one or more nationalities or ethnic groups originating in Europe, the Middle East or North Africa” — he doesn’t consider himself white.
Whether Arab Americans fall into the broader category as persons of color is still a matter of debate within the community he said, adding that some “white-passing Arab Americans” prefer to identify as white.
“It’s going to be a fluid conversation we’re going to keep having,” he said.
The city’s previous elected mayor — Democrat Marty Walsh — stepped down to become U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden.
Walsh was replaced on an acting basis by Kim Janey, sworn in March 24 as Boston’s first female and first Black mayor.
Steve Leblanc , The Associated Press
Enrolment drops in N.L.'s oil-focused engineering programs; students in it for change
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Newfoundland and Labrador's post-secondary institutions are seeing a steep drop in enrolment in oil-focused engineering programs as the province's offshore oil industry tries to claw its way out of a downturn.
And many of those who have enrolled say they did so because they want to bring change to the industry in the era of climate change. "What I would like to do is to make it more sustainable," said Brooklyn Hollett, a fourth-year undergraduate student in process engineering at Memorial University in St. John's. "To make it so there's less emissions and it's not so hard on the environment."
Figures from the College of the North Atlantic show the number of students in its programs geared toward the oil industry — petroleum and chemical process engineering technology — declined steadily from 157 students in 2016-2017 to 73 in 2020-2021. The school did not provide data for this academic year.
At Memorial, the number of students completing a master's degree in oil and gas engineering went from 56 in 2016-17 to 69 in 2017-18, before falling to 30, then 20, then 19 in successive years. Just two students are enrolled in the university's oil and gas engineering PhD program this year, down from 11 students in 2016-2017.
"With COVID, oil took a big downturn, so I think people were hesitant to put all their eggs in that basket," Hollett said in a recent interview, adding that she's one of 15 students in her fourth-year class.
Her program allows students two paths: one with a strict focus on petroleum, the other with a wider scope that includes sustainability methods, renewable energy and even mining. "Usually, there's a lot of students in the petroleum stream, but this year, my class, not a single person is in it. All 15 of us are in the sustainability stream," she said.
Hollet said her classmates are on "both sides of the oil spectrum." One woman wants to work at a big operator and just keep producing oil, she said, "and there's other people that are, like, totally against it, and they want to work in green energy, wind energy, that type of thing."
Hollett grew up in the small community of Arnold's Cove, where the Come By Chance oil refinery is the town's biggest employer, so she knows how unpredictable jobs in the sector can be. She wants to improve the oil industry, but she's made sure she can work in renewables or even in mining if those goals don't work out.
Newfoundland and Labrador's oil industry was hit hard in recent years by a crash in global oil prices, which was promptly followed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.In response, three of the province's four offshore oil projects halted some or all of their plans or operations, and the provincial government parcelled out $320 million in aid provided by Ottawa. All four projects are big polluters: in 2019, they were among the top six per cent of greenhouse gas emitters among over 700 Canadian oil and gas extraction projects, according to data from the federal Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. All are expected to keep pumping for at least another decade.
A request for an interview with a College of the North Atlantic representative wasn't granted, but spokesman Roger Hulan noted by email that the oil and gas sector is a cyclical industry, and there are signs of a strong recovery. "Enrolment for both programs is beginning to improve, and now would be the optimal time for students ... to enter this field and prepare for this recovery and future demand," he said.
Greg Naterer, dean of engineering and applied science at Memorial, said the pandemic had an impact on enrolment. But students are also driven by growing concern about climate change and the need for the industry to curb emissions and develop renewable energy sources, he said.
The university is looking to adapt its programs, "largely because of what's happening in the world around us, to be more environmentally responsible," Naterer said in a recent interview. "We're broadening the scope of the current undergraduate programs in process engineering ... incorporating other forms of green energy like biodiesel, hydrogen fuel cells and others." The University of Calgary has suspended admissions for its undergraduate program inoil and gas engineering, citing a growing student interest in more renewable forms of energy. A similar move wouldn't make sense at Memorial, Naterer said. "This is not the first time that we've ever seen fluctuations in enrolments," he said. "The students want to be part of the solution rather than the problem, and that's what our programs allow them to do."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2021.
Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press
Major study finds that people who believe in COVID-19 conspiracies are more likely to catch the virus, lose their jobs, and be socially isolated
Bethany Dawson
COVID-19 conspiracy theories. A sample of four books on the first page of a search for "COVID" on Amazon.com's bookstore. Amazon/Insider
A new study has shown that those who believe in COVID-19 conspiracies are more likely to catch the virus.
They are also more likely to break rules, lose their jobs, and face social isolation.
Conspiracy theories are a "quick" solution to the fear of the unknown, said an expert.
New research has found that people who believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories are more likely to be infected by the virus.
The Dutch study, published by Cambridge University Press, found that those who believe in COVID-19 conspiracies are less likely to be tested for COVID-19, but when tested, are more likely to be infected.
It also notes that there is a higher probability of this group violating coronavirus regulations and experiencing social rejection, job losses, reduced income, and decreased overall well-being.
The authors of the study, from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, wrote, "one basic property of conspiracy theories is that they are consequential, even if a conspiracy theory is extremely implausible according to logic or scientific evidence, if it seems real to a perceiver, it has a genuine impact on attitudes, emotions, and behavior."
Led by first author and social psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooijen, the study's researchers surveyed 5,745 people to provide a large sample from a cross-section of Netherlands' society, first in April 2020 and then again in December 2020.
The study concluded: "Conspiracy beliefs predict how well people cope with the challenges of a global pandemic and therefore has substantial implications for private and public health, as well as perceivers' economic and social well-being."
Conspiracy theories are often used within a time of heightened anxiety to explain events beyond our control, Geoffrey Dancy, an expert in conspiracy theories, told Insider in March.
He explained that it is often comforting to have something, or someone, to blame for a vast problem, like a pandemic.
"The great power of conspiracy theories is that you can offer them quickly, and you can point to somebody to blame for problems," he said.
"So, if you've got a pandemic, it's actually a 'plan-demic,' people planned it. Either it was Anthony Fauci or Bill Gates that planned this with their research, or they caused it with their research in China."
There has been repeated evidence disproving a number of the most widely discussed conspiracy theories, including that the virus was built as a bio-weapon, or that it was created by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Maxime Bernier Went To Florida Without Getting Vaxxed & Explained Why On Twitter (VIDEO)
In a video shared on Twitter on Sunday, October 31, he responded to those asking how he was able to travel across the border to the United States without being fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
"As you know, I didn't take the two shots and I won't," Bernier told his followers. "But an unvaccinated person can travel to the U.S. until the 8th of November without having the vaccine passport."
The party leader explained that this was the reason he and his wife decided to visit Florida ahead of that date, which is when the new travel rules kick in.
Although the U.S. land border remains closed to non-essential travel right now, both vaccinated and unvaccinated Canadians are able to enter the country via plane. Until November 8, a negative COVID-19 test is accepted as an alternative to vaccination.
In order to skip travel restrictions like on-arrival COVID-19 testing, day-eight COVID-19 testing and quarantine, travellers entering Canada and Canadians returning home from abroad must be fully vaccinated.
Bernier didn't address whether he would be quarantining upon his return to Canada and did not confirm the reason for his visit to Florida.
Health Canada has a robust website with all the latest information on the vaccines and can answer any questions you may have. Click here for more information.
OF COURSE HE DID HE IS A FASCIST WHO ESPOUSES AMERICAN STYLE LIBERTARIANISM WHEN IT SUITS HIM
New federal minister says it's 'great honour' to represent Alberta at the cabinet table
Alberta’s first federal cabinet minister in two years says that he recognizes his responsibility to be a voice for the province in the federal government.
Randy Boissonnault, MP for Edmonton Centre, was named tourism minister and associate minister of finance by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week in Ottawa. He is the only representative of Alberta in cabinet and the first Alberta cabinet minister since 2019 when the Liberals were shut out of the province.
“It’s a great honour for me to represent Alberta at the cabinet table and we wanted Albertans in caucus and cabinet,” he said in an interview with Postmedia the day after the cabinet was announced.
“I take these dual responsibilities very seriously and I’m looking very much forward to making sure that the concerns and priorities of our province are voiced.”
Boissonnault’s appointment comes following an October referendum in Alberta where 61.7 per cent of Albertans who voted said they wanted to remove the principle of equalization from the constitution.
While Alberta doesn’t have the power to do that, Premier Jason Kenney has argued that a yes vote could be used as leverage to negotiate a “fair deal” with Ottawa.
“This is a powerful statement today — a democratic statement — where Albertans are demanding to be respected,” Kenney said following the release of the referendum results.
“We fully expect the prime minister to respect the constitutional amendment process and to sit down and negotiate with Alberta in good faith.”
When asked whether he thought negotiations would actually happen, Boissonnault pointed to the amount of federal money and support — including from the armed forces — that Alberta has received during the pandemic. “That’s the very principle behind equalization, making sure that every Canadian has a fair chance of success, no matter where they live,” he said. “Every province, including us in Alberta, has benefited from the program at some point and that equalization program enables provinces to deliver education, world-class health care, and other services that Canadians rely on. So it’s a fundamental example of Canadians supporting each other and of Canadian values.”
Though a formal request to begin negotiations with Ottawa has yet to pass in the Alberta legislature, Kenney has suggested topics for negotiation could include changes to the fiscal stabilization program, or federal legislation around oil tankers and energy projects.
Boissonnault said those are the type of concerns Kenney should discuss with other premiers at the Council of the Federation meetings because they require “significant consensus across the country to achieve.”
On the day the new cabinet was announced, Alberta politicians, including Kenney, began raising concerns about the appointment of Steven Guilbeault as Canada’s new environment and climate change minister.
Kenney called the appointment of Guilbeault, a well-known environmental activist who has been vocally opposed to pipelines and once climbed onto the roof of then-premier Ralph Klein’s home, “very problematic.” Boissonault said concerns over climate change were the top issue he heard from voters while campaigning.
“When we have (energy) companies like Cenovus and Suncor committing to a net zero future and to decarbonizing their industry, that is something that we can and must do as a federal government and every minister has a responsibility to making sure that that happens,” he said.
Parliament is set to return on Nov. 22.
— With files from Hamdi Issawi
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