P.J. Akeeagok will be Nunavut’s new premier

Former QIA president defeats incumbent Joe Savikataaq and Health Minister Lorne Kusugak

 POLITICS  NOV 17, 2021 – 

P.J. Akeeagok won a three-way race to become Nunavut’s next premier, defeating incumbent Joe Savikataaq and Health Minister Lorne Kusugak on Wednesday. (Photo by Mélanie Ritchot)

By  Mélanie Ritchot

P.J Akeeagok has been named Nunavut’s new premier-elect after a three-way race on Wednesday.

“I’m very honoured,” he said, and then thanked his family, elders, and constituents after he was elected.

“I know there’s so much work to be done but I think we’re ready to pull up our sleeves and get to work.”

Akeeagok — a first-time MLA — and Health Minister Lorne Kusugak challenged the current premier, Joe Savikataaq, and spent the day trying to win MLAs’ votes on Wednesday.

The race was settled by secret ballots cast by the MLAs elected to the sixth legislative assembly by Nunavummiut.

Before MLAs voted, each nominee made a speech and answered questions from other members.

Hot topics included in-territory elder care, job creation through mining and decentralizing the Government of Nunavut, and housing.

Mental health resources and suicide prevention were also recurring topics brought up in MLAs’ questions.

Akeeagok referenced the Iqaluit high school students who walked into the lobby of the legislature on Tuesday to demand more resources.

“I want every one of them to know we heard you loud and clear,” he said, addressing the youth.

He compared the severity of suicide rates in Nunavut to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Governments were able to mobilize very quickly, they were able to provide support to ensure safety,” he said about the pandemic response. The response to suicide needs to be similar, he said.

“I will do everything in my power to bring tangible solutions to the issue.”

Akeeagok was the president of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association for seven years until resigning to run in Nunavut’s Oct. 25 general election.

This experience came up when the nominees for premier debated how the Government of Nunavut should work with Inuit organizations to tackle issues, like the housing crisis, more effectively in the territory.

With Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., having recently passed a resolution to seek Inuit self government, and stating the GN has failed Inuit, Akeeagok said he’s looking forward to meeting with NTI executives soon, in an interview after he was elected.

“To really come openly and really listen in terms of where we could collaborate,” he said.

Akeeagok said two of his top priorities if elected would be addressing the housing shortage and elder care needs.

Throughout the candidate debate, Savikataaq relied on his track record and said his strength is being fair to all Nunavummiut and listening to all sides of issues.

He said giving him a second term would allow for consistency through the changing government.

“I’ve done the job, I’ve been doing the job,” Savikataaq said.

“There is no learning curve.”

Health Minister Kusugak spoke about the need for the next government to be proactive multiple times.

“This government has to stop being a reactionary government on very important issues such as child abuse, suicide, and other crimes to our women and children,” he said.

When the topic of decentralizing the GN to create jobs in small communities came up, Kusugak also suggested more remote jobs be made available to bring remote Nunavummiut into the workforce without needing to build local offices.

Tony Akoak, the MLA for Gjoa Haven, was elected as Speaker of the house at the beginning of Wednesday’s leadership forum.

On Wednesday evening, eight ministers will be chosen from the group of MLAs, also voted-in by their peers by secret ballot.

The premier-elect will assign ministers their portfolios in the coming days.

After the premier was chosen, the MLAs voted for the eight members who will form the cabinet.

They nominated 16 of their peers, including six newcomers, to become ministers, forcing more voting to narrow the field to eight.

Seven ministers were voted in on first ballots.

After MLAs picked Akeeagok to be premier, they voted for the eight MLAs who will form the cabinet.

MLAs nominated 16 of their peers, including six newcomers to cabinet, to be ministers.

Seven ministers were voted-in on the first ballots.

But four more ballots were needed to narrow down who got the last seat in cabinet, with Aggu’s MLA Joanna Quassa, breaking the stalemate.

The fifth ballot came down to Solomon Malliki Joanna Quassa, Premier Savikataaq.

Nunavut’s eight incoming cabinet ministers are:

• Adam Arreak Lightstone
• David Akeeagok
• Pamela Gross
• Lorne Kusugak
• John Main
• David Joanasie
• Margaret Nakashuk
• Joanna Quassa

Pamela Gross, the MLA for Cambridge Bay, and Aggu’s Joanna Quassa, are the only first-time MLAs in the cabinet and are among the four women chosen for ministerial positions.

It’s up to Akeeagok, as premier-elect, to assign ministers their portfolios in the coming days. MLAs will be officially sworn-in to their roles on Friday.

 

Former nuclear reactor space in Saskatoon gets the all-clear

By Thomas Piller  Global News

Posted November 17, 2021 

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SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear research reactor was used for doing neutron activation analysis to determine elemental concentrations for various industries. 

Saskatchewan Research Council / Supplied

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The Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) says its nuclear research reactor in Saskatoon has been safely decommissioned and the space could now be used for regular office use.

The Safe Low-Power Kritical Experiment (SLOWPOKE-2) reactor was commissioned in March 1981.

READ MORE: Saskatchewan eyes small nuclear reactor advancements with 3 other provinces

Officials said the multi-year transition involved defuelling the reactor and transporting the shoebox-sized uranium core to the United States.

“SLOWPOKE-2 leaves a strong legacy in Saskatchewan and proves, now more than ever, that nuclear is safe, reliable and sustainable,” Minister Responsible for SRC Jeremy Harrison said in a press release on Wednesday.

“This is another example of SRC demonstrating leadership and expertise.”

SLOWPOKE-2 was used for doing neutron activation analysis to determine uranium and other elemental concentrations for various industries. Throughout its lifespan, the reactor conducted nearly 240,000 analytical tests.

1:49Experts weigh in on possibility of nuclear energy in Saskatchewan

Experts weigh in on possibility of nuclear energy in Saskatchewan – Feb 18, 2021

Officials said, over the past years, testing had decreased and newer technologies were adopted at SRC’s facility in Saskatoon.

“SRC is incredibly proud of the role our SLOWPOKE-2 played in adding value to the province by performing analytical testing for industry for the past 38 years,” SRC president and CEO Mike Crabtree said in a statement.

“This hands-on experience with the SLOWPOKE-2 can be applied to emerging nuclear technology, such as small modular reactors, as we consider how to power our future.”

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has officially deemed the decommissioning complete, according to officials.

 

The impact of flowering plants on the evolution of life on Earth

by University of Bristol

The evolution of modern plants and animals, showing how the rise of angiosperms through

 the past 200 million years was accompanied by massive expansion in biodiversity of

 numerous key groups of insects (such as bees, wasps, butterflies, bugs, beetles, and flies)

. The key mass extinctions are marked in red, but the key phase was from 100 to 50 million

 years ago, which we term the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution.

 Credit: Mike Benton and New Phytologist Trust.

Researchers at the University of Bristol have identified the huge impact of flowering plants on the evolution of life on Earth

Flowering plants today include most of the plants humans eat or drink, such as grains, fruits and vegetables, and they build many familiar landscapes such as wetlands, meadows, and forests. From 100 to 50 million years ago, the flowering plants dramatically boosted Earth's biodiversity and rebuilt entire ecosystems.

Paleontologist Prof Michael J. Benton from Bristol's School of Earth Sciences teamed up with Prof Peter Wilf, a palaeobotanist from Pennsylvania State University, U.S., and Dr. Hervé Sauquet, an expert on flower evolution from the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Australia.

In their new paper, the team reviewed the way in which angiosperms rebuilt forests and other habitats on land, and how this contributed to modern biodiversity.

"Flowering plants might have been around for some time, but they began to appear more commonly in the Cretaceous, in the last 70 million years of the age of dinosaurs," said Prof Benton. "But it seems that dinosaurs didn't choose to eat them, and continued chomping ferns and conifers such as pines. However, it was only after the dinosaurs had gone that angiosperms really took off on evolutionary terms."

A gymnosperm, Ginkgo yimaensis, reconstructed from fossil evidence. Credit: Rebecca Horwitt

"The Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution, as we call it, marked a huge change in ecosystems and biodiversity on land," said Prof Wilf. "More than a million species of modern insects owe their livelihoods to angiosperms, as pollinators such as bees and wasps, as leaf-eaters such as beetles, locusts and bugs, or feeding on nectar such as butterflies. And these insects are eaten by spiders, lizards, birds and mammals. After the dinosaur extinction, the great tropical rainforests began to flourish, and angiosperms began to dominate life on land."

"Angiosperms owe their success to a whole series of special features," said Dr. Sauquet. "Biology students all know that the angiosperm flower was an amazing innovation, with special colors and adaptations to make sure particular insects pollinate them successfully. But angiosperms also drive the evolution of the animals that pollinate them, mainly insects, and they can build complex forest structures which are homes to thousands of species. They can also capture much more of the Sun's energy than conifers and their relatives, and this extra energy passes through the whole ecosystem."

Prof Wilf explained: "Although angiosperms first appeared and then became very diverse during the age of dinosaurs, it was only after dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago that flowering plants really made big changes and restructured the world's ecosystems.

"It is even possible that the removal of the dinosaurs and their constant trampling and disturbance was the trigger for these events. Today, two-thirds of all species of plants and animals live in rainforests."

Early angiosperm, Archaefructus sinensis reconstructed from fossil evidence. Credit: Rebecca Horwitt

"A typical angiosperm-dominated rainforest may contain hundreds of species of flowering plants, as well as hundreds of species of other plants like ferns and mosses, and thousands of species of fungi, insects, spiders, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals," added Dr. Sauquet. "On the other hand, conifer forests, based around the pine family, for example, contain fewer species of other plants or animals, and they probably were never as species-rich."

"The big change happened in the Cretaceous, when angiosperms with their amazing flowers gradually took over, step by step," continued Prof Benton. "Cretaceous forests and open spaces probably contained far fewer species. So, when the dinosaurs died out, modern groups of animals could fill their places, but it seems they did much more than just replace them like-for-like. The angiosperms became hugely diverse themselves, but they also created enormous numbers of niches for other plants and animals, so you get tens more species on each hectare of the Earth's surface than you would if angiosperms had not become established when they did."Dinosaur-age fossils provide new insights into origin of flowering plants

More information: Michael J. Benton et al, The Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution and the origins of modern biodiversity, New Phytologist (2021). DOI: 10.1111/nph.1782

Journal information: New Phytologist 

Provided by University of Bristol 

Finally, a Practical Use for Nuclear Fusion

Researchers used the roiling temperatures of an experimental fusion reactor for a surprising purpose: testing heat shield materials for spacecraft.

Inside a tokamak, like this EAST at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, powerful magnets are used to hold whirling plasma at a high pressure, enabling it to reach the tens of millions of degrees required for atoms to fuse together and release energy.

PHOTOGRAPH: LIU JUNXI/XINHUA/GETTY IMAGES

ON DECEMBER 7, 1995, a NASA probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere and immediately started to burn. It had been hatched six months earlier by the orbiting Galileo mission, and now, 80 million miles later, it was ready to sample the thick layers of hydrogen and helium surrounding the solar system’s largest planet.

The spacecraft, called the Jupiter Atmospheric Probe, had been carefully designed to withstand the soaring temperatures it would encounter on contact with Jovian air. It had a huge carbon-based heat shield, comprising about 50 percent of the probe’s total weight, which had been designed to dissipate heat by wearing away as the probe descended. This controlled process, called ablation, had been carefully modeled back on Earth—NASA had even built a special test lab called the Giant Planet Facility in an attempt to re-create the conditions and test the design.

As the probe descended through the clouds at more than 100,000 mph, friction heated the air around it to more than 28,000 degrees Fahrenheit—splitting atoms into charged particles and creating an electric soup known as plasma. Plasma accounts for natural phenomena like lightning or the aurora; the sun is a giant burning ball of it. It is often referred to as the fourth state of matter, but really it’s the first: In the moments after the Big Bang, plasma was all there was.

The plasma ate through the Jupiter probe’s heat shield much faster than anyone at NASA had predicted. When the agency’s engineers analyzed the data from sensors embedded in the heat shield, they realized that their careful models had been way off the mark. The shield disintegrated much more than expected in some areas, and much less in others. The probe barely survived, and the only reason it did was that they had built a margin for error into the design by making it extra thick. “This was left as an open question,” says Eva Kostadinova, an expert on plasma from Auburn University. “But if you want to design new missions, you have to be able to model what’s going on.”

After the Galileo mission, scientists used the data from the probe to tweak their models of ablation, but they still faced a big problem: It’s very difficult to precisely re-create the conditions of a high-speed entry to a dense atmosphere, so it’s hard to test those models for accuracy. That also poses a barrier for new heat shield materials that could be lighter or better than the carbon-based ones used right now. If you can’t test them, it’s very hard to be confident they’ll work when attached to a billion-dollar spacecraft.

Past testing efforts have used lasers, plasma jets, and high-speed projectiles to simulate the heat of entry, but none of them are quite right. “No aerospace facility on Earth can reach the high heating conditions that you experience during atmospheric entry into something like Jupiter,” says Kostadinova.

Now, new research by Kostadinova and collaborator Dmitri Orlov from UC San Diego has demonstrated a potential alternative—the fiery innards of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor.

There are a few hundred such reactors, known as tokamaks, in state-funded research facilities around the world, including the Joint European Torus in the United Kingdom, and ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a 35-nation collaboration in southern France. For decades, researchers have been using them to grapple with the challenges of nuclear fusion, a potentially revolutionary technology that could provide essentially unlimited power. Inside a tokamak, powerful magnets are used to hold whirling plasma at a high pressure, enabling it to reach the tens of millions of degrees required for atoms to fuse together and release energy. Cynics argue that nuclear fusion is doomed to forever remain the energy source of the future—right now, fusion experiments still consume more electricity than they generate.

But Kostadinova and her collaborator Dmitri Orlov were more interested in the plasma inside these reactors, which they realized could be the perfect environment to simulate a spacecraft entering the atmosphere of a gas giant. Orlov works on the DIII-D fusion reactor, an experimental tokamak at a US Department of Energy facility in San Diego, but his background is in aerospace engineering.

Together, they used the DIII-D facilities to run a series of experiments on ablation. Using a port at the bottom of the tokamak, they inserted a series of carbon rods into the plasma flow, and used high-speed and infrared cameras and spectrometers to track how they disintegrated. Orlov and Kostadinova also fired minuscule carbon pellets into the reactor at high speed, mimicking on a small scale what the heat shield on the Galileo probe would have encountered in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

The conditions inside the tokamak were remarkably similar in terms of the temperature of the plasma, the speed it flowed over the material, and even its composition: The Jovian atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, the DIII-D tokamak uses deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen. “Instead of launching something at a very high velocity, we instead put a stationary object into a very fast flow,” Orlov says.

The experiments, which were presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Pittsburgh this month, helped to validate the models of ablation that were developed by NASA scientists using data sent back from the Galileo probe. But they also serve as a proof of concept for a new type of testing. “We’re opening this new field of research,” says Orlov. “Nobody has done it before.”

It’s something that’s sorely needed in the industry. “There’s been a lag in new testing procedures,” says Yanni Barghouty, founder of Cosmic Shielding Corporation, a startup building radiation shields for spacecraft. “It allows you to prototype a lot faster and more cheaply—there’s a feedback loop.”

Whether nuclear fusion reactors will be a practical testing ground remains to be seen—they’re incredibly sensitive devices that have been designed for another purpose entirely. Orlov and Kostadinov were given time at DIII-D as part of a special effort to use the reactor to expand scientific knowledge, utilizing a port built into the tokamak for the purpose of safely testing new materials. But it’s an expensive process. Their day on the machine cost half a million dollars. As a result, this kind of experiment will likely be done sparingly in the future, when the opportunity arises, to tweak and improve computer simulations.

With further experiments, Orlov and Kostadinova hope that the models can be improved and used to optimize heat shield design for future missions—putting more material where it’s needed, but also removing it from where it’s not. NASA’s DAVINCI+ mission, scheduled to launch toward Venus near the end of the decade, could be the first to take advantage. It comprises an orbiter and a descent probe, which will need powerful shielding as it falls through the hot, thick Venusian atmosphere. The Galileo probe taught scientists much about the formation of the solar system, but with a better heat shield, it could have done much more. “Half of the payload is something that’s just going to burn,” says Kostadinova. “You’re limiting the number of scientific instruments you can really fit in.”

Beyond that, the technique could be used to test new materials, such as silicon carbide, or new forms of heat shield that use a mixture of passive materials that ablate and other components that don’t. Engineers will need those for future missions—the Galileo probe took the slowest, flattest trajectory possible to limit ablation, and still stretched the limits of what was then possible.

The research could also help in the design of fusion reactors themselves. Until now, most research has understandably focused on the core plasma reactions inside a tokamak. But as nuclear fusion inches toward commercialization, more attention will need to be paid to the construction of the reactors and the design of materials that can contain the fusion reaction and safely dissipate the energy if things go wrong.

Kostadinova and Orlov are calling for more collaboration between the fusion and space research communities, which both have an interest in understanding plasma reactions—and in developing substances that can contain them. “The future is to make better materials, and new materials,” Kostadinova says.

 

Is The U.S. Shale Patch Refusing To Pump For Political Reasons?

By Irina Slav - Nov 17, 2021

• President Biden’s calls on OPEC to increase production were received rather negatively by the U.S. shale patch which believes it can take care of the supply problem
• While some observers may see this as the shale patch being political, the reality is that shale drillers are actually reacting to both profit and fear
• Shale companies are making more profit than ever before and, while they are happy to help Biden bring the price of gasoline down, are eager to avoid another oil price crash

When President Joe Biden first called on OPEC to increase production earlier this year, he drew an angry response from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who told Biden to "back off" and let American companies take care of the supply problem that was pushing fuel prices higher. The awkward relationship between the current administration in Washington and the oil industry, which tends to lean to the right politically, has been highlighted repeatedly in the media along with Biden's anti-oil moves such as the killing of the Keystone XL pipeline project and the temporary moratorium on oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

Yet political incompatibility alone cannot stand in the way of profiting from higher prices, so it is hardly the only - or even an important - reason for the U.S. oil industry's production restraint amid soaring prices for both crude and products. In fact, there are at least two more important reasons for this restraint.

The first is that especially shale drillers are raking in much fatter profits right now at current production levels. According to Deloitte calculations cited by Bloomberg's Kevin Crowley, U.S. shale operators are currently booking the biggest profits since the start of the shale revolution. And that's saying something. The reason the shale play development earned the name revolution was that it happened so quickly, and it happened so quickly because it was profitable, for a time.

By booking higher profits, shale drillers - at least the public ones among them - can keep their shareholders happier than they have been in years during the cash-burning phase of the shale revolution when everyone raced to boost output by the most, contributing to the two latest price crashes.

Related: IEA Hikes 2022 Brent Oil Price Outlook To $79Speaking of crashes, the other reason shale drillers are practicing restraint is OPEC. The cartel has already demonstrated twice that it has the power to cause a collapse in prices that may its members but seems to hurt U.S. shale producers more. After several waves of bankruptcies, shale drillers appear to have decided on a different approach to production, betting on fatter profits instead of higher production.

Be that as it may, production in the U.S. shale patch is rising. Reuters reported earlier this week that production at the Permian was about to set a record, surpassing its pre-pandemic production levels next month. That's because the Permian has been the darling of the shale industry for years now, sporting some of the lowest production costs in some areas, drawing in more capital than other shale plays.

Overall production is also on the rise. According to the Energy Information Administration's latest weekly industry update, the U.S. was producing 11.5 million bpd of crude, which puts it in the first place globally and represents a 1-million-bpd increase on the year. It is lower than the record 13-million-bod production rate right before the pandemic struck, but it is no small potatoes by any means.

And, perhaps surprisingly to some, the industry is not averse to working with the federal administration to make gasoline more affordable. The messages coming from shale oil are not all in the same tone but they do tend to be encouraging.

Related: The Energy Crunch Is Adding Billions To Oil Tycoons’ Net Worth

The chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, for instance, was quite blunt in telling Biden to "back off" the U.S. oil industry rather than calling on OPEC to increase oil production so U.S. drivers can pay less at the pump. The president, Scott Sheffield, said earlier this month that Biden has "got to back off his rhetoric on federal leases going forward."

Occidental's Vicki Hollub was more delicate this week, when she said, in response to a question on whether Biden was wrong to call on OPEC to boost output, "if I were gonna make a call, it wouldn't be long-distance, it would be a local call."

"I think first you, you stay home, you ask your friends, and you ask your neighbors to do it. And then if we can't do it, you call some other countries," Hollub told CNBC.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Biden skips traditional press conference with Trudeau and Obrador


The "Three Amigos" gathering of the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico on Thursday will be missing one of the staples of the summit: the joint news conference featuring all three leaders.

© Chris Roussakis/Bloomberg via Getty Images Vice President Joe Biden Meets With Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

It's the first in-person gathering of the leaders since 2016, before Donald Trump was elected president. Mr. Trump's relationship with the Canadian and Mexican leaders was strained by the tariffs he imposed, although later, he and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador grew friendlier. That wasn't the case with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Mr. Trump famously disparaged as "two-faced."

Mr. Biden pitched himself as the return of normalcy and tradition when running for office against Mr. Trump, so skipping the press conference came as something of a surprise to White House reporters this week. In all eight summits held since their inception in 2005, there has been a trilateral press conference. Former President Obama hosted press conferences with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in 2012, as did former President Bush in 2008 and 2005.

At that last 2016 news conference, reporters were able to ask tough, even uncomfortable questions of Mr. Obama, Trudeau, and then Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto — in particular, about their responses to Mr. Trump's GOP nomination, victory and the future relations between the U.S. and Mexico on issues like NAFTA and migration.

"Whoever becomes the president of the United States is going to have a deep, strong interest in having a strong relationship with Mexico. It's our neighbor, our friend and one of our biggest trading partners," Mr. Obama said at the time. "I think I've made myself clear, setting aside whatever the candidates are saying, that America is a nation of immigrants. That's our strength."

Without a press conference Thursday, Mr. Biden will not be forced to answer questions about his decision to continue with Title 42, a controversial public health policy used at the Mexican border to rapidly expel migrants based on concerns about COVID-19. Mr. Biden has been roundly criticized by progressives and immigration advocates for continuing to rely on it to try to keep the numbers at the border down. A U.S. District Court judge in Texas has also determined the Biden administration improperly ended the "Remain in Mexico Policy."

Nonetheless, the summit and news conference have generally projected a kind of continental unity, one that may have peaked during the Obama years.

Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she thought a press conference had been planned. But no press conference appeared on the president's Thursday schedule released Wednesday night. The president does have a bill signing prior to his meetings with Trudeau and Obrador, and as always, it's possible he could take questions then.

Trudeau may be going it alone with the press at his own availability Thursday evening at the Canadian Embassy, according to the prime minister's schedule. The Mexican government has not yet said whether Obrador will hold a solo press conference after the meeting.

Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told CBS News during a press conference he held Wednesday that the resolution from the three leaders is "more precise" than a press conference.

Asked Wednesday about a joint press conference, White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher said there would be "pool sprays" — that is, opportunities before meetings begin. In these brief on-camera moments, reporters have the chance to yell out questions, but leaders can just ignore the questions.

One reporter asked the White House on Wednesday whether the lack of the news conference could be chalked up to recent comments Mr. Biden has made that had to be "cleaned up" by the White House press office.

"You guys (the press office) had to clean up not only [Mr. Biden's] Olympic comment, but his comment on the timing for the Fed [chair nomination] and his Taiwan comment. Is the worry that you don't want the president taking questions," Bloomberg's Justin Sink asked Meagher.

In addition to the pool sprays, Meagher responded that "the president often takes questions throughout the course of the day, throughout the course of trips, throughout the course of his day at the White House."

Thursday's meetings are likely to have some contentious moments, aside from immigration matters. Canada and the U.S. have sparred over tariffs.

Though Mr. Trump did not host a North American Leaders Summit with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts, he met with them individually and at events elsewhere, and he was able to get a new trade agreement signed.

The three leaders plan to address economic challenges they face, COVID-19, climate change and other pressing issues. The White House says the three nations will "reaffirm their strong ties and integration while also charting a new path for collaboration on ending the COVID-19 pandemic and advancing health security; competitiveness and equitable growth, to include climate change; and a regional vision for migration."

Kathryn Watson 
— CBS News' Arden Farhi and Jacob Rosen contributed to this report.

MAYBE THIS IS WHY
Mexican minister chides U.S. for protectionism ahead of summit

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's economy minister rebuked the United States ahead of a North American leaders summit for pursuing what she described as protectionist policies that were liable to backfire and spur immigration.

Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier, who will attend the gathering of the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada in Washington on Thursday, said she had never expected the United States to become so closed economically.

"The way I've seen them close themselves, they've closed themselves off and protected themselves, it's incomprehensible from my perspective," she told website Codigo Magenta in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

"And this business of them apparently not wanting migration coming their way, they're causing it by closing themselves off. And if they carry on, they'll cause more of it," she added, noting protectionist measures undermined Mexico's labor market.

Detentions of illegal immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border have surged this year, piling pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to curb the flow of people and tighten the frontier.

Clouthier is part of the delegation traveling with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for his Thursday meetings with Biden and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

She said a dispute with Washington over the interpretation of regional content rules for the auto industry under a North American trade pact was "really hurting" Mexico.

Rather than pushing a "Buy American" agenda, the United States should focus on "Buy North American," she argued.

"Why? Because we're a region. And President Lopez Obrador has said it to Biden, he's said it to Kamala," she added, referring to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

"He's said if we don't see ourselves as a region, we won't be able to deal with the challenges we have in the world."

(Reporting by Dave Graham)

Largest U.S. Bank Cuts Ties to Conservative Group, Canceling Donald Trump Jr. Event
Aila Slisco 

The country's largest bank has cut ties with a Missouri conservative group, forcing an event that had been set to feature Donald Trump Jr. to be immediately canceled.

© Alex Wong/Getty The Donald Trump Jr. event was reportedly canceled after JPMorgan Chase-owned WePay said it violated a policy against "hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime, or items or activities that encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others regarding the same." Trump is pictured during a rally in Dalton, Georgia on January 4, 2021.

The December 3 St. Charles, Missouri, event featuring the son of former President Donald Trump was organized by the conservative Defense of Liberty political action committee. WePay, a payment processor owned by JPMorgan Chase, had reportedly been used to handle the event's ticket transactions until the arrangement fell apart.

Defense of Liberty founder Paul Curtman, a former GOP state representative, told the Missouri Independent that WePay informed him in a message that it would no longer do business with his group based on an alleged violation of terms of service and had refunded $30,000 in payments already processed for the event.

"It seems you're using WePay Payments for one or more of the activities prohibited by our terms of service," the message reportedly states. "More specifically: Per our terms of service, we are unable to process for hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime, or items or activities that encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others regarding the same."

The quoted terms of service appear on the WePay website under the heading "Illegal." Other violations listed under the category include "deceptive, unfair, or predatory practices" and "forced child labor/human trafficking, slavery." The specifics of why the Defense of Liberty PAC was found to be engaging in "illegal" activity is unclear.

"My personal sense of why they did this is kind of along the same lines we have been seeing in our culture in recent years," Curtman told the news outlet. "If someone has a different idea politically, there is an attempt to silence them or shut them down."

"I can't think of a single instance where anything we have done at any one of these events violates one of their terms of service," he added. "They are trying to shut us down because they don't like our politics."

Former Republican state Senator Jim Lembke, who was working with the group on the event, reportedly said that the Trump Jr. appearance was expected to draw an audience of 3,000 people. Tickets were priced between $70 and $250, while guests could participate in a special event with Trump Jr. before the main event for another $500.

Lembke announced that the event had been canceled during a local radio interview on Tuesday. He told the Missouri Independent a day later that the move "directly speaks to a woke corporation that is trying to cancel free speech and specifically the speech of Donald Trump Jr."

Newsweek reached out to WePay for comment.

P.E.I. declares moratorium on 'renovictions' for 2 years
Kerry Campbell 

© Nicole Williams/CBC Tenants Marlene Gallant, Dylan Menzie and Dave Neatby display the eviction notice they were provided by their Charlottetown landlord in Feb. 2020.

Prince Edward Island has enacted a two-year moratorium on what have become known as "renovictions" — evictions of tenants by their landlords in order to renovate their units.

Politicians from all parties have acknowledged that the practice, allowed under the province's Rental of Residential Property Act, is sometimes used by landlords to skirt around provincial rent controls.

"What it means is that, immediately, there is a halt on people coming home and finding eviction notices taped to their door… because the landlord wants to paint their apartment and then rent it again for a higher rent," said Green MLA Hannah Bell, an opposition member who sponsored the bill that passed in the legislature Wednesday.

Annual rent increases in P.E.I. are capped by the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission. For 2021, the maximum allowable increase was one per cent. The same limit has been set for 2022.

That limit applies even if a new tenant moves into the same unit. But if the landlord renovates the unit, the limit on rent increases doesn't apply when the unit is occupied again.

© Al MacCormick/CBC 

Green MLA Hannah Bell introduced a bill in the P.E.I. Legislature that was passed Wednesday, which limits the ability of landlords to evict tenants in order to renovate their apartments.

"This is a huge, huge problem in Prince Edward Island," said Liberal MLA Gord McNeilly.

"This is really all about people during a crisis, and I think that this is a good piece of legislation to provide some relief to some desperate people in our community."
Housing shortage, increasing costs

P.E.I. has for years been struggling with a shortage of available housing, along with increasing housing costs.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation determined the apartment vacancy rate for P.E.I. was 2.6 per cent in October 2020. It bottomed out at 0.3 per cent in 2018.

P.E.I. has also led the country for years in population growth, while housing starts have not kept up.

Meanwhile, rising housing costs have helped make P.E.I. the national leader when it comes to inflation.

The annual increase in the cost of living in October for P.E.I. was 6.6 per cent. Over the previous 12 months, rental costs increased in the province by 7.6 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

© Rick Gibbs/CBC 

P.E.I.'s Housing Minister, Brad Trivers, said he believes most Island landlords are acting in good faith.

On Tuesday, MLA Cory Deagle from the governing PC Party asked the government to open an emergency shelter in his community of Montague, saying a lack of housing and rents that are out of reach for many have led to residents sleeping in cars and living in tents.

"I was kind of taken aback by it," he told the legislature, explaining it had been his impression homelessness was an issue affecting large urban centres, not small rural towns like Montague.
Fighting eviction takes a toll: advocate

IRAC doesn't track the number of evictions in P.E.I. — only the number that are contested.

Speaking on the floor of the legislature in support of the Green Party's bill, housing advocate Connor Kelly said fighting an eviction notice takes a toll on tenants because they prepare arguments for their case and worry about where they are going to live.

"I've talked to tenants who basically are considering suicide if they don't win, because they'll end up being homeless, because they have no options to find housing," Kelly told MLAs.

The Green Party had been hoping for a blanket moratorium on renovictions for two years. But Housing Minister Brad Trivers introduced an amendment to allow evictions if the renovations are required "to protect or preserve the property or to protect the health and safety of persons."

"The assumption here is that many, many landlords are acting on bad faith," Trivers said. "I prefer to take the view that most landlords are acting on good faith."

He said his amendment was required to allow landlords to perform necessary repairs.

"If you have a unit where there's significant mould … or you might have a pipe burst and there's six inches of water, again this is not a situation where a tenant can necessarily stay in the unit while the renovations are done," he said.

The Greens came back with an amendment of their own, saying if an eviction notice goes out, the landlord has to have obtained a building permit — in the hopes that will provide some assurance the renovations actually require the unit to be empty. The amendment passed.

Bell expressed concern the changes to her bill opened the door for the moratorium to be sidestepped, but declared "it's the best we can do right now, and that's better than nothing at all, and that's what Islanders need us to do."

While the moratorium is set to be in place for two years, Trivers said the government plans to table new tenancy legislation in the spring, and have it implemented by June. That new legislation would supercede the Greens' bill.

In February 2020, the province unveiled draft legislation that included a number of measures meant to protect tenants in cases of renoviction — including first right of refusal on the unit once it's renovated, a longer period of notice required before eviction, and a requirement that the renovations be extensive enough to require a building permit.

After pandemic-related delays in consultations, Trivers said a new draft of the legislation will be ready to present by Christmas.

Grassy Narrows takes Ontario to court for issuing mining exploration permits
Logan Turner 

© FreeGrassy.net 

Chief Randy Fobister, near the shoreline at Grassy Narrows First Nation in northwestern Ontario, wants the province to quash the nine mineral exploration permits they issued in the territory of Grassy Narrows.

Members of a First Nation in northwestern Ontario are accusing the government of breaking the law in granting nine permits for mineral exploration in traditional territory without consulting them — a requirement under the Canadian Constitution and Ontario's Mining Act.

Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) First Nation wants all nine permits quashed and a declaration that the government "breached the honour of the Crown," according to legal documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Monday.

The permits were issued between September 2019 and February 2021 for land that's been subject to a moratorium on industrial activity by the people of Grassy Narrows since 2007. But the First Nation only learned about them in May, according to the legal documents.

"When the government issues mining permits behind our backs, that's not reconciliation. That's destruction," Grassy Narrows Chief Randy Fobister told CBC News.

Early exploratory activities allowed by the permits, such as the drilling of holes and "mechanized surface stripping which involves the use of heavy equipment to remove all vegetation and soil from areas of rock," could cause harm to the lands that make up the traditional territory of the First Nation, said Fobister.

Lands have been devastated by industrial activities like clear-cut logging, mining and mercury poisoning since at least the mid-1900s, he added.

Old maps of First Nation lands used: chief

After learning about the exploration permits, Grassy Narrows requested additional information.

On June 25, the First Nation received a response from Ontario indicating it wasn't consulted on any of the exploration permits because it only allowed mining activities outside the boundaries of Grassy Narrows traditional territory, the legal documents say.

But the province was relying on a map with old boundaries from the 1980s, Fobister said.

"Some areas in our territory weren't in the map. They said they didn't know that was part of Grassy territory, but that's not true at all."

© CBC Grassy Narrows First Nation is located in Treaty 3 territory, about 88 kilometres northeast of Kenora, Ont.

The chief said the First Nation has been submitting maps to Ontario with updated boundaries to its territory throughout the 2000s.

The Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry did not confirm to CBC News whether it was using a map with outdated boundaries. In an emailed statement, a ministry spokesperson said it is committed to fulfilling its duty to consult, but would not comment further "as this matter is before the courts."

The nine permits are held by four resource extraction companies for seven different areas in Grassy Narrows territory:
EMX Properties Inc., which holds five exploration permits.
Pacton Gold, with two of the nine permits.
Power Metals Corporation, one permit.
Glencore Canada Corporation, one permit.

CBC reached out for comment to each company, but did not immediately hear back.

Lands just starting to heal

The First Nation chief said it is the responsibility of Grassy Narrows and its people to protect the land and the waters within their territory.

In 2007, facing a provincial plan to increase clear-cut logging in their lands, community leaders declared a moratorium on all industrial activity within their traditional territory without community consent. They've also maintained a blockade against logging trucks on traditional territory since 2002.

In 2018, the First Nation signed a land declaration that called on the province to withdraw the territory from forest management planning and mineral staking, as well as ending any hydro damming or oil and gas extraction.

Fobister credited these grassroots actions with the slow restoration and healing of the lands.

"You'll start to see new tracks in the snow here — moose tracks — it's been awhile since I've seen that and I've lived in community all my life," he said. "It's a beautiful sight to see."

Other animals are coming back and trees are starting to regrow.

While many community members still suffer symptoms from mercury contamination of the Wabigoon River, the recovering land and water systems are helping the people of Grassy Narrows heal themselves, Fobister added.

"We're here to continue working on that plan of healing. The youth are crying out for healing, they want support," he said. "The government needs to listen to the cries of the youth."