BC COASTAL GASLINK PROTESTS

Punishment for Pipeline Protesters, but Not for Pipeline Firm’s Violations?

In the legislature, Green Leader Sonia Furstenau points out a stark contrast.

Andrew MacLeod 24 Nov 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria and the author of All Together Healthy (Douglas & McIntyre, 2018). Find him on Twitter or reach him at amacleod@thetyee.ca.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau on the Coastal GasLink pipeline: ‘It’s clear that this company has been harming the environment, and this government has abdicated its responsibility to the public interest.’ 

Photo by Chad Hipolito, the Canadian Press.

While dozens of people have been arrested while protesting the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline in northern B.C., the government hasn’t done much at all to enforce laws protecting the environment during the pipeline’s construction.

Why is that, wondered Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau in the B.C. legislature yesterday.

“On the one hand, the RCMP have eagerly enforced an injunction on behalf of CGL and this government’s fossil-fuel-expanding agenda,” Furstenau said.

“At the same time, there have been multiple instances of environmental violations on the CGL pipeline since construction began with little or no enforcement,” she said. “What will the minister do to ensure timely enforcement of these environmental violations?”

Since last Thursday there have been at least 29 arrests, including several Wet’suwet’en members and supporters opposed to the project on the Indigenous nation’s Yintah, or traditional territory.

Three of the arrests were of journalists, two of whom were held in jail over the weekend.

RCMP enforcement of the injunction came after land defenders blocked the Morice West Forest Service Road and cut the access route for 500 workers who were in camps to work on the 670-kilometre gas pipeline between the northeast of the province and Kitimat.

Meanwhile, Furstenau said, there appeared to be few consequences for Coastal GasLink violating environmental requirements while building the pipeline.

“CGL’s failures to comply with environmental requirements have resulted in damaged habitat, eroded waterways and the contamination of watersheds with pollutants,” she said.

In late 2020, B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office found CGL’s activities were harming watersheds, and in early 2021 independent auditors found the company failed to meet eight out of nine requirements to control erosion and sediment, she said.

“Coastal GasLink has failed to reclaim and restore the waterways that they have polluted,” she said.

Responding for the government, Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman said the company has to meet the conditions set out in its environmental assessment certificate.

“Staff and inspectors that are part of the environmental assessment office have regularly conducted inspections,” he said. “They have issued orders. They have issued directions.”

When the company failed to comply with those directions, staff increased the level of inspection and issued more orders. “[They] are now going through the process of considering the application of administrative penalties to make the point. We take the conditions on this certificate seriously.”

Furstenau responded, “Administrative penalties, but no police raids yet, I understand. It’s clear that this company has been harming the environment, and this government has abdicated its responsibility to the public interest.”

The provincial government is also failing to uphold the protections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Furstenau said, citing the arrests and incarceration of journalists Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano.

“We’re now learning that the RCMP had been tracking these specific journalists, which makes it very hard to understand how the police were saying, ‘We didn’t know that they were journalists when we arrested them.’”

The B.C. government also restricted press freedom last summer by allowing the unlawful enforcement of media exclusion zones at Fairy Creek, she added. “I think all of us, no matter where we stand on these issues, should be deeply concerned, because the role of the media and press freedom in democracy is essential.”

Solicitor General and Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said the government takes the freedom of the press seriously and that it is “a fundamental foundation of our democratic system,” adding that enforcement of court-ordered injunctions is done by the police and is not directed by the solicitor general or the government.

The arrested reporters were released after appearing in court and agreeing to the conditions the judge set for bail, Farnworth said. “The judicial process worked appropriately, and that’s as it should be. Not being directed by politicians.”

Some 40 media outlets and related organizations, including The Tyee, signed an open letter to Canada’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino saying that reporters should not be arrested for doing their jobs.

“The decision to detain the press along with protesters represents a move by the RCMP to prevent the public from being informed about what is happening on the ground, during a standoff,” the letter said.

“As Canada and its democratic and civic institutions contend with and promise to redress their roles in the oppression and dispossession of Indigenous people on their land, journalists have a unique and express duty to bear witness to and comprehensively cover news events of consequence.”


Slew of Journalists and Land Defenders Released After Three Days in Custody

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It was the second day in a row that Green MLAs have raised concerns in the B.C. legislature about the conflict over construction of the CGL pipeline.

On Monday, Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Minister Murray Rankin said the provincial government is committed to sorting out the conflict through negotiations with the federal government and Wet’suwet’en Nation.

“We’ve been struggling to do so in the face of disunity,” he said. “There has been — it’s no secret — conflict between the elected and the hereditary system, but we continue to do this historic work.”

Adam Olsen, the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands and a member of the Tsartlip First Nation, said the government has been knowingly exploiting the divisions in Indigenous communities that were created through the Indian Act.

The province, he said, is unwilling to change the racist government structures that have created the conflict. “Instead of the much-assured reconciliation, what we have from this BC NDP government is more of the same divide-and-conquer tactics gift-wrapped in meaningless political rhetoric and empty promises.”

Jason Kenney Apparently Thinks about David Suzuki a Lot

The premier spent much of a news conference about the kids’ vaccine rollout ranting about an environmentalist.

David Climenhaga 24 Nov 2021 | Alberta Politics
David J. Climenhaga is an award-winning journalist, author, post-secondary teacher, poet and trade union communicator. He blogs at Alberta Politics. Follow him on Twitter @djclimenhaga.

Jason Kenney trying to get David Suzuki out of his head, failing. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick, the Canadian Press.


Jason Kenney actually had some good news to impart yesterday — that the rollout of Pfizer’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine will commence in Alberta on Friday.

Instead, Alberta’s premier spent most of his time at the microphone at an afternoon news conference about the vaccine delivering an unhinged diatribe about environmentalist David Suzuki, whom Kenney continues to falsely portray as advocating violence against pipelines.

He also took an angry swipe at U.S. President Joe Biden for cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline.

You’d think Alberta’s premier would have wanted to emphasize news that will come as a huge relief to vast numbers of the province’s parents, whose kids aged 5 to 11 can be vaccinated now that Health Canada has approved the pediatric vaccine and the federal government and manufacturer Pfizer-BioNTech have cut a deal to accelerate delivery of 2.9 million children’s doses to Canada.

Parents can start to make appointments for their kids today, the Alberta government’s news release said. Vaccinations will be provided at more than 100 locations across the province.

Sure, not everyone was happy about the United Conservative Party government’s timid reluctance to require parents to show vaccine passports for their children under 12. And there was criticism of Kenney’s mealy-mouthed insistence that “we want parents to take the time they need to assess their situation, review the data, and make the best choice for their kids and their family.” (On Facebook, presumably.)

“And that’s why children aged 5 to 11 will not be subject to the restrictions exemption program,” he said.

Still, half a loaf is better than none, and for a politician in trouble in the polls who had just overcome a challenge, easily routed though it may have been at his party’s annual general meeting last weekend, you’d have thought he would have been ready to take credit for this positive development.

Instead, he left dealing with the topic of the day’s news conference mostly to Health Minister Jason Copping. Because, obviously, Suzuki has now taken up semi-permanent residence in Kenney’s head.

The premier had a rant ready in the event a reporter asked about the environmentalist’s warning in Victoria last Saturday that if police and pipeliners continue to steamroll over opposition to their projects on First Nations land in B.C., there is potential for violence.

Responding to a question from the CBC’s Colleen Underwood, the premier portrayed Suzuki’s warning as “implicit or winking incitement to violence.”

“I think it creates a context that some people could use to rationalize violence, and that’s why it’s so dangerous,” he said later in response to a similar question by Calgary Sun political columnist Rick Bell.

Spinning controversial 2013 remarks by Suzuki about Canadian immigration to give them a racist tinge, Kenney complained that if Don Cherry had said the same thing on Coach’s Corner, “he would have been cancelled by the CBC in a New York minute.”


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“And it is sad to see so many of the Laurentian Elites, and others, CBC and others, rush to the defence of this guy, like he’s some kind of a saint,” Mr. Kenney continued his jeremiad. “He’s infallible. He cannot possibly be criticized, even though he has a track record of saying things that would result in any mere mortal going down the cancel culture black hole of history!”

Apparently triggered by Suzuki’s 2016 remark about Stephen Harper that “people like the former prime minister of Canada should be thrown in jail for wilful blindness” about climate change, Kenney could barely contain himself.

“That’s not how we solve problems in Canada,” he huffed — apparently forgetting his own praise for Russia’s jailing of Greenpeace protesters in 2019. “We resolve our differences peacefully and democratically, not by threatening to throw our opponents in jail!”

He was angry at the Alberta Teachers’ Association for inviting Suzuki to speak to a meeting.

And he denounced the University of Alberta, once again, with particular bitterness for giving Suzuki an honorary degree in 2018. “I’m seriously ticked off about this. And still about the fact that the University of Alberta gave this guy an honorary degree! They wouldn’t give anybody else with a track rec — is there anybody else who’s anti-immigration that the U of A would give an honorary degree to?”

Clearly, if one wishes to get Kenney wound up, one needs only utter the word Suzuki.

Note: The unhinged quality of Kenney’s hyperbolic stream of consciousness is difficult to summarize and portray. I recommend that if readers have time, they watch the second half of the Government of Alberta’s recording of the news conference. I have prepared a transcript of much of Kenney’s rambling answers about Suzuki. His response to Bell, in particular, is evocative.

AFL ALBERTA LABOUR NEWS

Alberta's new election bill silences UCP government's critics

As Jason Kenney and the UCP circle the drain of public opinion, they’re making one last desperate attempt to stack the deck in their favour by introducing a law to silence their critics. The law in question is the innocuous-sounding Elections Statutes Amendment Act, or Bill 81. But it should really be called the “Anti-Democracy Gag Law.” Read AFL president Gil McGowan's guest column in the Edmonton Journal:

Read Edmonton Journal Story.

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The UCP’s anti-democracy gag law: Bill 81 explained

The UCP’s gag law is an undemocratic and unconstitutional attempt to silence their critics and give them a backdoor method to raise unlimited donations from secret donors. Bill 81 is giant and sneaky so we broke it down in this blog.

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Watch: Understanding the UCP's Anti-Democracy Gag Law

Thank you to everyone who joined AFL president Gil McGowan and AFL secretary treasurer Karen Kuprys to discuss Bill 81. A special thanks to our guests, Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) president Mike Parker and political scientist University of Calgary professor Lisa Young. Watch the recording on YouTube.

Kenney Wants a New Law. It’s His Latest Attack on Democracy

Alberta’s premier presses for rules to muzzle his critics and favour his wealthy backers. Behold Bill 81.

Gil McGowan 26 Nov 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Gil McGowan is the elected president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, which represents 175,000 Alberta workers from more than 20 unions in public and private sectors.

‘This is the kind of authoritarian pretzel logic that the Kenney government is deploying against its own citizens.’ Image via Shutterstock.

If there has been one constant for Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party since they formed government in Alberta 2½ years ago, it’s been their determination to demonize critics, silence dissent and make it harder for their opponents within the province to be heard by other Albertans.

The way the UCP tells it, Albertans who engage in advocacy around climate change, for example, aren’t concerned citizens — they’re “anti-Alberta” activists and pawns of shadowy “foreign-funded conspiracies” aimed at destroying Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

Similarly, citizens who speak out against UCP policies on things like school curriculum, coal development or COVID response aren’t Albertans with justifiable concerns and legitimate differences of opinion — they’re agents of the NDP simply trying to gain partisan advantage.

The UCP’s preoccupation with demonizing dissent isn’t just rhetorical; it has manifested itself in real-life legislation and policies.

It started with Bill 1, the so-called Infrastructure Defense Act. This bill was ostensibly about protecting pipeline projects from disruption, but it also quietly expanded the definition of “critical infrastructure” to include things like sidewalks and public squares.
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The result is that you can now be arrested and/or fined in Alberta for participating in rallies, demonstrations or picket lines — actions that have long been seen as expressions of the democratic right to free speech.

Around the time they were introducing new ways to criminalize protest, the UCP also created the ominously named “Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns.” (Seriously, that’s what they really called it.)

First the witch hunts

Much like the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s in the United States, the inquiry was launched as a clear effort to demonize and discredit citizens with progressive views.

Sen. McCarthy’s targets were progressive supporters of the hugely popular and successful New Deal. They were branded “unAmerican” and “Communist collaborators.” In the UCP’s case, the target was those who dared to raise questions about the role of Alberta-based fossil fuel development in climate change — the clear implication being that they are “unAlbertan.”

Thankfully, the UCP’s McCarthyesque strategy of political character assassination failed.

After two years, $3.5 million and multiple extensions, the head of the inquiry, accountant and UCP insider Steve Allan was forced to acknowledge that he could find no evidence that environmentalists had done anything wrong.

He even admitted that he felt uncomfortable with the “anti-Alberta” label that Kenney had attached to his inquiry and that the amount of “foreign money” spent on campaigns to oppose oilsands development ($54 million over 16 years) paled in comparison to the money deployed by the oil and gas industry in its own efforts to influence policy-makers.

Given the embarrassing failure of the inquiry to support the UCP’s big lie that Alberta’s oil industry is struggling because of “foreign-funded campaigns against it” (as opposed to the reality that the world has started the process of moving away from fossil fuels) you’d think that Kenney and his cohorts would reconsider their efforts to discredit and muzzle their critics. But instead, they’ve doubled down.

The Kenney government has now tabled the innocuous-sounding Elections Alberta Amendment Act, Bill 81.

In a news conference to explain the bill, UCP Justice Minister Kaycee Madu said it was about prohibiting “foreign influence” in Alberta’s political affairs (apparently, they can’t get enough of that rhetoric), “strengthening democracy” and “getting big money out of politics.”

But the bill literally does none of these things. In fact, in the truly Orwellian fashion that we’ve come to expect from the Kenney UCP, it does exactly the opposite.


For example, as experts in elections have pointed out, by removing all caps on donations to nomination campaigns, Bill 81 has created a backdoor mechanism that will allow unlimited amounts of money to flow into the coffers of political parties from people who can write big cheques.

And now the anti-democracy gag law

Just as alarmingly, the bill introduces what we in the Alberta labour movement are describing as an anti-democracy gag law, aimed at silencing civil society groups who want to run public advocacy campaigns that criticize the government.

Of course, the UCP’s main target with these outrageous new rules is the Alberta labour movement, which includes all of our unions and the Alberta Federation of Labour — our province’s oldest, largest and most vocal worker advocacy group.

One of our core jobs as democratically elected worker advocates is to hold governments accountable on issues of concern to working people. And we’re good at it. That’s why the UCP wants to shut us up and shut us down.

But Bill 81 isn’t only about muzzling unions. And it’s not really about stopping the Alberta Federation of Labour from running partisan ads during election campaigns (which, for the record, we have rarely done).

Instead, the impact of the bill is much broader. It will constrain ALL civil society groups (potentially from all points on the political spectrum). And it will impact ALL advocacy and issue campaigns, not just those aimed at supporting particular candidates or parties during elections.

Consider the rules contained in the bill (Section 9.1 sub 5.1 and 5.2):

It says that all groups who want to spend more than $1,000 on campaigns that criticize the provincial government, political leaders and/or political parties must register as so-called “third-party advertisers” with the elections commissioner.

Only groups that are approved by the election commissioner as TPAs can raise money or spend money on advocacy campaigns that criticize the government, political leaders and/or political parties.

Groups that get any of their campaign money from outside of Canada will not be allowed to register as TPAs, or if they’re already registered, they’ll have their status revoked

Groups that are “affiliated” with a political party or are “under the control” of a political party will not be allowed to register as a TPA.

A third party will be “deemed” to be affiliated with a political party if they are named in the party’s “founding documents” (as the AFL is in the Alberta NDP’s constitution) or if any of their officers also hold positions within a political party.

Groups will also be prohibited from establishing TPAs if they have made statements “in support or in opposition to the registered party” or if the group’s “political programs, advertising materials and policy statements” are critical of a registered party.

Even if groups manage to jump through all of these hoops and water down their messages to avoid any explicit criticism of the government or a political party, they won’t be allowed to run advocacy campaigns during the “election period” (which will now be defined as Jan. 1 to the last Monday in May during an election year) because, during that period, only individuals, not groups, will be allowed to register as TPAs.

There you have it. If a civil society group in Alberta wants to run a campaign that publicly criticizes the provincial government, they first have to register as a TPA; but their application to register as a TPA will be rejected if they have publicly criticized the provincial government.

Right out of the authoritarian playbook

This is the kind of authoritarian pretzel logic that the Kenney government is deploying against its own citizens. The only kind of civil society campaigns that will be tolerated by our Dear Leader are the ones that don’t explicitly criticize the government.

When you cut through all the UCP spin, it becomes clear that Bill 81 isn’t really about “strengthening democracy,” as the UCP has claimed. On the contrary, it is an attack on the rights of free speech and free association guaranteed in the Canadian Constitution.

Trying to suggest that all government critics are “agents” of other parties is a strategy used by authoritarian governments. So too is the establishment of a government commissar to determine what is acceptable “political speech” and what is not. None of these rules have any place in a true democracy.

Having said that, most Albertans would agree there is a need to do something about all the money that has been sloshing around Alberta’s political stage since the former NDP government banned corporate and union donations six years ago — a change we in the Alberta labour movement enthusiastically supported.

However, while we need rules to ensure that “big money” doesn’t distort elections, we also need to make a clear distinction between public campaigns run by legitimate civil society groups — whose job is to hold government to account — and purpose-built, American-style political action committees or PACs, which exist only to promote or oppose the election of a particular political party.

Bill 81 fails to make this crucial distinction, thereby turning a law that purports to protect democracy into a law that does the opposite. That’s why we’re urging Alberta civil society groups and concerned citizens to push back against Bill 81 and demand that it be withdrawn from the legislature or repealed if passed.

We can’t let Kenney and the UCP get away with this blatant attempt to muzzle citizens and take civil society out of our democracy.

MACHIAVELLI AND THE FIRST WAVE OF MODERNITY

Timothy H. Wilson

54 Pages

1 File ▾

Political Philosophy,

Humanities,

Renaissance Humanism,

Reformation Studies,

Modernity

 ...more ▾

Presentation slides for a lecture on the "modern revolution" in thinking that occurred ca 1500 CE. A brief overview of the Medieval worldview is presented in order to highlight the order that was overturned by the moderns. Some of the historical factors contributing to the modern revolution are enumerated: linear perspective in painting, the fall of Constantinople, Gutenberg's Bible, the Voyages of Discovery, modern warfare, Luther's 95 Theses, and the Copernican revolution. The notion of "Three Waves of Modernity", as articulated by Leo Strauss, is briefly presented. Finally, the philosophy of Machiavelli is summarized as a way of understanding the modern shift in thinking. For instance, war is no longer judged as the "right" course of action if it is in accordance with a Providential design (the Medieval view); rather, war is judged as the right course of action if it advances the overall "human designs" of the Machiavellian leader.

https://www.academia.edu/62722692/MACHIAVELLI_AND_THE_FIRST_WAVE_OF_MODERNITY?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper

 

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Copyright (C) 2021 Alberta NDP Caucus. All rights reserved. That you for taking the time to read our message. Our mailing address is: Alberta NDP Caucus Federal Building 9820 107 St Nw Fl 5 Edmonton, AB T5K 1E7 Canada

Province Introduces Five Days of Paid Sick Leave

The BC Federation of Labour acknowledges the milestone, but says it falls short of the 10 days that workers had asked for.

Andrew MacLeod 25 Nov 2021 | TheTyee.ca
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria and the author of All Together Healthy (Douglas & McIntyre, 2018). Find him on Twitter or reach him at amacleod@thetyee.ca.

About half of BC workers currently lack paid sick leave, and they are disproportionately the most vulnerable people in the province, said Labour Minister Harry Bains.

 Photo by Jonathan Hayward, the Canadian Press.

B.C. Labour Minister Harry Bains says the government has struck the right balance by deciding employees in the province will be legally entitled to a minimum of five days per year of employer-paid sick leave.

The new entitlement is short of the 10 days that most workers participating in a government engagement process said they supported and that the BC Federation of Labour said should be the minimum.

“Five days is a sustainable solution given the challenges faced by many sectors,” Bains said. “I think it’s all about balance and listening to people.”

The new minimum applies to all workers covered by the Employment Standards Act and will be in force starting Jan. 1, 2022. It includes part-time employees, but not people who are self-employed or work in federally regulated sectors.

The federal government has pledged that workers in federally regulated jobs will be entitled to 10 days a year of paid sick leave but has not yet passed the necessary legislation to make it happen.
The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

Last May, the B.C. government created a temporary paid sick leave that covered up to three days as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the risk of people going to work sick and spreading the disease because they couldn’t afford to miss a day’s pay.

Under the measure, which expires Dec. 31, the government has been reimbursing employers up to $200 per day to help cover the wages for people off work because they were sick.

According to a budget update earlier this week, of the $325 million budgeted for the program, only $15 million had been spent as demand fell short of the worst-case scenario the government had projected.

In September, Bains announced the government would make paid sick leave permanent but hadn’t decided how many days it would cover or whether the government or employers would pay for it.

It launched an engagement process, during which 81 per cent of workers and 19 per cent of employers said they supported 10 days of employer-paid sick leave. More employers and fewer workers supported the other two options the government gave, five days or three.

Anita Huberman, the president and CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade, participated in the government’s announcement and said she believes five is the right number of days.

The BC Federation of Labour released a statement saying that while the announcement was a significant milestone, it fell short of the coverage sick workers need.

“We’re disappointed that it’s only half the 10-day standard that science supports and that is the overwhelming preference of British Columbians,” said president Laird Cronk.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, speaking alongside Bains, said the need for paid sick leave was one of the many lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are all in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat,” she said. “We have seen that the pandemic has exposed and amplified inequities, and experiences have been quite different for different groups of people.”

In particular, women and marginalized, lower-income and racialized people have carried a heavier burden in the pandemic, and it’s become clear that economic policies have health impacts, she said.

Bains said about half of B.C. workers lack paid sick leave and they are disproportionately the most vulnerable people.


“These are the very people who can least afford to stay home and lose wages when sick,” he said. “I firmly believe no worker should have to choose to go to work sick or stay home and lose wages.”



BC Commits to Paid Sick Leave by Jan. 1, But Details Still to Come READ MORE

The BC Liberals released a statement saying they supported the introduction of paid sick leave but criticized the decision to “burden” employers by passing the cost on to them.

BC Green Party Leader and Cowichan Valley MLA Sonia Furstenau said paid sick leave is needed to keep people healthy and reduce transmission of infectious diseases, but the number of days should be based on desired public health and economic outcomes.

“Most OECD countries have 10 days or more of paid sick leave,” she said. “That’s because paid sick leave is an essential public health measure, and an important basic standard for business. Government should closely monitor the impacts of this policy over the next year, and work with labour advocates and business to explore moving to match other OECD countries.”

Furstenau also said the government should make sure small and medium-sized businesses are supported so that the financial burden isn’t dropped on already stretched business owners. 

 

Alberta worker advocacy group applauds Ottawa's 10-day sick leave bill, calls on province to follow suit

The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) applauded Friday's announcement but said the ball is now within the court of the province to extend paid sick leave provisions for all workers since the legislation would apply to 10 per cent of the overall Canadian labour force.

"Workers have waited far too long for this common-sense policy," said AFL president Gil McGowan, "10 days of paid sick leave is the minimum that policymakers should be pushing for — and the minimum that workers should accept." Read our press release. Read news story.

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Action

Demand paid sick leave for all Alberta’s workers

Go to work sick or stay home without pay and even risk losing your job—Alberta’s workers shouldn’t have to choose between these options. But Jason Kenney is forcing them to choose and workers are saying enough is enough! Alberta’s workers need 10 permanent, paid sick days so they can afford to take time off from work when sick. Send an email to Jason Kenney to demand paid sick leave today!

REST IN POWER

African designers say fashion icon Abloh helped 'open door'

Virgil Abloh was artistic director for Louis Vuitton men's collections

 (AFP/FRANCOIS GUILLOT)

Camille MALPLAT
Mon, November 29, 2021

African fashion designers on Monday paid tribute to American star designer Virgil Abloh for helping "open the door" and allowing them to be seen and heard in the global industry.

Artistic director for Louis Vuitton men's collections, Abloh, whose family was from Ghana, died on Sunday of cancer aged 41, after becoming the first major black designer to be recognised in an industry often criticised for its lack of diversity.

"Thank you Virgil for your bravery and talent, which disrupted and allowed so many people to be seen and heard. You held open the door, we'll never forget you," South African designer Thebe Magugu, the first African winner of the LVMH prize in 2019, wrote on Instagram.

Abloh's partnership with Kanye West took him from Chicago's skate and DJ culture to the heights of the fashion world, first with his own red-hot label Off-White, and then into the luxury industry in Paris.

His cancer diagnosis came just a year after he was appointed as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton, becoming the first black person to take an artistic director role at a top French fashion house.

Though born in the United States, Abloh has never forgotten his Ghanaian roots: in January 2021, the designer brought Kente, a traditional fabric worn in Ghana during major ceremonies, to the catwalks of Louis Vuitton.

"It is a huge loss for world fashion, all the more shocking because it was unexpected," said Cameroonian designer Imane Ayissi, who in 2020 joined the closed circle of fashion houses during haute couture week in Paris.

"He remains a model for part of the population by proving that it is possible to creatively and successfully manage one of the very top luxury houses, whatever one's origin and one's skin colour."

- African streetwear -

Nigerian designer Bubu Ogisi told AFP that as many Africans in the diaspora are taken away from their culture while growing up, fashion was one of the ways Abloh used to pay tribute.

Abloh also had a strong influence on streetwear brands in Africa, said Ogisi, director of the Iamisigo brand, whose creations showcase fabrics and techniques from the continent.

"A lot of friends who have street brands in Nigeria and in Ghana have taken references from Off-White," he said, referring to Abloh's luxury streetwear brand.

"Gone too soon, thanks for supporting African skaters," trendy Nigerian skate clothing brand Wafflesncream posted on Instagram on Monday.

A fan of hip-hop and urban culture, Abloh helped finance a skatepark in Ghana's capital Accra.

He had also worked with UNICEF to promote education and entrepreneurship in the West African country.

Throughout his career, the designer strove for more inclusiveness in the fashion industry.

In 2017, he confided during a conference at Harvard University that he found it difficult to see himself as a designer as designers did not look like him.

His career give hope to many black creators, in the West and on the African continent.

"A few black people in the world have risen above and really pioneered a shapeshifting idea that anyone can be anything and Virgil has been that guy from day one," said Adedayo Laketu, a young Nigerian designer who founded the couture brand Pith Africa.

"I want to do a billion more and go harder cause he has shown and told me it's possible."

cma/aml-pma/tgb

Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland's staunch feminist PM

Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir has become a unifying force (AFP/HANNAH MCKAY)

Sun, November 28, 2021

Katrin Jakobsdottir, who on Sunday kicked off her second term as prime minister of Iceland, is a popular and fervent feminist who has become a unifying force after years of political upheaval.

The country's three coalition parties agreed that the 45-year-old former journalist would remain premier, a post she has held since 2017, despite her Left-Green Movement's weak showing in September's legislative election.

That mere fact illustrates Jakobsdottir's pivotal role in the unusually broad coalition, made up of her Left-Greens, the conservative Independence Party and the centre-right Progressive Party.

The unlikely alliance has been hard for some in her party to accept.

"I know I've been criticised for it, but when I look back, I think this government has done a good job and I think it has really shown what is possible in politics," she told AFP in a recent interview.

Jakobsdottir has won over Icelanders with her integrity, sincerity and consensual management style.

Almost 60 percent said they wanted her to stay on as prime minister, in a poll published in October, even though her party won only 12.6 percent of votes at the ballot box.

A former education minister, from 2009 to 2013, she has remained down-to-earth and avoided scandal during her years in power, earning the people's trust according to analysts.

"Katrin Jakobsdottir is a very skilled politician (who) has more of a consensus style than confrontational style," notes University of Iceland political science professor Olafur Hardarson.

This is only the second time since 2008 that a government made it to the end of its four-year mandate on the sprawling island of 370,000 people.

Deep public distrust of politicians amid repeated scandals sent Icelanders to the polls five times from 2007 to 2017.

However, holding onto power has come at a high price, with Jakobsdottir forced to make concessions on key issues like immigration and the environment during her first term.

She had to back down from a promise to create a national park in the centre of the country, to protect a natural national treasure, after her two allies refused to support the legislation.

- Footie and books -

Born into a family of academics and lawmakers, Jakobsdottir is the second woman to head Iceland's government.

Her concern for the environment was awakened in the 2000s by a controversial project to build a hydroelectric dam in eastern Iceland.

"I wouldn't say I was the most radical activist in town, but, yes, I began my political participation through demonstrations," she told US magazine The Nation in 2018.

She joined the youth wing of the Left Green Movement in 2002, before becoming deputy leader a year later. She has been the head of the party since 2013.

The slender, athletic politician has been a member of parliament for 14 years.

A huge football fan, she has rooted for Liverpool FC since she was a child.

That makes for a sometimes tense atmosphere in her Reykjavik apartment, where her husband and three sons are all Manchester United supporters.

"I clearly didn't raise my children well enough," she joked on a radio show earlier this year, blaming her husband who has spent more time with their children due to her hectic schedule.

In a country that champions gender equality, she has made women's causes a priority. Among other things, she has extended parental leave.

Her friends are meanwhile quick to point out her funny side.

"With her sense of humour and jokes she can put a room at ease," says former party member Rosa Bjork Brynjolfsdottir who studied with her at university.

With a degree in Icelandic and French studies and a Masters in Icelandic literature, Jakobsdottir is a fan of crime novels and fiction, finding time to read almost every day.

"It's like a kind of therapy at the end of the day," she has said, revealing last year that she was working on her first crime novel with a local author.

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China to provide 1 billion Covid vaccine doses to Africa, President Xi says

China will deliver another 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa and encourage Chinese companies to invest no less than $10 billion in the continent over the next three years, President Xi Jinping said on Monday.

© Cooper Inveen, Reuters

The country has already supplied nearly 200 million doses to Africa, where vaccination rates have fallen behind amid growing concern over the spread of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which was first identified in southern Africa.

Xi said 600 million doses would be donations and 400 million doses would be provided through other means such as joint production by Chinese companies and relevant African countries. China will also build 10 health projects in Africa and send 1,500 health experts, he said.

In a speech via video link at the opening of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Xi said a China-Africa cross-border yuan centre would be set up to provide African financial institutions with a credit line of $10 billion, without giving further details.

China will provide $10 billion of trade finance to support African exports, create a zone for trade and economic cooperation and build a China-Africa industrial park, he said.

The announcement comes amid criticism of China's infrastructure-for-commodities deals that some experts say saddle countries with unsustainable debt. Democratic Republic of Congo is currently reviewing a $6 billion deal with Chinese investors over concerns that it is not sufficiently beneficial to Congo.

The Belt and Road Initiative, in which Chinese institutions finance major infrastructure in mainly developing nations, has slowed: Chinese bank financing for infrastructure projects in Africa fell from $11 billion in 2017 to $3.3 billion in 2020, according to a report by international law firm Baker McKenzie.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a four-nation tour of the region last week that Washington was pushing for cleaner deals without unsustainable debts.

Xi says imports from Africa to reach $300 billion

China's imports from Africa, one of its key sources of crude oil and minerals, will reach $300 billion in the next three years, Xi said, adding that the two sides would cooperate in areas such as health, digital innovation, trade promotion and green development.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, also speaking via video link, thanked China for its support and said African economies should be able to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines.

Discussions at the World Trade Organization on a temporary TRIPS waiver to make COVID-19 vaccines and treatments available to all needed to be finalised, he said, while criticising the travel curbs imposed on South Africa.