Quebec and public daycare unions reach agreement in principle

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Agreement needs to be ratified by union membership

Josh Grant · CBC News · Posted: Dec 08, 2021 

Hundreds of early childhood educators protested outside government offices in November, amid months of talks between public daycare workers and the Quebec government. (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada)

After days of strikes and months of negotiations, the labour dispute between public daycare workers and the Quebec government appears to be nearly resolved and a strike that loomed Friday seems to be off the table.

After two days of "intensive negotiations," the FSSS–CSN, a branch of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux which represents 11,000 daycare employees, announced it had reached an agreement in principle at around 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

A few hours later, the Syndicat québécois des employées et employés de service (SQEES) associated with the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) said its negotiators had also come to an agreement in principle with Quebec's Treasury Board and family minister.

"We've worked really hard to get here," said FSSS–CSN child-care lead Stéphanie Vachon. "We feel we've done everything we can to push forward the workers' priorities at the negotiation table, but in the end the decision is up to them."

The union says it won't be giving any more details on the agreement in principle until its members have had a chance to review it and have their say.

In a video posted to the FSSS-CSN members Facebook page, Vachon said all employees would be receiving more information this afternoon and would be invited to general assemblies where the deal will be put to a vote.

The SQEES-FTQ says it has started a similar process and is delaying an unlimited strike that was set to start tomorrow.

Anxious parents

Arwen Fleming says she and her partner have struggled not being able to send their daughter Tova to her FSSS-CSN affiliated daycare in Côte-des-Neiges, Que., this week. 

"The disruption in routine is horrible," she said, "and I can tell my daughter hates this."

Fleming says she's had to take time off work because it's impossible to work from home with a toddler in the house. And she says it's equally frustrating for her toddler.

"She asks to go to daycare every morning, she's refusing naps and meals, she misses the stimulation and her friends, she misses the structure, the routine."

Arwen Fleming, right, says this week's daycare strikes have been challenging for her and her partner Serhiy Homonyuk as well as their daughter Tova, who's anxious to get back. Fleming hopes today's agreement in principle is something daycare workers will be happy with. (Dave St-Amant/CBC)

"I'm so relieved that there's an agreement in principle," she said, "because I really don't know how much longer we can handle this."

Despite the strain on her and her family, Fleming says she blames the government for failing to resolve the situation sooner and not the workers.

"You need to come up with an agreement that fairly pays people, so they stay in the area of work," she said.

3rd union reaches deal

Early childhood educators and staff affiliated with the SQEES-FTQ and the Fédération des intervenantes en petite enfance du Québec, affiliated with the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (FIPEQ-CSQ), were set to walk off the job on Thursday if no agreement was reached.

But on Wednesday evening the FIPEQ-CSQ, which represents 3,200 educators, announced it too had reached an agreement and its members would soon convene to study and vote on it.

This afternoon, Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel was asked about the negotiations.

LeBel said she didn't want to go into too much detail about the agreement in principle but said she stuck to her position that the government is not able to offer the same salary increases to auxiliary staff as it is to educators.

She said Quebec agreed to offer educators the big salary boosts and increased support they were asking for and considers that issue to no longer be a sticking point.

with files from Kwabena Oduro and Radio-Canada

Concordia University of Edmonton faculty association could be first in Alberta to strike

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University says its primary goal is reaching a fair and

 equitable collective agreement

Madeleine Cummings · CBC News · Posted: Dec 07, 2021 

Concordia University of Edmonton faculty association has voted 90 per cent in favour of a strike. However, the university has been approved to take lockout action against the association. The university says its primary goal is reaching a fair and equitable collective agreement (Madeleine Cummings/CBC)

Concordia University of Edmonton's faculty association could be the first in Alberta to go on strike. 

The Concordia University of Edmonton Faculty Association (CUEFA), which represents 81 full-time professors, librarians, placement coordinators and lab instructors, has been negotiating a new collective agreement with the university since the spring. 

A strike authorization vote on December 1 saw 90 per cent support a strike, with about 95 per cent of the association's members participating in the vote. 

The results mean the association could choose to strike anytime within 120 days.

"We obviously want to minimize the harm to the students, but at the same time, we do have to stand up for our own health and we do have to stand up for our own working conditions," CUEFA interim president Glynis Price told CBC News on Monday.

According to Price,  the university has been approved to lockout staff, should they choose to do so. In the case of a strike or a lockout, 72 hours notice is required.

An emailed statement from the university said it has a primary goal of reaching a fair and equitable collective agreement with the association and to avoid any disruptions. 

"We are hopeful that ongoing negotiations will achieve a reasonable and mutually beneficial agreement as soon as possible," the statement said.

'Highly unusual' workload

Price said the faculty association's biggest point of disagreement with the university pertains to workload. 

In negotiations, she said, the university offered a "highly unusual" workload that reduced the number of courses some teachers would have to teach by one, but increased research expectations for everyone. 

Price said higher teaching loads are common at colleges and undergraduate-focused universities, but Concordia is in the process of transitioning to a research institution.

The association is also concerned about job security, in particular, language in the university's proposal on discipline that would allow faculty members to be disciplined without cause. 

On its collective bargaining website, the university said the parties disagree over "relatively minor" adjustments about faculty discipline and the school "expects this item will be fairly easily resolved."

Regarding workload, the university said a mediator suggested the two sides continue bargaining.

The right to strike

Bob Barnetson, a labour relations professor at Athabasca University, said faculty strikes in other provinces have proven to be effective at putting pressure on post-secondary institutions. 

They typically last no more than six weeks, he said, "at which point, employers cave and give up more than they had originally hoped to."

• U of Manitoba, faculty reach tentative deal, potentially ending weeks-long strike

• New bill gives academic staff the right to strike

Faculty associations did not have the right to strike until the Alberta government passed a 2017 bill that moved faculty collective bargaining under the Labour Relations Code. 

Concordia may be the first faculty association to vote in favour of a strike mandate since the bill was passed, but Barnetson said other universities, including the University of Alberta, the University of Lethbridge and Mount Royal University, could also be headed in that direction.

Barnetson, who is involved in the collective bargaining process at his own institution, said the Concordia faculty association's workload claim is reasonable.

He said professors at research universities typically teach fewer courses to make up for their research and administrative responsibilities.

A strike could happen at any time, so long as the association gives the school at least 72 hours notice, but he said it would be more advantageous for the union to wait until students are in class again in the new year. 

'Students are nervous'

James Wakelin, president of the Concordia Students' Association, said he has received letters and emails from students, departments and faculty members about the dispute.

He said in general, students support the faculty, but a strike would interrupt their education and could derail graduating students' plans.

"I know lots of students are nervous and a little frightened for the next semester," he said. 

Price said she understands students' worries, but if teachers are stressed and burned out, that will also affect students' learning environment. 

Deal with career college irks Fanshawe College faculty ahead of strike vote

Author of the article: Heather Rivers
Publishing date:Nov 30, 2021 •

Fanshawe College. (Derek Ruttan/The London Free Press)
Article content

A new contracting-out deal between London’s Fanshawe College and a private Toronto career college has sparked concern within its faculty union, as it prepares for a strike vote next week.

As negotiations hit a standstill, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents about 800 instructors at Fanshawe as well as at other colleges across Ontario, will hold a provincewide strike vote Dec. 9, 10 and 11.

Friday, Fanshawe announced a partnership with ILAC International College, where it will offer some of Fanshawe’s programs to international students in downtown Toronto in the spring of 2022.

Fanshawe programs to be offered through ILAC include hospitality and tourism, hotel and resort management, addictions and mental health, and gerontology, said Wendy Curtis, who heads Fanshawe’s international student program.

“Fanshawe has a strategic plan where we have targeted a 50 per cent increase to international students over five years,” Curtis said. “Right now we are limited in our ability to grow. The way to achieve that target is by continued growth in London supplemented by growth in Toronto.

“ The college continues to contribute to (filling) the province’s labour market gaps , also the federal government’s plan in terms of supporting economic recovery through immigration.”

Money earned by Fanshawe from ILAC will “be reinvested back into our communities,” Curtis said.

But the freshly minted deal “feels like a betrayal of trust,” said Darryl Bedford, president of OPSEU Local 110, Fanshawe College’s faculty union.

“The issue for our members is they have worked under challenging circumstances during this pandemic to post all of this material online and they did so to help the students and community,” Bedford said. “Now you have a situation where Fanshawe is going to be licensing these programs to a private college so they can make a quick buck off of them.

“Instructors uploaded (the programs) believing it would be to the benefit of Fanshawe College, not so it could be turned around and used by a private college.”

The issue is a big deal within the context of bargaining because “provincially the union has language that materials cannot be transferred outside of a college without their permission,” Bedford said.

“This should not be about profit. It’s not what faculty members or donors wanted,” he said. “We don’t want a strike and it’s the last thing our system needs, but we are in collective bargaining and our team needs a (strike) mandate.”

Bedford said he hopes an arbitrator will step in “to decide what’s fair and reasonable.”

“The union is happy to go back to the bargaining table,” he said.

Instructors at the college last walked out in 2017, with the top issue being job security.

hrivers@postmedia.com

Strike mandate vote on the way for Ontario colleges

Tue., December 7, 2021

For the second time in just four years, Ontario's 24 public colleges look to potentially be on the cusp of a work stoppage.

Members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) will vote from December 9-11, but local Union President Grant Currie who represents St. Lawrence College faculty and counselors says a strike is a last resort that faculty hope to avoid.

"We believe there will be a strong mandate for a strike but that is not to say a strike will happen," Currie explained.

"We are fighting to say that the faculty across the province believe in this agenda that our bargaining team is putting forward and hope it's going to send a message to the College Employer Council to come back to the table and negotiate what is best for the students and what is best for the faculty."

Currie says he doesn't anticipate the union to choose to strike, and says the College Employer Council (CEC) either locking out faculty or unilaterally imposing terms and conditions of employment would be the more likely scenario.

After months of talks between OPSEU and the CEC, the two sides seem to be at an impasse.

Much of the sticking points in negotiations have centered around addressing equity and Indigenization, in school counselors, use of faculty produced materials, and adjusting the workload agreement for staff.

Currie says the current workload agreement was negotiated in 1984 and has seen only minor tweaks since.

Specifically, faculty are seeking evaluation time for each student to be raised from 5 minutes and 24 seconds per week to 7 minutes and 12 seconds per week for a 3 hour course.

In a written statement to YGK News, Council CEO Graham Lloyd says that the union "seeks immediate changes such as those to the workload formula, with resulting cost increases that are prohibited by Bill 124."

With the gulf between the two parties seeming too large to bridge, the faculty team offered Voluntary Binding Interest Arbitration in front of arbitrator William Kaplan.

The CEC, however, has not agreed to that, and has instead proposed Final Offer Selection which would lead to Kaplan selecting one side or the other in its totality.

In a November 25 letter to the Chair and President of union bargaining, Lloyd says on behalf of the CEC that the union should have no issue with this style of arbitration over what they say are reasonable, moderate and necessary demands.

"Assuming those assertions accurately reflect the CAAT-A team’s confidence in your demands," Lloyd writes.

"We trust that you will be prepared to place them entirely before Arbitrator Kaplan."

Currie says this type of negotiation leads to toxic labour relations, leaving no room for compromise between the two sides.

"It's basically a coin toss," Currie said.

"It's either/or and I don't think that serves the students or the colleges at all."

Both sides have maintained that they are negotiating with the students' best interests in mind, and hope to avoid a strike or lockout.

On November 26 the Canadian Federation of Students penned a letter in support of faculty negotiations they say are aiming for the betterment of the college education system.

A strike could very well impact students the Winter semester, with the 16th being the first possible day, but Currie says the bargaining team is unlikely to declare a strike date and hopes to still work out a fair agreement.

Owen Fullerton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, YGK News

Employees in auditor general's office to protest lack of pay equity Thursday

The newly renovated Sir John A. Macdonald building in Ottawa on Monday, June 15, 2015.The building which was formerly the Bank of Montreal, is now adjoined to a new building to form a new Government reception centre. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Sarah Turnbull

CTVNews.ca Producer
 Wednesday, December 8, 2021

 
A group of about 170 employees within the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) have planned a protest on Thursday to demand pay equity.

The Audit Services Group, composed of staff whose work goes into the making of the auditor general’s reports, is taking issue with the fact that they haven’t seen the same kind of salary increases as other government departments and still lack a formal wage grid.

“They’re the lowest paid workers at the OAG. Essentially what this fight is about is pay equity. We’re seeking the same economic increases that were achieved elsewhere under Treasury Board, the same increases that other workers at the OAG, managers, and executives got," said Alex Silas, the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s regional executive vice-president for the National Capital Region in an interview with CTVNews.ca.

“This is only group at the OAG that doesn’t have a wage grid, so we’re trying to establish the same wage grid that non-unionized workers, managers, and executives have.”

Silas said that 75 per cent of the Audit Services Group is composed of women.

“These members are super mobilized, super united, they’ve really come together in this fight for fairness and they’re standing up to an employer that is opposing fairness,” he said.

The protest is set to take place tomorrow outside Ottawa’s Sir John A. Macdonald building just before the auditor general holds a press conference to debut four new reports on the government’s response to COVID-19.

The group has been on strike since Nov. 26 and conducted a full walkout last Wednesday. According to Silas, management has taken the step of suspending pay during the strike.

“Typically the Treasury Board of Canada doesn’t actually withhold pay during a strike…and then those wages are reimbursed to the employer but the Office of the Auditor General has decided to take a harsher approach,” he said.

In a statement to CTVNews.ca, Yan Michaud, director of communications for the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, said the office continues to administer pay and benefits for all employees “per its established practices, which is to pay our employees in an accurate and timely manner for the hours that they work.”

According to a government website, in the event of labour disruptions, pay cheques and direct deposit payments will continue to be produced and issued to striking employees on the regular payday.

Salary “overpayments” due to striking will be recovered from a later pay period.

Michaud's statement also said a new offer was presented on Wednesday but out of respect for the collective bargaining process, the OAG couldn’t comment on it.

Silas said the new offer doesn’t address the group’s main concerns.

“It’s essentially the same as the old offer that members have already rejected,” he said. “We’re seeking a three-year contract, they’ve offered us a four-year contract with the same increase in year four and year five...It brings down the total average increase.”

Gig economy workers to get employee rights under EU proposals


Draft legislation would improve status of millions of workers, with likely knock-on effect on UK despite Brexit

Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway offers employee status to workers who have been on the platform for more than 100 hours. Photograph: Robin Utrecht/Rex/Shutterstock

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Thu 9 Dec 2021 

Gig economy companies operating in the European Union, such as Uber and Deliveroo, must ensure workers get the minimum wage, access to sick pay, holidays and other employment rights under plans for new laws to crack down on fake self-employment.

Publishing long-awaited draft legislation on Thursday, the European Commission said the burden of proof on employment status would shift to companies, rather than the individuals that work for them. Until now, gig economy workers have had to go to court to prove they are employees, or risk being denied basic rights.

Nicolas Schmit, EU commissioner for jobs and social rights, told the Guardian and other European newspapers that internet platforms “have used grey zones in our legislation [and] all possible ambiguities” to develop their business models, resulting in a “misclassification” of millions of workers.

Companies that did not allow people to work for other firms, or had rules about appearance and how to carry out tasks, could be classed as employers, under the proposals, under criteria used to determine employment status. The new rules would not apply to genuinely indepdent contractors.

Brexit would be better for UK workers, Boris Johnson promised. But will it?

In the EU’s 27 member states, about 5.5 million workers are misclassified as self-employed, when they should be treated as employees with benefits and protection, such as accident insurance, according the commission. Firms would only have to pay minimum wages, where they already exist. About 28 million people work for platforms in the EU, but this is expected to reach 43 million by 2025.

The proposals are an attempt to provide legal certainty, after European courts have been asked to settle about 100 disputes relating to gig economy companies. France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal tightened up domestic laws, but EU officials believe no government has fully addressed the problem.

Since Brexit, the UK government has no obligation to follow EU laws, while judges have been left to clarify employment law for a new generation of internet companies. In 2016 an employment court found that Uber drivers are not self-employed and should be paid the minimum wage, a verdict upheld by the supreme court in February.

Tim Sharp, senior employment rights policy officer at the Trades Union Congress, said there had not been any “significant government intervention in the UK” to address what unions see as abusive and problematic aspects of platform working.

“If the European Union is seen to be taking a robust approach on platform operators, I think there will be more pressure on the government here to take measures to protect vulnerable workers,” he said.

The EU proposals will be amended by national ministers and MEPs before they become law.

Schmit, a former labour minister in his native Luxembourg, said some services might cost “a bit more”, but argued consumer convenience should not be at the expense of workers.

Services, such as food delivery, were not free, he said. “I cannot consider if somebody brings the pizza at 11 o’clock in the evening to my home … that I have not to pay for that. This is a service. And if it’s a service, the guy who performs the service has also rights.”

Under the directive, workers would also gain rights over algorithms, to stop situations where people are denied jobs, working hours or even fired as a result of machines’ decisions. Instead, workers would have the right to receive explanations for and contest automated decisions, while companies would have to ensure access to a human contact for anything that would have a significant impact on the person.

The European Trade Union Confederation’s Ludovic Voet said the directive should “signal the end of the free for all” for companies such as Uber, Deliveroo and others. “For too long platform companies have made huge profits by dodging their most basic obligations as employers at the expense of workers while peddling the lie that they provided choice to workers,” he said.

Companies in the gig economy have taken different approaches. Just Eat Takeaway, a Dutch company that is one of the world’s biggest food delivery firms, announced last year that gig workers would become employees with benefits.

MoveEU, a body representing ride-hailing apps, such as Uber, has argued EU action could cost jobs. “Platform work is very diverse, and a one-size-fits-all approach could carry weight on the business model of platforms and ultimately negatively affect the many independent workers relying on them,” it said in a recent paper.

George Maier, a specialist on digital technology at the London School of Economics, said companies would have to adapt to stay in markets. “For a lot of these platforms, because they are realising their model is not profitable, there is a big question over what change they can do and what change they can’t do.”

“We have seen some evidence of platforms trying to get around the tightening grip of legislation by changing their business model. The alternative is to pull out of a country where they don’t see a profitable future.”

This article was amended on 9 December 2021. Text that was removed in the editing process was restored in order to clarify the criteria under which companies could fall under the EU proposals.

Anthrax arms race helped Europeans evolve against disease

by Cornell University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

New research from the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine has revealed how humans evolved greater resistance against anthrax multiple times during history: when they developed a diet of more ruminants, and when agricultural practices took hold.

Anthrax grabbed the nation's attention when it was used in bioterrorism attacks in 2001, but the disease has haunted humans for much longer. Over millennia, humans and anthrax have co-evolved. According to a study in Nature Communications from the lab of Charles Danko, this resulted in humans, particularly humans of European descent, evolving fewer anthrax receptors that allow the disease to take hold in the body.

"We found evidence of multiple stages of adaptation in humans, which is one of the more important aspects of our discovery," said Danko, the Robert N. Noyce Associate Professor in Life Science and Technology.

Anthrax bacteria's main host are ruminants such as cattle and sheep. The grazing animals inhale the bacteria spores and become infected, and soon die from toxins produced from the bacteria. The decaying carcass returns the bacteria to the soil and vegetation, repeating the cycle. How humans became entangled in this host-pathogen affair was not entirely clear, until the Danko team began diving into the genetic patterns.

Lauren Choate, former Danko lab doctoral student and currently a genomics fellow at the Mayo Clinic, explored genomic sequences from many species by examining both existing human population databases and running experiments on human and nonhuman primate samples.

She found that the gene expression for anthrax toxin receptor 2 (ANTXR2), which allows the toxin access into host cells, was abundant across the mammalian family tree, including primates. That wasn't the case when it came to humans. "The ANTXR2 gene is fairly constrained in its expression level over 100 million years of evolution," Danko said. "But in humans, we saw this large decrease—and that's what made it so interesting to us."

Essentially, Darwin's law was at work: At the dawn of humans' emergence in sub-Saharan Africa, hunter-gatherer cultures began to eat more and more ruminants, encountering anthrax more regularly than their primate ancestors. The disease would have wiped out many of these early humans, leaving survivors who had a natural genetic resistance to anthrax—i.e., fewer anthrax receptors.

Next, the lab looked at the gene expressions of different human populations, including those of European, Chinese, Japanese and Yoruba (a sub-Saharan African ethnic group) ancestry.  They found that while all showed a reduction in anthrax receptor expression compared to most mammals, the European group had an even greater reduction—and a reduction in expression meant a reduced risk of the anthrax bacteria taking hold. This follows observations that Europeans seem to be less sensitive to anthrax toxins compared with Africans or Asians.

"Our finding shows that there is genetic evidence that Europeans have been living with anthrax for a longer period of time," Danko said, allowing that population to build up a natural immunity against the disease due to natural selection.

This follows the path of human migration and agricultural practices. For example, England was long plagued by "wool-sorter's disease," caused by the inhalation of anthrax spores from infected wool by working-class people who sorted wool in the 1800s.

Ultimately, Danko team's study has opened a door to the way molecular evolution of gene expression can lead to real-world differences in disease resistance. Next steps in the research could go in several directions. "It would be interesting to see the impact of the spread of anthrax on additional human populations that were historically more isolated, and if that mimics the evolution that we found in our study," Choate said.

Other avenues of inquiry may entail finding the exact DNA sequences that underlie the expressed genes or looking for other host-pathogen co-evolution

France begins vaccinating cows, sheep against anthrax

More information: Lauren A. Choate et al, Multiple stages of evolutionary change in anthrax toxin receptor expression in humans, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26854-z

Journal information: Nature Communications 

Provided by Cornell University 

Dinosaur-era swamp ecosystem preserved in amber

Team Las Vegas News

Rocks that formed in a swamp in what is now Spain 110 million years ago contain both dinosaur bones and amber rich in invertebrate fossil

Part of a feather preserved in amber from the Santa Maria coal mine

Sergio Avarez-Parra

7 December 2021

By Carissa Wong

An impressive trove of fossil-filled amber has come to light at a 110-million-year-old site that has already yielded dinosaur bones in Ariño, north-eastern Spain. The amber contains an unusually diverse range of insect, plant and vertebrate fossils and provides a rare insight into the life that inhabited what would have been a coastal freshwater swamp during the Cretaceous period.

“Having two different yet complementary windows of preservation from a given fossil [site] – the bonebed and the …

Mammoths, Yukon wild horses lived thousands of years longer than believed: Canadian permafrost study

Researchers used DNA capture-enrichment technology developed at McMaster University to isolate and rebuild the fluctuating animal and plant communities during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. (Illustration by Julius Csotonyi)

Michael Lee

CTVNews.ca Writer
 Wednesday, December 8, 2021 

A new study analyzing soil samples and DNA from Canada's permafrost has found evidence that woolly mammoths and Yukon wild horses may have survived thousands of years longer than previously thought.

The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, compiled a 30,000-year DNA record of past environments, based on cored permafrost sediments taken from the Klondike region of central Yukon.

The researchers, who hail from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., the University of Alberta, the American Museum of Natural History and the Yukon government, say in a news release that their analysis reveals mammoths and horses were already in steep decline prior to the climatic instability of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition between 11,000 and 14,000 years ago, during which a number of large species such as mammoths, mastodons and sabre-toothed cats disappeared.

However, the researchers say mammoths and horses didn't immediately disappear as a result of overhunting by humans as previously believed.

Instead, they say the DNA evidence shows both the woolly mammoth and North American horse were around until as recently as 5,000 years ago during the mid-Holocene — the epoch humans currently live in, which began about 11,000 years ago.

The study builds on previous research done by McMaster scientists, who in 2020 reported that woolly mammoths and the North American horse were likely in the Yukon about 9,700 years ago.

"The rich data provides a unique window into the population dynamics of megafauna and nuances the discussion around their extinction through more subtle reconstructions of past ecosystems," said Hendrik Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist and lead author on the paper, who also serves as director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre.

Using tiny soil samples containing billions of microscopic genomic sequences from animal and plant species, as well as DNA capture-enrichment technology developed at McMaster, the researchers were able to reconstruct ancient ecosystems at different points in time during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.

The researchers say the Yukon environment continued to experience massive change throughout the early Holocene, with formerly rich grasslands known as the "Mammoth Steppe" becoming overrun by shrubs and mosses.

Due in part to a lack of megafaunal "ecological engineers" such as large grazing herds of mammoths, horses and bison, grasslands no longer prosper in northern North America, according to a news release on the study.

"Now that we have these technologies, we realize how much life-history information is stored in permafrost," said Tyler Murchie, a postdoctoral researcher in McMaster's department of anthropology and a lead author of the study.

"The amount of genetic data in permafrost is quite enormous and really allows for a scale of ecosystem and evolutionary reconstruction that is unparalleled with other methods to date."


Co-author Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History added that while "mammoths are gone forever, horses are not."

"The horse that lived in the Yukon 5,000 years ago is directly related to the horse species we have today, Equus caballus. Biologically, this makes the horse a native North American mammal, and it should be treated as such."

Meanwhile, the researchers caution that permafrost is at risk of being lost forever as the Arctic warms, stressing the need to gather and archive more samples.

‘Disastrous’ plastic use in farming threatens food safety – UN

Food and Agriculture Organization says most plastics are burned, buried or lost after use

Farmers cover a field with plastic films in Yuli county, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northern China. 

Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock


Damian Carrington 

Environment editor

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 7 Dec 2021

The “disastrous” way in which plastic is used in farming across the world is threatening food safety and potentially human health, according to a report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

It says soils contain more microplastic pollution than the oceans and that there is “irrefutable” evidence of the need for better management of the millions of tonnes of plastics used in the food and farming system each year.

The report recognises the benefits of plastic in producing and protecting food, from irrigation and silage bags to fishing gear and tree guards. But the FAO said the use of plastics had become pervasive and that most were currently single-use and were buried, burned or lost after use. It also warned of a growing demand for agricultural plastics.

There is increasing concern about the microplastics formed as larger plastics are broken down, the report said. Microplastics are consumed by people and wildlife and some contain toxic additives and can also carry pathogens. Some marine animals are harmed by eating plastics but little is known about the impact on land animals or people.

“The report serves as a loud call for decisive action to curb the disastrous use of plastics across the agricultural sectors,” said Maria Helena Semedo, deputy director general at the FAO.

“Soils are one of the main receptors of agricultural plastics and are known to contain larger quantities of microplastics than oceans,” she said. “Microplastics can accumulate in food chains, threatening food security, food safety and potentially human health.”

Global soils are the source of all life on land but the FAO warned in December 2020 that their future looked “bleak” without action to halt degradation. Microplastic pollution is also a global problem, pervading the planet from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest ocean trenches.

The FAO report, which was reviewed by external experts, estimates 12.5m tonnes of plastic products were used in plant and animal production in 2019, and a further 37.3m in food packaging.

Plastic is a versatile material and cheap and easy to make into products, the report says. These include greenhouse and mulching films as well as polymer-coated fertiliser pellets, which release nutrients more slowly and efficiently.

“However, despite the many benefits, agricultural plastics also pose a serious risk of pollution and harm to human and ecosystem health when they are damaged, degraded or discarded in the environment,” the report says.

Data on plastic use is limited, it says, but Asia was estimated to be the largest user, accounting for about half of global usage. Furthermore, the global demand for major products such as greenhouse, mulching and silage films is expected to rise by 50% by 2030.

Only a small fraction of agricultural plastics are collected and recycled. The FAO said: “The urgency for coordinated and decisive action cannot be understated.”


The hills are alive with the signs of plastic: even Swiss mountains are polluted

Prof Jonathan Leake, at the University of Sheffield in the UK and a panel member of the UK Sustainable Soils Alliance, said: “Plastic pollution of agricultural soils is a pervasive, persistent problem that threatens soil health throughout much of the world.”

He said the impact of plastic was poorly understood, although adverse effects had been seen on earthworms, which played a crucial role in keeping soils and crops healthy.

“We are currently adding large amounts of these unnatural materials into agricultural soils without understanding their long-term effects,” he said. “In the UK the problems are especially serious because of our applications of large amounts of plastic-contaminated sewage sludges and composts. We need to remove the plastics [from these] before they are added to land, as it is impossible to remove them afterwards.”

As a solution, the FAO report cites “the 6R model” – refuse, redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover. This means adopting farming practices that avoid plastic use, substituting plastic products with natural or biodegradable alternatives, promoting reusable plastic products and improving plastic waste management.