It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, December 20, 2021
JV signs contract for upgrades at Bruce Nuclear Unit 3
Aecon Group Inc., SNC-Lavalin Group, and United Engineers & Constructors Inc. were awarded a fuel channel and feeder replacement contract for Unit 3 at Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada.
The contract is worth more than $310 million U.S. dollars. Aecon holds a 55% share in the project, SNC-Lavalin has a 30% share and United Engineers &Constructors holds 15%.
The work at the nuclear power plant involves modernizing reactor-related components – 480 fuel channels and calandria tubes, 960 end fittings and 980 feeder pipes. The partners will also be responsible for operations, robotics and employee management and training.
Planning is expected to start in conjunction with a scheduled outage at the nuclear station in early 2022, with a project completion target of 2026.
The joint venture partners collectively make up the Shoreline Power Group, which was awarded a contract to refurbish the nuclear power plant’s Unit 6 in 2018. That job is expected complete by the end of 2022.
Shoreline is already a preferred parts supplier of Bruce Power and could get similar refurbishing contracts in the future.
“We are making this significant contract award with the confidence that the members of the Shoreline Power Group have demonstrated the experience and commitment to safety, quality and innovation to successfully deliver this key part of our Life Extension program,” said Mike Rencheck, Bruce Power’s President and CEO.
Bruce Power is refurbishing its nuclear fleet so the plant can safely operate through 2064. The Canadian company’s life-extension program involves the gradual replacement of older systems in the plant’s eight reactors during scheduled maintenance outages.
(Source: Bruce Power)
More on Bruce Power’s nuclear life-extension program here.
Ontario Power Generation to deploy GE Hitachi small modular reactor tech
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) to supply a BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) for the Darlington New Nuclear Project.
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, based in Ontario, Canada, generates about 20% of Ontario’s electricity each day, according to OPG.
The Darlington New Nuclear site is the only site in Canada currently licensed for a new nuclear build, and could be completed as early as 2028.
Jay Wileman, President & CEO, GEH, said: “OPG is Ontario’s climate change leader and is positioned to become a world leader in SMRs. Together, this partnership will bring jobs and economic benefits to Durham Region, Ontario and Canada, and potential global export of this technology.”
According to GE, the BWRX-300 produces no carbon during operation and has been designed for lower construction and operating costs compared to traditional nuclear technologies. Furthermore, the BWRX-300 leverages a combination of a new, patented safety breakthrough, proven components, the licensing basis of the US NRC-certified ESBWR and an existing, licensed fuel design.
Ken Hartwick, the CEO of OPG, added: “We know nuclear is a key proven zero-emissions baseload energy source that will help us achieve net-zero as a company by 2040, and act as a catalyst for efficient economy-wide decarbonization by 2050.
“By moving forward, with our industry-leading technology partner GE Hitachi, on deployment of innovative technology for an SMR at Darlington, OPG is paving the way on the development and deployment of the next generation of nuclear power in Canada and beyond.”
GE’s support for the Canadian nuclear industry dates to the early 1950s, when the company helped build the first Canadian nuclear power plant, the Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD) reactor that became the basis for the entire CANDU fleet.
Ontario’s nuclear industry is necessary
Nuclear power makes electricity clean and affordable for Ontarians and will for years to come. And it plays an important role in fighting disease.
Mark Winfield’s recent take on the issues that face Ontario’s electricity sector and ratepayers is puzzling. It mischaracterizes nuclear power as not being part of the solution to climate change, and it ignores the many benefits nuclear is providing and has the potential to supply in the years ahead. Nuclear innovation will support global healthcare workers through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, address energy concerns in rural and Indigenous communities, and help Canada (indeed the world) meet climate change targets and the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Hydrogen, a clean energy tool used to fight climate change, can be produced in a machine called an electrolyser, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using large amounts of electricity. This is most effective when utilizing a reliable non-emitting baseload supply source such as nuclear power.
Let’s get this straight – nuclear power is the anchor keeping down the price of electricity in Ontario and will continue to be for years to come. Refurbishments at Darlington and Bruce Power are proceeding safely and cost-effectively while supporting jobs and economic recovery through our manufacturing supply chain. A 2017 report by Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office stated, “there is currently no portfolio of alternative low emissions generation which could replace nuclear generation at a comparable cost.” The notion that nuclear is somehow hindering affordability for Ontario ratepayers is just plain wrong.
Nuclear has given the province so much more than just affordable electricity – it provides the chance to reach Ontario’s climate change goals. It was nuclear power, not renewables, that drove Ontario’s elimination of coal-powered generation over the past decade. Nuclear was responsible for 89 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions reduction achieved by displacing coal in Ontario. Smog days fell from 53 in 2005 to zero by 2015.
The federal government has been clear over the past year. There is no credible path to net-zero without nuclear power. In fact, our emissions would rise without it. We can leverage the potential that clean baseload electricity from nuclear holds to further innovate, electrify and decarbonize. Whether it’s through small modular reactor development (SMRs) to assist remote communities move away from diesel-powered generators among other applications, or to mass-produce hydrogen fuel for use across Canada, the opportunities stemming from nuclear are immense. Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power both launched net-zero strategies last fall and the nuclear industry is excited to be an innovation leader in this respect.
Canada’s nuclear industry is also a global leader in the supply of medical isotopes, producing 40 per cent of the supply of Cobalt-60, an isotope used to treat cancer and sterilize medical equipment including gowns and swabs. Think about how critical this has been over the past 12 months in helping our frontline workers around the world in the fight against COVID-19.
There are many tangible benefits provided by Ontario’s nuclear industry. And nuclear innovation is poised to revolutionize the fight against climate change and global disease – all while providing the clean, affordable electricity Ontarians need and can rely on.
In summary, Ontario’s nuclear industry is ready and poised to help lead Canada’s post-pandemic recovery and the global clean energy transition in the years ahead. And it will do so while keeping the price of electricity down for ratepayers.
Taylor McKenna is project manager for Ontario’s Nuclear Advantage, an ongoing public communications campaign focused on maintaining support for nuclear energy across Ontario.
Canada’s nuclear future brightens
Although the Canadian and US nuclear industries have shared origins in World War II, their paths soon diverged.
On a windswept field near the shores of Lake Ontario in mid-November, Canadian politicians and nuclear industry executives gathered to announce plans to build the country’s first new nuclear reactor since the early 1990s. A month earlier US Department of Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Romania’s Minister of Economy, Energy, and Business Environment Virgil Popescu signed an $8 billion agreement in Washington, DC, that paves the way for the construction of two new Canadian-origin reactors at a nuclear power plant on the Black Sea. Two Canadian reactors are already located there.
The two events highlight differences between the Canadian nuclear industry and its counterpart in the US. As competitive pressures have forced the closure of nuclear power stations and threaten many others south of the border, Canadians are in the midst of major refurbishments to extend the lives of a dozen reactors; another has already been updated. Six other aging reactors are due to be shut down by 2025, and it’s likely that some new nuclear plants will eventually replace them.
Canada’s 19 operating power reactors all have a markedly different design from the light-water reactors (LWRs) that predominate in the US and around the world. Known as CANDUs (Canadian deuterium uranium), they employ heavy water (deuterium oxide) as the neutron moderator and coolant. Should current plans proceed, however, the next Canadian reactor will be of a new type altogether.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the provincial government utility that owns the province’s 18 reactors, is to select one of three competing designs for a single small modular reactor (SMR) to be built at its Darlington Nuclear Generating Station roughly 80 kilometers east of Toronto. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, X-Energy, and Terrestrial Energy are finalists in the competition, said Ken Hartwick, OPG’s president and CEO. The target date for startup is 2028.
A rendering of a small modular reactor design from SNC-Lavalin. The heavy-water-moderated reactor would produce 300 MW of electricity.
Additional SMR orders from Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Alberta will follow, predicted Greg Rickford, Ontario’s minister of energy, northern development, and mines and of indigenous affairs. In a December 2019 memorandum of understanding, the four provinces agreed to cooperate on advancing development and deployment of SMRs.
Nuclear power in Canada has always been centered in Ontario, the most populous and industrialized of the 13 provinces and territories. Roughly 60% of the electricity consumed in the province is from nuclear. The only CANDU outside Ontario supplies about one-third of New Brunswick’s electricity. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec have abundant hydroelectric resources, and Quebec, which exports power, closed its only CANDU in 2012, electing to forgo the expense of refurbishment. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the maritime provinces are more sparsely populated and rely mainly on fossil fuels.
Heavy and light water
Canada’s nuclear program dates to World War II, when the UK relocated its atomic bomb program from Cambridge University to its North American dominion. In Montreal and later at Chalk River Laboratories, about 180 kilometers upstream of Ottawa, British and Canadian scientists were focused on developing a heavy-water-moderated reactor to produce plutonium for the Manhattan Project. The British had brought along a large quantity of heavy water that had been smuggled out of occupied France. The Zero Energy Experimental Pile (ZEEP) at Chalk River, the first operating nuclear reactor outside the US, was a heavy-water design.
Ultimately, the US nuclear bomb development program chose graphite to be the neutron moderator for the reactors that made the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb. But Canada’s National Research Experimental (NRX) reactor, the successor to ZEEP, was the basis for the heavy-water plutonium and tritium production reactors at DOE’s Savannah River Site, says historian Robert Bothwell, author of Nucleus: The History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (1988).
Some of the R&D in support of Hyman Rickover’s nuclear propulsion program for the US Navy was done at the NRX, although the navy chose light water as the moderator and coolant for submarine reactors. President Jimmy Carter, who was then a navy lieutenant, was assigned to assist the cleanup of a 1952 partial meltdown of the NRX, the world’s first major nuclear accident.
The National Research Universal (NRU) heavy-water research reactor began operating at Chalk River in 1957. In addition to developing fuels for CANDUs and conducting materials research, the NRX and NRU produced medical radioisotopes. At times the NRU supplied more than half the world’s molybdenum-99, the precursor to technetium-99m, the most widely used medical isotope. When it was permanently shut down in 2018, the NRU was the world’s oldest operating nuclear reactor. Two dedicated replacement isotope-production reactors at Chalk River, completed by a public–private partnership, were plagued by design faults and were abandoned in 2008.
The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Huron is the largest nuclear power plant in North America. Its eight CANDU reactors produce 30% of Ontario’s electricity. Four of the reactors are in the foreground; the others are visible in the background.
Canada never developed nuclear weapons, but Canadian mines and uranium processing facilities played key roles in the Manhattan Project and in the postwar US nuclear arms buildup. In Port Hope, Ontario, a former radium processing plant now owned by Cameco Corp was converted during World War II to refine high-grade uranium from the Belgian Congo. Today it exports uranium hexafluoride to enrichment plants for peaceful purposes only. It also produces uranium dioxide for CANDU fuel.
The Cold War arms race fueled a boom in uranium mining at Elliot Lake in northern Ontario. Joseph Hirshhorn, whose collection of art now populates the Smithsonian museum that bears his name, made much of his fortune from Elliot Lake. When the US Atomic Energy Commission began cutting back on uranium orders in the late 1950s, the boomtown went bust. Canada is today the world’s second-largest exporter of uranium, all of which is now mined in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca River basin, whose ore has a higher grade than Elliot Lake’s.
As partner in the North American Aerospace Defense Command and a NATO member, Canada once fielded US nuclear warheads on surface-to-air missiles and aircraft, says Tim Sayle, assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto. Canada has been free of nuclear weapons since the early 1980s.
Enrichment not required
With encouragement from the government, the US Navy submarine reactor technology was adapted by US utilities for electricity production. All operating commercial reactors in the US are LWRs. But Canada continued to develop its heavy-water technology. In large part, the CANDU design stemmed from Canada’s inability to manufacture large castings for the pressure vessels that encapsulate LWR nuclear fuel assemblies, says Colin Hunt, cochair of the government and regulatory affairs committee of the Canadian Nuclear Society.
The CANDU reactor core consists of a calandria, an unpressurized vessel of heavy water with hundreds of tubes running through it to contain the nuclear fuel. Whereas LWRs must be shut down every 12–18 months to be refueled, CANDUs were designed to allow on-line refueling. The reactors remain operating as fresh fuel bundles are inserted into the tubes and the spent ones are ejected. LWR uranium fuel must be enriched to around 4% in the fissile uranium-235 isotope, but the CANDU burns naturally occurring uranium fuel containing about 0.7% 235U. That feature eliminates the need for costly enrichment plants or services. And the CANDU can burn other fuels, including thorium, plutonium, and even spent fuel from LWRs.
The first CANDU, at Douglas Point on the shores of Lake Huron, operated commercially from 1968 to 1984. Four larger CANDUs came on line at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station near Toronto in 1971, and four more units were added there in 1983. Six remain in operation. Twelve more CANDUs were built in Ontario, eight at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station at Douglas Point and the newest four at Darlington. Today, Bruce is the largest nuclear generating station in North America, supplying more than 30% of Ontario’s electricity.
Outside Canada, CANDUs have been installed in Argentina (1), China (2), India (2), Pakistan (1), Romania (2), and South Korea (4). Following India’s 1974 test of a nuclear weapon, Ottawa ended nuclear cooperation with New Delhi. India went on to build more than a dozen reactors of a CANDU-derived design. Canada’s assertive efforts to sell CANDUs to the UK were unsuccessful. Had the UK bought any, Bothwell says, the CANDU likely would have become a joint venture between the two nations, and the technology might have become the world’s dominant reactor model.
An uncertain future
The aging Pickering reactors, which supply about 15% of Ontario’s power, are scheduled to be permanently closed by 2025. It’s an open question what will replace them. The other major power source in Ontario, hydroelectric, has been fully tapped, says Hunt. Coal-fired generation in the province is prohibited by law, and a recently enacted federal carbon tax of Can$30 ($23) per ton of carbon dioxide, rising to Can$50 in two years, should discourage new natural-gas-fired plants.
Although the province’s electricity demand isn’t growing now, it will likely increase as demand for electric vehicles and hydrogen grows, says William Fox, executive vice president for nuclear at SNC-Lavalin, an architect and engineering firm that holds the rights to CANDU technology.
Created during the Manhattan Project, the Chalk River Laboratories north of Ottawa were home to CANDU heavy-water-reactor development and several research reactors. Now known as Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, the facility is operated by a consortium of companies led by SNC-Lavalin for the federal government.
At the federal level, the Liberal-led government of Justin Trudeau has begun considering legislation with the aim of reducing Canada’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050. On 30 November the government announced its intention “to launch an SMR Action Plan by the end of 2020 to lay out the next steps to develop and deploy this technology.” It’s a sign that Liberal members of Parliament have recognized that nuclear power is needed if Canada hopes to meet its 2015 Paris Agreement pledge that by 2030 it will have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% from their 2005 levels, says John Barrett, a consultant and former Canadian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Increasing wind and solar energy seems an obvious option to meet Ontario’s future needs. But its leaders have soured on renewables since the previous Liberal provincial legislature’s heavy subsidization of wind energy led to enormous increases in electricity rates. From 2010 to 2016, average home electricity costs rose by 32%, despite a 10% decline in average household electricity consumption, according to Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office. The price hikes, which also caused many industrial operations to flee the province, were a major contributor to the Liberals’ historic rout in the 2018 elections. The current Progressive Conservative provincial government tore up the still-outstanding wind turbine construction contracts, says Hunt.
Importing power from neighboring provinces isn’t an option, Hunt says. Purchasing power from electricity-rich Quebec would put Ontario in competition with New England and New York State and drive up electricity rates further. Quebec’s transmission system was built to export power to the US, so new transmission lines would be required to accommodate interprovincial flow, Hunt says. A further complication is that Quebec’s electricity grid is out of phase with the rest of North America’s: The peaks and valleys of its alternating current flow are asynchronous with the rest of the continent’s. As a result, the power imported by Ontario would need to be converted to DC and then converted back to in-phase AC once across the border.
Hunt believes that no more CANDUs will be built in Canada; he sees the future belonging to SMRs. (See Physics Today, December 2018, page 26.) Though SNC-Lavalin has a large SMR design (see the figure on page 23), Fox believes that large reactors will be needed to replace the 2400 MW that Pickering’s CANDUs now supply. Because the entirety of Canada’s nuclear experience with large reactors has been with CANDUs, Fox is confident that the same technology will be chosen if new conventional-size reactors are ordered.
Smaller SMRs could be ideal for providing electricity to remote off-grid communities in the vast Canadian north. The diesel-generated power they use now is expensive, dirty, and vulnerable to cutoffs of fuel supply during severe winter weather. SMRs also would be an attractive option to provide power to remote mining operations and to produce the steam used in extracting oil from Canadian tar sands, Barrett says. Several 300-MW-sized SMRs could meet Saskatchewan’s needs, he notes.
Compared with the US, Canada has made far more progress on the disposition of nuclear waste. The federal Nuclear Waste Management Organization expects to select the location for a geological nuclear waste repository in 2023. Unlike the US, where the now-abandoned Yucca Mountain location was unsuccessfully forced on Nevada, the waste authority invited site proposals from communities; 22 were received. After each was characterized, two Ontario sites were named finalists: one in farmland about 45 kilometers east of Lake Huron and the other in the exposed rock of the Canadian Shield about 246 kilometers northwest of Thunder Bay.
It’s a question on Melina May’s mind since the alleged murder of a woman in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood last month.
Police are still undecided on the details of the crime, which saw a man and a woman dead in a residence on Nov. 4. Investigators are looking at it as a possible murder-suicide, during which the man would’ve killed the woman before taking his own life.
Journalists have since reported the woman was a sex worker, and that her alleged killer was a client known to be violent. Sex workers’ advocates say he had been black-listed among those in the business – many of whom reportedly refused to see him.
A customer black-list is one way sex workers protect themselves from danger. There are other ways, too. May, a sex worker herself and member of Montreal's Sex Work Autonomous Committee, asks for references and application forms from new customers.
She says sex workers need to protect themselves. While it’s difficult to pinpoint rates of violence against sex workers, May says she’s constantly aware of the dangers, and that she’s still shaken by the murder of 22-year-old Marylène Levesque, killed by a convicted murderer let out on day parole in January.
Despite being at a greater risk, sex workers face significant barriers when it comes to getting help from police, advocates say.
“They just don't have the privilege to go to the police,” she said.
May says it’s hard to call for help when most aspects of your industry are considered criminal by the federal government.
In 2014, the Harper government passed a piece of legislation which redefined how sex workers would be treated under Canada’s Criminal Code as a response to a supreme court ruling asking it to better protect sex workers.
“The prohibitions at issue do not merely impose conditions on how prostitutes operate. They go a critical step further, by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution,” read the ruling.
In response, the government passed the 2014 Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.
Its most influential provision, advocates say, is that while it did not make sex work illegal, it made it impossible to legally pay for it or advertise it.
A 2014 legislative summary calls sex work a “de facto illegal activity,” continuing to read “the act of prostitution can no longer be practised without at least one of the individuals involved committing a crime.”
Advocates say those limitations mean sex workers are forced to use underground channels to communicate, organize, and protect themselves.
The Act’s preamble reads that the purpose of the law is to respond to “the risks of violence posed to those who engage in it.”
In reality, sex workers say, it puts them in greater danger.
ONE IN THREE SEX WORKERS WON’T GO TO POLICE: STUDY
“Going to police means being outed, which can lead to all kinds of consequences,” said Sandra Wesley, executive director of Stella, an advocacy group run by and for sex workers.
Those consequences include “being evicted from our housing, having our money seized, having people around us … be arrested as third parties,” she said.
“There are so many consequences to reporting any kind of violence that it's not worth it,” said Wesley. “It can be more violent to go to the police than to just stay silent,” said May.
The result is a patchwork safety net of individual precaution and black lists keeping to keep sex workers out of violent situations. Oftentimes, it’s not enough, say advocates.
What’s more, they say, is that if a sex worker is independent, they might not know a client is black-listed. If they desperately need the money, they might take them anyways.
“The Department of Justice Canada continues to monitor the impact of former Bill C-36, including relevant Canadian case law and research,” wrote a statement from Ian McLeod, a spokesperson for Canada’s justice ministry.
McLeod told CTV News the ministry is actively monitoring the impacts of sex work laws in other countries, “including decriminalization.”
Brigitte Cleroux, 49, is seen in an image provided by the Ottawa Police Service.
She is accused of impersonating a nurse in multiple Canadian cities.
A class action lawsuit has been filed over a woman accused of posing as a nurse at B.C. Women’s Hospital for a year, as new details show she also worked at a private clinic in Victoria.
The 49-year-old worked at the hospital for an entire year – from June 2020 to June 2021. Patients are being sent letters informing them of Cleroux’s involvement in their care.
It’s now been revealed she also worked at View Royal Surgical Centre in Victoria for three weeks in Nov. 2020.
“We are working with the authorities to review the matter and ensure patients who may have had contact with Ms. Cleroux are provided with the information and support they need,” said Fatima Fazal, chief operating officer of Surgical Centres Inc.
It’s not clear how many patients at the clinic had interactions with Cleroux during that time.
A class action lawsuit has also been filed in the B.C. Supreme Court against the Provincial Health Services Authority (the authority responsible for hiring Cleroux) claiming PHSA is liable for the actions of Cleroux.
The lawsuit, filed by personal injury law firm Murphy Battista LLP, claims members of the class action “sustained a battery” after receiving treatment from Cleroux. The suit also states “as a result of learning that Cleroux was not a registered nurse, many Class Members sustained mental distress and nervous shock all of which was foreseeable to PHSA.”
Litigation lawyer Scott Stanley said patients gave consent to receive treatment from Cleroux under the impression she was a licensed professional, adding that consent is “now invalid."
“A battery is unlawful, non-consensual contact with another human being and a medical procedure is a battery if it hasn’t been properly consented to,” Stanley said.
A number of women have joined the class action but Stanley said his law firm is hearing from “more and more people” as patients learn about the story.
“To find you were administered or cared for by someone who’s not a licensed professional is incredibly distressing for all of them,” he said. “There are safeguards in place to make sure that people aren’t put in important positions like this. As we see, this just wasn’t done here.”
The class action lawsuit has not yet been certified and the allegations haven't been tested in court.
The statement goes on to say that the health authority has conducted a review to “re-confirm that all of PHSA’s licensed health-care professionals hold valid registration with their respective colleges and associations.”
Doctors’ requests to be exempt from vaccine policy dismissed by Alberta justice By Fakiha Baig The Canadian Press Posted December 17, 2021
A medical staff member prepares a syringe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a temporary vaccination centre in Paris on December 7, 2021.
Mylene Deroche/ABACAPRESS.COM
An Alberta judge has dismissed an application by four doctors who wanted to be exempt from an Alberta Health Services requirement that all health-care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Court of Queen’s Bench Justice John Henderson says his decision is in the public interest because he does not want Albertans to question the rules the health provider has put in place to try to curb spread of the virus.
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Nadr Jomha; Dr. Blaine Achen, chief of cardiac anesthesia at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute; and physicians Gert Grobler and Tyler May filed the request earlier this month.
Richard Secord, a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, represented the doctors and argued all four had built a natural immunity to COVID-19 after testing positive and recovering from the infection.
Secord also argued that the doctors are facing termination, restrictions and disciplinary action for going against their employer.
The health agency twice delayed its deadline for health-care workers to get vaccinated before making Dec. 13 the final day to provide proof.
Henderson told court the doctors have genuine, subjective concerns but “whether those concerns are objectively reasonable is an issue that cannot be resolved today” He said Alberta Health Services had not had enough time to submit evidence.
“Because of the policy, three of the four plaintiffs have had their privileges suspended, and are therefore effectively prevented from carrying on any medical practice at any AHS facility,” Henderson said.
The doctors also argued that the policy could tarnish their reputation and said they are losing significant income.
Henderson said Alberta Health Services is willing to meet the doctors in court in mid-March to reassess their dismissals once the agency is able to gather enough evidence.
“There is nothing to suggest that AHS was acting in bad faith,” the judge said.
“I do doubt that AHS might be wrong in its assessment of the value of vaccines, just as the chief medical officer of Canada might be wrong and the chief officers in Canada might be wrong.
“We have entrusted these decisions to AHS. It would be harmful to Albertans to undermine their decision making.”
Opinion: Physicians are bound to do no harm — and that includes not making false and misleading statements about vaccines
Special to National Post Can doctors licensed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) lie, intentionally or through ignorance, about medical information? This question has come up in response to a number of false and misleading public statements made by doctors in B.C. regarding COVID-19.
Some of these statements have been so inaccurate that they are either intentional lies, or highlight a serious lack of understanding about COVID-19 and the vaccines. In either case, they are harmful and should be corrected. A physician should not operate in a way that harms people; nor should a physician communicate in a way that harms people.
Demonstrably false statements made by some B.C. doctors have included referring to mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines as “experimental gene modification therapy,” “the most unsafe vaccines in history,” saying that they “damage the ovaries” and that PCR tests are “useless” and cannot discriminate between different coronaviruses.
These false claims have been made by licensed doctors, in a professional capacity, and thus carry a lot of weight with the public. This misinformation may influence a person’s decision regarding a potentially lifesaving health intervention, and therefore, it is particularly serious.
A physician may believe that COVID-19 vaccines are not effective, that they can alter DNA or reduce fertility — just as a physician may believe that immunity from surviving a tetanus infection provides more robust and effective protection than a tetanus vaccine. But both of those beliefs have proven to be false, and it would be wrong and harmful to discourage others to avoid the COVID or tetanus vaccines based on false information.
One of us recently moved apartments and, during a conversation, one of the movers made a series of false statements, including that COVID-19 wasn’t real; that people were not dying from it but rather from other things, like old age; that someone who is asymptomatic could not be a health risk to others; and that the vaccines are dangerous and could affect our genes.
When he discovered he was speaking to an infectious diseases specialist who treated actual patients with COVID-19 in hospital, he explained that we were telling lies to keep our jobs, and that other doctors, who were speaking more honestly, had told him otherwise. The mover likely heard one of the doctors who promotes misinformation in articles and videos online, at rallies and on social media.
As doctors, we are trained to be critical thinkers and to pose scientific questions. But we are also trained to ensure that our recommendations are scientifically rigorous and based on evidence.
This is not a simple matter of free speech. This is a matter of professional standards and competency. Imagine if a licensed civil engineer persisted in grossly misrepresenting the structural integrity of a bridge despite being corrected by colleagues. If that misinformation led to harm, there would be legal ramifications.
And the situation only seems to be getting worse. Comparisons between COVID-19 vaccine mandates and the Holocaust by a physician licensed by the CPSBC at a recent anti-vaccine rally in Victoria demonstrates a frightening level of ignorance and raises serious concerns regarding that person’s competency and professional standards. That these comments were made in front of effigies of people who promote vaccines with nooses around their necks is even more unacceptable.
The CPSBC has recognized that false and inaccurate statements are harmful. In a written statement, the college noted that, “The safety of patients is paramount, and we must all do our part to ensure it is not jeopardized by misinformation during this critical time.”
Given the seriousness of this matter, it is important that the CPSBC, as the licensing authority for physicians in B.C., urgently and seriously addresses these issues and, if necessary, takes disciplinary action against physicians who persist in promoting objectively false and harmful claims in a professional capacity that endanger public health and safety.
National Post
Dr. Jan Hajek is an infectious diseases doctor and a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Alastair McAlpine is a is a pediatric infectious disease doctor based in Vancouver.
New Brunswick
After success keeping immigrants in Atlantic region, pilot program becomes permanent
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6,000 newcomers a year will be able to become permanent
Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser says the immigration program doesn't directly address problems related to newcomers who can't get their credentials recognized, but it will go a long way to increasing Atlantic Canada's population. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
After a five-year test run, an Atlantic immigration program that lets employers handpick workers from other countries, then fast tracks their permanent residency in Canada will be made permanent.
Starting in January, Canada will be able to accept at least 6,000 applicants a year to the Atlantic program.
In a virtual announcement Friday, federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said that after one year in Canada, more than 90 per cent of newcomers who arrived under the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program were still living in Atlantic Canada, a higher rate than any other program.
"What does this mean for our region? In one word, growth," Fraser said.
People can begin submitting applications for permanent residence under the new program on March 6, 2022, and the process would take about six months. Without this program, it could take immigrants up to five years to receive permanent residence status.
Fraser didn't say if there would be a province-by-province allocation of the 6,000 spots.
Premier Andrew Furey says fish plants and tech companies are hungry for workers. (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador)
The pilot was launched in 2017, and 2,000 newcomers and their families per year were eligible to immigrate to Canada through the Atlantic pilot stream.
What sets the program apart is the extensive involvement of employer. A company can ask to be part of the program, then hire foreign nationals to fill positions they haven't been able to fill locally. The company would be responsible for most of the settlement and recruitment process.
Since its start, workers have been retained for nursing homes, child-care centres, the seafood and technology sectors to name a few, Fraser said.
Jason Shannon, president of the senior-care provider Shannex, said his company has hired 160 employees through the program, including nurses, with "hundreds more to come."
"These programs allow newcomers to attain their [permanent residence] status more efficiently with greater certainty, allowing them to bring their families over quicker and keeping them together, which really improves the settlement experience and increases the chances of them making Atlantic Canada their permanent home," he said.
Premiers Tim Houston of Nova Scoia and Andrew Furey of Newfoundland and Labrador, Arlene Dunn, New Brunswick minister responsible for immigration, and Matthew MacKay, Prince Edward Island's minister of economic growth, spoke about the benefits of the program, saying this is good news for all of their provinces' population numbers.
"Almost 4,500 people came to Nova Scotia through that program, and Nova Scotia is absolutely better for it," Houston said.
According to the federal government, the pilot brought 10,000 newcomers to the Atlantic provinces.
Furey said his province is the only one in Canada that's declining in population.
"You heard the narrative that people were going to come and take jobs, that has completely changed," Furey said.
"People know that we need a healthy immigration policy in order not only to protect jobs, but to create new jobs, to create a sustainable way of life."
Housing, credential recognition issues
Fraser said to make sure newcomers are "set up for success" the government will have supports for employers and employees, such as immigration staff who can answer questions directly, and information about how to get language training and how to open a bank account in Canada.
Fraser said if 6,000 spots is not enough, the numbers could increase in the future.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says 4,500 people have settled in his province through the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
Fraser said part of the retention problem is a lack of housing stock, but the solution is not to bring fewer people to the country.
"That would be a recipe for disaster over the long term," he said. "The recipe for a successful immigration strategy and housing strategy is to build more supply."
One of the biggest barriers facing immigrant workers is getting their credentials recognized in Canada. The Atlantic immigration program doesn't directly address this issue, Fraser said.
"It's something we need to work on in partnership with provinces and regulatory bodies across every immigration stream to Canada," he said.
Fraser said that because of travel restrictions related to COVID-19, the government has focused on recruiting people who are already in Canada, such as international students and temporary foreign workers. But cross-border immigration will continue to increase as more people are getting vaccinated, he said.
"We're going to have a healthy mix of people who are here with some experience in Canada now and other employees who may not yet be here … as the public health situation allows," he said.
