NUCLEAR WASTE

CNL seeks support for disposal facility

Pembroke – It is a crucial year for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) with the pending hearings on the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) and President and CEO Joe McBrearty is hoping all municipalities in the county will lend a voice of support for this massive clean-up effort.

“It enhances the protection of the river and the environment,” he told Renfrew County council recently. “The material is already there. It is in our 40-year-old buildings. It is in our soils.”

He was at council not only asking for support, but delivering an update on the facility, including informing council of the innovative cancer therapy studies currently underway there. CNL is at a pivotal point now, dealing not only with waste from seven decades of research and work, but also rehabilitation as it looks forward to continuing research.

“Our primary mission is environmental restoration of legacy stuff that was a result of 70 years of incredible effort at the Chalk River campus, which has benefited the entire world,” he said.

CNL plays an important role in the county with around 2,800 employees, mostly in the Chalk River/Deep River and Pembroke and Petawawa areas. He said the economic impact is spread throughout the county.

The priorities for CNL – outlined in Vision 2030 – are to restore and protect the environment, provide clean energy for today and tomorrow and improve the health of Canadians. This is done through conducting the largest and most complex remediation in Canada, spanning three provinces, as well as supporting the CANDU and LWR industry, and additionally being involved in SMR/vSMR (Small Modular Reactors) demonstration, advanced fuels and materials and hydrogen sciences. He pointed out in the last five years 100 structures on site have been taken down with the land being remediated.

“It reduces risk to our public. It reduces risk to our workforce,” he said. “It reduces risk to our precious environment.”

The current nuclear remediation process is the most complex in Canada, he added.

“It takes awhile because we have to do it in a very painstaking manner to protect our workforce and protect our environment,” he said.

The “heart and soul” of CNL has been isotope production and this continues with work on a new isotope which targets cancer tumours with very little impact on other cells, he said. The Ac-225 radioisotope program is a very exciting development in fighting cancer, he said. The Actinium 225 is attached to a targeting molecule and when the isotope decays, it emits high energy alpha particles. Those particles kill the cancer cell, leaving nearby healthy cells unharmed. He said this is being considered as a potential treatment for a number of cancers, including prostrate, pancreatic and bladder cancer, as well as leukemia.

“If we can save even one life through our research here, that is incredibly important,” he said.

The need for this material is expected to increase by 100 to 300 times in the next 10 years.

“We believe we can be at the forefront of this,” he added, noting this is a project for the next two decades and more.

The vision is for a new facility housing a cyclotron particle accelerator co-located with a pharmaceutical grade isotope processing capability. This will not only save lives in Canada but put Canada in the forefront as a global provider of a rare medical isotope. It will also generate high tech employment opportunities.

Meggan Vickerd, the general manager of waste management, spoke about the NSDF, noting CNL is viewing this as a key element.

“The NSDF is key to improving the state of our waste storage,” she said.

The waste has been onsite for decades and this is dealing with that waste, she stressed.

“The proposed NSDF will protect the public and the environment in every stage of the facility,” she said.

Having this facility demonstrates waste is no longer a problem and clears the way for future research, she added. It also enhances the protection of the Ottawa River, she said.

This year is important in the hearings for the facility. She noted any interventions to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission must be submitted by April 11. As a result, CNL will be reaching out to the municipalities in the county looking for support. The preference is for in-person recommendations.

“We are hoping for positive interventions from all our communities,” she said.

The hearing is scheduled for late May and will be held in Renfrew County.

Municipal Support

Warden Debbie Robinson said it is not only important for the county to speak out in favour of the NSDF, but also municipalities.

“We need more than one voice from the county supporting CNL,” she said. “We need 18 voices. The county and the municipalities.”

The warden said the request for support will go to the Development and Property Committee for a recommendation and come back to council.

Laurentian Hills Mayor Jed Reinwald said he has been involved in the nuclear industry for about 35 years. Recently a lot of work has been done at the local site, he added.

“I see the improvements that have been made there in the last 10 to12 years,” he said.

Mayor Reinwald said he will be in support of the NSDF.

“Our council is very much behind it,” he remarked.

Mayor Michael Donohue of Admaston/Bromley said the role of nuclear remains very important.

“I cannot see there is any path addressing climate change moving forward without nuclear energy being a part of that,” he said.

The fact most of the material being disposed of at the NSDF is already on site at Chalk River is not widely known and should be, he said.

“By in large the waste is generally what has been generated on site,” he said.

If this waste is not entombed then it will have to be moved off site through the highway elsewhere, he noted.

Renfrew Reeve Peter Emon pointed out when the Go-Co (Government Owned Contractor Operated) model was first presented to the County of Renfrew a decade ago there was much unknown and there was a desire for more information on how this would work and the impact locally.

“Our asks at the time were engagement and information, which we are getting,” he said.

The importance of CNL (AECL at the time) and the need for a future vision for the facility were key to a desire to see the site flourish, he said. Since then, CNL has kept the county informed and there has been a lot of engagement locally, he said.

“We know we have to give back to Canadian taxpayers,” Mr. McBrearty noted.

Debbi Christinck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eganville Leader

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPTIALI$M

A sign of ransomware growth: Gangs now arbitrate disputes


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Cyber criminal gangs are getting increasingly adept at hacking and becoming more professional, even setting up an arbitration system to resolve payment disputes among themselves, according to a new report by the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom that paints a bleak picture of ransomware trends.

Ransomware gangs, which hack targets and hold their data hostage through encryption, caused widespread havoc last year with high-profile attacks on the world’s largest meat-packing company, the biggest U.S. fuel pipeline and other targets. Western governments have pledged to crack down on the cyber criminals, who operate largely in and around Russia, but have little to show in the way of progress.

The new report on 2021 ransomware trends highlights the growing maturity and specialization of the ransomware market, with independent operators filling a lucrative niche market. Specialists now range from the hackers who can break into networks or develop ransomware to the nontechnical operators who negotiate payments with victims. The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre said it's seen some ransomware gangs offer a 24/7 help center to victims to expedite ransom payments and restore encrypted data.

There's even money to be made by arbitrators who can settle payment disputes among the various ransomware criminals, according to the report.

“The criminal marketplace is incredibly, incredibly efficient and constantly evolving," said John Hultquist, vice president of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. "The fact that they can operate like this, it’s evidence of our failure to get a good grip on this problem.”

The report also describes the growing technical skills of ransomware gangs, which have been able to target cloud infrastructure — often touted as a safer alternative to storing data locally — and developed code to stop industrial processes. U.S. authorities said they'd seen ransomware attacks involving 14 out of 16 designated critical infrastructure sectors, including the defense industrial base, agriculture and information technology sectors.

“When critical infrastructure is held at risk by foreign hackers operating from a safe haven in an adversary country, that’s a national security problem,” National Security Agency Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce said in a statement, adding that addressing ransomware is a “significant focus” of the NSA.

The joint report was issued Wednesday by the FBI, the NSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the U.S. as well as the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

The report said that after major highly disruptive hacks on the Colonial Pipeline in the U.S. in May and on Brazilian meat processor JBS SA in June, "ransomware groups suffered disruptions from U.S. authorities in mid-2021" and have targeted midsize victims to reduce scrutiny.

But the UK and Australian authorities said they'd not seen any similar trend in their countries. Kaspersky Labs reported in December that ransomware-related incidents in 2021 accounted for 47% of its global response, up from 38% the previous year. In the U.S., however, targeted ransomware attacks that its intelligence network detected were down 33% in 2021 compared with the previous years. That compares with a 30% rise globally.

In the past month, ransomware victims have included operators of maritime fuel depots in Belgium and Germany and media outlets in Portugal. A cyberattack on the wireless provider Vodafone in Portugal this week had all the hallmarks of ransomware, though the company's CEO for Portugal said it received no ransomware demand.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.

Alan Suderman, The Associated Press

SEC Chair Gary Gensler wants to know more about what hedge funds and private equity are doing

Bob Pisani - Yesterday CNBC

SEC Chair Gary Gensler is pushing forward with key measures focused on hedge funds and private equity.

There are more than 50 proposed rules that Gensler is considering this spring, one of the largest regulatory pushes by the SEC in decades.

The agency also wants more disclosure from companies regarding cybersecurity risks and attacks.


© Provided by CNBC

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, July 30, 2013.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has kicked off an ambitious regulatory agenda — and his agency is pushing forward with key measures focused on hedge funds and private equity.

The federal agency is meeting on Wednesday to consider three new rules: more disclosure from hedge funds and private equity funds, more disclosure regarding cybersecurity risks and attacks, and shortening the date on which stock transactions must be settled, a fallout from the GameStop saga.

There are more than 50 proposed rules that Gensler is considering this spring, one of the largest regulatory pushes by the SEC in decades.
More disclosure from hedge funds and private equity funds

Gensler wants more disclosure from private funds (hedge funds and private equity funds). In a speech in November, he noted that private funds (mainly private equity and hedge funds) had gross assets under management of $17 trillion and that many of the investors were state government pension plans, nonprofits and university endowments. As a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, many private fund advisors were required to register with the SEC and to report information about their holdings through a so-called Form PF filing.

Gensler has said he wants to "freshen up" that Form PF filing and require additional disclosures, saying more information on what private funds are doing was critical to the SEC's role of protecting investors. For example, he wants funds that have had "significant stress" (i.e., big losses) to report what has happened within one business day.

The proposal also would decrease the reporting threshold for large private equity advisors from $2 billion to $1.5 billion in private equity fund assets under management

Gensler also wants more transparency around fees and expenses. He has noted that there has been little change in private fund expenses even as mutual fund and ETF costs have come down significantly, and that the average private equity fees were estimated to be 1.76% in annual management costs and 20.3% in performance fees in 2018 and 2019.

The SEC chair wants a quarterly statement to investors with a detailed accounting of all fees and expenses paid by the private fund during the reporting period; he also wants investors to be provided information regarding the private fund's performance. Such information would not be available to the public.

The gist of this is that the changes would help to shine more light on fund performance and on whether private funds really do outperform public funds when all expenses are considered.

The proposal would also require an audit at least annually to check on private fund advisors' valuation of the fund's assets.

Cybersecurity risk management

The SEC also wants more disclosure from companies regarding cybersecurity risks and attacks. Proposed changes would require advisors and funds to adopt written policies that are "reasonably" designed to address cybersecurity risks. They must also report significant cybersecurity incidents and maintain cybersecurity-related books and records.

The regulatory agency has said for years that significant cybersecurity incidents need to be disclosed, but it is getting more aggressive enforcing that requirement. Separately, the SEC has signaled it will also go after companies that are misleading investors about the extent of cybersecurity breaches.

In 2021, for example, British publishing company Pearson PLC paid a $1 million fine to settle charges that it misled investors after a 2018 breach, in which millions of student records were stolen. Real estate services company First American Financial Corp. also paid a nearly $500,000 penalty for lack of disclosure after a vulnerability in its system exposed Social Security numbers and financial information.
Shortening the settlement-transaction date

Reducing the time between the execution of a trade and its settlement reduces risk. In 2017, the SEC shortened the date on which stock transactions must be settled from three business days after the trade date — known as T+3 — to two business days, or T+2.

The SEC is now considering shortening the settlement cycle further, to one business day, or T+1.

This became an issue during the GameStop saga in January 2021, when wild price swings in that stock caused clearinghouse deposit requirements to skyrocket for Robinhood. The retail broker halted purchases of the stock, causing a huge controversy.

"It's time for T+2 to go," Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev tweeted shortly after that incident almost brought the company down.
The broad theme: more disclosure from everyone

Surveying the more than 50 rules that are currently proposed or being finalized by the SEC, Shane Swanson, senior analyst at Coalition Greenwich, expressed amazement at their breadth.

"This is an aggressive agenda from the SEC," he told me.

Swanson noted a common thread: "The broad theme is more disclosure and more reporting — it's driving across all these issues."

He also noted that part of the aggressive agenda — such as the focus on payment for order flow and shortening the settlement cycle — is a result of the GameStop controversy, and that it is understandable for Gensler to want to move on these issues while they are still fresh in the public mind.

"They have a lot of ideas that have been kicked around for a while, and in particular they want to act while there is focus on some of these issues [because of GameStop], like moving the settlement cycle," Swanson said.

"So there's a bit of 'let's make things happen' while they still have the public's attention," he added.

Despite pandemic, Canada's population grows at fastest rate in G7: census

Despite the pandemic, Canada remains the fastest-growing country in the G7, thanks in large part to immigration, according to 2021 census data released Wednesday.

© Andrew Lee/CBC

More than 27 million of Canada's 37 million people lived in one of 41 large urban centres, according to 2021 census data. Here, pedestrians cross a street in downtown Vancouver on Dec. 30, 2021.

Peter Zimonjic - CBC - Yesterday 

The newly released census numbers put Canada's population at 36,991,981 in the spring of last year, with close to 27.3 million Canadians living in one of Canada's 41 large urban centres.

There are approximately 1.8 million more people living in Canada than there were five years ago, a growth rate of 5.2 per cent between 2016 and 2021.

While Canada's population growth sits on top in the G7, it is ranked seventh in the G20, trailing Saudi Arabia, Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico, and is on par with India.

The newly released census population figure is a snapshot of Canada at a specific moment in time — in this case from May 2021. Statistics Canada also provides population estimates which differ from census data because of the way the estimates are calculated.

Other census highlights:

The Maritimes grew at a faster pace than the Prairie provinces for the first time since the 1940s.
For the first time since the 1986 census, more people moved to the Maritimes from other parts of Canada, 134,841, than moved away, 98,086.

The Yukon's population grew at the fastest pace nationally, with a growth rate of 12.1 per cent.
Newfoundland and Labrador was the only province to see its population decline from 2016 to 2021, falling by 1.8 per cent.

The province with the fastest growth rate was Prince Edward Island, which grew at a rate of eight per cent.

Despite the pandemic, Canada's population grew at almost twice the pace of other G7 countries from 2016 to 2021.

Immigration — not birth rate — was the driver in Canada's population growth from 2016 to 2021. It was also the main reason for a slowdown starting in 2020, as border restrictions were imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Pandemic impacts growth rate

While Canada's overall population growth rate from 2016 to 2021 — at 5.2 per cent — was greater than the five per cent growth seen over the previous five-year cycle, the pandemic had a significant impact.

Most of the population growth actually took place before the pandemic kicked off. In 2019, for example, the country's population grew by 583,000, or 1.6 per cent — a record high.

In 2020, however, with the introduction of global border and travel restrictions implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19, population growth from immigration declined to less than one-quarter of what it was the previous year.

Deaths from COVID-19 also had an impact on population growth in 2020, but only marginally.

The number of deaths recorded in 2020 stood at 307,000, which was about 22,000 more than the previous year. That increase, combined with the immigration decline, resulted in 2020 seeing the lowest annual rate of population growth since the First World War.

Immigration driving increases

Four-fifths of Canada's population growth from 2016 to 2021 was attributable to immigration, while only one-fifth of Canada's growth was due to natural increase, or the difference between the number of births and deaths.

That means the natural increase fell from a rate of 0.3 per cent in 2016, to just 0.1 per cent by 2021 — the lowest rate on record. Despite that decline, Statistics Canada said that unlike the G7 nations of Italy and Japan, where the natural increase has gone negative, Canada is expected to maintain a positive natural increase for the next 50 years.

Population counts by province and territory

The immigration story, however, is not the same for all provinces. At the time of the 2016 census, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba had the fastest growth rates, but five years later the story is very different.

While immigration rates in the other provinces increased significantly in the years leading up to the pandemic, they stayed almost the same in the Prairie provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba also saw more people move out of these provinces than move in from other parts of the country.

As a result Alberta, which had led provincial population growth for five consecutive census cycles, has fallen to sixth place, as it marked the first decline in interprovincial migration over a five-year period since the 1991 census.
Urban vs. rural growth rates

The number of Canadians living in rural areas in 2021 was 6,601,982, an increase of 0.4 per cent over 2016, but that growth rate was far below that of Canada's urban centres, which grew at a rate of 6.3 per cent.

The number of large urban areas, or census metropolitan centres (CMAs), with populations greater than 100,000 in 2021 was 41. That compares to just 35 at the time of the last census.

A CMA, according to Statistics Canada, is counted by counting one or more municipalities that are centered on a downtown core. To be considered a CMA, the large urban area must have a population of more than 100,000 with at least 50,000 people living in the downtown core.

Population growth across Canada

Of the six new CMAs, none were in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. Three were in B.C., including Kamloops, Chilliwack and Nanaimo. The others were Fredericton, Drummondville, Que., and Red Deer, Alta.

Resort areas such as Squamish, B.C., Canmore, Alta. and the Ontario towns of Wasaga Beach and Collingwood were among the fastest growing towns in Canada.

Toronto remains Canada's most populous CMA with 6,202,225 residents, with Montreal coming second at 4,291,732, followed by Vancouver with 2,642,825 people.

From 2016 to 2021, the CMAs fo Toronto and Montreal grew at the same pace of 4.6 per cent. Toronto's pace of growth, however, was slower compared to what was seen in the 2016 census, when Toronto grew at a rate of 6.2 per cent. Montreal, by comparison, grew slightly faster than the 4.2 per cent growth rate recorded in the last census.

While the growth of Canada's two largest CMAs was below the national average of 5.2 per cent, they received a record number of permanent or temporary immigrants compared to previous years.

The three other Canadian CMAs with a population over one million in 2021 are: Ottawa–Gatineau at 1,488,307, marking a rise to fourth place again after temporarily losing that title in 2016 to Calgary; Calgary, which now has a population of 1,481,806; and Edmonton, with a population of 1,418,118.

US Fed denies release of correspondence on pandemic trades made by policymakers

By Howard Schneider

(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by Reuters, said there are about 60 pages of correspondence between its ethics officials and policymakers regarding financial transactions conducted during the pandemic year 2020.

But it "denied in full” to release the documents, citing exemptions under the information act that it said applied in this case.

The disclosure of trading by two regional reserve bank presidents during the pandemic led them to resign last fall, and prompted Fed chair Jerome Powell to overhaul Fed ethics rules and request the central bank's inspector general to investigate.

The FOIA responses to Reuters for the first time quantify how much back and forth may have occurred over policymakers’ personal trading in a year when markets first cratered, then rebounded on the basis of both massive federal fiscal stimulus and an aggressive rescue effort by the Fed.

Reuters requested release under the information act of any 2020 communication "regarding the propriety of individual financial transactions" exchanged between the Fed's general counsel or ethics staff and members of the Board of Governors, then Dallas Fed president Robert Kaplan, or then Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren.

Fed FOIA officer and deputy board secretary Margaret McCloskey Shanks responded to Reuters that staff had identified "approximately 47 pages of information" involving Fed board members and around 13 pages involving either Kaplan or Rosengren. However release of the documents was denied.

"The responsive documents contain predecisional and deliberative information, as well as information that is subject to attorney-client privilege," she wrote. There was, she said, nothing in the documents that was "reasonably segregable" and not exempt from release under FOIA.

Demands for more disclosure from the Fed about the ethics controversy has been widespread, with public interest groups and elected officials including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, calling on the central bank to release more details about policymakers' stock trading and the guidance or opinions provided to them by ethics officials.

Gunita Singh, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the FOIA exemption cited by the Fed is meant to "protect agency candor" so U.S. government staff and officials can discuss issues freely as decisions are being made.

The response from Shanks did not detail what current discussions or deliberations warranted withholding the information.

The inspectors general’s investigation of Fed trading during the pandemic is still underway. The Fed is also still finalizing the procedures and rules for the new ethics regulations adopted because of the controversy.

The Fed has released the substance of one email sent from its ethics office to policymakers at the height of the crisis. In late October, after a New York Times report, the Fed released a March 23, 2020, email from its ethics officer which noted that Fed rules were meant to avoid even the appearance that officials used their access to market moving information for personal profit.

Policymakers were advised to "consider observing a trading blackout and avoid making unnecessary securities transactions for at least the next several months," or until Fed meetings and decisions moved back to normal from the emergency footing of that spring.

The ethics scandal blindsided the Fed last fall after reports in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg about Kaplan's active trading in stocks during the pandemic and Rosengren's investment in real estate securities.

That activity was noted in the annual financial disclosure reports that Fed policymakers are required to file. Both officials initially responded that their trades complied with Fed ethics rules, but said they planned to divest nevertheless. They eventually resigned.

(Editing by Edward Tobin)

Census data suggests Alberta economy shifting but growth expected to stay strong

EDMONTON — Laid off twice from energy-related jobs, Calgary engineer Bill Copeland figured it was time to move with the times.

"(Energy) is what you know and what you're used to," said Copeland, who spent 15 years as an engineer and a sales rep. "It was a difficult decision."

Copeland made the call to learn how to adapt his considerable skill set to a new industry. Now a project manager at an IT company, he's moved on.

"I'm having fun. I'm learning something new every day."

It's a story playing out across Alberta, reflected in new census data from Statistics Canada that suggests the nation's one-time boomtown is starting to look a lot like its other provinces.

For years, Alberta enjoyed population growth that towered over the rest of the country's. Energy sector jobs and plenty of them — some offering six-figure paycheques with no university requirement — drew the young and ambitious from sea to sea to sea.

But the 2021 census shows the province has actually fallen behind the national average in growth. There are now 4,262,635 Albertans, 4.8 per cent more than in 2016. The Canadian growth rate was 5.2 per cent.

It's quite a switch. The 2016 census showed Alberta growing at the rate of 11.6 per cent — more than double the national rate.

Ten years ago, seven of Canada's eight fastest-growing census districts were in Alberta. This year, the situation is almost reversed — Alberta has seven of the 10 fastest-shrinking municipalities in the country.

For the first time in over 25 years, Calgary isn't among Canada's five fastest-growing cities.

Still, don't look for tumbleweeds blowing down the main streets of Wild Rose Country just yet. Analysts say Alberta is shifting to an economy that looks a lot more like the rest of Canada's, maybe even a little stronger.

"The source of growth and opportunity going forward will be very similar to what you see in other economies," said Trevor Tombe, a University of Calgary economist.

"The growth will be driven by services and increasingly tech. Alberta's economy is stronger than others, even though the pattern of its growth will approach what we see elsewhere."

Ten years ago, billions of dollars a year were pouring into the province's energy industry, especially the oilsands. Those mines and processing plants are now built.

"I don't think we have any prospect for those kind of unusual growth rates because they were driven in large part by investment in these incredibly expensive large oilsands facilities," said Tombe. "Most of that past growth was tied to investment flows that are very, very unlikely to return."

Oil production reached an all-time record last year. But jobs in the sector haven't entirely recovered and remain below their 2019 peak.

Albertans are adapting, said Brad Perry of Calgary's economic development office. In 2019, his organization began offering a seven-month program for oil and gas professionals to learn to use their skills in other sectors such as finance, clean energy or agriculture.

It's the program that helped Copeland switch careers.

Its first year saw 1,100 applications for 100 spots. About 70 per cent of its graduates got jobs in their new fields. This year, the Energy to Digital Growth Education and Upskilling Project has filled all of its 320 spaces.

"It's akin to your stock portfolio," Perry said. "Maybe we've over-indexed (in energy) a little bit and we need to let some of these other sectors start to get a little bit of sunshine."

Statistics Canada has noted an outflow of young people from the Alberta in recent years.

But the province's affordable housing market is expected to help attract and keep young people. Although prices have risen, they're nowhere near the 25-per-cent growth seen in some Ontario and British Columbia markets.

A recent study from the mortgage brokerage Edison Financial found Edmonton and Calgary had the second- and third-highest rates in the Canada of home ownership among people aged 20-39.

"Millennials are finding it very favourable to put in roots in the Edmonton area and start families and making this their home because it's more affordable than other places," said Paul Gravelle of the Realtors Association of Edmonton. "I think it's a pretty big factor."

Alberta will be OK, said Tombe.

"Alberta's economy is stronger than others, even though the pattern of its growth will approach what we see elsewhere. The growth rates will be slower than we've historically seen … (but) over the long term, Alberta remains poised to be the growth leader in Canada."

It took nerve to change careers, said Copeland.

"How do you do it?" he recalls asking himself. "There was definitely elements that were difficult, the uncertainty of moving to a new industry."

But it was worth it.

"I haven't looked back."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2022.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Rural population growth concentrated near urban centres, StatCan says


Kelly Rae, the administrator of Arran, Sask., says the denizens of dwindling rural communities like her own are clinging to a vanishing way of life in Canada.

Between 2011 and 2021, the village west of the Manitoba border saw its population slashed in half to just 20 people,Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday, as it released the first tranche of data from last year's census.

The share of Canadians living in rural areas has declined for the ninth census in a row, the agency said, dropping from 18.7 per cent in 2016 to 17.8 per cent in 2021.

However, the count showed that Canada's rural population grew faster than any other G7 country, ticking up 0.4 per cent over the five-year period to 6.6 million people in May 2021.

This rate trails behind the 6.3 per cent increase reported in urban areas. But analysts say that some of the metropolitan sprawl is spilling over into neighbouring rural outposts, while remote communities like Arran struggle to keep their remaining residents.

"It's just a disappearing village. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. We have nothing here," said Rae. "People just don't want to live in little municipalities anymore."

Rae said she's seen locals leave to be closer to schools, health-care providers and other services that have become clustered in urban centres such as Yorkton, Sask., about an hour-and-a-half drive southwest.

All that's left in Arran is the rural municipality's office and a bar that's rumoured to be up for sale, Rae said.

But maintaining roads and water systems costs just as much whether there are 50 or 10 taxpayers footing bill, said Rae.

The "million-dollar question" rural communities face is how to cover these routine infrastructure costs without making it more expensive for residents to stay, said Rae.

Rae said Arran has come up with a new approach to this problem: council is considering selling off lots to be turned into campsites where visitors can enjoy recreational activities such as hunting, fishing and snowmobiling.

"The problem in a lot of these disappearing communities is instead of thinking of other initiatives, they're stuck in thinking … 'We'll just raise taxes.' But if you raise taxes, you're going to chase your people away," she said.

"I think if (council) is successful, we'll be able to be solvent and keep our tiny village and our way of life."

Statistics Canada's definition of "rural" is an area with fewer than 1,000 people and a population density of fewer than 400 individual per square kilometre.

Laurent Martel, director of the centre of demography at Statistics Canada, said a wide variety of communities fall within these criteria.

"Very often people think that the rural areas of the country are homogeneous, but that's not the case at all," he said. "The population growth among these different types of rural areas are very different, one from the other."

Martel said the census showed that one of the key drivers of rural demographic change was geographic proximity to urban areas and the size of those population centres. Statistics Canada uses these factors to classify regions on an index of remoteness.

The agency found that the areas that were deemed least remote reported a growth rate of 5.9 per cent between 2016 and 2021, compared to a 2.7 per cent decline in the most remote areas.

Martel said rural areas near some of the country's largest urban centres have experienced accelerating growth since the last census.

For example, he said, several census divisions outside Montreal — including L’Assomption, Joliette, Marguerite-D'Youville, Mirabel and Roussillon — each saw greater population gains than the previous five-year average.

The census only captures the first year of the COVID-19 crisis, and data on the pandemic's demographic disruptions is still emerging, said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

But Norris said early evidence suggests the flexibility of remote work has made the allure of rural life that much more attractive to city-dwellers searching for affordable real estate and a slower pace of life.

"That's where you can have your cake and eat it," said Norris, who spent 30 years at Statistics Canada.

"You get out from the urban rush, but if you want to go to the theatre, you can still drive downtown in maybe an hour."

But in the far reaches of Canada, rural-to-urban migration, aging populations and lower rates of immigration have decimated many rural communities over the past two decades, and there are no signs of the drain slowing down, Norris said.

Ashleigh Weeden, a doctoral candidate in rural studies at the University of Guelph, cautioned against conflating rural development with urbanization, noting that both population growth and decline can strain communities.

A rapid influx of people may overwhelm existing infrastructure, she said, while shrinking populations deplete municipal resources to maintain it.

Weeden said the focus should be on investing in infrastructure to afford rural communities the same standard of living as their urban counterparts, including access to internet, roads, health care and education.

But rather than falling prey to the view of rural areas as leisurely havens for out-of-towners, Canada needs to empower communities to succeed on their own terms, she said.

"What's really needed is not to look at rural decline and urbanization as twin sides of some inevitable horrible coin," she said.

"What happens if we change this from things we're just doing to rural communities, and instead viewing it as: How do we support a rights-based lens for rural lives and livelihoods so your geography doesn't determine the quality of your life?"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Feb. 9, 2022.

— with files from Jordan Press in Ottawa

Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press

RIGHT WING TRUCKER CONVOY OPPOSES IMMIGRATION
Immigration — not fertility — driving Canada’s population growth

Immigration, not fertility, drove Canada’s population growth over the past five years, says a Statistics Canada study as Ottawa plans to announce its new 2022-2024 immigration intake levels plan.

“Although the pandemic halted Canada’s strong population growth in 2020, it continued to be the fastest among G7 countries,” said the study released on Wednesday.

The report’s authors said immigrants are far more likely to settle in an urban area rather than a rural setting. Consequently, rural Canada’s population has grown at a slower pace than urban centres.

Some of the key findings in today’s report that provides a portrait of Canada’s population growth include:

- Population growth accelerated in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia over the past five years when compared with the previous census cycle (from 2011 to 2016), while population growth slowed in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Population growth also accelerated in Canada’s three largest provinces of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia;

- British Columbia was the lone province in Western Canada that saw more people move into the province from elsewhere in Canada than move out from 2016 to 2021, with interprovincial migration gains (+97,424) reaching their highest level since 1991 to 1996;

- While Yukon (+12.1 per cent to 40,232) led the country in population growth, it was the sole territory that grew at a faster pace than Canada overall;

- Quebec, Canada’s second most populous province (8.5 million people), saw its share of the total population decline for the 11th consecutive census period;

- Population growth in large urban centres relies much more on immigration than other areas of Canada, with more than 9 in 10 new permanent immigrants settling in a metropolitan area. Over one-third of Canadians (13.1 million people) live Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver.

- Four of the five fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country were located in British Columbia from 2016 to 2021: Kelowna (+14.0 per cent to 222,162), Chilliwack (+12.1 per cent to 113,767), Nanaimo (+10.0 per cent to 115,459) and Kamloops (+10.0 per cent to 114,142).

- Several of the smaller urban centres known for being tourist destinations or resort cities also saw population increases. While being close to nature, these small urban centres are not among the most remote and are generally less than a one-hour drive from a large urban centre, meaning they are also close to the amenities of larger urban centres.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Sean Fraser is expected to announce Canada’s new 2022-2024 immigration intake levels plan by the end of the month, which will also outline the programs under which these newcomers will be admitted.

According to the latest government data, IRCC has an estimated 1.8 million applications in queue waiting to be processed because of pandemic-induced delays.

The Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA) is calling on Ottawa to stabilize the immigration system before seeking more ambitious newcomer targets.

“While using this year as an opportunity for IRCC to catch its breath would be far from ideal, it would be beneficial for several reasons,” said a statement on CILA’s website. “It would allow many of those who have been waiting in limbo during the pandemic to finally land as permanent residents.”

Fabian Dawson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media

Feds table changes to Canada's cornerstone environmental law


The Liberals are again pushing for changes to Canada's cornerstone environmental law, as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced Wednesday that a bill seeking to update the legislation was introduced in the Senate.

This is not the first time the federal government has tried to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). The Liberals originally tabled a bill to strengthen the law last spring, but it died on the order paper when the federal election was called. The new bill uses the same language but was introduced to the Senate.

CEPA regulates toxic substances, greenhouse gases and other pollution to protect environmental and human health and was first introduced in 1988.

The proposed changes include requiring the government to study the cumulative health impacts of exposure to chemicals, identify and study vulnerable populations exposed to pollutants and acknowledge the right to a healthy environment, among other things.

“Our government is reintroducing this bill, with the same wording as before, because Canadians know the urgency,” Guilbeault said at the announcement. “We need to give this bill the best chance to get passed, and we are responding to that urgency by introducing the bill to the Senate first because it is the best way to get it through a very busy legislative agenda.”

The proposed changes are a starting point, but many environmental organizations and advocates wanted the government to reintroduce the bill with amendments that address some concerning language, said Elaine MacDonald, program director of healthy communities for Ecojustice.

For example, the bill says a right to a healthy environment will be balanced with relevant social, scientific and economic factors.

“This is the first piece of legislation in Canada that's going to recognize the right to a healthy environment, and the government needs to get it right, and we are concerned that this language undermines that,” said MacDonald.

Costly cleanups of chemicals are just one economic consideration she says could compromise this right.

Joseph Castrilli, a lawyer with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said he “wasn't surprised” the government opted to keep the same language and take advantage of the Senate's less-packed agenda rather than introduce it in the House.

“I'm hopeful that the government of Canada plans on introducing a robust package of amendments … before the bill eventually passes in the House of Commons,” said Castrilli.

One change he’d like to see is for it to make pollution prevention plans mandatory for all Schedule 1 toxic substances, which include asbestos, lead, mercury, methane and other gases.

Over 20 years after CEPA’s introduction, “only 25 of the 150 substances in Schedule 1 have a pollution prevention plan,” said Castrilli. “At that rate, we're not going to see a pollution prevention plan for all 150 substances on the list until the year 2100. We’ve got to go faster than that.”

Laurel Collins, the NDP’s environment critic, expressed doubt about the text of the bill in a statement, saying it has “significant loopholes and weaknesses that are of serious concern.”

“We are concerned that this bill will allow government to make politically motivated decisions that override the scientific evidence when it comes to dangerous substances,” Collins' statement reads.

Although Castrilli and MacDonald hoped the government would address some of their concerns before retabling the bill, they are glad the ball is rolling. MacDonald said the next step is to familiarize senators with the changes she wants to see.

“We thought about the possibility of making some changes before introducing the bill, but we are a minority government. Time is not on our side,” said Guilbeault.

He said the government is “very happy to entertain proposed changes” including concerns about the right to a healthy environment being undermined by economic factors.

“Let's have those discussions and let's see how we can make this bill the best possible bill it can be,” said Guilbeault.

Six environmental groups are calling on Parliament to prioritize the bill and adopt amendments to ensure there are no loopholes for high-risk substances to remain a threat to the public, that there are no delays in assessing the risk of dangerous chemicals and that the language saying the right to a healthy environment must be balanced with economic factors is removed.

In the same press release, the environmental groups asked the House Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to “initiate an early consideration of the bill while the Senate debates and votes on this legislation” to speed the process up.

If Elizabeth May’s private member’s bill to address environmental racism and require the government to collect data on links between environmental hazards, race, socioeconomic status and health becomes law, it would fill an important gap left by CEPA, which does not require that level of data collection but could certainly benefit from the information, said MacDonald.

Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

To tackle fossil fuel subsidies, Canada needs to change tactics: report


Right now, many government policies work against Canada’s best climate, economic and social interests, and to fix this, a new report states we need to address the elephant in the room: fossil fuel subsidies.

The report proposes a framework for assessing fossil fuel programs and recommends the government start by making sure all new policies are consistent with social and climate goals before tackling established policies.

Instead of focusing solely on how fossil fuel subsidies are defined, programs and policies should be evaluated on whether they will support a successful transition to a low-carbon economy, says the report by the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices (CICC).

“The report shows that the type of government spending we're seeing on the fossil fuel sector — even if it's supposed to be to reduce emissions or maintain employment — is not an effective use of public money,” said Vanessa Corkal, a policy adviser with the International Institute for Sustainable Development who was not involved in writing the report.

Government measures should further the transition to a low-carbon economy, make workers and communities less vulnerable to impacts of that shift, and give good value for money, according to the report. If policies do not check those boxes, governments should look for a different solution.

The CICC analyzed more than a dozen government measures — including the $1.7 billion for orphan well cleanup, purchasing the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and the proposed carbon capture utilization and storage investment tax credit — and none met its proposed criteria.

A recent example of policy lacking in these areas is a federal program providing financial aid to help struggling oil and gas companies reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions dubbed the Onshore Emission Reduction Fund.

In November, Canada’s environment commissioner said it was “poorly designed” and amounts to little more than a fossil fuel subsidy.

The commissioner’s report revealed the program overestimated emission reductions benefit, and over half the approved applicants indicated the funding would help them increase oil and gas production. Another stated objective of the program was to retain jobs in the oil and gas sector, but the commissioner found job retention wasn’t tracked and wasn’t included in the eligibility criteria.

But the report warns Canada needs to look at programs through lenses of value for money, employment outcomes and a transition to a low-carbon economy because “the fossil fuel sector is no longer the secure source of economic growth and job creation it once was.” Public investment in the sector “now carries significant risk and less certain benefits for society,” according to the CICC’s analysis.

The Canadian government promised to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies by 2023. But there is no universal definition of what an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy is, which has “served to complicate, rather than clarify, decision-making,” according to the report. Because of this, it proposes examining programs based on criteria for strong climate and economic outcomes, instead of getting hung up on definitions.

Corkal agrees assessing individual outcomes like employment is critical but says a strong definition is still important to ensure subsidies are phased out by 2023.

She says the so-called “debate” over definitions is “really a domestic issue within Canada that reflects the political dynamics and disagreements” and that “internationally, there's actually substantial agreement on this issue,” referring to the more than 150 countries that have agreed to the World Trade Organization’s definition.

In 2019, the Office of the Auditor General found Finance Canada had not developed sufficient social, environmental or economic criteria to evaluate subsidies, but the government has yet to publish a framework with new and improved evaluation criteria or clarify how it defines inefficiency.

The Canada Energy Regulator hasn’t published any scenarios consistent with holding global warming to 1.5 C, despite Canada signing on to this commitment in 2015 with the Paris Agreement. This information will be key if Canada is going to assess programs on whether they are consistent with the global low-carbon transition, said Corkal.

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer