Thursday, April 21, 2022

'Precious little' in Manitoba budget to slash greenhouse gas emissions, activists say

Province finding 'innovative ways to bend the emission

curve downward,' budget documents say


Ian Froese · CBC News · 
Climate activists say Manitoba must push to electrify transportation and the heating of buildings if it is serious about reducing greenhouse gases. (Jaison Empson/CBC)

If urgency is needed to stave off a climate catastrophe, Manitoba's government isn't showing it with its 2022 budget, activists are saying.

The province lists "protecting our environment" in last week's budget documents as one of its five main priorities, but the new measures, such as $50 million to clean up abandoned mines and $6 million for existing initiatives, will have a negligible impact on what Curt Hull says is really needed: weaning ourselves off of greenhouse gases.

"There's precious little in [the budget] with respect to climate change and showing an effective approach to helping us move away from our dependence on fossil fuels," said Hull, project director at Climate Change Connection in Winnipeg.

The budget registers numerous programs that can reduce greenhouse gases, such as making the trucking industry more efficient, but Hull said those developments are not enough.

Manitoba must push to electrify transportation and the heating of buildings, he said.

Without it, the province will not heed the recent findings from the International Panel on Climate Change, which said the world is running out of time to avert the dire impacts of climate change. 

Alternatives to fossil fuels

"Instead of making the use of fossil fuels more efficient, we need to be finding ways to eliminate our use of fossil fuels entirely," Hull said.

"That doesn't mean making fossil fuel usage more efficient. It means to find alternatives to fossil fuel usage, including electrification of both heating and transportation."

Hull said he isn't surprised the provincial budget is lacking in those regards, as, he argues, the Progressive Conservative government hasn't prioritized a separate from greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2022 budget details various environmental matters, but not all of them are intended to reduce emissions. 

The spending plan vows $50 million to clean up abandoned mines over a two-year period and an extra $6 million to support initiatives arising from the province's green plan, which was released in 2017.

The province is funneling more money into initiatives from its climate and green plan. (Gary Solilak/CBC)

It will give out an extra $500,000 in 2022 to expand the Conservation and Climate Fund, which supports the green-friendly initiatives of non-profits, municipalities and businesses, and an additional $1.2 million toward forestry programs. 

The budget also says Manitoba is in the process of developing an energy policy framework, which it says will "explore innovative technologies to reduce emissions and simulate the economy."

A consultant which is helping prepare the new strategy told the province it would need to turn passenger vehicles electric and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

The environment minister, however, said the consultation document, which was leaked to the NDP and made public, is feedback the province is considering, but not necessarily the path Manitoba would follow, he said in an email.

Manitoba hasn't said if it's working toward net zero, but the federal government says Canada is planning to hit the target by 2050.

Net zero is reached when all the greenhouse gas emissions produced are offset by emissions removed from the atmosphere.

Emissions slipped in pandemic's start

The Manitoba government set a target to cut emissions by a cumulative one megatonne between 2018 and 2022.

In recently released data from the federal government, Canada recorded a drop in emissions in 2020, though the pandemic is considered a large contributor. In Manitoba, emissions slipped from 22.3 megatonnes in 2019 to 21.7 megatonnes the following year.

Ottawa's plan is to reduce emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. As of 2020, emissions in Manitoba are 5.6 per cent higher than 2005 levels.

The province was unavailable to comment on Monday, but Environment Minister Jeff Wharton said in an unrelated news conference Tuesday that the province is committed to reducing emissions in collaboration with the federal government. 

"We know that they've set out mandates and goals, and we're going to work with them to ensure we meet those goals.

The budget document describes Manitoba as a leader in producing clean, renewable hydroelectricity and says the province continues to find "innovative ways to bend the emission curve downward."

Durdana Islam, program manager for Manitoba's Climate Action Team, said she doesn't see enough commitment from the provincial government in reducing emissions. (Submitted by Durdana Islam)

Durdana Islam, program manager for Manitoba's Climate Action Team, said the provincial budget should have specific commitments for electrifying vehicles or motivating people to take the bus.

She also wants progress on retrofitting homes, but the provincial building code hasn't been updated to match the latest national code from 2015, which included upgrades for certain insulation values and other energy efficiency measures.

That leaves it up to individual homeowners to spend their own money to make some of these improvements, Islam said.

"We cannot afford that," she said. "It has to be coming from the government and also from the Crown corporations."

She added all levels of government must collaborate to help slash emissions.

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Professors call on Western University to commit to divesting from fossil fuel industry

A growing movement has prompted many Canadian universities to pledge to end relationships with industry


Rebecca Zandbergen · CBC News · 
Western University has so far not pledged to divest from the fossil fuel industry. (Colin Butler/CBC News)

A group of 150 professors and other staff at Western University in London, Ont., has written an open letter to the school's administration calling on it to divest of any assets from the fossil fuel industry.

"We'd really like to see the university join the growing divestment movement by disclosing and divesting its investments in the fossil fuel industry," said Carol Hunsberger, associate professor in the department of geography and environment. 

The fossil fuel industry is a major contributor to climate change, said Hunsberger.

"Divestment...can send a direct financial signal by withdrawing some funds from that industry," she said. "It also sends a broader message that the university is not content to profit from business as usual."

Any institution like Western that has a commitment to sustainability needs to take proportionate action, and that includes exerting whatever financial pressure it can on the fossil fuel industry.- Carol Hunsberger, Associate Professor at Western University

As part of a growing movement, many universities across both Canada and the U.S. have pledged to divest their financial holdings from the fossil fuel industry. The list includes the University of Toronto, Concordia University, and the University of Waterloo.

"It's quite a long list now," said Hunsberger.

In February, Western University's Students' Council (USC) announced it would no longer invest in companies that "explore, drill, or refine fossil fuels." In addition, USC said it would redistribute its investment portfolio into fossil-free funds, which now account for 61 per cent of the organization's portfolio. It committed to doing that by 2025.

Carol Hunsberger is an associate professor in the department of Geography and Environment at Western University. (Submitted by Carol Hunsberger)

Hunsberger applauds the university's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions on campus, pointing to the university's strategic plan. But it's not enough, she said.

"Any institution like Western that has a commitment to sustainability needs to take proportionate action, and that includes exerting whatever financial pressure it can on the fossil fuel industry and the financial institutions that support it," said Hunsberger.

A different approach from Western

Though the university has not committed to divesting entirely from the fossil fuel industry, it has, over time, been tracking how much of its money is invested in the sector.

"As part of Western's commitment to reduce the university's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45 per cent by 2030 and to achieve net-zero by 2050 or sooner, we are aggressively pursuing the decarbonization of Western's investment portfolio," said Lynn Logan, Vice-president of Operations and Finance, in a statement on Tuesday.

Logan said Western's current direct investments in the fossil fuel sector are just 0.33 per cent of it's total operating and endowment fund, down 0.10 per cent from the year before.

Lynn Logan is Western's Vice-President of Operations & Finance. (Western University)

"Active engagement is a key component of our responsible investing approach," said Logan. "If we divest and another organization acquires that investment, we've had no impact. Engaging strategically allows us to achieve greater impact."

Logan said the university is collaborating with all sectors to set meaningful climate goals. "This is achievable as an active owner and has the greater impact toward achieving a net-zero future," she said. 

Logan added Western will divest of any fossil fuel company by 2030 if it has not demonstrated "tangible progress toward realistic net-zero pathways, as these investments will not contribute to Western's long-term goals."

Hunsberger and her colleagues still want to know how much Western has actually invested in fossil fuels, not just the percentage of the total fund and they've filed a request for investment information.

"We're trying to get that list of companies that the university is invested in to get a clearer picture of where the money is invested and how much of it," said Hunsberger.

"Also, where research funds and donations may be coming from that could be tied to the fossil fuel industry."

Hunsberger hopes to present the group's open letter to the University's Senate and Board of Governors this spring.

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How bitcoin is keeping zombie power plants alive

Cryptocurrency is an economic lifeline for dirty, aging coal and gas plants.


PODCAST 
20 April 2022

Bitcoin mining today uses approximately half a percent of all the world’s electricity. As more shipping containers and warehouses full of high-powered computers are deployed every year to unlock more bitcoin, its associated energy use grows by double-digit percentages.

What’s more, as bitcoin mining operations scramble to find new power sources, they’re often turning to aging coal or fossil gas plants that offer cheap electricity.

This week, we’ll take you to Seneca Lake in upstate New York, where a group of unlikely activists is fighting back against a ​“zombie” power plant that is now fueling a bitcoin mine.

What’s happening in Seneca Lake is not a one-off story. Across the nation, the companies that own dying, dirty power plants see cryptocurrency as an opportunity to extend their facilities’ useful lives. Bitcoin mining is locking in fossil fuels — what can we do about it?

Today’s guest is Brian Kahn, the climate editor at Protocol. You can read his recent piece about the Greenidge power plant in New York here.

We want to hear from you! Take our quick survey for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. This will help us bring you more relevant content.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

The Carbon Copy is supported by Nextracker. Nextracker’s technology platform has delivered more than 50 gigawatts of zero-emission solar power plants across the globe. Nextracker is developing a data-driven framework to become the most sustainable solar tracker company in the world — with a focus on a truly transparent supply chain. Visit nex​track​er​.com/​s​u​s​t​a​i​n​a​b​ility to learn more.

The Carbon Copy is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scale​cap​i​tal​so​lu​tions​.com to learn more.

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Chart: Which nations get over 10% of their power from solar?
Hint: Not the U.S or China.



Maria Virginia Olano
15 April 2022
Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format. Canary thanks Natural Power for its support of this feature.

Solar energy generation around the world grew by 23 percent last year, according to Ember’s 2022 Global Electricity Review. Six countries generated more than 10 percent of their electricity from solar in 2021, and several others are getting close to that level.



The small European country of Luxembourg has integrated the most solar into its grid mix, nearly 18 percent. The nation has been aggressive in installing large-scale solar projects, and last year it announced more tax cuts for home solar installations.

Yemen, second on the list, has taken a very different path to build up its solar capacity. For seven years, the country has been mired in a civil war that has decimated its electrical grid. Only about three-quarters of the population has access to electricity, and only about 10 percent has access to centralized grid electricity. Distributed solar energy has become a lifeline in the country, particularly for farmers.

Chile is No. 3 in total share of electricity from solar, and it is only beginning to tap its massive solar potential. The country is home to the Atacama Desert, which has the world’s highest solar irradiation level. The Chilean government has big plans to become a solar energy exporter; last year, it unveiled an ambitious scheme to export solar energy to China via submarine cable.

Globally, solar provided nearly 4 percent of all electricity in 2021. That share will need to increase manyfold to get the world on a path to net-zero emissions by midcentury: Solar power needs to be providing 19 percent of the world’s electricity by 2030 and 33 percent by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

***

Natural Power is a global consultancy that supports its clients to deliver a wide range of renewable energy projects. Its independent engineering experience covers all phases of the project lifecycle, from feasibility through construction to operations, and all stages of the transaction. Learn more.


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Biofuels are accelerating the food crisis — and the climate crisis, too

It’s crazy to put more food in our fuel tanks when there’s a war on. Or when there isn’t.

19 April 2022
(Patrick Pleul/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
CANARY MEDIA

Ukraine has stopped exporting its grain because it’s at war. Russia’s customers have stopped buying its grain because it started that war. Famine is stalking East Africa, where a brutal drought has ravaged harvests — and now the region can no longer supplement its production with Ukrainian and Russian imports. Drought is also parching farms in the United States, especially in the West and the southern Plains — another contributor to higher food prices and growing food shortages.

The United Nations was warning even before the war in Europe’s breadbasket that the world faced ​“unprecedented catastrophic levels” of food insecurity, and now that global food prices have reached an all-time high, we’re facing the worst food crisis since 2008. It’s a weird time to divert more grain from the food supply to fuel tanks.

In Washington, though, it’s always time to divert grain from food to fuel. President Biden visited Iowa corn country last week to announce he’s allowing more corn ethanol to be blended into gasoline this summer, a move designed to save drivers 10 cents per gallon at a time of painful prices at the pump. It will also make food more expensive at a time of painful prices at the supermarket, but it will surely please a lot of farm lobbyists and Midwestern politicians.

The amount of corn it takes to fill an SUV with ethanol could feed a person for a year, and the U.S. and Europe could immediately replace the lost grain exports from Ukraine’s breadbasket by cutting their biofuel production in half. So it’s pretty obvious why this food crisis is a dumb time to accelerate biofuel production. In fact, a bunch of studies have confirmed that biofuel mandates were a leading driver of the 2008 food crisis, driving up prices by driving up demand for grain and vegetable oil.

The thing is, the reasons biofuels are dumb when the world is freaking out about its food supply are the same reasons most biofuels are always dumb: Land is much more efficient at growing food than growing energy. Using land to grow fuel induces the clearing of additional land to grow food, wiping out forests and other carbon sinks we need to save the climate. And for the foreseeable future, the world should always be freaking out about its food supply.

This was the theme of my first Eating the Earth column about food and climate, and fair warning: It’s going to be a recurring theme. No matter what ends up happening in Ukraine, the world will still face a long-term food crisis after the guns go silent. Farmers will need to grow 7 quadrillion additional calories every year by 2050 to feed the growing global population, and they’ll need to do it on a smaller agricultural footprint to avoid accelerating our long-term climate crisis. But humanity is currently on track to tear down another 14 Californias’ worth of forests to provide the farmland we need to grow the food we need.

In other words, our food and climate crises are largely land crises. We need the limited land on earth to produce massive amounts of food and store massive amounts of carbon. But thanks to misguided government policies, of which Biden’s latest agri-pander is a relatively innocuous example, we’re using more than 30 million acres of U.S. cornfields, almost an entire Iowa worth of incredibly productive land, to grow modest amounts of fuel.

Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing new climate policies that would devote as much as 20 percent of the continent’s farmland to growing crops for fuel and electricity, an area larger than Poland. The math just doesn’t pencil out. It would take about 30 percent of the world’s crops to provide just 2 percent of the world’s energy, which would drive up food prices, speed up deforestation and ratchet up carbon emissions. The only thing most biofuels do well is funnel extra cash to farmers.

Let’s be honest: What Biden is doing is not an economic or environmental catastrophe. He’s suspending a rule so that U.S. filling stations can sell gas with 15 percent instead of 10 percent ethanol for a couple of months, which might create a bit more smog, food inflation and natural destruction. But it’s just a temporary tweak.

The real catastrophe is the world’s broader commitment to farm-grown energy, embodied in the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that 15 billion gallons of ethanol be blended into fuels each year, as well as Europe’s push for even more ambitious bioenergy mandates. If we were really serious about our long-term food and climate crises, we wouldn’t keep using productive land to grow fuels that make both crises worse.
“You come out against ethanol, you are dead meat”

Ethanol is the most common form of alcohol, the fermented magic in beer, wine and liquor. It’s also a functional automotive fuel that powered the first prototype of the internal combustion engine and was once touted by Henry Ford as the future of transportation. He was wrong — gasoline turned out to be much more efficient. But over the last few decades, corn ethanol has carved out a modest role in U.S. fuel markets because powerful politicians have seen it as a miracle elixir for agricultural prosperity.

Farm-state congressional leaders such as Bob Dole (R) of Kansas, Tom Daschle (D) of South Dakota and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) of Illinois — who became an ethanol lobbyist before he went to jail over a sexual abuse scandal — repeatedly pushed through protective tariffs, tax breaks and lavish subsidies for ethanol. And presidential candidates have sucked up to ethanol interests during Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses so shamelessly and predictably that an entire episode of The West Wing lampooned the quadrennial spectacle.

“You come out against ethanol, you are dead meat,” political aide Josh Lyman warned future president Matt Santos. ​“Bambi would have a better shot at getting elected president of the NRA than you’ll have of getting a single vote in this caucus!”

Santos thought ethanol was ridiculous, but he supported it publicly, and so has every nonfictional president since Jimmy Carter. George W. Bush enacted and expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard. Barack Obama of corn-rich Illinois preached the biofuels gospel too. Donald Trump pandered even harder to his farm-state supporters, approving year-round 15 percent ethanol (the new standard was eventually struck down in court). Biden and his ethanol-loving agriculture secretary, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, are just following tradition.

Even environmentalists initially supported the Renewable Fuel Standard. ​“Renewable” sounded sustainable, and biofuels seemed like the only viable alternative to gasoline. There were no electric vehicles on America’s roads in the Bush years, and the future prospects seemed so bleak that a 2006 documentary was titled Who Killed the Electric Car?

Today, of course, electric vehicles are almost universally acknowledged as the real future of transportation. Even many boosters who once dreamed that biofuels would provide all transportation fuel now focus more on serving the hard-to-electrify aviation and shipping industries.

The question is whether biofuels are any greener than fossil fuels. They’re certainly not more efficient. Fossilized plants from millions of years ago have much higher energy density than fresh plants, and the corn ethanol production process uses almost a gallon of fossil fuel for every gallon of gasoline it displaces. Still, even though planting, plowing, fertilizing, harvesting, fermenting and distilling corn produces far more emissions than extracting and refining oil, the prevailing science before 2008 found ethanol to be slightly better for the climate than gasoline because growing corn on a farm absorbed the carbon emitted by burning ethanol in an engine.

The problem was that when cornfields were used to grow fuel, farmers needed to clear more carbon-absorbing natural land to replace the lost food production capacity. A 2008 paper in Science revealed that when this ​“indirect land-use change” was taken into account, corn ethanol and other farm-grown fuels were much worse for the climate than gasoline. That year’s food crisis basically confirmed the findings, as the ethanol boom depressed U.S. corn exports, which encouraged Brazilian farmers to plant more soybeans on former pastures to replace the missing grain, which encouraged Brazilian cattle ranchers to deforest the Amazon at record rates to create new pastures. More recent studies have confirmed that while biofuels made from crop residues or other waste products can help the climate, using productive land to grow fuel is a climate disaster.

The biofuels industry can still point to studies that find climate benefits, but what those studies all have in common is that they downplay the danger of land-use change — by assuming that biofuels will be grown on unspecified ​“marginal lands” that wouldn’t be able to grow food, or that biofuels will somehow inspire farmers to grow so much more food on their existing farms that they won’t need to clear more land, or, ironically, that biofuels will increase food prices so much that the global poor will eat less, a rather ugly source of climate benefits. In fact, the U.S. government’s modeling justifying ethanol as a climate solution generated all of its greenhouse gas savings from reduced food consumption abroad.

In the context of the global land crunch, the science of biofuels is not as complex as some scientists make it sound. The world has committed to ending deforestation by 2030 to help keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and there’s a broad consensus that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would also require a massive campaign of reforestation by 2050. At the same time, the world is already devoting an area the size of Texas to growing fuel, even though more land for farming means less land for forests, wetlands and other natural ecosystems. The twin problems of agricultural expansion and deforestation are currently getting worse, and many nations are planning to use even more crop-based biofuels to meet their renewable energy goals. There’s obviously a Texas-sized opportunity to free up scarce land for food production and carbon-friendly rewilding.

But even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Nobel Prize–winning gold standard on global warming, has promoted bioenergy as a potential strategy to cut emissions, in part because researchers devoted to bioenergy have had so much sway at the IPCC. Felix Creutzig, a German physicist who oversaw the IPCC’s bioenergy work for its landmark 2014 report, told me ardent bioenergy supporters shot down his efforts to inject words of caution into their chapter. He and other biofuels skeptics on his team had to go to the Journal of Industrial Ecology to publish a critique of excessively rosy bioenergy analyses.

“It’s a huge bias in science: People make a career investment in studying a technology, then they defend that technology,” Creutzig said. ​“It’s a real problem.”

Sticking with bioenergy is easy — and dead wrong

Of course, there’s an even stronger pro-biofuels bias in the political arena. In the U.S., Biden has an opportunity this year to change the rules under the Renewable Fuel Standard, and even though he’s vowed to devote his entire government to climate action, there’s virtually no chance that he’ll try to roll back the ethanol mandate.

In the European Union, the ​“Fit for 55” plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030 depends heavily on growing crops for fuel and burning trees for electricity — even though forest-grown power may be even more damaging than farm-grown fuels. If anything, farm and forestry interests are even more influential in Europe than in the U.S.

It’s understandable that policymakers are grasping for alternatives to fossil fuels during a climate crisis. It’s especially understandable during an energy crisis when renewable fuels can be a four-fer that address public anger about gas prices, reduce demand for Vladimir Putin’s petroleum, subsidize rural interests with outsized political influence, and at least sound like a step toward a greener world. Politically, bioenergy is usually the path of least resistance.

Right now, though, with corn prices up nearly 50 percent since the start of 2021, we’re confronted with the cost of using grain to fuel our cars rather than ourselves every time we buy cereal. And with the latest IPCC report portraying a world hurtling toward calamity, the cost of using land to grow energy rather than food or trees also ought to be starker than ever. Land is the only successful tool we have for growing the food we need to sustain us and storing the carbon we need to save us; fortunately, we now have better ways to produce energy.

Ultimately, the problem of saving the climate while feeding the world will not be solved by following the path of least resistance. We’ll have to do a lot of things that make powerful interests uncomfortable, and maybe some things that make all of us uncomfortable. The earth is our home, the only planet we’ve found with barbecue potato chips, breathable air and the NBA playoffs, and at some point we’ll have to be willing to make a few sacrifices to keep it habitable.

On the other hand: 10 cents a gallon!
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Newspaper apologizes for cartoon depicting Indigenous people seeking payout from Pope

First Nations leaders say cartoon reinforces negative

 stereotypes


Lenard Monkman · CBC News · 
Hiawatha First Nation Chief Laurie Carr said that it's disturbing a cartoon like that was published in 2022. (CBC)

First Nations leaders in southern Ontario say the media has to do better at reconciliation after a newspaper ran an offensive cartoon depicting Indigenous people asking the Pope for financial compensation.

"You can't speak out of both sides of your mouth — to Indigenous people one way, and then what you print to the general Canadian population," said Laurie Carr, chief of Hiawatha First Nation.

Metroland Media's seven Simcoe County newspapers ran a cartoon last week that pictured the Pope saying "I'm sorry" to what appears to be an Indigenous woman and man, who respond "How $orry?"

Carr, who sits on one of Metroland Media's advisory councils in Peterborough, said "it's really disturbing" to see a cartoon published like that in 2022.

The cartoon ran in seven newspapers in Simcoe County in southern Ontario. (Travis Boissoneau/Twitter)

"When you have Metroland Media who has reached out to Indigenous people to sit on these advisory committees … to work together and to bring a better media and the truth to the general Canadian population … it's really disheartening," said Carr.

Metroland Media is a subsidiary of the Torstar Corporation, and has newspapers in the Simcoe County communities of Alliston, Barrie, Bradford and West Gwillimbury, Collingwood, Innisfil, Midland/Penetanguishene, Orillia and Stayner/Wasaga.

Editor's apology

When contacted for comment, Adam Martin-Robbins, Metroland's managing editor for the Simcoe County newspapers, directed CBC News to a column he wrote that was published on Simcoe.com on Monday.

"The cartoon we published on the editorial page in our seven local newspapers last week was offensive, and we apologize," Martin-Robbins wrote.

"We apologize, in particular, to our Indigenous readers including our Beausoleil First Nation and Rama First Nation neighbours as well as the Métis residing in Midland and surrounding communities. We recognize the generational trauma of the atrocities related to the residential school system." 

He wrote that the cartoon, which was drawn by Steve Nease, "was intended as a satirical look at how the Pope's long-awaited apology to Indigenous people falls short without the Roman Catholic Church also delivering on its promise of providing compensation to residential school survivors. But this wasn't the way to depict that opinion and we shouldn't have published it."

Nease wrote in an email to CBC News that he believes a papal apology is the first step toward righting the wrongs that residential school survivors faced from the Catholic church and that the Pope should "put his money where his mouth is, and compensate victims financially."

"I know that many have been offended by my cartoon, and I regret that deeply," Nease wrote.

"It was never my intention, or the intention of the newspaper that ran it, to cause such hurt."

Carr said she is thankful for an apology, but would have preferred it be just an apology, rather than explain the intention behind the cartoon.

News needs more historical context

Reg Niganobe, grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation whose members include some First Nations in Simcoe County, said cartoons like that reinforce a stereotype that Indigenous people are only out for money when something bad happens.

"Money is the only compensation that can be offered to us at the very least, other than maybe jail time or prosecution for the offenders. But that doesn't address the issue of what happens to our people," said Niganobe.

Reg Niganobe, grand council chief of the Anishinabek Nation, says newspapers can help advance reconciliation by adding more historical context to their reports. (Michael Kaiser Photography)

Niganobe, whose father attended the Spanish Indian Residential School, said he accepts the editor's apology but would like to see media take actions moving forward like including more historical background when reporting on Indigenous issues.

"They leave out the historical context, right?" he said.

"They leave out all the information and all the facts that exist within them and it puts Indigenous people in a very poor light."

Martin-Robbins wrote in the column that the newspaper has reviewed its processes and added an extra layer of review and oversight for its editorial page content. He also wrote they are committed to ongoing training focused on anti-oppression, anti-racism and inclusion and diversity, among other things.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lenard Monkman

Lenard Monkman is Anishinaabe from Lake Manitoba First Nation, Treaty 2 territory. He has been an associate producer with CBC Indigenous since 2016. Follow him on Twitter: @Lenardmonkman1


Dear Simcoe County readers, we owe you an apology


The cartoon published in our newspapers last week was offensive, and we're sorry, writes Adam Martin-Robbins

Adam Martin-Robbins
Simcoe.com
Monday, April 18, 2022

It’s about trust. Our relationship with our readers is built on transparency, honesty and integrity. As such, we have launched a trust initiative to tell you who we are and how and why we do what we do. This article is part of that project.

Let me start with this: We Are Sorry.

The cartoon we published on the editorial page in our seven local newspapers last week was offensive, and we apologize.

We apologize, in particular, to our Indigenous readers including our Beausoleil First Nation and Rama First Nation neighbours as well as the Métis residing in Midland and surrounding communities. We recognize the generational trauma of the atrocities related to the residential school system.

The cartoon was intended as a satirical look at how the Pope's long-awaited apology to Indigenous people falls short without the Roman Catholic Church also delivering on its promise of providing compensation to residential school survivors. But this wasn't the way to depict that opinion and we shouldn't have published it.

Second, I’d like to thank the many readers who reached out by email and social media to call us out and express their concerns.

Your responses are an important part of our reflection and learning as we strive to do better.

It's also an important reminder of how impactful the work we do is and what we must consider before publishing content about or in reference to Indigenous peoples.

We must, we can and we will do better.

Since the cartoon was published, we have reviewed and changed our processes so this won't happen again. We have added an extra layer of review and oversight for our editorial page content to ensure it meets our ethical standards.

We're also aware we have more learning to do. We're committed to ongoing training focused on anti-oppression, anti-racism, inclusion and diversity, among other things.

In our daily work as journalists, we're regularly confronted with tough ethical decisions and we often do the right thing. But, on occasion, we get it wrong.

When that happens, we know how important it is to own up to our mistakes.

Owning up to our errors is part of what makes us a trusted news source that our readers count on to keep them informed about what's happening in their communities.

We recognize, for some readers, this error in judgment has undermined your trust in us.

I know our dedicated team of editors and reporters will strive to re-earn your trust.

I assure you, we're committed to delivering fair, balanced, and ethical journalism rooted in values of respect and dignity, which readers expect from us.

Adam Martin-Robbins is managing editor of Metroland’s seven Simcoe County newspapers and Simcoe.com. We welcome your questions and value your comments. Email our trust committee at trust@metroland.com.
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The Pope Apologized. Some Conservatives Are Denying Residential School Horrors Anyway.

The denial or downplaying of what happened at residential schools works to protect the status quo and amounts to a form of genocide denial that needs to be confronted, experts say.

By Anya Zoledziowski
VICE CANADA
TORONTO, CA



CLASSROOM AT THE FORMER KUPER ISLAND INDIAN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, WHICH RAN FROM 1890 TO THE 1970S. PHOTO BY INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL HISTORY & DIALOGUE CENTRE VIA NATIONAL CENTRE FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION

After Pope Francis finally issued a long-awaited apology for the role the Catholic Church played in Canada’s abusive residential school system, some prominent conservatives were quick to deny residential school horrors—again.

Conrad Black, a former media baron who was pardoned by Donald Trump, published an op-ed in the Canadian daily the National Post that threw into question the probability of unmarked graves of Indigenous kids.

Last May, more than 200 unmarked graves were found at the site of a formal residential school in Kamloops, B.C., which set off a national reckoning. Nearly 2,000 more have been confirmed since and many more are expected.

But Black said, “Sophisticated audiences… do not accept that thousands of Indigenous children were murdered and secretly buried, as has been alleged.”

Meanwhile, a retired University of Manitoba professor, Hymie Rubenstein, like many angsty conservatives, continues to publish articles on his Substack, “The REAL Indian Residential Schools Newsletter.”

After Pope Francis apologized, Rubenstein said, “Read and gnash your teeth about the hegemony of emotion over truth” and then pointed out that the apology was issued on April Fool’s Day.

Well-known conservative figures continue to deny or downplay what happened at residential schools, some even saying the graves are a “hoax” because the bodies haven’t been exhumed. The denial works to protect the status quo and amounts to a form of genocide denialism that needs to be confronted, experts say.

It’s not just fringe figures on the right that are denying these horrors, either. Last month, Tom Flanagan, once an aide to former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, wrote that accounts of Canada’s brutal history “are not simply a fraud of hoax,” and referred to them as “bizarre claims.”

In December, then federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was caught on video telling young Conservatives that the purpose of residential schools was simply “to provide education.” He walked back his comments after the video was made public.

“It can seem like, ‘Oh, a few trolls are saying dumb things on the internet, but denialism is very appealing,” said Sean Carleton, a University of Manitoba professor in Indigenous studies. “Its objective is to keep in place the colonial status quo.”

The Canadian government, along with churches, the majority of them Catholic, ran residential schools to forcibly assimilate 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children—to “kill the Indian in the child,” a famous phrase endorsed by several residential school architects, including Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. Physical and sexual abuses were common, as were malnutrition and disease. Thousands of children died, while others were left with incomprehensible trauma. While the Anglicans and other denominations apologized for their roles, the Catholic Church hadn’t. The pope’s apology came more than 20 years after the last school closed down.

Denying or misrepresenting the history risks retraumatizing communities, survivors, and their families. Rachel Ann Snow, a practitioner of Indigenous legal traditions and matriarch among her Iyahe Nakoda Sioux people, said this denialism is making it more difficult for survivors to come forward with their stories.

Denialists are “completely attacking or undermining the existing hurt. You want to tell your trauma because part of the recovery is to talk and to face those demons,” said Snow, whose father escaped from a residential school and several other relatives were forced to attend them.

As for those calling unmarked graves a “hoax,” “If some of the denialists understood that it's not just business as usual… They know nothing about Indigenous people or how we feel we need to handle this respectfully,” Snow said. “These children were so little and so desecrated by just being thrown together. There is a whole spiritual threshold and process that has to happen.”

Daniel Heath Justice, a UBC professor and Cherokee Nation citizen, said denialism is “nothing new” and may be easier than the truth for some people to believe.

“Even really kind people don’t want to believe that their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, respected leaders of their communities, could have been part of a genocidal project. It's an existential issue for a lot of people,” Justice said.

“The frustrating thing for me is how many bodies do they need to finally believe Indigenous people? My fear is there will never be enough because they don't want to believe Indigenous people.”

The way forward, according to Justice, is to confront denialism and call it out in our own families.

Carleton thinks disinformation and misinformation will only get worse as the anniversary in Kamloops approaches, and the pope gets ready to visit Canada, reportedly in late July.

“We need to understand denialism as a phenomenon, rather than as an individual expression,” Carleton said. “These arguments need to be challenged and discredited—not just ignored—otherwise it’ll hold up the colonial status quo and anti-Indigenous racism.”

According to Snow, fighting disinformation and misinformation about residential schools is paramount to fighting and recovering from colonialism in Canada.

“It becomes a sore or a festering wound of Canada and nobody wants to look at that festering wound and say, ‘This is very ugly and it’s been there for a while,” Snow said. “But we need to see the truth in order to heal.”


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