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Braid: Criminals walk as UCP faces chronic problems with prosecution service

If prosecutors walk off the job, hundreds of cases would suddenly shut down, letting more perpetrators walk free

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date: Apr 20, 2022 •

Crown prosecutor Aaron Rankin poses for a portrait at Centrium Place in downtown Calgary on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. 

PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI /Postmedia

Alberta’s Crown counsels — the ones who prosecute offenders — are talking seriously about going on strike. This is another crisis nobody needs, least of all the UCP government.

The Crown attorneys association has a meeting Thursday with Treasury Board officials that could lead to progress on pay.

This is welcome. Most Alberta prosecutors earn far less than their counterparts in other provinces. The gap with Ontario is said to be 40 per cent.

But pay is only one problem. On March 22, the Alberta Crown Attorneys’ Association sent Premier Jason Kenney a letter, asking for an urgent meeting.

They said, in part: “The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service is in crisis.

“Crushing file loads, inadequate mental health supports and uncompetitive compensation have led to dozens of unfilled prosecutor positions.

“We have seen a significant number of prosecutors leave the ACPS for places like British Columbia and Ontario, to the extent that the ACPS often seems like a farm team for other prosecution services.”

If prosecutors walk off the job, hundreds of cases would suddenly shut down, letting more perpetrators walk free.

As many as 3,000 cases are already at risk of withdrawal because they haven’t been taken to court within time limits. A work stoppage by the Crowns would add many more. After a strike of any length, the courts would face even greater backlogs when trials resumed.

“One of the very last things we want to do is go on strike, but we’re forced to look out for the long-term viability of the (prosecution) service,” says Dallas Sopko, president of the Alberta Crown Attorneys’ Association (ACAA).

Dallas Sopko, president of the Alberta Crown Attorneys’ Association, says there is strong support for a strike. 

PHOTO BY IAN KUCERAK /Postmedia

“We did a survey of our members and a very strong majority were in favour of going on strike. This isn’t just a bluff. This isn’t just words we throw around loosely.”

Under current conditions, the letter says, cases that could be stayed include “sexual assault, robberies, domestic assaults and other crimes of significant violence.” That doesn’t include hundreds of even more serious cases awaiting trial in Court of Queen’s Bench.

The prosecutors didn’t get a meeting with the premier. But “discussions” have started.

Alberta has about 380 Crown lawyers. The count is fluid because departures (and some additions) happen regularly.

The government did announce hiring of 50 new Crown prosecutors, mostly at the junior level. Officials say those people were brought on.

But still, departures are so high that nearly 40 positions are now vacant. In recent weeks three prosecutors from the Calgary office and four in Edmonton have taken jobs in other provinces. Every time that happens, the court backlogs stack up further.


MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Crown prosecutors see 'glimmer of hope' to avoid strike after government meeting

Possible Crown prosecutor strike would bring justice system to a 'grinding halt'

The UCP has said for three years now that public servants make too much money in comparison with other provinces, based on the findings of the MacKinnon Report. The government’s key policy goal is to bring pay into line.

But the standard should apply both ways. If a vital area such as Crown prosecution is seriously underpaid by national standards, the compensation should surely be raised.

The government acknowledges that some Crowns, although not all, face a significant pay gap. There seems to be a will to fix that.

But the prosecutors have other problems. In 2017, the UCP, then in opposition, called for an end to triage; the system brought in by the NDP that allows picking and choosing which cases go to trial. Some are never heard because of staff shortages.

And yet, triage still exists under the UCP. The Crowns want it ended. There is also a shortage of security in rural courtrooms, a high level of stress and burnout, and many other problems.

The prosecutors are classified as managers even though, as Sopko says, “95 per cent of our lawyers don’t manage anyone.”

That classification means Crown prosecutors have faced several politically motivated pay freezes. It also keeps them from negotiating with the government. Unlike prosecutors in every other province but Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, they do not have collective bargaining rights.

The government’s position seems to be that the Crowns are welcome to join the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. By law, all units with employees who work for government must bargain through AUPE.

But the lawyers argue persuasively that this would create a conflict of interest.

In trials, prosecutors often call witnesses who work for the government.

   

A courtroom at the Edmonton Law Courts building. 

PHOTO BY JASON FRANSON /The Canadian Press, file

A social worker might testify against an abusive spouse, for instance. The defence could claim that the worker and the Crown prosecutor are in conflict as AUPE members.

The Crowns asked the Labour Relations Board for certification as an independent bargaining unit. They were unsuccessful at the Board and again at Queen’s Bench. The case is now before the Appeal Court, awaiting decision.

The Queen’s Bench judgment rejected the prosecutors’ case on technical grounds, but pointed out that Crowns have their own independent bargaining units in British Columbia, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

About 300 of the province’s Crown lawyers have joined the voluntary ACAA. It has gained informal standing with the government. The mere fact of a meeting with Treasury officials is a big step.

While the union question sorts out, there has to be urgent action on pay, staff shortages, security in rural court, work conditions and triaging.

Government neglect, alternating with occasional action, has allowed problems to fester and grow.

“There has to be some structure in place to prevent standards in the ACPS from slipping while political attention is directed elsewhere,” says Aaron Rankin, secretary of the prosecutors’ association.

“Albertans should be able to count on that.”

Only the criminals would disagree.


Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald.
Twitter: @DonBraid
Facebook: Don Braid Politics

Alberta Crown prosecutors in a 'holding pattern' as talks with province to avoid strike continue

The witness box and Judges's bench at the Edmonton Law Courts building, in Edmonton on Friday, June 28, 2019 (The Canadian Press/Jason Franson).

Adam Lachacz
CTVNewsEdmonton.ca Digital Producer
Updated April 18, 2022

Discussions between Crown prosecutors and the province are ongoing with the hopes of preventing a mass strike action that would paralyze Alberta's justice system.

Justice ministry and treasury board officials met with the Alberta Crown Attorney's Association (ACAA) last week, with another meeting scheduled for Thursday.

Dallas Sopko, ACAA president, said frozen wages, low morale, and an ever-increasing workload represent concerns prosecutors hold, especially as more attorneys consider moving to other jurisdictions.

"We've made it clear to the government that what we are really seeking here is the ability to collectively bargain on behalf of prosecutors," Sopko said. "We had some higher-level conversations about expectations."

According to Sopko, no formal commitments were made by the government, but there is a small "glimmer of hope" that a strike won't occur.

"We are in a bit of a holding pattern," he told CTV News Edmonton. "The ball really is in the government's court.

"We are waiting to get a response from them about what they are willing to do to resolve the issues."

Joseph Dow, Justice Minister Tyler Shandro's press secretary, said discussions continue.

"Discussions with ACAA will help inform the development of an objective, market-based approach to compensation for Crown prosecutors," Dow said. "Which we understand is a key priority for ACAA and its members."

Should the government respond with a proposal not in the best interest of the ACAA, Sopko said the more than 300 members of the association are "united" in the belief that job action would need to be taken.

"We want to be as reasonable as possible," Sopko said. "We want to at all costs avoid a disruption or a shutdown of the justice system or a number of cases in the justice system."

"What we really need is to avoid this vicious cycle of things boiling over and feeling like we've been ignored and then things boil over and then there's a knee-jerk reaction that temporarily solves the problem but has no long-term solution," Sopko added.

'A HUGE CAMPAIGN PROMISE'

Chaldeans Mensah, MacEwan University political scientist, said avoiding a Crown prosecutor strike remains in the best interest of the United Conservative Party.

"They definitely have to be motivated because the UCP promised in the last campaign that they would be tough on crime and they committed to providing resources to prosecutors to be able to accomplish this," Mensah said. "This is a huge campaign promise.

"Any movement to a strike in this period as we prepare for the next election would be very, very tough on the UCP," he added. "I think there is an incentive for the government to compromise here."

Mensah said the conflict with the ACAA is just the latest example of tensions between the UCP and public sector unions and employees.

"The UCP government has traditionally had a difficult relationship with public-sector unions," he said, adding that tensions between doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers compensation remain, in addition to a push to change teacher discipline.

"There's no doubt that there's no love lost between the public sector and this government," he said. "(However), if there's too much upheaval, demonstrations, that plays into the hands of the NDP, particularly in the big cities."

With Jason Kenney's leadership review ongoing and a looming provincial election to be called no later than May 2023, Mensah expects the government to settle the issue with Crown prosecutors before it gets to job action.

"The government is in a better financial position than they were months ago," the political scientist said. "So they can afford to make a deal and settle this because Jason Kenney doesn't want things like a strike hanging over his head."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Chelan Skulski

02:09
Alberta prosecutors continue talks with government

01:39
Alta. prosecutors could strike

02:15
Overwhelming amount of work for crown prosecutors

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Pterosaur Discovery Solves Ancient Feather Mystery: Flying Reptiles Could Change the Color of Their Feathers

By UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK APRIL 20, 2022

Artist’s reconstruction of the feathered pterosaur Tupandactylus, showing the feather types along the bottom of the headcrest: dark monofilaments and lighter-colored branched feathers. Credit: © Nicholls 2022 Copyright Bob Nicholls

Remarkable new evidence that pterosaurs, the flying relatives of dinosaurs, were able to control the color of their feathers using melanin pigments has been discovered by an international team of paleontologists.

The study, published today (April 20, 2022) in the journal Nature, was led by University College Cork (UCC) paleontologists Dr. Aude Cincotta and Prof. Maria McNamara, and Dr. Pascal Godefroit from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, with an international team of scientists from Brazil and Belgium.

Artist’s reconstruction of the feathered pterosaur Tupandactylus, showing the feather types along the bottom of the head crest: dark monofilaments and lighter-colored branched feathers. Credit: Copyright Julio Lacerda

The new study is based on analyses of a new 115 million-year-old fossilized head crest of the pterosaur Tupandactylus imperator from north-eastern Brazil. Pterosaurs lived side by side with dinosaurs, from 230 to 66 million years ago.

This species of pterosaur is famous for its bizarre huge head crest. The team discovered that the bottom of the crest had a fuzzy rim of feathers, with short wiry hair-like feathers and fluffy branched feathers.

University College Cork (UCC) Professor Maria McNamara holding tiny samples of the pterosaur feathers. Credit: UCC

“We didn’t expect to see this at all,” said Dr. Cincotta. “For decades paleontologists have argued about whether pterosaurs had feathers. The feathers in our specimen close off that debate for good as they are very clearly branched all the way along their length, just like birds today.”

The team then studied the feathers with high-powered electron microscopes and found preserved melanosomes – granules of the pigment melanin. Unexpectedly, the new study shows that the melanosomes in different feather types have different shapes.

University College Cork (UCC) Professor Maria McNamara. Credit: UCC

“In birds today, feather color is strongly linked to melanosome shape,” said Prof. McNamara. “Since the pterosaur feather types had different melanosome shapes, these animals must have had the genetic machinery to control the colors of their feathers. This feature is essential for color patterning and shows that coloration was a critical feature of even the very earliest feathers.”

Thanks to the collective efforts of the Belgian and Brazilian scientists and authorities working with a private donor, the remarkable specimen has been repatriated to Brazil. “It is so important that scientifically important fossils such as this are returned to their countries of origin and safely conserved for posterity,” said Dr. Godefroit. “These fossils can then be made available to scientists for further study and can inspire future generations of scientists through public exhibitions that celebrate our natural heritage.”

Reference: “Pterosaur melanosomes support signalling functions for early feathers” by Aude Cincotta, Michaël Nicolaï, Hebert Bruno Nascimento Campos, Maria McNamara, Liliana D’Alba, Matthew D. Shawkey, Edio-Ernst Kischlat, Johan Yans, Robert Carleer, François Escuillié and Pascal Godefroit, 20 April 2022, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04622-3

Forget passenger cars, here’s where hydrogen make sense in transport

Hydrogen is attractive to trucking and ports, but only if it's clean.

JONATHAN M. GITLIN - 4/20/2022, 

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Earth Day is April 22, and its usual message—take care of our planet—has been given added urgency by the challenges highlighted in the latest IPCC report. This year, Ars is taking a look at the technologies we normally cover, from cars to chipmaking, and finding out how we can boost their sustainability and minimize their climate impact.

You can understand why the idea of a hydrogen-powered car is appealing. Humans aren't great at accepting change, but we do find comfort in the familiar. Being told that our transport must decarbonize means more change. While electric vehicles are better at almost everything, even the world's biggest EV evangelist must concede that charging a car takes longer than filling a fuel tank. Hydrogen can be pressurized and pumped, and hydrogen can be clean, therefore hydrogen-powered cars make sense, the argument goes.

That's probably all the prompt any regular Ars Technica reader needs to list the reasons why hydrogen is a non-starter. Like mammals after the Chicxulub asteroid, battery electric vehicles are poised to fill the niches soon to be left by the dinosaurs, in this case fossil fuel-powered vehicles, leaving alternative fuels like hydrogen evaporating into thin air.

But don't count the universe's simplest molecule out just yet. While it's unlikely to catch on in the near future for light passenger vehicles, there are commercial applications like trucks, trains, and other heavy equipment where it does make sense. (For this entire article, we're talking about green hydrogen, made of wind or solar energy; using fossil fuels to make hydrogen—even with carbon capture—offers little to no benefit. Unfortunately, the vast majority of hydrogen currently produced is derived from hydrocarbons.)

Forget about hydrogen cars—at least for now

There are two main ways to use hydrogen to power a vehicle. You can burn pressurized hydrogen in an internal combustion engine or use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to generate electricity to power electric motors.

Burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is probably the most straightforward in terms of existing tech—after modifications to the engine and fuel system, the rest of the car's powertrain remains the same. And the only exhaust product is water. But hydrogen has little energy density, with just a single covalent bond between two atoms to be broken. Hydrogen combustion engines also make little power, and very inefficiently compared to a similar engine burning gasoline.Advertisement

So, BMW's 2006 Hydrogen 7 used a modified version of the company's V12 engine that, burning hydrogen, generated about 60 percent as much power as the gasoline-burning V12 and required five times as much fuel to do so.

Hydrogen fuel cells have a lengthier automotive history: the first was the General Motors Electrovan in 1966, which had a curb weight that would shame even a Hummer EV and used actual space-age technology. By the mid-2010s, automaker interest in fuel cells was surging, with Audi, BMW, GM, Genesis, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and others portending fuel cell EVs in the next few years.

Some even made it into production: Ars tested two generations of Toyota Mirai, and the Hyundai Nexo, all of which use hydrogen fuel cells to power their electric motors. But neither Mirai nor Nexo is common on the roads. Here in the US, neither is viable outside of California, which remains the only state with any level of public hydrogen refueling infrastructure.

Hydrogen's fast refueling times (relative to fast-charging an EV) count for nothing if you can't find a filling station, which has created a chicken-and-egg problem. Without hydrogen fuel cell EVs on the roads, there's no demand for building the infrastructure. And there's no demand for a car or SUV you can't refuel anywhere.

"The challenge doing it for retail customers who have a very different set of needs than, let's say, commercial customers in the aerospace business or in the trucking business or the rail business is they want hydrogen everywhere. They don't know where they're going to want it, but they want it there when they need it, and they don't want the inconvenience or the range anxiety of trying to hunt for hydrogen. And so that means you put in a lot of stations when you don't have a lot of vehicles on the road, and those stations don't operate efficiently," explained Charlie Freese, the head of GM's fuel cell program.

Fixed routes let you plan

It takes a lot less work to build out hydrogen refueling infrastructure if you're on a fixed route or always returning to the same place—like the drayage trucks at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California. In 2017, Toyota started testing its fuel cell technology adapted from the Mirai sedan to power a class 8 tractor-trailer. By June 2021, the project expanded to five heavy-duty trucks and plans to add five more, as well as two battery-electric yard tractors.

GM has been looking at trucking as a better fit for its hydrogen fuel cells than another SUV. "We're able to leverage investments that are already going in for hydrogen at factories and at warehouses where forklifts are operating, economically, on hydrogen today. We can use those same refueling points to fuel the trucks," Freese told me.

Frank Weber, a BMW board member with responsibility for new technology, also sees a future for hydrogen fuel cells as a way to electrify heavy vehicles. "Hydrogen is one of the few options to get them to zero emissions. Because a battery-electric heavy truck is a problem. If you have 40 ton and you have to dedicate 10 ton into batteries—wow," Weber exclaimed. "So when you look at the European development, even the Chinese development and the Asian development, it is obvious—We will see infrastructure in mobility for heavy trucks that is hydrogen infrastructure," Weber said.

"So for larger vehicles, fuel cells become a very interesting point. Because with those large batteries, the fuel itself becomes very competitive and with hydrogen being more available and being affordable, when we look at the industrialization of hydrogen, then we can say for large vehicles fuel cells might be an alternative in the future," Weber told Ars.

Fuel cells are an attractive way to electrify rail lines where adding a third rail or catenary is unworkable or cost-prohibitive, and GM is working with train-maker Wabtec to adapt GM's Hydrotec fuel cell platform to power freight locomotives. Hydrogen fuel cells are also candidates for replacing fossil fuel-burning auxiliary power units on aircraft. "We can provide the zero-emission solution, and we can provide improvements in terms of performance—now I can have a system that is optimized, I don't have a compromised turbine that doesn't really want to sit there and run on the ground, but it has to. And I don't have to have the noise that comes along with these big APUs on these aircraft," Freese told me.

Hydrogen is also appealing for applications in places with a complete lack of infrastructure, in addition to reliable fixed routes around places like ports, rail hubs, and airports.

Enlarge / At the recent Hummer EV first drive event, GMC used a number of Hydrotec fuel cell generators to fast-charge the trucks each night between waves of journalists.
Jonathan Gitlin

The fledgling Extreme E off-road racing series travels with its own solar array and electrolyzer, making hydrogen that's used to run generators to charge the electric racing cars.

Anglo American is exploring a similar concept, minus the racing and focus on environmental destruction. It's testing out a hydrogen fuel cell-powered mining truck fueled by hydrogen that's electrolyzed on-site. And the potential to make your own fuel with not much more than water and some solar panels or wind turbines has led to interest from airship developers and marine biologists.

Assuming that hydrogen fuel cells find favor for uses like freight trucking, rail transport, aviation, and other industries, it's possible to see that eventually leading to a second chance for light passenger vehicles powered by hydrogen. I'm just not sure whether the Mirai and Nexo will have faded from memory like the Electrovan before that happens.

JONATHAN M. GITLIN

Jonathan is the automotive editor at Ars Technica, covering all things car-related. Jonathan lives and works in Washington, D.C.EMAIL jonathan.gitlin@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @drgitlin

Global warming is speeding up ocean currents. Here’s why

Excess heat constricts water flow in shallow surface layers

20 APR 2022
BY PAUL VOOSEN

Surface ocean warming appears to be speeding up global currents, reconstructed here from satellite and ship readings.

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO

Two years ago, oceanographers made a surprising discovery: Not only have oceans been warming because of human-driven climate change, but the currents that flow through them have accelerated—by some 15% per decade from 1990 to 2013. At the time, many scientists suspected faster ocean winds were driving the speedup. But a new modeling study fingers another culprit: the ocean’s own tendency to warm from top to bottom, leading to constricted surface layers where water flows faster, like blood in clogged arteries. The study suggests climate change will continue to speed up ocean currents, potentially limiting the heat the ocean can capture and complicating migrations for already stressed marine life.

“This mechanism is important,” says Hu Shijian, an oceanographer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Oceanology, who was the lead author on the 2020 paper. “[The new paper] links directly the surface warming and acceleration of upper ocean circulation.”

Currents like the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream are highways for marine life, ushers of heat, and drivers of storms. Driven in large part by wind, each of them moves as much water as all the world’s rivers combined. And, despite the fact that the ocean absorbs more than 90% of the heat caused by global warming, until 2020, there had been little evidence that these currents were changing.

When Shang-Ping Xie, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, saw Hu’s study, he immediately suspected that the structure of the ocean—not winds—played a leading role in the speedup. He knew the excess warmth from climate change is not distributed evenly through the ocean but is instead concentrated at its surface. This causes surface waters to grow more buoyant—and more reluctant to mix with waters below. The shallower surface layers created by this process have been seen across the world’s oceans.

Xie and his colleagues also realized that, in shallower layers, currents would naturally have to speed up: In effect, the winds were pushing the same amount of water through a narrower pipe. “If you assume the total transport can’t change, your stuff is going to accelerate,” Xie says.

To test that hypothesis, Xie’s team turned to a climate model of all the world’s oceans. The researchers increased either winds, saltiness, or surface temperatures, while holding all other variables steady. Increasing temperatures alone caused currents to speed up more than 77% of the ocean’s surface. That was by far the largest increase, they found in a new study published today in Science Advances. One notable exception was the Gulf Stream, which is likely slowing for an unrelated reason: As Arctic ice melts, it dilutes the sinking, salty water in the North Atlantic that pulls the current northward.

“This is an interesting study with a provocative finding,” says Sarah Gille, a physical oceanographer at Scripps. “We usually assume that if you uniformly warm the ocean, there will be no major impact on ocean circulation.” Accounting for the top-down nature of ocean warming changes that picture, she adds.

The new findings also suggests that in much of the ocean, lower waters, some 400 meters or so down, would slow as warm upper waters take up more and more of the movement, Xie says. Hu is not so certain of that, however. Unpublished measurements of the speed of Argo floats, a fleet of robotic instruments that have been drifting through the ocean for nearly 20 years, show a significant acceleration in surface currents—and a modest increase at lower depths. “I trust what the observations tell us,” Hu says. The new finding, he adds, “might not be the total story.”

But if ocean currents are indeed becoming faster and shallower, there are many implications for the planet. For example, the shallow, speedy currents could ultimately limit how much heat the ocean can absorb, causing more of that excess heat to remain in the atmosphere. Marine microbes and wildlife could be subjected to shallower, hotter, and faster surface waters. And given that the speedup is driven by the steady drumbeat of warming, it means these trends are likely to continue in the future—as long as human emissions of greenhouse gases continue.

doi: 10.1126/science.abq6332

Uber to drop mask requirement as one Toronto taxi company vows to keep it in place

The Uber app is seen on an iPhone near a driver's vehicle after the company launched service, in Vancouver, Friday, Jan. 24, 2020. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck


Chris Fox
CP24 Web Content Writer
Published April 20, 2022

Uber Canada has announced that it will no longer require riders to wear masks as of later this week but at least one Toronto taxi company is keeping the requirement in place for the time being.

A spokesperson for Uber told CP24 that customers outside of Quebec will no longer be required to wear masks when using the ridesharing service as of April 22.

The spokesperson, however, said that drivers will still be permitted to require that riders wear masks and can cancel a trip “for safety reasons” if they refuse.

“We still strongly recommend wearing a mask depending on personal risk factors and infection rates in your area,” the spokesperson said.

Uber has required that all passengers wear masks since May, 2020 but with many provinces now having removed mask requirements for most settings, the ridesharing company is following suit.

In Ontario masks do continue to be mandatory in a number of high-risk settings, including in hospitals, long-term care homes and on public transit.

Toronto’s biggest taxi company, Beck Taxi, has also said that it will continue to require that all passengers and drivers wear masks for the time being.

“We know that many, including the most vulnerable, rely on the safety and security of for-hire services like ours and drivers depend on us to make informed decision when it comes to masking policies,” the company said in a statement posted to Twitter on Tuesday. “We will continue (to require masks), as we do know that the inside of a vehicle does not allow six feet of distance between riders and drivers, which makes it a high-risk setting. We see this as a smart health and safety policy and as a policy that hopefully lends itself to keeping our economy open for business.”

While Uber will drop its mask requirement as of April 22, its competitor Lyft has told CTV News that its mandatory mask policy remains in effect.

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Anna Mehler Paperny
Publishing date:Apr 19, 2022 •

Passengers at the nearly empty departure level of Trudeau International Airport in Montreal on December 17, 2021. 

PHOTO BY PIERRE OBENDRAUF/POSTMEDIA/FILE

TORONTO — Canada’s federal government said on Tuesday it has no plans to stop requiring masks on planes after a Florida judge struck down a U.S. version of the law.

“We are taking a layered approach to keeping travellers safe, and masks remain an incredibly useful tool in our arsenal against COVID-19,” a spokesperson for Canada’s Transport Minister wrote in an email.

The spokesperson confirmed masks will be required on Canadian airlines and on flights that depart from or arrive in Canada. The federal government also requires travellers to wear masks and track close contacts for 14 days after arriving in Canada.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the U.S. mandate, which required masks on airplanes, trains and in taxis, among other locations, saying the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exceeded its authority.

In Canada, the landscape is different. Surveys have shown masking to be widely popular. More than challenges to mask mandates, there is vocal opposition and legal challenges to lifting them.

Last week an Ottawa school board introduced its own mask mandate after the province dropped its requirement. In a letter to parents, the board said students will not be suspended or expelled for non-compliance but their parents may be called.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association did not consider challenging Canada’s mask mandate, its fundamental freedoms director Cara Zwibel said.

“It’s hard to know, really, what right is kind of being violated by a mask mandate” assuming medical exemptions were permitted, she said.

It’s “what the court would probably characterize as ‘de minimis’ — it’s a minor sort of incursion.”

Zwibel said travel is one of the most justifiable places to impose these kinds of measures.

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

 Nfld. & Labrador

Ottawa, N.L. disagree on who will foot hefty Bay du Nord royalty bill

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Project's location leaves Canada on the hook for

 international payments

Patrick Butler · CBC News · Posted: Apr 21, 2022 

Equinor's Bay du Nord project, seen here in a rendering, will be located in deep water about 500 kilometres east of St. John's. Given the distance from shore, Canada will have to pay international royalties under a United Nations convention. (Equinor)

Canada could soon be the first country on Earth to pay millions of dollars in international oil royalties as a consequence of the Bay du Nord megaproject in Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore — but just how that bill gets paid remains to be seen.

Article 82 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows countries like Canada — known as "broad margin" states that have larger-than-normal continental shelves — to extract offshore oil beyond their 200-nautical-mile limit.

But that extraction comes with a catch: broad margin states must pay royalties on that oil, money which then gets redistributed to developing countries.

Bay du Nord, spearheaded by Norwegian oil giant Equinor, is the first project to move the province's offshore oil industry past Canada's nautical limit and into the deep waters of the Flemish Pass, which sits 270 nautical miles — about 500 kilometres — east of St. John's.

Although Bay du Nord moved closer to commissioning this month – with a green light from the federal environment minister on April 6 – Ottawa and the Newfoundland and Labrador government still haven't agreed on just how the hefty royalty bill resulting from the United Nations convention will be paid.

Hundreds of millions of dollars at stake

Michael Gardner, a Halifax-based consultant who previously studied the issue for Natural Resources Canada, said Wednesday that UNCLOS royalties from the project could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

"It all comes back down to, what are the production levels that you reach and what's the price of oil?" Gardner said.

So, where will that money come from?

The federal government negotiated UNCLOS in the 1970s, and Parliament ratified the document in 2003. Ottawa says the provincial government should help pay the royalties, but the province, which expects to receive $3.5 billion from Bay du Nord, rejects that suggestion outright — and has for years.

"The federal government is the signatory to UNCLOS, and would be responsible for making payments under Article 82," said Andrew Parsons, Newfoundland and Labrador's energy minister, in a statement last week.

"The province does not see a role for itself in this agreement."

The Newfoundland and Labrador government receives all of its offshore revenues through a deal with Ottawa known as the Atlantic Accord.

The Bay du Nord project will use a floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) like the one pictured in this rendering to extract oil from below the ocean floor. (Equinor)

Couldn't Equinor pay the difference?

Ottawa could impose an additional levy on Equinor to help meet its international obligations.

But that approach carries risks, warned Gardner.

"At some point, if the operator is squeezed sufficiently, it no longer is an economic proposition," he said.

"It's that old Norwegian expression, you don't want to kill the cow you're trying to milk."

In a statement, Equinor spokesperson Alex Collins said, "Decision making regarding the implementation of UNCLOS royalties rests with the Government of Canada."

• Bay du Nord could be N.L.'s last oil project, hints federal environment minister

• Oil industry calls Bay du Nord approval triumph, climate advocates condemn it

Collins declined to answer further questions.

"The implementation of this mechanism in Canada, including the input from the various parties, is still under development," said Miriam Galipeau, a spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada.

N.L. position called 'almost petty'

Armand de Mestrahl, a member of the Canadian team that negotiated UNCLOS in the 1970s, said he believes a compromise between the provincial and federal government is inevitable.

"Don't forget that without that international agreement, which was painstakingly negotiated over several years by the federal government, there would be no formula. There would be no rights. We had to fight so that the international community would respect Canada's right," de Mestrahl said in an interview in French with Radio-Canada.

"People in Newfoundland… say, 'They stole our rights away.' It's easy to say that, but it's almost petty because the federal government and the Canadian delegation put in incredible effort to ensure that the continental shelf would be recognized."

He added, however, that Ottawa would be remiss to overlook the provincial government's current considerable debt load and series of structural deficits.

"It's hard to see how the government won't concede anything," de Mestrahl said.

Andrew Parsons, seen here in a file photo, is Newfoundland and Labrador's minister of industry, energy and technology. In a statement he said the province is not on the hook for royalty payments. (Patrick Butler/CBC)

Still time to negotiate

Ottawa and the provincial government still have years to come to an agreement.

Production at Bay du Nord isn't expected to begin until at least 2028 and under UNCLOS, no international royalties are due during the first five years of production, in a measure meant to help operators recoup upfront capital costs.

Annual royalty payments of one per cent of gross production revenues begin after the sixth year of production, and increase by one percentage point per year until the 12th year. Thereafter, royalty payments remain at seven per cent, according to the Canada Energy Regulator's website.

Bay du Nord is expected to produce at least 300 million barrels of oil over 30 years.

Risk of prolonged litigation

In a 2020 article, Dalhousie University law professor Aldo Chircop warned "there could be the realistic prospect of prolonged federal-provincial litigation" over who pays the UNCLOS royalties.

But in an interview last week, he said he believes "we live in the era of co-operative federalism. So basically what that means is that the federal and provincial governments will work together on this to find a way."

"Newfoundland would recognize that the reason why there is this offshore development out there is because of the Law of the Sea convention, which creates an obligation for them. And therefore, they would have to work with the federal government to honour this international obligation."

In an email regarding UNCLOS from October 2021 and obtained through access to information legislation, an employee at Newfoundland and Labrador's energy ministry wrote, "discussions between the federal and provincial governments, and industry are ongoing as to how to meet this obligation."

Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

A win for Macron will not be a complete defeat for France’s far right

If the centrist president wins, it will be by swinging the political pendulum further in Marine Le Pen’s direction
‘When Emmanuel Macron’s carbon tax unleashed the gilets jaunes movement, protesters were dealt with brutally.’ Demonstrators and police clash in Quimper, western France, November 2018. Photograph: Fred Tanneau/AFP/Getty Images

Owen Jones

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 20 Apr 2022 

The promise of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency was straightforward: he would transcend the concepts of left and right, and consign populism to the margins of French politics. His rise to power in the spring of 2017 was an apparent lifeboat for liberals traumatised by Brexit and Donald Trump: here was the “centrist” prince over the water, a beacon of good governance and confirmation that the grownups were back in the room.

Even if Macron wins, he will struggle to realise his vision for France and Europe

It hasn’t worked out that way. Champions of so-called centrism believed Macron would be a desperately needed antidote to political polarisation. But Macronism has acted as an accelerant, not a coolant, leaving the country more troubled, divided and disillusioned than when this former investment banker secured office. Macron’s likely re-election, thanks to tactical voting, should not obscure a damning fact: the far right will come closer to gaining power in a western European nation than at any time since 1945.

As I arrived in Paris a couple of hours before voting concluded in the first round, a taxi driver voiced what has become a common refrain: “Macron is for the rich”. Within months of Macron – widely known as the “president of the rich” – taking the post, more than eight in 10 French citizens believed his tax policies favoured the wealthy. His drive to hike the pension age is a class issue, too: after all, the richest French men have a life expectancy 13 years higher than their poorest counterparts, and deprived citizens have fewer healthy years to look forward to. His introduction of a “carbon tax” was a case study in how not to tackle the climate emergency: by hitting less well-off people most, he violated the basic principle of what is called a just transition – that the cost of preserving civilisation from calamity must not be shouldered by the poor. Public consent for necessary measures will be destroyed by such an approach.

As the first-round post-election poll revealed that the leftwing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon had narrowly failed to reach the second stage of the contest, the expressions of grief and rage on the faces of his supporters were strikingly similar to those who had witnessed the routs of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn: these were younger citizens aggrieved at their hopes being snatched away by older generations.

On his election, Macron became the youngest president in French history, but his base of support comes from older voters – above all, the over-70s – and he is a distant third among under-35s. It is Mélenchon who is most popular among the young, many of whom say they may abstain in the second round. “I am scared if I vote, and I am scared if I don’t vote,” one young woman told me, arguing that by waging war on the public sector “he [Macron] is creating a monster” and laying the foundations for a far-right victory next time. I hear this narrative again and again.

It is easy to berate these youngsters: to tell them to park their grievances since, however profound their fury with Macron, the victory of the far right’s Marine Le Pen would be infinitely worse. Yet attacking the disillusioned is rarely convincing. When I put to these voters the racist menace posed by the far right, they note that Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, denounced Le Pen for being “too soft on immigration”.

Macron has praised the Nazi collaborator Marshal Pétain as a “great soldier”, and been condemned by Human Rights Watch for tearing down refugees’ tents. In his 2017 campaign, Macron pledged to curtail police excesses, yet, when his carbon tax unleashed the gilets jaunes movement, protesters were dealt with brutally. “I have never been so scared of protesting as I have been under Emmanuel Macron,” the young leftwing intellectual Édouard Louis tells me. Rather than acting as a firewall against rightwing extremism, Macronian “centrism” absorbs its racism and authoritarianism, further legitimising the far right in the process.

Undoubtedly, a minority of Mélenchon supporters will defect to Le Pen’s camp: these are voters who don’t think in terms of “left” and “right”, but who resent a system they understandably believe is rigged against them, and who were most convinced by the radical left’s answers in the first round. “Macron only thinks of the rich. He’s a guy who’s all about the money,” one older Mélenchon supporter in the northern city of Douai tells me.

That doesn’t mean the left has nothing to answer for: the nearby town of Hénin-Beaumont is a former stronghold of socialists and communists, but is now firmly Le Pen country and the place she cast her own vote. Many working-class voters came to believe the socialists had nothing but contempt for them, and under François Hollande’s presidency – which promised to confront austerity and then did no such thing – the party collapsed. Indeed, in this election, the centre-left’s standard-bearer, Anne Hidalgo, chalked up a paltry 1.74%, finishing seventh in Paris – the city in which she is mayor. While Mélenchon did unexpectedly well, the radical left – as in other European countries, except where it governs as a junior partner, in Spain and Nordic countries – is yet to emerge victorious from the rubble.

If Macron wins, albeit with a tighter margin than in 2017, expect a mixture of relief and triumphalism from centrists. This failure to learn lessons is a profound error. Witness, too, the fate of Joe Biden in the US: again, the promise here was that with the “grownups” back in charge, the years of turbulence would end and politics would become boring again. No such thing happened: instead, Biden’s popularity has collapsed – not least among the young, who cannot be described as natural Donald Trump supporters – and a revival of the president’s predecessor is entirely plausible, with potentially terminal consequences for US democracy.

This is an age of grievance and fury driven by stagnating living conditions and justifiable pessimism, however much predominantly affluent centrists dismiss the consequences as mass irrationality. One Macron supporter told me far-right success was down to conspiracy theories and the fact that “a lot of French people forget they are extremely lucky”. The centrists believed that by presenting an image of moderation and statesmanship they could make all that go away. They were wrong.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Google Search now shows detailed air quality information in three countries 

Abner Li
- Apr. 20th 2022 
@technacity



Last year, Google started prominently showing air quality (AQI) data to Nest Hub and other Smart Display users. You can now also search for air quality on Google to get detailed information.

Searching “air quality” in the United States shows an identically named card. You can specify a city in the query to find data for a location other than your current one.

Update: Besides the US and India, this data is also available for Victoria (EPA Victoria) in Australia. Meanwhile, this city-level data can also be found by searching “air pollution near me.”

In the United States, this data is “From airnow.gov and PurpleAir,” and you’re able to “Choose area” with key locations offered. There’s a map, which follows light or dark mode settings, with color-coded pins of available stations in the area.

Below the map is an explanation of the US Air Quality Index (AQI) and station list. Each entry can be expanded for a text description of what healthy conditions are and to see when it was last updated, as well as the specific provider.



If there are not enough stations, you can enable “include air sensors,” but Google notes how “sensor data may have unknown performance and inaccuracies.” You cannot zoom in on the map so you have to rely on dot colors.

This feature first rolled out in India last November and is dependent on local partners. The US rollout looks to have been more recent. It works on both mobile and desktop web, as well as the Google apps on Android and iOS.

This feature is quite useful and comes after Google Weather in 2018 stopped displaying air quality data. The next step would be to merge AQI with the Weather app on Android as well as its widgets.