B.C. First Nation chief leads call to investigate RBC for allegedly misleading the public on climate change

In an application to Canada's Competition Bureau, a group of environmentalists are calling for RBC to end its financing of fossil fuels and stop "deceiving the public."

Stefan Labbé

NORTH SHORE NEWS
Apr 21, 2022

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is the largest bank in Canada and the biggest banking financier of fossil fuel projects, according to a recent report. The Chief staff

The leader of a B.C. First Nation has joined a group of environmentalists calling for an investigation into the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) for allegedly making false and misleading representations about action on climate change.

In an application to Canada’s Competition Bureau, Kukpi7 Judy Wilson — secretary-treasurer at the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) and chief of the Skat'sin te Secwepemc-Neskonlith Indian Band — joined five other individuals calling for RBC to end its financing of fossil fuels and stop “deceiving the public.”

“Climate change disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples around the world as well as here in Canada,” said Wilson in a written statement.

“Until RBC stops financing fossil fuels, advertising itself as Paris Agreement-aligned is greenwashing — and it shouldn't be tolerated.”

RBC is among the top five banking financiers of fossil fuel projects in the world, and the biggest in Canada, according to a report produced earlier this year.

The report, which surveyed 60 banks around the world, found RBC had increased its investments in fossil fuel projects to nearly $38 billion from over $19 billion in 2020.

In a statement to Glacier Media, RBC spokesperson Rafael Ruffolo says the bank "strongly disagrees with the allegations" and believes the complaint to be unfounded.

"RBC has been engaging with our clients, partners and other stakeholders, working towards solutions to help Canada meet its net-zero commitments," Ruffolo wrote. "It’s critically important that we get the transition to net-zero right in order to address climate change and we have laid out a clear strategy for meeting climate goals."
Fossil fuel financing flouts climate promises, claims application

The application is the latest salvo from environmental groups and UBCIC against RBC and other of fossil fuel investors. In February 2021, UBCIC passed a resolution calling on Canadian banks "to cease funding the climate crisis and Indigenous rights violations."

Four months later, the International Energy Agency, long a public policy arm of the fossil fuel industry, dropped a landmark report calling for a near-immediate end to the construction of new oil and gas projects.

“RBC represents that it supports action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and address climate change, but is taking action to increase emissions and exacerbate climate change by providing tens of billions of dollars annually in financing for fossil fuel development and expansion,” states the application to the Competition Bureau.

As a result, the group claims it is misleading the public to promote RBC’s reputation and attract or maintain clients concerned about climate change.

The application focuses on two claims made by RBC.

The first centres around marketing claims that the bank “supports the principles of the Paris Agreement and the international goal to hold global warming to below 2 C” and so is committed to achieving net-zero emissions in its lending by 2050 and net-zero emission in its global operations annually.

The application to the Competition Bureau says this is misleading because RBC continues to heavily invest in industries actively working against a clear path to a 2 C warming target. At the same time, it alleges RBC has no credible plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions going forward.

Wilson and the five other complainants also argue against RBC's claim that it will provide “$500 billion in sustainable financing by 2025.” The problem, says the group, is RBC's definition of sustainable financing is not pinned to reducing emissions.

In one example, they point to $2 billion in “sustainability-linked” loans to the pipeline company Enbridge.

Should the Commissioner of the Competition Bureau find RBC made false and leading representations to the public, the complaint calls for all such material to be scrubbed from public viewing until it lives up to zero-emission and “sustainable financing” promises.

And in a second penalty, they call on the bank to pay a $10-million fine to the Environmental Damages Fund.

The group, which includes Wet’suwet’en land defender Eve Saint among other environmentalists, has received support from the legal environmental advocacy group Ecojustice and the non-profit Stand.Earth.

The application comes a month after several high-profile actors, directors, professional athletes and musicians waded into the conversation.

In March, dozens of Hollywood celebrities led by actor Mark Ruffalo signed the ‘No More Dirty Banks’ petition calling on RBC to stop financing fossil fuel projects — such as the $6-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have opposed the pipeline for several years, maintaining blockades to prevent construction. While 20 First Nations elected chiefs and councils along the pipeline route have approved the project, the hereditary chiefs say their authority is limited to reserves created under the Indian Act. Traditional lands on unceded territory, they say, remains under their authority.

Not the Competition Bureau's first case of alleged 'greenwashing'

Canada’s Competition Bureau is an independent law enforcement agency set up to protect and promote competitive business practices. But this isn't the first time it has been asked to go after 'greenwashing.'

Following a global report in January that found 40 per cent of companies make misleading environmental claims, the bureau warned Canadians to be on the lookout for the practice.

“It can take many forms, including claims, adjectives, colours and symbols used to create an impression that a product or service is ‘greener’ than it really is,” said the bureau in a statement at the time.

“If a company claims a product or service is ‘green’, take a moment to reflect on that claim.”

The bureau has had success in the past. In one victory against greenwashing earlier this year, the Competition Bureau reached an agreement with Keurig Canada to pay a $3-million penalty after it made false and misleading environmental claims.

The case centred around the coffee company telling consumers — through social media, its website and directly on product packaging — that its single-use K-Cup pods were recyclable. The bureau found B.C. and Quebec were the only provinces where municipal recycling programs widely accepted the coffee pods.

Keurig Canada was also found to have made false or misleading claims by giving consumers the impression they could recycle the pods by peeling off the lid and dumping out the grounds.

In addition to the $3-million penalty, Keurig Canada was forced to pay for the cost of the bureau’s $85,000 investigation and donate $800,000 to a Canadian environmental charity.

The company is no longer permitted to make the bogus claims on its packaging, online or in news media.

CARNIVORE CULTURE
'A visionary and cowboy': This man founded The Keg restaurant chain in North Vancouver

As the massive brand celebrates 50 years slinging drinks and steaks, here's a look at how it all started in a little Lower Lonsdale restaurant with big energy.

Andy Prest
2 days ago

Today it is an international powerhouse brand, a restaurant synonymous with big steak dinners and milestone celebrations at more than 150 locations across Canada and the United States.

But half a century ago it was a small diner in the bottom floor of an old industrial building in North Vancouver’s Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood.

George Tidball, described as “a visionary and a cowboy” in a 2014 obituary, opened the Keg ‘n Cleaver restaurant in 1971 at 132 Esplanade West in North Vancouver. That location is no longer there – in fact, North Vancouver is now one of the largest Lower Mainland municipalities without a Keg restaurant – but the casual fine dining vibe that Keg diners know today was created in that little space in North Vancouver.

“It was a very unique concept at the time, because there was hotel dining and then there was White Spot and McDonalds, and nothing in between,” said Tidball’s daughter Kathy Robbins, who worked various jobs in the Keg chain before becoming a kindergarten teacher. Robbins was 19 years old at the time the first Keg opened, and she remembers it as a place that had good food and great energy.

“What I recall mainly is The Keg was a huge party place,” she said with a laugh. “There was as much alcohol as you could possibly drink, and as much food as you could eat, and all the young people working there were university students, so it had the energy level. Like, it just vibrated.”

Cheap drinks and singing servers

In the early days of The Keg, Tidball took a meeting with famed restaurater Hy Aisenstat, founder of the Hy’s Steakhouse chain, and came away with a useful piece of advice.

“Hy said if you’re going to do cheap drinks, make them really cheap,” said Robbins, adding that her dad put that into practice in the early days of The Keg. “The drinks were 60 cents, and the special drinks like martinis or Spanish coffees were a buck.”

The original Keg ‘n Cleaver location had around 120 seats, and staff prided themselves on turning over those tables as quickly as possible, said Robbins. She recalls the restaurant humming along as a well-oiled machine on busy weekend nights.

“The busboys used to have competitions to see how many tables they could clear, and the hostesses would try to seat people as soon as the last setting was put down,” said Robbins. “It was just geared for high volume, high energy entertainment. … You wanted a job at The Keg. You made great money, great tips. There were a lot of people that made their way through university working at The Keg.”

Servers were sometimes known to finish off a guest’s leftover highball, or make someone’s uneaten chunk of steak disappear on the way back to the kitchen, said Robbins about those early North Vancouver days. The restaurant also often filled with song, as staff members serenaded guests celebrating milestones, sometimes even tying people to their chairs and hoisting them into the air, said Robbins.

“There didn’t seem to be as many rules,” she said with a laugh. “I think the people that they hired were really important – they were very energetic people. … It was just a really fun place to be. That's what I remember more than anything. And the food was always really good.”

50th anniversary menu honours the past

Tidball’s run as owner came to end in the 1980s when he sold The Keg to U.K.-based company Whitbred. In the 1990s, the chain changed hands again, with David Aisenstat, Hy’s son, acquiring The Keg and beefing it up into the brand it is today.

To celebrate their anniversary, The Keg is now featuring a limited-time menu inspired by some of the favourite dishes of the past 50 years. The menu includes classics such as The Keg’s Pecan Sirloin, Salmon Neptune, Crab Parmesan Spinach Dip, and Mile High Chocolate Cake, as well as some newly created items like the 14-ounce French Onion Ribeye.

“The Keg has held a unique place in Canadians' lives since it first opened its doors, and we found that for many, celebrations at The Keg were a rite of passage,” said Jimmy duDomaine, The Keg’s vice-president of marketing and food services. “With our 50th anniversary menu, we wanted to celebrate where we’ve been and where we intend on going.”

It’s neat to see the chain that her father started in the early 1970s still going strong today, said Robbins.

“It's amazing, isn't it? Because longevity in the restaurant business is unusual,” she said, adding that she can definitely see her father’s personality mirrored in the makeup of the restaurant chain. “He was a charmer. … I remember once one of the managers at The Keg was talking to him, and he said, ‘You know, George, I really appreciate that you always talk to the little people.’ And my dad said, ‘Rod, there are no little people. They're just people.’ He had a rapport with the dishwashers, with the busboys, with the waiters, with management. He just really loved being around people, and I think that really showed through.”

At Venice Biennale, Ukraine expresses 'right to existence'

As Ukraine's cultural heritage and art faces destruction by Russian shelling and bombs, Ukrainian artists are sending a strong message through the Ukraine pavilion and a special open-air exhibition space.


Art curator Maria Lanko poses by 'Fountain of Exhaustion' 

by artist Pavlo Makov at the Ukraine Pavilion in Venice

On the second day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, curator Maria Lanko and members of her team packed 72 copper funnels into boxes and then loaded them into her small car, which she drove out of Kyiv.

The funnels were components of a sculpture by Kharkiv-based artist Pavlo Makov. Entitled "Fountain of Exhaustion," the work was intended for exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia, commonly referred to as the Venice Biennale, one of the world's premiere international art exhibitions that starts April 23.

Lanko spent over a week driving between cities in western Ukraine before making it to Austria.

"I was the only one in the team who didn't have any children or dependents, and I could just sit in the car and drive away, which I did," Lanko said in a press conference on Wednesday in Venice.

The determination to be present in Venice was "an opportunity to remind the world that Ukraine is an independent nation with its own identity," Ukrainian pavilion curators Lanko, Lizaveta German and Borys Filonenko told DW in March. "And while our people fight for this right on a military front, we take on the cultural one."

Lizaveta German, Borys Filonenko, artist Pavlo Makov and Maria Lanko (left to right) were determined to take part in Venice

"In times like this, the representation of Ukraine at the exhibition is more important than ever," the curators said in a statement confirming their dedication to bring the work to Venice, despite the sculpture platform and other parts having been left in Ukraine. These were later reconstructed in Italy.

"When the sheer right to existence for our culture is being challenged by Russia, it is crucial to demonstrate our achievements to the world," they added.
Symbol of 'freedom and independence'

Now the "Fountain of Exhaustion" is standing at Ukraine's pavilion in Venice. The work symbolizes exhaustion; the 72 copper funnels are arranged in the form of a pyramid through which water struggles to travel.

The 63-year-old Makov first conceived of this "metaphor of exhaustion" in the mid-1990s. It was a statement of the struggle afflicting post-Soviet societies, but it is still being played out in the context of the war in Ukraine, Makov said.

"Behind any war, there is a cultural conflict," Markov said at Wednesday's press conference, adding that Ukraine and Russia's cultural conflict is not recent but has been ongoing "for hundreds of years."

The funnels that make up Pavlo Makov's artwork were evacuated from Kyiv by car

He referred to artists and writers who had been integral to a "Ukrainian renaissance" and were "eliminat[ed]" by the Soviet revolutionary Bolsheviks in the 1920s. He said that this is happening again and explained his view of the two sides of the long-unfolding conflict.

"One of them is built on a great respect to power and dominance; the other is built on a respect to freedom and independence," said Makov.

Ukrainian artist Pavlo Makov exhibited 'Fountain of Exhaustion' in Kharkiv in 1996

This conflict is playing out now in Ukraine, Ukraine pavilion curator Borys Filonenko said on Wednesday. He asked the art world to "shift your focus to Ukrainian culture" that is being targeted by Russian attacks — the curators said over 230 attacks on cultural sites and objects have been recorded by the Ukrainian Culture Ministry, including the intentional destruction of the Mariupol Theater. The UN's cultural institution, UNESCO, has tallied over 100 damaged or destroyed cultural sites since the start of the war.

"Today history meets Ukraine. History meets 'Fountain of Exhaustion'. And history meets La Biennale," Filonenko said.
Piazza Ucraina: Place of solidarity with Ukraine

Over the past week, the Ukrainian pavilion's curators have created a new open-air exhibition space, Piazza Ucraina, in the heart of the Biennale's exhibition area.

At the center of the open space is a monument covered with sandbags, a wartime practice in Ukrainian cities to try and shield public art from shelling. The rest of the space features charred wooden polls that serve as display stands for artwork created by Ukrainian artists in the midst of war.




Many of these works have already been released to the public via social media. "They become an evidence, an artifact, a document of the state of mind," the curators said in a statement.

"Perhaps, these works have already gained a status of the most sincere and certainly undeniable documentation of the experience: the one of trauma, of anger and, yet, of sheer courage, too," they added.

"Is it possible to make art after Bucha?" Filonenko asked, referring to the massacrein the suburb of Kyiv. Yet he added that artists, some of whom are working in the Ukrainian army, continue to express themselves.

The artworks at Piazza Ucraina were collected as part of the Wartime Art Archive compiled by the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund, which was established to "deal with the consequences of the Russian invasion and threats the war poses on the Ukrainian art community."

The fund organizes emergency grants and administers donations and overseas residencies so Ukrainian artists can continue their work.

Female artists dominate the Venice Biennale for 1st time

The predominance of women among the more than 200 artists that Alemani chose for the main show “was not a choice, but a process”

By COLLEEN BARRY

1 of 18

A visitor stands next to sculpture "Last Garment" part of the "Sovereignty" installation by artist Simone Leigh, at the United States' pavilion during the 59th Biennale of Arts exhibition in Venice, Italy, Tuesday, April 19, 2022.

(AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)


VENICE, Italy (AP) — For the first time in the 127-year history of the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest and most important contemporary art fair features a majority of female and gender non-conforming artists, under the curatorial direction of Cecilia Alemani.

The result is a Biennale that puts the spotlight on artists who have been long overlooked despite prolific careers, while also investigating themes including gender norms, colonialism and climate change.

Alemani’s main show, titled “The Milk of Dreams,” alongside 80 national pavilions opens Saturday after a one-year pandemic delay. The art fair runs through Nov. 27. It is only the fourth of the Biennale’s 59 editions under female curation.

The predominance of women among the more than 200 artists that Alemani chose for the main show “was not a choice, but a process,” Alemani, a New York-based Italian curator, said this week.

“I think some of the best artists today are women artists,” she told The Associated Press. “But also, let’s not forget, that in the long history of the Venice Biennale, the preponderance of male artists in previous editions has been astonishing.”

“Unfortunately, we still have not solved many issues that pertain to gender,” Alemani said.

Conceived during the coronavirus pandemic and opening as war rages in Europe, Alemani acknowledged that art in such times may seem “superficial.” But she also asserted the Biennale’s role over the decades as a “sort of seismographer of history ... to absorb and record also the traumas and the crises that go well beyond the contemporary art world.”

In a potent reminder, the Russian pavilion remains locked this year, after the artists withdrew following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Nearby, sandbags have been erected in the center of the Giardini by the curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion, and surrounded by stylized posters of fresh artwork by Ukrainian artists representing the horrors of the two-month-old war.

Among the women getting long-overdue recognition this Biennale is U.S. sculptor Simone Leigh, who in mid-career is both headlining the U.S. pavilion and setting the tone at the main exhibit with a towering bust of a Black woman that Alemani originally commissioned for the High Line urban park in New York City.

Fusun Onur, a pioneer of conceptual art in Turkey, at age 85 has filled the Turkish pavilion with wiry cats and mice set up in storyboard tableaus that confront modern-day threats like the pandemic and climate change. While proud of her role representing Turkey and the work she produced during the pandemic in her home overlooking the Bosphorus, she acknowledged that the honor was late in coming.

“Why it is so I don’t know,” Fusan said by phone from Istanbul. “Women artists are working hard, but they are not always recognized. It is always men first.”

New Zealand is represented by third gender artist Yuki Kihara, whose installation “Paradise Camp,” tells the story of Samoa’s Fa’afafine community of people who don’t accept the gender they were assigned at birth.

The exhibition features photos of the Fa’afafine mimicking paintings of Pacific islanders by post-impressionist French artist Paul Gaugin, reclaiming the images in a process the artist refers to as “upcycling.”

“Paradise Camp is really about imagining a Fa’afafine utopia, where it shutters colonial hetero-normality to make way for an Indigenous world view that is inclusive and sensitive to the changes in the environment,” Kihara said.

The image of a hyper-realistic sculpture of a futuristic female satyr giving birth opposite her satyr partner, who has hung himself, sets a grim post-apocalyptic tone at the Danish Pavilion, created by Uffe Isolotto.

The Nordic Pavilion offers a more hopeful path out of the apocalypse, with artwork and performances depicting the struggle against colonialism by the Sami people, who inhabit a broad swath of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland into the Murmansk Oblast of Russia, while also celebrating their traditions.

“We have in a way discovered how to live within the apocalyptic world and do it while, you know, maintaining our spirits and our beliefs and systems of value,″ said co-curator Liisa-Ravna Finbog.

This year’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement awards go to German artist Katherina Fritsch, whose life-like Elephant sculpture stands in the rotunda of the main exhibit building in the Giardini, and Chilean poet, artist and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuna, whose portrait of her mother’s eyes graces the Biennale catalog cover.

Vicuna painted the portrait while the family was in exile after the violent military coup in Chile against President Salvador Allende. Now 97, her mother accompanied her to the Biennale.

“You see that her spirit is still present, so in a way that painting is like a triumph of love against dictatorship, against repression, against hatred,” Vicuna said.

____

Charlene Pele contributed to this report.

At Venice Biennale, Canadian art star Stan Douglas explores meaning of protest in social media era

Social Sharing

• Facebo

• Twitter

• Email

• Reddit

• LinkedIn

Douglas is 1st Black artist to create Canada's official

 offering at prestigious exhibition

Megan Williams · CBC News · Posted: Apr 23, 2022 

A couple of gallery visitors in Venice, Italy, examine Stan Douglas's photograph depicting the riots in Vancouver following the 2011 Stanley Cup finals. (Megan Williams/CBC)

At first glance, the four huge photographs of protests by Vancouver artist Stan Douglas displayed in the small, angular Canadian pavilion of the Venice Art Biennale look like reportage.

There's an aerial view of the Tottenham riots in the U.K., with smoke, scattered protesters and police flanks; a scene of Occupy Wall Street in New York with non-violent resisters being arrested; clusters of young people gathered on the main avenue in Tunis, Tunisia, peacefully discussing politics and an alternate future at the onset of the Arab Spring; and the Vancouver riots after the Canucks were defeated in the Stanley Cup finals, with a crowd of hockey fans cheering an overturned car that has been set ablaze.

Yet on closer examination, the viewer notices every single person, object and structure captured by the camera is in perfect focus and fully rendered.

These images are not photojournalism at all, but elaborately produced reimaginings of real events, all of which took place in 2011.

Stan Douglas's photograph Tunis, 23 January 2011, from the series 2011 ≠ 1848, which is currently showing at the Venice Biennale. (Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong)

"It's the idea of poetic condensation," said Douglas, one of Canada's most internationally acclaimed artists, "of having as much information in one place to allow the viewer to see it and parse it as they need to. It has a sense of unreality. 

"But I'm not trying to fool anybody. I'm saying this construction is less a snapshot of the moment, but more a schematic or diagram of a riot."

A view of Stan Douglas's photograph New York City, 10 October 2011, hanging at the 2022 Venice Biennale. (Venice Biennale)

He calls this form "hybrid documentaries."

The two-part show — the photographic series 2011 ≠ 1848 and the video installation ISDN, in another part of Venice — marks Douglas's fifth appearance at the Venice Art Biennale, perhaps the most prestigious art exhibition in the world.

But it's his first show as Canada's officially selected artist, and the first time Canada has chosen a Black artist.

The virality of protest

In 2011 ≠ 1848, Douglas links the protests of 2011 to the widespread upheaval of the 1848 "Springtime of Nations," when bourgeois uprisings against the aristocracy erupted across Europe.

Douglas is interested in the similarities between the two years — the 1848 protests spread with the help of print technology, whereas the 2011 blew up thanks to social media.

Speaking of the photos at the Venice Biennale, Vancouver artist Stan Douglas said, 'I'm not trying to fool anybody. I'm saying this construction is less a snapshot of the moment, but more a schematic or diagram of a riot.' (Courtesy Evaan Kheraj, the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner)

"Many of the events you see depicted were made larger by people saying, 'This is going on. Come down.' The example of the Arab Spring is what inspired Occupy Wall Street," he said.

But there are key differences: 1848 ultimately led to the formation of nation-states, whereas the social inequality that fomented the 2011 protests — a ripple effect of the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 — remains depressingly unresolved, he says.

Other events since then, including the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter, have shone more light on the underlying social inequality.

The second part of Douglas's show, ISDN, is set just before 2011, as the use of the digital transmission system to transmit audio over traditional phone lines began to decline, and is more hopeful.

Two giant screens hang in a disused 16th-century salt warehouse with U.K. grime musicians projected on one and Mahraganat artists (who fuse hip hop, electronica and Egyptian folk music) on the other. 

The two groups of rappers seem to perform an endless call-and-response, but it's fictitious, as they were each recorded separately, without listening to the other.

WATCH | U.K. and Egyptian rappers collaborate in Stan Douglas's video installation ISDN: 

In Vancouver artist Stan Douglas's video installation ISDN, U.K. grime artists Lady Sanity and True Mendous perform an imaginary call-and-response with Cairo musician Raptor. 0:50

The result is a joyful session of imaginary collaboration, with bass lines, drums, melodies and effects tracks all on different time loops creating an "improvised" jam that lasts more than three days before repeating in the same order.

"They both took the model of U.S. hip hop … but then incorporated a local idiom with that," said Douglas of the U.K. and Egyptian music. "In the piece, a third idiom comes out of that through [the imaginary ISDN] collaboration. Your mind makes connections where there may not be any."

Sign of 'incredible maturity'

Douglas, 61, studied at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and now spends half his time in L.A., where he's chair of the graduate program at the ArtCenter College of Design. 

He has spent a career making photographs, film and most recently theatre exploring failed utopias and alternative histories as they relate to urbanism, technology and post-colonialism.

He uses elaborate techniques for his photographs. Shoots can last days, in which dozens of actors are photographed on a soundstage, sometimes one at a time, and then composited together with a digital plate shot of the location.

Douglas has a strong fanbase both in the world of art and film.

"It's interesting to look at world history through four photos and [process] all that happened and what became of it," said German art curator Bettina Steinbruegge, referring to 2011 ≠ 1848. 

Stan Douglas's photo Vancouver, 15 June 2011. (Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong)

"And then you see the rap musicians, which is very political and a younger generation. It's a good way to look at what's happening, all the turmoil. We are living in a world that is changing rapidly and is quite aggressive, and I think he captured it very well."

Mark Peranson, publisher of the Canadian film magazine Cinema Scope, is equally enthusiastic.

"The way he composes the video stylistically with the reiterations of the algorithm works really well with rap music," he said. "Because there's not a strict narrative [with rap], it worked. And the music is great."

Reid Shier, the curator of the Canada pavilion in Venice and part of the three-person committee through the National Gallery of Canada that selected Douglas to represent Canada, calls him an incredibly generous and accessible artist.

"If you walk into ISDN and don't know anything about Stan Douglas or contemporary art, you're going to be met with a work that is about an experience of listening to music in real time," he said. "It's not something you have to come in and read like a long, didactic panel to understand. You can get it visually, sensorially, audially, in so many different ways, and that's incredible maturity."

'International interconnectedness'

While race is a consistent element in Douglas's work, it's not explicitly autobiographical and usually part of a larger exploration of post-colonialism.

His 1991 short, I'm Not Gary, features a white man mistakenly calling a Black man he passes on the street Gary, a commentary on racial invisibility. In Inconsolable Memories (2005), Douglas reflects the experience of a Black, working-class Cuban.

A still from Stan Douglas's 2005 film Inconsolable Memories. (Courtesy of the artist/Art Gallery of York University)

He says he's had an abiding interest in race, but has resisted showing it from a purely regional perspective, citing another early work, Der Sandmann (1995), which features an African German character whose experience is closer to his own.

He's "kind of an outsider figure," which is similar to Douglas's experience "growing up in Vancouver with a majority-white population."

Douglas says this year's Venice show has been the most fun so far — he's been here enough to know what to expect, and to be able to relax. But he bristles at the idea of  "representing Canada" as the country's official artist this time around.

"I have a problem with the idea of identity, so in representing Canada, I'm not representing Canada — I'm representing international interconnectedness," he said, a point made in his work.

"I identify as Canadian, but I don't want to say, 'This is what Canada is.' I have no idea of what that is. To produce a national myth about what Canada is, is not really feasible. Unlike the U.S., that's all held together by people who can't stand each other but who love their constitution, their revolution or whatever it was. In Canada, we don't have those unifying myths."

'I identify as Canadian, but I don't want to say, 'This is what Canada is,' said Douglas. 'I have no idea of what [Canadian identity] is. To produce a national myth about what Canada is, is not really feasible.' (Michael Courtney)

While Canada may not have unifying myths, one could argue it has a certain unifying mode of expression that, even in the big-ego world of contemporary art, shuns hyperbole and self-aggrandizement.

When asked if he's surprised about how well his career as an artist has gone, Douglas laughs. 

"Oh yeah, I never thought I would not have to have a job," he said. "When I was coming up, the expectation of having [an art] career was very low, especially as a Canadian."

He pauses, then gives an understated — one could say quintessentially Canadian — explanation for his success.

"Lucky. Right place, right time."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Megan Williams

Rome correspondent

Rome correspondent Megan Williams has covered everything from Italian politics and migration to the Vatican and the Venice Biennale for almost two decades. Her award-winning documentaries can be heard on Ideas, The Current and other CBC shows. Megan is a regular guest host of As It Happens and The Current.

‘Worst it’s ever been’: a threatened species alarm sounds during the election campaign – and is ignored

Warnings of dramatically escalating extinctions in Australia over the next two decades seem to be falling on deaf ears

Australian Capital Territory’s faunal emblem, the gang-gang cockatoo, is now on the endangered list. 

Photograph: William Robinson/Alamy


Lisa Cox

Sun 24 Apr 2022 

Gregory Andrews was Australia’s first threatened species commissioner, appointed in 2013 by the then incoming Coalition environment minister Greg Hunt. He recently returned to the country, after serving as high commissioner to Ghana, and was disheartened by what he found.

Andrews believes the state of the country’s natural wildlife and biodiversity is the “worst it’s ever been” and calls the ongoing destruction of forests and other habitat “crazy”.

After a political term marked by consecutive summer disasters and multiple official reports highlighting government failure, he sees it as a major issue. But, as far as the first two weeks of the election campaign are concerned, the environment may as well not exist.

“Biodiversity and nature have been completely absent from this campaign so far,” he says.

“That makes me really sad because Australians define ourselves through our wildlife. We’ve got them on our money, our sports teams, our coat of arms, the tail of Qantas. We can’t keep defining ourselves by our wildlife when we’re losing it to extinction.”

Given so much of Australia’s landscape had already been cleared, he believes the time has come for a conversation about sharing what remains with the country’s unique, and increasingly struggling, wildlife.

“If we’re serious about what it means to be Australian … we are a rich enough country with enough habitat and enough cleared area to dedicate the remaining land to protection,” he says. “The trouble is the Greens are the only party that says that, and it is seen as a fringe or extremist position.”

Andrews spent three years as threatened species commissioner. He says while he was proud of some of the things that were achieved under Hunt, he felt restricted due to climate denialism within the Coalition and the refusal to deal with habitat degradation.

‘We are a rich enough country with enough habitat and enough cleared area to dedicate the remaining land to protection,’ says Australia’s first threatened species commissioner. 

Photograph: Der Wa/PR

He is not alone in raising concerns about the environment missing from the campaign. Others are also trying to raise its profile.

A new report from a coalition of conservation groups says if Australia was serious about nature protection, it would increase its spending ten-fold. It highlights 100 animals and plants – including the orange-bellied parrot and the grassland earless dragon – that are at imminent risk of extinction.


Koala listed as endangered after Australian governments fail to halt its decline

The South Australian independent senator Rex Patrick this week called for a change in the way the environment is treated in the next parliament, including requiring the prime minister to make an annual extinction statement, listing the species newly declared as either extinct or critically endangered.

The question is: is anyone listening?

That Australia is not doing enough to protect its environment is well known.

In the past term alone, three official reports, two from the Australian National Audit Office plus the independent review of Australia’s environmental laws by the former competition watchdog head Graeme Samuel, highlighted a litany of environmental failures.

A fourth, the five-yearly State of the Environment report, is also expected to highlight the ongoing decline. That report could have been tabled by the Morrison government before the campaign began but has been withheld.

The rate of land-clearing in states such as Queensland and New South Wales has been increasing and the addition of new species to Australia’s national list of threatened wildlife was accelerated by the country’s worst bushfire disaster.

The Australian Capital Territory’s faunal emblem, the gang-gang cockatoo, entered the list as endangered, with the expert scientific committee highlighting the climate crisis as the major driver of reductions to populations of the bird.

And a week before the election was called, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change again sounded the alarm that the world was rapidly running out of time to limit warming to 1.5C.

That the climate and nature crises are intertwined is acknowledged globally.

But the conversation about either of these issues in the campaign so far has been characterised by commentary on power bills, based on unsourced modelling, and a $220m pledge by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, for native forestry in Tasmania.
Advertisement


Before the election was called, the Morrison government also promised $50m for a single species, the koala, which had its conservation status upgraded in February from vulnerable to endangered.

Carol Booth, the principal policy analyst at the Invasive Species Council, says the silence from the major parties on what the next government will do to change the trajectory reveals a lot.

“They’re obviously making a judgment that it’s not going to turn the election for them,” she says.

“They pay attention to individual crises, like the fires. But because it’s a long term, insidious problem and there are so many threats coalescing and interacting … it’s hard to get your head around.

“You’re not going to see results in one term of government.”


Australian government ‘aggravating extinction’ through land-clearing approvals, analysis finds

Read more

The council – backed by BirdLife Australia, Bush Heritage, the Humane Society International and the Australian Land Conservation Alliance – has released a new report that notes extinctions are expected to dramatically escalate in Australia over the next two decades due to Australia’s failure to deal with the major threats of invasive species, habitat destruction and climate change.

It identifies 100 species that have a high risk of extinction in that time, including 20 freshwater fish, nine birds, eight frogs, six reptiles, one mammal and one butterfly with a greater than 50% risk of extinction within 20 years, and 55 plants at high risk of extinction within 10.

A new report highlights 100 animals and plants – including the orange-bellied parrot – at imminent risk of extinction. 

Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

It argues an overhaul of Australia’s threat abatement system is necessary after years of neglect, evidenced by overdue and outdated species recovery plans and the near decade-long failure by the Coalition to formally list major threats.

That streak was finally broken this week after fire regimes that cause wildlife decline was officially listed as a key threat to Australia’s environment, 14 years after it was first proposed.

The environment minister, Sussan Ley, signed off on the decision shortly before the election was called.

The Invasive Species Council’s report puts forward solutions, including that governments simply apply the laws and protections they have neglected for so long. That is, systematically listing major threats and developing and implementing plans to tackle them as well as recover species.

And it reiterates earlier work by a group of scientists led by the conservation ecologist Brendan Wintle that found Australia needed a ten-fold increase in nature spending to recover endangered wildlife.

Booth says this would require expenditure of about $1.5bn to $2bn annually.

“That’s not much in terms of the whole budget but it’s a lot more than they’ve committed to date,” she says.

Samantha Vine, the head of conservation and science at BirdLife Australia, says most voters care about nature, but that passion is not always visible to politicians.

She says when governments do make the effort to tackle threats, the trajectory of species facing extinction can be turned around.

On Macquarie Island, for example, breeding populations of grey-headed albatross are recovering after governments prioritised the eradication of rodents and rabbits on the island.

“It shows what can happen if you just invest in the work that needs to be done,” she says.

Guardian Australia asked the Coalition, Labor and the Greens about their priorities for nature.

Much of the Morrison government’s term has focused on its environmental deregulation agenda and a bid to transfer environmental approval powers to the states and territories.

But Ley says it has also “delivered more than $6bn in environmental spending since 2019” and points to budget announcements of $1bn for the Great Barrier Reef and $100m for the Environment Restoration Fund.

As minister, she established a new 10-year threatened species strategy and delivered a long-awaited recovery plan for the koala.

“The Morrison government is committed to practical action and to working with communities, land managers, traditional owners and scientists to protect the environment, from our heritage places to the health of our oceans and native species,” she says.

Labor’s environment spokesperson, Terri Butler, says the party will have more to say about the environment closer to the election, but has already committed to increased funding for Indigenous rangers and Indigenous Protected Areas as well as $200m for urban rivers and catchments.

She says the Australia State of the Environment Report, which Ley was sitting on, should be made public.

“Protecting and restoring the environment has never been more important after bushfires and floods,” Butler says.

“The environment cannot afford to have the Morrison-Joyce government mismanage [it] for another term.”

The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, says the party has been “fighting against the Liberal-Nationals attacks on our environment since they came to power”.

“Our environment is in crisis and the Greens are crucial to protecting it in the parliament,” she says.

She says the Greens have the most comprehensive policy of the parties for protecting the environment, which includes a zero extinction target and a commitment to end habitat destruction.

This week Rex Patrick, who is fighting to keep his seat, said if reelected he would move for the prime minister to be “personally accountable for Australia’s irrevocable environmental failures”.

Patrick wants to create a requirement in Australia’s environmental laws stating the prime minister must table an annual extinction and endangered species statement to parliament listing the species newly declared as either extinct or critically endangered.

“No prime minister is going to be very keen to stand up in the parliament and sound the death knell for unique Australian species,” he said.

“But that is what’s likely to be required to focus the minds of governments to take action before the irrevocable point of extinction is reached.”

Guardian Australia’s full federal election coverage

Rare cold-water coral garden in peril on B.C. coast

Heavy prawn traps and ropes are destructive to the delicate red tree corals

Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, 

Canada’s National Observer

A remarkable coral garden tucked away in a remote inlet on B.C.’s wild central coast is in danger unless the federal government takes immediate steps to save it from destruction before the prawn fishing season gets underway, conservationists say.

Heavy prawn traps and ropes, which make contact with the seabed, are particularly destructive to the delicate red tree corals, or Primnoa pacifica, in a unique area in the ­centre of Knight Inlet, said professional diver, filmmaker and naturalist Neil McDaniel.

The bright orange coral fans in the relatively shallow waters of the Hoeya Head Sill are unusually large, stretching nearly two metres across and 1.5 metres high, McDaniel said.

The marine zoologist has been pushing Oceans and Fisheries Canada (DFO) for a decade to close the small section of the inlet to fishing, particularly each spring in May and June as the prawn season begins.

The large, intricate-fingered corals may take as long as a century to form, but can be destroyed in a moment from contact with fishing gear or anchors, McDaniel said.

He is perplexed at the ministry’s failure to protect the coral ecosystem, even on a ­temporary basis, given DFO’s own science supports such a move.

What’s more, both the area’s First Nation and the province have flagged the site for ­conservation while developing a network of marine protected areas along the northern West Coast.

“I don’t know why DFO is so resistant,” McDaniel said, noting that such large corals in such shallow waters are unmatched elsewhere in B.C.

“When I found out last week [DFO] had no intention of giving the area any interim ­protection, I was angry about it, to be honest.”

Coastal First Nation assumes guardianship in face of inaction

Leaders of the Mamalilikulla First Nation unilaterally declared an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) near the central part of Knight Inlet, which includes a marine area of spectacular corals and sponges.

The Mamalilikulla-Qwe’Qwa’Sot’Em is a First Nations band government based on northern Vancouver Island. The home territory of the Mamalilikulla and Qwe-Qwa’Sot’Em groups of Kwakwaka’wakw is in the maze of islands and inlets of the eastern Queen Charlotte Strait region around the opening of Knight Inlet, mainly on Village Island, where their principal village Memkumlis is located. It’s also known by the name Mamalilikulla.

There are significant pockets of band members in Port Hardy, Alert Bay, Campbell River, Nanaimo, Victoria and Vancouver, according to the First Nation.

The Mamalilikulla First Nation declared an IPCA late last year near the central part of Knight Inlet close to Lull Bay/Hoeya Sound, which includes the coral garden.

The Gwa̱xdlala/Nala̱xdlala IPCA encompasses 10,416 hectares — including land and sea — protecting important cultural sites and damaged watersheds and estuaries critical to dwindling salmon, bears and eagles, the nation said.

The marine protection includes the Hoeya Head Sill, cited as a highly biodiverse ecosystem of shallow corals, sponges and rare endangered species particularly sensitive to bottom-contact activities.

The move re-establishes the Mamalilikulla’s ancient role as guardians and to collectively make decisions with federal and provincial governments to ensure the well-being of the land, water and creatures in their territories, Chief Councillor Winidi (John Powell) said.

Government authorities have denied Indigenous people their ancestral stewardship roles for more than a century, Powell said.

“They put their own regulations in place, which have gravely failed, as is evident from the devastation in our territory, which has been subjected to logging and commercial fishing on a massive scale for decades,” he said.

A moratorium on commercial fishing in the area has not materialized, Powell added.

“One of the incentives to declare the IPCA when we did is that seasonal openings for prawn and crab fisheries were approaching, and those fisheries can be very detrimental to the ocean floor-dwelling creatures like coral,” he said

“All of these reasons, and more, are why we are taking back our stewardship responsibilities in Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala.”

DFO working toward coastal protected network

The DFO did not provide a response to Canada National Observer’s query about whether it intends to suspend fishing in Hoeya Head Sill to protect the corals.

The federal government has worked closely with provincial, territorial and First Nations communities to advance work to develop a marine protected network in the Northern Shelf Bioregion, or the Pacific North Coast, ministry press secretary Claire Teichman said in a statement.

“Minister [Joyce] Murray looks forward to continuing the work in protecting this critical coastal ecosystem,” Teichman said.

“We are actively considering how Mamalilikulla First Nation’s IPCA, as well as other sites, can fit into the broader context of reducing harm to sensitive and ecologically important areas in support of the Government of Canada’s commitments to protect 25 per cent of Canadian marine waters by 2025, and 30 per cent by 2030.”

McDaniel said it’ll be ironic if, by the time DFO actually establishes a marine protected area in Knight Inlet, there’s nothing left to conserve.

“It’s just like closing the barn door after the horses have left,” he said.

“We have several more years, during which time, prawn fishing will carry on — and the corals will be destroyed.”

John Bones, an adviser to the Mamalilikulla First Nation on its Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, said the First Nation has “given up” on trying to persuade DFO to halt the May 5 prawn fishery opening. Instead, he said, it has made a direct appeal to prawn fishery organizations for “voluntary avoidance” of areas with high concentrations of the corals and sponges.

The Mamalilikulla find it ironic that “their best ally in advancing protection of this unique area appears to be fishery organizations and not the federal department mandated with the role for marine habitat protection,” Bones said.

Targeted fishery closures are a quicker, more flexible measure

DFO has made good use of targeted fishery closure protections for ancient glass sponge reefs in various parts of the coast, such as Hecate Strait, Howe Sound and the Strait of Georgia, said Jay Ritchlin, David Suzuki Foundation director-general for western Canada.

Such measures are limited in scope and don’t involve the blanket closure of a large geographical area, Ritchlin said.

An interim fishery closure designed with First Nations might close the relatively small area but would still allow fishing in the majority of the 100-kilometre-plus inlet.

“It’s not a big hammer that shuts down everything all at once,” he said.

Such fishery protections are easier to put in place and flexible compared with the lengthy, complex process to get a marine protected area legislated, Ritchlin said.

“I feel fairly confident that if DFO wanted to take that approach … [it] could do that fairly quickly,” he said.

Protecting the coral ecosystem could benefit fisheries

Deepwater sponges are also found in the shallow waters of the Hoeya Head Sill.

Protecting the coral and sponge ecosystem in the shallower waters of the Hoeya Head Sill will likely benefit commercial fisheries in adjacent waters, said marine biologist Verena Tunnicliffe.

“Species like prawns, red rockfish and other commercial species use it as a nursery or refuge area,” said the Order of Canada scientist who first conducted research in Knight Inlet more than three decades ago.

“If you take out such good feeding areas, you might just find your fishing grounds in the region are suddenly not so good anymore.”

A dump of glacial rock made the shoal — as shallow as 65 metres in a fjord often half a kilometre in depth — which experiences strong tidal currents and turbulence that stir up food and create conditions ideal for the coral and other deepwater or rare species, Tunnicliffe said.

In addition to the corals, soft goblet or cloud sponges thrive on the sill along with Townsend eualid shrimp and bigmouth sculpin.

But it’s the Primnoa pacifica coral, usually found in deep water beyond the reach of recreational divers or marine biologists, that’s the main draw, Tunnicliffe said.

“I can tell you, it was a stunning sight,” she said.

“I’ve worked a lot of the coast, and I haven’t seen that density and size of corals.”

— With a file from the Times Colonist

1 / 11 Conservationists and First Nations are calling on the ­federal ­government to protect a unique ecosystem of corals and sponges in a remote B.C. inlet.

 NEIL McDANIEL

Expand
Previous

Next