New Zealand targets supply management system to get better access to Canada's dairy market

LONG READ

Janyce McGregor - Yesterday 

Canada's dairy industry will soon be defending a new front in its ongoing battle to preserve its supply management system in the face of international trade challenges.

On Thursday, New Zealand's minister for trade and export growth, Damien O'Connor, announced his government has initiated dispute settlement proceedings under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It's the first time consultations have been triggered in an attempt to resolve differences between signatories of the eight-member Pacific Rim trading bloc.

The CPTPP came into effect at the end of 2018, with Canada and New Zealand among its original six members. New Zealand is an aggressive global exporter of dairy products, putting it on a collision course with Canada's relatively closed domestic market both during the original negotiations, and as the deal has been implemented.

"Our priority is to ensure that New Zealand exporters have meaningful access to the benefits negotiated under CPTPP, and that all parties fulfil the commitments they have made to each other under the agreement," O'Connor said in a release.

While New Zealand's relationship with Canada is "excellent," the minister said, the two countries have engaged on this issue "over a number of years and these proceedings will not come as any surprise to them.

"Occasionally even good friends disagree, and it's for that reason dispute settlement mechanisms in free trade agreements such as CPTPP exist to provide a neutral forum for settling such disputes when they arise," O'Connor said.


© Blair Gable/Reuters

The federal government, and Minister of International Trade Mary Ng, have seven days to respond to New Zealand's dispute resolution request.

Canada was notified Thursday, the New Zealand government release said. Canada has seven days to respond, after which the two countries will begin formal consultations. If those don't resolve their differences, New Zealand can request a panel to adjudicate the dispute, according to the provisions found in Chapter 28 of the agreement.

International Trade Minister Mary Ng's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBC News.
Latest in a line of disputes

It's not the first time Canada's system for controlling the importation of dairy products has been targeted by trading partners and criticized as unfairly protectionist. Similar issues emerged with cheese imports under the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union, although, so far formal arbitration has not been required.

To stabilize domestic prices and maintain a consistent national supply of cow's milk and other processed dairy products, the federal government uses prohibitively high tariffs to discourage any imports beyond the minimum levels required by the World Trade Organization and negotiated trade agreements with specific partners.

The CPTPP guaranteed member countries a specific amount of tariff-free access to Canada's market in 20 different categories of dairy, egg and poultry products — all sectors that are part of Canada's supply management system.

In order to import these named products tariff-free, interested businesses must apply to Global Affairs Canada for a share of the annual quota for the specific commodity. The ultimate decision over who gets to hold how much quota for a given year rests with the trade minister

Less than a month before the CPTPP came into effect, the Liberal government announced it would allocate between 80 and 90 per cent of the import licences to domestic dairy processors, with a much smaller share available for dairy distributors. Grocery retailers — businesses that directly import and sell food products to consumers — were shut out entirely.


© Nick Perry/AP

Damien O’Connor, New Zealand’s minister for trade and export growth, said his country's relationship with Canada remains 'excellent' despite their issues with dairy trade.

For Canada's dairy sector, it was a form of compensation for the market share they stood to lose to foreign competitors. Processors already active in the market, industry spokespeople argued, would know best what kind of complementary foreign imports could fill market gaps for consumers.

Retailers, not to mention foreign producers, called foul, pointing out that domestic processors have no incentive to import goods that compete with their own. They warned Canada may not import as much foreign dairy as the agreement specified, although the federal government put rules in place to supposedly prevent importers from applying but then not fully exercising their right to import tariff-free.
Fill rates suggest unused quota

Import data posted on the Global Affairs website suggests New Zealand's concerns may be founded, at least for some products. Although Canada was close to importing the full quota negotiated for butter under the CPTPP last year, the data for cheese and other commodities show a much bigger gap between what was bargained at the negotiating table and what's been realized at the border.

That data doesn't specify how many of those imports came from New Zealand. Decisions over what to import from which CPTPP countries rest with the holder of the import licence. The other major dairy exporter among current CPTPP partners is Australia.

The quota volumes set for CPTPP partners predate the departure of the United States from the agreement following the election of former U.S. president Donald Trump, and the subsequent renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in which the U.S. also successfully negotiated additional tariff-free access to Canada's dairy market in a long list of product categories.

Once the Americans left, not all of the CPTPP categories, which include fresh products, remained practical and competitive for producers farther away to fill, especially after international shipping took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains significantly more expensive as supply chains continue to strain amid disruptive geo-political events like the war in Ukraine.

The United Kingdom is in the early stages of talks to join the CPTPP in the future. Depending on how those accession negotiations go, the U.K. could compete for this market share in the future.

Thursday's challenge shows New Zealand hasn't forgotten about its grievances. And it may be seeing fresh momentum for its side of the argument, following a decision by a panel established under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, CUSMA, the successor agreement to NAFTA, that found Canada's administration of similar import licences wasn't consistent with what the Americans believed they had signed onto when NAFTA was renegotiated.

In early March, Canada announced changes to its CUSMA quota allocation policies, eliminating the pool reserved only for processors. However, the CUSMA panel decision maintained the right of the trade minister to make the final decision. The end implications of these changes remain unclear.

The U.S., for its part, is still sounding skeptical.

During a visit to Ottawa last week, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai called access issues with Canada's dairy market a "source of great frustration." While she and Ng are still "talking and thrashing out the details for how we might be able to make some progress," Tai said "it's been a thorny issue for decades, for sure."

Canada's dairy industry remains bitter for having to take a succession of hits to its market in order for Canada to land several subsequent trade deals under the Liberals. In return for taking these hits for the team, they've demanded compensation from Canadian taxpayers.

On top of benefits from the way import licences are allocated, Canadian farmers are receiving up to $1.75 billion in direct payments over the first four years of the implementation of both the CPTPP and Canada's trade agreement with the European Union. The owner of a farm with 80 dairy cows, for example, was awarded approximately $38,000 each year.

The 2021 federal budget also established a $292.5 million investment fund for domestic dairy processors, to help them compete.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said in her spring budget that her department will include additional domestic dairy sector compensation for losses attributable to CUSMA in next fall's economic statement.

Mathieu Frigon, the president of the Dairy Processors Association of Canada, told CBC News he's aware of New Zealand's request for consultations and his organization is committed to working collaboratively with the federal government "to defend our country's ability to design and implement tariff-rate quota allocation mechanisms that meet its trade obligations and support its domestic production."

CANADA; RIGHT WING MEDIA PRAISES LEADER OF SOCIALIST PARTY

Toronto Sun
EDITORIAL: Some wise words from Jagmeet Singh

Postmedia News - Yesterday 

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh 

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh responded admirably to an ugly incident outside the office of Ontario NDP candidate Jen Deck in Peterborough on Tuesday.

When he visited her to support her campaign, he was surrounded by a small group of protesters yelling at him that he was a “traitor,” a “liar” and that he wasn’t welcome in the city, along with swearing at him and using obscene gestures.

While describing it as one of his “worst experiences” in politics — noting, “some folks were saying ‘hope you die’ and things along that nature” — he sought to defuse tensions rather than escalate them.

In a tweet referring to what happened Singh wrote:

“Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me after yesterday’s incident in Peterborough.

“To those who have asked, I’m in Chardi Kala — rising spirits.

“I want to especially say to the people of Peterborough — I have visited many times and I know your community is filled with good people who want the best for each other … Peterborough, I love you. Don’t worry — I’ll (be) back.”

Perhaps he was mindful of a recent story in the Peterborough Examiner noting the city in 2020, “had the highest rate per capita of police-reported hate crimes of all census metropolitan areas in the country … according to new data from Statistics Canada, with local rates far outstripping those of big cities such as Toronto and Montreal.”

Whether he was, Singh showed how to de-escalate political tensions, correctly noting “polarization and disinformation are real dangers to our society.

“While disagreements are fundamental to a thriving democracy,” he wrote, “hatred, violence and wishing death upon others threaten it.”

We understand many Canadians are angry about the deal he made with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to keep the Liberals in power until 2025. We’re not fans of it, either.

But it is irresponsible and dangerous to suggest Singh is a “traitor” for having done so. His agreement with Trudeau is constitutional. Similar deals have been made in the past — including in Ontario.

We also agree with Singh’s caution to politicians that they “must remember the consequences when they stoke fear and division.”

We’d simply add that applies equally to government and opposition MPs, at every level, including party leaders.

Immigration minister says getting refugees out of Afghanistan a major challenge

Ryan Tumilty - Yesterday 

POSTMEDIA

OTTAWA – Canada’s immigration minister pledged to reduce backlogs across his department caused by the COVID-19 pandemic before the end of the year, but said getting refugees out of Afghanistan will continue to be a major challenge.


© Provided by National Post

Afghans in Islamabad plea for help. Canada's immigration minister Sean Fraser pledges to reduce the backlog by end of the year.

“I’m actually quite confident the vast majority of our lines of business will be back to about the service standard by the end of the year,” Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told MPs at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday

Fraser said that should include permanent residents and family reunification, as well as the government’s commitment to bring 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada by the end of this year.

The Liberal government made that pledge last summer during the election when the Afghanistan swiftly fell to Taliban forces. The government got some refugees out of the country before the Taliban took complete control, but thousands of people with ties to Canada were left behind.

Canada promised to take in 20,000-40,000 Afghan refugees. Where are they?

Only 2,385 Afghan nationals who assisted CAF mission relocated to Canada

Fraser said getting Afghans who have fled to other countries to Canada should be relatively straightforward, but for those living in Afghanistan it’s difficult.

“I am confident we can still do that but I don’t want to breeze over the fact that the territory is controlled by the Taliban,” he said. “I don’t want to sugarcoat things. It is really challenging to move people through Afghanistan and the stories are the most heartbreaking things.”

Conservative MP Jasraj Hallan said he heard from frustrated refugees that the government appeared to consider them security threats and are insisting on time-consuming and detailed checks.

Fraser said that isn’t the case.

“There’s not an internally held view that there is a class of people that have served Canada that pose a security threat to our national interest.”

NDP MP Jenny Kwan told Fraser the delays that Afghan refugees have seen are unacceptable and urged him to do more to address the problems.



Related video: Protest erupts outside Canada's embassy in Pakistan over delays in processing Afghan refugees (cbc.ca)

“Afghan interpreters with enduring relationships to Canada are being captured by the Taliban and are being tortured. Every second of the day counts for the lives of these individuals so I am absolutely astounded with the process here,” she said. “Maybe the minister should think about the option of engaging the military and asking them for help to bring people out of Afghanistan.”

Outside of Afghan refugees, Fraser said he hopes to alleviate the long waits that grew while COVID-related travel restrictions delayed the system.

During the pandemic, the government shifted the immigration focus to offering permanent residency to people who were already in Canada. Through a temporary resident-to-permanent resident program, they extended offers to student visa holders and people already in the country on work permits.

The government is still processing applications for people who applied through that program and will only start draws for economic immigrants abroad in July. On top of that, Canada has made large commitments on Afghan refugees and Ukrainians looking to flee the war.

The backlog across the system is so long that the department has put restrictions on the number of enquiries it will take from even MPs offices.

Fraser said he wants to eliminate that rule soon, but it’s a result of the large number of cases waiting in the backlog. He said every public servant responding to individual MPs is a public servant not helping to clear that backlog.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said Fraser should be focusing on the larger issue.

“We’re not the problem. We’re a symptom of another problem, but insofar as that problem exists people need to go to their members of parliament and seek their support and advocacy,” he said.

Fraser was also asked about Ukranians fleeing the war. The government has rejected calls to provide visa-free travel to people fleeing Ukraine, instead creating a new program that allows Ukranians to come to Canada and work for up to three years.

But the program comes with an application process that includes biometric scanning and other measures for many applicants. Fraser said more than 200,000 people have applied through the program and approximately half of those have been approved to come to Canada, but only about 25,000 have actually made the trip here so far.

He said he is confident that the number of approvals will catch up with the applicants soon.

“Our capacity to process people exceeds the demand that’s being put onto the system, so the numbers in the inventory will continue to come down if that remains the case,” he said.

He said, during a recent trip to Europe, he found many people fleeing Ukraine want to be able to return to their home country and are getting Canadian travel approvals as more of a safety net.

“The people are, largely speaking, wanting to stay as close to Ukraine as possible.”

Twitter: RyanTumilty
Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com

Fraser pressed on why Immigration has not approved 2,900 Afghans who helped Canada

Tuesday
The Canadian Press


OTTAWA — NDP caucus chair Jenny Kwan says she is seeking urgent answers about what has happened to the applications of 2,900 Afghans who helped the Canadian military.

Kwan is demanding Immigration Minister Sean Fraser explain why the Afghans, whose credentials were checked and verified by Canada's military, have not had their applications to come to Canada approved.

Defence chief Gen. Wayne Eyre told a parliamentary committee Monday night that the Defence Department had checked and verified the credentials of 3,800 Afghans, including interpreters, who supported the Canadian military.

But the committee heard from Eyre and Bill Matthews, deputy defence minister, that only 900 of them have had their applications to come to Canada accepted so far by the Immigration Department.

The government has committed tobringing18,000 Afghans and their families to Canada who served as interpreters for the Canadian Armed Forces, or worked at the Embassy of Canada, or had some other enduring or significant ties with Canada.

Kwan said she is planning to pursue the matter vigorously with the department as the lives of Afghans who helped Canadian troops are in danger from the Taliban.

She also plans to ask if the Immigration Department has lost files of Afghan interpreters who want to come to Canada, saying the government has "betrayed them."

"With every single passing day, the risks are heightened for Afghans," Kwan said. "And for those who served this country and their loved ones, it is wrong that the government has left them behind."

A spokesperson from the minister's office said the department plans to extend more invitations to Afghans who have a confirmed relationship with Canada in the coming weeks.

After Global Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence confirm an Afghan's ties to Canada, their name is passed on to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, press secretary Aidan Strickland said in a statement Tuesday.

IRCC then sends an email to the people on that list inviting them to apply, she said. Only people who receive an invitation are able to apply for the special program.

"We have already received applications for more than 14,905 Afghan refugees under the Special immigration program for Afghans who assisted the Government of Canada and approved over 10,000 applications. IRCC continues to process applications as quickly as possible," Strickland said.

More than 6,200 Afghans have arrived through the special program, she said.

Kwan said the Taliban is hunting down interpreters and their families, and she wants Canada to issue a one-time travel document so vulnerable Afghans do not have to raise their heads to apply for passports.

It is dangerous for Afghans who helped Canadian Forces to apply to the Taliban authorities for passports, Kwan said.

"When you are being hunted down and you are trying to hide from the Taliban, you can't just walk into the office run by the Taliban and say, 'Can you issue travel documents, issue passports for my entire family?'" she said.

"The minute you do that, you are putting a red flag right on top of your head to be targeted."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2022

Marie Wolfe and Laura Osman, The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version reported that 3,100 Afghans had not yet been approved to come to Canada.

FIVE EYES

CSE cybersecurity centre's new boss says job has been 'dizzying' experience of responding to multiple major cyber incidents

Christopher Nardi - CBC

The new head of Canada’s cybersecurity centre says his first months on the job have been a “dizzying” experience of responding to one major incident after another, including a cyberattack from a hostile state against a federal government department in recent months.



“The last eight months have been somewhat a dizzying experience of a number of cyber incidents and managing all these cyber incidents,” Sami Khoury, who was named head of the Communications Security Establishment’s (CSE) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security last August, told the audience at the Cyber UK conference Wednesday.

“Day one of the job, the federal election is called,” he began listing, noting that the government suddenly was responsible for defending the entire country at a time of particular interest for foreign states looking to interfere in Canada’s affairs.

Then, just as the election ended, Newfoundland suffered a major cyber attack that crippled the province’s health care system for weeks and led to 200,000 files being stolen. That required CSE to deploy a team to help the province essentially rebuilding its IT systems, Khoury told conference attendees.

Shortly after, CSE scrambled to help cyber defenders address a major vulnerability, known as Log4j, in a nearly ubiquitous software library that hackers quickly tried to abuse. At the time, it was qualified as of the single most critical vulnerabilities in the last decade.

At the same time, Khoury said CSE was trying to handle “a number” of ransomware incidents, which he has frequently qualified as one of the biggest cyber threats Canada faces right now.

In 2021, 304 ransomware attacks were reported to CSE, a 151 per cent increase on the previous year but still likely a drop in the bucket compared to the real number because the problem remains “way, way underreported,” he said.

Canada the target of 'thousands' of cyber attacks every day, CSIS reveals

CSE responded to more than 2,200 cyber attacks in 2020

Khoury said that by the beginning of 2022, “we thought we would celebrate a quiet New Year,” he told conference attendees.

But that hope was dashed by a previously undisclosed “nation-state incident against one of our federal government departments.” He did not specify which hostile state was behind the attack, nor which department it targeted.

The only known incident around that time is a significant cyber attack against Global Affairs Canada (GAC) that was first detected on Jan. 19. The incident forced the department to shut down a host of internal programs for days and sometimes weeks to prevent further damage.

In an interview after his panel (but before it was made available publicly online ), Khoury declined to say who was behind the GAC attack but noted that it was a “sophisticated incident.”

He also confirmed that there was no private or sensitive government information that was either compromised or stolen during the GAC incident.

“We have not come out publicly with anything that points fingers at who’s behind this,” he told National Post.

Then, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, creating significant concerns of increased attacks from the country that is repeatedly listed as a key hostile cyber threat to Canada. Khoury also spoke of “another incident we had to manage,” but did not provide any more detail.

But despite the fears of a looming cyber war with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, the head of Canada’s Cyber Security Centre says that Canadian organizations have been targeted by Russian cyber criminals … yet, he specified in an interview.

“We haven’t seen anything in Canada that we can find a fingerprint that, ‘this is Russia turning its sights to Canada’ at this point,” he said, noting that most of the country’s cyber attacks have focused on Ukrainian targets.

But “we want Canadian businesses to be ready for when that happens,” he added, because the issue is serious and the threat is real. “Russia is throwing everything and the kitchen sink in the Ukraine conflict.”

But it’s not because Canada isn’t directly targeted by Russia yet that CSE isn’t watching what it’s doing to Ukraine and using that as a warning of what could be to come here.

“In the early days of the Russia campaign, we saw that we saw them go against Ukrainian banks. So then we issued an advisory about trying to protect your web-facing servers,” Khoury detailed.

“Then we saw them flood the airwaves with misinformation and disinformation. And we issued another bulletin with that information,” he continued.

“Then we saw them deploy very nasty, destructive malware in the Ukraine,” he said. “It’s a bit of a game of cat and mouse … Every time we observed something to Ukraine, we turned around and updated Canadian guidance or made it a little bit more customized.”

Khoury says the last months have been so intense for cyber defenders across the country that he’s now concerned they may be slowly getting burnt out.

“I am concerned about the energy level … and pacing ourselves. There are humans that manage these cyber incidents and it’s important to make sure that our teams have a bit of time to breathe, to catch their breath,” he said.

“The last eight months have taught me that it’s going to be a busy few years. We are not out of a job. It’s going to keep us busy,” he added.

More evidence emerges of N.S. mass shooter's long history of domestic abuse

Among other things, the public inquiry’s mandate includes investigating the role of gender-based violence.


HALIFAX — The former wife of the man responsible for the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia says he once pinned her to the floor during a fit of rage, confirming that the killer’s violence towards women extended back to the 1990s.


The woman, who is not named in documents recently released by a public inquiry into the mass shooting, talked to police on April 29, 2020 — 10 days after the killer’s rampage claimed 22 lives in northern and central Nova Scotia.

The woman’s statement, which includes details about a second violent outburst, is now part of a growing narrative detailing Gabriel Wortman's decades-long pattern of violence towards women.

That chronology includes a statement from a former neighbour who said she told RCMP that the man attacked his spouse, Lisa Banfield, when they were living in Portapique, N.S., in 2013.

Some lawyers are calling on the inquiry to ask the neighbour, Brenda Forbes, to provide in-person witness testimony as the commission explores the role gender-based violence played in the tragedy.

In the case of the killer's first wife, the interview with police also includes her description of incidents in the 1990s when her husband’s drinking would contribute to violent rages.

During one incident at the couple's home in Dartmouth, N.S., the former wife recalled how he used a hammer to smash a collection of shelves and expensive figurines when he was triggered by the sight of dust on the shelves.

When she fled from the home, he threatened to smash her car windows with the hammer, she told police.

"There was another time he got very upset when he was drinking ... he actually pinned me down on the floor that day,” she said. “I was very scared that day, too."

After the 2020 killings, several of the gunman's neighbours in Portapique came forward to describe the man as jealous, controlling and abusive. And police confirmed that on the night the murders started, he had bound and attacked his longtime partner.

The next day, Banfield told police that her spouse had devolved from a "loving, kind and generous" man when they first met, to a moody partner who since 2003 had routinely assaulted her.

"In the past, he was abusive and I would appease him and say whatever I could to make it stop," she told RCMP Staff Sgt. Greg Vardy during an interview at the Colchester East Hants Health Centre in Truro, N.S.

Banfield told the RCMP she didn't report the abuse because she "didn’t want to get him in trouble. And in hindsight, I wish I would’ve, because maybe this wouldn’t have happened."

At the time of the interview, Banfield was being treated for injuries she suffered on April 18, 2020, when Wortman attacked her at their home in Portapique.

Banfield, then 51, described other beatings at the cottage, saying her spouse’s explosive anger was typically triggered by small disputes. Before the assault in April 2020, Banfield said the last time she experienced intimate partner violence was three years earlier.

Among other things, the public inquiry’s mandate includes investigating the role of gender-based violence.

In a research report commissioned by the inquiry, two professors at Monash University in Australia found that all mass shootings in western countries in recent decades have been carried out by men.

The paper concludes that there is a "significant minority" of mass shootings that also involve the targeting of specific women, "often an intimate partner, as the first victim," and that there is growing evidence of the linkages between gender-based violence and mass shootings.

"In order to better understand, prevent and respond to mass casualty attacks, there is a need to better understand, prevent and respond to gender-based violence," the report says.

Meanwhile, participating lawyer Anastacia Merrigan has told the inquiry there are discrepancies between the evidence provided by Forbes — the killer’s former neighbour — and the RCMP's description of how they responded to her complaint.

In a summary of evidence, the inquiry said a responding officer took "minimal notes" at the time of Forbes's complaint and that other information had been purged from RCMP files.

The inquiry's summary says a constable who responded to the complaint in 2013 is quoted in an RCMP report saying he didn't remember Forbes reporting a domestic assault.

Merrigan, who represents the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia, said she wants the inquiry to provide a more critical view of what happened with Forbes’s complaint.

"To date, the foundational document has adopted the evidence provided by the RCMP almost without question," she told the inquiry last week.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

Michael Tutton and Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press

We need to pay better attention to the ways people talk about incels

Luc Cousineau, 

Postdoctoral Fellow in International Network on Technology, 

Work, and Family, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) 

- Tuesday
The Conversation

Men’s rights activists have been around since the mid-1970s when scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. But over the past 50 years, this movement has shifted and many of these activists are migrating towards more extreme and misogynistic views — the most violent of which are incels.

Research on incels is growing, and in December of last year, New York University (NYU) released Incels: Inside the world of involuntary celibates. While the report includes a useful glossary of incel terms and ideology, worldview and theory, there are issues with it. And these issues are common across incel-related writing (and writing on other violent terrorists), making it an issue that people need to get a handle on.

In the context of communities like incels, researchers must navigate a line between exploration and exposing content for wider consumption.

The dilemma here is that when researchers are working from a perspective critical of these ideologies we should be aware of how our research might serve to amplify the messaging. Are we inadvertently honouring the people we seek to condemn?

It is certainly possible to walk that line, and communications researchers Debbie Ging and Adrienne Massanari provide us with good examples. However, in reports like the one out of NYU, some common practices are problematic.

Risk creating worshippers and copycats

One of the most discussed hot-button issues when writing about far-right and misogynist violence is whether to identify attackers.

Like using the word incel itself, naming well-known attackers adds shock value. But when people do this, regardless of intention, it increases the profile of the attackers and can elevate them to positions of cultural phenomena and martyrdom.

Perhaps the most significant example of this is the Isla Vista killer, who killed six people during a multi-site spree in California, in 2014. The killings were heinous, but at the risk of sounding glib, six deaths in a mass killing isn’t huge in the United States. What made this incident huge was the nearly perpetual coverage and re-inscription of the killer across popular media and the academy.

By publishing and re-publishing this information, media and academics helped make the perpetrator an icon, inadvertently supporting and perpetuating the incel community’s veneration of individuals who have “died for the cause.”

When we label attackers incels, we inflate their power

A picture from Kimveer Gill's Blog

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EMOTIONAL PLAGUE 

The NYU report labelled the perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique tragedy the first incel. While it might be true that he had some characteristics that would align him with today’s misogynist incels, he was not an incel.

Given that the term incel as it is used today did not appear until the late 1990s, it is simply not possible for him to have been an incel.

To include him in any accounting of incel violence does a disservice to those working to disrupt violence against women, as it flattens the nuances and complexities of misogynistic violence.

The Montréal perpetrator’s inclusion in the history of incel violence is a fabrication to give certain ideological positionings deeper roots. His inclusion gives a historical significance and early presence to inceldom while helping provide legitimacy.
The issues are much deeper than incels

In the context of media coverage and academia, incels are trendy; they get views.

For most incels, violent misogynist inceldom is the end of their journey, not the beginning. They have likely been introduced to elements of inceldom in other spaces (like pick-up artist communities) and moved slowly into inceldom.

The appeal of covering incels can blind people of this pathway, and facilitate a move to innocence where people ignore the more mundane and everyday instances of violent misogyny.

The fact that radicalization is a process provides opportunities to stop movement towards radical ideas — there are places where men can be intercepted before they are encouraged (or encourage others) to do real violence.

Even once men become incels, there are opportunities for deradicalization and de-conversion, like the work being done by Groundswell Project in the United Kingdom.

We are going to see more and more writing about incels as some continue to commit acts of violent misogyny. But how people write about them matters.

The danger is that in giving incel ideology all of this time and energy people will unavoidably perpetuate what they seek to stop. It gives energy to a movement that’s primary interest is subjugating women and increases the value of violence.

As writers and academics, we have the responsibility to do better. There is no place for this violence in Canada, and we bear part of the responsibility to stop it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Incels are surprisingly diverse but united by hate

Inside the warped world of incel extremists

Luc Cousineau receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He is the Director of Research at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies.

Inuit fear ruling on Arctic mine expansion could hasten ongoing narwhal decline

Inuit hunters fear an upcoming ruling on an Arctic mine expansion could hasten the ongoing decline of a narwhal population that they rely on for food.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

Harvesters from Pond Inlet on the northern coast of Baffin Island say numbers of the iconic, single-tusked whale are already a small fraction of what they were before the Mary River iron mine began operating.

They say a decision expected Friday from the Nunavut Impact Review Board could make things even worse by allowing the mine to nearly double the amount of ship traffic through nearby waters.

"We're used to seeing thousands and thousands of narwhal," said Enooki Inuarak. "We used to go to sleep hearing the narwhals breathe.

"The last couple years, there has been barely any."

In a letter sent last week to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, the Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization says the mine is already harming their ability to harvest the important food source.

"Narwhal are less abundant ... narwhal behaviours are changing, and ... hunters are having limited success in their attempts to harvest," the letter says.

The Mary River mine is owned by Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. The mine, considered one of the world's richest iron deposits, opened in 2015 and ships about six million tonnes of ore a year. The company has said the mine's expansion would create 325 jobs.

Aerial surveys conducted for Baffinland suggest summer narwhal numbers in Eclipse Sound declined to about 2,600 in 2021 from 20,000 in 2004.

Meanwhile, shipping in the area — mostly traffic to and from the mine — has increased dramatically. In 2021, nearly 245 trips were made to and from Milne Inlet, where the mine's ore is loaded. In 2015, that figure was 42.

Baffinland said it expects to see 168 visits by ore carriers if the expansion is approved. Josh Jones at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, who is studying the proposal, said that would mean more than 450 individual transits by carriers, icebreakers and other mine-associated vessels.

Other research has linked marine traffic and whale behaviour, said Kristin Westdal, Arctic science director for the environmental group Oceans North. She said vessels create underwater noise that interferes with the animal's ability to locate prey and communicate.

"That research clearly points to an increasing level of sound, sound which overlaps with that of narwhal frequencies.

"The animals are responding to the vessels. They're moving away, they're changing direction."

Baffinland disagrees that constant, low-level disruptions are driving the narwhal away.

"Based on the expert advice of marine biologists ... with the application of the mitigation measures proposed under the Phase 2 proposal, increased shipping does not represent a significant risk to narwhal," Baffinland spokesman Peter Akman said in an email.

He suggested the Eclipse Sound narwhal have simply migrated to Admiralty Inlet on the other side of Baffin Island. Changing ice conditions or "prey/predator dynamics" — killer whales are present in the area — may also be factors, he wrote.

That doesn't help Pond Inlet hunters, who must ask permission to hunt in another community's waters.

"For countless generations we relied on them for our diet," Inuarak said. "It's part of our life.

"We're here because of the wildlife."

Baffinland has promised to impose nine-knot speed limits throughout the shipping corridor, lower than limits in whale habitats elsewhere. It also said it will reduce transits in shoulder seasons, reducing the need for icebreakers.

That won't help, said Westdal.

She said the number of transits should be reduced and icebreaking should be "off the table," restricting Baffinland to the open-water season. She noted that Eclipse Sound is in Tallurutiup Imanga, a national marine preserve.

"We think you can have the marine park and the community and the mine," Westdal said. "But if we keep going in this trajectory, we're just going to have the mine."

The hunters and trappers of Pond Inlet have called for similar measures.

"The Board (should) consider requiring Baffinland to implement adaptive management measures in order to protect the marine environment and to limit impacts to narwhal and Inuit harvesting rights," says their letter.

Baffinland said its willing to talk.

"If our monitoring programs ... identify reasonable linkages between the project and unacceptable changes to narwhal and/or harvesting in the future, Baffinland will respond accordingly," Akman wrote.

He said that could include changes to the shipping season, ship speeds and transit restrictions.

Inuarak is aware of the importance of jobs, but he said only a few people in Pond Inlet depend on the mine. Food is more important, he said.

"It impacts our culture and our traditions. We're being pushed back to the point we have to defend our way of life and our food source."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Indigenous languages 'marginalized all the time' in Canada: Governor General Mary Simon


KANGIQSUALUJJUAQ, Que. — Think of your morning routine — after your alarm goes off and before breakfast, you probably unlock your phone and check emails, social media, text messages. The constant connection is a habit.

But in Canada's North, that isn't the reality much of the time. There's no service on most major cell carriers in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec. Locals are used to wifi dropping out or slowing down.

On Tuesday a student from a Kangiqsualujjuaq school asked Gov. Gen. Mary Simon about a letter her classmates sent last fall about the poor internet access in their community — the village near where Simon was born.

Although governments have put billions of dollars in recent years into improving issues with rural internet capacity and infrastructure, the North lags behind much of the country.

"I think having that gap in technological advances prohibits us from being on equal par with the rest of the country at this stage," Simon said in an interview with The Canadian Press Tuesday.

"It could improve a lot of things, you know. Access is one thing."

Access to more than just social media, of course. During the pandemic, many Canadian children attended school online, and people could access physician appointments and counselling services via video chat when in-person visits weren't possible.

In remote communities where weather impacts travel capacity and travel infrastructure is limited, the ability to connect without being in the same physical space is all the more crucial, and all the more difficult.

Simon said when she lived in Kuujjuaq, from 2006 to 2016, it often wasn't possible to even download documents.

"Unless you got up in the middle of the night and did it in the middle of the night when people were off-line," she said.

Throughout the Governor General's trip to Nunavik this week, access to the internet has been spotty at best. Hotels, schools and community centres frequently deal with outages.

This is just one of the challenges facing the North, Simon said, and one of the realities many Canadians are unaware of.

"There are some changes taking place, but they take place at a fairly slow rate and the need is great," she said.

"I hear that from the people that are talking to me right now. They're very committed, Inuit are very committed people to making life better for each other."

Simon has spent much of her lifetime working to make life better for Inuit as a political leader.

Much of that work has involved negotiating with the federal and provincial governments on behalf of the Crown. Now, Simon represents the Crown itself.

"I don't see the conflict, in relation to how I feel about it," she said.

"Perhaps other people see it differently, but the way I see it, I don't see a conflict. My role is really to be able to talk to people about what's going on in Canada."

Simon wants to see self-determination for her people. But she avoids using the word "reconciliation."

"I kind of stay away from that word a little bit because it gets kind of overused. But that's what it means, it means being able to bring people together," she said.

"One of the things that I have is the ability to convene people … It's really about educating one another and understanding."

For someone who grew up speaking Inuktitut and learned English at a federal day school, that understanding extends to language.

"I think there is a need to understand that Indigenous cultures also depend on their languages to keep their culture and their identity alive," she said, adding that residential schools led to the extinction of many Indigenous languages.

The controversy around the fact that Simon doesn't speak French has made headlines since her appointment. She said she's still committed to learning, but noted that rather than being given the same importance as the two Official Languages, Indigenous languages are "being marginalized all the time" across the country.

"I think there needs to be a much bigger effort to embrace Indigenous languages, and to support them and to help promote the use of the language," she said. "Not just in sort of an academic sense, but in the families and communities."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press

Quebec lost almost $1 billion on COVID-19 protective equipment: auditor general




MONTREAL — Quebec's unpreparedness and its delayed reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the province losing almost $1 billion in its procurement of personal protective equipment, the auditor general said Wednesday.

The government waited too long and then rushed into purchasing items such as masks and gloves at high prices, Guylaine Leclerc said in her report released Wednesday.

By the end of March 2021, the value of the equipment purchased by the province had dropped by $938 million, she said. Of that amount, the province lost $671 million in the value of its stockpile and another $267 million connected to contracts for equipment and prepaid orders.

"The Health Department didn't plan any measures to create a sufficient supply of personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic, such as making prior agreements with suppliers or creating a stockpile," Leclerc wrote.

"It was therefore forced to urgently purchase equipment to protect the population while prices skyrocketed."

Quebec spent $1.4 billion on procedural masks and N95 masks alone, she said.

Leclerc told reporters on Wednesday the government should have acted faster to procure equipment, noting that the first bulk purchases were made on March 22, 2020, despite the fact the first infection in the province was detected on Feb. 27 of that year.

"Quebec's plan against an influenza pandemic was outdated," Leclerc said in her report. "There was no measure put in place to facilitate the supply of personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic and several employees lacked training on how to use the equipment."

The auditor's report noted that the government has launched lawsuits valued at $170 million in connection with orders for equipment that was never delivered or faulty.

"Faced with the urgent need to take action, the government procurement centre didn't always verify the suppliers' integrity and the quality of the personal protective equipment, which contributed to losses of nearly $15 million," Leclerc said.

"Good management requires good planning."

Premier François Legault on Wednesday dismissed the criticism in the report.

He said it's easy to "rewrite history," adding that his government did what it could.

Health Minister Christian Dubé, meanwhile, defended the government by stating the pandemic was unprecedented.

"We learned a lot from the first wave, which took everyone by surprise," Dubé said in statement. "This is why we put in place a plan for the second wave, which included having a reserve of four to six months of personal protective equipment."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 11, 2022.

Jocelyne Richer, The Canadian Press

Over 75% of Canadian nurses burnt out, 42% plan to leave profession, RNAO survey finds

Hannah Jackson - Yesterday 
 Global News


Anew survey conducted by the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) has found that over 75 per cent of Canada's nurses are "burnt out."

According to a news release, the RNAO conducted the survey between May and July of 2021, "during the height of Ontario's third wave" of COVID-19, and collected responses from 5,200 nurses in Canada -- most of which were from Ontario.

The report, titled Nursing Through Crisis: A Comparative Perspective, found that more than 75 per cent of Canadian nurses who responded to the survey were classified as "burnt out," with higher percentages reported among those in hospital and front-line workers.

"This widespread burnout provides some insight about what life is like for a large percentage of Canadian nurses," the report reads. "It also implies that leaving their position or their profession may be a future reality for these nurses."

However, when asked, only 26.2 per cent of nurses surveyed said they had taken time off of work to manage stress, anxiety or other mental health issues related to working during the pandemic, or to prevent or deal with burnout.

Read more:

Hospitals grapple with ‘historical’ staff absences, burnout amid 6th COVID wave

What's more, a total of 69 per cent of nurses surveyed said they planned to leave their position within five years.

Of those who said the wanted to leave their position, 42 per cent said they would leave the nursing profession all together, would seek opportunities elsewhere or would retire.

The survey also found that 73 per cent of nurses said their workloads had increased "moderately or significantly" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sixty per cent of nurses said they were "moderately or extremely concerned about staffing levels, while 53 per cent said that they were "moderately or extremely" concerned about workloads.

Only 34 per cent of respondents said they felt they had adequate support services to spend time with patients or clients.

While the survey found that nurses in all sectors of the practice struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital and front-line nurses reported the highest levels of depression, anxiety, stress and burnout.

CEO of RNAO Dr. Doris Grinspun called the numbers "both sobering and alarming" adding that they "represent a call to action for the government, health employers, educators and nursing associates."

In the press release, the RNAO said the survey highlights the "instability in the nursing profession that, left unchecked, will have profound impacts on the profession, the effective functioning of the health system and the quality of care Ontarians receive."

Included in the report were a number of recommendations which include:

Repealing Bill 124 and refraining from extending or imposing further wage restraint measures.

Increasing the registered nurse workforce by expediting applications and finding pathways for 26,000 internationally educated nurses living in Ontario to join the workforce.

Increasing enrollments and funding for baccalaureate nursing programs,

Developing and fund a Return to Nursing Now program to attract registered nurses back to Ontario's workforce

Expanding the Nursing Graduate Guarantee, reinstate the Late Career Nurse Initiative and bring back retired registered nurses to serve as mentors.

Establishing a nursing task force to make recommendations on retention and recruitment of registered nurses.

Grinspun said without a "detailed health human resources plan that is laser-focused on retaining nurses in the profession and building Ontarios RN workforce, people's health and the system's ability to operate effectively are in danger."

The survey found that the top retention factor for nurses planning to leave the profession was offering better workplace supports, at 68.3 per cent.

A total of 63.3 per cent said reduced workload was a top retention factor, while 58.3 per cent said the ability to adjust their work schedule was a top factor.

Improved benefits and better career development opportunities were also among the top retention factors at 55.4 per cent and 43.4 per cent, respectively.

Read more:

‘They’re scared’: How COVID-19 is impacting the mental health of doctors, nurses

President of RNAO Morgan Hoffarth said the association's call to increase the province's registered nurse workforce has been backed by the Ontario Hospital Association, Ontario's Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission, Colleges Ontario and the Council of Ontario Universities.

In a statement in the release, Hoffarth said nurses play a "central role in the lives of Ontarians, in health and in illness."

"That's why we need to ensure that all nurses feel valued. And, we must pay unique attention to RNs – who are the ones exiting the profession en masse," she said. "We know nurses are committed and have vital expertise, compassion and skills to share. What we need is sustained effort to retain the nurses we have, and ensure welcoming workplaces for new graduates and others who join the profession."

Hoffarth said the "silver lining" is that there has been a 35 per cent in applications to baccalaureate nursing programs across Ontario.

The RNAO said it is launching four program to help address nurses' needs for better workplace supports by offering more professional development opportunities and "more control over their working lives."

The association said it is launching the Advanced Clinical Practice Fellowship program, the Leadership and Management for Nurses program, the Mentorship for Nurses program and the Nursing Student Preceptor for Long-Term Care program.