Peru community wants its land back, threatening Chinese copper mine

By Marcelo Rochabrun

LAS BAMBAS, Peru (Reuters) - The community of Fuerabamba in the Andean region of Peru was resettled eight years ago to make way for a giant Chinese-owned copper mine, in a $1.2 billion scheme billed as a model solution to protests dogging the South American nation's mining sector.

Now the community wants the land back.

In mid-April, more than a hundred Fuerabamba community members stormed the Las Bambas mine and pitched tents near the open pit, forcing a halt in production at a site that provides 2% of global copper supplies. They were joined by the nearby Huancuire community, which was protesting a planned expansion of the mine on their former land.

 Peruvian indigenous community demands back its ancestral lands, on the site of one of the country's biggest copper mines owned by Chinese firm MMG

An attempt in late April by the mine's Chinese owner MMG Ltd to remove the camp led to clashes in which dozens of people were injured and failed to end the protest. Copper production - worth $3 billion a year - remains suspended, with no restart in sight.

The Fuerabamba members were evicted but the Huancuire community remained in place - and the two groups have formed an alliance to bargain with the government and the mine.

Las Bamas acknowledges that 20% of its obligations under the resettlement agreement are outstanding, including the purchase of new lands for the community.

While Fuerabamba's leaders had initially called just for Las Bambas just to fulfill its commitments, tensions have flared since the failed eviction.

"We're going to keep fighting until Las Bambas shuts down and gets out of here for good," Edison Vargas, the president of the Fuerabamba community, told Reuters. "It's war." The protest is the most severe crisis Las Bambas has faced since opening in 2016, calling into question the future of one of the largest investments ever made in Peru, the world’s No. 2 copper producer, industry experts say. The mine, which still has over a decade of planned production remaining, has faced road blockades in recent years by communities further away that have hit its production. But the invasion marks a major escalation as well as the potential unraveling of Peru's most expensive community resettlement scheme, amid a resurgence in South America of protests against mining projects.




Some 1,600 members of the Fuerabamba community were relocated by Las Bambas in 2014 to a purpose-built village with tidy rows of three-floor homes near the mine. The community approved the move, which came with $300 million in cash payouts, according to the company.

A Reuters reporter who visited Las Bambas in late April saw community members, including women and children, rebuilding adobe houses there and grazing cattle against the mine's open pit backdrop. Residents of Fuerabamba and Huancuire said they would not abandon demands for the return of what they called their ancestral lands.

They face long odds, according to former government officials and advisors. Both communities received substantial payments from Las Bambas in exchange for the land they now want back.

Executives at Las Bambas - which is 62.5%-owned by MMG, the Melbourne-based unit of state-owned China Minmetals Corp - say the protests are illegal and have called on authorities to enforce the rule of law. The company declined requests for comment for this story.

On Tuesday, as the stoppage entered a third week, Peru's government failed to broker a deal in talks at Las Bambas with the communities, as the two sides traded accusations of violence.


Edgardo Orderique, chief executive for operations at Las Bambas, said Fuerabamba and Huancuire members had destroyed tens of millions of dollars of equipment and injured 27 security personnel during the clashes late last month. Vargas said a Fuerabamba member had lost an eye in the violence.

The protest underscores the depth of the challenge facing Las Bambas as it proceeds with plans to increase annual copper output from 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes amid a spike in global copper prices.

"This protest is the most serious that Las Bambas has faced since it began operating in Peru," said Ivan Merino, a former mining minister under Peru's embattled President Pedro Castillo, whose government has been torn between its pledge to uphold the rights of rural communities - the bedrock of its support - and the need to revive the economy.



"The State does not have the control to resolve the conflict," said Merino.

Related video: Protesters tear gassed at copper mine in Peru (Reuters)

Peru's mining ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.


A Peruvian indigenous community demands back its ancestral lands, on the site of one of the country's biggest copper mines owned by Chinese firm MMG

THE FACE OF PROGRESS

In the main square of New Fuerabamba, the town that Las Bambas built, a plaque says the settlement is the durable "face of progress and hope".

Close to a dozen residents, however, said the abrupt transition from rural living to town life had caused trauma and mental health issues. Reuters was not independently able to confirm this.

The residents cited simple problems like the new brick houses - which have electricity and indoor plumbing - do not keep out the cold of the chill Andean nights as well as their former adobe homes.

Residents have also complained that basics like water, food and fuel - which the rural community was previously able to glean from the land - must now be paid for. Many of them no longer plant crops or tend livestock because the replacement plots provided by Las Bambas are too far away.

"The problem is that sustainable development has not been achieved," said Paola Bustamante, a director at Videnza, a consultancy, who previously served as Peru's top official in charge of social conflicts at Las Bambas.

"What has been done is they were given some money and that's it."

As part of the resettlement agreement, Las Bambas gave one job per family at the company for the life of the mine. The company also said in a 2021 presentation that health and education levels have also sharply improved, particularly in young children.

Three residents told Reuters that some members of the community had already spent their payouts. The resettlement plan, which MMG inherited when it bought the mine from Glencore Plc in 2014, gave Fuerabamba's people cash settlements the mine says averaged $500,000 per family.

Residents say the payout was closer to $100,000.

Either way that's a huge sum in a country where the legal annual minimum wage is $3,300.

"For us, it seemed like a lot of money, endless money," Dominga Vargas, a lifelong resident of Fuerabamba, told Reuters from the tent camp at Las Bambas before the eviction. "But now it has all run out and we don't have anything left."

"How could we not regret selling," she added.

GOVERNMENT IGNORED 'CRITICAL SITUATION'

The government gave MMG permission to expand the mine in March. Fuerabamba chief Vargas said Castillo's administration turned a deaf ear to his warnings of a brewing crisis and a request for mediation before the occupation took place.

In a March 28 letter seen by Reuters, Vargas warned the mining ministry of a "critical situation" at Las Bambas. He told Tuesday's meeting that he also went to the capital Lima to ask the government to intervene in the dispute, without success.

On the day of the attempted eviction, April 27, the government declared a state of emergency in the area, suspending the civil rights to assembly and protest.

The government said in a statement following the eviction attempt that it had supported dialogue between the parties from the beginning.

Under Peruvian civil law, property owners can attempt to evict trespassers by force during the first 15 days after they have settled in the property. If that time period lapses, then they need to go through a lengthier legal process.

In the wake of the clashes, Vargas wrote to Las Bambas management saying that further attempts to restart mining operations would be considered a "provocation" by his community and could trigger more violence, according to a separate April 29 letter seen by Reuters.

"Las Bambas won't restart, not a single gram of copper will leave from here," he told the meeting on Tuesday.

The Huancuire community, which also sold land to Las Bambas a decade ago for $33 million that is now key to the expansion project, is demanding more benefits from the minerals under the ground.

Pablo O'Brien, a former adviser to several Peruvian governments including Castillo's, said the communities were pushing their luck making new demands given the large previous payouts.

"This situation is really just open extortion," he said. "They cannot complain that they have not benefited financially."

Community leaders denied the protests were a shakedown.

"As an indigenous community, we need to make ourselves heard because the government has issued this permit without consulting us," said Romualdo Ochoa, the President of Huancuire.

Under Peruvian law, citizens don't own mineral wealth underground and the land was already formally sold, Ochoa acknowledged. But he said indigenous communities have special rights because of their long ancestry in the territory: "What's under our soil still belongs to us."

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Additional reporting by Marco Aquino; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Daniel Flynn)

PHOTOS © Reuters/ANGELA PONCE

Quebec to pass unbelievably onerous language law
Tristin Hopper - Wednesday

© Provided by National Post

Quebec Premier Francois Legault, whose government is soon expected to pass a massive expansion of French-language mandates in the province. Bill 96 expands considerably on the Charter of the French Language first introduced in 1977 under the much-contested Bill 101.

First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.
TOP STORY

The Quebec National Assembly is entering the final stretch of passing Bill 96 , a controversial law set to dramatically expand the province’s ability to mandate the use of French both in public and private life.

Proponents of the bill have called it a critical tool to preserve Quebec as North America’s last majority French-speaking jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Indigenous leaders have denounced the bill as “ cultural genocide ” for imposing French on the province’s predominantly English-speaking First Nations communities. Physicians’ groups have warned it “could endanger people’s lives or have negative impacts on mental health if applied.” And last week, Quebec college students staged a mass walkout to protest the bill’s curbs on English-language education. 

Below, some of the more contested aspects of Bill 96.


Doctors would be forced to address patients in French

With limited exceptions, Bill 96 requires doctors to address their patients in French, e ven in situations where both doctor and patient would better understand each other in another language. Certain bilingual institutions, such as the Jewish General Hospital, are exempt . As are patients who can prove that they’ve attended an English-language school in Canada, or immigrants who have arrived in Quebec within the last six months. But for everyone else, everything from cancer diagnoses to Alzheimer’s treatment must be performed in French.

If a doctor violates the tenets of Bill 96, all it takes is an anonymous complaint to the Office québécois de la langue française for investigators to enter their office and start seizing records without a warrant , including confidential medical documents. And in this, doctors are not alone: Many of the provisions outlined below are similarly backed by expanded powers of search and seizure by the Office québécois de la langue française.



Whole categories of legal contracts will become mandatory to draft in French

The bill mandates “ francisation ” of any company with more than 25 employees, which means that the companies will need to obtain government certification that they predominantly function in French. An estimated 20,000 businesses will be captured by the new regulations, according to the provincial government’s own figures.

Quebec’s current laws aren’t tremendously enthused about job notices that request proficiency in a non-French language, but they allow it in situations where “the nature of the duties requires such knowledge.” Bill 96 takes that a step farther, and requires employers to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that non-French languages are spoken in the workplace as little as humanly possible.

Under Bill 96, any “contracts of adhesion” must also be drafted in French, with violators subject to penalties of up to $30,000 per day (which makes the liability for noncompliance “nearly indefinite” according to one legal analysis ). Any employment or service contract must exist in French form, even if both parties would prefer another language. This also holds true for court proceedings.



First Nations leaders are saying the bill demolishes “any hope of reconciliation”

Indigenous communities in Quebec generally don’t speak French as a first language. The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory outside Montreal is part of a wider Mohawk Council that includes many members in the English-speaking United States. Inuit and Cree communities in the province’s Arctic regions weren’t even part of Quebec until 1912, and the Inuit in particular still retain widespread household use of Inuktitut, with English as the usual second language. For this reason, First Nations leaders have particular issue with Bill 96’s mandates on CEGEPs, the publicly funded colleges offered to Quebecers between high school and university.

Students at English-language CEGEPs will henceforth need to complete at least five classes in French to graduate, which First Nations leaders have said will push down already-low Indigenous graduation rates. “We declare that this bill, should it pass, will never apply … and that our people will not accept its application over them anywhere within their ancestral lands,” reads a recent statement by the Haudenosaunee Longhouse, the traditional Mohawk government in Kahnawake.

English-language schools will now have a hard cap on how many students they can accept

Another education-related provision of Bill 96 is that English-language CEGEPs will have top-down quotas on how many students they can take in. English-language elementary and secondary school is currently offered in Quebec to a select subset of what has been called “historic Anglophones”; English speakers with established roots in the province. New immigrants to Quebec, for instance, are already required to do their schooling in French regardless of their mother tongue.

But CEGEP students still have free rein to pick either an English or French school. Bill 96 brings that regime to an end; henceforth English-language CEGEP student will only be allowed to represent 17.5 per cent of total CEGEP admissions – a measure that has been denounced by Francophone students looking to brush up on their English before studying at a university in English Canada or the United States.

WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE ATOMIC BOMB
Japanese writer who documented WWII Tokyo firebombing dies
Wednesday

TOKYO (AP) — Katsumoto Saotome, a Japanese writer who gathered the accounts of survivors of the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo in World War II to raise awareness of the massive civilian deaths and the importance of peace, has died. He was 90.



One of his publishers, Iwanami Shoten, confirmed his death. He died on Tuesday of organ failure related to old age at a hospital in Saitama, north of Tokyo, NHK public television reported.

A native of Tokyo, Saotome was 12 when he narrowly survived the firebombing of the city on March 10, 1945, that turned the densely populated downtown area of the Japanese capital into an inferno. “I ran for my life as countless cluster bombs rained down,” Saotome recalled in one of his storytelling events.

More than 105,000 people are estimated to have died and a million made homeless in a single night, but the devastation has been largely eclipsed in history by the U.S. atomic bombings of two Japanese cities several months later.

After the war, Saotome pursued his writing while working in a factory. His debut autobiographical story, “Downtown Home” was nominated for the prestigious Naoki literary prize in 1952.

In 1970, Saotome began visiting survivors of the firebombing to hear their stories to let their voices be heard.

He established a civic group to document the firebombing and collect documents and artifacts about the attack, leading to the establishment of a museum, the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, in 2002. He served as its director until 2019.

As head of the museum, he published magazines about the firebombing, while continuing to write books for children and young adults to raise awareness of the tragedy.

“We must hand the baton to the younger generation” to keep retelling the story, he said in an interview with NHK in 2019.

Many of the survivors of the firebombing feel they were forgotten by history and by the government.

Postwar governments have provided a total of 60 trillion yen ($460 billion) in welfare support for military veterans and bereaved families, and medical support for survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but nothing for civilian victims of the firebombings.

Acclaimed filmmaker Yoji Yamada, known for his highly popular film series “Otoko wa Tsuraiyo" ("It’s Hard Being a Man"), featuring a lovable wandering peddler named Tora-san, was a longtime friend of Saotome. He told Japanese media that he was “deeply saddened by the loss of his precious friend with whom he discussed postwar Japan, war and peace.”

Yamada often visited the firebombing museum. Sometimes Saotome took him around the area, making him a big fan of the Shibamata area, which became home to the Tora-san series.

Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction ...

https://apjjf.org › -Mark-Selden

by M Selden · Cited by 67 — As Michael Sherry and Cary Karacas have pointed out for the US and Japan ... Father Flaujac, a French cleric, compared the firebombing to the Tokyo ...

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  The Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Ground - Japan Focus

  https://apjjf.org › 2018/08 › Plung

  

  Apr 15, 2018 — Napalm, firebombing, Dugway Proving Ground, Japanese Village, ... precision bombing, civilian bombing, Tokyo air raids. ... Davis, Mike.

Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945) - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bombing_of_Tokyo_(...

On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city.

‎Background · ‎Preparations · ‎Attack · ‎Aftermath

Mike Davis - Firebomb | PDF | Strategic Bombing | Chemical Warfare

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..

Firebomb. How to Stop Worrying and Love the Incendiary Bomb. By Mike Davis. MacArthur fellow Mike Davis is the author of “City of Quartz”, “Ecology of Fear” ...

Landscapes can be weaponized to influence public opinion and perception during war

Fionn Byrne, Assistant Professor,

 School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture,

 University of British Columbia 

Wednesday
The Conversation

Blast craters, denuded landscapes and burning oil wells. When we think of the relation between war and the landscape, we think of such destructive acts and toxic legacies. Through this lens, nature and the landscape are often seen as casualties of war.

Yet there have been cases where nations have used the landscape as a weapon. In one such touchstone case — Operation Ranch Hand — the U.S. military released a defoliant called Agent Orange over the South Vietnam countryside to weaponize the forest during the Vietnam War.

While the end of the Vietnam War saw an international ban on using the environment as a weapon, landscape design — which includes the planning and planting of green spaces — continues to present itself as a tool capable of influencing the hearts and minds of local populations and ultimately achieving military objectives.

While speaking about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said,

“Winning a battle is not winning the war. Taking a city does not mean Vladimir Putin’s taking the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. On the contrary, he is destined to lose.”

Clearly, the United States military doctrine considers winning “hearts and minds” as a necessary measure to win a war.

As a design critic who has been studying the role of landscapes in warfare, I argue that trees and green spaces can be components of a non-coercive mode of warfare, as they can be used to further community solidarity and diminish the likelihood of insurgency.
Winning hearts and minds

The experience of the United States military in Afghanistan has proven that having a more powerful military force does not guarantee winning a war.

While the Taliban surrendered Kandahar only two months after the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, the U.S. military remained in Afghanistan and engaged in violent conflict for the next 20 years, ultimately withdrawing and returning the nation to Taliban control.

Central to the United States’ effort to secure peace was the strategy of winning “hearts and minds,” or making emotional and intellectual appeals to the local population through attraction and persuasion instead of force.

The U.S. military may have ultimately failed to win the war in Afghanistan, but they did develop tactics to secure peace and win over the hearts and minds of local citizens. While not every effort was successful, I found several instances where the U.S. military’s war-fighting objectives aligned with an unlikely ally — the profession of landscape architecture.

Landscape architects, after all, have always worked to improve public and environmental health. And while hearts and minds are not exactly the same as physical and mental health, it is understood that physical health and well-being are necessary to establish a peaceful society.
Green spaces influence health and mental well-being

American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s legacy of park building in the United States shows that landscape architects are concerned with public health and social stability. Olmsted was the first professional to use the title of “landscape architect” and is best known for designing New York’s Central Park.

Olmsted’s parks helped sustain Americans’ mental and physical health and social connections during the darkest days of the pandemic. Urban residents enjoyed the greenery in these designed spaces after recognizing that spending time in nature can improve one’s physical health and mental well-being.

Since Olmsted’s time, a growing body of scientific research has concluded that exposure to green space contributes to improved health and well-being. While medical professionals have been prescribing spending time with nature, landscape architects have been working to maximize the positive outcomes of exposure through design.

Landscape design presents itself as a tool capable of influencing the health and well-being and, therefore, the hearts and minds of local populations. Ultimately it can achieve military objectives through the planning and planting of green space.
Weaponizing the landscape

Using the landscape as a weapon is an underappreciated area of study.

In 1976, the United States, along with 47 other nations, became signatories to the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. This treaty prohibits “modification of the natural environment for use as a weapon of war” and “acts of war injurious to the natural environment.”

While deliberate environmental destruction continues, exemplified by the burning of oil wells set ablaze by Iraqi troops during the Gulf War, researchers hope that the International Criminal Court may one day prosecute “crimes against the environment.”

More recently, the Stop Ecocide Foundation has been working to provide a criminal definition of ecocide that will carry the force of international law, making punishable “severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment.”

These efforts are laudable and deserve our support. Yet, the understandable emphasis on damage and destruction decreases the attention given to acts of war, like tree planting efforts, that “improve” an environment.
Understanding the long-term impacts of war

One project undertaken by the U.S. military in Afghanistan saw active troops lead a reforestation effort in the Panjshir region, where they planted 35,000 trees, creating a regional green space.

As many individuals experienced this regional planting effort, the landscape influenced the hearts and minds of local citizens on a population scale.

Despite the U.S. military now having withdrawn from Afghanistan, these planted trees and other green spaces continue to grow and exert influence. Thus, it is not just acts of war injurious to the environment that have wide-reaching and long-term impacts on a population.

As I write from my office on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people, I am more keenly aware that a beautiful landscape can manipulate hearts and minds and become a weapon of war. The continued presence of a colonial landscape, designed and imposed on these lands, is easier to recognize if we ask what this land looked like before and after establishing a settler-colonial society.

We experience green spaces differently depending on their design and our cultural background. We need to think about who designed and built our local green spaces and for what purpose. Ultimately, it matters if the landscape is redesigned and replanted by local populations or by occupying forces.

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

Read more:

Crimes against the environment: the silent victim of warfare

How would Canada approach the prospect of war?

Language matters when Googling controversial people

Ahmed Al-Rawi, 

Assistant Professor, 

News, Social Media, and Public Communication,

 Simon Fraser University

 - Wednesday
The Conversation


One of the useful features of search engines like Google is the autocomplete function that enables users to find fast answers to their questions or queries. However, autocomplete search functions are based on ambiguous algorithms that have been widely criticized because they often provide biased and racist results.

The ambiguity of these algorithm stems from the fact that most of us know very little about them — which has led some to refer to them as “black boxes.” Search engines and social media platforms do not offer any meaningful insight or details on the nature of the algorithms they employ. As users, we have the right to know the criteria used to produce search results and how they are customized for individual users, including how people are labelled by Google’s search engine algorithms.

To do so, we can use a reverse engineering process, conducting multiple online searches on a specific platform to better understand the rules that are in place. For example, the hashtag #fentanyl can be presently searched and used on Twitter, but it is not allowed to be used on Instagram, indicating the kind of rules that are available on each platform.
Automated information

When searching for celebrities using Google, there is often a brief subtitle and thumbnail picture associated with the person that is automatically generated by Google.

Our recent research showed how Google’s search engine normalizes conspiracy theorists, hate figures and other controversial people by offering neutral and even sometimes positive subtitles. We used virtual private networks (VPNs) to conceal our locations and hide our browsing histories to ensure that search results were not based on our geographical location or search histories.

We found, for example, that Alex Jones, “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America,” is defined as an “American radio host,” while David Icke, who is also known for spreading conspiracies, is described as a “former footballer.” These terms are considered by Google as the defining characteristics of these individuals and can mislead the public.
Dynamic descriptors

In the short time since our research was conducted in the fall of 2021, search results seem to have changed.

I found that some of the subtitles that we originally identified, have been either modified, removed or replaced. For example, the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was subtitled “Convicted criminal,” yet now there is no label associated with him.

Faith Goldy, the far-right Canadian white nationalist who was banned from Facebook for spreading hate speech, did not have a subtitle. Now however, her new Google subtitle is “Canadian commentator.”

There is no indication of what a commentator suggests. The same observation is found in relation to American white supremacist Richard B. Spencer. Spencer did not have a label a few months ago, but is now an “American editor,” which certainly does not characterize his legacy.

Another change relates to Lauren Southern, a Canadian far-right member, who was labelled as a “Canadian activist,” a somewhat positive term, but is now described as a “Canadian author.”

The seemingly random subtitle changes show that the programming of the algorithmic black boxes is not static, but changes based on several indicators that are still unknown to us.

Searching in Arabic vs. English

A second important new finding from our research is related to the differences in the subtitle results based on the selected language search. I speak and read Arabic, so I changed the language setting and searched for the same figures to understand how they are described in Arabic.

To my surprise, I found several major differences between English and Arabic. Once again, there was nothing negative in describing some of the figures that I searched for. Alex Jones becomes a “TV presenter of talk shows,” and Lauren Southern is erroneously described as a “politician.”

And there’s much more from the Arabic language searches: Faith Goldy becomes an “expert,” David Icke transforms from a “former footballer” into an “author” and Jake Angeli, the “QAnon shaman” becomes an “actor” in Arabic and an “American activist” in English.

Richard B. Spencer becomes a “publisher” and Dan Bongino, a conspiracist permanently banned from YouTube, transforms from an “American radio host” in English to a “politician” in Arabic. Interestingly, the far-right figure, Tommy Robinson, is described as a “British-English political activist” in English but has no subtitle in Arabic.

Misleading labels

What we can infer from these language differences is that these descriptors are insufficient, because they condense one’s description to one or a few words that can be misleading.

Understanding how algorithms function is important, especially as misinformation and distrust are on the rise and as conspiracy theories are still spreading rapidly. We also need more insight into how Google and other search engines work — it is important to hold these companies accountable for their biased and ambiguous algorithms.

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

Read more:

There is, in fact, a ‘wrong’ way to use Google. Here are 5 tips to set you on the right path

Is Google getting worse? Increased advertising and algorithm changes may make it harder to find what you’re looking for

Ahmed Al-Rawi receives funding from the Department of Heritage, the Digital Citizen Initiative.

BOSSES SAY WORKERS ARE GREEDY

Forty per cent of Canadians would take less pay to work from home, survey finds

Nearly two in five (36 per cent) Canadian remote or partly remote workers say they would be willing to take a lower-paying job for the option to work from home, compared to a higher-paying role that requires full-time work at the office, according to an Ipsos survey * .

© Provided by National Post 

One recent poll showed 81 per cent of Toronto area office workers posted to their homes are happier that way.

Carly Penrose - Wednesday
National Post

The same survey, which polled 585 Canadian workers aged 18 and older, reported nearly one-third (32 per cent) of respondents would change jobs if their employer required them to work exclusively from the office — and 15 per cent have already switched jobs for that reason.

According to Statistics Canada, four per cent of workers were working mostly-remotely in 2016, but by 2021, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that number increased to 32 per cent. Even when the pandemic is over, though, it appears workers are not eager to be back in the office full-time.

The pandemic changed how Canadians work — and how they want to work: poll

Employees are 'in the driver’s seat': How employers are trying to lure people back to the office

Related video: 1 in 3 Canadians willing to change jobs if forced to work from office exclusively: poll (Global News)

“Given unemployment rates right now, I think organizations have to be very thoughtful about the kinds of settings they offer for people working for their company,” said Terri Griffith, a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University.

Last year, Forbes reported that companies like Google and Facebook said remote employees who live in, or relocate to geographic areas with a lower cost of living may be paid less. While employers in Canada cannot reduce an existing employee’s pay without significant legal risk, they could offer lower compensation before the person is hired. Griffith says that’s a risk “[if] another company says ‘no I’m going to pay you for the value of the work, I don’t care where you live.’ They may end up with the better employee.”

Shawn Hewat, CEO of tech company Wavy, said she has seen many companies struggling with recruitment and retention. Providing a remote work option can be an important incentive, “if that choice is taken away, you’re going to suffer from a culture perspective and from a hiring and retention perspective.”

* These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between April 14 to 19, 2022, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 585 working Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 4.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all working Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

Democrats seek criminal charges against Trump Interior head

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to investigate whether a Trump administration interior secretary engaged in possible criminal conduct while helping an Arizona developer get a crucial permit for a housing project.

The criminal referral says David Bernhardt pushed for approval of the project by developer Michael Ingram, a Republican donor and supporter of former President Donald Trump, despite a federal wildlife official's finding that it would threaten habitats for imperiled species.

Bernhardt led Interior from 2019 to 2021. In 2017, he was the No. 2 official at the department when the Fish and Wildlife Service, an Interior Department agency, reversed its opposition to the Villages at Vigneto, the proposed 28,000-home development in southern Arizona, and allowed it to move forward.

Democrat Reps. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, the committee chairman, and Katie Porter of California, who leads a subcommittee on oversight and investigations, made the referral in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. They said the committee has conducted an extensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the 2017 decision.

A high-ranking interior official had said issuing a Clean Water Act permit for the project could adversely affect endangered species or critical habitat in the area. The region is home to birds such as as the southwestern willow flycatcher and yellow-billed cuckoo, as well as the northern Mexican garter snake.

In their referral, Democrats say Ingram met with Bernhardt in August 2017, two weeks before a Fish and Wildlife official received the phone call directing him to reverse the decision blocking the project. The meeting was not disclosed in Bernhardt’s public calendar or travel documents.

Two months later, Ingram made a $10,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fund. The permit was approved later that month. At least nine other donors associated with Ingram also donated to the Trump Victory Fund in the days after Ingram's donation, Democrats said.

“Evidence strongly suggests the decision was the result of a quid pro quo between Vigneto’s developer, Michael Ingram, and senior level officials in the Trump administration,'' including Bernhardt, who was then the deputy Interior secretary, the Democrats wrote.

Ingram "had frequent access to high-ranking officials across the Trump administration,'' including Bernhardt, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and then-Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, Democrats said. Zinke, who led Interior from March 2017 to January 2019, met with Ingram in May 2017 and April 2018, the Democrats said in documents submitted with the referral. Zinke and his staff emailed Ingram multiple times, using personal email addresses, Democrats said.

Bernhardt, now a lawyer in private practice, called the Democrats' letter “a pathetic attempt by career politicians to fabricate news.”

A Justice Department spokesman said the department received the letter and will review it.

The lawmakers asked Garland to investigate and consider bringing criminal charges against Bernhardt or other officials.

"The findings of this investigation show us yet again that the previous administration cast career staff expertise aside while they handed out federal agency decisions to Trump’s buddies and big donors on a pay-to-play basis,” Grijalva said in a statement.

Porter said that “an exchange of money for a specific government action is the clearest form of corruption there is, and Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — share an understanding that this kind of quid pro quo erodes our democracy.”

Lanny Davis, a lawyer for El Dorado Holdings, a company owned by Ingram, called the referral by Grijalva and Porter “false, misleading (and) unfair" and said it used "innuendo as a surrogate for fact.''

El Dorado participated in multiple meetings with the committee, "acted in full transparency and gave full cooperation without a subpoena,'' Davis said in a statement. Even so, the company was denied the opportunity to rebut the allegations in the referral or even a chance to speak to Grijalva, Davis said.

"Unfortunately, the American people have been numbed and accustomed to political attacks that have little to do with the truth, and there needs to be bipartisan outrage when this occurs,'' added Davis, a prominent Democrat who was special counsel to former President Bill Clinton.

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the left-leaning Center for Western Priorities, called the allegations against Bernhardt “extremely serious,” adding that the Justice Department should launch a full investigation.

“We said all along that David Bernhardt was too compromised and too corrupt to be a cabinet secretary. This is damning evidence of a straight up pay-for-play favor,'' she said.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

Matthew Daly, The Associated Press

Exclusive: Senate sued for $332,500 over cancelled survey on employee harassment

Ryan Tumilty - Yesterday 

POSTMEDIA

OTTAWA – The Senate is being sued for $332,500 after it cancelled a survey of Senators and staff on workplace harassment because managers didn’t like the questions being asked.


© Provided by National PostThe Senate Chamber in Ottawa.

WPV Corp, a human resources company that is now named AI2HR, won a competitive bid in late 2020 and signed a deal with the Senate in January 2021 to do an assessment of bullying and harassment in the workplace.

The work was done as part of new federal legislation, which requires all federal workplaces including the House of Commons and the Senate to have policies about harassment and bullying.

In the fall of 2020, the Senate awarded nearly $500,000 in compensation to employees of former senator Don Meredith who was accused of creating a toxic work environment and of harassing and sexually harassing some employees. The complaints against Meredith first emerged in 2013 and Meredith resigned from the Senate in 2017.

In its statement of claim, WPV Corp charges that public servants who help oversee the Senate told the company the survey as first drafted “would raise the objections of Senators” and that the questionnaire did not reflect the unique culture of the Senate.

The company charges that Senate staff told them the red chamber’s culture is different, because Senators “ have no leadership” and are “not accountable in the traditional sense.” While the company offered to make some changes to some questions, it told Senate staff it was not able to completely change its approach.

In the suit, the company said it planned several trips to the Ottawa area only to have meetings cancelled and that Senate staff never properly explained the unique culture and were slow to respond to requests for more information.

The company’s president Michael Rosenberg said he couldn’t comment on the lawsuit or get into any details about the dispute, but said he is proud of the company’s approach, which he said finds problems in real-time.

“We always stand behind the data our technology provides and ensure its accuracy. This protects the organization, management and all its people. Integrity is an important value to us,” he said in an email.

He said their questionnaire has been vetted through research with St. Mary’s University in Halifax and it can’t simply be tweaked to direct an outcome. The company boasts on its website of several firms large and small that have benefitted from its service.

“If an organization tries to ‘game’ the data in order to create a false impression, we cannot stand behind the data. To do so would ruin our reputation and significantly increase our own liability,” he said. “We stand behind the validity of our tools and technology and cannot change it to guarantee an outcome as that would destroy our reputation.”

The Senate’s statement of defence denies any of the company’s charges. It says the company promised a “tailor-made” questionnaire and when it failed to deliver that the contract was cancelled.

The company was paid $13,500, the first portion of what was supposed to be a $45,000 contract. The lawsuit seeks the full contract payment, plus an additional $200,000 for business the company said it lost because of the failed Senate contract and punitive damages of another $100,000.

Pam Ross, a spokesperson for the Senate, would not comment on the suit citing the ongoing litigation. In an email, she did say that the Senate retained another firm to do the assessment at a cost of $74,250.

While the contract with WPV Corp was falling apart, the Senate unveiled a new harassment policy, which passed through the Senate in March. Ross said the Senate decided to incorporate the results of that survey into its policy after it was complete.

“Although not legally required to do so, the Senate wanted an independent third party to conduct the workplace assessment but did not want this process to delay the adoption of the policy,” she said.

The new harassment policy includes a third-party provider hired to take and review complaints. Ross said that service is in place, but would not reveal how many reports it has received, citing confidentiality.

A trial date or mediation hearing on the case has yet to be set. Statements of claim and defence are legal filings and include allegations that have not been proven in court.

46% of Canadians support use of Emergencies Act: Poll

Jane Stevenson - Yesterday 
Toronto Sun

Much like everything else in life right now, Canadians are divided over whether the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa could have been dispersed without Prime Minister using the Emergencies Act.

According to a new Angus Reid poll, 46% say use of the Act was necessary to give police the manpower necessary to break up the protest while others preferred an alternative.

Along party lines, 79% of past Liberal voters and 58% of past New Democrats supporters agreed with the use of the act.

But 34% of Canadians and 51% of past CPC voters felt it was unnecessary while 15% say that they don’t think any action was necessary.

Another 45% said the Emergency Act was a good example of how other governments should do it while 44% said it set a bad precedent for future governments.

In terms of provinces, 50% of Ontario residents, 49% of B.C. residents and 49% of Atlantic Canada said the Emergencies Act was necessary while 21% of Alberta residents and 23% of Saskatchewan residents said no action was necessary.

Along gender lines, 53% of men say the use of the act is a precedent-setting concern, compared to 34% of women who thought the same while 52% of the women said it was a good example of how the Act can be effectively used, compared to 38% of men.

Angus Reid conducted an online survey from May 4-6 of 1,992 Canadian adults with a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

White House, senators have 'sympathy' for Canada's position on Line 5, says Wilkinson

WASHINGTON — White House officials, Capitol Hill lawmakers and the U.S. secretary of energy have all expressed "significant sympathy" for the plight of Canada's Line 5 pipeline, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Thursday after a day of meetings in the U.S. capital.



President Joe Biden's administration understands the cross-border pipeline's ongoing role in securing North American energy security, even with both countries building a carbon-free future, Wilkinson said during a phone-in news conference from the Canadian Embassy in D.C.

But the 65-year-old pipeline, a vital energy artery for border states in the U.S. Midwest as well as Ontario and Quebec, is facing a pair of existential legal challenges — one from the government of Michigan, the other from an Indigenous group in neighbouring Wisconsin.

"I certainly did raise … that this is part of enhancing North American energy security, that it's ensuring that we are not taking steps that are going to take us backwards," Wilkinson said after a panel discussion with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

"In the meetings with Secretary Granholm, in the meetings with the White House and certainly in the meetings that I had with a number of senators, I think there was a significant sympathy for the Canadian position."

That position — first expressed by Wilkinson's predecessor Seamus O'Regan, and reiterated by Wilkinson himself last week — is that the continued operation of the pipeline is "non-negotiable."

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, long a political ally of Biden, has been trying to shut down Line 5 since November 2020, fearing a catastrophic rupture in the ecologically sensitive Straits of Mackinac, where the twin lines cross the Great Lakes.

And a fresh threat has emerged in Wisconsin, where the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa is urging a federal judge to close the pipeline amid a dispute over easements on Indigenous territory that the band argues expired in 2013.

While Canada remains "very focused" on avoiding such a decision, Wilkinson allowed Thursday that Ottawa has been giving some thought to what it would do otherwise, though he did not elaborate on what strategies are in play.

"In the remote eventuality that there is an issue that we need to address, of course it's prudent for us to be thinking about what might be done," he said. "But our primary focus continues to be on ensuring that this pipeline remains open."

The Michigan case eventually prompted Canada's federal government to file a so-called amicus brief — an argument from a "friend of the court" in favour of Calgary-based Enbridge Inc., the defendant in both cases and Line 5's owner and operator.

Ottawa has also invoked a 1977 pipelines treaty, originally sought by the U.S. government in an effort to avoid interruptions to the cross-border flow of energy, and those talks between the two countries have been ongoing.

Canada won't be filing an amicus brief in the Wisconsin case on the advice of lawyers who warned it could be "counterproductive" to efforts to resolve the dispute in Michigan, Wilkinson said. And he expressed hope that the treaty talks could encompass the issues in play in both cases.

"It's certainly possible that it can be part of the same process," he said.

"Ultimately, what we are looking for is a resolution to all of these issues, so the discussions that will be going on will relate to Line 5 more generally. My hope is that it could be resolved through the same process."

In their panel discussion, hosted by the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Wilkinson and Granholm agreed that the crisis in Ukraine and pressure on supply chains have helped to bring the two countries closer together on the issue of energy security.

That discussion was more focused on the future than the present, but the Vancouver-born Granholm sounded bullish on the idea of working closely with Canada to develop a green energy future.

"To me, the opportunity is just so powerful to have a North American powerhouse of an alignment on clean energy deployment and technology development," she said, suggesting former prime minister Lester Pearson's dream of "peace in the world" could be realized by ending dependence on fossil fuels.

And she acknowledged the potential Canada offers as a partner to the U.S. on the extraction and production of critical minerals and rare earth metals, a linchpin component of the global push toward electric vehicles and away from the internal combustion engine.

"Canada has got some best practices that we should be looking at; we shouldn't be afraid of extraction, if it's done in a responsible way," she said. "There's lessons, but there's also real partnerships that we can be doing on areas where we really need help."

Granholm also indicated that the Biden administration is taking steps to "bust through" regional and state-level opposition to projects designed to allow the U.S. to import clean hydroelectricity generated in Quebec and elsewhere north of the border.

In 2020, voters in Maine pointedly rejected a fully approved proposal to run transmission lines through their state that would have linked a billion-dollar Hydro-Québec energy generation project with markets in Massachusetts, as well as Vermont and New York.

"If Hydro-Québec wants to make sure that they are able to deliver hydropower and a state votes against it, and that state is a critical state to be able to make that connection to the northeast, It's extremely frustrating," she said.

"We should take local interests into account, but sometimes those local interests are funded by bigger interests that don't have necessarily the big goal of getting to 100 per cent clean electricity in mind."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press