It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Helium-filled airships to carry passengers as soon as 2026 in $600 million deal with British Airways' sister airline
A sister airline of British Airways struck a deal to buy 10 helium airships.
Air Nostrum signed the deal with a British company called Hybrid Air Vehicles.
The helium-filled airships could be transporting passengers in Spain as soon as 2026, the firm said.
Passengers in Spain could soon be boarding airships instead of jets for short-haul flights.
Air Nostrum, an airline owned by the same company as British Airways, ordered 10 helium airships to be used for regional travel.
It is the first order for the Airlander airships that will be made by Hybrid Air Vehicles, a British company part-backed by Iron Maiden frontman and qualified commercial pilot Bruce Dickinson.
Production of the 100-seat Airlander 10, which can spend up to five days aloft, is due to start in northern England later this year.
The airships could start flying passengers on routes such as Barcelona to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca as soon as 2026.
The Airlander 10 has a helium-filled hull and uses combustion engines that burn jet fuel, but the company said it planned to switch to electric engines to reduce carbon emissions by 2030.
Trips on the airships would be considerably slower than on passenger jets, but be much greener.
Air Nostrum's president, Carlos Bertomeu, said the deal was struck on the basis that the airships would "drastically reduce emissions."
A prototype of the Airlander has flown on six test flights, but it crashed in 2016 on its second outing and two people were hurt when it broke free from its moorings the following year.
However, its design has been approved by European regulators.
Teslas using driver-assist systems were involved in 273 crashes over the past 9 months, according to NHTSA
Matt McFarland - CNN
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released on Wednesday nine months of crash data from vehicles using driver-assist technologies like Tesla Autopilot as well as fully autonomous vehicles like Waymo’s robotaxis.
NHTSA broke crash data into two categories based on the level of the autonomous systems: driver-assist systems – which offer speed and steering input – and fully autonomous technologies, which are intended to one day safely function without human intervention. NHTSA found that there have been 367 crashes in the last nine months involving vehicles that were using these driver-assist technologies. 273 of the incidents involved a Tesla system, either its “full self-driving” software or its precursor, Tesla Autopilot.
There were 130 crashes involving fully automated driving systems, 62 of which were Waymo crashes. Transdev, a shuttle operator, reported 34 crashes, and Cruise, which offers robotaxis for General Motors in San Francisco, reported 23.
The data lacks critical context like fleet size or the number of miles traveled, making it impossible to fairly compare the safety of the different technologies. Not all relevant crashes may be included in the data set, NHTSA said, because crash data recording may vary widely among manufacturers.
“I would advise caution before attempting to draw conclusions based only on the data we’re releasing. In fact, the data alone may raise more questions than they answer,” NHTSA administrator Steven Cliff told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.
Two of the technologies with the most reported crashes are also two of the most commonly used systems. Tesla Autopilot, for example, comes standard on all of its vehicles, unlike competing driver-assist systems from other automakers. Drivers describe using Autopilot regularly because they say it can make them feel less fatigued after long drives. Waymo, the other company with the most total crashes, operates the most extensive robotaxi service in the country, with operations in much of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona and San Francisco.
For the first time, automakers and robotaxi operators have had to report to NHTSA data about crashes involving these vehicles. NHTSA says it will use the data to identify safety issues and intervene as necessary. Pony.ai, which is testing robotaxis in California, recalled three of its vehicles this year following data NHTSA gathered from this process.
Of the 497 crashes total, 43% occurred in California. The state is home to Silicon Valley, making it a hotspot for testing new technologies.
NHTSA found that of the 367 driver-assist crashes reported, there were six fatalities and five serious injuries.
The safety risks of these new technologies have drawn the attention of safety advocates for years. There are not specific regulations for driver-assist systems, leaving automakers to market and describe the systems as they so choose.
Tesla’s Autopilot and “full self-driving” software have been especially controversial. NHTSA’s investigation into Teslas rear-ending first responders’ vehicles was expanded last week and could lead to a recall.
The National Transportation Safety Board has investigated fatal crashes involving Autopilot and called for the automaker to make changes, such as developing technology to more effectively sense the driver’s level of engagement and alert them when their engagement is lacking.
Tesla has released data since 2018 claiming that Autopilot has a lower crash rate per mile than typical driving. But safety experts caution that Tesla’s analysis compares apples to oranges, as most Autopilot driving takes place on highways, where crash rates per mile are much lower than all driving.
Tesla states that drivers using Autopilot must remain alert and be prepared to take full control of the vehicle at a moment’s notice. However, drivers using technologies like Autopilot risk becoming distracted, experts say.
A 2021 MIT study found that Tesla drivers looked away from the road more frequently while using Autopilot than when driving without the driver-assist system.
NHTSA said that its investigation into Teslas rear-ending emergency vehicles while using Autopilot found that in 37 of 43 crashes with detailed car log data available, drivers had their hands on the wheel in the last second prior to the collision.
For years, Tesla detected torque on the wheel to determine if a driver was engaged. It’s begun to use an in-car camera for detecting distraction, which many safety experts say is a superior method, as cameras can track eye movement.
“We see value in having nationally standardized and uniform crash reporting during this early stage of the development and deployment of autonomous driving technology, and there’s public benefit in NHTSA sharing its findings,” Waymo said in response to the data. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Why we may never stop getting COVID: What we know about reinfections and immunity
Sharon Kirkey -NATIONAL POST
Many Canadians are wondering if we will ever see an end to COVID-19. Experts say there are various factors that keep the virus coming back.
“I feel okay,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured Canadians Monday while sharing his second COVID-19 positive test since January, joining growing numbers reporting repeated tangles with COVID. “He’s not alone,” said Dr. Catherine Hankins, co-chair of Canada’s Immunity Task Force. Nearly nine million adults in Canada had been infected with “parental” Omicron, BA.1, by mid-March, according to task force-funded research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Most people who got BA.1 might have thought, ‘I’m good now for a bit.’ But it depends on what the virus throws at us,” Hankins said, and SARS-CoV-2 has proven gifted at reinfecting people by mutating and darting around immunity from vaccines and previous infections. COVID infections also don’t always jog the immune system. Another study funded by Hankins’ group found that one in eight people with COVID did not develop detectable antibodies. The only predictor of an inability to create antibodies? No fever or chills. “We will probably never stop getting COVID,” said Matthew Miller, holder of the Canada Research Chair in viral pandemics at Hamilton’s McMaster University. How often we get reinfected will depend how quickly SARS-CoV-2 mutates in the future and how long immunity lasts, he said. “Both issues are a little bit uncertain at the moment,” though it’s possible to make some reasonable predictions, he said. The National Post’s Sharon Kirkey spoke with Miller, Hankins and London, Ont., infectious diseases physician Dr. Sameer Elsayed about how long reinfections are expected to keep happening.
Why are people reporting second, third, even fourth COVID infections?
“Viruses like smallpox and polio (which can be eliminated) do not generate ‘variants’ capable of escaping immunity in the same way as coronaviruses,” said Miller.
Alpha, Beta, Delta and then the remarkably contagious Omicron. The rapid-fire emergence of new variants has largely been driven by the “massive number of infections that have happened globally over the past couple of years,” Miller said.
Heavily mutated Omicron was more transmissible than Delta, and its subvariants BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5, appear more efficient spreaders still. The recent sixth wave was propelled by the BA.2 subvariant, and BA.1 infections didn’t entirely prevent people from getting reinfected with BA.2. “When BA.2 came around, it did evade immunity in some people,” Hankins said, including hybrid immunity — a past infection, along with two or three shots. “That’s why you have these one-after-the-other infections.” (Trudeau has received three vaccine doses.)
Unlike the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that tends to be durable for life, antibodies induced by COVID-19 vaccines drop off. “There’s not a magic number; people round things up to three months, six months,” said Elsayed, a professor at Western University and a physician with London Health Sciences Centre. “You need more boosters to get your immune system strong and able to fight some of these variants that the vaccines weren’t initially made for.”
“We’re not necessarily recommending that everyone get fourth boosters or fourth doses,” he said. We’re hitting the tail end of Omicron, and, theoretically, too many boosters could over activate the immune system. “I don’t want people to misinterpret what I’m saying — we 100 per cent support vaccination,” Elsayed said. “But there’s a limit to how many boosters one should get.”
Evidence from South Africa suggests the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, the fastest growing strains in the United States, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, are able to dodge immunity from BA.2 infections. “We’re not seeing a lot of it yet (in Canada), so we’ve got our fingers crossed,” said Hankins, an epidemiologist and professor of public and population health at McGill University. “But for people who think, ‘It’s a done deal now, I’m giving up.’ This is not the time to give up. We still have quite a lot of the population that hasn’t been infected,” Hankins said. “You do not want to get an infection.” Statistics Canada reported a jump in excess deaths in January, and nobody wants to get long COVID if they can avoid it. “And every infection means the potential to transmit to other people who may be potentially more vulnerable than you to develop a severe outcome,” she said.
Are repeat infections less severe?
“People are trying to get a feel for that,” Hankins said. Reinfections “only rarely land people in hospital, but the experience can nonetheless be miserable and disruptive,” University of Arizona immunologist Dr. Deepta Bhattacharya wrote in The New York Times this week. Omicron and its subvariants tend to infect the upper respiratory tract, rather than deeper in the lungs, making symptoms less severe, and less serious still, even “nonexistent,” for the vaccinated and boosted.
“I think it’s reasonable to expect that, in general, infections will be much less severe than we observed early in the pandemic, because even if our immune responses do not provide perfect protection against reinfection, they do protect very well against severe illness,” Miller said. “As more people are vaccinated, infected, or combinations thereof, we will be increasingly protected as a population.” During the Omicron wave, the unvaccinated with a previous infection had a higher chance of getting reinfected, compared to the vaccinated.
There are still questions to be answered about long COVID and whether repeat infections increase the risk. It likely depends more on the severity of the infections rather than necessarily how many, Elsayed said. Whether re-infection can cause a rebound of long COVID in some people also isn’t entirely clear.
“Trudeau is isolating himself appropriately, and he sent the proper messaging, from an infection control point of view,” Elsayed said. “He has a mild illness not requiring hospitalizations.” Reinfections tend to feel like a mild cold, he said. “Now, I know people who’ve been triple vaccinated who have been much sicker than Trudeau who had to stay home. But in terms of people coming to hospital, being admitted to hospital, that’s very, very rare for an otherwise healthy person who is fully vaccinated. It’s not uncommon for someone who isn’t vaccinated.”
Could some people keep getting infected every few months?
“It depends on the exposure. There’s not a lot of Omicron circulating around now compared to before,” Elsayed said. Omicron, which is transmitted through the air, is 100 times more contagious than the other virus everyone is talking about, monkeypox, which is not thought to be airborne. Hankins said it’s about living with COVID smartly: Assess the situation you’re in, decide when to wear a mask, when to avoid a crowded, poorly ventilated place. “Use your own judgment, and when you’re eligible for a dose of vaccine, get that vaccine because it will boost your immunity.”
“I think we should expect that evolution of new variants to slow down as the virus becomes endemic,” Miller said. “As rates of infection decline, the opportunity for new variants to emerge will also decline, which should prolong protection our immune system offers from re-infection.”
COACHING IS ABUSE
Minister St-Onge announces creation of Sport Canada athletes commission
Yesterday The Canadian Press
Canada's sport minister Pascale St-Onge emphasized once again that the athlete voice is critical in changing the sports culture in this country.
St-Onge announced a couple of safe-sport initiatives on Sunday, including the creation of an athlete advisory committee within Sport Canada to amplify athlete voices.
The minister said participation with the new Office of the Integrity Commissioner (OSIC), which will become operational on Monday, will gradually become mandatory for all national sport organizations.
St-Onge also plans to review Sport Canada's funding agreements with NSO's to "ensure that the standards in matters of governance, accountability and security are reached."
"We're all working towards breaking that culture of silence," St-Onge said. "So let's make sure that the athletes can speak out and feel free to do it. There's no reason to keep them from talking about their situation and what they're going through."
St-Onge spoke at the culmination of the Canadian Olympic Committee's annual session in Montreal. The COC announced a day earlier that it's investing $10 million into safe sport initiatives amid what St-Onge has called a safe sport "crisis" in Canada.
Hundreds of athletes in gymnastics, boxing, and bobsled and skeleton have called for independent investigations into their sports in recent weeks.
"The biggest theme is that athletes feel unheard and unseen. And so even as a starting point being asked what our experiences are, what our perspectives are, what our ideas are for change is critically important," said Rosie MacLennan, a two-time Olympic trampoline champion and chair of the COC's athletes commission.
"None of us want to see this system fail. We're all truly passionate about the sport system. We all truly love it … but, the theme has been that athletes feel unheard and unseen. And I'm excited that that is now shifting."
Earlier in the week, bobsled and skeleton athletes raised the issue of non-disparagement clauses in the athlete agreements they're required to sign. St-Onge had told The Canadian Press that NDAs are contrary to the very principles of safe sport.
She said Sunday that NDAs will be part of the conversation ahead of the next funding agreement with NSOs, and that they are "a preoccupation by the athletes that I heard quite clearly."
Asked about athletes who are required to sign NDAs before then — Canada's bobsled and skeleton athletes must sign athlete agreements to report for training camps in early July — St-Onge said "it's time that athletes and the NSOs have conversations about this and that they can clear the air. If some are signing new contracts right now, let's try to change that."
"We shouldn't be afraid of what athletes have to say," the minister said. "Because every time that (athletes speak out), it's an opportunity to make changes and to be better, and to ensure the safety and bring the trust back in the system, and making sure that parents trust us to send their kids to practise sport.
"Because it's so important in one person's development, whether it's for a psychological reason or physical health. We need sport in life. So we can't fail (in) this."
The Canadian gymnasts who requested an independent investigation in late-March — an original group of 70 that has grown to more than 400 in recent weeks — said Sunday's announcements don't go far enough in addressing their concerns.
"Everything discussed today means that abuse will have already happened and the burden rests with the athletes to see a complaint through a difficult process," the group, operating as Gymnasts for Change Canada, said in a statement. "We still have 1,000-plus Canadian athletes waiting for resolution to existing problems that won't and can't be address by a process that is only looking forward.
"If we don't examine the past, there is no opportunity to make amends, assist with healing, and … be very clear on how to recognize the signs so the culture of abuse that so many of us have experienced does not re-emerge. Ever."
While Sport Canada only oversees national organizations that receive federal funding, St-Onge plans to hold discussions about safe sport with provincial and territorial federations at the Canada Summer Games in August.
David Shoemaker, the COC's CEO and secretary-general, said Canadian sport has never been about winning at all costs.
"For the Canadian Olympic Committee, it's always been about winning the right way," he said. "We believe that we can relentlessly pursue Olympic and Paralympic performance, to get athletes and Canadian teams on podiums and, at the same time, relentlessly pursue a safe and healthy sport culture in Canada.
"What's at stake for us here is a country that can be proud of the athletes that represent it on the world stage."
Erin Willson, the president of AthletesCAN, the association representing Canadian athletes, called the weekend's meetings an "encouraging step."
She acknowledged there's concerns about the backlog of cases OSIC could face once it starts receiving complaints later this month. But she thought the creation of the athletes commission was a positive step.
"It really signifies this idea that athletes are having a more formalized voice in the system," she said. I think that has been something that we've learned this weekend, it's really, really been missing."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2022.
Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said national sport organizations will have to participate in OSIC by April 1, 2023. In fact, participation will become mandatory on a gradual basis and not by an April 1, 2023 deadline.
High school students across Canada to be trained on how to administer naloxone
Yesterday The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — Hundreds of thousands of high school students in Canada will be given training on how to respond to someone overdosing on opioids, including on how to administer naloxone — a drug used to reverse the effects of overdoses. The Advanced Coronary Treatment Foundation is announcing Tuesday that its new training program will be added to the CPR and automated external defibrillator training it offers for free in high schools across the country. Each year, in addition to learning how to administer naloxone, about 350,000 students will learn about opioids and how to identify when to call 911, when to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation and when to give naloxone. The training will first be deployed in Quebec, Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia before expanding to other provinces.
“The (opioid) crisis is very real,” Jocelyn Barriault, the medical director of the foundation, said in a recent interview. The Public Health Agency of Canada reported more than 5,386 deaths related to opioids between January and September 2021. The majority of the deaths — 94 per cent — were accidental.
"Cardiac arrests … it doesn't happen to young people that much," Barriault said. "But with opioids, there's a lot of chance that it's a peer … that it happens at school or at a party.
If a young person is confronted with someone suffering from heart failure, Barriault said, he or she will be trained on how to administer naloxone nasally. "And we hope it's going to work; but if we don't do anything, it's clear it won't."
Barriault said the training, which was developed after a successful pilot project in Ottawa involving 186 students and 15 teachers in 2019, will be an opportunity to teach young people how to react in emergency situations and on the risks of opioids. Carole Nadeau, who is leading the training program in Quebec, said between 1,000 to 1,500 Quebec teachers will be trained on how to teach the program to about 70,000 students each year in the province.
"We have done training at 141 schools, which represents 405 teachers that are ready to teach all of their students about opioids," Nadeau said. "It's a lot of people."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 14, 2022.
Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said students were being trained to inject naloxone but the drug will be administered nasally.
Natural gas plummets as Freeport delays facility restart following explosion
Pippa Stevens - Yesterday
Natural gas prices plunged on Tuesday, after Freeport LNG said its facility that had a fire last week likely won't be back up and running soon.
"[C]ompletion of all necessary repairs and a return to full plant operations is not expected until late 2022," the company said Tuesday in a statement. The facility, located in Quintana Island, Texas, had an explosion last Wednesday.
"Given the relatively contained area of the facility physically impacted by the incident, a resumption of partial operations is targeted to be achieved in approximately 90 days," Freeport LNG said.
U.S. natural gas fell about 16% to $7.22 per million British thermal units (MMBtu).
We have the supply to meet natural gas demand, the question is at what price, says EQT CEO
"The U.S. natural gas market will now be temporarily oversupplied as 2 bcf/d or a little over 2% of demand for U.S. natural gas has been abruptly eliminated," said Rob Thummel, managing director at Tortoise Capital.
"U.S. natural gas supply will likely remain at current levels as producers won't reduce production by 2 bcf/d. The result is an oversupplied U.S. natural gas market," he added.
Freeport's operation is roughly 17% of the U.S.' LNG processing capacity.
Despite Tuesday's drop, natural gas prices are still up 93% since the start of the year. Demand has rebounded as worldwide economies emerge from the pandemic, while supply has remained constrained.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended a market that was already tight. As Europe looks to move away from Russian energy, record amounts of U.S. LNG are now heading to the continent.
Surging prices are adding to inflationary pressures across the economy. Drivers are already grappling with record prices at the pump with the national average for a gallon of gas topping $5 over the weekend, and now utility bills are also set to rise.
Natural gas prices surged above $9 per MMBtu in May, hitting the highest level since August 2008.
After the explosion at Freeport's facility last week, the company initially said the plant would be shut for several weeks.
"The incident occurred in pipe racks that support the transfer of LNG from the facility's LNG storage tank area to the terminal's dock facilities," the company said Tuesday. "None of the liquefaction trains, LNG storage tanks, dock facilities, or LNG process areas were impacted," the company added.
The people who want to be Alberta premier: A list of UCP leadership candidates
DON'T WORRY ABOUT WHO IS RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT
IT'S THE PRESS CONTACTS AS USUAL
EDMONTON — The United Conservative Party on Tuesday announced rules for a leadership contest to be held on Oct. 6 to choose a new leader and the province's next premier. The race became necessary when Premier Jason Kenney announced last month that he was stepping down after he received 51.4 per cent support in a leadership review. Here is a list of the candidates who have so far declared they want his job:
Leela Aheer: UCP backbench member of the legislature for Chestermere-Strathmore. Was member of Kenney's original cabinet as minister for culture, multiculturalism and the status of women. Removed from cabinet in 2021 after criticizing Kenney’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Promises to restore trust in the party and to work to help the underprivileged. Brian Jean: UCP backbench member for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche. Former Wildrose party leader and co-founder of the UCP when his party merged with Kenney’s Progressive Conservatives in 2017. Lost to Kenney in first UCP leadership race. Promises to unite the party on shared grassroots ideals and principles. Todd Loewen: Backbench member for Central Peace-Notley constituency. Sits as an Independent after being voted out of UCP caucus in 2021 for urging Kenney to resign. Promises to restore trust in party, push for greater Alberta autonomy in dealings with Ottawa. Bill Rock: Mayor of the village of Amisk in east-central Alberta. Ran unsuccessfully for Wildrose party in 2015. Running on platform to advocate for rural Albertans on issues including crime and health care. Rajan Sawhney: UCP legislature member representing Calgary-North East. Was member of Kenney's cabinet, first as minister for community and social services, then in transportation. Promises to hold public inquiry into Alberta’s COVID-19 response. Rebecca Schulz: UCP member for Calgary-Shaw. Was in cabinet as minister of children’s services. Promises to continue fight for better deal with federal government, to improve economy and to rebuild trust with Albertans and party faithful. Danielle Smith: Former Wildrose party leader who led floor-crossing to Progressive Conservatives in 2014. Has since worked in business and as a radio talk-show host. Promises grassroots participation in party and to pursue increased Alberta independence within Confederation. Travis Toews: UCP member representing Grande-Prairie Wapiti. Accountant and rancher. Had been finance minister since the start of the UCP government. Promises to heal rifts in party and restore trust with Albertans, while maintaining fiscal honesty.
Note: Sawhney, Schulz and Toews stepped down from cabinet to avoid potential conflict of interest during the leadership run.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2022.
Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press
UCP HEALTH CARE
'Disastrous overcrowding': Alberta emergency doctors say ERs facing brunt of health-care pressure
Emergency doctors say mounting pressure on Alberta’s health-care system has created unprecedented emergency room wait times.
Alberta Health Services EMS ambulances are seen near the
University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.
Lisa Johnson - Yesterday- Edmonton Journal
Dr. Paul Parks, president of the section of emergency medicine in the Alberta Medical Association, said in an interview with Postmedia a high volume of patients and depleted staff has contributed to “disastrous overcrowding” in emergency rooms.
Parks said specialized hospital in-patient units are often full, so some patients admitted to an emergency department space with a significant illness can’t be transferred, in turn increasing wait times for new arrivals, something he called “access block.”
“Our wait times and our access block and our overcrowding is worse than it’s ever been,” he said, adding the strain has been significant for months but has only grown worse.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Alberta Health Services (AHS) was reporting estimated wait times of more than three hours at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, the Misericordia Community Hospital, and the Grey Nuns Community Hospital, and more than six hours at both the University of Alberta Hospital and the Northeast Community Health Centre.
Parks said the situation is not unique to Edmonton hospitals.
“All of the big emergency departments across the province are really struggling, and we’re just the canary in the coal mine — we’re the warning system of when things aren’t working in the entire system,” he said.
Parks said Albertans who need emergency medical care shouldn’t be discouraged from going to ERs, but called on the government to be more transparent and respond with help and a plan.
“A medical disaster is when the demand outstrips what we can supply … and that’s what’s been happening in our emergency departments regularly,” he said.
Kerry Williamson, a spokesman for AHS, acknowledged in a statement ERs are facing “significant” pressure because of high volumes of seriously ill patients and the impact of COVID-19. That impact includes more people needing hospitalization, while infection control measures limit admissions and more staff are absent.
He said more people are seeking care after deferring it over the past two years, and ERs are also seeing more patients with influenza-like symptoms.
Steve Buick, press secretary to Health Minister Jason Copping, said in a statement emergency departments and other services are under strain across Canada for the same reasons.
He said the government is spending $1.6 billion more on health care than the previous government did in 2018-19, but the strain on the workforce over the past two years means staff are struggling to keep up with patient volumes.
“The pressure on the hospitals will ease as the current Omicron BA.2 wave passes and the number of COVID-positive admissions drops, as well as the number of staff away due to COVID,” Buick said.
Dr. Shazma Mithani poses for a photo in Edmonton on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022.
Dr. Shazma Mithani, an emergency room physician in Edmonton, said in an interview the “care deficit” of the past two years is a big part of the problem, along with short-staffing in in-patient units, but the trickle-down effect on emergency rooms could have been much better mitigated.
“The wait times that we’re seeing now are completely unprecedented,” said Mithani, adding that while published AHS estimates might be a snapshot in time, they’re consistently high, day after day.
Mithani said if every Albertan had access to a family doctor or pediatrician, their health-care conditions would have been better managed and many ER visits would have been preventable.
“We would not be in the situation we are in right now,” she said.
Williamson noted AHS has 270 more staff working in emergency rooms now than a year ago, and over the past two years, the province has filled more than 2,000 vacancies for registered nurses.
AHS has also tried to help fill staffing gaps by hiring 1,188 new nursing school grads, but Mithani said in critical care, that can create challenges without more experienced nursing staff.
Emergency protection order applications in response to family violence continue to rise in Alberta
The number of requests for emergency protection orders (EPO) for those facing family violence have spiked 17 per cent since 2018, says Legal Aid Alberta.
Edmonton Journal
Kellen Taniguchi - Yesterday -
Christina Riddoch, staff lawyer with Legal Aid Alberta’s Edmonton office, said the province consistently has some of the highest family-violence numbers in Canada, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only pushed up the number EPO applications.
“Quite frankly, we think that the numbers are just going to continue to increase,” she said of EPO requests, now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.
“We hear concerns about recession looming, job security, income, the cost of living — financial strain is a significant cause of difficulties in relationships and that only exacerbates the potential of family violence occurring in relationships.”
Riddoch said when she first started doing EPO reviews in 2007, she was seeing about four or five at a time — now she is dealing with at least triple that amount. She has 13 EPOs to review on Thursday alone. There have been as many as 17 reviews some days.
Legal Aid Alberta staff lawyers working within the Emergency Protection Order Program have reported a total of 2,267 opened files in 2021-22.
Riddoch said the primary applicants for EPOs are women.
“Women in either established relationships, or they could be short-term relationships but they have a child together with their alleged abuser, but generally it’s women and usually it’s women with children,” she said.
As the number of EPO applications continue to rise, Riddoch said elderly Albertans are submitting applications at a significantly increasing rate.
“Elder abuse is becoming more of an issue. We’re seeing an increase in situations where an adult child or stepchild is abusing their elderly parent — something that could be the result of the cost of living becoming harder to manage,” said Riddoch.
“We’ve been working in tandem with support services for elder abuse victims to try and help get these vulnerable people out of these situations.”
When it comes to family violence, Riddoch said it is important to create more community awareness for the issue. She added it happens behind closed doors and victims don’t always know where to go or who to reach out to for help.
“There are service providers in the community, there’s our office to contact and reach us but that’s not always possible, so if the community would be more vigilant would be my plea,” said Riddoch.
She said everyone in the community, everyone in Alberta and everyone in Edmonton should be vigilant in spotting the signs of family violence.
Riddoch encourages those who hear or see a family violence situation occurring to report it to authorities.
“That may be the difference between someone reaching out for help and someone not being a statistic, a death statistic. It can mean all the difference,” she said.
In the heart of the golden south of Saskatchewan, the province's largest wind facility to date had its grand opening on Tuesday.
In an era of climate catastrophes, renewable energy facilities like the new one that just opened up near Assiniboia are offering optimism for a greener, cleaner and more sustainable future
Providing up to 200 megawatts (MW) of emission-free power to the province's power grid, the Golden South Wind Facility includes 50 turbines, which can power up to 100,000 homes.
Potencia Renewables is the company that owns the amenity and is responsible for its construction, maintenance and operations. It has been working closely with SaskPower on this project and the Saskatchewan Crown corporation will be purchasing the energy from Potencia to feed into their grid.
"The completion of Golden South brings us to a total of 10 wind generation facilities here in Saskatchewan. We have four additional renewable projects underway right now, including three solar facilities and another facility," said Troy King, SaskPower interim CEO.
SaskPower's power grid now includes 680 MW of wind and solar energy. If you include hydro power, 30 per cent of Saskatchewan's energy now comes from cost-effective renewables.
SaskPower Minister Don Morgan said the facility is a big leap forward for the province's climate action plan.
"The province is set to decrease its greenhouse emissions by more than 50 per cent from 2005 levels by the year 2030, and is looking forward to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050," Morgan said.
Delayed by supply chain issues and pandemic restrictions, it took more than two years to construct the facility.
However, the $350 million project is now operational and ready to serve the province for at least the next 25 years. After that quarter century mark, Saskpower can choose to either renew their contract with Potencia, or deconstruct the facility.
Additionally, the wind project has more than just environmental benefits to offer.
"Our general contractors Borea directly contracted $3.5 million of material and services with local businesses, their subcontractors did many more," said Ben Greenhouse, Potencia Growth vice-president.
"Borea alone generated more than 30,000 hours of labour by 35 Indigenous employees on their payroll and countless others for their other Saskatchewan team members," he added.
The surrounding rural municipalities and town of Assiniaboia expressed gratitude for the facility being constructed in their region.
"In a time when businesses were closing, small towns becoming smaller, this community was thriving," stated Sharon Schauenberg, Assiniboia mayor.
"I can say that this is exactly what we needed as 2020 and 2021 have been some of the toughest economical times we've seen in a long time," Schauenberg said.
In terms of next steps, SaskPower has launched a competition to find a vendor to build the province’s largest solar facility in the Estevan region.
Estevan was chosen because of its abundance of sunny days, proximity to suitable transmission infrastructure and the relatively flat landscape.
According to SaskPower, at 100 MW, the upcoming facility will be ten times the capacity of Saskatchewan’s current largest solar plant and will provide clean power for up to 25,000 homes.
