'Impossible to track' climate action of Canada's $2T pension industry: study

Jeff Lagerquist
Fri, July 22, 2022 

The Ontario-based think tanks say Canadians are increasingly concerned about how climate risk is being managed by those overseeing their pensions.

Climate progress at Canada's largest pension funds is "impossible to track," according to a new study calling for greater transparency from an industry that manages more than $2 trillion in assets on behalf of millions of Canadians.

Many of the largest funds have committed to making their portfolios greener, and adopted net-zero targets in response to mounting pressure to address climate change. However, the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Global Risk Institute in Financial Services note in their study that there is no binding requirement to track these voluntary commitments, and no standardized climate-related disclosure for pension funds.

"There is a significant transparency gap in determining what type of progress is being made, and whether these pledges will ring hollow," the study's authors wrote.

"Beneficiaries, researchers, and other stakeholders . . . will currently find it impossible to track progress on these commitments, given the opaque nature of disclosure on related metrics and lack of mandatory requirements to deliver on the promises."

The Ontario-based think tanks say Canadians are increasingly concerned about how climate risk is being managed by those overseeing their retirement incomes. At the same time, the study highlights the potential for pension funds to shape global markets, and hasten the transition to a lower-emission economy through their massive balance sheets.

Pension funds reached by Yahoo Finance Canada referred to frameworks and disclosure practices currently in place when asked about the study's claim that tracking progress on climate commitments by the general public is "impossible."

"CDPQ is a leader in terms of climate targets and transparency," a spokesperson for Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, manager of nearly $420 billion in assets, told Yahoo Finance Canada in an email on Thursday. "We have been reporting our carbon intensity annually since 2017, and the value of our green assets in our portfolio."

CDPQ says it followed recommendations outlined by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in its latest Sustainable Investing Report.

TCFD is a framework developed by the Basel-based Financial Stability Board that's become recognized as the global standard. Its disclosures span board-level responsibility for climate risks, tallies of greenhouse gas emissions, and analysis of business prospects under a range of temperature scenarios. The task force recommends that such climate-related financial disclosures be voluntarily included in public financial filings.

A spokesperson for the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSPIB), a pension investment manager with $230.5 billion in net assets, says it also voluntarily discloses the carbon intensity of its portfolio in its public reports, in accordance with TCFD recommendations. Maria Constantinescu adds that the fund's climate strategy roadmap is designed to be updated with new metrics and data as they become available.

Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health is a group that monitors the fossil fuel and climate-related investments of Canadian pension funds. It called PSPIB's climate strategy a "notable step forward" when it was released in April. However, it raised concerns, including language that could be used to ignore Scope 3 emissions. For example, the pollution from the tailpipes of cars built by an automaker, and the end-of-life treatment of the vehicle.

"The strategy's commitments and implementation plans are lacking in clarity, but it's clear that PSP is listening to the growing concerns of beneficiaries and beginning to recognize the scale and urgency of the climate crisis," Shift Action said in a statement.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the country's largest pension plan with more than $539 billion in assets under management, declined to comment on the report's findings. Five other major pension plans did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) released draft rules intended to force banks and the other institutions to assess and manage potential weak spots from physical climate risks, as well as those stemming from economic and policy changes. OSFI also intends to roll out mandatory climate-related financial disclosures aligned with the TCFD.

"These disclosures will incentivize improvements in the quality of the institutions' governance and risk management practices related to climate," the regulator stated on May 26. "In doing so, this contributes to public confidence in the Canadian financial system by increasing transparency."

Other countries are moving towards mandatory disclosures for corporations and financial institutions, including the EU, U.K., and the United States.

Among its recommendations, the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Global Risk Institute report calls for "a coordinated approach across federal and provincial bodies—including to ensure that pension funds' disclosure keeps up with the dynamic nature of climate information."

Sport Canada knew of 2018 sexual assault allegations involving hockey players

The Minister of Sport said on Tuesday that Sport Canada can do better. 

An NDP MP says the federal bureaucracy ‘failed to protect victims.’

By Kieran Leavitt

Edmonton Bureau
Tue., July 26,2022

The federal agency in charge of Canadian sports policies knew about the sexual assault allegations involving members of Canada’s 2018 world junior team back but didn’t tell the minister at the time, a parliamentary committee was told on Tuesday.

Michel Ruest, a senior director at Sport Canada, told MPs on the Canadian Heritage standing committee that his organization was made aware of the allegations, connected to a Hockey Canada event in 2018, but did not follow up with the national governing body or tell the minister’s office.

Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge told MPs later in the day that “procedures absolutely need to be improved so that there can be better monitoring of the cases that are signalled to Sport Canada,” a branch of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

The testimony on Tuesday marks the first of two days of hearings being held in the wake of a scandal that has rocked the world of hockey. Hockey Canada’s top officials are to testify before the same all-party committee of MPs on Wednesday.

Members of Canada’s world junior hockey team from 2018 are facing allegations of a group sexual assault and a criminal investigation reopened by police in London, Ont. Meanwhile, reports emerged last week of separate allegations about another group sexual assault involving members of the 2003 world junior team. Halifax police have said they opened an investigation into that incident as well.

MPs on the heritage committee questioned officials from Sport Canada and Sport Minister Pascale StOnge allegations of sexual assault against members of the 2018 world junior team. Speaking via translator, St-Onge said she hopes Hockey Canada's leadership team will ask itself whether they are the right people to make cultural change. 

Ruest, the senior official from Sport Canada, said that he was notified of the 2018 allegations on June 26 of that year.

“At that time, we did the verifications to find out whether competent authorities had been informed and whether a third party had been made available to the alleged victim,” he said in French through a translator. “Hockey Canada had provided that information, and so that was what we did.”

St-Onge became the minister years after the allegations came into the department.

Peter Julian, an NDP MP on the committee, said that while “it’s true that Hockey Canada failed” it’s “also true that Sport Canada failed to protect victims.

“Sport Canada should have taken action years ago,” he said.

At issue for the minister was funding. Hockey Canada receives cash from the federal government and saw that money suspended in the wake of revelations that they’d settled a lawsuit with a complainant in the 2018 incident. The organization also saw corporate sponsors flee amid the fallout from those reports.

St-Onge said that the organization must show signs it is changing its culture before she restores funding to it. Hockey Canada has announced some steps in the wake of the scandal, including a new complaint process.

“I had to make them understand that they had passed the point of no return,” St-Onge said in French.

Julien asked if the minister had made some inquiries about putting Hockey Canada into a trusteeship and she said she hadn’t done so yet. St-Onge said in French that she would use any tools at her disposal “to change the culture at Hockey Canada.”

Prior to testimony from government officials, the committee heard from lawyer Danielle Robitaille with Henein Hutchison LLP. She carried out an investigation ordered by Hockey Canada back in 2018 into the allegations. Ultimately, Robitaille said, she only spoke with 10 out of the 19 players who were at the London event because she wasn’t able to get the complainant’s version of events; she said she felt it was necessary to have that before interviewing the remaining nine players.

She also said that some of those remaining players now believe the case has been prejudged.

Robitaille told the committee that she was not able to answer some of the MPs’ questions because since the complainant has come forward with their version of events, the investigation continues, and she’s prohibited from speaking on some information due to attorney client privilege.

“I am laser focused on my conduct investigation,” Robitaille told MPs on Tuesday.

The standing committee heard testimony from top Hockey Canada executives in June, but since then more details have emerged regarding how money is used by the organization to settle sexual assault claims, and the Halifax allegations that have emerged.

On Wednesday, executives at Hockey Canada will testify once again, including president Scott Smith, chief financial officer Brian Cairo, chair of the Hockey Canada Foundation Dave Andrews, and retired CEO Tom Renney.

On Monday, Hockey Canada released a plan to address abuse in the sport and “shatter the code of silence and eliminate toxic behaviour in and around Canada’s game,” a news release said.

Former NHLer Sheldon Kennedy, an abuse survivor as well as a member of the world junior team in 1988 and 1989, responded on Tuesday to Hockey Canada’s stated plans by calling for Smith and the board of directors to resign, stating on Twitter, “The same people with a new plan expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

With files from The Canadian Press

Kieran Leavitt is an Edmonton-based political reporter for the Toronto Star. Follow him on Twitter: @kieranleavitt

Berating climate sceptics isn’t enough – disruptive protest now seems the only way forward

        
The time has come to choose: do you trust the people in suits downplaying this emergency, or the activists lying in roads in an attempt to ward off catastrophe?

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

John Harris
Sun 24 Jul 2022

For the past year or so, I have been repeatedly listening to a critically acclaimed album, Ignorance, released in 2021 by the Canadian band the Weather Station. Its music is graceful, poised and smooth, but it is also an almost conceptual set of songs about the urgency of the climate crisis and the disorientation of living in a culture that still refuses to acknowledge it. According to its chief creator, the singer-songwriter and former actor Tamara Lindeman, many of its songs evoke what happens when “this veneer of ‘everything will be OK’ disappears”. That moment of revelation is perfectly captured in one song I have played over and over again – which is simply called Loss, and finds Lindeman recalling a conversation: “What was it last night she said? At some point you’d have to live as if the truth was true.”

Amid unprecedented temperatures, fires and the grim pantomime that will eventually end with the selection of our next prime minister, I suspect more people than ever would now understand those words as a matter of direct emotional experience. For millions of us, this summer’s heat is synonymous with an anxiety that is now impossible to shake off, and a renewed awareness of the small transgressions and outright hypocrisies that are required to get through each day. We perform them because of something that Lindeman’s lyrics consummately describe: that very human talent for just about averting our eyes from what is directly in front of us, so as to live a quiet life; and a political culture that just about keeps the “everything will be OK” veneer in place.

These are things evident across the planet, and the UK has its own grim versions of them. One of the two remaining Tory leadership candidates has pledged to retain the current de facto ban on onshore windfarms; the other wants to reconsider some of the key policies built into the government’s milquetoast 2050 net zero target (the positions of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, respectively). The Labour party has one big climate policy – its £28bn-a-year climate investment pledge – but is still not putting global heating anywhere near the centre of its basic message, and is thereby failing to acquire much consent for action on it.

Meanwhile, for a certain kind of media voice, the past week has been all about raging against climate sceptics and deniers and their influence on politics, as if pointing out that they are mendacious and dangerous is an act of bravery. The former BBC presenter Andrew Marr provided a good example in a monologue broadcast on his new show on LBC: “I for one have had enough of being told by pallid, shadowy, old businessmen and lazy ignorant hacks and sleazy lobbyists – who aren’t real scientists, any of them – that the science is wrong and that what is happening isn’t happening,” he said. “Enough!”

The key question of 2022 is not whether those people are wrong, both factually and morally: we know the answer to that. For the moment, I don’t think many people need to be thinking very much about particular parties or politicians. What we surely need to focus on is the deep attachment to fossil fuels still locked into our economy and political system, and how to help the movements that definitely want to end it: Extinction Rebellion (XR), Insulate Britain, Just Stop Oil and the other forces that clearly understand the unspeakable gravity of the moment. This comes down to a question that still does not intrude on politics nearly enough: as these groups take the most direct kind of action, do you support them? And if – or, rather, as – the climate emergency deepens and the awful gap between politics and the sheer scale of what we are faced with only widens, what will you think if their actions take new, ever-more disruptive forms?
 
To some extent, the way our media and politicians fend off the climate crisis accidentally confronts people with exactly those arguments. In one of our most regular national rituals, mainstream politics barely intrudes and instead, a protester fresh from some or other climate action is berated by Piers Morgan, Richard Madeley or one of the presenters from GB News or TalkRadio, and the only real options become clear: meaningful and radical action or nothing at all. An editorial last week in the Sun insisted that “we need a sober debate, free from the extremists’ juvenile panic, on how we inch towards Net Zero in decades to come”, which made panic look like much the more sensible option. In April, the Labour party demanded that the government take legal action to effectively ban climate protests that disrupt traffic and oil production. When he stood to be his party’s leader, Keir Starmer took donations from a former boss of the RAC and AA, and the latter company-cum-lobby group’s former chief financial officer. The people he apparently thinks should be locked up, by contrast, are motivated by a comparatively pure mission to confront the car industry and quickly finish the hydrocarbon era, and thereby avoid catastrophe. So who do you choose?

In some cases – Occupy is a good example here – sustained support for protesters and activists has bumped up against their lack of a coherent agenda. But the modern climate movement is not like that. The basic position shared by the central handful of groups is clear enough: net zero by a much earlier date than 2050. XR and the people backing the climate and ecology bill – including such politicians as the Greens’ Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Clive Lewis – envisage that change being driven by citizens’ assemblies, set up to decide how such an aim will be reached. In the context of Westminster politics, such ideas may seem so unlikely as to be barely worth considering. But remember: Brexit is a madcap, massively disruptive project that defies just about every element of political and economic sense, but was until recently the preserve of cranks and obsessives and only became a reality when David Cameron decided to bypass MPs and ask the rest of us to decide. Less than a decade after it decisively burst into the political foreground, moreover, we are locked into it for keeps, with the support of both main parties. By comparison, is trying to set an example to other countries by doing exactly what the climate demands really so fanciful?

Activism and protest often trigger a kneejerk suspicion that they will alienate people and kill whatever cause they advocate. But experience suggests the exact opposite: just as successive waves of social reformers, the suffragettes and the anti-apartheid movement were stubborn, daring and creative enough to make their demands irresistible, so the people now lying in roads and charging into airports and refineries have conveyed the urgency of climate breakdown more successfully than anyone in a suit. There is a very good reason for that: it is only well outside centres of power that you can find the answer to a question that power and politics are dodging more than ever – how to live as if the truth is actually true.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

This Extremely Rare Jellyfish Has Only Been Caught on Camera Once

The jellyfish only has two recorded sightings, and this is the first video captured of it.

By Jules Roscoe
NEW YORK, US
July 25, 2022

SCREENGRAB FROM VIDEO POSTED TO THE SCUBA VENTURES - KAVIENG FACEBOOK PAGE.

A diver off the coast of Papua New Guinea recorded a huge jellyfish swimming alongside them, and posted the video to their Facebook page. They said the jellyfish was around soccer ball size, and swam “quite fast.”

Four groups of striped tentacles trail behind the jellyfish’s translucent body, which is spotted with rings of varying size. Inside the bell is a bright red organ that is most likely the animal’s gastrovascular cavity.

This jellyfish is so rare that it only has two recorded sightings, ever. And this video is one of them.

It’s called Chirodectes maculatus (from the Latin for “spotted”), and it’s an extremely uncommon species of box jelly found off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Box jellies, distinguished for their boxy shape, are often venomous to humans—some are even potentially fatal. But C. maculatus isn’t known to be.

“It is not possible to make out all of the characters of the species Chirodectes maculatus from the video (some are internal), but it certainly fits very well based on what one can observe,” said Dr. Allen Collins, a zoologist and curator for the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History, in an email to Motherboard.

C. maculatus was first described in 2005, by a team of Australian scientists led by Paul Cornelius. They had caught the specimen in 1997 and preserved it. In the paper, they write that they were “reluctant” to dissect it, so they made only external observations. The scientists initially described the species as Chiropsalmus. A year later, another scientist, Lisa-Ann Gershwin, published comments on the organism’s classification, and officially moved it to the genus Chirodectes, where it was accepted.

A DRAWING FROM THE PAPER FIRST DESCRIBING C. MACULATUS. IMAGE CREDIT: CORNELIUS, P.F.S., FENNER, P.J., & HORE, R. 2005 / MEMOIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM.

Collins noted that the color pattern on the bell of the organism in the video was different from that described by the original scientists. The jellyfish from 2005 had solid spots, while the one in the video had rings. “I suppose there is always a chance that this specimen is from a closely related but as yet undescribed species of Chirodectes, but I would lean toward it being C. maculatus,” he said.

Collins said the video was striking because it was only the second sighting of the jellyfish, despite its size. “That something so large and conspicuous in appearance would only be seen twice is pretty surprising,” he said. “But that said, a lot of diversity is rare. It tells me that we still have a lot of exploration to undertake.”

Cross-pollination among neuroscience, psychology and AI research yields a foundational understanding of thinking

If you want to build a true artificial mind, start with a model of human cognition. DrAfter123/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images


 CONVERSATION
Published: July 25, 2022 9.07am EDT

Progress in artificial intelligence has enabled the creation of AIs that perform tasks previously thought only possible for humans, such as translating languages, driving cars, playing board games at world-champion level and extracting the structure of proteins. However, each of these AIs has been designed and exhaustively trained for a single task and has the ability to learn only what’s needed for that specific task.

Recent AIs that produce fluent text, including in conversation with humans, and generate impressive and unique art can give the false impression of a mind at work. But even these are specialized systems that carry out narrowly defined tasks and require massive amounts of training.

It still remains a daunting challenge to combine multiple AIs into one that can learn and perform many different tasks, much less pursue the full breadth of tasks performed by humans or leverage the range of experiences available to humans that reduce the amount of data otherwise required to learn how to perform these tasks. The best current AIs in this respect, such as AlphaZero and Gato, can handle a variety of tasks that fit a single mold, like game-playing. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is capable of a breadth of tasks remains elusive.

Ultimately, AGIs need to be able to interact effectively with each other and people in various physical environments and social contexts, integrate the wide varieties of skill and knowledge needed to do so, and learn flexibly and efficiently from these interactions.

Building AGIs comes down to building artificial minds, albeit greatly simplified compared to human minds. And to build an artificial mind, you need to start with a model of cognition

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This robot, powered by an AI called Rosie, learned how to solve this puzzle from a human who communicated to the robot using natural language. James Kirk, CC BY-ND

From human to Artificial General Intelligence

Humans have an almost unbounded set of skills and knowledge, and quickly learn new information without needing to be re-engineered to do so. It is conceivable that an AGI can be built using an approach that is fundamentally different from human intelligence. However, as three longtime researchers in AI and cognitive science, our approach is to draw inspiration and insights from the structure of the human mind. We are working toward AGI by trying to better understand the human mind, and better understand the human mind by working toward AGI.

From research in neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology, we know that the human brain is neither a huge homogeneous set of neurons nor a massive set of task-specific programs that each solves a single problem. Instead, it is a set of regions with different properties that support the basic cognitive capabilities that together form the human mind.

These capabilities include perception and action; short-term memory for what is relevant in the current situation; long-term memories for skills, experience and knowledge; reasoning and decision making; emotion and motivation; and learning new skills and knowledge from the full range of what a person perceives and experiences.

Instead of focusing on specific capabilities in isolation, AI pioneer Allen Newell in 1990 suggested developing Unified Theories of Cognition that integrate all aspects of human thought. Researchers have been able to build software programs called cognitive architectures that embody such theories, making it possible to test and refine them.

Cognitive architectures are grounded in multiple scientific fields with distinct perspectives. Neuroscience focuses on the organization of the human brain, cognitive psychology on human behavior in controlled experiments, and artificial intelligence on useful capabilities.

The Common Model of Cognition

We have been involved in the development of three cognitive architectures: ACT-R, Soar and Sigma. Other researchers have also been busy on alternative approaches. One paper identified nearly 50 active cognitive architectures. This proliferation of architectures is partly a direct reflection of the multiple perspectives involved, and partly an exploration of a wide array of potential solutions. Yet, whatever the cause, it raises awkward questions both scientifically and with respect to finding a coherent path to AGI.

Fortunately, this proliferation has brought the field to a major inflection point. The three of us have identified a striking convergence among architectures, reflecting a combination of neural, behavioral and computational studies. In response, we initiated a communitywide effort to capture this convergence in a manner akin to the Standard Model of Particle Physics that emerged in the second half of the 20th century.

This basic model of cognition both explains human thinking and provides a blueprint for true artificial intelligence. Andrea Stocco, CC BY-ND

This Common Model of Cognition divides humanlike thought into multiple modules, with a short-term memory module at the center of the model. The other modules – perception, action, skills and knowledge – interact through it.

Learning, rather than occurring intentionally, happens automatically as a side effect of processing. In other words, you don’t decide what is stored in long-term memory. Instead, the architecture determines what is learned based on whatever you do think about. This can yield learning of new facts you are exposed to or new skills that you attempt. It can also yield refinements to existing facts and skills.

The modules themselves operate in parallel; for example, allowing you to remember something while listening and looking around your environment. Each module’s computations are massively parallel, meaning many small computational steps happening at the same time. For example, in retrieving a relevant fact from a vast trove of prior experiences, the long-term memory module can determine the relevance of all known facts simultaneously, in a single step.

Guiding the way to Artificial General Intelligence

The Common Model is based on the current consensus in research in cognitive architectures and has the potential to guide research on both natural and artificial general intelligence. When used to model communication patterns in the brain, the Common Model yields more accurate results than leading models from neuroscience. This extends its ability to model humans – the one system proven capable of general intelligence – beyond cognitive considerations to include the organization of the brain itself.

We are starting to see efforts to relate existing cognitive architectures to the Common Model and to use it as a baseline for new work – for example, an interactive AI designed to coach people toward better health behavior. One of us was involved in developing an AI based on Soar, dubbed Rosie, that learns new tasks via instructions in English from human teachers. It learns 60 different puzzles and games and can transfer what it learns from one game to another. It also learns to control a mobile robot for tasks such as fetching and delivering packages and patrolling buildings.

Rosie is just one example of how to build an AI that approaches AGI via a cognitive architecture that is well characterized by the Common Model. In this case, the AI automatically learns new skills and knowledge during general reasoning that combines natural language instruction from humans and a minimal amount of experience – in other words, an AI that functions more like a human mind than today’s AIs, which learn via brute computing force and massive amounts of data.

From a broader AGI perspective, we look to the Common Model both as a guide in developing such architectures and AIs, and as a means for integrating the insights derived from those attempts into a consensus that ultimately leads to AGI.

Authors

Paul S. Rosenbloom
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of Southern California

Christian Lebiere
Research Psychologist, Carnegie Mellon University

John E. Laird
John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering, University of Michigan

Disclosure statement

Paul S. Rosenbloom currently receives no funding.

Christian Lebiere receives funding from AFOSR, ARL, DARPA, IARPA and the Department of Defense Basic Research Office.

John Laird receives funding from ONR and AFOSR. I'm Chairman of the Board and stock holder of Soar Technology a company that does AI research for the government. I'm also founder and co-Director of the Center for Integrated Cognition, a non-profit that does basic research on AI.
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CHESS                   
Magnus Carlsen Is Giving Up The World Title. But The Carlsen Era Lives On.


By Jake Lourim
JUL. 26, 2022

In announcing he won’t defend his World Chess Championship title, five-time champion Magnus Carlsen joins the ranks of other greats who have stepped away from competition early.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY DAN DAO / GETTY IMAGES

The chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen announced last week that he will not defend his world championship next year. There are two ways to look at this news: One is with shock, given that Carlsen is maybe the greatest chess player of all time, at arguably the peak of his powers, with a good chance to win a sixth world title in 2023. But the other is without, given that Carlsen hinted several times that he had played his last world championship match in December.

Announcements like Carlsen’s aren’t uncommon across the sports world — see, for example, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps or Ashleigh Barty — but they always seem surprising. At this point, though, maybe they shouldn’t be, given the diminishing incentives for a great player to keep defending their place at the top.

Carlsen confirmed his intentions on Wednesday in the first episode of his podcast, “The Magnus Effect.” He said he had mulled his world championship future for more than a year, even before defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi for his fifth title, and that he was “pretty comfortable” with his decision to step aside. He confessed that he was “not motivated to play another match,” that “I don’t particularly like it” and that “I don’t have any inclination to play.” He added, “I don’t rule out a return [to world championship matches] in the future, but I wouldn’t particularly count on it, either.”

Carlsen’s legacy is largely secure: Many consider him the best player of all time. Chess has used the Elo rating system to rank players for more than a century, and by that metric, Carlsen is the GOAT. He surpassed Garry Kasparov’s record mark of 2851 after winning the London Chess Classic in December 2012, and he has stayed above that peak for most of the past decade.

But as in any other sport, comparing players of different eras is complicated. Robert Hess, a grandmaster and commentator for Chess.com, suggested that if you could pit today’s Carlsen — with today’s knowledge and today’s tools, having beaten today’s competition — against previous greats like Kasparov or Bobby Fischer, Carlsen would likely win.

“I’ve made this argument before, that essentially the high school physics teacher that you and I had knew more than Isaac Newton,” Hess said. “And that’s not to say that Isaac Newton wasn’t more talented. Isaac Newton just didn’t have the resources. Because of [their] predecessors, these players are better, and that’s true in most disciplines.”

Today’s chess champions study not only from books and historical games but also using the chess engine Stockfish and the neural network NNUE, which weren’t available to Kasparov and Fischer in their primes. But is Carlsen the best player of all time, adjusted for technological advancement? That’s impossible to say.

The arc of Carlsen’s world championships is the clearest proof of how his development has paralleled the advancements in how humans understand the game. In 2013, he wrested his first title from the reigning champ Viswanathan Anand. That was a best-of-12 series, but Carlsen only needed 10 games, winning 6.5 to 3.5. The next year, Anand challenged Carlsen for the title and even defeated him in one game, but Carlsen still won in 11 games, 6.5 to 4.5. In 2016, Carlsen appeared vulnerable, as challenger Sergey Karjakin earned the match’s first victory in Game 8. Carlsen evened the score in Game 10, though, and eventually won two rapid games as a tiebreaker. But the gap appeared to be narrowing.

Finally, in 2018, Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana completed one of the most impressive feats in chess history. The two grandmasters, ranked first and second in the world, played 12 straight draws before switching to the rapid format to break the tie. Carlsen won all three rapid games, but the match was otherwise a dead heat. On his podcast last week, Carlsen called his 2018 victory “the most fun” and “the most interesting.”

Carlsen’s 7.5 to 3.5 rout of Nepomniachtchi last fall was his most lopsided win yet, but Stockfish and NNUE told a fuller story of the skill on display. The match began with five straight draws, and Game 7 was, according to Stockfish, the most flawlessly played game in World Chess Championship history. Games 3 and 10 were tied for the second-most-accurate games played in championship history. The match shifted late in Game 6 when Carlsen won a record 136-move marathon that lasted nearly eight hours.

Training at that level is both mentally and physically draining; committing to another world championship would have meant six more months of that grind, followed by a rematch with Nepomniachtchi.1 That would have left Carlsen with something to lose and little to gain. “From a purely enjoyment perspective, I think that checks out,” Hess said. “I think from a competitive standpoint, it also makes a lot of sense.”

Elite competitors in Carlsen’s position have often found that there’s more to be lost than gained at the top — it’s even baked into the mathematical formula for Elo ratings. The system assigns each player a rating based on past results, and those ratings change based on players’ prematch win probabilities. Because Carlsen is the higher-ranked player in every game he plays, his wins only add a limited number of points to his rating, and his draws usually decrease his rating. Even after last year’s world championship, where he won 7.5 of 11 games against the fifth-ranked player in the world (rated 2782), Carlsen’s rating jumped by just 9 points, from 2856 to 2865.

When Carlsen reflected on his journey last week, he recalled playing in the Candidates Tournament on “a whim,” hoping only to win one world championship and lacking motivation to defend it as early as 2016. “I feel like I mostly played that match because other people sort of relied on it, expected me to,” he said. He admitted his next thought would sound strange to people who spend their lives trying to win one world championship. “[Going from] four championships to five, it didn’t mean anything to me. It was nothing. I was satisfied with the job that I’d done. I was happy not to have lost the match. But that was it.”

Even after abdicating his world championship, Carlsen will continue to occupy a unique space in the chess zeitgeist. The game has existed for centuries, contested often by little-known individuals who laid the foundation for much of modern strategy. It’s also experiencing a boom in popularity, driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and experienced by many people who have never played chess on a physical board. Carlsen is the link between chess’ past and its future. He earned the title of grandmaster at age 13, the same year he beat former world champion Anatoly Karpov and drew a game with Kasparov, almost beating the longtime world No. 1. He holds that connection to his predecessors — Kasparov was among those who wished him well last week — but he also resonates with the modern audience. He may be the biggest celebrity in chess since Fischer.

Through his business and his sponsorships, Carlsen is the rare multimillionaire in chess. This summer, he played the World Series of Poker Main Event. He advised the Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson and made a cameo with Daryl Morey, the Philadelphia 76ers’ president of basketball operations. He played chess with Bill Gates on a Scandinavian talk show and won in nine moves. He cracked jokes on an episode of “The Simpsons.” He was a guest on “The Colbert Report.” He appeared in a Porsche commercial alongside Muhammad Ali and Maria Sharapova. He was one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2013, the year of his first world championship. “If he can rekindle the world’s fascination with the royal game,” Kasparov wrote at the time, “we will soon be living in the Carlsen Era.”

How prescient those words were. In the end, Carlsen’s true legacy will be the effect Kasparov described — he became a global ambassador to chess and, with his international renown, helped bring it into mainstream popular culture.

Perhaps Carlsen will be back on the world championship stage again someday, like Jordan and Phelps were. Either way, he has a busy schedule and has said his next goal is to become the first player to achieve a 2900 rating. If anyone can do it, it’s Carlsen — and there’s no better time than the present, given how much the realm of what’s possible in chess has expanded since Carlsen became the face of the sport.

Jake Lourim is a freelance writer in Washington. He most recently worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal. @jakelourim

Where have all the workers gone? Don't blame COVID, economists say

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Boomers are exiting the workforce in droves, leaving more

 job vacancies than there are people to fill them

Alistair Steele · CBC News · Posted: Jul 23, 2022 

According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment-to-job vacancy rate is at a historic low across the country, indicating there are currently more available jobs than there are workers to fill them. (Chris Wattie /Reuters)

Canada is in the throes of a serious labour shortage, but economists say it's not all the pandemic's fault — it's the inevitable culmination of a seismic demographic shift decades in the making.

"It's the slowest-moving train on the planet. It was predictable 60 to 65 years ago, and we have done nothing about it," said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. "We knew this transition was going to happen."

• The labour shortage isn't over — and employers are having to lower their hiring expectations

The numbers behind all those help wanted signs are startling.

According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio — a key measure comparing the number of Canadians looking for work to the number of available jobs — is currently hovering at a historic low in every province. In fact, the ratio is significantly lower now than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The reason isn't that there are fewer jobs opening up — remember the help wanted signs? It's that there are fewer workers available to fill them. And the reason for that, economists say, can be traced back to the post-war baby boom.

Construction workers prepare a form in downtown Toronto in May. According to Statistics Canada, their industry is the among the hardest-hit by the current labour shortage. (Alex Lupul/CBC)

Not enough replacements

While those 55 and older have been steadily exiting the Canadian workforce — an exodus that some economists believe was accelerated by the pandemic, as many older workers opted for early retirement — there simply aren't enough younger workers to replace them.

In fact, participation in the workforce among those ages 25-54 approached 88 per cent in May, up more than one percentage point from February 2020, before the pandemic had taken hold in Canada.

"That's what happens when a baby boom finally starts exiting from stage left, and there's not enough people entering from stage right," Yalnizyan said. "We've actually got a higher share of the working-age population working than ever."

Armine Yalnizyan is an economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. (Christopher Katsarov/The Atkinson Foundation)

That contradicts the theory that some sort of "great resignation" among working-age Canadians, many of whom took advantage of pandemic income supports, is to blame for all those job vacancies, according to Ian Lee, associate professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business.

"I just found that very suspicious because unless you're independently wealthy … most of us have to have income to survive," Lee said. "It just didn't make sense."

"Your first suspicion as a labour economist is, well, are people just not in the labour force anymore?" said Gordon Betcherman, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa's school of international development and global studies. "But that's not the case. It's back up to levels that we had before COVID."

An employees' market

Instead, economists say the data points to the emergence of an employees' market where workers are enjoying an enormous amount of leverage over employers.

"It's undeniable this trend we're in where the balance between job seekers and job vacancies has definitely shifted," Betcherman said.

According to Statistics Canada, that has led to virtually unprecedented labour shortages across nearly every employment sector.

There just aren't enough people willing to do poorly paid jobs that are marginal at best.- Armine Yalnizyan, economist

In particular, the construction and manufacturing sectors are having a difficult time recruiting skilled workers, followed closely by accommodation and food services, which includes hotels, restaurants and bars. 

"People are finding other places to work. There just aren't enough people willing to do poorly paid jobs that are marginal at best," Yalnizyan noted. 

"Workers have a lot more choices now," Lee agreed. "If you have more choices and you don't have to work in that industry, you'll go and work in an industry where there's a better career stream and where the wages are higher and the hours are more predictable."

That could force employers in certain industries to raise wages, Lee said.

"I'm not suggesting that the demand for these jobs is going to go away. It's not," he said. "It suggests to me that we're going to see some pretty serious wage inflation in these industries over the years ahead."

The restaurant sector is also struggling to attract new hires as many opt for higher-paying jobs with better working conditions. (Paige Parsons/CBC)

Wages predicted to rise

According to Yalnizyan, this competitive new environment means employers in certain sectors will need to raise wages if they hope to retain skilled workers.

"We are losing people who are trained as early childhood educators because we won't pay them more than we pay pet groomers. Well why would they stay if they can get a better job in some other sector?"

That's borne out by Statistics Canada data showing the reservation wage — the minimum hourly rate at which job seekers are willing to accept a position — surpassing the current offered wage in nearly every sector, whereas Canadian workers have historically been willing to settle for less.

Economists believe there are other possible outcomes — increasing automation to fill the vacuum left by the labour shortage, for one. Some industries could also bring in more temporary foreign workers to help fill gaps at the lower end of the labour market, potentially blunting the gains made by domestic workers.

Ian Lee is an associate professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business. (CBC)

But Yalnizyan said rising wages could help erase some of the inequalities caused by a labour market that has for years paid some workers well and the rest poorly.

"If we actually improve wages and working conditions, particularly at the bottom, we could be creating the conditions for making a more resilient middle class that can actually afford to buy stuff. That's what we've been missing out on for quite a while now," she said.

"Population aging can be our friend, not our enemy. But we have to treat it as something more than just a labour shortage for business. We have to treat it as an opportunity to make every job a good job."                                                                                      

New Brunswick

They fought a rent increase and won, then received an eviction notice

Landlord says eviction for Fredericton couple is 'absolutely necessary to save our investment'


Jeanne Armstrong · CBC News · Posted: Jul 25, 2022 

Pauline Tramble, 67, and Charles Tramble, 85, are getting evicted after appealing a rent increase for an apartment they've lived in for 33 years. (Jeanne Armstrong/CBC)

Pauline Tramble's 85-year-old husband Charles has dementia. Every day since June, "three, four, five times a day," she's had to explain that they're getting evicted.

Tramble says her biggest concern is whether her husband will be able to adapt to a new environment, after 33 years in their second-storey unit on Shore Street in Fredericton.

"Some of the places have elevators and long halls. He'd be so confused. That's what really bothers me. He knows his directions [here], he goes for his walks. So it's just an ideal situation that way for us.

Landlords must prove Airbnb conversions aren't retaliation against tenants

It's the latest chapter in the rental woes for the couple, who faced a 67 per cent increase in their rent last December. That story prompted the New Brunswick government to beef up tenant protections, and put in place a one-year rent cap.

The Trambles were relieved to see a rent cap. But in June, everything changed when the eviction notice came.

"I just feel lost," the 67-year-old said through tears. "We're so uncertain of where we're going to go."
From 'courtesy letter' to 'notice of termination'

On June 13, DNV Properties Inc. sent the Trambles a "courtesy letter" letting them know they should start looking for somewhere else to live, because their unit was being converted into a short-term rental.

But on June 30, the Trambles received a new letter. It was a provincial "Notice of Termination to Tenant." It claimed that "the landlord or their immediate family intends to live in the premises," and it gave the Trambles until Sept. 30 to vacate the unit.

The reason provided is one of four exceptions that would allow a landlord to terminate a tenancy in New Brunswick.

The Trambles will have to leave their second-storey unit in Fredericton this fall.

 (Jeanne Armstrong/CBC)

Pauline Tramble said she was devastated by the letter, but she was also confused by their reasoning, because there are currently empty units in the building.

"The front apartment is available. That's supposed to be an Airbnb. And our neighbour's apartment is going to become available. … Why would they decide to come and live in this apartment?"

When Tramble tried to call her landlord, Neda Veselinovic, to ask her more about the termination, she was rebuffed.

"I tried to reach her when she dropped off our termination of rent, so I wanted to call her and ask her, why, you know? And she saw my number coming up, and she said she couldn't answer at the time, she was busy, and she said from now on, all our communications will be by email."

Pauline has to say goodbye to her home after she received an eviction notice in June. (Jeanne Armstrong/CBC)

In a subsequent email, Veselinovic told Tramble: "We understand that you are having a hard time finding a place to live, however we have tried to explain to you numerous times that we absolutely have to continue with our plan. ... The changes we are making are absolutely necessary to save our investment. Please understand this is not personal."

Requests for comment made by CBC News by email and by phone received no immediate response from DNV Properties Inc.

Tribunal 'actively reviewing this case'

Pauline said she's anxious to hear from the Residential Tenancies Tribunal.

In a statement to CBC, Service New Brunswick Minister Mary Wilson said the tribunal is "actively reviewing this case which was filed in early July."

"If the reason is due to the landlord or an immediate family member moving into the unit, supporting evidence will be required and the Residential Tenancies Tribunal will follow up in two months to ensure the landlord has followed through with the change."

In an interview with Information Morning Fredericton in June, Wilson, who refers to the tribunal as the RTT, said the province's Residential Tenancies Act offers protection against retaliatory rent increases or terminations.

"Is [this] a retaliatory change? Are they acting in good faith, or not? So at the end of the day, the RTT can deny, can delay or confirm termination," she said.

Pauline said the tribunal decision will dictate whether they're able to stay or go. The tribunal has not made a decision on the case yet, but a residential tenancies officer sent Pauline Tramble an update late last week.
Fredericton s

eniors told to vacate apartments for Airbnb-style conversions

More double-digit rent hikes in New Brunswick renew calls for limits

The officer sent the Trambles two digital pamphlets. One was titled "Housing & Homelessness," and it included a list of phone numbers for shelters, outreach workers and the Social Development Department.

The other digital pamphlet was titled "Food & Meal Resources," and it listed contact information for food banks, churches, and other charities.

The emails didn't give Pauline much hope.

"I am so anxious and afraid."

Pair using regenerative organic practices crowned as outstanding young farmers in Sask.

Farmers say their approach helped them improve soil, survive drought for 2 years

CBC News · Posted: Jul 24, 2022 

  

Cody Straza, left, and Allison Squires, right, were crowned outstanding young farmers this year for their work at Upland Organics, a farm they own in southwest Saskatchewan. (Upland Organics/Instagram)

A family of Saskatchewan producers have been crowned the province's most outstanding young farmers this year for their innovative practices.

Allison Squires and Cody Straza own Upland Organics in Wood Mountain, a village about 170 kilometres southwest of Regina.

The two earned their regional awards in a recent farm show in June by Canada's Outstanding Young Farmer's program, which recognizes excellent adult farmers under 40.

"It means quite a lot actually, it came as a bit of surprise," Squires told Shauna Powers, host of CBC's Saskatchewan Weekend.

"Being nominated by your peers and then recognized in such a way is pretty special and we're very excited about it."

A news release from the program said through "innovation and outreach, Upland Organics Ltd. have become leaders in organic agriculture."

Most importantly, their farm operations helped them survive a pair of back-to-back droughts that have devastated or hindered southern prairie farmers this year and last.

From drought relief to filling streams, heavy rain proves beneficial in Sask.

Sask. farmers using trees, winter crops to combat climate change-driven heat

Squires said the farm operates as a regenerative organic farm, and that's improved their soil and helped them weather the drought.

"Things are much better this year, although that is a pretty low bar," Straza said.

"We do still need to restore all the soil moisture .... it's in deficit right now, and we're always working on improving our soils."

LISTEN | Married couple named outstanding young farmers for organic produce farm talk about their practices:

Saskatchewan Weekend

11:01

Upland Organics named Saskatchewan's Outstanding Young FarmersAllison Squires and Cody Straza do things a little differently at their farm in Wood Mountain. Upland Organics works hard to build soil health and it's paying off: with their crops and their recognition. Recently they've been awarded the title of Saskatchewan's outstanding young farmers. Host Shauna Powers learns more about what that recognition means to them.

The two met at the University of Saskatchewan. Straza was an engineer who grew up on a farm in the Wood Mountain area, and Squires was a toxicologist from Newfoundland.

They got married and a few years later in 2010, and chose to buy the first parcel of land that would lead to Upland Organics.

"Learning from others and through their own on-farm experimentation Cody [and] Allison have successfully adopted farming techniques that include reduced tillage, intercropping, cover cropping, pollinator strips and rotational grazing," the release said.

"Using these practices, they have shown it is possible to improve their soil and be excellent stewards of the environment while also realizing financial benefits."


A national program event for 2022 is set to be held in Saskatoon in late November, where they'll learn if they've earned the national title as well.

"We show very well in the categories across the [nomination] application," Straza said.