Tuesday, August 02, 2022

Alberta legal aid lawyers threaten job action over 'perpetual funding neglect'

Jonny Wakefield - Yesterday 
Edmonton Journal


Alberta lawyers who represent low income clients are threatening to walk off the job over what they call “perpetual funding neglect” of Legal Aid Alberta.



On Saturday, three organizations representing criminal defence lawyers across Alberta issued an ultimatum to Justice Minister Tyler Shandro, saying they will withdraw from legal aid without an infusion of new funding.

On Saturday, three organizations representing criminal defence lawyers across Alberta issued an ultimatum to Justice Minister Tyler Shandro, months after Crown prosecutors made similar demands for additional funding

“The most minimal provision of legal aid services in Alberta is at a breaking point,” states the news release. “While we are prepared to collaborate with other stakeholders to solve this crisis, our cooperation is contingent upon a meaningful commitment by the government to adequately fund Legal Aid Alberta now.

“To ensure the government understands the immediacy of this crisis and the importance of this funding, our organizations are taking steps towards job action.”


The release is signed by the Edmonton-based Criminal Trial Lawyers’ Association (CTLA), Calgary’s Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association and the Southern Alberta Defence Lawyers’ Association.

Unlike the public defender system in the United States, defence lawyers in Alberta are not employed directly by the government . Rather, they are paid to represent low-income clients through Legal Aid Alberta, an arm’s length organization that receives funding from the federal and provincial governments, as well as from interest earned on their trust accounts.


In July, the three lawyers’ associations sent Shandro letters asking for more funding for the legal aid system, which they say pays about 40 per cent less than legal aid in other provinces.


They are also asking government to revamp the financial eligibility guidelines for legal aid. CTLA president Danielle Boisvert said that in some cases, people on AISH and those making as little as $25,000 a year do not qualify for the program.

“The government must take immediate action regarding the (Legal Aid Alberta) budget,” Boisvert said in her letter to Shandro, noting the government reported a $3.9 billion surplus last fiscal year. “The need is urgent. The time is now. The money is in the coffers.”

The lawyers’ groups added that without more funding, defence lawyers will continue to leave for other provinces or the Crown’s office, hurting the constitutional rights of low-income Albertans and creating a less efficient system.

“The quality of legal services will deteriorate, and the risk of wrongful convictions will grow,” they wrote. “Which means more appeals, more re-trials, more victims returning to court, more waste of precious court time, and more Jordan stays of serious prosecutions.”

The three associations said they did not hear back from Shandro by their July 29 deadline, and that they will meet Wednesday about withdrawing their services from Legal Aid Alberta.

Boisvert said defence lawyers operate as small businesses, and the associations, which are not unions, cannot compel their members to refuse legal aid work.

However, “all of us understand that something needs to be done now, and lawyers are much more willing to act collectively now than ever before,” she said. “I think … we’re going to have almost unanimous support for whatever we decide to do going forward, but unfortunately I can’t say we represent 100 per cent of the defence lawyers on the legal aid roster.”


Judge’s bench at the Edmonton Law Courts Building. File photo.

The threat of job action comes four months after Crown prosecutors made similar demands of the government, saying they were among the lowest paid in the country and that experienced lawyers were leaving as a result.

In April, the Alberta Crown Attorneys’ Association threatened job action, which led the province to bump up their pay ahead of negotiations on a new agreement.

The government also recently added funding for four additional judges on the Alberta provincial court. In an interview, Boisvert compared the justice system to a stool, with the judges, the Crown and the defence as each of its three legs.


“The government has infused a lot of money into the judiciary,” she said. “They’ve now infused a lot of money into the prosecution services. So two of those legs have been propped up, and the other one has been left shortchanged.”

She said funding for legal aid is an access to justice issue.

“When the public cannot access justice to begin with, and the justice they can access is subpar because of an underfunded legal aid system, then the justice they do get is not going to be quality justice.”


In an email, Shandro press secretary Joseph Dow said “contrary to what has been suggested,” the government “is willing to consider” increasing the legal aid operating budget and expanding eligibility for the program.

He said a review of the system is underway to make the billing and fee system less cumbersome. Any changes to Alberta’s contribution to Legal Aid Alberta “must be done after the current review is complete and must be done through the development of the 2023 budget,” Dow said.


jwakefield@postmedia.com

twitter.com/jonnywakefield

Legal aid lawyers reach breaking point, request more funding from province


Meaghan Archer and Craig Momney - Yesterday
Global News

Legal aid has reached a breaking point and Alberta defense lawyers are looking to the province for more funding.



The Law Courts in Edmonton, Alberta. Summer 2014.

Alberta’s legal aid program has been underfunded for years, said Ian Savage, the president of the Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

“Every now and then we try and get the government’s attention to the crisis and they put some money towards it on a band-aid type solution,” he said.

According to Savage, in 2018, a four-year provincial funding agreement was put in place with Rachel Notley’s NDP government. However, that funding decreased starting in 2020.

In May of this year, the province gave Legal Aid Alberta the green light to modernize its lawyer-building framework. But lawyers are saying that if there’s no money, then there’s no sense in the project.

Read more:
Edmonton court mixes law with psychology to find ‘meaningful resolutions’ for at-risk Albertans

“What legal aid has been given or not been given in terms of what it can work with to revamp the tariffs, as a whole, puts legal aid in a position where it can only do so much,” said Danielle Boisvert, a criminal defense lawyer in Edmonton and the president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers' Association.

Legal Aid Alberta is trying to pay lawyers for longer trials, said Boisvert, but that means taking away money from smaller files which make up about 70 per cent of cases the defense lawyers take on.


“If you’re getting paid less on each file, what are you going to do if you’re going to keep working in this industry as a defense lawyer for legal aid? What you need to do is take on more files.”

This approach, however, is causing burnout amongst lawyers trying to make a living.

Last month, three senior lawyers, including Savage and Boisvert, wrote letters to minister of justice and solicitor general Tyler Shandro about the issue. They asked him to respond by July 29 or they would consider job action.

There has not yet been a response from Shandro.

Read more:
A ‘broken’ system: Canadians can’t afford lawyers but don’t qualify for legal aid

“When a person who is a lawyer cannot be bothered to even respond in writing or with a telephone call to three senior lawyers representing hundreds of other lawyers across the province who are telling him – point blank – that he needs to act… that is very sad… and a shameful state of affairs,” said Savage.

According to Mount Royal analyst Lori Williams, the situation mirrors what Alberta prosecutors have recently raised. And any job action could have implications on the already-stretched judicial system.

“If the trials are delayed because of shortages of prosecutors or defense lawyers, then they can actually exceed time limits and wind up having the cases dismissed,” Williams explained.

The issue could play a major political role, she added.

“Rural crime has been an issue for some time now. If it looks like those who are trying to defend rural Albertans or trying to support them in their needs or so forth are falling short, that could have implications not just for the leadership race but for the next election.”

The three lawyer organizations will meet on Wednesday to discuss next steps, including job action.

Global News has reached out to Tyler Shandro for comment but had not heard back at the time of publishing.
BC
More than half of Fraser River dikes would overtop in repeat of 1894 flood, new modelling shows

LONG READ
Gordon Hoekstra , Nathan Griffiths -
Yesterday 
 Vancouver Sun

This low, overgrown dike, left, in Maple Ridge would be no match for a major flood.

In May of 1894, rapid snow melt triggered a massive flood from the upper Fraser Valley to Richmond. Homes, barns and bridges were swept away and railway tracks were left twisted from the deadly flooding.

The flood was the largest on the Fraser River since settlers arrived. But because the population was so low, the value of property damages was not great, perhaps a half-million dollars by one estimate.

Today, a similar event would have a much different result.

A Postmedia analysis of information recently provided to Lower Mainland municipalities shows more than half of the dikes along the lower Fraser would overtop in a repeat of 1894, inundating homes and businesses in towns and First Nation communities, and vast swaths of farmland.

The data provided to Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley municipalities — and to Postmedia at its request — used the latest dike crest survey information produced by the province in 2019 and 2020 and was applied to five flood scenarios, ranging from the 1894 flood, considered a one-in-500-year event, to a one-in-20-year event.

The data for 100 dikes was produced by the non-profit Fraser Basin Council, which is helping co-ordinate a Lower Mainland flood strategy with municipalities, the province and Ottawa.

The new information is meant to help communities prepare for spring high-water levels on the Fraser, known as a freshet, and to influence longer-term plans to improve flood resiliency as climate change is expected to make flooding more frequent and severe.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle,” says the Fraser Basin Council’s director of water programs, Steve Litke, who presented the information to a recent meeting of the Metro Vancouver flood-resiliency task force.


© Jon Murray Steve Litke of the Fraser Basin Council.

“Obviously, the crest height of the dike is significant, a pretty important part of a dike functioning properly relative to different flood events. … This does reveal deficiencies in terms of height,” said Litke.

The latest information does come with caveats.

The analysis focuses on the spring freshet and does not include potential flooding from coastal storm surges or flooding from other rivers — and as a result does not include all the dikes along the lower Fraser.

The Fraser Basin Council has cautioned local governments the information should be checked on the ground for measurement errors or situations where some feature such as adjacent high ground provides flood protection.

Litke said he believes the biggest limitation is the fact there are other ways that dikes can fail before overtopping, including erosion and seepage. “So, that’s an additional concern that isn’t reflected in these results,” he said.


© G.W. Edwards
The Fraser River flood in Hatzic, B.C., in June, 1894.

Postmedia used the information to estimate how much of each dike would fail in the five flood scenarios, which also include one-in-200, one-in-100 and one-in-50-year floods.

That information was then used to calculate the percentage of all the dikes where at least some section of dike was expected to overtop in the five flood scenarios.

In addition to the more than 50 per cent that would overtop in a flood similar to the one in 1894, the Postmedia analysis showed a section of more than one-third of the Fraser River dikes would overtop in a one-in-200-year flood, 20 per cent in a one-in-100-year flood, 16 per cent in a one-in-50-year flood and more than 10 per cent in a one-in-20-year flood.

Postmedia also examined information on whether dikes met the province’s guidelines for a buffer between the high-water mark and the top of dikes, known as freeboard. The guidelines call for a 0.6-metre buffer for the one-in-500-year flood.

The data showed 83 per cent of dikes had some sections that did not meet this guideline.

Craig Hodge, a Coquitlam councillor and vice-chair of the Metro flood-resiliency task force, said the latest dike crest-flood scenario modelling helps support work on a Lower Mainland flood strategy and underscores the need for funding and the urgency to get started on dike improvements.

During the catastrophic flooding in November, even though Coquitlam was not flooded, the community was affected, for example, by cut off transportation routes and gas rationing. The deadly flooding in the Fraser Valley and B.C. Interior washed away homes, bridges and roads and resulted in the evacuation of 14,000 people.

“We just have to bring everybody together. Certainly there’s a clear need to co-ordinate flood management strategies,” said Hodge. “Now, we know we can’t wait.”

Communities where there are significant portions of dikes that would overtop in the flood scenarios include Maple Ridge, Mission, Delta and Nicomen Island in the Fraser Valley, which includes a community of the Leq’á:mel First Nation.

In the City of Maple Ridge, nearly 90 per cent of the 2.5-kilometre Albion dike would overtop in the one-in-500-year flood, with seven per cent of it overtopping in a one-in-20 year event. Almost all of the dike does not meet the province’s freeboard guideline, according to Postmedia’s analysis.

City officials said the Albion dike is not owned by the city, but it has been carrying out work at the request of the province.

City spokesman Fred Armstrong said the city has the latest Fraser Basin Council figures and had conducted its own surveys, which have helped influence the city’s freshet flooding plan.

“In the event of potential inundation of the areas, the city’s freshet flooding plan has an interim plan to place concrete blocks along the edge of the river to act as a temporary dike until such time as a permanent dike would be completed,” said Armstrong.

The city has said it is willing to take ownership of dikes in the city but not until the province provides funding for upgrades to current standards, which also need to be part of a comprehensive plan along the Fraser River, noted Armstrong.

The Lower Mainland flood strategy was meant to set flood mitigation priorities, costs and a cost-sharing model but is four years overdue. Hodge, the Metro flood-resiliency task force’s vice-chair, said it is still probably at least one year away.

Work carried out earlier for that flood strategy estimates a similar 1894 flood today would cause about $23 billion in damage and result in severe economic fallout.

These latest flood scenario figures underscore the significant undertaking needed to improve flood protection on the lower Fraser — and the struggles local governments and First Nations have to do that.

A recent Postmedia News investigation found that municipalities don’t have the billions of dollars needed to upgrade flood protection after the province downloaded responsibility to municipalities beginning in 2003.

In Mission, analysis showed 16 per cent of one of its dikes along the Fraser River, largely protecting commercial property, would over top in the one-in-500 year flood, 10 per cent in the 200-year event and six per cent in the 100 year event.

More than 20 per cent of the dike doesn’t meet the freeboard guidelines.

City of Mission spokeswoman Taryn Hubbard said they received the Fraser Basin Council data and have used it alongside other reports and studies to influence their work and planning. A recent report on the state of Mission’s dike system found they are “deficient” with issues such as being lower than design flood levels, and pumps not having enough capacity.

In the Fraser Valley, Nicomen Island’s dikes also face overtopping in flood events. About 90 per cent of the 35-kilometre dike system would overtop in a one-in-500 year event, according to Postmedia’s analysis. And none of the dike meets the province’s 0.6 metre freeboard guidelines.


In March 2017, under the then-B.C. Liberal government, the province announced $10.5 million to upgrade the Nicomen Island dikes.

Although the dike is under the authority of a diking district with a volunteer board, the province provided the money to the Fraser Valley Regional District to administer on behalf of the diking district.

Some of the funding is expected to be used to upgrade five pumping stations, while other funds may be used to widen and raise some of the dike system, said Fraser Valley Regional District spokeswoman Angelique Crowther.

A 2015 report estimated the cost to upgrade the entire Nicomen Island dike system to modern standards would be $65 million.

In Delta, there are sections of its dike system in the Ladner area that were found to overtop in various flood scenarios, according to Postmedia’s analysis.

Suman Shergill, manager of utilities and engineering for the city, said due to the community’s proximity to the ocean, its dikes are built to withstand a 200-year winter coastal flood, which produces higher water levels than a spring freshet.

The city did not say whether it had received the latest dike crest-flood scenario information from the Fraser Basin Council and had checked the figures on the ground.

Following last year’s deadly flooding that caused billions of dollars in damage, B.C. municipalities and First Nations have been calling for the province and Ottawa to show more leadership on flood protection.

The November flooding was caused by an atmospheric river, a torrential downpour in a short period of time. This is different than a spring freshet but also expected to increase in frequency and severity because of climate change.

B.C. government officials noted they had funded the latest work of the Fraser Basin Council, saying the information was provided mainly for local governments to prepare for the freshet along the Fraser River.

But Andrew Giles, manager of the River Forecast Centre and flood safety for the province, said the information also supports longer-term planning by dike authorities through the four elements of emergency management: preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery.

“This information also provides a foundation for further dialogue between the province and diking authorities toward flood risk reduction,” said Giles.

The federal government referred questions about the new dike information, and what it meant for its plans, to the province.

ghoekstra@postmedia.com

twitter.com/gordon_hoekstra
Why carbon markets should focus on funding Indigenous and natural solutions

M.A. Jacquemain - Saturday
The Weather Network

How carbon markets are funding the fight against climate change
View on Watch

On the traditional territories of the Squamish Nation and Lil’wat Nation in British Columbia, the Cheakamus Community Forest Carbon Offset Project is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by some 10,000 tons of CO2 each year through modified forestry practices.

These practices, like improved logging and increased protection of wildlife habitats, ensure that more carbon is sequestered, and earned the project 12,500 carbon offsets at $25/ton through the BC Emission Offsets Regulation – funds to be reinvested in the forest.

It’s one of many projects that are created and maintained independently through startup funding, investment, and an assortment of government subsidies. One such source of funding comes from the sale of carbon offsets.

“This additional tool allows the Lil’wat Nation a way to balance protecting culturally important areas and serves our people today and for future generations,” Lil’wat Nation Chief Dean Nelson said in a statement.

Carbon markets and offsets can be confusing, and some climate analysts consider them a way for industrial polluters to pay even less than what they shell out for the federal carbon price.

A new national carbon emissions market launched last month, the Greenhouse Gas Credit Offset System, fell under similar scrutiny.


The new system would allow registered participants like farmers or cities to sell CO2 reduction credits to bigger emitters. For every one ton of emissions participants remove from the atmosphere, they would earn one credit to sell to other polluters.



Man looking at beef cattle grazing in a field on a summer morning in southwest Scotland. (John F Scott/ E+/ Getty Images)

The announcement has once again raised questions as to how effective carbon markets are in the fight against climate change.

“The government’s decision to double down on carbon offsets is a major step backwards for Canada’s climate ambitions,” Shane Moffatt of Greenpeace Canada, said in a statement.

“Offsetting doesn’t stop carbon from entering the atmosphere and warming our world, it just keeps it off the books of big polluters responsible,” Moffat added.

But there’s another line of thinking that suggests that carbon offsets could become a way for companies to fund sustainable innovation, rather than a way for companies to get to Net Zero.

A recent Bloomberg Green article suggested that “allowing investments in new, green technologies to count as credit for offsets … would unleash billions of dollars to flow into research and development aimed at reducing carbon in the atmosphere and creating meaningful funding for the expansion of renewable energy.”

New research sponsored by the Institute for International Finance (IIF) determined that demand for carbon credits would increase by upwards of 15 times by 2030 and 100 times by 2050, resulting in a market worth as much as $50 billion in the coming decade.

High-integrity voluntary carbon markets could be an important source of funding to projects designed to fight climate change. A key beneficiary of this funding would be projects involving natural solutions and those in developing countries.

“The reason why this is a great idea is that climate projects cost more in the developed world than in less-developed or developing countries,” Teresa Hartman, Climate and Nature Lead with the World Economic Forum, told The Weather Network (TWN).

Watch: Enormous carbon capture plant in Iceland opens soon

A report published last year by the World Economic Forum found that natural solutions to climate change “play a critical role in supporting the future of both climate and nature.”

The research determined that natural climate solutions (NCS) could provide fully one third of the climate mitigation required to meet climate goals by 2030.

Several NCS projects are underway in Canada, many of them run by Indigenous communities, such as the Cheakamus Project, as well as organizations like Nature United, which has instituted NCS programs focused on conservation led by Indigenous groups. The latter established a 6.5-million acre protected area with the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation.

“Money from the sale of carbon offsets enables the Community Forest to implement ecosystem-based management forestry practices that increase protection around creeks and rivers, protect more old growth management areas and biodiversity-rich areas,” Joseph Pallant, Director of Climate Innovation at Ecotrust Canada, told TWN.

“Without this carbon finance, the forest would have to be logged in a more damaging, status quo fashion,” Pallant added. “Natural Climate Solutions are so clearly integral in beating climate change and sustaining a healthy environment.”

If well-implemented, carbon markets continue to offer much potential in directing the flow of capital away from emission-producing and toward emission-reducing.

Thumbnail image: Sunset in Toronto, Ontario. The characteristic Toronto skyline with the famous CN tower graces the horizon. As seen from Riverdale Park East, Broadview. (Katrin Ray Shumakov/ Moment/ Getty Images)
Stephen Harper may have picked the wrong horse – again

Andrew Mitrovica - Yesterday  Al Jazeera

I did not know that Canada’s former prime minister, Stephen Harper, read this column.



Stephen Harper gives his concession speech after Canada's federal election in Calgary, Alberta, October 19, 2015
[File: Mark Blinch/Reuters]

Such is, I suppose, the unlikely reach of Al Jazeera. I was unaware that Harper’s reading tastes extended much beyond the ever agreeable opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal or the Jerusalem Post.

In any event, you may recall that a few weeks ago I devoted a column, reluctantly, to Pierre Poilievre, the jejune heir apparent to Harper.

The column was, I thought, a rather tame but accurate portrait of an ephemeral career politician who considers cheap, media-attractive stunts suitable substitutes for serious thinking about the serious challenges confronting Canada and the world.


Given the pedestrian subject matter, I was surprised when the column rocketed to the top of Al Jazeera’s home page – “trending” for a while longer than the usual lifespan of my weekly contributions.


So, thank you, readers.

Still, like all columns, some readers enjoyed my cheeky, if uncharitable, insights, while others did not.

The latter flocked, I’m sure, like a pack of crazed hyenas online to find my Twitter handle, eager to vent their incoherent, phantom grievance-laden displeasure.

Disappointed, no doubt, to learn that I don’t – like most wise people who prefer to read, write or go for a walk rather than tweet – have a Twitter account, the pack migrated en agitated masse to a not-so-secret email address where I can be reached and, happily, block irritating pests.

There, the pack confirmed that they share every juvenile aspect of Poilievre’s inconsequential temperament and intellect in an assembly line of anaemic messages that their authors confused with being cutting or pithy.

Sadly, I suspect the hot tub-wading, wannabe insurrectionists will descend upon me again and insist that I “get out” of the country – with or without various parts of my anatomy – after reading this missive.

Note to crazed hyenas and other easily triggered Poilievre fan-boys and girls: I’m staying put in this lovely, B-movie country I call home.

Apparently, Harper was also moved to come to his protégé’s defence just days after my original column appeared.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

True to Borg-like form, Harper posted a dour one-minute-and-47-second video on his Twitter page – shot in what resembles a funeral parlour foyer – to endorse Poilievre as the next Conservative Party leader.


Looking as welcoming and charismatic as the exhausted director of the aforementioned funeral parlour on the cusp of retirement, Harper droned on for one minute and 47 seconds too long. More on his sad, perfunctory performance in a moment.

Like many of his predecessors, Harper promptly leveraged his tenure as a poorly-paid, but oh-so-well-connected prime minister to make oodles of money as an “international consultant” and a high-priced “director” of a slew of real estate and investment companies.

That Harper took less than two minutes from his lucrative, post-PM pursuits to back Poilievre’s candidacy with the energy of a dead battery is a measure not only of how irrelevant he has become, but of how cashing in is now the all-consuming priority.

Harper began his eulogy – I’m sorry, rousing endorsement – by telling Conservative supporters who were able to stay awake for a little more than 90 seconds that Poilievre has “garnered disproportionate attention” during the leadership campaign.

Stirring stuff.

I’m obliged to remind Harper and Conservatives touched by his touching rhetoric, that Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have “garnered disproportionate attention” for years. No one outside what constitutes the seething, fanatical far-right cauldron of today’s Republican Party would deem any of these – to borrow a phrase – “bull**** artists” even remotely worthy of praise, let alone qualified for public service.

I concede, however, that, long ago, standards for high office have slipped. Stephen Harper is proof of that.

Not done rousting fellow Conservatives from their midday naps with take-a-memo-like language, Harper described his effervescent mini-me as a “strong minister” who for the “past several years has been our party’s most vocal and effective critic of the Trudeau Liberals”.

Translation: Pierre was a junior cabinet minister because I didn’t trust him to be anywhere near the Prime Minister’s Office, finance, or foreign affairs. Instead, I named the leader of the anti-science, anti-reason, anti-immigrant [Pestilent] People’s Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier, foreign minister. OK. I and my many admirers in Canada’s dominant Conservative-hugging press want to forget about that. Meanwhile, I had to quit in 2015 after an on-life-support Liberal Party led by a kid who beat up one of my hand-picked senators in a boxing ring walloped me too at the polls. Since then, the party has been reduced to shouting and performing click-bait-driven antics in political purgatory – otherwise known as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition – with Pierre earning the distinction as Canada’s loudest and most obnoxious member of parliament. Winning!

Building to a stalled crescendo, Harper said that Poilievre’s habit of “talking” about the “issues” set him apart from the other banal Conservative leadership candidates, one of whom has bailed from the final debate since the party refuses to “talk” about abortion or entertain Alex Jones-like conspiracy theories involving the World Economic Forum.

The talkative Poilievre is – irony alert – skipping the last all-candidates debates, as well. Poilievre prefers to do his talking these days in a log cabin where, in a fireside chat without the fire, he tried and failed to convince confused viewers that reclaimed wood is a metaphor for lost “freedoms”.

More gripping stuff.

Poilievre doesn’t “talk” about how and when those “freedoms” went missing or who “lost” them, but, God and Conservative members willing, he’s determined to find them – somewhere and somehow.

While he’s out searching like an eager-to-please Boy Scout with a broken compass, most enlightened Canadians are preoccupied with the existential threat that the unfolding climate calamity poses to Canada today and tomorrow.

They understand that every decision made by a responsible prime minister with a scintilla of foresight and appreciation for why the urgent imperative to prevent – if still possible – the earth from burning up should inform every decision a responsible prime minister makes to address “pocketbook issues”.

Harper and his reckless progeny refuse, of course, to “talk” about that. They’re too busy digesting the trite lessons of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life to bother with British climate scientist Bill McGuire’s Hothouse Earth, which makes the persuasive case that by virtue of our denial, greed and complacency, we have passed the tipping point into catastrophe.

In the absence of a tangible solution, Harper recycled this hackneyed drivel in response to the seminal test of these perilous times. “[Poilievre] is proposing answers rooted in sound Conservative ideas but ones adapted for today’s realities.”

My goodness.

The Conservative Party is the home of cliché. Devoid of imagination or ideas, it is left to traffic in vacuous slogans and posturing, including standing with scientifically illiterate buffoons who are convinced that a life-saving, plague-blunting vaccine is the devil’s brew.

And yet there is hope.

If Poilievre becomes leader, he will be the third ex Darth Harper cabinet minister to have challenged the synonymous-for-smug Liberals in a federal election.

The two others lost and soon disappeared into obscurity.

Conservatives are either calculating that the third time will be the elusive charm or it may finally register that Harper and his clawing acolytes are a spent, anachronistic force.

Simply put for the simple-minded: Stephen Harper may have picked the wrong horse – again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
KENNEY'S MOUTHPIECE
Dr. Hinshaw sees massive bonus, while healthcare workers continue to struggle

Tom Vernon - Yesterday 

For more than two years, Dr. Deena Hinshaw has been the face of Alberta’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s no denying this role has meant a lot of work and long days. And that has led to a significant bump in pay.


Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw in Edmonton on Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021.

As Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Hinshaw has a salary of more than $360,000, but last year she brought home much more than that.

Alberta’s sunshine list shows additional cash benefits totaling nearly $230,000. All added up, that is more than $590,000 in compensation.


Read more:
Alberta Health Services no longer requires COVID-19 immunization for its workers

The sunshine list shows she did not receive this type of payment in 2020 – the first year of the pandemic.

In a statement, government spokesperson Steve Buick said, “Given the scale of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an extraordinary amount of additional work was required from Alberta’s top public health doctor,” and that the bonus was “determined using a formula for managers based on additional hours worked.”

In total, 107 government employees were given additional compensation, which came to a total of $2.4 million.

This has caught the attention of at least two UCP leadership candidates.

Read more:
Albertans rally to support public health-care system

“’We’re all in this together’ didn’t mean what we thought it did,’ wrote to her Twitter followers, adding Albertans are stunned and outraged.

“$19,000 a month as the bonus?” added MLA Brian Jean. “This is unsettling, to say the least.

“The healthcare system is in trouble,” said Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. “The wisdom of the expenditures or cuts that have been made are being called into question.”

Read more:
Behind the COVID curtain: formerly confidential Alberta government documents made public

Williams said it won’t just be UCP leadership hopefuls asking these questions, but other frontline healthcare workers as well.

“Doctors are still – more than two years later – without a contract with the Alberta government. Nurses and frontline healthcare workers, including respiratory therapists, have been repeatedly asked to take cuts,” she said.

The pandemic persists and Dr. Hinshaw continues her work. And Albertans now know what that work is worth.

Alberta government paid Dr. Deena Hinshaw record cash bonus in 2021

Janet French - CBC - YESTERDAY

Alberta's chief medical officer of health last year received the largest cash benefit payout of any provincial civil servant since the government began posting records in 2016.


Alberta's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, was paid substantially more than many of her counterparts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw's salary last year was $363,634, but she also took home an additional $227,911 in "cash benefits" during the 2021 calendar year, according to the Alberta government's salary and severance disclosure database, which was updated last month.

Hinshaw is one of 107 employees in management positions who received extra pay for their efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, the provincial government says. The total extra compensation cost Albertans more than $2.4 million dollars.


"The scale of the response to this unprecedented public health emergency required an extraordinary amount of additional work from the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, the Vaccine Task force, the Pandemic Response Team and others, which is reflected in the recent disclosure," Ministry of Health spokesperson Mark Feldbusch said in an email last week.

He said it is a long-standing policy on pay that has been in place during other emergencies, including the Fort McMurray wildfires in 2016 and southern Alberta floods of 2013.

Hinshaw's contract, which is posted online, does not specify the number of hours in her work week, nor does it include overtime provisions.

The Alberta government's extra pay to Hinshaw covers time she worked in excess of 45 hours per week. It was calculated using a formula devised by the public service commission, Feldbusch said.

He declined to say how many hours of overtime she worked.

CBC News compared Hinshaw's compensation for the most recent years available to that of her counterparts in four other provinces, as well as that of Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, of B.C., received $342,292 for the 2020-21 fiscal year. Henry did not receive any bonus pay in that time for pandemic management, a B.C. government spokesperson said.

Dr. Robert Strang, of Nova Scotia, received $305,645 in 2020-21. He did not receive any additional pay for pandemic management during 2020-21 or 2021-22, a Nova Scotia government spokesperson said.


Salaries, compensation of select chief provincial public health officers

Dr. Saqib Shahab, of Saskatchewan, received $411,416 in 2020-21 — about $78,000 more than he received the previous year.

The Saskatchewan government cannot say if Shahab received a bonus, because the law prevents it from releasing more details about civil servants' compensation, a Saskatchewan government spokesperson said.

Ontario's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, who started in the post on June 26, 2021, received $235,314 in the 2021 calendar year.


The Ontario government could not disclose whether Moore received any bonus pay, a spokesperson said.

Hinshaw's extra pay opaquely justified: bioethicist

Dr. James Talbot, a medical microbiologist, served as Alberta's chief medical officer of health from 2012 to 2015.

Talbot did not discuss additional pay for potential excessive overtime with Alberta government human resources personnel while he was in the role, he said.

The pandemic is an unprecedented situation that required public health officials to work a lot of overtime to properly respond to the emergency, so it's fair that Hinshaw was compensated for additional work, Talbot said.

Hinshaw's total compensation last year — about $591,545 — isn't out-of-line with what many medical specialists earn, he said. But her workload was likely comparable to that of her counterparts during this time, making her pay an outlier.

The Alberta government's justification for the additional pay is opaque, said Arthur Schafer, a bioethicist and founding director of the University of Manitoba's Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics.


Hinshaw was one of the best-paid in the country before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the provincial government hasn't explained why her pay is a national aberration, he explained.


"They're blowing smoke in the public's face," Schafer said. "Top-level officials such as Dr. Hinshaw are not paid to work a 40-hour week. They're not salaried based on the number of hours they work. They're given very high remuneration."

Moving forward, Talbot expects medical officers of health — and doctors applying for those positions — to seek additional danger pay, or assurances of security from their respective provincial governments, given the public outrage and threats Hinshaw and her counterparts have faced.

"The amount of stress that that position was under across the country was also unprecedented," he said. "I was only peripherally involved, and I got death threats."

Since late May 2021, the Alberta government has paid Price Langevin and Associate, a private security firm, more than $262,000 to protect Hinshaw, according to the province's sole-source contracts diclosure database.

 

Engineers repurpose 19th-century photography technique to make stretchy, color-changing films

The technique opens a door to manufacturing of pressure-monitoring bandages, shade-shifting fabrics, or touch-sensing robots

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Stretchy Optics 

IMAGE: BY APPLYING A 19TH-CENTURY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUE TO MODERN HOLOGRAPHIC MATERIALS, AN MIT TEAM HAS PRINTED LARGE-SCALE IMAGES ONTO ELASTIC MATERIALS THAT WHEN STRETCHED CAN TRANSFORM THEIR COLOR, REFLECTING DIFFERENT WAVELENGTHS AS THE MATERIAL IS STRAINED. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF MATHIAS KOLLE, BENJAMIN MILLER ET. AL

Imagine stretching a piece of film to reveal a hidden message. Or checking an arm band’s color to gauge muscle mass. Or sporting a swimsuit that changes hue as you do laps. Such chameleon-like, color-shifting materials could be on the horizon, thanks to a photographic technique that’s been resurrected and repurposed by MIT engineers.

By applying a 19th-century color photography technique to modern holographic materials, an MIT team has printed large-scale images onto elastic materials that when stretched can transform their color, reflecting different wavelengths as the material is strained.

The researchers produced stretchy films printed with detailed flower bouquets that morph from warm to cooler shades when the films are stretched. They also printed films that reveal the imprint of objects such as a strawberry, a coin, and a fingerprint.

The team’s results provide the first scalable manufacturing technique for producing detailed, large-scale materials with “structural color” — color that arises as a consequence of a material’s microscopic structure, rather than from chemical additives or dyes.

“Scaling these materials is not trivial, because you need to control these structures at the nanoscale,” says Benjamin Miller, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Now that we’ve cleared this scaling hurdle, we can explore questions like: Can we use this material to make robotic skin that has a human-like sense of touch? And can we create touch-sensing devices for things like virtual augmented reality or medical training? It’s a big space we’re looking at now.”

The team’s results appear today in Nature Materials. Miller’s co-authors are MIT undergraduate Helen Liu, and Mathias Kolle, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

Hologram happenstance

Kolle’s group develops optical materials that are inspired by nature. The researchers have studied the light-reflecting properties in mollusk shells, butterfly wings, and other iridescent organisms, which appear to shimmer and shift their color due to microscopic surface structures. These structures are angled and layered to reflect light like miniature colored mirrors, or what engineers refer to as Bragg reflectors.

Groups including Kolle’s have sought to replicate this natural, structural color in materials using a variety of techniques. Some efforts have produced small samples with precise nanoscale structures, while others have generated larger samples, but with less optical precision.

As the team writes, “an approach that offers both [microscale control and scalability] remains elusive, despite several potential high-impact applications.”

While puzzling over how to resolve this challenge, Miller happened to visit the MIT Museum, where a curator talked him through an exhibit on holography, a technique that produces three-dimensional images by superimposing two light beams onto a physical material.

“I realized what they do in holography is kind of the same thing that nature does with structural color,” Miller says.

That visit spurred him to read up on holography and its history, which led him back to the late 1800s, and Lippmann photography — an early color photography technique invented by Franco-Luxembourgish physicist Gabriel Lippmann, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the technique.

Lippmann generated color photos by first setting a mirror behind a very thin, transparent emulsion — a material that he concocted from tiny light-sensitive grains. He exposed the setup to a beam of light, which the mirror reflected back through the emulsion. The interference of the incoming and outgoing light waves stimulated the emulsion’s grains to reconfigure their position, like many tiny mirrors, and reflect the pattern and wavelength of the exposing light.

Using this technique, Lippmann projected structurally colored images of flowers and other scenes onto his emulsions, though the process was laborious. It involved hand-crafting the emulsions and waiting for days for the material to be sufficiently exposed to light. Because of these limitations, the technique largely faded into history.

A modern twist

Miller wondered if, paired with modern, holographic materials, Lippmann photography could be sped up to produce large-scale, structurally colored materials. Like Lippmann’s emulsions, current holographic materials consist of light-sensitive molecules that, when exposed to incoming photons, can cross-link to form colored mirrors.

“The chemistries of these modern holographic materials are now so responsive that it’s possible to do this technique on a short timescale simply with a projector,” Kolle notes.

In their new study, the team adhered elastic, transparent holographic film onto a reflective, mirror-like surface (in this case, a sheet of aluminum). The researchers then placed an off-the-shelf projector several feet from the film and projected images onto each sample, including Lippman-esque bouquets.

As they suspected, the films produced large, detailed images within several minutes, rather than days, vividly reproducing the colors in the original images.

They then peeled the film away from the mirror and stuck it to a black elastic  silicone backing for support. They stretched the film and observed the colors change — a consequence of the material’s structural color: When the material stretches and thins out, its nanoscale structures reconfigure to reflect slightly different wavelengths, for instance, changing from red to blue.  

The team found the film’s color is highly sensitive to strain. After producing an entirely red film, they adhered it to a silicone backing that varied in thickness. Where the backing was thinnest, the film remained red, whereas thicker sections strained the film, causing it to turn blue.

Similarly, they found that pressing various objects into samples of red film left detailed green imprints, caused by, say, the seeds of a strawberry and the wrinkles of a fingerprint.

Interestingly, they could also project hidden images, by tilting the film at an angle with respect to the incoming light when creating the colored mirrors. This tilt essentially caused the material’s nanostructures to reflect a red-shifted spectrum of light. For instance, green light used during material exposure and development would lead to red light being reflected, and red light exposure would give structures that reflect infrared — a wavelength that is not visible to humans. When the material is stretched, this otherwise invisible image changes color to reveal itself in red.

“You could encode messages in this way,” Kolle says.

Overall, the team’s technique is the first to enable large-scale projection of detailed, structurally colored materials.

Indeed, Kolle notes that the new color-changing materials are easily integrated into textiles.

“Lippmann’s materials wouldn’t have allowed him to even produce a Speedo,” he says. “Now we could make a full leotard.”

Beyond fashion and textiles, the team is exploring applications such as color-changing bandages, for use in monitoring bandage pressure levels when treating conditions such as venous ulcers and certain lymphatic disorders.

This research was supported, in part, by The Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the National Science Foundation, the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, Samsung, and the MIT ME MathWorks seed fund.

CAPTION

An MIT team has provided the first scalable manufacturing technique for producing detailed, large-scale materials with “structural color” — color that arises as a consequence of a material’s microscopic structure, rather than from chemical additives or dyes.

CREDIT

Image courtesy of Mathias Kolle, Benjamin Miller, et al; edited by MIT News

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

Additional background

Paper: “Scalable optical manufacture of dynamic structural color in stretchable materials”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01318-x

SARS-CoV-2 and vaccine uptake among First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples in urban areas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION JOURNAL

 NEWS RELEASE 

Despite prioritizing Indigenous populations for SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations, vaccine uptake was low among First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples in Toronto and London, Ontario, according to new research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journalhttps://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.212147.

As more than half of Indigenous Peoples in Canada live in urban areas, it is critical to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated existing health inequities, on these populations.

“Dense and multigenerational social networks; barriers in access to culturally safe health care; and a disproportionate burden of poverty, chronic disease and inadequate housing create conditions for the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among First Nations, Inuit and Métis living in urban areas in Canada,” writes Dr. Janet Smylie, St. Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto, and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, with coauthors.

To fill gaps in understanding, a team of Indigenous and allied researchers co-led by Dr. Janet Smylie, Cheryllee Bourgeois, Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto and Dr. Michael Rotondi, York University, in partnership with Indigenous agencies, aimed to generate data on rates of SARS-CoV-2 testing and vaccination, and incidence of infection among First Nations, Inuit and Métis living in Toronto and London, Ontario. They included data on population-representative samples of 723 and 364 people over age 15 in each city respectively. The rate for 2-dose vaccination among First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Toronto was 58% compared with 79% for the overall population. In London, 2-dose completion was 61% for Indigenous populations compared with 82% for the overall population.

As well, vaccination rates among First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Toronto and London lagged behind overall vaccination rates among First Nations living on and off reserve in Ontario and national rates for First Nations on reserve. The authors suggest these differences in vaccination rates could be because of delayed access to vaccines in cities as well as Indigenous peoples’ mistrust of vaccines and of the urban hospitals leading Ontario’s vaccination campaigns.

“Multigenerational colonial policies that aimed to assimilate First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples and appropriate land and resources have led to inequities across most major health outcome for First Nations, Inuit and Métis living in urban, rural and remote geographies compared with non-Indigenous people in Canada, as well as striking gaps in access to equitable and culturally safe health care,” write the authors.

With new variants arising, these lower vaccination rates are concerning.

“There is a time-sensitive need to amplify Indigenous-focused COVID-19 response measures to prevent widespread SARS-CoV-2 infection among those who are not vaccinated with a subsequent surge in hospital admissions and mortality caused by COVID-19 among First Nations, Inuit and Métis,” they write.

Testing rates for SARS-CoV-2 among First Nations, Inuit and Métis were higher in Toronto (54%) than local and provincial rates. Community partnerships and outreach and culturally safe access to testing and vaccination can help lessen the burden of COVID-19 on these populations.

“Localized by-community-for-community approaches have successfully engaged First Nations, Inuit and Métis living in cities in the COVID-19 response and could be used to further improve access to trusted COVID-19 information sources and culturally safe vaccination opportunities,” they suggest.