Environmental groups protest proposals to build LNG terminals on Canada's East Coast

Thu, August 4, 2022 

HALIFAX — A coalition of environmental groups is calling on Ottawa to reject any proposal to build export facilities for liquefied natural gas on Canada's East Coast.

The coalition, which includes the Sierra Club Canada Foundation and Climate Action Network Canada, issued a statement today suggesting Canadians are opposed to such projects because of their "climate-wrecking emissions" and potential financial risks.

Calgary-based Pieridae Energy has been promoting the construction of a multibillion-dollar LNG terminal at Goldboro, N.S., since 2011, but it put the project on hold last summer.

The company, which could not be reached for comment, had planned get natural gas from Western Canada via pipeline and then ship it by tanker to European customers, but the idea fizzled as LNG prices fell last year.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, however, the demand for natural gas has grown amid concerns the Russians will cut off its supply to Europe, and Germany in particular.

Other plans for LNG terminals in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have also generated renewed interest.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 4, 2022.

The Canadian Press

In pictures: Mysterious, 105 foot-wide sinkhole at mining site in Chile

A sinkhole is exposed at a mining zone close to Tierra Amarilla town, in Copiapo, Chile, August 1, 2022. 

 TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

TOPSHOT-CHILE-MINING-SINKHOLE

 Aerial view taken on August 1, 2022, showing a large sinkhole that appeared over the weekend near the mining town of Tierra Amarilla, Copiapo Province, in the Atacama Desert in Chile. - A 100-metre security perimeter has been erected around the hole which appeared in the Tierra Amarilla municipality near the Alcaparrosa mine operated by Canadian firm Lundin Mining. 

(Photo by JOHAN GODOY / AFP)



Abhya Adlakha
·Editor, Yahoo News Canada
Thu, August 4, 2022 .

A mysterious, giant sinkhole appeared at a mining site in Chile over the weekend, leading authorities to investigate.

On Tuesday, Chile's National Service of Geology and Mining confirmed the sinkhole is almost 105 feet in diameter. That's about 11-feet longer than an NBA or WBNA basketball court.

The hole appeared on land where Canadian company Lundin Mining operates a copper mine.

According to USGS, sinkholes can occur where the rock below the land surface can naturally be dissolved by groundwater circulating through them. This creates caverns or spaces that can collapse suddenly despite the surface appearing stable.

The investigators of the sinkhole in Chile haven't yet determined how it was created. The company is monitoring the nearby Alcaparrosa mine for any movement related to the event. Work in the underground mine has been temporarily suspended.

Libraries in the U.S. and Canada are changing how they refer to Indigenous Peoples


Julia Bullard, Assistant Professor in Information Studies, University of British Columbia
Thu, August 4, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION

Changes to search terms, through guidance from Indigenous communities and library experts, can align systems with everyday language, but can't invalidate the terms people use to refer to themselves. (Shutterstock)

The two largest agencies responsible for the language we use to discover books in libraries in North America — the Library of Congress in the United States, and Library and Archives Canada — are changing how they refer to Indigenous Peoples.

Recently, the Library of Congress announced that by September 2022 a project would be underway to revise terms that refer to Indigenous Peoples.

Beginning in 2019, Library and Archives Canada made changes within Canadian subject headings, starting with replacing outdated terminology with “Indigenous peoples” and “First Nations,” and adding terms that specify Métis and other specific nations and peoples.

It is important to acknowledge what these library changes can and cannot do, and the need for consultation with and guidance from Indigenous communities and Indigenous library workers. This is a departure from business as usual for maintaining these systems.

Library indexing

Both Library of Congress and Library and Archives Canada manage the term lists used in public and academic libraries throughout both countries.

When a book is published, library workers use lists of approved terms to indicate the subject or topic of the book. These terms determine how the book can be found in a library search and may even be printed on the copyright page of the book itself. The catalogue record then gets copied to each library that holds a copy of the book.

Read more: Libraries can have 3-D printers but they are still about books

Outdated terminology such as “Indians of North America” has remained in these term lists despite changing use in society and no longer matches the language used in the books themselves. The management of these terms lists last made international news when politicians interfered in a change from “illegal aliens” to “undocumented immigrants.”

Revisions to systems

The heading “Indians of North America” has been part of these lists since the Library of Congress Subject Headings were first standardized and shared with libraries more than a century ago.

Library researchers and librarians hope revisions to existing systems will reduce some of the friction of using the library for Indigenous and decolonizing research. This friction relates both to materials being categorized strangely, and how the use of older terms like “Indians of North America” could negatively affect some members of Indigenous communities, even while there are a diversity of views that exist in Indigenous communities about identity labels.

1,000 terms under review

Since 2015, the Manitoba Archival Information Network has shared a list of more than 1,000 terms relating to Indigenous Peoples with suggestions for more accurate and respectful language. Many of the recommended changes use the term “Indigenous peoples,” which exists in the term lists already.

Right now, adding a geographic term to the end, as in “Indigenous peoples — Asia” is a permitted heading, except in the case of the Americas. At present, terms like “Indigenous peoples — United States” and “First Nations (North America)” redirect to “Indians of North America.”

The same is the case for terms that redirect to “Indians of South America.”

Library and Archives Canada continues to roll out changes like a shift from “Canadian poetry (English)–Inuit authors” to “Inuit poetry (English).”

Indigenous knowledge organization

Beyond revamping misleading terminology, library science scholars and Indigenous knowledge holders (like Sandy Littletree, with colleagues) are examining how to advance Indigenous knowledge organization practices in library systems.

Research conducted by my team of librarians and students shows that authors prefer their books to be labelled in Indigenous-centered approaches or reconciliation approaches. For example, Xwi7xwa Library is a branch of University of British Columbia’s academic library entirely dedicated to Indigenous materials. Indexing is adapted from a system developed by Kahnawake librarian Brian Deer in the ‘70s for the National Indian Brotherhood, now the Assembly of First Nations.

The the Greater Victoria Public Library has introduced locally developed interim Indigenous subject headings that use more current terminology.

Interviews with authors

Over the past two years, my team and I interviewed 38 authors whose books were labelled in libraries with terms like “Indians of North America.”

Those authors told us these terms didn’t match the language in their books, nor what is acceptable in their professional communities. They shared how these terms created difficulty in findings works by or about Indigenous Peoples.

They explained how people using library search functions would have to use terms they disagreed with and wouldn’t use in their classes and writing. Ambiguous terms like “Indian cooking” and “Indian activism” create confusion as to whether an item pertains to Indigenous Peoples in North America or India.

As authors in our study suggested, the continued use of these terms imposes a colonial worldview on books that are often resisting, challenging or exposing the harms of colonialism.

Slow to change

Library systems tend to be slow to change because they prioritize consistency. Yet the Canadian and American systems undergo constant revision to add new terms and, less often, to replace old terms.

Since there are more than 1,000 terms relating to Indigenous Peoples in library lists, revisions to this topic will be monumental. In a typical month, around 200 new headings are added to the Library of Congress Subject Headings, across all topics.

Terminology for Indigenous Peoples from this continent varies as communities themselves are numerous and diverse. At the same time, terms like “Indians” persist in law in Canada and the United States.

People seen in August 2021 on Parliament Hill were part of a protest calling for changes to the ‘Indian Act’ in Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Colonial borders

Changes of these terms, through consultation with and guidance from Indigenous communities and Indigenous library workers, can bring our library systems into alignment with language used in common conversation and academic research.

They cannot invalidate the terms that people use to refer to themselves. A library term list is for shared, government-supported systems to enable discovery and access and does not determine self-expression.

Even in that context, changing terms for Indigenous Peoples is unlikely to change the awkwardness of how these lists currently use Canadian and American colonial borders. For the time being, works about Coast Salish botany or art, for example, may still end up labelled redundantly with “Indigenous peoples — British Columbia” and “Indigenous peoples — Washington (State).”

Continued research will be needed as libraries consider how to update their practices.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Julia Bullard, University of British Columbia.

Read more:

2020 is a year for the history books, but not without digital archives

How Commonwealth universities profited from Indigenous dispossession through land grants

Julia Bullard receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Feds strike conciliatory tone in statement on Pope’s visit

Thu, August 4, 2022

The federal-government ministers responsible for Indigenous relations and services in Canada stood with Indigenous people in Canada in their lukewarm response to the Pope’s recent non-apology apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the horrors perpetuated on Indigenous children attending Residential Schools.

Crown-Indigenous Relations minister Marc Miller, Indigenous Services minister Patty Hajdu and Northern Affairs minister Daniel Vandal stopped short of saying the Pope’s comments didn’t go far enough, but hinted at the notion in their statement.

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Call to Action 58 called ‘…upon the Pope to issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run Residential Schools.’ The Pope has acknowledged the sexual abuse that was rampant in Residential Schools since his initial apology in Maskwacis on July 25; however, it is important to also recognize the systemic nature of this tragedy, that was both instigated and perpetuated by the Government of Canada and the churches, including the Catholic Church,” they wrote.

That day, the Pope said "I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of Residential Schools," the last of closed as recently as 1996. He asked forgiveness “for the wrong done by so many Christians to the Indigenous peoples.”

The Pope’s statement was roundly criticized in many parts of the country for not mentioning the sexual abuse Indigenous children faced at Residential Schools in his apology or the unmarked graves on school grounds.

“It is not up to the Government of Canada to accept or decline an apology on behalf of Indigenous Peoples, and we will continue to support them as they determine what is needed for healing, the ministers wrote. “We recognize that the events of this past week – and the revisiting of some of our country's most tragic and painful truths – has been extremely difficult and traumatizing for many Survivors, families, and communities. And we know that the hurt and trauma they suffered continues to impact generations of Indigenous families and communities today.”

The ministers promised to continue to work with Indigenous communities on reconciliation and righting the wrongs of the not-so-distant past.

"Our government recognizes that there is work to do on many fronts following the pope's visit to Canada. Pope Francis acknowledged that concrete actions are needed, including the repatriation of Indigenous artefacts, access for Survivors to Residential Schools documents, addressing the Doctrine of Discovery, and ensuring justice for survivors. We will continue to work with First Nations, Inuit and Métis on other priorities they've identified, to advance reconciliation and healing."

Marc Lalonde, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Iori:wase

As US eyes new China chip curbs, turmoil looms for global market


Illustration picture of memory chips by SK Hynix

Wed, August 3, 2022 
By Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - Export restrictions being considered by Washington to halt China's advances in semiconductor manufacturing could come at a substantial cost, experts say, potentially disrupting fragile global chip supply chains - and hurting U.S. businesses.

Reuters reported on Monday that the United States is considering limiting shipments of American chipmaking equipment to memory chip producers in China that make advanced semiconductors used in everything from smartphones to data centres.

The curbs would stop chipmakers like South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix from shipping new technology tools to factories they operate in China, preventing them from upgrading plants that serve customers around the world.

Samsung and SK Hynix, which control more than half of the global NAND flash memory chip market, have invested heavily in China in recent decades to produce chips that are vital to customers including tech giants Apple, Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Google. As well as computers and phones, the chips are used in products like electric vehicles that require digital data storage.

"Samsung's China production alone accounts for more than 15% of global NAND flash production ... If there's any production disruption, it will make chip prices surge," said Lee Min-hee, analyst at BNK Securities.

The potential for fresh turmoil - the curbs have yet to be approved - comes just as a global chip supply shortage that has disrupted businesses from autos to consumer devices for more than a year is finally showing signs of easing. Supply chain adjustments and weakening consumer demand amid the slowing global economy have combined to repair damage.

But the shortage has yet to be fully resolved. Any signs of fresh disruption could rekindle supply uncertainty, triggering a price surge - as seen earlier this year when China imposed COVID-19 restrictions in Xian where Samsung manufactures chips.

Chipmaking equipment has to be installed and fully tested months before production is due to start. Any delay in shipping the gear to China would pose a real challenge to chipmakers as they seek to manufacture more advanced chips in China facilities.

"Many U.S. companies, like Apple, use Samsung and SK Hynix memory chips. No matter what strategy (the South Korean firms) end up choosing, it will have global implications," said BNK Securities analyst Lee.

Samsung and SK Hynix declined to comment. Apple, Amazon, Meta and Google didn't respond to emails seeking comment outside regular U.S. business hours.

AMBITIONS, COMPLICATIONS

In Samsung's memory chip operation in Xian, central China, one of the largest foreign chip projects in the country, the company has invested a total of about $26 billion since it broke ground on the site in 2012, including chip production as well as testing and packaging.

The tech giant makes 128-layer NAND flash products in Xian, analysts said, chips that store data in devices such as smartphones and personal computers, as well as in data centres.

The facility accounts for 43% of Samsung's global NAND flash memory production capacity and 15% of the overall global output capacity, according to TrendForce late last year.

The U.S. crackdown, if approved, could also complicate SK Hynix's ambition to expand its presence in the NAND market where it is ranked third as of first quarter behind Samsung and Japan's Kioxia Holdings, which was spun out of Toshiba Corp.

SK Hynix completed late last year the first phase of its $9 billion purchase of Intel's NAND business, including its Dalian, China NAND manufacturing facility.

CHINA STRATEGIES

The move being considered by the United States is one of several recent signs of deepening tensions between Beijing and Washington over the tech sector.

Congress last week approved legislation to subsidise semiconductor production in the United States. It bars any company that receives federal subsidies from investing in certain chip technology in China during the subsidy period.

The deepening tensions could leave Samsung and SK Hynix having to review strategies on China investments, analysts and industry sources said.

"Until now, companies tended to invest in countries like China, where costs were cheap," said Kim Yang-jae, analyst at Daol Investment & Securities.

"That's no longer going to be the only consideration. The biggest change these potential limits will bring will be where the next chip factories are built."

They could also face potentially diminishing returns from their multi-billion dollar China plants, which could be stuck making older-technology, less lucrative chips.

SK Hynix has not been able to upgrade its DRAM memory chip production facilities in Wuxi, China with the latest extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chipmaking machines made by Dutch firm ASML as U.S. officials do not want advanced equipment used in the process to enter the country.

The EUV machines are used to make more advanced and smaller chips that are used in high-end devices such as smartphones.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Kenneth Maxwell)

France discriminated against hijab-wearing vocational trainee -U.N. document

Juliette Jabkhiro
Wed, August 3, 2022 

A woman wearing a hijab walks at Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris
By Juliette Jabkhiro

PARIS (Reuters) - A United Nations committee ruled that France discriminated against a Muslim woman who was prevented from attending vocational training in a public school while wearing her Islamic head scarf, according to a U.N. document.

In 2010, Naima Mezhoud, now aged 45, was due to train as a management assistant at a course held in a state high school, where teenagers are prohibited by law from wearing the hijab. When she arrived, the head teacher of the school in the northern outskirts of Paris barred her from entering, according to the document which was seen by Reuters.

Six years earlier, in 2004, France had banned the wearing of hijabs and other visible religious symbols in state schools by school children. Mezhoud argued that as a higher-education student, she should not have been targetted by the law.

"The committee concludes that the refusal to allow (Mezhoud) to participate in the training while wearing her headscarf constitutes a gender and religious-based act of discrimination," the U.N Human Rights Committee determined, according to the document.

A U.N. source confirmed the authenticity of the document.

The interior ministry and foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The possible ramifications of the U.N.'s ruling were not immediately clear. Freedom law expert Nicolas Hervieu of the Paris Institute of Political Studies said that according to legal precedent, it was unlikely that France would comply with the committee's decision.

France is home to one of Europe’s largest Muslim minorities. For years, the country has implemented laws designed to protect its strict form of secularism, known as “laicité,” which President Emmanuel Macron has said is under threat from Islamism.

Some Muslim associations and human-rights groups allege those laws have targeted Muslims and chipped away at democratic protections and left them vulnerable to abuse.

Mezhoud approached the U.N. Human Rights Committee after she lost a series of appeals in French courts.

The committee said France had breached articles 18 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on religious freedom.

Mezhoud's lawyer, Sefen Guez Guez, told Reuters the decision showed that international human-rights institutions were critical of France's policies regarding Islam.

"French institutions will have to comply with the U.N. decision," he added.

In theory, following the U.N. committee's ruling, France now has six months to financially compensate Mezhoud and offer the opportunity to take the vocational course if she still wishes. The country also must take steps to ensure similar violations of international law will not happen again.

(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro in Paris; Editing by Richard Lough and Matthew Lewis)

50-year international partnership on Great Lakes makes progress, but challenges lie ahead

Wed, August 3, 2022 

Lake Erie's shoreline in Leamington, Ont. is shown in this file photo. According to the State of the Great Lakes 2022 report,

It's been 50 years since Canada and the U.S. signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, meant to restore and protect the Great Lakes, and a new report is showing what's changed over that time and what challenges are ahead.

According the the annual report, the Great Lakes overall assessment is "fair" with an "unchanging" trend, which is due to the "tremendous progress to restore and protect the Great Lakes" over the last few decades. The evaluation is based on a set of indicators officials watch.

"If we look back 50 years, there have been some substantial improvements in the health of the Great Lakes. But that doesn't mean we're done in any way," said John Hartig, a visiting scholar at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor.

Hartig says there continues to be challenges.

"We know in western Lake Erie we still have algae blooms, harmful algae blooms, and we have them in Saginaw Bay and Green Bay as well. We still have, particularly on the U.S. side, the legacy of the industrial revolution in contaminated sediments. We still have a loss and degradation of habitats like important ones, like wetlands," he said.

"And of course, we are now facing climate change."

State of the Great Lakes 2022 report

Both countries along with several organizations are behind the annual report, using about 40 indicators to calculate the overall assessment. Each Lake had a "good" (most or all ecosystem components are in acceptable condition) or "fair (some ecosystem components are in acceptable condition) standing. Except Lake Erie, which was described as being in a "poor" standing, meaning "very few or no ecosystem components are in acceptable condition," mainly due to algae blooms and elevated nutrient concentrations.

"I think obviously Lake Erie has a significant population density around it and it has significant agricultural land around it. It has had significant industrial development, it's part of the industrial heartland. So I think if you look back at 50 years ago where this started, people spoke out," explained Hartig.

He says that due to advocates, activists and engaged politicians — through Earth Day, the Canada Water Act, and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement — people started caring about the quality of the water in Lake Erie which led to change.

But Hartig worries people will get complacent, especially in the face of climate change.

"We still have things to do, and now we have climate change, which is a threat multiplier," he said. "That means it's going to make it harder to solve the algal bloom problems. It's going to be harder to solve some of the contaminates remediation problems and the agricultural non-point source runoff problems that we have."

The good news of addressing these issues now though, said Hartig, is that it will save taxpayers and government money in the long run.

"We need to think about it as an investment that will reap benefits for us, and we need to think about it as a gift to future generations as well," he said.

NOVA SCOTIA
Goldboro Gold project approved with conditions in Guysborough County

Tue, August 2, 2022 

Signal Gold, previously known as Anaconda Mining, has been approved to develop a gold mine in Goldboro, N.S. But it has to follow a number of conditions from the province.

(Zach Goudie/CBC - image credit)

Nova Scotia's minister of Environment and Climate Change has approved the Goldboro Gold project in Guysborough County, but with conditions.

"I am satisfied that any adverse effects or significant environmental effects of the undertaking can be adequately mitigated through compliance with the attached terms and conditions as well as through compliance to the other licences, certificates, permits and approvals that will be required for operation," Tim Halman wrote in his decision to Signal Gold president Kevin Bullock.

Signal Gold wants to develop the mine. The project includes two open pits, a processing facility, a tailings management facility, waste rock storage areas, as well as water management infrastructure such as collection ditches, culverts, settling ponds and water treatment systems.

Among the list of conditions is for Signal Gold to develop a wildlife management plan with Nova Scotia's Department of Nautral Resources and Renewables as well as Environment and Climate Change, developing and implementing a complaint resolution plan for receiving and responding to complaints related to the project, and have a Mi'kmaw communication plan.

The company also plans to bring in trailers to house employees, with 350 beds expected during the construction phase and 175 beds during the operations phase.

The project will create 735 new direct and spinoff jobs a year in the province for 15 years, the company said in June after it submitted for environmental approval. It expects the project to generate $528 million in income and mining taxes at the federal, provincial and municipal level from direct and spinoff economic activity.

The company anticipates construction will begin in late 2023, with the mine being commissioned in 2025 and operations continuing until 2035. The closure process would begin in 2036.

Signal Gold, previously known as Anaconda Mining, had sought environmental approval for a gold mine development at the site in August 2018.

But the environment minister at the time said the company's submission didn't contain enough information.

Race relations foundation urges more help for victims as hate crimes rise further

Tue, August 2, 2022 


OTTAWA — The head of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation is calling for action to combat hate and more federal help for victims, as new statistics show that hate crimes in Canada rose by 27 per cent last year.

Executive director Mohammed Hashim warned that unless action is taken to combat hate-motivated abuse, including online, it will continue to spread.

He said the "slew of hate" online is so prevalent it risks becoming normalized and those affected are changing their behaviour to deal with it, including by not reading social media comments.

"It is a firehose of hate that is growing honestly like a wildfire," he said. "And unmitigated it will grow even further to a point where we will normalize being in a wildfire.

"That is because we have left this environment unchecked."

Statistics Canada reported a further dramatic increase in hate crimes in 2021. The number of hate-motivated crimes recorded by the police has gone up 72 per cent since 2019, according to the agency.

Last year, the number of hate-motivated crimes reported to the police rose to 3,360 incidents from 2,646 in 2020. This followed a 36 per cent rise in 2020.

A report by the foundation, published Tuesday, calls for greater federal help for victims of hate, many of whom do not qualify for financial compensation because their abuse does not count as a crime.

Hashim warned that "not supporting victims and leaving hate to proliferate freely disintegrates Canadian multiculturalism as a whole and a sense of collective belonging to this nation."

Hate-motivated crimes targeting a person's religious affiliation were up 67 per cent last year, according to Statistics Canada. Crimes based on a victim's sexual orientation were up 64 per cent year over year. Another 1,723 recorded incidents targeted a person's race or ethnicity, a six per cent increase, and together these categories made up the majority of the overall rise.

Marvin Rotrand of B'nai Brith Canada said Jews were the No. 1 target of hate crimes aimed at religious minorities.

"All Canadians should be worried about the alarming explosion of hate crimes witnessed in 2021," Rotrand said. "Our community comprises 1.25 per cent of the Canadian population but were the victims of 56 per cent of hate crimes aimed at religious minorities. That is more than all other religious groups combined."

All provinces and territories reported increases in the number of hate crimes in 2021, except for Yukon, where the numbers remained the same.

Hashim, who regularly tours the country speaking to victims of hate as well as community groups and police forces, said more focus must be put on victims. He said young women are facing huge amounts of abuse online, particularly young Black women.

"Right now we talk a lot about hate crime statistics, how police are dealing with it or not dealing with it, being reported or not being reported," he said. "What we are constantly missing is what is the effect on victims."

The Department of Canadian Heritage is working on drafting an online hate bill to set up a framework to combat abuse online.

A previous anti-hate bill, introduced at the tail end of the last Parliament, died when the election was called.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez appointed an expert panel to make suggestions for a future bill, including faster takedown obligations on platforms, in particular over child pornography.

During a consultation by the federal government last year, some minority groups raised concerns about directly involving the police to combat hate speech online.

Hashim warned against "digital carding" and a mass trawl of content online. He acknowledged there is concern about whether police should be able to access all takedown materials for investigative purposes.

"I don’t think that is the proper way of doing online safety. There needs to be checks and balances between how much information is accessible to the police. That is why we have warrants," he said.

"Just creating open access for all police, for all takedown data, for all social media platforms is overkill in my opinion."

The report commissioned by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and written by PricewaterhouseCoopers, said 80 per cent of hate crimes go unreported each year.

The report recommends Canada mirror Germany's model for supporting victims of hate with millions of dollars of funding for community groups, which people who encounter hate "instinctively" reach out to, as well as a further victims fund.

It says the government's current compensation schemes exclude many victims of hate because few hate-motivated acts are designated as criminal.

The report also suggests the government establish an emergency response fund for communities hit by hate attacks on a large scale, as well as a central national support hub for victims.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 2, 2022.

Marie Woolf, The Canadian Press

Crossing the US-Mexico border is deadlier than ever for migrants – here's why


Joseph Nevins, Professor of Geography, Vassar College

THE CONVERSATION
Thu, August 4, 2022 

A makeshift memorial where a tractor-trailer was discovered with 53 dead migrants inside, near San Antonio, Texas, June 29, 2022.

Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

The June 2022 deaths of 53 people, victims of heat stroke, in the back of a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, show the dangers of crossing the U.S. southern border without authorization.

All of the dead came from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras – the three most common origin countries of migrants encountered by the Border Patrol in 2021 and so far in 2022.

Such fatalities result from two intersecting phenomena. One is the massive growth in the federal government’s policing system in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands since the mid-1990s. The other is the strong and profoundly unequal ties between the United States and the home countries of most unauthorized – or undocumented – migrants.

‘Prevention Through Deterrence’

Since 1994, when I began to research the roots and impacts of U.S. border and immigration enforcement, U.S.-Mexico border policing has radically changed. Beginning during Bill Clinton’s presidency, this transformation has involved infusing massive amounts of resources – in the form of personnel, technology and infrastructure – into a multifaceted system of border control.

The number of Border Patrol agents has grown from roughly 4,200 in 1994 to more than 20,000 today. Typically, 80% to 90% of them are stationed in the U.S. Southwest. Spending has increased as well. In 1994, the Border Patrol’s budget was US$400 million. In 2021, it was $4.9 billion – an approximately 700% increase in inflation-adjusted dollars in less than 30 years.

Complementing the growth is a federal border policing strategy called Prevention Through Deterrence. Introduced in 1994, the strategy concentrates policing personnel, surveillance technology and infrastructure in and around border cities and towns. Its goal is to push unauthorized migrants into remote areas characterized by harsh and dangerous terrain, forcing people to abandon their efforts to reach the United States.

As Doris Meissner, Clinton’s head of Immigration and Naturalization Service, later reflected, “We did believe that geography would be an ally to us.”

U.S. officials anticipated that unauthorized border crossings “would go down to a trickle once people realized what it’s like.” Instead, the deterrence policy has compelled migrants to take ever greater risks, resulting in more deaths.
Rising death toll

Traversing the southern borderlands has long proved deadly for migrants.

In the late 1800s, for example, unauthorized Chinese immigrants died in the deserts of the borderlands as they tried to avoid policing associated with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that barred most immigrants from China. And in the 1980s and 1990s, many people, mostly Mexican nationals – sometimes numbering in the hundreds – died annually trying to enter the United States without authorization.

With Prevention Through Deterrence, however, deaths grew markedly.

According to U.S. Border Patrol statistics, there were an average of 359 fatalities annually from fiscal years 1998 to 2021 in the Southwest borderlands. This represents about one death per day over 24 years. Fiscal year 2021 saw 557 fatalities, the highest death toll on record.

Since these deaths occur among a clandestine population, no one knows what percentage of total migrant trips end in tragedy.

But research on the location of human remains does demonstrate that high-tech surveillance towers have pushed migrants to more remote, and more lethal, travel routes beyond the zones of detection.

Crosses mark where remains were found of migrants who died trying to cross into the U.S. through the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Jan. 24, 2021. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Another dangerous method of unauthorized entry, as seen in San Antonio, involves cramming people into poorly ventilated spaces like the back of a truck. The hope is to transport them across the border and into the U.S. interior undetected by authorities.

The official death tolls cited above are likely severe undercounts. They are based on bodies or human remains that are retrieved. But many corpses are never recovered because of the region’s arduous terrain and enormous size: The U.S.-Mexico boundary is about 2,000 miles long. A combination of bodily decomposition and the scattering of remains by animals further exacerbates the undercounting problem.

The Border Patrol has also failed to include thousands of fatalities in its official counts. According to an April 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, Customs and Border Protection “has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths or disclosed limitations with the data it has reported.”

In the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, for example, there were more than twice as many deaths as the agency reported from fiscal year 2015 to 2019, according to the report.
The Mexico-US connection

In 1999, anthropologist Josiah Heyman made a provocative suggestion: “The United States and Mexico are really one unified, if highly unequal, society,” he wrote, “drawn together rather than separated by the border.”

Back then, Mexico was the United States’ second-most important trading partner. It was also the source of 98% of people apprehended by the Border Patrol in the U.S. Southwest. The free movement of people, unlike commercial goods, was not included in NAFTA, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Today, one could easily make an observation similar to Heyman’s about Guatemala and Honduras in relation to the United States. Both maintain deep and broad social, political and economic ties with the United States. But those ties are profoundly unequal. The United States also has a history of intervention in Central America that, research shows, directly contributes to the instability and insecurity that set the stage for today’s migration.

In the aftermath of the deaths in San Antonio, U.S. authorities blamed smugglers for the fatalities. President Biden, for instance, said that the deaths “underscore the need to go after the multibillion-dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants.”

Such responses are typical from Washington following such tragedies. But this framing obscures that migrants’ heavy reliance on smugglers is a direct result of the dramatic growth in the federal government’s Southwest border policing system and the associated deterrence strategy. In its official 1994 document outlining the Prevention Through Deterrence strategy, the Border Patrol even included among its “indicators of success” higher fees charged by smugglers and increasingly sophisticated smuggling methods.

In other words, U.S. authorities anticipated growth in the very industry they now decry. Consequently, deaths remain a way of life in the borderlands.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Joseph Nevins, Vassar College.

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Joseph Nevins is a member of the editorial committee of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).