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'Heartbreaking' stories go untold, doctors say, as employers 'muzzle' them in wake of abortion ruling

Elizabeth Cohen - CNN- TODAY

After the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, an obstetrician who works at a hospital in the Northeast thought she could make a difference by publicly describing what she was seeing, by telling the stories of the patients she saw suffering in the aftermath of the court’s historic court ruling.

MUZZLED AND SHACKLED, THAT'S WHAT DOCTORS TELL CNN THEY ARE
Duration 2:23   View on Watch

So when a reporter from The New York Times reached out, she was grateful for the opportunity to discuss the plight of patients traveling to her hospital from states that had abortion restrictions.

The obstetrician passed along the reporter’s inquiry to her hospital’s public relations office, asking for permission to do the interview, noting that the reporter approached her because she holds a leadership position on a state government maternal mortality committee.

A hospital PR official replied that “without any notable exceptions, we are not participating in interviews at this time” and asked the doctor to send along the reporter’s questions and her proposed answers.

The doctor sent along the questions and answers and received a resounding “no” from the PR official: “We ask that you do not comment to the NY Times at this time.”

“They’re censoring me,” the doctor told CNN. “It’s shameful and embarrassing to work for an institution that is not supportive of women’s rights.

“I’m extremely angry,” she added. “It’s disgusting.”

A physician in another state echoed her: “I feel shackled. I feel muzzled. I feel completely restrained, and I’m outraged.”

These two doctors, and six others interviewed by CNN, say their employers – major public and private medical centers in five states – have asked them to not speak publicly about abortion, or have instructed them that if they do speak publicly about abortion, they can do so only as private citizens and cannot mention where they work.

Even when they are permitted to speak about abortion as private citizens, these doctors say, their employers have made it clear that they would prefer the doctors not talk at all, and so they have hesitated to speak up.

“If [they] don’t speak up, who is going to provide the evidence about the effect [abortion bans are] having on patients?” asked Dr. Erika Werner, who chairs the health policy and advocacy committee at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and is the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Dr. Eric Rubin, editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, said doctors need to be able to speak up because “the world of medicine in general – and certainly abortion – is full of misinformation, and we have not found good ways to counter that.”

“We’re really spiting ourselves if we do not allow physicians to speak about the facts,” he said.

Dr. Rosha McCoy, acting chief health care officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said medical centers and universities are having to deal with a great deal of “fear” and “confusion” in the aftermath of new abortion limitations.

“They don’t want themselves or the physicians to be put in a position where something is said that could be interpreted that’s going to cause a problem for both the clinician and/or the institution,” said McCoy, whose group represents more than 400 teaching hospitals and health care systems.

“We would never support doctors being censored,” she added. “I’m hoping it’s not censorship as much as a protective desire.”

‘These stories are not getting told’

A Texas obstetrician watched as the pregnant woman she was caring for got sicker and sicker.

The woman was 19 weeks pregnant, the fetus too young to survive outside the womb. Her water had broken, an ultrasound showing no amniotic fluid around the baby. In states where abortion is allowed, doctors would offer to terminate the pregnancy, since pregnant women in this situation have a high likelihood of developing an infection and becoming septic, which is a life-threatening emergency.

But in Texas, where strict limitations on abortion took effect more than a year ago, doctors fear criminal and civil prosecution if they offer termination before the mother is on the brink of death.

“Literally, we’ve had to watch patients deteriorate in front of our eyes,” said the doctor, a specialist in high-risk pregnancies who works at a public university.

Since the passage of the Texas laws, some women have been denied abortions even when their lives were in danger and the fetus had fatal birth defects and would die within minutes of birth. Others have been denied abortions even after the fetus had died.

The hospital that employs the Texas doctor said she can speak about abortion and use her name, but she’s not allowed to say where she works, and she can’t communicate with journalists on her work email or using her work computer.

The doctor says it seems clear that her employer would prefer she stay quiet about abortion, so like other doctors in this story, she would only speak to CNN anonymously, for fear of reprisals from her employer.

“This has clearly been done to make us feel like criminals. That’s exactly how it makes us feel – like we’re doing something wrong,” she said. “I think we’re all pretty scared. I’m afraid of losing my job. I’m the primary breadwinner in my family, so losing my job would be a big, big deal.”

At a hospital in a different state, one that does allow abortion, a doctor said they “got called into the principal’s office” by hospital administrators after participating in a public event about abortion, even though at the event, the doctor never mentioned where they work.

The doctor told CNN that at this meeting, it was intimidating that “these very fancy, very high-level, high-powered administrators had watched a video [of the event] and obtained a transcript to make sure I in no way made a connection to my employer.”

The doctor, who works for a public university, said the administrators explained that if they want to speak publicly about abortion and identify the hospital where they work, they should run it by the hospital public relations office first.

“I got the strong sense they’ll say no,” they said. “They worry about state funding sources and what happens if it gets controversial, so unfortunately instead of supporting us, they want everyone to play nice and quiet and not stir up any trouble.”

The doctor does not want CNN to include their gender or what part of the country they work in for fear of reprisals from their employer.

Like this doctor, an obstetrician in the Midwest felt a “chilling effect” when their employer said they could speak publicly about abortion only if they didn’t mention where they worked.

“It’s so heartbreaking, the stories we’ve seen, and these stories are not getting told,” the obstetrician said.

An Instagram post that lasted 40 minutes

In another state, a few weeks after Roe was overturned, a group of residents in obstetrics and gynecology posted a photo that included the message: “Abortion is healthcare” on their group’s Instagram account. It was clear from the post where the residents worked.

The photo was taken down less than 40 minutes later at the insistence of a university lawyer, according to a doctor familiar with the situation.

That doctor says residents didn’t think twice about posting the picture, considering that multiple medical societies – the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Nurse-Midwives, the Society of Hospital Medicine, the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health, the National Hispanic Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics – have used the exact same phrase they did: Abortion is health care.

The association of medical schools, which represents where the residents work, has criticized the Supreme Court for “rescinding the protection of the right to safe and effective abortions.”

Despite these statements from respected national organizations, a university official told the residents to also remove the photo from their personal social media accounts, according to the doctor familiar with the situation. The doctor added that a little bit later, the official told the residents they could post the picture on their own accounts, as long as they didn’t identify where they work.

Emails and text messages obtained by CNN back up this doctor’s account.

A month later, at a mandatory lecture, university lawyers gave the residents a presentation about the limits of free speech, according to the doctor. CNN has seen a photo of a portion of the presentation.

The doctor said the lawyers instructed the residents that they could talk or write about abortion publicly as long as they didn’t say where they worked. If they did want to make a public statement about abortion and identify where they work, they had to first get approval from the legal department.

The doctor said residents are hesitant to make trouble because when they go to look for another job, “the world is very small, and you rely on senior colleagues to make calls for you, and you won’t be able to find a position if you are perceived as being difficult.”

‘I think real people are suffering’

In the past year, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has issued more than 150 news releases detailing advances in the lab, studies conducted by its doctors, awards for its researchers and a new culinary medicine program, among dozens of other topics.

But when five of its doctors published a study – one of the first of its kind – about the effect of abortion bans in real life, the medical center didn’t issue a news release. The research, published in the American Journal of Gynecology, found that at two Texas hospitals, the abortion bans were “associated with significant maternal morbidity.”

When CNN reached out to one of the study’s authors last month, she said that she would be “happy to talk” but that all inquiries needed to go through the university’s media office.

CNN then received this response from the medical center’s director of public relations: “UT Southwestern continues to review the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in conjunction with Texas laws and will not be commenting at this time. The findings speak for themselves.”

When CNN pushed back, explaining that journalists often speak with study authors, the official said the researchers, if interested, could speak with CNN, but “they will be providing comments as private individuals, independent of their role with the state.”

One of the researchers contacted CNN but declined to be interviewed with their name, for fear of reprisals from UT Southwestern.

UT Southwestern isn’t the only medical center that has been hesitant to allow their doctors to speak with the media.

CNN reached out to two oncologists at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, one of the largest cancer centers in the US, to ask them about their experiences treating pregnant patients, considering that Texas has had strict abortion limitations for more than a year.

Oncologists have expressed concern that abortion bans could hurt pregnant cancer patients. Pregnant women can’t receive certain cancer tests, and treatments that can harm a fetus, so if abortion is not an option, they sometimes have to delay lifesaving cancer care. As two breast cancer doctors wrote in August in The New England Journal of Medicine, abortion bans “will harm some of our patients” because sometimes, “we cannot offer complete or safe treatment to a pregnant person with a breast cancer diagnosis.”

When CNN reached out to the cancer doctors at MD Anderson on September 9 to discuss what they have seen since Texas passed strict abortion bans last year, an unsigned response from the MD Anderson public relations office stated that the doctors were “not available for an interview.”

MD Anderson said in a statement that its providers discuss the published data on the implications of delaying treatment due to pregnancy, and they refer patients to maternal fetal medicine specialists.​

On October 7, CNN pressed further to speak with the doctors, and an associate vice president said they were working on coordinating the interviews, but none was made available prior to the deadline for this story.

None of this surprises Kerri Wade.

Wade is the chief public affairs officer at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, a membership organization that includes physicians who are experts in high-risk pregnancies. A few months ago, a reporter from The New York Times Magazine approached Wade with the idea of embedding a photographer in a high-risk maternal-fetal medicine department.

“It seemed like an easy fit for us,” Wade said.

Wade shopped around the magazine’s request, which she said was clearly a great opportunity to showcase the work of high-risk pregnancy doctors.

About 10 hospitals and medical practices said no, Wade told CNN.

“We were told no by every single person we approached, with the exception of the Cleveland Clinic,” Wade said.

The magazine ran the story, “What a High-Risk Pregnancy Looks Like After Dobbs” on September 13.

Wade reflects on her struggle to place a story that documents the risks that families have had to take since the Supreme Court’s decision.

“When people don’t hear these stories, they don’t understand the reality of what these laws are doing to real people, and I think real people are suffering. That’s what people need to understand and hear,” she said.

She said the hospitals and practices that declined The New York Times’ invitation told her that “this would make our attorneys and public relations colleagues very nervous.’ “

“There is a part of me that understands that as these laws continue to change rapidly, [for hospitals] to interpret what can be done and can’t be done varies in some places day to day. So I can understand someone taking a very cautious approach – why they might see the world that way,” she said.

Doctor ‘a tiny bit more optimistic’

After The New York Times Magazine published its story, a high-risk pregnancy doctor at a large public academic medical center in the Northeast received a similar embed request from a different national media outlet. This doctor works in a “surge state” – one that allows abortion and has been seeing an influx of patients from neighboring states that have banned the procedure.

The doctor ran the request by her hospital’s media department, even though she knew they would say no. They said no.

She said it’s just one more disappointment in a series of disappointments.

It started soon after the Supreme Court’s decision, when she and other maternal-fetal medicine specialists got on a call with their hospital’s administrators.

“My assumption, as a state with relatively liberal abortion laws, is that we would step up in a number of ways, like structural ways to meet the surge we knew we would see. And I thought we would use our position as a respected women’s health institution to continue to educate about the impact these laws have on women’s health,” she told CNN.

But on the call, “it became pretty clear that [the medical center] was not going to take a particularly activist approach” and would not make it easy for doctors to describe the impact of the new laws to the public.

She said she and her fellow high-risk pregnancy doctors were crushed.

“People cried on that call – like 40-, 50-year-old women were in tears when they realized the extent to which the institution was going to make this difficult,” she said.

Then, last week, the doctor thought she might be seeing a glimmer of hope.

She said a physician in a leadership position at the hospital was disappointed that they’d had to say no to the journalist’s request to embed at their hospital. She said the doctor in the leadership position told her that ” ‘We have to stop muzzling physicians. I want to figure out a way to get our voices out there.’ “

“They’re just a doctor – they’re not corporate – but maybe it was a little bit of a thaw. I’m a tiny bit more optimistic,” she said.

CNN’s Lindsey Knight and Casey Hicks contributed to this report.

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DAY ONE; FOOT IN MOUTH 

Smith didn't mean to trivialize discrimination of others in remarks about unvaccinated, she says

YES SHE DID

Elise von Scheel - 

New Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she didn't mean to downplay discrimination against minority communities when she said unvaccinated people have received the worst discrimination of any group in more than 50 years.



"I want to be clear that I did not intend to trivialize in any way the discrimination faced by minority communities and other persecuted groups both here in Canada and around the world or to create any false equivalencies to the terrible historical discrimination and persecution suffered by so many minority groups over the last decades and centuries," she wrote in a statement.

"I am committed to listening, learning and addressing the issues affecting minority communities."

The statement says her office will be setting up meetings to help her better understand what those communities are facing — and that Canadians need to work together to end all discrimination.

On Tuesday, during Smith's first hours as Alberta's premier, she said people who didn't get COVID-19 vaccines faced the most discrimination.

"They have been the most discriminated against group that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime," she said.

"This has been an extraordinary time, in the last year in particular, and I want people to know that I find that unacceptable."

She promised during the United Conservative Party leadership race that if elected she would amend the Alberta Human Rights Act to add vaccination status as a grounds subject to protection from discrimination, the way race, sexual orientation and religion are currently protected.

Smith said she knows society broadly was working to get to a high level of vaccination, but now it's time to treat the virus as endemic, similar to influenza.

'I don't have a choice to have the dark skin I have'

Tuesday's comments led to widespread backlash against the premier from political critics, community leaders and a fellow premier.

"She has marginalized and overlooked the trauma, the ongoing harm, the discrimination, the racism [against] First Nations peoples. And we were here before there was an Alberta, so we have been fighting a long battle," Rachel Snow, an Indigenous legal scholar and member of the Stoney Nakoda Nations, told CBC News.

Alberta's last residential school wasn't closed until the 1990s.

The leader of the Official Opposition reacted to Smith's comments, saying an apology was needed.

"We are trying to draw people to Alberta.… The ignorant, harmful comments about vaccines made by the new premier hurt our reputation and, by extension, our economic future. She must apologize immediately," NDP Leader Rachel Notley wrote on Twitter.

Anila Lee Yuen, the CEO of the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary, also commented.

"I felt it in my stomach and my heart sank and I thought, 'Here we go again, we're going to have to defend our right to be here," she said.

"I don't have a choice to have the dark skin I have, I don't have the choice to be born a woman."

Outgoing B.C. Premier John Horgan also scoffed at Smith's comparison.

"It's laughable, quite frankly," he told CFAX 1070's Al Ferraby on Wednesday.

"These are critical times, and for the incoming premier to focus on a sliver of the population who chose not to get vaccinated when there are all these other challenges seems short-sighted to me, and I just disagree with her."

At least one faith group has asked to meet with Smith.

"We have reached out to the premier's office to express our concerns surrounding these comments and are keen on meeting with the premier to discuss antisemitism, discrimination in our community & others in Alberta, the need for mandatory Holocaust education & the story of Alberta's Jewish community," the Jewish Federation of Edmonton wrote in a social media statement.

Civil liberties group raising transparency concerns ahead of Emergencies Act inquiry

OTTAWA — The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says it fears the federal government will seek to keep some information from becoming public during an inquiry into the unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act.



Cara Zwibel, a lawyer with the group, said she has questions about what is being submitted as evidence.

"I do have concerns about the level of transparency that the federal government has been displaying through this process," she said. "That's a problem in terms of not being forthright with Parliament, and not being forthcoming with the Canadian public."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government triggered the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, a week after protesters first blockaded the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge and several weeks into what he called the "illegal occupation" of downtown Ottawa by anti-lockdown protesters and their vehicles.

It was the first time a government invoked the law since it passed in 1988.

The temporary measures under the act gave authorities greater leeway to make arrests, impose fines, tow vehicles and freeze assets.

Trudeau revoked the emergency declaration Feb. 23, two days after the NDP joined the Liberals in a House of Commons motion affirming his government's choice to use the exceptional powers.

The inquiry and a special parliamentary committee are required under the Emergencies Act to scrutinize the government's decision-making.

MPs and Senators on the joint committee have expressed frustration with the testimony of Liberal ministers, the director of CSIS and others.

Justice Minister David Lametti repeatedly prefaced his responses to questions from committee members in April by saying he "would not betray cabinet confidence" or that he was bound by solicitor-client privilege.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland's appearance before the committee in June was, in her own words, "adversarial" at times. Several members accused her of not answering questions, being evasive, and of not bringing any new information.

The commission said in June that the government committed to the extraordinary step of providing "all the inputs that were before cabinet" when it declared the emergency, but Commissioner Paul Rouleau has not said whether he will release that information publicly.

Zwibel and others are raising concerns that some documents could be held back from the public by different levels of government, citing confidentiality or national security risks.

"We will have questions about whether the government is being forthcoming, about whether the evidence is going to allow the kind of transparency that we think is required," she said.

Key participants in the inquiry, including CSIS and the Ontario government, were still filing documents with the commission throughout the day Wednesday.

They are among five dozen witnesses who are set to testify, including Trudeau and other ministers, police services and "Freedom Convoy" organizers.

Adding to transparency concerns is the time the inquiry has to complete its work. The commission is mandated to provide a final report to Parliament by Feb. 20, 2023.

"They have a very ambitious schedule," said Zwibel. "There's a lot of witnesses they want to hear from there are a lot of documents to get through."

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

The Canadian Press

Deaths of homeless people in B.C. rose by 75% in 2021: coroner

VANCOUVER — The toxic drug crisis in British Columbia was a key factor in pushing the number of deaths of homeless people up by 75 per cent in 2021 compared with the year before, the BC Coroners Service says.



A preliminary report released Wednesday by the service shows there were 247 deaths of people experiencing homelessness last year.

"This report reflects the risks and realities that people experiencing homelessness face every day," chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a statement.

"We know that many are facing significant health concerns, including physical disabilities, mental-health challenges and substance-use issues. Additionally, as is also evident in the province's housed population, the report details the significant risks associated with toxic drugs for those who are unhoused."

She said she hoped the report would support "positive action" during and beyond Homelessness Action Week, which runs until Oct. 15 in B.C.

The report says 85 per cent of deaths last year among people experiencing homelessness were accidental, and 93 per cent of those accidental deaths were caused by the illicit drug supply.

The coroners service says an average of 153 homeless people died each year between 2016 and 2020.

In a joint statement, Housing Minister Murray Rankin and Mental Health and Addictions Minister Sheila Malcolmson called each death a tragedy.

"The data is a stark reminder of the devastating impacts of the toxic drug crisis on people in B.C., compounded by the daily risks and health challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness," the statement said.

"We are working on all fronts to turn the tide on this crisis, including expanding treatment services and harm reduction measures like drug checking and prescribed safer supply, including for people experiencing homelessness."

The ministers said the government is continuing to open supportive housing and complex care housing spaces for people who need a higher level of support, for overlapping mental health and substance use challenges, trauma or acquired brain injuries.

A larger report looked at the number of deaths among people experiencing homelessness in the decade from 2012 to 2021.

It found that people between 30 and 59 years old accounted for 72 per cent of reported deaths, and 83 per cent of the people who died were men.

More than half of the investigated deaths occurred in either the Fraser or Vancouver Coastal health authorities.

Nearly three-quarters of the investigated deaths were classified as accidental, and 87 per cent of those accidental deaths were determined to have been caused by illicit drug toxicity.

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

The Canadian Press

WORD OF THE DAY
Bear expert says B.C. attack on family was likely a rare 'predaceous' incident

Oct 5

VANCOUVER — An expert in bear behaviour says an attack on a family in northeastern British Columbia that left two women with critical injuries appears to have been a rare example of a "predaceous" attack by a black bear.



Ellie Lamb, director of community outreach for the Get Bear Smart Society, said that by knocking down the women near Dawson Creek Monday night then staying close by them for more than an hour, the large boar bear was likely treating humans as food.

RCMP said they shot the bear dead after it was observed "guarding" the injured women, aged 30 and 48, and could not be chased off.

Lamb, a wildlife guide who serves on several B.C. advisory bodies related to human-bear interaction, said bears could exhibit predatory behaviour towards humans if improperly managed at a young age, but this was extremely uncommon.

In a "food-based situation," a bear would be "unwilling to give it up easily," said Lamb.

"They would stand guard to make sure they don’t lose this food-based situation to another animal.”

She said officers were left with no option but to kill the bear involved in Monday's attack on Bear Mountain.

However, in most human-bear encounters, bears usually yield, said Lamb.

She said that people approached by a bear should not run. Instead, they should get bear spray ready, stand their ground and fight for space by firmly telling the bear to back off. If the bear continues to advance, the spray should be used, she said.

Two GoFundMe pages have been set up to raise money for women said by organizers to be the victims of the attack.

One page says a woman in Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital is in critical condition. The other says a woman in intensive care in Vancouver risks losing her left arm and has suffered multiple other lacerations.

The B.C. Conservation Officer Service said it would release an update on its investigation into the attack, which also left a teenage boy injured.

Cpl. Madonna Saunderson of RCMP North District said details of the victims' condition would not be released by police.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Oct. 5, 2022.

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Nono Shen, The Canadian Press

B.C. breaking its own law on climate-change reporting, Sierra Club tells court


VANCOUVER — An environmental group is in court accusing the British Columbia government of failing to report if its climate plans will achieve key greenhouse gas emissions targets, as required by a provincial law.



Harry Wruck, a lawyer representing Sierra Club BC, told a B.C. Supreme Court judge that climate change accountability legislation from 2019 requires the government to publish annual reports that outline progress toward emissions targets for 2025, 2040 and 2050.

Wruck said annual reports are the only mechanism for transparency and accountability, if they include details on how close or far the government is to meeting its targets.

"We're asking the court to interpret the legislation and resolve a dispute between the two parties," he said.

Wruck referred to a decision by the High Court of Justice in London, which in July forced the government in the United Kingdom to outline how its policies would achieve emissions targets. In 2020, Ireland's Supreme Court ordered the government to rewrite its climate-change plan in keeping with its legal obligation.

Sierra Club BC wants the province to come up with a new accountability report for 2021 by filling in the gaps of missing information on its progress toward meeting emissions target for 2025.

It also wants data included on a plan to cut carbon emissions in the oil and gas sector as the province moves toward building a liquefied natural gas industry with the construction of a pipeline across the province and LNG Canada export terminal in Kitimat.

Andhra Azevedo, another lawyer representing the Sierra Club, told the court the B.C. government seems to have a "trust us" approach, which does not align with the legislation's transparency and accountability purposes.

The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said in a statement that the province has the strongest climate accountability measures in Canada.

It said its annual reports provide the latest available data, but the Sierra Club's lawyers argued the province still isn't explicitly saying what action it would take to get the province to its various targets beyond 2030.

"Nor can it be assumed that progress to 2030 means that you're going to target for three years from now, in 2025," Azevedo said.

"The plan could be good or bad," she said. "It's not about the court assessing that. The law simply requires B.C. to tell us enough information to assess whether the plan is good or bad ... and how far the plan gets us toward the targets."

Azevedo said that while the targets are not enforceable and there are no consequences for not meeting them, the annual reports were meant to allow the public and the legislature to hold the government to account for its failure to achieve them.

The B.C. government released its CleanBC initiative in 2018 with a plan to lower climate-changing emissions. Three years later, that initiative evolved into the CleanBC Road Map to 2030. Its aim was to meet the province's legislated target to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent of 2007 levels by the end of the decade.

David Cowie, a lawyer representing the B.C. government, said gaps had become apparent in the initial plan, creating the impetus to develop a followup plan, which Premier John Horgan introduced as a priority for the government.

Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman echoed those sentiments toward a path to fulfilling the province's net-zero emissions commitment for 2050, Cowie added.

"Is it your submission that those statements equate to compliance with the statutory provisions?" Justice Jasvinder Basran asked.

Cowie said the opposing lawyers seemed to suggest there was no plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2030, but the government had no intention of stopping there.

"But I take your point. That does not satisfy the obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as far as that's required," he said.

Besides the oil and gas sector, the government has committed to reducing emissions in transportation, buildings, communities and industry.

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

Camille Bains, The Canadian Press

TOXIC WHITE MASCULINITY
Committee study on abuse in sport will look to expand beyond just hockey, MPs say


OTTAWA — The House of Commons committee investigating abuse in sport will reconvene next week to hash out how to expand its probe beyond Hockey Canada.



MPs on the committee say their inquiries must find a way to hold all sports organizations, coaches and athletes accountable for inappropriate and abusive behaviour.

Liberal MP Chris Bittle, one of 12 regular members on the Canadian Heritage committee, said the departure of Hockey Canada's president and board of directors Tuesday was necessary, but that alone "is not a substitute for culture change."

The committee launched its investigation into Hockey Canada in June, after it came to light that the organization settled a lawsuit with a woman who alleged eight members of the 2018 national junior team sexually assaulted her after a Hockey Canada gala in London, Ont.

Bittle said there needs to be a focus now on how to fix what ails not only Hockey Canada, but the deep cultural issues across many sports that have prompted a look-the-other-way attitude when medals and glory are on the line.

"We can look at whether there are organizations that are putting athletes on such pedestals that there are no consequences for their actions, including this case that has led to our inquiry where there didn't seem to be any consequences," Bittle said in an interview.

Hockey Canada officials told the committee in June they learned about the alleged assault the day after the London gala, but an internal investigation was not able to identify the players involved and no disciplinary action was taken.

"Why wasn't there a look to say, 'There's certain people who shouldn't be wearing the Maple Leaf on their chest representing Canada moving forward'?" Bittle asked. "If there's no consequences for coaches and athletes in terms of their conduct, it's going to be worse."

NDP MP Peter Julian said the leadership overhaul at Hockey Canada does not change the "fundamental issues around how Hockey Canada treats these horrific allegations of sexual violence, treats sexual abuse, treats victims."

Getting to the bottom of that should be a priority for the committee, but Julian said those questions need to be asked of many more sporting organizations.

"It's not just Hockey Canada that is not taking seriously the issues of protecting athletes and protecting the public," he said. "So there is a lot of work for our committee still to do."

The committee normally meets on Tuesdays and Fridays when the House of Commons is sitting and Julian said he expects the first meeting next week will be spent discussing where the inquiry now needs to go and which witnesses are still to be called.

"I think it's fair to say all members of the committee understand that this is beyond hockey, that this is a crisis in national sports organizations," said Julian. "And I expect that we will continue the hearings and broaden that mandate on that basis."

Allegations of psychological, physical and sexual abuse have arisen in multiple sports in Canada in recent years including rowing, boxing, rugby, skiing and soccer.

Hundreds of athletes in gymnastics and bobsled signed open letters in March calling for independent investigations of abuse and toxic environments. Both letters suggest athletes were afraid to speak up earlier for fear of being punished and left off national and Olympic teams.

In 2018, a lawsuit was filed against Alpine Canada by former skiers who said the organization covered up sexual abuse at the hands of a coach in part to prevent a loss of sponsorships.

Julian said the issue is not just that sporting organizations have been allowing toxic environments, but also that the federal government hasn't done anything to stop it.

"The federal government has let national sports organizations run themselves with no oversight, with no obligations, and that has to fundamentally change," said Julian.

That is starting to change. Sport Minister Pascale St.-Onge suspended federal funding for both Hockey Canada and Gymnastics Canada earlier this year when the abuse allegations arose.

She is overhauling the contribution agreements so that sports bodies have to show accountability, transparency and a commitment to safe sport in order to receive federal money.

To get funding next year, all sporting organizations are required to sign on with the new sporting integrity commissioner, who was hired in June to implement a "Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport."

As of now, only two national federations have signed on: Volleyball Canada and Weightlifting Canada.

In its first three months of operation, the integrity commissioner's office received 24 formal complaints, but two-thirds were related to people in sporting organizations that haven't yet signed on to the process.

Only six of the complaints were considered admissible under the commissioner's jurisdiction.

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

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Hockey culture suffers from a 'systemic problem' of sexual violence, minister says

Ashley Burke - Sept 29

Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge says there's a "systemic problem" of sexual violence and toxic masculinity in Canada's hockey culture that Hockey Canada has failed to change.

Her comment was a response to a Fifth Estate investigation that identified at least 15 group sexual assault cases involving junior hockey players investigated by police since 1989 — half of which surfaced in the past decade.

At least 50 players have been accused in the alleged crimes. Half were charged and only one was convicted after taking a plea to a lesser offence, the Fifth Estate found.

"We're talking about a systemic issue," St.-Onge told CBC News on Thursday. "The stories that we're reading about are deeply disturbing and sickening, quite frankly."

"We've heard these stories before. It's not the first time we talked about the toxic culture in hockey. But nothing has been done, or not enough has been done in the past 10 years. It's a terrible legacy we want to see change."

St-Onge sharpened her condemnation of Hockey Canada on Thursday, arguing the organization doesn't have the luxury of years to change its culture. She said this toxic culture in the sport has been "normalized for too long."

"A lot of players have become men who have never taken responsibility for their actions and what happened," she said. "But it's also about the people in management and in leadership roles that have also failed all those years.

"So far, I don't think what's been done is enough, for sure."

Hockey Canada continues to face calls for a change to its leadership; one of those calls came from St-Onge. The hockey organization has been under intense public scrutiny since May, after a woman filed a $3.5-million lawsuit alleging eight hockey players — some of them members of the 2018 World Junior hockey team — sexually assaulted her.

Hockey parents were outraged to learn that Hockey Canada used a fund made up in part of their registration fees to pay for a settlement in that case and others.

St-Onge suspended Hockey Canada's funding in June — the strongest sanction at her disposal, she said. A series of major sponsors followed suit and pulled their financial support for the hockey organization.

There are a number of conditions Hockey Canada must meet before federal funding can resume. But St-Onge didn't close the door on further conditions after the completion of a financial audit and a series of ongoing investigations.

'There needs to be change in leadership in Hockey Canada,' says sports minister

"I'm giving myself all the flexibility to decide when the federal funding will be reintroduced," she said.

Hockey Canada is facing a "real sustainability problem," said St-Onge, as parents wonder if they should sign up their children for hockey and provincial federations threaten to withhold their dues.

"It can't take two, three, four, five years to change the culture," she said. "There needs to be a 180-degree shift in hockey culture and it needs to happen now."

Hockey Canada says it's taking action

In a statement, Hockey Canada said that "while culture change cannot happen overnight," it is "taking immediate action to eliminate inappropriate action in and around our game."

The hockey organization said it has made progress on its plan to address "toxic" culture by launching a third-party complaint mechanism, rolling out mandatory training for national teams and working on updating its policies.

"We are committed to making the changes necessary to improve the culture of Canada's game, including by taking a leadership role in prioritizing safe sport in Canada," said Hockey Canada in a statement to CBC News on Thursday.

The hockey organization is encouraging anyone who feels they were a victim of maltreatment, sexual violence or any other kind of abuse to come forward and report it.

Hockey Canada said it's also "important to note" it commissioned a former Supreme Court justice to conduct a third-party governance review.



Hockey Canada president and chief operating officer Scott Smith told a Commons committee on July 27 that his organization's goal is to

© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

House of Commons committee resumes next month

The only member of Hockey Canada's leadership who publicly resigned during the controversy, Michael Brind'Armour, is scheduled to testify at a House of Commons committee on Oct. 4.

Brind'Amour is the former chair of Hockey Canada's board of directors. He stepped down in early August, saying "there is no need to wait for a new era."

The Commons committee has expanded its review into how Hockey Canada handles cases of sexual assault allegations to include other sports.

Andrea Skinner, the Hockey Canada board's new interim chair, is also being called to testify next month. She was first elected to the board in November 2020, used to serve as a member of the risk management committee and was chair of the human resources committee.

The committee has asked Hockey Canada's board of directors to submit any notes it took during in-camera sessions when it discussed the 2018 group sexual assault case and settlement.

You can watch the Fifth Estate's documentary Anatomy of a Scandal Thursday at 9 p.m. (9:30 p.m. in Newfoundland) on CBC-TV or stream it on CBC Gem.

Delusional broadcast disorder has claimed its latest victim: John Cleese

Opinion by Marina Hyde -The Guardian

How very interesting to hear John Cleese explain how he’d be immediately cancelled or censored on the BBC, in comments made freely and at considerable length yesterday in the marquee 8.10am interview slot on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 news programme. Explaining why he was about to become a presenter on GB News, the 82-year-old declared loftily: “The BBC have not come to me and said: ‘Would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ And if they did, I would say: ‘Not on your nelly!’ Because I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored.” To which the only possible response is, “Morning, Major!”


Photograph: Amel Emrić/AP

These days, Cleese claims to “live in hotel rooms” – a bit on-the-nose, but there you go – and evidently boasts a lively range of views. In the strictest interests of accuracy, we should note that he was recently given a whole two series of a sitcom on the BBC, with the last episode of Hold the Sunset broadcast in 2019, a few months before the pandemic hit. Furthermore, it was barely a month ago that Cleese was tweeting: “GB News is sometimes referred to, rather wittily, as ‘KGB News’. To what extent is GB News influenced by Russian interests?” I don’t know – but perhaps it’s a matter that could be explored on his new GB News show. We’re told anything goes.

For now, what seems clear is that Cleese suffers one of the great afflictions of our age, a kind of delusional broadcast disorder that can make the sufferer believe they have been cancelled by the BBC even while they are literally on the BBC. The worst part of it is that we are not allowed to discuss this social sickness because of political correctness. I tried to tell my husband about it at breakfast yesterday – he works at the BBC – but he told me to be quiet so he could listen to John Cleese on the BBC. Like Cleese, I had been silenced.

In any rational world you’d be able to state the obvious reality – the condition is overwhelmingly suffered by men. But you can’t say it! You can’t say it! You can look at Cleese, or Noel Edmonds, or Nigel Farage, or Laurence Fox, but you’re banned from saying what you see. You have to pretend that women are out there every five minutes wanging on about how they’re not allowed to have a primetime show forever, as well as a bus pass or leadership of a political party, and how their only alternative option is presenting hours of gloriously bitter live telly every week on one of our bazillion-pound news-o-tainment channels.

Related video: John Cleese has revealed he will be joining GB News

Duration 1:29   View on Watch

In a sane world, you’d be allowed to say scientific facts, like the fact that 90% of heroically whingeing BBC cancellees are men, 95% of them are acrimoniously divorced, and 110% of them have “divorced energy”. (Obviously, it’s Not All Previously Primetime Men – Mr Blobby has behaved with perfect dignity.) Yet you can’t say it. You’d get cancelled in seconds. In fact, I don’t even know how I’m writing this next sentence.

Pity me. In my incredibly vulnerable position as a newspaper columnist, I have to think about this stuff constantly. Constantly! I once described a soon-to-launch TV news channel as sure to become “unmoored from facts” – and its CEO voided his pram of all toys. He spent rather a lot of time to-ing and fro-ing with the readers’ editor demanding some mean words be changed, before handing Press Gazette a copy of his very grand letter to the Guardian (which was also subsequently published by the Guardian). In it, he explained: “We are absolutely committed to our mission to report news in the most accurate and balanced way we can. It is unfortunate that your article failed to adhere to this basic principle.” The channel in question? Why, it was GB News.

Related: Allegations swirl around Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail. Until they clear, a peerage would be a travesty | Jane Martinson

Don’t get me wrong, I was and am still hugely amused by Angelos Frangopoulos, the adorable little Aussie snowflake who wrote that letter. But imagine how I felt last week when I saw his channel had given a guest spot to Naomi Wolf, who hasn’t been playing with a full deck of data points since the 00s. Wolf’s appearance was essentially a very, very long diatribe against the Covid vaccine. Her assertion that “mass murder has taken place” was bolstered by the GB News presenter Mark Steyn explaining that vaccines “cause every conceivable kind of damage”. Other lowlights of Naomi’s appearance, which was allowed to proceed without a single piece of disinformation being questioned? The claim that Covid vaccinations were “bioweapons” that were “sterilising people” and “poisoning breast milk”. Also, “civil society has been wholly co-opted by bad actors trying to destroy British civil society”. Wolf went on – entirely unchallenged – to compare today’s medical establishment to the eugenicists and exterminators of the Third Reich. Steyn just nodded along, repeatedly going “yeah”, presumably in “the most accurate and balanced way” he could. He booked her again the very next night.

Anyway, a fun new stablemate for John Cleese. Cleese famously decided that the Brexit debate saw this country sink “to the lowest intellectual level ever”, so I strongly urge him to push that envelope and book Wolf on his first show. In the meantime, those of us saddened by a former idol’s comic decline should comfort ourselves that some of the best recent comedy has happened on GB News. Last year on the free speech channel, presenter Guto Harri took the knee live on air, got suspended for it, quit and was soon made prime minister Boris Johnson’s comms chief. The whole batshit saga was easily funnier than anything Cleese has done since A Fish Called Wanda (1988), and we must look forward to his promising new show in that spirit.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £18.99) is out now

Scientists integrate human nerve cells into rat brains

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

A new procedure transplanting human nerve cells into rat brains transforms rat brains into a biological living laboratory that could revolutionize research into human mental disorders and brain development, researchers say. Photo by Anna Tyurina/Shutterstock

Human brain tissue has been successfully transplanted into the brains of rats using a cutting-edge experimental procedure, say researchers. They envision the achievement as a promising new frontier in medical research.

Groups of living human nerve cells have become integrated into the brains of laboratory rats, creating hybrid brain circuits that can be activated through input from the rats' senses, the scientists reported Wednesday.

Further, experiments have shown that the human tissue forms a two-way connection within the rat brain, also sending out signals that can potentially alter the rat's behavior, the researchers said.

This procedure transforms rat brains into a biological living laboratory that could revolutionize research into human mental disorders and brain development, said study co-author Dr. Sergiu Pasca. He is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in California.

For example, the human brain grafts could aid early testing of drugs designed to treat mental conditions like schizophrenia, Pasca suggested.

"You can transplant patient cells into the rat, wait until they integrate into the circuitry and then take your experimental drug or your drug of interest and inject it into the rat," Pasca said. "Then you can see if the drug is reaching the target. Is it changing the defect you're testing?"

Such experiments cannot be performed on humans, but might provide invaluable information applicable to them.

RELATED Study: Injured brain's ability to heal may hinge on time of day, circadian rhythms

The new research revolves around tiny cell cultures called organoids that are created in a lab dish from stem cells.

Organoids can be used to recreate tissue from any human organ. For instance, Pasca's research team has generated tissue belonging to more than a dozen different human brain regions as organoids in the lab.

However, the research value of these cell cultures has been limited because they can't grow to full size in a dish, Pasca said.

RELATED Noninvasive electrical brain stimulation boosts memory, study shows

Brain tissue in a dish also isn't attached to and functioning within a living creature, which is essential in studying mental conditions, he added.

"Psychiatric disorders are behaviorally defined," Pasca said. "So when you find a defect in a cell at the bottom of a dish - let's say faulty dendrites or fewer synapses - will that result in changes in the circuitry? Will that affect behavior? How would those cause disease in a patient? That's the motivation for us to try to integrate these cultures into living systems."

As part of this effort, the researchers transplanted organoids closely resembling the human cerebral cortex into the brains of nearly 100 rat pups just two to three days old.

The young rat brains accepted the human tissue, forming blood vessels to support the organoids and supplying immune cells to protect them against disease, the researchers found.

With this support, the implanted human organoids thrived, eventually covering about one-third of one hemisphere of the rats' brains.

"They grow about six times larger than what an equivalent neuron would grow in a dish," Pasca said. "If you have a batch of organoids and half of them are transplanted and half stay in a dish, if you compare them after 250 days you'll find the human neurons that have been transplanted are at least six times larger."

The human neurons also set up shop in the rat brains, forming working connections with the rodents' own circuits.

For example, when researchers annoyed the rats' whiskers with puffs of air, the human neurons in the rat brains lit up in time with the stimulus.

In fact, the human brain matter integrated well enough to actually affect the behavior of the lab rats, the study authors said.

To demonstrate this, the scientists implanted human organoids that were modified to respond to specific frequencies of blue laser light.

During a 15-day training period, researchers delivered random bursts of blue light delivered by ultrathin fiber-optic cables directly to the implanted organoids. After each burst, the rats were provided water from a tiny spout.

"We wanted to see whether we could teach the rats to associate delivery of reward - in this case, water delivery - with stimulation of human neurons," Pasca said.

By the end of the experiment, a random blue light pulse would send the rats scurrying to the spout, Pasca said.

These human/rat brain hybrids already have yielded some new understanding of Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic condition strongly associated with autism and epilepsy, the team noted.

The scientists transplanted an organoid generated from the cells of a Timothy syndrome patient on one side of a lab rat's brain, and on the other side they transplanted an organoid created from a healthy person.

Watching for five to six months, the researchers found that the Timothy syndrome organoid wound up with much smaller neurons and significantly different electrical activity than the healthy organoid.

These changes and differences did not develop in cells kept in a dish, Pasca said - they required being part of a living being in order to mature to that point.

Researchers might find similar developmental differences in organoids generated from the cells of people with schizophrenia or autism, Pasca added.

The findings were published Wednesday in Nature. A commentary accompanying the paper agreed that these transplants open up a new means of researching the human brain.

"Human neurons are different from those of all other species, and discrepancies in the rate at which rat and human neurons develop will limit how well human-to-rodent xenografts can mirror human brain function," said the article by two Swiss researchers.

"Nevertheless, the ability to produce mature human neural tissues that integrate with their host at the circuit level provides exciting opportunities for studying the development and basic biology of human neural circuitry, as well as representing a new system for testing therapies for human neurological diseases," the commentary concluded.

More information

The Harvard Stem Cell Institute has more about organoids.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Hamilton record store owner finds rare tape of 'lost' 1973 Neil Young concert at McMaster University

Cara Nickerson - Yesterday - CBC

Chad Silva, owner of Flashbacks Records on Concession Street in Hamilton, received a large donation of cassette tapes last year.

Silva, 24, said most record shop owners wouldn't have given the pile of homemade mixtapes and recordings a second glance.

"I went through everything because I'm thorough," he said. "Everything else was almost trash worthy."

That is, except for two unlabelled tapes containing notes in looping handwriting on the back of the set list for a lost 1973 McMaster University Neil Young show.


The Hamiltonian who recorded the cassette tapes wanted her husband to be able to listen to the concert, because he couldn't attend.© Cara Nickerson/CBC

"As a fan, I was like, 'Oh my God, Neil Young at McMaster University. I never even thought he would play there,'" Silva said.

The Sugar Mountain Neil Young fan website has curated a list of all the known shows by the Toronto-born artist and their recordings. Silva found the date of the McMaster show: Oct. 28, 1973.

"Beside that date, it said not recorded, presumed to be lost. And I was like, 'Well, I have it in my hands right here,'" Silva said.

A 'unique and unusual' concert

The tape Silva found was part of Young's Tonight's the Night tour.

Paul Panchezak, a McMaster student at the time and longtime volunteer at CFMU, McMaster's student radio station, said even though it was almost 50 years ago, he remembers it well.

"It was just before Halloween. It was raining and cold," he said.

"[Young] wore the white suit like the cover of Tonight's the Night and had a palm tree with a light bulb on top of it. And every once in a while, he flicked the light bulb on and said, 'Welcome to Miami Beach. Everything is cheaper than it looks.'"

After the concert, an article in McMaster's student paper, The Silhouette, that was written by Carol Ann Wilson brought up the stage dressing in a scathing review of the show.

"If an artificial palm tree and a light bulb 'sun' can convince you you're in Palm Beach, then you also probably feel that the long awaited Neil Young concert was worth the $5.00 ticket," the article says.

Panchezak said the crowd of students also didn't know how to take the concert.

"They didn't recognize any songs and, you know, it was interesting, but … it wasn't familiar."

To this day, Panchezak said, the 1973 concert is in the top three shows he's ever attended.

"I've been to a fair amount of concerts in my life but it's up there because it was so unique and unusual, and had so many unexpected twists and turns, and they played great."

'Neil's pretty consumed with his archives'

Silva said the woman who recorded and donated the bootleg copy of the concert never intended for it to be distributed.

"The story is her husband couldn't make the show, so she just brought her tape recorder for him to hear it later."

Silva said the woman who donated the tapes was worried Young would file a lawsuit against her, after reading that Eric Clapton allegedly sued a German widow who had put a bootleg CD of his on eBay in 2021. Clapton did not pursue the lawsuit.

"I don't think a lawsuit is even in the realm of possibilities," said Astrid Young, Neil Young's sister. "I think it's more of a matter of interest at this point, like a, 'Let's see what it sounds like' kind of thing."

In fact, in 2020, Young released six bootleg recordings of his concerts as vinyl records.

Astrid said that in recent years, Young has turned his focus to archiving his life's work, and he's currently working on his music from the 1990s and 2000s.

"Currently, Neil's pretty consumed with his archives," she said, adding her brother, who's 76, has recordings of most of his concerts from his long, prolific career.

"There is so much material, and they started working on this probably in the late '80s, sifting through shows, and a lot of it's on tape too," Astrid said.


Young performs at the 4th Annual Light Up The Blues at the Pantages Theatre on May 21, 2016 in Hollywood, Calif.© Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

"If you can imagine having to listen to 300 different versions of Down by the River, each one of them being 20 minutes long or something like that. It's definitely a full-time job for quite a few people..

"There's a lot of bootlegs floating around. Some of them are really good and some of them are really bad." Neil's interest comes down to how clean the audio is, she said.

CBC Hamilton listened to the tape at Flashbacks Record Store and found the audio was clear.

Silva said he has been in contact with Young's management and is donating the tape to the Young archives.

He said he's happy he ended up with the tape, so it doesn't go into the trash.

"I truly think in my heart of hearts, if any other store received this donation, it'd be in the landfill right now," Silva said.