Marine heatwaves are sweeping the seafloor around North America

People bathe in the Pacific Ocean at Agua Dulce beach in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Gloria Dickie
Reuters
Staff
Published March 17, 2023

Heatwaves unfolding on the bottom of the ocean can be more intense and last longer than those on the sea surface, new research suggests, but such extremes in the deep ocean are often overlooked.

A team of scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have conducted the first assessment of marine heatwaves along North America's continental shelves. Climate Barometer newsletter: Sign up to keep your finger on the climate pulse

They found that these bottom heatwaves ranged from 0.5 degrees Celisus to 3C warmer than normal temperatures and could last more than six months — much longer than heatwaves at the surface.

"We simply don't have a ton of instruments on the ocean bottom along continental shelves," said study co-author Dillon Amaya, a NOAA climate scientist. "The ocean is a powerful thing. It destroys instruments that we have in the water for too long."

Surface heatwaves can be picked up by satellites and can result in huge algal blooms. But, Amaya said, often no one knows a bottom marine heatwave is happening until the impacts show up in commercial bottom-dwelling species like lobsters and crabs.

The assessment, published in the journal Nature Communications, used computer models of the ocean and observations to analyze seafloor heatwaves. It found that while sometimes a marine heatwave can hit both the sea surface and ocean bottom at the same time, bottom heatwaves can also occur on their own.

The ocean has absorbed about 90% of the excess heat from global warming, with the ocean's average temperature increasing by about 0.9C over the last century. Marine heatwaves have become about 50% more frequent over the past decade.

"It's a little less clear if climate change is strongly impacting bottom marine heatwaves in the same way it would at the surface," Amaya said, saying changes to ocean circulation patterns could also play a role.

Past bottom marine heatwaves have decimated Pacific cod and snow crab populations. "Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska is an important fishery and … that population has declined by 75% following the big marine heatwave in 2015," said Michael Jacox, a scientist at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

Warmer water, he said, can increase the energy needs of species at the same time that there's less prey available for them to eat, leading to more deaths and fewer births.

(Reporting by Gloria Dickie; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

RELATED STORIES

Climate change is creating hungrier, more vicious ocean predators: study
Ocean currents growing weaker due to climate change: Study
Climate change is preventing ocean heat from escaping in Antarctica: McGill study
The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate
Canada seeks U.S. buy-in on ocean protection as part of G7 climate initiative: CP
UN ocean treaty talks resume with goal to save biodiversity

Scientists identify heat wave at bottom of ocean

by NCAR & UCAR

This visualization depicts bathymetric features of the western Atlantic Ocean Basin, 

including the continental shelf, captured by satellite. 

Credit: NOAA's National Environmental Satellite and Information Service

The 2013-2016 marine heat wave known as "The Blob" warmed a vast expanse of surface waters across the northeastern Pacific, disrupting West Coast marine ecosystems, depressing salmon returns, and damaging commercial fisheries. It also prompted a wave of research on extreme warming of ocean surface waters.

But, as new NOAA research shows, marine heat waves also happen deep underwater.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a team led by NOAA researchers used a combination of observations and computer models to generate the first broad assessment of bottom marine heat waves in the productive continental shelf waters surrounding North America.

"Researchers have been investigating marine heat waves at the sea surface for over a decade now," said lead author Dillon Amaya, a research scientist with NOAA's Physical Science Laboratory. "This is the first time we've been able to really dive deeper and assess how these extreme events unfold along shallow seafloors."

Marine heat waves dramatically impact the health of ocean ecosystems around the globe, disrupting the productivity and distribution of organisms as small as plankton and as large as whales. As a result, there has been a considerable effort to study, track and predict the timing, intensity, duration, and physical drivers of these events.

Most of that research has focused on temperature extremes at the ocean's surface, for which there are many more high-quality observations taken by satellites, ships, and buoys. Sea surface temperatures can also be indicators for many physical and biochemical ocean characteristics of sensitive marine ecosystems, making analyses more straightforward.

About 90% of the excess heat from global warming has been absorbed by the ocean, which has warmed by about 1.5C over the past century. Marine heatwaves have become about 50% more frequent over the past decade.

In recent years, scientists have increased efforts to investigate marine heat waves throughout the water column using the limited data available. But previous research didn't target temperature extremes on the ocean bottom along continental shelves, which provide critical habitat for important commercial species like lobsters, scallops, crabs, flounder, cod and other groundfish.

Bottom vs. surface marine heatwave spatial extent. a–i The fraction of each Large Marine 

Ecosystem’s (LME) area experiencing surface marine heatwave (SMHW) conditions for

 each month from 1993–2019. Shading denotes average SMHW intensity (°C) in a given 

month, as measured by sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) averaged across all 

grid cells experiencing SMHW conditions. Black contours mark fraction of LME’s area in 

bottom marine heatwave (BMHW) conditions (i.e., bar height in Fig. 5). Horizontal gray 

lines mark areal extents of 0.5 and 1. Note only grid cells with bottom depths <400 m were 

used for areal percentage and intensity calculations. Numbers next to LME names indicate

 total number of months with areal extent greater than 0.5 for SMHWs and BMHWs, 

respectively. Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36567-0

Due to the relative scarcity of bottom-water temperature datasets, the scientists used a data product called "reanalysis" to conduct the assessment, which starts with available observations and employs computer models that simulate ocean currents and the influence of the atmosphere to "fill in the blanks." Using a similar technique, NOAA scientists have been able to reconstruct global weather back to the early 19th century.

While ocean reanalyses have been around for a long time, they have only recently become skillful enough and have high enough resolution to examine ocean features, including bottom temperatures, near the coast.

The research team, from NOAA, CIRES, and NCAR, found that on the continental shelves around North America, bottom marine heat waves tend to persist longer than their surface counterparts, and can have larger warming signals than the overlying surface waters. Bottom and surface marine heat waves can occur simultaneously in the same location, especially in shallower regions where surface and bottom waters mingle.

But bottom marine heat waves can also occur with little or no evidence of warming at the surface, which has important implications for the management of commercially important fisheries. "That means it can be happening without managers realizing it until the impacts start to show," said Amaya.

In 2015, a combination of harmful algal blooms and loss of kelp forest habitat off the West Coast of the United States—both caused by The Blob—led to closures of shellfisheries that cost the economy in excess of $185 million, according to a 2021 study. The commercial tri-state Dungeness crab fishery recorded a loss of $97.5 million, affecting both tribal and nontribal fisheries. Washington and Californian coastal communities lost a combined $84 million in tourist spending due to the closure of recreational razor clam and abalone fisheries.

In 2021, a groundfish survey published by NOAA Fisheries indicated that Gulf of Alaska cod had plummeted during The Blob, experiencing a 71% decline in abundance between 2015 and 2017. On the other hand, young groundfish and other marine creatures in the Northern California Current system thrived under the unprecedented ocean conditions, a 2019 paper by Oregon State University and NOAA Fisheries researchers found.

Unusually warm bottom water temperatures have also been linked to the expansion of invasive lionfish along the southeast U.S., coral bleaching and subsequent declines of reef fish, changes in survival rates of young Atlantic cod, and the disappearance of near-shore lobster populations in southern New England.

The authors say it will be important to maintain existing continental shelf monitoring systems and to develop new real-time monitoring capabilities to alert marine resource managers to bottom warming conditions.

"We know that early recognition of marine heat waves is needed for proactive management of the coastal ocean," said co-author Michael Jacox, a research oceanographer who splits his time between NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center and the Physical Sciences Laboratory. "Now it's clear that we need to pay closer attention to the ocean bottom, where some of the most valuable species live and can experience heat waves quite different from those on the surface."

More information: Amaya, D.J. et al, Bottom marine heatwaves along the continental shelves of North America, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36567-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36567-0

Journal information: Nature Communications

Provided by NCAR & UCAR

Weak winds in the Pacific drove record-breaking 2019 summertime marine heat wave

Giant underwater waves may affect the ocean's ability to store carbon

by Sarah Collins, University of Cambridge

Credit: AGU Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2022AV000800

Underwater waves deep below the ocean's surface—some as tall as 500 meters—play an important role in how the ocean stores heat and carbon, according to new research.

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and the University of California San Diego, quantified the effect of these waves and other forms of underwater turbulence in the Atlantic Ocean and found that their importance is not being accurately reflected in the climate models that inform government policy.

Most of the heat and carbon emitted by human activity is absorbed by the ocean, but how much it can absorb is dependent on turbulence in the ocean's interior, as heat and carbon are either pushed deep into the ocean or pulled toward the surface.

While these underwater waves are already well-known, their importance in heat and carbon transport is not fully understood.

The results, reported in the journal AGU Advances, show that turbulence in the interior of oceans is more important for the transport of carbon and heat on a global scale than had been previously imagined.

Ocean circulation carries warm waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic, where they cool, sink, and return southwards in the deep ocean, like a giant conveyer belt. The Atlantic branch of this circulation pattern, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), plays a key role in regulating global heat and carbon budgets. Ocean circulation redistributes heat to the polar regions, where it melts ice, and carbon to the deep ocean, where it can be stored for thousands of years.

"If you were to take a picture of the ocean interior, you would see a lot of complex dynamics at work," said first author Dr. Laura Cimoli from Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. "Beneath the surface of the water, there are jets, currents, and waves—in the deep ocean, these waves can be up to 500 meters high, but they break just like a wave on a beach."

"The Atlantic Ocean is special in how it affects the global climate," said co-author Dr. Ali Mashayek from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. "It has a strong pole-to-pole circulation from its upper reaches to the deep ocean. The water also moves faster at the surface than it does in the deep ocean."

Over the past several decades, researchers have been investigating whether the AMOC may be a factor in why the Arctic has lost so much ice cover, while some Antarctic ice sheets are growing. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that heat absorbed by the ocean in the North Atlantic takes several hundred years to reach the Antarctic.

Now, using a combination of remote sensing, ship-based measurements and data from autonomous floats, the Cambridge-led researchers have found that heat from the North Atlantic can reach the Antarctic much faster than previously thought. In addition, turbulence within the ocean—in particular large underwater waves—plays an important role in the climate.

Like a giant cake, the ocean is made up of different layers, with colder, denser water at the bottom, and warmer, lighter water at the top. Most heat and carbon transport within the ocean happens within a particular layer, but heat and carbon can also move between density layers, bringing deep waters back to the surface.

The researchers found that the movement of heat and carbon between layers is facilitated by small-scale turbulence, a phenomenon not fully represented in climate models.

Estimates of mixing from different observational platforms showed evidence of small-scale turbulence in the upper branch of circulation, in agreement with theoretical predictions of oceanic internal waves. The different estimates showed that turbulence mostly affects the class of density layers associated with the core of the deep waters moving southward from the North Atlantic to the Southern Ocean. This means that the heat and carbon carried by these water masses have a high chance of being moved across different density levels.

"Climate models do account for turbulence, but mostly in how it affects ocean circulation," said Cimoli. "But we've found that turbulence is vital in its own right, and plays a key role in how much carbon and heat gets absorbed by the ocean, and where it gets stored."

"Many climate models have an overly simplistic representation of the role of micro-scale turbulence, but we've shown it's significant and should be treated with more care," said Mashayek. "For example, turbulence and its role in ocean circulation exerts a control over how much anthropogenic heat reaches the Antarctic Ice Sheet, and the timescale on which that happens."

The research suggests an urgent need for the installation of turbulence sensors on global observational arrays and a more accurate representation of small-scale turbulence in climate models, to enable scientists to make more accurate projections of the future effects of climate change.

More information: Laura Cimoli et al, Significance of Diapycnal Mixing Within the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, AGU Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2022AV000800

Journal information: AGU Advances 

Provided by University of Cambridge When winds and currents align, ocean mixing goes deep

FRIENDS OF CTHULHU

Opinion: Why Canada needs to take action now to stop octopus farming

 (PHOTOS)

Mar 17 2023

Khalil Ahmed/Shutterstock

Written for Daily Hive by Chantelle Archambault of the Vancouver Humane Society

In the award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, filmmaker and Sea Change Project co-founder Craig Foster says, “A lot of people say an octopus is like an alien. But the strange thing is, as you get closer to them, you realize that we’re very similar in a lot of ways.”

As one octopus develops a complex friendship with Foster, the film demonstrates how intelligent, curious, and sensitive these animals can be.

Industry stakeholders seem to be relying on the perceived otherness of octopuses to enable consumers to look the other way as they begin to establish the first inhumane octopus farms, even as our society is increasingly critical of cruel intensive animal agriculture practices. Thousands of animal advocates and allies across the world have spoken out to agree: it’s not working.

Earlier this week, reports of horrific plans for the world’s first octopus farm began making their way across the media cycle after confidential planning proposal documents were released to the BBC by the organization Eurogroup for Animals.



Kanaloa Octopus Farm, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii/Laura Lee Cascada/The Every Animal Project/We Animals Media

The farm, which is planned to open in Spain’s Canary Islands by multinational corporation Nueva Pescanova, will be a nightmare for octopuses.

In the wild, common octopuses—the species set to be farmed, and the species featured in My Octopus Teacher—are typically solitary animals who are highly territorial. They spend time interacting with their environment, in which they are capable of using complex problem-solving skills and tools. They hunt a varied diet of many marine species, usually at night. They are accustomed to the dark and prefer making their home in crevices where they can easily hide.You might also like:

Opinion: Why hasn't Canada stopped horses from being shipped to slaughter overseas?

Opinion: Wolf escapes highlight horrific issues plaguing Greater Vancouver Zoo

By contrast, Nueva Pescanova’s intensive farming plans would keep octopuses in crowded communal tanks, at times under constant light, where they would be unable to express their natural behaviours such as hiding and hunting. The animals would be defenceless as they would be raised and picked off for human consumption.

Keratsini, Greece, 2020; Selene Magnolia/We Animals Media

Plans also note that octopuses will be killed by “ice slurry,” which has been identified as a painful and stressful death for the fish on whom it is currently used. The aquaculture industry has already begun shifting away from this slaughter method, including a requirement in the National Farm Animal Care Council’s (NFACC) Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Farmed Salmonids to transition to acceptable methods by 2025.

If we could have stopped industrial-scale animal farming before it began, the reality for animals would look very different now. Industrial animal agriculture has been called the biggest animal welfare crisis on the planet, with more than 70 billion land animals killed for food each year.

Keratsini, Greece, 2020; Selene Magnolia/We Animals Media

The Sentience Institute estimates that 74% of farmed land animals and virtually all farmed fishes are currently on factory farms, which are characterized by large numbers of animals confined in cramped, barren and unnatural conditions. Many of these animals are never given the opportunity to see the sky, smell fresh air free of the scent of ammonia, or feel the grass.

In Canada alone, 825 million land animals were killed in 2021. The number of farmed aquatic animals who are killed in Canada is so enormous that they are counted by weight rather than lives: 191,249 tonnes of finned fish and shellfish in 2021.

The Canadian animal agriculture industry has been the face of numerous scandals over the past decade, as undercover footage revealed live chickens with their legs ripped off, dairy cows cornered and beaten with canes, and conscious sheep flailing about with their necks cut open.

While we can do our collective best to decrease the demand for animal products and address the terrible suffering that industrially farmed animals endure, we sadly cannot go back in time to save the millions of lives squandered in misery, awaiting a painful and terrifying end.

However, we can prevent this tragic fate for octopuses. A federal petition calling on the government to ban the breeding, keeping, and import of farmed octopuses and other cephalopod species in Canada has already amassed more than 10,000 signatures.

The decision is simple, and it must be made now: before another species is subjected to horrific suffering; before cephalopod, farms are established; before the federal government must contend with industry interests and try to unring yet another bell of cruel treatment. For the sake of protecting these intelligent, complex animals, sign the petition today.

Scientists slam plans for world's largest octopus farm


Clare Roth

DW
March 17, 2023

Leaked plans for the world’s first octopus farm detail how the eight-legged creatures would be slaughtered: by hypothermia. Experts say it’s inhumane.

Nueva Pescanova, a seafood company, has been breeding octopuses in captivity for years with the intent of applying for a permit to farm them in the Canary Islands.

In 2019, the company said it had found a way to breed the animals at large scale for commercial purposes. No company had figured out a way to do this before then.

Octopus sold as food is usually either caught in the wild or bred in small octopus farms in the middle of the ocean — but those farms are a fraction of the size of Nueva Pescanova's proposed farm. The company says it is responding to growing demand in Japan and the US.

Octopus are a popular seafood, especially in Italy and other countries in southern Europe

Image: Katja Döhne/DW

But octopus experts have criticized the plans Nueva Pescanova's because of the way it says it would kill the animals. Octopuses were declared sentient and capable of feeling pain in a large study published in 2021.

 
How the farm would kill the octopuses

DW has seen the plans, which were leaked and shared by someone close to the matter in Spain. Nueva Pescanova did not respond to phoned requests for comment in time for publication of this article.

The records indicate the company plans to breed around one million octopuses per year, producing around 3,000 tons of octopus meat.

The octopuses would be slaughtered using a method called ice slurry slaughter. That involves submerging the animals in 500-liter plastic containers of icy water where they would develop hypothermia and eventually freeze to death.

Keri Tietge, an octopus expert at Eurogroup for Animals, an animal rights campaign group based in Brussels, said ice slurry slaughter results in a "really prolonged and painful death for the octopuses."

The European Union's Food Safety Authority advises against the use of this method for several fish species already and is in the process of drafting legislation to end its use on sea bass and seabream as well.

Zoe Doubleday, a University of South Australia marine ecologist, said "there are humane ways to euthanize or kill an octopus, but placing them directly into ice slurry is not best practice."

Doubleday said the octopuses could be anesthetized via immersion in seawater mixed with a small amount of magnesium salts or around 3% ethanol before they are killed. 

New research shows octopus have feelings

Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa-Zentralbild/picture alliance

But it’s unclear whether octopuses killed in this fashion are safe for human consumption.

 
How they will be bred

According to the leaked documents, Nueva Pescanova plans to breed octopuses in tightly packed areas — around 10-15 octopuses per cubic meter — and exposed to 24 hours of light when they are in periods of reproduction.

Doubleday said these conditions sounded "inhumane and stressful, particularly as they are generally nocturnal animals and do not like bright artificial lights."

"All species are different, but octopuses generally need 'dens' in their tanks (like pipes or pots)," said Doubleday.

A farm of the nature suggested by Nueva Pescanova represented a controlled environment, said Doubleday, which would make it easier to kill the animals humanely.

"If we are going to do something new like octopus farming, we should get the animal welfare part right," she said.

 
How the process will move forward

If the permit is approved by Canary Island officials, Nueva Pescanova will be able to move forward with the construction of its proposed octopus farm. Tietge said this decision could be made "any day."

"They put in the applications over a year ago now," Tietge said. "So they're planning to move on this very quickly. And since they already have the animals in their laboratory, in theory, they could start selling them quite quickly once they have the farm built."

VIDEO 

Aquaculture breeding for octopuses

Controversial Alberta coal mine could soon get green energy makeover

By Sarah Offin  Global News

Posted March 16, 2023 

“This is really unique. We like to refer to it as a unicorn.”

Metallurgical coal was discovered at Tent Mountain in the early 1900s. Small-scale mining made way for the first open cut pit in 1948.

But operations were suspended in 1983 and coal policy changes in 2021 led owners to rethink the mountain’s potential.

READ MORE: TransAlta completes Canadian conversion from coal to natural gas power

Enter TransAlta. The company was once Canada’s premier provider of coal-fired electricity. Now, it’s partnering with Australian company Montem Resources in a project to turn Tent Mountain’s historic mining operation — and its water-filled mining pits — into a new stream of renewable energy.

“The sheer volume of potential storage that is sitting in that water and the cost to run the pumped hydro facility compared to other facilities, the capital outlay that will need to go into the project up front… is really unique,” said van Melle.

“On a list of pumped hydro projects that you could find around the world, this one ranks near the top.”

READ MORE: TransAlta to buy interest in Alta. pumped hydro energy storage development for $8M

Pumped hydro electric storage works a little like a rechargeable battery. When energy demand is low, excess wind and solar power is used to pump water from a lower reservoir and store it in an upper reservoir. When energy demand is high, the system is reversed and gravity does the work. The water then flows through turbines to generate power.

“When you have a lot of wind blowing overnight and nobody really using power, there’s not a lot of ways to store that power,” said van Melle.

“This will allow us, during periods of low demand and high renewable generation, to essentially have a large battery to store that power and then give it back to consumers into the grid during peak periods.”

TransAlta said the project could power up to 400,000 homes in the future.

1:59Pristine Alberta lake contaminated by dust from mountaintop coal mines: study

Conservationists are pleased that coal mining is no longer part of the plans for Tent Mountain, but are eyeing the project with cautious optimism while it waits to see environmental impact assessments.

“Although a renewable energy complex would be better than a coal mine, it could still have adverse environmental impacts,” Devon Earl with the Alberta Wilderness Association said as part of a statement to Global News.

“Pumped hydro storage generally takes more electricity from the grid than it adds, and we’re concerned about siting industry in alpine areas, which are particularly sensitive to disturbance and difficult to reclaim, so any development could have a really high impact even in preliminary stages.”

It’s still early days. Financing, engineering and regulatory work will continue over the next few years, making way for possible construction by 2026 and what could be Canada’s first pumped hydro plant by 2030.

1:57Alberta organizations draft their own coal policy

RELATED NEWS

• Alberta government won’t release data on snowpack contamination from coal mines
• Alberta government appoints independent committee for coal policy feedback
• TransAlta to buy interest in Alta. pumped hydro energy storage development for $8M

    

Alberta geothermal technology inspired by orphaned wells being tested overseas

By Sarah Offin  Global News

Posted March 17, 2023

But almost a decade ago, it was in those orphaned wells that Calgary entrepreneur John Redfern saw a hot new opportunity.

“The oil industry was in depression. The only growth industry was well abandonment… ‘Why don’t we just turn them into geothermal wells? Why don’t we generate geothermal energy?'” said Redfern, now president and CEO of Eavor Technologies.

2:05Controversial Alberta coal mine could soon get a green energy makeover

READ MORE: Going green: Geothermal innovation in Alberta creating buzz

The idea works a lot like a giant radiator, connecting 50-60 kilometres of wellbores into a closed loop of water, circulated using sub-surface heat.

According to Redfern, the resulting “Eavorloop” can generate enough electricity to power up 20,000 homes, in addition to offering options for direct heating.

It’s a prospect now also now appealing to energy-starved countries overseas. Construction of the company’s first commercial project is currently underway in Germany.

“It’s the validation from the EU that what we’re doing makes sense when a lot of people thought it was a bit of a radical idea,” said Redfern.

RELATED NEWS

• Alberta landowners fear repeat of orphan well crisis as renewable energy booms
• Geothermal heating facility on its way to Regina alongside new aquatic centre
• Going green: Geothermal innovation in Alberta creating buzz

 Canada·First Person

I wanted to make Canada my home. Then I realized my degree was worthless here

Social Sharing

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

After 9 years as an architect in the Middle East, it hurt that I could no longer call myself one in Canada

Komaldeep Makkar · for CBC First Person · Posted: Mar 18, 2023 

Komaldeep Makkar had nine years of experience as an architect in India and Dubai before she moved to Canada. (Submitted by Komaldeep Makkar)

This First Person column is the experience of Komaldeep Makkar, a Canadian permanent resident who moved back to Dubai. 

I grew up in the Indian state of Punjab. It felt like almost every street in my state had billboards promoting a better life and lots of job opportunities with higher salaries in Canada. I knew many families whose younger members were enrolled in courses for English-language proficiency tests making efforts to move to Canada. The pride in the eyes of those parents as they shared the news of their son or daughter settling in Canada left a strong impression on me. It made me think Canada had amazing opportunities and could one day also become my home.     

I graduated with a bachelor of architecture and a master of urban planning from India. My work as an architect took me to New Delhi and subsequently to Dubai, where I worked for multinational firms. In Dubai, I earned a salary I likely would have never earned in India, while also having a good work-life balance. But as an expat living in Dubai, there isn't a straightforward path toward citizenship. So to advance my career goals and in pursuit of a place to call my permanent home, I applied for the Canadian express entry program in 2017. I got married to an architect during the process of application and received my permanent residency visa in early 2020. My husband and I were excited to finally make the move we had heard and read so much about.

Makkar, pictured here, and her husband immigrated to Toronto in 2021. (Submitted by Komaldeep Makkar)

When we landed in Toronto in January 2021, we experienced our first snowfall. I loved breathing in the clean air and listening to the sounds of nature, which were so different from India. But soon our winter started getting colder with the cold calls that ended nowhere. After a few months of job hunting, I realized that my education and nine years of experience as an architect in the Middle East didn't matter. 

We joined government-funded newcomer programs when we arrived in Toronto to learn how to adapt our skills and experience to the Canadian market. I was told by multiple employment counsellors to remove my master's degree from my resume — the same degree that had gained me additional points in the express entry program. They also kept suggesting that I shave off some years of experience from my resume or strike off some of higher-profile projects so that I didn't appear overqualified for positions available to me. 

Architecture is a licensed profession in Canada — which is another way of saying I was no longer allowed to call myself an architect. I could only identify as an internationally trained architecture professional. To add to our confusion, while immigration is the federal government's responsibility — and we scored high in the points system because of our qualifications — the licensing requirements are managed by the province, which didn't recognize our degrees. If I wanted to call myself an architect, I'd have to enroll in an expensive Canadian master's program and repeat the degree I already had or crawl my way up the corporate ladder by taking entry-level internships. That was the advice I got from counsellors and other immigrants who had made it. I felt deeply disrespected and demoralized. 

Most interview callbacks I received were either for co-op or unpaid work. The few job offers for architectural technician positions which I received paid $15 per hour. I was at a loss. I had invested years of my life and a lot of money in the process of getting permanent residency in Canada. But instead of getting a job in the profession I had studied and worked so hard for, I was bleeding my savings day by day, just to keep up with living costs in Toronto.

Makkar sketched the view from her balcony in Toronto in between hunting for jobs as an architect. (Komaldeep Makkar)

My husband and I started to become disillusioned by the reality of the Canadian dream. We both had worked on large-scale projects in many regions like the Gulf states, Africa and India. And here we were as newcomers to the country explaining to companies why we did not have this seemingly special "Canadian experience." 

We weighed our options. To stay meant spending a huge amount of money for further education in the hopes of eventually landing a job as a Canadian architect, while simultaneously putting on hold our plans for saving for retirement or buying a home. Our years of education and professional experience overseas would have been for nothing. Rather than choose this subpar life in a country that has erected systemic blockades to prevent immigrants from succeeding in their professions, we decided to leave. I respect myself too much to stay.

I can't understand how the Canadian government says it plans to welcome 500,000 immigrants a year in order to meet the country's labour shortage, but then doesn't seem to do anything to stop qualified professionals from being treated with disdain. Until that gap between immigration policy and hiring loopholes is closed, we'll keep hearing stories of foreign-trained doctors who become Uber drivers and teachers who can only find jobs as janitors.

I also totally understand why so many immigrants in our position choose to stay — to validate the dream they have been advertised for their entire lives. Many of them are even from my hometown. Throwing in the towel was not something I ever saw myself doing until I saw my bank statements.

Makkar, left, with her husband at a beach in the U.A.E. in July 2021. (Submitted by Komaldeep Makkar)

We currently live in Dubai, working in decent jobs where we can proudly call ourselves architects and hold a standard of living that we have earned and our parents can be proud of. We do not intend to go back. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Komaldeep Makkar

Freelance contributor

Komaldeep Makkar is an architect from India.

Deal ratified for Victoria transit drivers and maintenance workers

B.C. Transit and the union representing 680 drivers and maintenance workers in the Victoria Regional Transit System have ratified a three-year collective agreement.

Jeff Bell
Mar 16, 2023 

B.C. Transit head office at 520 Gorge Rd. East.

 DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST

B.C. Transit and the union representing 680 drivers and maintenance workers in the Victoria Regional Transit System have ratified a three-year collective agreement.

A tentative agreement between B.C. Transit and Unifor Local 333 was announced last week.

The new deal runs from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2025.

It provides for a flat-rate wage lift of $.0.25 per hour and a 3.24 per cent increase in the first year, a minimum increase of 5.5 per cent and a maximum of 6.75 per cent in the second year (subject to a memorandum of agreement for a cost-of-living adjustment) and a two to three per cent increase (also subject to a cost-of-living adjustment) in the third year.

The previous agreement expired on March 31, 2022.

CP, Canadian maintenance workers reach contract agreement

By | March 17, 2023

Deal covering 2,600 workers awaits ratification

CALGARY, Alberta — Canadian Pacific has reached a tentative agreement with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Maintenance-of-Way Employees Division, the railroad said today (March 17).

The new contract will cover approximately 2,600 workers. Details will not be released until the agreement is ratified.

“By working collaboratively with our valued union partners, we’ve reached another negotiated tentative agreement this year,” CP CEO Keith Creel said in a press release. “We thank the TCRC-MWED for working collaboratively with us throughout this negotiation. This tentative agreement is a testament to the hard work and commitment of both sides.”

The railroad said it completed 16 ratified agreements so far this year with unions in the United States and Canada.

B.C. K-12 school support staff ratify new 3-year contracts

A classroom is seen during a media tour of Hastings Elementary school in Vancouver, Wednesday, September 2, 2020. More than 40,000 school support staff in British Columbia have ratified new contracts.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

The Canadian Press
Published March 18, 2023 8:00 a.m. MDT

VICTORIA -

More than 40,000 school support staff in British Columbia have ratified new contracts.

Employees including education assistants, Indigenous support workers and custodians working in kindergarten to Grade 12 are now covered by 69 local agreements.

The Ministry of Finance says the deals stretch over three years, from July 1, 2022, until June 30, 2025.

The parties began local bargaining after the BC Public School Employers' Association, the K-12 Presidents' Council and support staff unions reached a tentative provincial framework agreement in last September.

The province says the deals were ratified under the provincial shared recovery mandate, which sets out specific wage increases, including inflation protection, while ensuring the government has the resources to protect services and support economic recovery.

The deal also includes a promise to participate in any discussions regarding standardized credentials for education assistants.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 17, 2023.

Capital gains tax and more changes that could target higher-income Canadians in the next federal budget

Jamie Golombek: Ottawa says it's looking to close tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporations

Author of the article:Jamie Golombek
Published Mar 16, 2023 

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland 

 PHOTO BY BLAIR GABLE/REUTERS


We have a date. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will deliver Canada’s federal budget plan on March 28, giving us less than two weeks to speculate about what may — or may not — be included therein, which also means time is running out to do any significant planning before any potential tax changes.

No one knows with any certainty what will be in the upcoming budget, but we can glean some insight on its potential themes from the 226-page pre-budget Report of the Standing Committee on Finance issued last week, which contained 230 separate recommendations for tax changes and spending.

Among the proposals, the following recommendation may set the tone: “Undertake a public review to identify federal tax expenditures, tax loopholes and other tax avoidance mechanisms that particularly benefit high-income individuals, wealthy individuals and large corporations and make recommendations to eliminate or limit them.”

With that ominous theme in mind, here are some potential tax changes that could target higher-income Canadians, along with some potential planning tips.




Top tax bracket

The top federal tax rate of 33 per cent currently kicks in at an income of more than $235,675 for 2023, which is a 6.3 per cent bump in the threshold over 2022 as a result of the high inflation we’ve been experiencing over the past year. The NDP’s pre-election platform hoped to increase the top rate by two percentage points to 35 per cent. If enacted, this could bring the top combined marginal tax rate, once provincial tax is factored in, to approximately 56 per cent in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and to 57 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador.

A similar proposal to bump up the top rate for the highest income earners was recently included in United States President Joe Biden’s budget announcement earlier this month. He called for a top federal income tax rate of 39.6 per cent, up from 37 per cent, for taxpayers earning more than US$400,000.

Surplus strips

The government may decide to shut down a popular private corporation tax-planning arrangement that some sophisticated taxpayers have been employing to distribute corporate surplus (essentially, retained earnings for tax purposes) from their corporation at capital gains rates, rather than at the higher rates for Canadian dividends, or via the payment of a salary or bonus.

The Canada Revenue Agency has previously attempted to challenge surplus strip transactions, but the courts have generally held that this type of planning is acceptable, and doesn’t violate the general anti-avoidance rule, since the Income Tax Act doesn’t contain a general policy requiring shareholders to remove their surplus via a dividend rather than a capital gain.

The government tried to shut down this type of planning as part of its private corporation tax reforms in 2017, but those proposals were ultimately abandoned after significant public criticism.

Alternative minimum tax

Last year’s federal budget noted that “some high-income Canadians still pay relatively little in personal income tax as a share of their income.” To address this, the government announced a formal review of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), the results of which were originally supposed to come out in last fall’s economic update. Instead, the government stated that a “detailed proposal and path for implementation” would be released in the upcoming budget.

Of course, we already have a federal AMT at a 15-per-cent rate. The primary reasons why some high-income Canadians pay low effective rates of tax has nothing to do with nefarious tax planning. For the most part, high-income earners are doing nothing more than claiming registered retirement savings plan deductions, charitable donations and dividend tax credits, and earning half-taxable capital gains.

South of the border, Biden’s recent budget included a proposal to introduce a new 25-per-cent minimum tax on individuals whose net worth is more than US$100 million. This new tax would be different, in that it would be imposed on both income and unrealized capital gains for the wealthiest 0.01 per cent.

Capital gains inclusion rate

Finally, no discussion of potential budget changes would be complete without at least touching on the capital gains inclusion rate. Currently set at 50 per cent, you may recall that the NDP’s platform proposed a hike to 75 per cent.

In preparation for the budget discussions, Jonathan Rhys Kesselman, emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy, just released a paper entitled Pathways to Reform of Capital Gains Taxation in Canada that considers the case for increasing taxes on capital gains in Canada, and the implications for the upcoming reform of the AMT.

Kesselman shows there is a high concentration of capital gains among relatively few taxpayers and at very high incomes, and suggests that targeting an increased capital gains inclusion rate, either on large gains above a certain dollar amount or by filers with very high incomes, would sharply reduce the number of affected taxpayers, “easing both administration and compliance as well as public acceptance.”

Biden’s budget proposed a similar measure. The U.S. currently taxes long‐​term capital gains and dividends at a top rate of 20 per cent federally, plus net investment income tax (NIIT) of 3.8 per cent. The U.S. budget proposed taxing capital gains at a new top marginal income tax rate of 39.6 per cent (plus raising the NIIT to five per cent) for taxpayers with more than US$1 million of annual income.

If a change were announced to Canada’s capital gains inclusion rate, it would likely be effective as of budget day (March 28). This means investors who fear a bump in the inclusion rate could consider accelerating any planning, including a potential rebalancing of their portfolios by taking gains now, thereby locking in a 50-per-cent inclusion rate. There are also more sophisticated tax strategies that could buy you some time if you’re unsure what could happen to the inclusion rate on budget day.

Jamie Golombek, CPA, CA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Estate Planning with CIBC Private Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.