WHO dismisses lead Covid-19 origins investigator for sexual misconduct

MAY 03, 2023

Peter Ben Embarek, a member of the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), holds a chart during the WHO-China joint study news conference at a hotel in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on Feb 9, 2021.

Reuters

GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday (May 4) that it has dismissed a senior scientist, known for his role as the head of an international mission to China to probe the origins of Covid-19, for sexual misconduct.

The UN agency said Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish scientist who previously headed up its 'One Health' initiative on diseases jumping from animals to humans, was removed from his post last year. In a response to Reuters, Ben Embarek said he contested the accusation of harassment and was challenging the sanction.

"Peter Ben Embarek was dismissed last year following findings of sexual misconduct against him that were substantiated by investigations, and corresponding disciplinary process," said WHO spokesperson Marcia Poole.

Poole said the cases that led to the dismissal occurred in 2015 and 2017. The agency was first made aware of them in 2018. The WHO did not provide further details of the misconduct allegations.

Ben Embarek said that a single incident in 2017 "was settled immediately in a friendly way". He said he could not comment further as both he and the WHO are bound by confidentiality agreements until a resolution is reached.

"I am not aware of any other complaints and no other complaints have ever been brought to my attention," Ben Embarek said in a digital message. "I duly contest the qualification of harassment and I am quite hopeful in the defense of my rights."

Ben Embarek is the most senior WHO official known to have been dismissed since the UN agency launched a series of reforms to improve its response to sexual misconduct. He has often been quoted in the media about the origins of the pandemic. His dismissal can be appealed through the UN internal justice system.

He was the lead WHO representative on a trip to China in 2021 that aimed to investigate where Covid-19 came from. The team made global headlines with their conclusion that bats were the most likely initial hosts, eventually leading to a pandemic in humans. They had also determined that a leak of the virus from a laboratory in China was "highly unlikely", despite calls from various scientists to probe that possibility.

Ben Embarek later said that there had been some political pressure on the team, including from outside China, but that nothing in the report had been changed as a result. He did not identify the source of such pressure.

The WHO has overhauled its handling of sexual abuse and misconduct cases after a 2021 inquiry found that dozens of aid workers, including some from WHO, had been involved in sexual abuse and exploitation during an Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The agency said that people are more willing to come forward about sexual misconduct and that it is taking action where allegations are substantiated. It has started a monthly report on disciplinary action taken.

Democrat Colin Allred launches 2024 bid against Ted Cruz

• Andrew Solender

Rep. Colin Allred. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images.

Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) on Wednesday announced his bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2024.

Why it matters: Allred is the highest-profile Democrat vying to unseat Cruz, who is one of just a handful of potentially vulnerable Senate Republicans up for reelection this cycle.

Driving the news: In a video posted to social media on Wednesday, Allred took aim at Cruz’s support for baseless 2020 election fraud claims in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and his ill-fated trip to Cancun in 2021.

• “When I left the NFL, I thought my days of putting people on the ground were over. Then, Jan. 6 happened,” says Allred, while standing on a football field.
• “I took off my jacket and got ready to take on anyone who came through the door,” he continues, “And Ted Cruz? He cheered on the mob, then hid in the supply closet.”

The backdrop: Allred, a former Tennessee Titans linebacker and Obama administration official, won his House seat in 2018 by unseating Republican incumbent Pete Sessions in one of the most closely watched races in the country.

• He won a 7-point reelection victory in 2020 and was then redistricted into a safer seat, easily winning in 2022.

The other side: “Democrats have once again turned to a far-left radical to run for Senate. Not only does Colin Allred vote with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time, but his voting record is completely out-of-touch with Texas,” Cruz campaign spokesperson Nick Maddux said in a statement.

• Cruz, a former state solicitor general, won an upset GOP primary victory for the U.S. Senate in 2012, followed by a 16-point general election win.
• However, the high-profile former presidential candidate and right-wing firebrand won reelection by just 3 points in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who shattered fundraising records.

FTC: Facebook misled parents, failed to guard kids’ privacy

By BARBARA ORTUTAY

yesterday

 This photo shows the Facebook's Messenger Kids application on an iPhone in New York, Feb. 16, 2018. U.S. regulators say Facebook misled parents and failed to protect the privacy of children using its Messenger Kids app. The Federal Trade Commission says Facebook misrepresented the access it provided to app developers to private user data. As a result, the FTC on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 proposed sweeping changes to a 2020 privacy order with Facebook — now called Meta — that would prohibit it from profiting from data it collects on users under 18.

 (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, file)


U.S. regulators say Facebook misled parents and failed to protect the privacy of children using its Messenger Kids app, including misrepresenting the access it provided to app developers to private user data.

As a result, The Federal Trade Commision on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to a 2020 privacy order with Facebook — now called Meta — that would prohibit it from profiting from data it collects on users under 18. This would include data collected through its virtual-reality products. The FTC said the company has failed to fully comply with the 2020 order.

Meta would also be subject to other limitations, including with its use of face-recognition technology and be required to provide additional privacy protections for its users.

“Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The company’s recklessness has put young users at risk, and Facebook needs to answer for its failures.”

Meta called the announcement a “political stunt.”

“Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory. Let’s be clear about what the FTC is trying to do: usurp the authority of Congress to set industry-wide standards and instead single out one American company while allowing Chinese companies, like TikTok, to operate without constraint on American soil,” Meta said in a prepared statement.

The Menlo Park, California company added that it will “vigorously fight” the FTC’s action and expects to prevail.

Facebook launched Messenger Kids in 2017, pitching it as a way for children to chat with family members and friends approved by their parents. The app doesn’t give kids separate Facebook or Messenger accounts. Rather, it works as an extension of a parent’s account, and parents get controls, such as the ability to decide with whom their kids can chat.

At the time, Facebook said Messenger Kids wouldn’t show ads or collect data for marketing, though it would collect some data it said was necessary to run the service.

But child-development experts raised immediate concerns.

In early 2018, a group of 100 experts, advocates and parenting organizations contested Facebook’s claims that the app was filling a need kids had for a messaging service. The group included nonprofits, psychiatrists, pediatricians, educators and the children’s music singer Raffi Cavoukian.

“Messenger Kids is not responding to a need — it is creating one,” the letter said. “It appeals primarily to children who otherwise would not have their own social media accounts.” Another passage criticized Facebook for “targeting younger children with a new product.”

Facebook, in response to the letter, said at the time that the app “helps parents and children to chat in a safer way,” and emphasized that parents are “always in control” of their kids’ activity.

The FTC now says this has not been the case. The 2020 privacy order, which required Facebook to pay a $5 billion fine, required an independent assessor to evaluate the company’s privacy practices. The FTC said the assessor “identified several gaps and weaknesses in Facebook’s privacy program.”

The FTC also said Facebook, from late 2017 until 2019, “misrepresented that parents could control whom their children communicated with through its Messenger Kids product.”

“Despite the company’s promises that children using Messenger Kids would only be able to communicate with contacts approved by their parents, children in certain circumstances were able to communicate with unapproved contacts in group text chats and group video calls,” the FTC said.

Meta critics applauded the FTC’s action. Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy, called it a “a long-overdue intervention into what has become a huge national crisis for young people.”

Meta, and with its platforms like Instagram and Facebook, Chester added, “are at the center of a powerful commercialized social media system that has spiraled out of control, threatening the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”

The company, he added, has not done enough to address existing problems — and is now unleashing “even more powerful data gathering and targeting tactics fueled by immersive content, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, while pushing youth further into the metaverse with no meaningful safeguards.”

As part of the proposed changes to the FTC’s 2020 order (which was announced in 2019 and finalized later), Meta would also be required to pause launching new products and services without “written confirmation from the assessor that its privacy program is in full compliance” with the order.

Meta has 30 days to respond to the FTC’s latest action.

Blank-check firm bite to take stake in Canadian food company

Derek Decloet, Bloomberg News

Food can be seen in this undated photo. (Valeria Boltneva/ Pexels)

Bite Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company led by a former Merrill Lynch executive, plans to merge with Canadian plant-based food company Above Food Corp.

The deal will provide about US$44 million in gross proceeds to Regina, Saskatchewan-based Above Food, according to a statement Monday, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News. It expects to use the money to pay to develop facilities and for working capital. 

Above Food owns grain terminals and railway infrastructure for moving food commodities and is also a supplier of ingredients, private-label packaged goods and other food products. It has a small lineup of brands including Tuno, a plant-based tuna alternative, and Loma Linda, which sells simple vegetarian meals in packages.

Specialty ingredients and packaged goods have significant room for growth, President and Co-Founder Martin Williams said in an interview. Those two categories could rise to 60 per cent of revenue this year, from about 40 per cent last year, he said. “We focus on staples — things that go into the grocery cart every day.”

Bite, which focuses on the food and restaurant sectors, closed a $200 million initial public offering in early 2021 during a boom in blank-check offerings. The popularity of such investment vehicles has since soured amid tighter credit and greater scrutiny from regulators, and Bite transferred its listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the NYSE American board earlier this year.

The special-purpose acquisition company is led by Alberto Ardura Gonzalez, a former investment banker with Merrill and Deutsche Bank in Latin America.

Above Food was established in 2019 and announced a merger a year later with Purely Canada Foods, a producer of plant-based proteins. Its shareholders will maintain about a 70 per cent stake after the deal, according to the statement.

The companies said the transaction implies an enterprise value of more than $300 million. Bank of Montreal’s capital markets division and EarlyBirdCapital are the financial advisers to Bite.

Bite Acquisition rose 0.4 per cent to $10.35 at 1:38 p.m. in New York.

Vancouver port traffic dips in 2022, hinting at economic slowdown to come

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

Cargo volumes at Canada's largest port fell by three per cent last year as the global economy began to show signs of a slowdown.

Though grain and fertilizer exports surged in the second half of 2022, the gains were not enough to offset a sputtering start to the year caused by a weak 2021 harvest and lingering supply chain problems, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority said Monday.

After more than a year of rising container traffic, imports also declined by four per cent amid softer consumer demand and overstocked inventories, port authority CEO Robin Silvester said in a phone interview.

Despite the decrease, he stressed that more capacity is "desperately needed" due to rising trade and population forecasts down the line. A new container terminal that would boost that capacity by nearly 50 per cent, dubbed the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project, received federal cabinet approval last month — a critical step — but still requires various permits to proceed.

A green light from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is expected to take at least a year, he said, with permits also needed from B.C.'s Environmental Assessment Office.

Cruises were one area to come roaring back after a two-year hiatus, with a record 307 vessels dropping anchor in Vancouver — though the number of passengers still fell 24 per cent below 2019 levels.

The cruise-ship wave shows no signs of ebbing, Silvester said from his waterfront office, where the Grand Princess, Koningsdam and Norwegian Jewel were visible through the window. Meanwhile a bumper grain crop in 2022 along with sharply reduced supply out Russia and Belarus — fallout from the former's invasion of Ukraine — point to increased grain shipments this year.

But container traffic in Canada has continued to drop off as Canadians tighten budgets amid higher interest rates and ongoing inflation.

In March, container volumes across the country fell nearly 12 per cent year over year, according to the National Bank of Canada.

"We still have softer consumer spending. And we're certainly also hearing about congestion in the supply chain with full warehouses in the main population areas around Toronto and Montreal, stock not clearing through the system as quickly as normal," Silvester said.

Sluggish movement of the corrugated steel boxes reflects lagging economic output — preliminary figures from Statistics Canada suggest the economy contracted by 0.1 per cent in March. 

"Container trade normally tracks pretty closely with GDP. So when we're seeing GDP down, then we expect to see container trade down," Silvester said.

Greg Rogge the port authority's director of land operations, said in a March interview that the port expects container traffic to fall by two to three per cent this year.

Nonetheless, the port handled its second-highest annual volume of containers on record last year, Silvester noted — though 28 per cent of them were empty, compared with 18 per cent in 2020. The higher proportion owed to lower grain exports and higher freight rates, the port said.

Meanwhile, a 12-day strike by more than 150,000 federal public servants — now over for the vast majority after a tentative deal was announced — has already started to dent container cargo, with more of it bound for East Coast ports via the Panama Canal, Silvester said.

"Shipping lines are always nervous about the risk of having containers stuck behind the picket line," he said.

In spite of ongoing supply chain hurdles and a stalling economy, Silvester highlighted bright spots on the near-term horizon.

"At this stage, 2023 is set to be a strong year with very strong grain volumes with the recovery from the drought in 2021," he said, adding that potash and steelmaking coal traffic remain hot commodities.

Last year, overall cargo volume fell to 141.4 million tonnes from 146.5 million tonnes in 2021.

Fertilizer shipments increased by 13 per cent, while coal and petroleum products rose six per cent each, according to the port. Construction and materials traffic jumped 15 per cent.

Grain dropped 23 per cent and forest products fell seven per cent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2023.

• Project progress under Impact Assessment Act remains slow: Report

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

The approvals process for major projects in Canada continues to be slow and cumbersome under revamped environmental assessment legislation, according to a new report.

The report, released Monday by the Canada West Foundation — a Calgary-based think-tank — analyzed the 25 projects submitted under the federal Impact Assessment Act since it came into force three-and-a-half years ago. It found almost all of the projects submitted under the legislation remain in the first two phases of a four-part process.

That's concerning, said report author Marla Orenstein, given that the Impact Assessment Act — formerly known as Bill C-69 — was intended to speed up the application process for major infrastructure and resource projects in the country.

"These projects are complex and nuanced and have a great deal of impact ... that’s why they wound up in the review process in the first place," Orenstein said.

“At the same time, it’s not terribly encouraging that three-and-a-half years in, we’re seeing projects just entering Phase 2 of a four-phase process. This doesn’t seem to bode well for getting projects out the other side in a relatively tidy way.”

The Impact Assessment Act's predecessor, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act of 2012, was also regularly criticized for its excessively long project approval timelines. Under that process, according to Canada West Foundation data, it took almost 3.5 years on average for projects to either receive approval or be terminated, with some projects taking over 10 years.

Orenstein said while it's good that Canada's regulatory process is robust and thorough, the federal government is facing a looming 2030 deadline to meet its own climate goals of reducing the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels. 

She added doing so will require large-scale and swift deployment of infrastructure — everything from carbon capture and storage technology to hydrogen facilities to electricity transmission lines.

"It takes a long time to plan projects and to build them," Orenstein said. 

"If something takes eight years or six years just to get through a regulatory process, we have no hope of meeting those net-zero goals. It just can't happen."

The Liberal government announced in its federal budget in March that it will unveil a plan aimed at speeding up the permitting process for major infrastructure projects before the end of the year.

The government also earmarked $1.3 billion in Budget 2023 to be used by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, the Canada Energy Regulator and 10 other departments to improve regulatory efficiency.

“I think there is a real recognition from the federal government that this is a problem, and this is an obstacle to achieving their targets," said Mike Holden, chief economist of the Business Council of Alberta, which counts among its members some of the country's largest energy companies.

For much of the past decade, Canada's energy sector has complained of lengthy permitting timelines and regulatory uncertainty slowing down everything from major oil pipeline projects to the development of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in this country.

Holden said it's difficult to measure the cost of regulatory delays and difficulties to the Canadian economy. Project proponents, investors, host communities, Indigenous groups and taxpayers all bear some of the financial burden.

But Holden said perhaps the biggest economic damage comes in the form of opportunity loss, in that some companies may choose to not put projects forward at all rather than face an unclear regulatory process and timeline.

"Because right now they're being asked to invest sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, and sometimes years and years of process, into an uncertain outcome at the end of the day," he said. "And that's a tough ask for a lot of businesses."

Under the legislation, the Impact Assessment Agency is mandated to complete the first phase of the approvals process — the "planning" phase — within 180 days of the project's application. 

However, that process may also be extended via “stop clock” requests by the project proponents. According to the Canada West Foundation, 80 per cent of the projects currently within the federal review process required a clock stoppage for reasons that included the pandemic, additional time for Indigenous consultation and ballooning requirements for information from proponents. 

This meant that though the Impact Assessment Agency consistently met its legislated deadline of 180 days, with clock stoppages it took projects an average of 332 days to complete Phase 1.

Major projects that fall under the federal Impact Assessment Act include pipelines, mining, nuclear power facilities, liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, transmission lines, oilsands mines and fossil-fuel powered electricity generation facilities.

South of the border, companies have raised similar complaints about regulatory slowness and permitting delays. U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to improve communication and co-operation among federal agencies to accelerate permitting and environmental reviews in that country.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2023.

Shuttered gypsum mine in central Cape Breton to reopen: USG Corp.

The Canadian Press

Changes to Mining Act help companies adopt a reuse/recycle mindset

A gypsum quarry in central Cape Breton that closed seven years ago will soon be reopened.

The Canadian division of USG Corp. says it will spend $104 million revitalizing the quarry at Little Narrows, N.S., creating 100 permanent jobs once the relaunch is completed in three years.

The Chicago-based building materials company says the quarry will produce up to two million tonnes of raw gypsum every year.

Gypsum is used to make drywall, a popular building material also known as wallboard that is used to form the flat surfaces of walls and ceilings.

The gypsum from Little Narrows will be shipped by boat to Montreal and other manufacturing locations along the eastern seaboard. 

USG says it kept the quarry operating between 1954 and 2016.

The quarry first started producing gypsum in 1935, and at its peak it employed 150 people.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2023.

Under pressure from crypto miners, NB Power places pause on electricity requests

The Canadian Press

New Brunswick's electric utility imposed a moratorium on providing new service to cryptocurrency mining operations last year, saying it was concerned about its ability to meet the increasing demands from the power-hungry sector.

Details about the moratorium are contained in a cabinet order dated March 1, 2022, which endorses the indefinite pause and directs Crown-owned NB Power to conduct a review of the industry and submit its findings by Dec. 31, 2022.

The cabinet document, which recently came to light in a CBC report, confirms that NB Power had received several "large-scale, short-notice" service requests from cryptocurrency mining companies, which were not named.

In February 2021, Vancouver-based Hive Blockchain Technologies Ltd. announced it would pay $25-million in shares to acquire GPU Atlantic Inc., which at the time was operating its own 50-megawatt substation and crypto mining data centre in Grand Falls, N.B.

Hive said it would deploy next-generation bitcoin mining hardware that would by powered by "some of the lowest electricity costs in the industry."

In early 2022, NB Power said it would put a temporary hold on all new large-scale, short-notice requests for electricity, and all new requests from cryptocurrency miners, due to concerns about its ability to meet the growing demand.

According to the cabinet order, signed by Premier Blaine Higgs, the utility said the requests were putting "significant pressure" on the province's electricity supply.

In response, the cabinet cited the province's Electricity Act, which states that the provincial government must ensure NB Power is managed in a way that is "consistent with reliable, safe and economically sustainable service."

The cabinet order was posted online by the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board.

The New Brunswick government and NB Power did not respond to requests for an interview. It remains unclear what the review found or how the government or NB Power intends to deal with the crypto mining industry.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2023. 

Fishers crabby over Japan's Russian imports, but Tokyo says Canada exports negligible

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press

Atlantic fishers are feeling the pinch as Japan brings in cheap Russian product rather than Canadian snow crabs, with federal ministers and provincial premiers saying they are raising the issue with Japanese officials.

But Tokyo is pushing back on claims that its trade decisions are undermining G7 sanctions — or that they are having much of an effect on the Canadian industry.

Snow crab prices have dropped in Newfoundland and Labrador from $7.60 per pound at the start of last year's season to an opening price of $2.20 this year. 

Fishers in the province have refused to start harvesting this year as they scramble to sell off last year's surplus, although the price could still rise.

Analysts say crab is a lucrative species for Atlantic Canada, and it was the country's second-largest seafood export in 2021. Market prices hit record highs during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but began plummeting last year.

The United States blocked sales from Russia to punish the country for its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and its own Alaska crab fishery collapsed, making Washington reliant on Canada. 

But American customers have opted against pricey Canadian crab during a period of inflated food prices, leaving unsold roughly 10 million pounds of Canadian crab that was caught last year.

Meanwhile, Moscow has flooded other parts of the international market with cheap product.

South Korea and Japan are still allowing such imports, and the latter has become the target of an influence campaign by Canadian politicians.

Japanese trade magazine Toyo Keizai reported that as of last October, Japan had increased its imports of all forms of Russian crab by 50 per cent compared with the same period the year before that.

Conservative fisheries critic Clifford Small has raised the issue in Parliament in recent months, saying Ottawa should press Japan to ban Russian crab as a measure of solidarity among G7 countries.

His home province of Newfoundland and Labrador says snow crab exports accounted for $886 million in sales in 2021, but the price crash has now left fishers trying to sell last year’s catch.

A week ago, Trade Minister Mary Ng would not specify when Small asked whether Ottawa had explicitly requested that Asian allies sanction Russian crab.

"We have raised this issue with Japan," she told the House of Commons. "We will continue to stand up for Canadian fishers."

Ng's office added Tuesday that Canada still hopes Japan will change course, as part of their ongoing collaboration to isolate Russia.

"We are thankful for Japan’s continued efforts to work with allies to isolate Russia, and have asked Japan to consider Canada’s sustainable, ethical and premium snow crab to replace its current supply of Russian products," spokeswoman Alice Hansen wrote in an email.

Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray told the Fisheries Committee on March 27 that she discussed the matter with Tokyo's envoy.

"I have raised this matter personally twice with the ambassador from Japan to Canada — in fact, once at his residence at a reception. We are taking a Team Canada approach," she said.

"We will stand up for our fish harvesters and our fishing industry and help export our top-quality products around the world."

The Japanese Embassy in Ottawa said it's been steadfast in sanctioning Russia and banning trade in multiple products. Tokyo removed preferential tariffs on Russian fishery products including crab, which drives up the price for those imports but doesn't block them.

The cause of shifting trade flows "is thought to be the soaring price of Canadian crab, as a result of the impact of higher fuel costs and other factors," the embassy's economic section told The Canadian Press in a statement.

"Should prices normalize, we expect that purchases of Canadian crab will increase."

Small, who is the Conservatives' fisheries critic, has asked for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to raise the issue with his Japanese counterpart. Trudeau is widely expected to visit Japan later this month for the G7 leaders' summit in Hiroshima.

"While Canadian prices may have been higher than that of crab dumped on the Japanese market as a result of U.S. sanctions, we are G7 partners and the government of Canada should be pressing Japan to buy from us, and sanction Russian crab until the Ukraine war is over," he said in an emailed statement.

Small said "aggressive Russian dumping" left unchecked is causing the biggest Newfoundland fishery shutdown since the calamitous 1992 cod moratorium.

"The economic devastation as a result of what’s happening is immense."

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey raised the issue with Japanese Ambassador Kanji Yamanouchi during his visit to St. John's in March, with the province noting in a statement "the negative impact that exports of Russian crab to Japan are having on the province's crab fishery."

And Nova Scotia's government said Fisheries Minister Steve Craig "raised the snow crab issue during two recent meetings with Japanese officials," adding the species makes up the province's second-largest seafood export.

New Brunswick's fisheries department said it was "aware of the issue" and is promoting exports where it can, such as with the ongoing Seafood Expo Global in Spain. Prince Edward Island did not offer a response.

Still, Japanese officials seem unconvinced that their country is having much of an effect on the Canadian market.

The embassy noted that roughly 90 per cent of Canada's snow crab exports go to the U.S., while Japan's share made up only about four per cent before the invasion of Ukraine.

"We consider it difficult to believe that the decrease in Japan's imports is the main factor having a major impact on the Canadian fisheries industry," the embassy said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2023.

Canadian Public Employees' remote work agreement just the beginning: labour expert

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press May 2, 2023

The agreement on remote and flexible work between public sector workers and the federal government could set the stage for future union negotiations, according to labour experts. 

“We're basically entering a brand new phase of what we talk about in collective agreements, which includes workers’ autonomy over their time,” said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada and Ottawa announced they had reached tentative agreements Monday morning for more than 120,000 workers, with wage gains and a letter of understanding about remote and hybrid work. 

The letter outside the collective agreement promises a joint review of the government’s directive on telework, and the union said the letter will mean managers have to assess telework requests individually instead of the government applying a one-size-fits-all approach. 

Yalnizyan said a case-by-case approach is appropriate for the post-pandemic era of work, even though it’s much more complicated than a one-size-fits-all policy. 

Issues of employee time, surveillance, productivity and the right to disconnect have all become hot-button topics in the wake of COVID, but haven’t really been baked into formalized language, said Yalnizyan, putting PSAC and the government at the forefront of what’s bound to be an ongoing discussion. 

While a letter of understanding is just the beginning, if a case-by-case approach to remote work gets baked into a collective agreement it could open the door to “a mountain of grievances,” she added. 

“This is a large bargaining unit, and the interpretation of whether the boss was too strict or the worker was too lazy is in the eye of the beholder. So that's the problem with this approach,” Yalnizyan said. 

“But it is also the best approach for the moment.” 

Remote work is an issue everywhere, said Jim Stanford, an economist and director at the Centre for Future Work.

“Everywhere there's offices, workers and employers are having some tough discussions about how they come back to the office and what rights they have to continue working from home, at least part of the time,” he said on Monday. 

Employers at unionized and non-unionized workplaces should expect to continue hearing about remote and flexible work in the months and years to come, said Lluc Cerda, a senior associate at employment law firm Samfiru Tumarkin LLP.

“The workplace has changed since the pandemic ... and a lot of employees are very reticent to give up some of the gains that they’ve acquired over that period," he said. 

Stanford said both the public and private sector are grappling with this, and PSAC decided it preferred to negotiate the best way forward instead of having changes unilaterally imposed by the government. 

“This is ... an important step toward making hybrid work a normalized part of the work environment and setting up reasonable balanced procedures to make all of those decisions,” he said. 

“All this contract does is commit both sides to discussing and negotiating return to work as it occurs.”

Cerda said non-unionized workers should make sure they get any promises of remote or hybrid work into their contracts to ensure the arrangements are enforceable. 

The same goes for getting remote work into a collective agreement, with a letter of understanding being a first step, said Cerda. 

“The union hasn't given up on getting this written into the collective bargaining agreements,” he said. 

Though remote work has been talked about a lot in the past couple of years, Yalnizyan pointed out it’s not something available to many workers, even those in white-collar jobs.

That’s likely why the government and the union were happy to start with a letter of understanding so they could get the wage demands, which affect all workers and have been top of mind for government workers without a contract during historic inflation, Yalnizyan said. 

“I just think that was just such an adult way of dealing with a very difficult and very real problem that we are all making a big deal of, but doesn't affect that many people,” she said. 

“Let’s get money to these workers first, and then we can talk about this other thing.” 

According to Statistics Canada, hybrid work has become more popular in the wake of the pandemic, with almost one in 10 workers in October 2022 reporting they work both at home and outside of their home, up from earlier in 2022. That month, almost 16 per cent of workers said they work exclusively from home, down from the beginning of the year.  

In a tight labour market where the workforce is shrinking as more Canadians retire, employers will use remote or hybrid work to attract and retain people, said Yalnizyan.

“We need all hands on deck, and that changes the dynamic,” she said. 

Meanwhile, for unionized workers, PSAC’s agreement with the government could be influential, she said.

“It becomes a foundation for pattern bargaining in some respects,” she said. 

“Talking is different than codifying. But it’s certainly a fascinating moment.”