Burning Questions: Will Canada's most oil-dependent provinces bounce back next year?

© Provided by Financial Post Downtown Calgary amid a lockdown in March. An L-shaped trajectory could be in store for Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s two most oil-dependent provinces.

Burning Questions: The pandemic has left a multitude of unknowns in its wake. In a year-end series, the Financial Post explores some of the most intriguing.

CALGARY — While most Canadian provinces are expecting either U-shaped or V-shaped economic recoveries next year, the country’s oil-producing regions are bracing for a bleaker outlook illustrated by a less exciting letter of the alphabet.

An L-shaped trajectory could be in store for Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s two most oil-dependent provinces, which experienced sharp economic contractions during the COVID-19 pandemic and are now expected to be the slowest provinces to recover from the shock.

“Newfoundland and Alberta won’t get back to pre-COVID levels until 2022 at the earliest. If there’s an area that’s struggling with more of an L-shaped recovery, it’s oil and gas,” said Derek Burleton, vice-president and deputy chief economist at TD Economics. “It’s going to take a while to see investment spending bounce back and make a real improvement in performance.”

The beginning of the coronavirus outbreak this year coincided with an oil-price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which flooded oil markets with millions of barrels of crude at a time when major economies were locking down to prevent the spread of the virus. In other words, a massive expansion of oil supply precisely when oil demand was contracting at its fastest rate in history.

As a result, while Canadians in other provinces are planning for a return to normal — or close to normal — in 2021, residents in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador expect the scars of the pandemic, oil price crash and resultant recessions to last throughout next year and into either 2022 or 2023.

Indeed, those two provinces are dragging down Canada’s overall expected real GDP growth next year. After a 5.8 per cent fall in real GDP in 2020, RBC Economics forecasts Canada’s economy to expand by 5 per cent in 2021 — clawing back some of its coronavirus-induced losses.

By contrast, RBC Economics expects Alberta to post the sharpest economic contraction in the country in 2020 with an 8.3 per cent decline in real GDP, followed by a recovery of 4.5 per cent GDP growth in 2021.

Newfoundland and Labrador experienced a more muted 4.6 per cent drop in real GDP this year but is also expecting the smallest economic recovery of any province next year at just 2.8 per cent, according to RBC estimates.

The economic shocks to Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador are particularly tough as they came at a time when both provinces were expected to shake off the previous oil-price shock of 2014 and return to substantial growth in 2020, said Robert Hogue, senior economist with RBC.

Hogue doesn’t expect Alberta to recover to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity until 2023 — and even those 2019 levels are a steep drop from a peak in 2014.

“There’s so much frustration and in some cases, people are getting into fairly desperate situations. That frustration is not a surprise given how deep and how long this downturn has been,” Hogue said 

© David Bloom/Postmedia News files 

A volunteer packs hampers at the Edmonton Food Bank in April.

Saskatchewan, which sits atop a massive light oil formation and is the second largest oil-producing province in the country, also posted a sharp contraction of 4.7 per cent of GDP but is expected to make a full recovery, posting 4.7 per cent real GDP growth, in 2021 thanks in part to its rebounding mining and agriculture sectors, RBC Economics forecasts.

While the worst of the economic downturn is behind Saskatchewan, there are still downside risks in both Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, which are reflected in the negative trends associated with both provinces’ credit ratings, said Travis Shaw, senior vice-president, public finance at ratings firm DBRS Morningstar.

“We’ll hear the provinces and some economists talk about ‘when is GDP going to return to pre-COVID levels’ but even at that point, when the broader economy returns to pre-COVID levels, provincial finances aren’t going to look like what they looked like in pre-COVID times,” Shaw said.

Neither will the two provinces’ labour markets. Alberta’s unemployment rate jumped from 6.9 per cent in 2019 to 11.4 per cent this year, and RBC Economics expects that jobless rate to average around 9.6 per cent in 2021 and 7.2 per cent in 2022.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the situation is more dire. Unemployment rose in 2019 from 11.9 per cent to 13.8 per cent in 2020 and that rate is expected to hold steady through 2021 and decline only slightly to 13.1 per cent in 2021.

In both provinces’ labour markets, newly started major projects in 2020 initially provided some hope for economic expansion this year. Those hopes have since been dashed as those major projects have been cancelled.

In Newfoundland, Husky Energy Inc. announced in the summer it was putting its offshore West White Rose oil project under review and directly asked the federal government for assistance to ensure the oil platform, 60-per cent complete at the time, wasn’t scrapped completely.

© Pennecon Limited Construction of the drilling platform for the West White Rose oil project.

Earlier this month, Husky secured a $41-million handout from Ottawa to complete work on parts of the project. Husky did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was required to finish the oil project as a condition for taking the funding.

Similarly in Alberta, Pembina Pipeline Corp. indefinitely suspended work on a $5-billion propane-to-plastics petrochemical facility with joint-venture partner Petrochemical Industries Company, a company owned by the state of Kuwait. Pembina did not respond to a request for comment on how many people were working on the petrochemical facility at the time work was cancelled.

Thousands of additional layoffs at major Calgary-based oil and gas companies including Suncor Energy Inc. and Imperial Oil Ltd. are expected to offset any potential improvements in the province’s labour market next year. Consolidation in the sector such as Cenovus Energy Inc.’s purchase of Husky would also likely lead to redundancies.

TD’s Burleton said the two provinces show the challenges in the energy market over the past five years will now be compounded by the coronavirus pandemic-induced recession.

“Just as the economy was getting back on its feet, it was hit by this second huge shock and there will undoubtedly be some longer-term impacts in terms of scarring,” Burleton said.

Financial Post

Despite mistrust, Native Americans’ participation in vaccine development proves vital

Navajo medicine man Timothy Lewis starts each day with a corn pollen seed offering to the creator. He prays for his family and the world’s wellbeing amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

© Michelle Tom Dr. Michelle Tom, the only Navajo emergency physician at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center in Arizona, got her vaccine this week.

“I hope that we can get back to normal,” Lewis said. “I want to see my grandkids again. I wanna hold them and I wanna hug them again.”

Lewis is one of the 463 Native Americans across the country that volunteered in one of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trials; his was a pivotal Phase 3 trial. Both of his parents were also traditional Navajo healers, and he says they instilled in him a responsibility to help others whenever possible.

“My parents would have liked this,” Lewis said. “They would have wanted me to do this. And that's the reason why I actually volunteered. I really want us to come back to being the way we were [before the pandemic].” 

© ABC Timothy Lewis is one of the 463 Native Americans across the country that volunteered in the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trial.

The virus has ravaged the Navajo Nation, which covers an area the size of West Virginia, and is home to more than 300,000 enrolled tribal members. Despite some of the strictest lockdowns and weeks-long curfews, the communities there are still in the throes of a lasting crisis.

Just this week, the Navajo Department of Health reported 272 new cases. As 75 communities continue to face uncontrolled transmission of COVID-19, there have been a reported 21,833 total cases throughout the Navajo Nation, with over 760 deaths since March.

Several factors have contributed to the virus’ proliferation in the Navajo Nation, including an abundance of multigenerational homes where people live with their extended families in small buildings.

There are also only 13 grocery stores throughout the 27,000-square-mile reservation, according to Dr. Loretta Christensen, chief medical officer of the Indian Health Service in the Navajo area

.

© ABC Dr. Loretta Christensen is the chief medical officer at Indian Health Services in the Navajo area.

“We've been working with John Hopkins Center for American Indians for quite some time here in Navajo,” she said. “What we found through multiple vaccine trials, there [are] often vaccines that are more appropriate for our population that we do respond better to, that we get better immunity from.”MORE: Navajo Nation hospitals at 'breaking point'

Because of people like Lewis, the research on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine included data on Native Americans’ reactions to the vaccine.

“They volunteered. So they're trailblazers,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said. “Based on that data that's available right now, it indicates that this vaccine doesn't have the negative, adverse effect on Native Americans.”

Christensen is developing the Navajo Nation’s vaccine plan and is helping distribute and administer the shot to health care workers like EMS, medical practitioners and medicine men in the initial phase of the process

.

© ABC Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez

The Navajo Nation received 3,900 Pfizer vaccine doses so far and nearly 8,000 from Moderna this week

“It’s finally the day I had envisioned,” Tom told ABC News. “It couldn’t have come soon enough. It’s a huge deal for Navajo people, for Native people, [for] all the families it hit so hard.”

© Michelle Tom Dr. Michelle Tom, the only Navajo emergency physician at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center in Arizona, got her vaccine this week.

At the height of the crisis, Tom left her family and moved to an apartment an hour away to try to minimize the risk of exposing the group of people she’s trying to save.

ABC News spoke to Tom in May, when the Navajo Nation had the highest infection rate per capita in the country

.

© Michelle Tom Dr. Michelle Tom, the only Navajo emergency physician at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center in Arizona, got her vaccine this week.

“My job is immensely hard because I have such a connection to my people and to my land -- my ancestors and my grandparents,” she said at the time. “And to put me here today … Our elders are our teachers, protectors. They hold all the key elements that we need to have a strong sense of identity.”

Gwen Livingston, a Johns Hopkins American Indian Health research nurse, has been working with Pfizer and partner BioNTech on their COVID-19 vaccine trials in the Navajo Nation amid a second, deadlier wave.

“We've been trying, we've been educating, we've been doing what we can as far as social distancing, wearing our masks, sanitizing, doing what we can,” she said. “Then, our numbers are rising again. So yeah, something needs to happen. And this vaccine rolls out, and this is just another resource. This is just another tool. This is something that we need to combat this virus.”

For Livingston, the virus’ toll has been personal. She is from the Navajo Nation and the Khapo Owingeh, a Santa Clara pueblo in New Mexico.MORE: How one young activist is standing up for her Navajo community's COVID-19 relief

In June, Livingston lost her grandfather to COVID-19 and had to watch her grandmother say goodbye alone, from a distance.

“Having to explain to her why she could not see him, why she could not be with him, why we were outside of the window and could not go inside the building to see him -- that really hit home and it hit hard,” Livingston said.

“To hear the pain and the hurt just from talking with family members, or even with patients who have COVID-19,” she said. “Just the struggle to breathe alone, and the questions of, ‘What's gonna happen to me?’ And there's that fear of, ‘Am I gonna die?’”

The virus has brought to light the generational health problems that have afflicted the Navajo people.

“We got high rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer,” Nez said. “And as the nation saw during the first wave in April, the Navajo Nation got hit hard.”

Livingston says that even if someone with high blood pressure and diabetes has asymptomatic COVID-19, “the damage is already happening.” It’s high blood pressure and diabetes that could cause them to need dialysis.

© ABC Gwen Livingston, a Johns Hopkins American Indian health research nurse, has been working with Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 on vaccine trials in the Navajo Nation amid a second, more deadly wave.

“By the time they reach stage four [of chronic kidney disease], they're already having to think about their treatment options when it comes to dialysis,” she explained. “That is the end result of these chronic illnesses… Sometimes that reality, it's too late in some cases.”

Despite indigenous peoples’ participation in vaccine trials, there’s still a deep mistrust in the community.

Prior to the European conquest, Native Americans had never experienced smallpox, measles or the flu. Exposure to the “New World'' diseases killed nearly 90% of their population.

In the 1860s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs implemented a series of boarding schools on Indian reservations, which separated children from their families.

“It was the whole idea of assimilating Indians into the white culture,” Livingston said. “It was the whole idea of, ‘Kill the Indian, save the man.’ And bringing these children, taking them from their homes, taking them from their families, taking them from everything that they know [and] putting them in schools -- that was traumatic, too. They were punished for speaking their language, [or] anything to do with their culture.”

That intergenerational trauma is compounded by a history of forced experimentation on Native Americans.

“In the 1970s, the sterilization of Native American women was a huge traumatic event,” Livingston said. “[That] made it very, very hard for indigenous people to trust the federal government, or to even trust [the] Indian Health Service.”

Most tribal members say they are not against research, but that they want it done ethically and with consent from participants and community members.

In 2002, the Navajo Nation banned genetic research on its territory in order to prevent unethical medical experiments on Native Americans. In 2003, the Havasupai Indian tribe sued Arizona State University for sharing blood samples from a 1990s diabetes research project with researchers working on other projects without consent from the study participants. The tribe won the case in 2010.

Because of this long history, Lewis said he was met with skepticism when he told his friends and relatives about volunteering for the vaccine trial.

MORE: Navajo Nation, reeling from coronavirus, focuses attention on elections

“They were saying, ‘Don't do it.’ But I didn't listen because I wanted to help,” he said. “I wanted to help my people.”

Christensen says she believes that COVID-19 vaccine makers need to be transparent and share the data they collect in order to build trust within the Navajo community.

“We really need [the] population of the Native Americans to be represented in data and how they respond to the vaccines,” Livingston said. “We really need to take a look at that so that we are better prepared to present this data to the community, and that way they would feel more comfortable in receiving the vaccine when the time comes.”

Acknowledging the trauma inflicted on the community is only half the battle. Livingston says traditional healers and Western health care providers should come together to help Native communities through the pandemic.

“[We should] work together in understanding medication, treatment -- all of these things -- in order to keep our people healthy,” she said.

"Lewis recognizes the benefit he has in having access to both Western medicine and the traditional medicine of his culture. "I have two worlds," he said. "I'm lucky."

Nez said he’s optimistic the Navajo community will get through this as they have survived many diseases, including the hantavirus outbreak in 1993.

“We are resilient,” he said. “Remember, our ancestors got us to this point… Now it is our turn to fight hard against this virus and to think about our children and our grandchildren.”

Nuro gets first California OK to charge money for self-driving services


(Reuters) - Robotics company Nuro on Wednesday received the first-ever permit to commercially deploy its self-driving vehicles in California, allowing the Silicon Valley firm to charge clients for its driverless delivery service


.
© Reuters/HANDOUT The unmanned delivery vehicle, Nuro, 

is seen during the Kroger annual shareholders meeting in Cincinnati

Relying on a remote human operator - who could control multiple autonomous vehicles from miles away - is a step that allows a path to profitability in the emerging field of self-driving technology.

Nuro has been testing autonomous vehicles on California's roads with safety drivers since 2017, and it was authorized by the state regulators to test two driverless delivery vehicles in nine cities earlier this year.

The company said it would launch a delivery service with a fleet of autonomous Toyota Priuses, and later add its own low-speed R2 vehicle, which has no pedals or steering wheel and only room for packages.

Last month, Nuro raised $500 million in a funding round, driven by a massive boost to e-commerce from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nuro, a privately held firm based in Mountain View, California, was permitted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in February to deploy up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles in Houston without human controls such as mirrors and steering wheels.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Louis Vuitton yoga mat made of leather draws Hindu complaint

“The scenario of yoga — a profound, sacred and ancient discipline introduced and nourished by Hinduism — being performed on a mat made from a killed cow is painful,” 

BOSTON — A Hindu activist is calling on luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton to pull a yoga mat made partly from cowhide leather, calling it “hugely insensitive.”

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said in a statement Tuesday that the mat is “highly inappropriate” to practicing Hindus, who regard cows as sacred symbols of life.

“The scenario of yoga — a profound, sacred and ancient discipline introduced and nourished by Hinduism — being performed on a mat made from a killed cow is painful,” Zed said.

Paris-based Louis Vuitton did not immediately respond Tuesday to messages from The Associated Press seeking comment

The company's yoga mat, made mostly of canvas with leather details and a cowhide carrying strap, retails for $2,390 online.

 (MORE THAN THE COW COST)

In an email to AP, Zed called on Louis Vuitton executives to apologize and adhere to its corporate code of conduct, which includes commitments to ethical and social responsibility. The company “should not be in the business of religious appropriation, sacrilege, mocking serious spiritual practices and ridiculing entire communities,” he said.

The Universal Society of Hinduism, which is based in Reno, Nevada, has led several recent campaigns targeting what it considers the commercial misuse of sacred symbols.

Zed’s organization is part of an interfaith coalition that’s recently called on Anheuser-Busch InBev to rename its Brahma beer line — which shares its name with a Hindu god, but isn’t named for the deity, the beer giant says — and also urged nightclubs to stop using sacred Buddhist and Hindu imagery as decor.

In August, online home goods giant Wayfair pulled a towel depicting the Hindu deity Lord Ganesha after the coalition objected.

The Associated Press

RIP

Leslie West, guitarist of rock band Mountain, has died at 75

© Provided by The Canadian Press

LOS ANGELES — Leslie West, an iconic guitarist-vocalist who was behind several '70s rock anthems including “Mississippi Queen” with the popular band Mountain, has died. He was 75.

His spokesman Steve Karas said West died Wednesday in Palm Coast, Florida. Karas said West died from cardiac arrest after being rushed to the hospital.

West battled with health issues in the past few years. In 2011, his lower right leg was amputated in a life-saving operation related to his diabetes.


Rockers like Gene Simmons and Slash showed support for West on social media a day before his death when it was clear he was in dire condition. Paul Stanley called West a “gentle man and guitar hero” on Twitter.

West began his music career in the mid-60s with The Vagrants with his brother Larry West Weinstein, who played bass. The band known as a blue-eyed soul group had a minor hit with “I Can’t Make a Friend” and covered Otis Redding’s “Respect” in 1967.

West stepped out on his own with a solo career, releasing the 1969 album “Mountain,” which was produced by Felix Pappalardi. West and Pappalardi ended up starting the hard rock band Mountain, which was named after West’s debut solo album.

In 1969, Mountain performed an 11-song set at Woodstock before the Grateful Dead. A year later, the band released their biggest hit “Mississippi Queen,” which appeared on numerous movie and TV soundtracks along with video games including Guitar Hero. The song was covered by several artists such as Ozzy Osbourne, W.A.S.P. and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Mountain’s song “Long Red” became popular among multiple hip-hop artists including Jay-Z, Kanye West and Nas, who sampled the single. “Theme From An Imaginary Western” was another of the band's notable songs.

During a Mountain hiatus, West formed the group West, Bruce and Laing along with Cream bassist Jack Bruce and Mountain drummer Corky Laing.

West appeared in films such as “Family Honor” and “Money Pit.” He was a regular guest on the Howard Stern Show. The musician was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

West is survived by his wife, Jenni, whom he married on stage after Mountain’s performance at the Woodstock 40th anniversary concert in Bethel, New York in 2009.

Jonathan Landrum Jr., The Associated Press

Thai man uses CPR to save baby elephant struck by motorbike

Who knew CPR worked on elephants?  

© Kunchaylek via Reuters Mana Srivate provides CPR to an elephant calf in Thailand on Dec. 20, 2020.

Mana Srivate didn't know what to expect when he started using the rescue tactic on an injured baby elephant last week after the animal was struck by a motorbike on a road in Thailand. The elephant was crossing the road with its herd when the collision happened.

Mana was on a road trip through the eastern province of Chantaburi when he witnessed the crash late Sunday. The off-duty rescue worker immediately sprang into action, rushing over to the injured elephant while others tended to the dazed rider.

Read more: Florida man wrestles alligator to save puppy in dramatic video

Mana says he's provided CPR to dozens of traffic accident victims over his 26 years on the job, but he's never successfully revived any humans — and he'd certainly never used CPR on an animal.

Nevertheless, he gave it a try.

Video from the scene shows Mana giving the elephant two-handed chest compressions while others stand back and watch.

“It’s my instinct to save lives, but I was worried the whole time because I can hear the mother and other elephants calling for the baby,” Mana told Reuters. “I assumed where an elephant heart would be located based on human theory and a video clip I saw online."

Mana worked tirelessly at the scene while witnesses captured his efforts on video. The elephant eventually got back on its feet after 10 minutes.

"When the baby elephant started to move, I almost cried," he said.

Read more: Woman charged with animal cruelty after dog thrown off motel balcony

Several rescuers loaded the elephant into a truck for additional treatment, then later returned it to the scene and released it back into the wild.

The calf's mother was waiting for it when it came back, Mana said. Mother and child were reunited, and together they stomped off into the darkness.

The motorcycle rider was not seriously injured.

—With files from Reuters

Octopuses filmed sucker-punching fish — 

sometimes out of ‘spite’

© Eduardo Sampaio et. al. via Ecology An octopus lashes out at a fish in the Red Sea in this image from video.

Octopuses might be squishy, but they’re no suckers — and they won’t stand float by while fish mess around with their food.


New research reveals that octopuses in the Red Sea have developed a so-called “partner control mechanism” for dealing with fish that annoy them while they hunt.

The octopus will sucker-punch the fish.

Read more: Massive, deep-sea ‘entity’ leaves ocean scientists ‘blown away’

Videos captured by the research team in Israel and Egypt show several cases of octopuses lashing out to drive off various species of fish on the Red Sea floor. The gesture resembles a punch, though it's more of a "directed explosive arm movement" because they don't have hands, researchers say.

Octopuses and fish are known to hunt together, and their skills complement each other well when they're combing the sea bottom for food, according to lead study author Eduardo Sampaio. However, even the best partnerships trigger the occasional disagreement, and the Red Sea octopuses have shown that their first answer to such an issue is to throw a punch.

"Since multiple partners join, this creates a complex network where investment and pay-off can be unbalanced, giving rise to partner control mechanisms," Sampaio explained on Twitter.



Gallery: Cutest Australian animals (Espresso)


In other words, an octopus will punch a fish when the hunting duties are unfair — or whenever it feels like it.

The unusual behaviour has never been observed before, according to the authors of the study published in the journal Ecology. However, they saw multiple octopuses (Octopus cyanea) demonstrating the same punchy attitude on separate occasions, suggesting that the phenomenon is not a one-hit wonder.

Researchers saw the octopuses lash out in a variety of circumstances. Sometimes they'd punch a fish to gain an advantage, expending a bit of energy to immediately get their tentacles on some prey. However, there were times when there seemed to be no motivation for a punch, according to Sampaio, a researcher at the University of Lisbon in Portugal.

Read more: 57,000-year-old wolf puppy found frozen in Canada’s permafrost

The study suggests these unexplained punches might have occurred out of "spite," or in an attempt to "bully" the fish into co-operating in the future.

"The octopus pays a small cost to impose a heavier one on the misbehaving partner," the study authors write. They add that punching is occasionally "a spiteful behaviour" used to hurt other fish, regardless of the effort it takes from the octopus.

Video: Bald eagle vs. octopus fight caught on camera in B.C.

The octopuses were not shy about what they punched. They socked it to some tailspot squirrelfish. They punched two kinds of groupers. They smacked yellow-saddles. They hammered some half-spotted hinds. They even suckered some Red Sea goatfishes.

Researchers say more study is needed to see if octopuses punch some fish more than others — and to figure out if the Red Sea is the only place to see the Rock'Em Sock'Em cephalopods.

Novelist Yu Miri: Olympics not helping Fukushima rebuilding


TOKYO — Yu Miri, who won this year’s National Book Award for translated literature, says Tokyo’s Ueno Park, where a homeless man kills himself in her award-winning story, looks very clean ahead of next summer's Olympics. Still, she says, that doesn't help to raise hope amid the coronavirus pandemic and the delayed recovery of the disaster-hit Fukushima region.  

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The park is a main setting of Yu's award-winning novel, “Tokyo Ueno Station,” in which the protagonist, Kazu, a seasonal worker from Fukushima, ended up. The elderly man first came to the Japanese capital a year before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for construction work.

Yu said at a Tokyo news conference Wednesday that she visited the park recently and it was surprisingly clean, but that an area where she used to interview homeless residents for her book has largely been eliminated.

The book, first published in Japan in 2014, portrays the life of the seasonal worker without a place to go back — a theme for many of Yu's works.

The story was based on her interviews with homeless squatters living in huts made of cardboard boxes and blue plastic tarp more than 10 years ago. She said she was also inspired by about 600 Fukushima residents she interviewed while hosting a local radio program that she started a year after the March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The triple meltdowns at the plant caused massive radiation leaks to the outside, contaminated the surrounding areas and displaced as many as 160,000 people from the no-go zones and elsewhere in the prefecture. Most of those places have been reopened as the government has tried to showcase the recovery ahead of the Tokyo Games, but those who returned to their homes are largely elderly people.

Many families, especially with small children, say they don't plan to return to their homes due to radiation concerns as well as loss of their former jobs and communities.

But their lives have significantly changed — for the worse — since Yu finished the book, with a growing sense of isolation among Fukushima residents amid preparations ahead of the Olympics, and the coronavirus pandemic that has made them more isolated, said Yu. She has since moved to Minamisoma, where she opened a book café in hopes of creating a place for locals to get reconnected after displacement due to the nuclear disaster.

“Both the nuclear accident and the coronavirus pandemic have revealed distortion and inequality in society,” Yu said.

“Many people see the situation through a lens of despair instead of a lens of hope,” she said. “Perhaps the story fit their thinking and that's probably why the book has been widely read."

She said disaster-hit areas have not recovered enough and preparations for the Olympics have taken away resources and jobs from the recovery projects, becoming part of the reasons delaying their reconstruction. “Organizers should have seen the level of progress of the reconstruction before deciding to host the Games," she said.

The Olympics, initially planned for July 2020, were postponed until next summer due to the pandemic.

Many of those Yu interviewed had worked as seasonal workers in Tokyo during Japan’s post-war economic advancement. When they finally came back to have an easy retirement life back in their hometown, they lost their homes in the Fukushima disaster. “A man told me it was back luck, and the word got stuck in my chest like a thorn,” she said.

Yu remembered another thorn she has had in her chest from her past conversation with a homeless man. He told her that those who possess the roof and walls don’t understand the feelings of those who don’t.

“So I wrote the story of how the man named Kazu lived and chose death, not from the outside but his inner self, thinking that perhaps I can convey how he felt to those who have places to go back,” she said. “As a novelist, my job is to play a role as an endoscope to look inside of a person, while also showing him or her with an external camera.”

Yu, an ethnic-Korean who was born and raised in Japan, writes in Japanese and has won a number of Japanese literature awards, including the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1997 for “Family Cinema."

___

Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi

Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

Wealth Inequality Video Goes Viral

From: Mashable

The issue of wealth inequality across the US is well known, but this video shows you the extent of that imbalance in dramatic and graphic fashion. The viral video on Mashable relies heavily on a 2011 Mother Jones article and information from CNNMoney and ThinkProgress, and challenges the relationship between free market capitalism and community values.

MERCANTILIST MONOPOLY

Key events behind China's investigation into Alibaba Group

(Reuters) - China has launched an investigation into Alibaba Group for suspected monopolistic behaviour and will summon its Ant Group to meet in coming days, regulators said, in the latest blow for Jack Ma’s e-commerce and fintech empire.

Here’s a timeline of key events leading up to the investigation.

SEPT 14 - CHINA ROLLS OUT NEW RULES FOR FINANCIAL HOLDING FIRMS

China issues new rules to regulate financial holding companies, with the central bank saying there had been a loophole in regulations for such companies.

Ant was among companies named by Pan Gongsheng, the People’s Bank of China vice governor.

OCT 21 - ANT WINS GREEN SIGNAL FROM REGULATOR

Ant wins the final nod from China’s top securities watchdog to register its Shanghai IPO, clearing the last regulatory hurdle for its issue.

OCT 24 - “OLD MAN’S CLUB

At a public event attended by Chinese regulators, Ma, China’s richest man, said the financial and regulatory system stifled innovation and must be reformed to fuel growth. He also compared the Basel Committee of global banking regulators to “an old man’s club”.

OCT 26 - ANT WINS BACKING OF GLOBAL STRATEGIC INVESTORS

Ant prices its IPO and secures the backing of strategic investors including a unit of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, as well as Singaporean and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, large Chinese insurers and mutual funds.

OCT 30 - MOM-AND-POP INVESTORS BID $3 TRILLION FOR ANT’S SHARES

Retail investors bid for a record $3 trillion worth of shares in Ant’s dual listing, the equivalent of Britain’s gross domestic product, as they bet on demand for Ant’s financial technology services in China.

OCT 31 - BEIJING FLAGS CONCERNS OVER FINTECH

China’s Financial Stability and Development Committee, a cabinet-level body headed by Vice Premier Liu He, flags risks associated with the rapid development of fintech, at a meeting that was widely interpreted as a government response to the rise of players such as Ant.

NOV 2 - REGULATORS ANNOUNCE TALKS WITH ANT

Four of China’s top financial regulators say they conducted regulatory talks with Ant’s top two executives and Ma.

Chinese regulators recommend tighter regulations for online micro-lending companies to help contain potential financial risks and rein in rising debt levels.

NOV 3 - SHANGHAI IPO SUSPENDED; ANT FREEZES HK IPO

The Shanghai stock exchange suspends Ant’s IPO on its tech-focused STAR Market, citing the regulatory talks as a “material event” and a tougher regulatory environment as factors that may disqualify Ant from listing.

The move prompted Ant to also freeze the Hong Kong leg of its dual listing.

NOV 10 - CHINA PUBLISHES DRAFT ANTI-MONOPOLY RULES FOR INTERNET PLATFORMS

China published draft rules aimed at preventing monopolistic behaviour by internet platforms, a move that will increase scrutiny on e-commerce marketplaces and payment services belonging to the likes of Alibaba Group.

NOV 23 - ALIBABA CEO SAYS CHINA’S SCRUTINY OF INTERNET PLATFORMS IS NEEDED

China’s increasing oversight of internet platforms is both “timely and necessary”, Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang told the World Internet Conference.

DEC 14 - CHINA FINES DEALS INVOLVING ALIBABA, TENCENT

China warned its Internet giants it would not tolerate monopolistic practices and to brace for increased scrutiny, as it slapped fines and announced probes into deals involving Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.


Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

UPDATE

Modi calls farmer protests over contested laws politically motivated

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that protests by farmers against three laws brought by his government were politically motivated, as he touted the success of an agricultural scheme launched last year.

Thousands of farmers from several Indian states have been camped on the outskirts of New Delhi for over a month, blocking highways to demand that Modi’s government repeal the farm laws passed in September that they say threaten their livelihoods.

But Modi’s virtual public address on Friday was not focused on the laws under contention.

Instead, he spoke via video conferencing to seven farmers from different states, asking them how they had benefited from ‘PM Kisan’ - a cash transfer scheme his government launched in February, 2019, under which farmers get minimum income support.




The farmers Modi spoke with on Friday praised his scheme - but none were among the thousands who have been protesting.

Modi repeatedly said “some people” were spreading lies and rumours about farmers’ troubles, and dismissed the protests as motivated by political opponents.

“All these people who are protesting in support of farmers, what did they do when they were in power?” he said, referring to opposition politicians. “Those with political motives...are firing the gun from the farmers’ shoulders.

Modi also said he was open to discussions with farmers. “I ask even those opposing me today, that my government is ready to talk to them on farmer issues...I urge our farmers to not be misled by anyone.”

At least six rounds of talks between Modi’s government and farmer leaders on the new laws have failed.

Modi used his address to also to take a dig at his political rivals, chiefly the fiery leader of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, ahead of legislative assembly elections in the state in 2021. Modi alleged that Banerjee’s government was not allowing the farmers in its state to benefit from Modi’s federal scheme.

For an Explainer on India's multi-billion dollar food programme that is at the heart of the ongoing protests, click here here or here


Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in MUMBAI; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

In South Africa, child homicides show violence 'entrenched'

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — At night, Amanda Zitho worries her little boy is shivering and cold in his coffin and yearns to take him a blanket. She knows Wandi’s dead and gone and it’s senseless, but that doesn’t stop the ache.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Wandi was 5 when he was killed in April, allegedly strangled with a rope by a Johannesburg neighbour — another dead child in a land where there are too many.

According to official figures, around 1,000 children are murdered every year in South Africa, nearly three a day. But that statistic, horrific as it is, may be an undercount.

Shanaaz Mathews thinks many more children are victims of homicides that are not investigated properly, not prosecuted or completely missed by authorities. The official figures are “just the tip of the iceberg,” said Mathews, the director of the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town and probably the country’s leading expert on child homicides.

In a country where more than 50 people are murdered every day, children are not special and are not spared.

“Violence has become entrenched” in the psyche of South Africa, Mathews said.

“How do we break that cycle?” she asked.

In 2014, she embarked on a research project to uncover the real extent of those child deaths. She did it by getting forensic pathologists to put the dead bodies of hundreds of newborn babies, infants, toddlers and teenagers on examination tables to determine exactly how they died.

Child death reviews are common in developed countries but had never been done in South Africa before Mathews’ project. As she feared, the findings were grim.

Over a year, the pathologists examined the corpses of 711 children at two mortuaries in Cape Town and Durban and concluded that more than 15% of them died as a result of homicides. For context, Britain’s official child death review last year found 1% of its child deaths were homicides. Mathews’ research showed homicide was the second most common cause of death for children in those two precincts.

“And the numbers are not going down,” she said. “If anything, they are going up.”

There are two patterns in South Africa. Teenagers are being swallowed up in the country’s desperately high rate of violent street crime. But also, large numbers of young children aged 5 and under are victims of deadly violence meted out not by an offender with a gun or a knife on a street corner, but by mothers and fathers, relatives and friends, in kitchens and living rooms, around dinner tables and in front of TVs.

Fatal child abuse is where the justice system often fails and cases are “falling through the cracks,” Mathews said.

There was, she says, the case of a 9-month-old child who had seizures after being dropped off at day care. Though rushed to the hospital, the child died.

Doctors found severe head injuries and told the mother to go to the police, but no one followed up. The mother never reported the death. When investigators tried to revive the case nearly two years later, the baby had long been buried and the evidence was cold.

Joan van Niekerk, a child protection expert, recounts numerous cases tainted by police ineptitude and corruption.

“I sometimes go through stages when I am more angry with the system than I am with the perpetrators and that’s not good,” she said. She said justice for children in South Africa is unacceptably “hard to achieve.”

And failures of justice sometimes lead to more deaths.

The neighbour originally charged with killing Wandi Zitho was released and the case provisionally dropped because the police didn’t deliver enough evidence, possibly because of a backlog in analyzing forensic evidence, according to one policeman working the case. Months later, the woman was arrested again and charged with murdering two other children.

Then there was the case of Tazne van Wyk.

Tazne was 8 when her body was found in February dumped in a drain near a highway nearly two weeks after she disappeared. She had been abducted, raped and murdered, police said.

Tazne’s parents blame the correctional system for paroling the man charged with their daughter's murder despite a history of violent offences against children. He’d already violated his parole once. They also fault police for failing to act on a tip that might have saved Tazne in the hours after her disappearance.

The case was high profile. The Minister of Police spoke at Tazne’s funeral and admitted errors. “We have failed this child,” he conceded, pointing at Tazne’s small white coffin, trimmed in gold. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the van Wyk home and promised meaningful action.

Nine months later, Tazne’s parents feel it was all lip service.

“How many children after Tazne have already passed away? Have been kidnapped? Have been murdered? Still nothing is happening,” said her mother, Carmen van Wyk.

She sheds no tears. Instead, anger bubbles inside her and her community. Houses connected with the suspect and members of his family were set on fire in the wake of Tazne’s killing.

It’s not just on the police to stop the abuse, said Marc Hardwick, who was a policeman for 15 years, 10 of them as a detective in a child protection unit.

He recalls one case, from 20 years ago. A 6-year-old girl was beaten to death by her father because she was watching cartoons and, distracted as any 6-year-old would be, wasn’t listening to him.

When they arrested the father and took him away — he was later sentenced to life in prison — the victim’s 9-year-old cousin approached Hardwick and said: “I think you stopped my bad dreams today.”

Clearly, children in that household had been living a nightmare, and the other adults had remained silent, said Hardwick: “The reality is that child abuse is not a topic people want to talk about.”

___

Janssen reported from Johannesburg.

Gerald Imray And Bram Janssen, The Associated Press

Surprise: Donald Trump Is Using His Pardons On Child-Killers & Sleazy Republicans

Yesterday it was announced that lame-duck President Donald Trump issued 15 pardons and five commutations, all of which perfectly reflect everything from his long-held grudges against the special counsel’s Russia investigation to his willingness to reward political allies. Made public in a White House statement on Tuesday evening, many of the pardons and commutations bypassed the traditional Justice Department review process and, according to The New York Times, more than half did not meet the department’s consideration criteria.

© Provided by Refinery29 VALDOSTA, GA – DECEMBER 5: President Donald J. Trump holds a victory rally on Saturday, Dec. 5, 2020 in Valdosta, Georgia. The event was hosted by the Republican National Committee and featured Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Among those pardoned were two people who pleaded guilty in Robert S. Mueller’s inquiry into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia, three former Republican Congress members convicted of corruption, and four Blackwater guards convicted for their involvement in the killing of Iraqi civilians in 2007.

The Mueller-related pardons effectively nullified many of the legal consequences associated with the investigation into Russian interference during Trump’s 2016 campaign, an investigation that the president has consistently labeled a hoax. Notably among those pardoned on Tuesday is George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to federal officials during Mueller’s investigation. Trump also pardoned Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to lying during the investigation as well. Both have served short prison sentences.

Prior to this round of pardons, Trump granted clemency to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn for twice pleading guilty to lying to the FBI and longtime adviser Roger Stone who was convicted on a series of charges related to the Russia inquiry. Trump reportedly intends to pardon more people caught up in the investigation before his presidency comes to a close.

Chris Collins, Duncan D. Hunter, and Steve Stockman are the three former members of Congress who Trump pardoned. Collins, who has supported Trump since his early campaign days, has been serving a 26-month sentence after conspiring to commit securities fraud and making false statements to the FBI, both of which he pleaded guilty to in 2019. Hunter was all set to serve an 11-month sentence starting next month after he pleaded guilty to one charge of misusing campaign funds. Convicted in 2018 on charges of money laundering and fraud, Stockman was in the middle of a 10-year sentence.

Also among Trump’s list of pardons were four former U.S. service members. While working for Blackwater, a private security firm contracted by the military, they were involved in the 2007 massacre of 17 civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad. All four were convicted on charges of murder and manslaughter, their youngest victim was nine years old.

It’s not just that Trump has used his pardoning power more aggressively than most presidents, he has also used it more blatantly for personal and political purposes. According to Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of 45 people prior to those announced on Tuesday. Of those 45, 88 percent were people with personal ties to the president or to people who helped further his political goals.

He still has three more weeks in the White House and is expected to issue more pardons before January 20. In that time, it is reportedly likely that he will preemptively pardon personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as his three eldest children and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Infuriating as all that is, at least we know he can’t pardon himself.

Like what you see? How about some more goodness, right here?

Giuliani Might Really Need Trump To Pardon Him

Why Reality Winner Needs To Be Pardoned By Trump

Trump Is Under Investigation For Pardon Bribery

From biblical times to Trump, false messiahs have doomed societies

The prophet Jeremiah records in excruciating detail the catastrophic events leading to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE.

Jeremiah describes the devastating famine, escalating sense of fear and ominous foreboding that permeated the city despite optimistic oracles issued in the royal court by prophets, who promised divine intercession. Jeremiah warned his listeners not to be deceived by false hopes based on the belief that God would protect his sacred temple and the city in which it stood: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’”

The people of Jerusalem disregarded Jeremiah’s advice and threw him into a well, threatening even to kill him because his doom-saying weakened morale in the besieged city. Yet, it is Jeremiah’s oracles that the Bible preserves because he was correct: the city was violently destroyed and most of the Judeans either died or were exiled to Babylonia, leaving only a remnant of peasants behind to work the land. This brought the biblical kingdom of Judah to an end.

History teaches that messianic hopes lead to poor outcomes for the societies that embrace them. Yet, they continue to surface — even today, with the elevation of Donald Trump by some to messiah-like status.

© (Gallerie dell'Accademia) ‘Distruzione del tempio di Gerusalemme (Destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem),’ by Italian painter Francesco Hayez (1867)

Divine intervention and predictive failures

The Babylonian conquest is just one example of false hopes for divine intercession leading to ill-fated rebellion and catastrophic defeat. In the year 70 CE, Jerusalem again found itself besieged by a regional superpower demanding political submission.

Josephus, a Jewish historian who survived the war, writes an eye-witness account of the events that led to the second cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem. He reports that, leading to the Jewish revolt in 66 CE, numerous bandits fomented rebellion against Rome in ways that suggest they had messianic pretensions: one false prophet gathered mobs in the wilderness and led them to the Mount of Olives, promising to breach the city walls.

More poignantly, Josephus narrates the final hours of the Jerusalem temple before it was burned to the ground, when thousands of common people, including women and children, gathered in the temple cloisters because a prophet had predicted that God would deliver them from there. In language choked with emotion, Josephus describes the foolish waste of life that day due to false hopes in divine intercession.

Sixty-five years later, another disastrous rebellion against Rome culminated in brutal conquest, death and slavery for hundreds of thousands of Judeans — leading to the disintegration of Jewish society in Judea for over a century. This failed revolt by a man with messianic pretensions, dubbed “Son-of-a-Star” (Bar Kokhba), resulted in political domination by foreign rulers and the dispersion of the Judean population into foreign lands until the modern era.

Christian messianism has an equally long track record of failed apocalyptic predictions and false prophecies, appearing already in the New Testament: the Gospel of Mark 9:1 and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 7:29-31 both anticipate that Jesus will return within their lifetimes to establish the kingdom of God.

The failure of this event and efforts to justify and explain it ultimately led to the founding of a new religion: Christianity.

Trump the saviour

Most recently, messianic expectations have attached to the figure of Trump, whom a large proportion of white evangelicals herald as a political saviour. Many of them draw a link between Isaiah 45, which describes the Persian king Cyrus the Great as God’s anointed, and the fact that Trump is the 45th president of the United States; this numerical coincidence is viewed as evidence for divine providence.

Even Trump’s moral failings have been assimilated to his messianic identity: Jerry Falwell Jr. compares Trump to King David, who committed adultery, hired a hitman and repented to God following the death of his son who was conceived through this illicit sexual union.

If evangelicals regard Trump as their saviour and the one who will rectify the moral and political imbalance they perceive is afflicting American society, the QAnon movement has taken this doctrine of salvation to the next level: Exploiting human emotion and concern for children, the movement posits a global child sex-trafficking ring run by high level Democrats and the Hollywood elite.

QAnon followers believe that this criminal network controls the U.S. government — menacingly labelled “the Deep State” — and operates with impunity across the globe.

Their conspiratorial mythology centres on Trump, who is acclaimed as the tireless leader, fighting to destroy this evil cabal. QAnon believers anticipate an imminent revelation of the truth, referred to as the Great Awakening, and predict an impending apocalypse cryptically referred to as “the Show.”

Read more: The Church of QAnon: Will conspiracy theories form the basis of a new religious movement?

Trump’s claims to be the “chosen one” and his frequent references to the Deep State explicitly fuel messianic speculation centred on his presidency.

 

Trump’s relentless (albeit futile) attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election through unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting was riddled with fraud exploits the credulity and undying faith of his supporters; they overwhelmingly accept his narrative and have taken to the streets to support his cause.

Trump’s narcissistic undermining of democratic principles, abetted by messianic mythologies and ill-fated expectations for divine intercession, threatens to unravel American society in civil violence and distrust.

Trumpism has all the hallmarks of previous messianic movements: in subordinating reality to mythology, they failed and in the process destroyed the societies they aspired to save.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kimberly Stratton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Where is God? 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a test of faith for believers


OTTAWA — Where is God?   STILL DON'T KNOW AFTER READING THIS

© Provided by The Canadian Press

It is a question Rev. Harrison Ayre finds himself asking and being asked often as the COVID-19 pandemic has left nearly two million dead worldwide; 80 million sickened; families torn apart by death, disease and border closures; economies devastated; and an uncertain year looming ahead.

As a Catholic priest in Nanaimo, B.C., he's among thousands of religious leaders who have worked this year to help their congregations make sense of the pandemic in spiritual terms.

Religions have historically seen disease as divine judgment or punishment: the Old Testament contains a story of plagues against Egyptians for refusing to free the Jews, while one Islamic response to the "Black Death" of the 14th century was to call those who lost their lives martyrs for God.

Judgment is not always a bad thing, Ayre said.

"It is a challenge to return to the heart of things," he said.

"It's not a judgment unto condemnation. It's a judgment to bring us back to fall in love with (God)."

How to do that during a pandemic is both existential and practical.

Physical distancing restrictions have forced faith groups to entirely close their doors or dramatically restrict access to their sanctuaries.

This fall, a coalition of Christian research organizations surveyed 1,269 churches and ministries and found 80 per cent were offering online services.

But that doesn't work for all faiths, said Prof. Sabina Magliocco, who leads the religion program at the University of British Columbia.

For Indigenous faith practice, gathering extended kin for singing, dancing and acts of hospitality has been sharply curtailed by COVID-19 restrictions, she said, and just can't be replicated online.

Also, some don't have access to the technology — often, the same people whose kids have trouble getting online for school: those who live in rural communities with poor internet connectivity and people who can't afford the devices.

The spiritual uplift that comes from attending services in person isn't just about participating in rites and rituals, but also the intangibles, Magliocco said.

The energy of attending Friday sermon at mosque, chanting and dancing with extended family, or just the sights and smells triggered by walking in the door of a house of worship are all elements of connection in their own right.

"There aren't those outside clues, hints that put your mind in that religious place that connect you to community, that connects you to your ancestors — all of that is gone," said Magliocco.

Then there are theological issues.

For observant Jews, using electronics is forbidden on religious days.

Video: Coronavirus: Canada ‘must do everything we can’ to protect Indigenous communities from COVID-19, official says (Global News)

Some found workarounds; during the Jewish high holy days in September, congregations began livestreaming from their synagogues before the holidays began and just left the cameras running.

For Catholics, the fundamental rites known as the sacraments must be done in person. For a time, Ayre heard confession in a parking lot, where parishioners would drive in and roll their windows down a crack to unburden their souls.

For Muslims, the pandemic has meant a renewed emphasis on certain requirements, like ritual purification before prayer, five times a day, said Imam Mohamed Refaat, the president of the Canadian Council of Imams.

Within the Qur’an, there are also teachings from the Prophet Muhammad that directly relate to staying away from places known to be infected with the plague.

While Muslims can and do pray at home, Refaat said the loss of community gatherings and the end of annual trips to the holiest site of Islam, at Mecca in Saudi Arabia, are painful.

For him, the lesson is to value what has been given by God: the ability to talk and travel and do good in the world.

When those blessings are taken away, it is a reminder of their worth, he said.

"When we get ourselves back to normal, then we will recognize that those blessings should be maintained," he said.

"And we should be thankful to our Lord for giving us all these blessings."

What it will take to get back to normal at minimum is a vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19, most faith groups say.

Convincing their followers to take it will be the next challenge.

Mainstream religious leaders have issued proclamations in support of the vaccine; the first people to get it in Montreal were residents and staff at a Jewish nursing home where dozens have died.

Opposition by religious leaders to vaccines in the past has been based on a number of factors, including what kind of human cells are used in testing and where they are from, and a belief that the divine, and not science, will protect the faithful.

Those voices are already challenging this vaccine, and earlier this month, the role religious leaders can play to quiet them was part of a call between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and faith leaders.

But the real source of tension on the call wasn't the coming shot in the arm.

It was the shot to the heart religious groups received by being told they didn't qualify as "essential services" during the pandemic, and in turn were subject to tighter restrictions than gyms or bars.

Refaat said while religious groups, health officials and politicians have been talking for months about the balance between protecting people's right to worship and public health, what's missing is an acknowledgment of the central role communal religious life plays.

"The weekly sermon people attend, that gathering of people together, you're charging your battery for the rest of the week. And that charging is big for people of faith," he said,

"It is so essential for them."

Various religious groups in the U.S. have taken governments to court for restricting access to faith gatherings.

The process is only just beginning to play out in Canada; arguments in one case involving a Toronto church claiming COVID-19 restrictions violate charter rights are expected sometime in 2021.

The pandemic has exposed two challenges for the faithful, said Andrew Bennett, the director of the Cardus religious freedom institute and an ordained deacon: What do they need to actually live a religious life? And how much of that requires physically going to church or mosque or synagogue?

The answers may determine what Canada's post-pandemic religious landscape looks like, he said.

"These are challenges that faith communities are going to need to address."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 22, 2020.

Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press