'It will get worse over the next 10 to 15 years': What to expect from Canada's labour market as the workforce ages

Aging population contributing to labour shortages


Jennifer Ferreira
CTVNews.ca Producer
Published Dec. 14, 2023

As more Canadians leave the workforce over the next few decades, experts say this will likely exacerbate existing labour shortages. In this stock image, a senior couple appears stressed while looking at bills. 

(Getty Images / whyframestudio)

There will likely be more Canadians leaving the workforce than entering it over the next few decades as the country’s senior population grows, according to new data from Statistics Canada. Experts say this will not only exacerbate existing labour shortages, but could result in higher wages for employees.

As of November 2023, there were approximately 2.7 million Canadians aged 15 to 24 who said they were employed, compared to more than 4.4 million people aged 55 and older(opens in a new tab) who had a job. This is based on data from Statistics Canada’s latest labour force survey, which also shows a wide difference in the total population of Canadians 15 to 24 years of age compared to those aged 55 and older, with 4.7 million and 12.4 million people, respectively.

“This means that there are potentially more people prepared to leave the labour force because of retirement than there are entrants to replace these workers,” reads a note prepared by Jane Badets, senior adviser at Environics Analytics, a marketing and analytical services company owned by Bell Canada.

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This comes amid new statistics from Environics Analytics that show Canada’s senior population is projected to surpass 11 million by 2043. The data, based on a special analysis for CTV News, paints the senior population as the fastest-growing age group in the country.
LABOUR SHORTAGE LINKED TO AN AGING POPULATION: EXPERTS

Canada is already facing labour shortages(opens in a new tab) across several sectors, largely due to the country’s aging population, said Stephen Tapp, chief economist for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Over the next few years, more Canadians born between 1946 and 1964 – also known as the baby boomer generation – will be entering their senior years and likely retiring. Without a boost in the number of young Canadians entering the workforce, existing labour gaps will only become larger, Tapp said.

“(We’re) in a more labour-scarce world,” Tapp told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview. “Things are getting tighter and more difficult … It will get worse over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Businesses of all sizes and across every industry have complained of labour shortages for months(opens in a new tab), with experts saying Canada’s aging workforce is among the factors to blame. These shortages could lead to a reduction in labour input as well as economic growth, a recent study shows.

Conducted by the RAND Corporation, a research organization based in the United States, the study published in 2016 and revised in 2022(opens in a new tab) shows a link between an aging workforce and national economic performance. Looking at U.S. data, researchers discovered that with each 10 per cent increase in the fraction of the population aged 60 and older, per-capita GDP decreased by 5.5 per cent.

“Our estimate implies population aging reduced the growth rate in GDP per capita by 0.3 percentage points per year during 1980 (to) 2010,” the paper reads. Aging in Canada: What a growing senior population means for you(opens in a new tab)

A study published in August by the Fraser Institute(opens in a new tab), a conservative think tank, came to a similar conclusion. Researchers determined that every 10 per cent increase in the senior population is linked to a slight decrease in the real GDP per capita growth rate.

“This result implies that, in 2021 dollars, Canada’s GDP per capita will be lower by $4,300 (per person) by 2043 under Statistics Canada’s slow-aging population projection scenario and by $11,200 under its fast-aging scenario,” reads a press release issued earlier this year(opens in a new tab).

A report published by the federal government in 2018(opens in a new tab) already indicated that Canada was seeing “proportionally fewer young people moving into the workforce to replace the increasing number of older individuals retiring.”



Adding to this is what is expected to be an increase in the number of Canadians who are retiring year-over-year. An analysis of labour force survey data by the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) revealed 73,000 more people retired in the year ending August 2022(opens in a new tab) compared to the year prior.

HEALTH CARE, CONSTRUCTION WILL NEED MORE WORKERS

Some sectors can expect to see greater labour shortages than others, Tapp said. Amid a lack of nurses and physicians, Canada’s health-care sector is likely to continue facing labour shortages as demand for services increases with an aging population, said Ted McDonald, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick.

“Those labour shortages have direct implications for patient outcomes as well as the broader economy,” McDonald told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview.

Health care is among the industry sectors that are currently seeing some of the highest job vacancy rates, according to the most recently available data from Statistics Canada(opens in a new tab).

Across all industries, the job vacancy rate was 3.9 per cent as of September, but within the health-care and social assistance sector, that rate was 5.6 per cent. Other sectors with job vacancy rates above the four-per-cent mark include construction, and accommodation and food services, at 4.7 and 6.2 per cent, respectively.

Sectors such as transportation are also likely to experience tighter labour market conditions in the years to come, as they have a higher number of older workers, according to a research note produced by Environics Analytics.

The ratio of older to younger workers varies by occupation, according to the latest census data from 2021. Younger workers include employees aged 25 to 34, whereas older workers includes those aged 55 and above. Examples of some of the occupations that have more older than younger workers include bus drivers and other transit operators. In these occupations, the number of older employees is more than four times higher than the number of younger employees.


Alternatively, the employment rate among 25- to 54-year-olds born in Canada from 2010 to 2021 has seen a two-per-cent increase, according to data from Statistics Canada(opens in a new tab).

As more of Canada’s older employees exit the workforce, transferring their knowledge to younger workers can become a challenge, Tapp said. As a result, providing adequate training will be key, he said. This not only includes properly training new hires, but also offering technical training to older employees who may choose to continue working beyond the age of 65. Some of these workers may need to be trained on how to use new tools or technology to perform old tasks, he said.

“If we have older people staying in the labour force longer, they're going to need to stay up on their on their skillsets and to be retrained more frequently than they would have been before,” he said.

WAGES WILL SEE AN INCREASE: EXPERT

Although the road ahead may present challenges for employers facing an increasingly tight market, conditions may be beneficial for workers, said Tapp.

With more Canadians expected to leave the workforce than enter it, workplaces may struggle with obtaining and retaining employees. As an incentive when hiring, they may be more likely to offer increased wage rates to fill gaps within their labour force, he said.

“In any kind of market where there’s fewer workers … the market is going to have to pay them more and their wages are going to be increased to entice them to come in,” he said. “It’s good news if you’re looking from a household perspective … The balance of power has really shifted.”

Tapp said he expects to see wages increase more than two per cent each year to account for annual inflation.

Another trend McDonald expects to see emerge is a continued boom in the use of artificial intelligence technology. Struggles to secure labour will likely prompt more businesses to explore ways to automate processes, he said, which may allow them to hire fewer people.

“You look at alternative ways to continue to operate,” McDonald said.

SOME DELAY RETIREMENT TO KEEP WORKING

While Canada’s workforce may be aging, some employees are continuing to work for longer, data shows. In 2022, nearly one million Canadians were working at the age of 65 or older, making up five per cent of the total labour force in Canada that year, Statistics Canada data shows(opens in a new tab).

Additionally, the average retirement age in Canada has been steadily increasing over the last two decades. In 2022, the average retirement age was 64.6 years(opens in a new tab). This is approximately four years older than the average age reported in 1998, which was 60.9.

CTVNews.ca heard from a handful of Canadians who said they are considering delaying their retirement in an effort to save more money – Anita Newson is one of them. Living in Halifax, the 60-year-old said she plans to delay her retirement “indefinitely” due to the elevated cost of living.

“I had hoped to pay off some debt and retire this year but that didn't happen and I am actually further in debt,” she wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca. “I may not ever retire.”

Instead, Newson said she plans to work for as long as her health permits. In response to the rising cost of daily expenses, Newson said she has begun to scale back spending on birthdays and holidays, as well as eating at restaurants and visiting movie theatres.

“It is becoming more frightening thinking about how I will support myself when and if I retire,” she wrote. “I am a renter and rent goes up every year, pensions do not.”

Newson said she only expects her pension to be able to cover her monthly rent payments, leaving her with no choice but to continue working to cover other expenses such as food.

Stewart Turnbull said he finds himself in a similar position. The 56-year-old living in Victoria, B.C., owns a single-family home and works full-time as a customer service manager. Upon retiring, he planned to sell his home and purchase a smaller property farther from the downtown core, he said.

However, when his three-year mortgage agreement went up for renewal in March, the rise in interest rates increased his payments by about $900 per month, he said.

Turnbull and his partner recently put their home up for sale, but they are unsure of whether they will receive enough money to purchase a new home and comfortably retire at 65. Without much money accumulated in savings, Turnbull said he is not convinced his pension will be enough to cover daily expenses if he stopped working.

“We are trying to leverage whatever equity we have in this house into sort of a rescue mission after interest rates totally annihilated any extra money we had on a monthly basis,” he told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview. “I hoped it would be worth enough that we could possibly retire but I’m not 100 per cent sure that that’s going to happen.”

Stewart Turnbull, 56, planned to sell his home in Victoria, B.C., and use the extra money to retire. But with increasing mortgage payments as a result of high interest rates, and little money saved up, he's unsure of whether selling his home will leave him with enough money to comfortably retire at 65. Turnbull, left, appears in this image with his partner. 

(HANDOUT / CTVNews.ca)

Instead, Turnbull is not planning for retirement and anticipates he will have to continue working beyond the age of 65 to continue to afford his daily expenses. He has also made some lifestyle changes over recent months in order to adjust to the elevated cost of living. This includes hanging his clothes to dry in order to lower his electricity bill, and downgrading his cell phone bill so monthly fees are less expensive, he said.

“It has become clear to me that retirement is no longer an option,” he wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca.

National labour force survey results(opens in a new tab) released in August show that many Canadian workers would delay their retirement if given the option to work fewer hours without affecting their pension. Additionally, employees aged 65 and older have been making up a larger proportion of the total working population in Canada over the last few years, data shows.

In 2010, employed seniors made up three per cent of the total workforce, according to Statistics Canada. Fast forward to 2022, and working seniors accounted for five per cent of all Canadians employed that year.



But according to Tapp, this could be due to the growing number of seniors in Canada as opposed to a shift in retirement patterns.

WHAT ROLE DOES IMMIGRATION PLAY?

In order to fill existing gaps within the country’s workforce throughout the years, the federal government appears to be relying on immigration, McDonald said.

Over the last decade, the share of new and recent immigrant workers grew the most quickly in accommodation and food services, as well as transportation and warehousing, according to 2021 Statistics Canada census data(opens in a new tab). Other sectors that saw relatively high levels of immigrant workers include manufacturing and health services.

Many of Canada’s new immigrants are skilled workers(opens in a new tab) who apply for permanent residency through the Express Entry program. Using a comprehensive ranking system, points are awarded to applicants based on their age, language proficiency, level of education and work experience, and those with the highest scores are admitted. In an effort to address labour market shortages(opens in a new tab), it was recently announced that the program would prioritize skills and work experience(opens in a new tab) in fields such as health care, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), trades, transport and agriculture.

In a recent announcement, Canada’s immigration minister also shared federal government plans(opens in a new tab) to increase permanent resident targets to 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025 before holding this number steady at half a million permanent residents in 2026.

But how much these policies will help strengthen the country’s workforce remains to be seen, McDonald said.

CTV News is a division of Bell Media, which is part of BCE Inc.

Edited by Mary Nersessian, graphics produced by Jesse Tahirali

 

Researchers, Coast Salish people analyze 160-year-old indigenous dog pelt in the Smithsonian’s collection

Analysis conducted to pinpoint the origin and sudden disappearance of the culturally significant coast salish woolly dog

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SMITHSONIAN

 

IMAGE: 

FULL-BODY FORENSIC RECONSTRUCTION OF A WOOLLY DOG BASED ON A 160-YEAR-OLD PELT IN THE SMITHSONIAN’S COLLECTION AS WELL AS ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS.

THE RECONSTRUCTED WOOLLY DOG STANDS AGAINST A STYLIZED BACKGROUND OF A COAST SALISH WEAVING MOTIF FROM A HISTORIC DOG-WOOL BLANKET. THE PORTRAYAL OF THE WEAVING MOTIF WAS DESIGNED UNDER ADVISEMENT OF THE STUDY’S COAST SALISH ADVISORY GROUP.

RESEARCHERS FROM THE Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History LED A NEW ANALYSIS THAT SHEDS LIGHT ON THE ANCESTRY AND GENETICS OF WOOLLY DOGS, A NOW EXTINCT BREED OF DOG THAT WAS A FIXTURE OF INDIGENOUS COAST SALISH COMMUNITIES IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST FOR MILLENNIA. THE STUDY’S FINDINGS, PUBLISHED TODAY, DEC. 14, IN THE JOURNAL Science, INCLUDE INTERVIEWS CONTRIBUTED BY SEVERAL COAST SALISH CO-AUTHORS, INCLUDING ELDERS, KNOWLEDGE KEEPERS AND MASTER WEAVERS, WHO PROVIDED CRUCIAL CONTEXT ABOUT THE ROLE WOOLLY DOGS PLAYED IN COAST SALISH SOCIETY.

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CREDIT: KAREN CARR

Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History led a new analysis that sheds light on the ancestry and genetics of woolly dogs, a now extinct breed of dog that was a fixture of Indigenous Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. Anthropologist Logan Kistler and evolutionary molecular biologist Audrey Lin analyzed genetic clues preserved in the pelt of “Mutton,” the only known woolly dog fleece in the world, to pinpoint the genes responsible for their highly sought-after woolly fur.

The study’s findings, published today, Dec. 14, in the journal Science, include interviews contributed by several Coast Salish co-authors, including Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Master Weavers, who provided crucial context about the role woolly dogs played in Coast Salish society.

“Coast Salish traditional perspective was the entire context for understanding the study’s findings,” said Kistler, the museum’s curator of archaeobotany and archaeogenomics.

Coast Salish tribal nations in Washington state and British Columbia bred and cared for woolly dogs for thousands of years. Prized for their thick undercoats, the dogs were sheared like sheep and often kept in pens or on islands to carefully manage their breeding and to care for the canines’ health and vitality. Coast Salish weavers used the dogs’ wool to craft blankets and other woven items that served a variety of ceremonial and spiritual purposes. Woolly dogs themselves possessed spiritual significance and were often treated as beloved family members. As emblems for many Coast Salish communities, woolly dogs adorned woven baskets and other art forms.

By the mid-19th century, this once thriving dog wool-weaving tradition was in decline. In the late 1850s, naturalist and ethnographer George Gibbs cared for a woolly dog named Mutton. When Mutton died in 1859, Gibbs sent his pelt to the nascent Smithsonian Institution, where the fleece has resided ever since. However, few were aware of the pelt’s existence until it was rediscovered in the early 2000s.

Lin first learned about Mutton when she was a Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow at the museum in 2021.

“When I saw Mutton in person for the first time, I was just overcome with excitement,” said Lin, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History. “I had heard from some other people that he was a bit scraggly, but I thought he was gorgeous.”

She was surprised to find out that virtually no work had been done on the genetics of woolly dogs, which disappeared around the turn of the 20th century. She teamed up with Kistler and they reached out to several Coast Salish communities to gauge their interest in working together on a potential research project on woolly dogs.

Many in the Coast Salish communities were eager to share their knowledge.

“We were very excited to participate in a study that embraces the most sophisticated Western science with the most established Traditional Knowledge,” said Michael Pavel, an Elder from the Skokomish/Twana Coast Salish community in Washington, who remembers hearing about woolly dogs early in his childhood. “It was incredibly rewarding to contribute to this effort to embrace and celebrate our understanding of the woolly dog.”

To complement the perspectives they received from Pavel and other Coast Salish people from British Columbia and Washington state (the text from their interviews is available in the study’s supplementary materials), Lin, Kistler and their colleagues began analyzing Mutton’s genetic code. They sequenced the woolly dog genome and compared it with the genomes of ancient and modern breeds of dogs to determine what set woolly dogs apart. They also identified certain chemical signatures called isotopes in Mutton’s pelt to determine the dog’s diet and teamed up with noted natural history illustrator Karen Carr to create a life-like reconstruction of what Mutton looked like in the 1850s. Carr’s work is the first in-depth reconstruction of a Coast Salish woolly dog in nearly three decades.

Based on the genetic data, the team estimated that woolly dogs diverged from other breeds up to 5,000 years ago—a date that lines up with archaeological remains from the region. They also discovered that Mutton was genetically similar to pre-colonial dogs from Newfoundland and British Columbia. The researchers estimate that nearly 85% of Mutton’s ancestry can be linked to pre-colonial dogs. This ancient ancestry is surprising because Mutton lived decades after the introduction of European dog breeds. This makes it likely that Coast Salish communities continued to maintain woolly dogs’ unique genetic makeup until right before the dogs were wiped out.

In total, the team analyzed more than 11,000 different genes in Mutton’s genome to determine what gave woolly dogs their fluffy fleece and wool fibers that could be spun together to create yarn. They identified 28 genes that have links to hair growth and follicle regeneration. These included a gene that causes a woolly hair phenotype in humans, and another linked to curly hair in other dogs. Similar genes were even activated in the genomes of woolly mammoths.

However, Mutton’s genetics could tell the researchers little about what caused the dogs to decline. Traditionally, scholars have speculated that the arrival of machine-made blankets to the region in the early 19th century made woolly dogs expendable. But insights from Pavel and other traditional experts revealed that it was improbable that such a central part of Coast Salish society could be replaced.

Instead, woolly dogs were likely doomed by numerous factors impacting the Coast Salish tribal nations after European settlers arrived. Due to disease and colonial policies of cultural genocide, displacement and forced assimilation, it likely became increasingly difficult or forbidden for Coast Salish communities to maintain their woolly dogs.

“It was thousands of years of very careful maintenance lost within a couple of generations,” Lin said.

But despite their disappearance, the memory of woolly dogs is still embedded into Coast Salish society. And Pavel thinks their understanding of woolly dogs is only getting clearer thanks to the new research effort.

“All of our communities held a certain aspect of knowledge about the woolly dog,” Pavel said. “But when woven together, as a result of participating in this study, we now have a much more complete understanding.”

The study included authors affiliated with Vancouver Island University, University of Utah, University of Victoria, The Evergreen State College, Skokomish Nation, Squamish Nation, Musqueam First Nation, Karen Carr Studio, Queen Mary University of London, Texas A&M University, Simon Fraser University, The Francis Crick Institute, University of East Anglia, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, University of Oxford, University of York, Centre for Paleogenetics in Sweden, Stockholm University, Swedish Museum of Natural History, University of Copenhagen, the National Institutes of Health in the United States, Memorial University of Newfoundland, University of California at Davis, University of Copenhagen and Cardiff University.

This research was supported by the Smithsonian, European Molecular Biology Organization, the Vallee Foundation, the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Francis Crick Institute, Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

About the National Museum of Natural History

            The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. It is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. The museum is open daily, except Dec. 25, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

# # #

---

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adi6549 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

The History of Coast Salish ‘Woolly Dogs’ Revealed by Ancient Genomics and Indigenous Knowledge

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2023

Pelt of the woolly dog Mutton in the Smithsonian’s collection 

 

The 160-year-old pelt of the woolly dog Mutton in the Smithsonian’s collection.

Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History led a new analysis that sheds light on the ancestry and genetics of woolly dogs, a now extinct breed of dog that was a fixture of Indigenous Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. The study’s findings, published today, Dec. 14, in the journal Science, include interviews contributed by several Coast Salish co-authors, including Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Master Weavers, who provided crucial context about the role woolly dogs played in Coast Salish society.

By the mid-19th century, the once thriving Coast Salish dog wool-weaving tradition was in decline. In the late 1850s, naturalist and ethnographer George Gibbs cared for a woolly dog named Mutton. When Mutton died in 1859, Gibbs sent his pelt to the nascent Smithsonian Institution, where the fleece has resided ever since.

Mutton’s genetics could tell the researchers little about what caused these dogs to decline. Traditionally, scholars have speculated that the arrival of machine-made blankets to the region in the early 19th century made woolly dogs expendable. But insights from Coast Salish community members and experts revealed that it was improbable that such a central part of Coast Salish society could be replaced.

Woolly dogs were likely doomed by numerous factors impacting the Coast Salish tribal nations after European settlers arrived. Due to disease and colonial policies of cultural genocide, displacement and forced assimilation, it likely became increasingly difficult or forbidden for Coast Salish communities to maintain their woolly dogs.

CREDIT

Brittany M. Hance, Smithsonian

USAGE RESTRICTIONS

News media use of the photos in relation to the study is permitted with attribution.

LICENSE

Original content

A classic-style Coast Salish blanket  

A classic-style Coast Salish blanket, which includes a mixture of woolly dog and goat wool. The woolly dog wool is in the warp (vertical strands). Accessioned 1858. Collection notes.

Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History led a new analysis that sheds light on the ancestry and genetics of woolly dogs, a now extinct breed of dog that was a fixture of Indigenous Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. The study’s findings, published today, Dec. 14, in the journal Science, include interviews contributed by several Coast Salish co-authors, including Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Master Weavers, who provided crucial context about the role woolly dogs played in Coast Salish society.

Coast Salish tribal nations in Washington state and British Columbia bred and cared for woolly dogs for thousands of years. Prized for their thick undercoats, the dogs were sheared like sheep and often kept in pens or on islands to carefully manage their breeding and to care for the canines’ health and vitality. Coast Salish weavers used the dogs’ wool to craft blankets and other woven items that served a variety of ceremonial and spiritual purposes.

“We were very excited to participate in a study that embraces the most sophisticated Western science with the most established Traditional Knowledge,” said Michael Pavel, an Elder from the Skokomish/Twana Coast Salish community in Washington, who remembers hearing about woolly dogs early in his childhood. “It was incredibly rewarding to contribute to this effort to embrace and celebrate our understanding of the woolly dog.”

Despite their disappearance, the memory of woolly dogs is still embedded into Coast Salish society. And Pavel thinks their understanding of woolly dogs is only getting clearer thanks to the new research effort.

CREDIT

Smithsonian

USAGE RESTRICTIONS

News media use of the photos in relation to the study is permitted with attribution.

LICENSE

Original content

Researchers hope tracking senior Myanmar army officers can ascertain blame for human rights abuses

GRANT PECK
Wed, November 1, 2023 




Myanmar War Crimes
FILE - An alphabet book and a notebook lie on top of an elevated wooden floorboard of a middle school in Let Yet Kone village in Tabayin township in the Sagaing region of Myanmar on Sept. 17, 2022, the day after an air strike hit the school. A group of human rights researchers officially launched a website Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 that they hope will help get justice for victims of state violence in Myanmar, where one of the world’s less-noticed but still brutal armed struggles is taking place. 

BANGKOK (AP) — A group of human rights researchers officially launched a website Wednesday that they hope will help get justice for victims of state violence in Myanmar, where one of the world’s less-noticed but still brutal armed struggles is taking place.

Since the army seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, thousands of people have been killed by the security forces seeking to quash pro-democracy resistance. According to the United Nations, more than 1.8 million have been displaced by military offensives, which critics charge have involved gross violations of human rights.

War crimes have become easier to document in recent years thanks largely to the ubiquity of cellphone cameras and the near-universal access to social media, where photo and video evidence can easily be posted and viewed.

But it's harder to establish who is responsible for such crimes, especially generals and other high-ranking officers behind the scenes who make the plans and give the orders.

“Generals and lower ranking officers should fear being dragged before a court of law and imprisoned for crimes they ordered or authorized,” Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, told the AP by email. “Research must move beyond merely stating the obvious — that crimes are occurring — and connect those who are responsible to specific atrocities. The victims of these crimes deserve justice and that will require the research necessary to hold those responsible fully accountable.”

The new website, myanmar.securityforcemonitor.org, is an interactive online version of a report, “Under Whose Command? — Human rights abuses under Myanmar’s military rule,” compiled by Security Force Monitor, a project of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, to connect alleged crimes with their perpetrators.

The project’s team constructed a timeline of senior commanders and their postings, which can be correlated with documented instances of alleged atrocities that occurred under their commands. It exposes the army’s chain of command, identifying senior army commanders and showing the connections from alleged rights violations to these commanders, study director Tony Wilson told The Associated Press in an email interview.

“This is one of the pieces of the jigsaw that has up until now been missing in terms of accountability — demonstrating how the system works and that these abuses are not just the result of rogue units or individual soldiers,” he said.

Wilson said the Myanmar data show that 65%, or 51 of all 79 senior army commanders between the end of March 2011 and the end of March this year, “had alleged disappearances, killings, rape or instances of torture committed by units under their command.”

He said the study also shows the officer with the most links to serious human rights violations is Gen. Mya Htun Oo, who became defense minister and a member of the ruling military council when the army seized power in 2021. He also became deputy prime minister in 2023.

The legal significance leans on the established doctrine of “command responsibility,” which allows the prosecution under international law of military commanders for war crimes perpetrated by their subordinates.

“Establishing the command structures of militaries and other groups involved in atrocities is the lifeblood of properly conducting investigations into international crimes,” Mark Kersten, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Canada’s University of the Fraser Valley, said in an email to The Associated Press. “When the Nazis were prosecuted at Nuremberg, the lead counsel for the Allies famously exclaimed that it was individuals who would be prosecuted for atrocities, and not abstract entities, namely states.”

Collecting evidence of human rights violations in Syria’s civil war has served as a guide to utilizing online information and technical advances to gather and organize evidence of war crimes. Similar projects have also been launched in other areas of conflict including Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine.

Since 2021, evidence-gathering groups have formed in Myanmar, including Myanmar Witness, an NGO that seeks to “collect, analyse, verify and store evidence related to human rights incidents … in a way that is compatible with future human rights prosecutions.”

Similar work for Myanmar has already been done by groups documenting the security forces’ brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign in the western part of the country that drove an estimated 740,000 Rohingya to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh. Several international tribunals have been considering charges of genocide and other crimes brought against the army for their activities.

“Our work can complement and feed into the work of documenting abuses,” said Wilson. “Because we always aim to map the entire police or military, our research can help make connections between what human rights groups have documented and the wider chain of command.”

He said the project relied on open-source information drawn from the work of national and international human rights organizations and local activists, as well as books, independent newspapers and the military’s own media outlets.

Its previous work includes research on the Mexican Army’s chain of command for a complaint to the International Criminal Court alleging crimes against humanity. Its methodology has been used to support the Syrian Archive’s submission of evidence to investigative and prosecute authorities in Germany, France, and Sweden about the 2013 sarin gas attack on Khan Shaykhun.

“We’ve applied lessons learned from researching militaries around the world to our work in Myanmar, and we would not have been able to map the Myanmar Army without those lessons,” said Wilson.

Israel-Hamas war threatens world economy, bankers tell Saudi forum

Robbie COREY-BOULET and Haitham EL-TABEI
Tue, 24 October 2023 at 6:43

In this article:
Ajay Banga
Indian American business executive, CEO of Mastercard

Israel has bombarded targets in the Gaza Strip for more than two weeks since Hamas's deadly cross-border attacks on October 7 and is poised for a widely anticipated ground offensive (Jack Guez)

The war between Israel and Hamas could deal a heavy blow to the global economy, banking titans told a glitzy investment forum in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

The dour mood from some of the gathering's most high-profile speakers underscored how the war threatens attempts by the world's biggest oil exporter to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels.

Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot or burnt to death on the first day of the raid, according to Israeli officials.


The militants also took 222 people hostage, among them elderly people and young children, according to the Israeli authorities' latest count.

More than 5,700 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed across the Gaza Strip in retaliatory Israeli bombardments, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry said.

"What just happened recently in Israel and Gaza -- at the end of the day you put all this together, I think the impact on economic development is even more serious," World Bank President Ajay Banga told the Future Investment Initiative (FII), often referred to as "Davos in the Desert", on Tuesday.

"I think we're at a very dangerous juncture," he added.

The raging war risks drawing in other countries, notably Lebanon, home to the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group which has engaged in daily exchanges of fire with Israeli forces.

"If these things are not resolved, it probably means more global terrorism, which means more insecurity, which means more (of) society is going to be fearful, less hope," said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

"And when there's less hope we see contractions in our economies."

More than 6,000 delegates are registered for the three-day event that will feature appearances by global banking chiefs and the presidents of South Korea, Kenya and Rwanda, organisers say.

- Unstable neighbourhood -

But Wall Street leaders indicated that lofty themes of innovation and economic transformation would be at least partly overshadowed by the shocking violence in Israel and Gaza.

"We're sitting here with the backdrop, which I think we all acknowledge, of the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Israel and the events that have been unfolding since, and it's desperately sad. So it's hard not to be a little bit pessimistic," Citi CEO Jane Fraser said.

The war stands in stark contrast to the vision of a more stable and prosperous Middle East championed by Saudi Arabia, which this year rebuilt ties with Iran and was in talks towards recognising Israel before the fighting broke out.

The conflict comes halfway through the Vision 2030 reform agenda championed by the kingdom's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which is intended to remake the oil-reliant Saudi economy.

"Saudi Arabia today is all about their internal transformation which demands a stable neighbourhood," said Kristin Diwan of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

"It's harder to get people to invest, to golf in Riyadh, or to sun along the Red Sea coast when the region is associated with war and terrorism."

Riyadh has condemned violence against civilians in Gaza and affirmed its support for the Palestinian cause.

A source familiar with discussions on possible normalisation with Israel told AFP this month that the process had been paused.

- Hopes for stability -

Saudi officials have signalled they intend to forge ahead with their economic reform plans despite fears of wider regional turmoil.

In addition to FII, the capital this week is hosting its first fashion week and a boxing match between Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou.

The FII opening ceremony featured a vocal performance by Britain's Got Talent contestant Malakai Bayoh as a giant dove flashed on a screen behind him.

Some attendees struck a positive note despite grim headlines from the region.

The war "is in the minds of each and everyone", Laurent Germain, CEO of construction engineering firm Egis Group, told AFP.

"But I guess in the economic world we're optimistic people. We're hoping for the comeback to stability as soon as possible."

Atul Arya, chief energy strategist at S&P Global Commodity Insights, said the current geopolitical situation was "challenging" but that "economic development never stops".

rcb/th/srm

As drought dries up B.C. rivers, conservationists turn to beavers for help


CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023 


The ongoing drought in many parts of B.C. is causing some rivers in the province's northern Interior to reach their driest mid-October levels in years.

In Prince George, the unusually low waters have locals worried.

Harriet Schoeter moved to the northern B.C. city 60 years ago, and loves walking the shore where the Fraser and Nechako rivers meet.

This week, the water was so low she could almost walk right across.

"I've never seen it this low," she said. "It was low before, but not like this."

Wayne Salewski, with the Nechako Environment and Water Stewardship Society, said the river is indeed at its driest for this time of year in decades.

"It's horridly low — unbelievably low," Salewski said, standing on the dry river bottom at the confluence of the two Prince George rivers. "Everything is going to pay the price for that.

"Our streams are dry right now … We need to hold water in place."

A family walks on the riverbed where water normally flows at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers near Prince George, B.C., on Wednesday. (Jason Peters/CBC)

The shallower and warmer waters will harm salmon, sturgeon, and people whose livelihoods depend on healthy rivers, he said.

Now, Salewski's non-profit is looking for help to slow water loss in tributaries, from Canada's best-known builders: beavers.

'Nature's engineers'

According to data from Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Fraser River near Prince George is at its lowest for this week in 17 years, and nearly a third below the historical average for October.

The Nechako River, which flows into the Fraser from a reservoir to the city's west, is at its lowest for this time of year since records were kept.

A Prince George, B.C., railway bridge at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers is seen in an October 2021 photograph. This October’s river levels are far below average for this time of year. (Submitted by Chuck Chin)

Salewski asked engineers at the University of Northern B.C. to help plan beaver dam analogues (BDAs), a promising fix that's common in Washington, Idaho and other U.S. states.

Sometimes also known as artificial logjams, the idea is to simulate the flat-tailed rodents' wood-and-mud dams to retain tributaries' moisture in small pools.

"Beavers are nature's engineers," said Mauricio Dziedzic, chair of UNBC engineering. "They tend to build dams that hold for quite a while."

He is helping Salewski's society with the technical aspects of beaver-style building. Thanks to their sharp teeth, he said, beavers cut wood to start a new dam, criss-crossing branches in a stream, adding mud, and then packing it tight with their flat tails.

Beavers use their sharp teeth to cut wood to build dams — criss-crossing branches in a stream, adding mud, and then packing it tight with their flat tails. (David P. Lewis/Shutterstock)

"They use their tails to tap it and and make it almost impervious," he said.

"A man-made structure made to look and function similarly — by keeping that water behind the dam — you recharge the groundwater [and] make the soil moisture increase."

'A more resilient kind of a waterway'

B.C. already has several such pilot projects. The B.C. Wildlife Federation (BCWF) and Nicola Valley Institute of Technology researchers installed nearly a dozen BDAs on a stream near Merritt, B.C., earlier this year.

The federation plans to build at least 100 more across the province's Interior and North, including in Nechako tributaries.

By driving vertical wood poles into the stream bed, and weaving them with debris such as logs, evergreen boughs and mud, their hope is beavers will take over their maintenance.

A beaver dam analogue is set up in Howard Creek, a tributary of the Nicola River, where 10 of the artificial logjams have been built as a pilot project that could soon expand across B.C. (Submitted by B.C. Wildlife Federation)

"It is basically a starter kit for a beaver," explained Neil Fletcher, BCTF's conservation stewardship director. "Can we encourage beavers to come back onto the land base and help hold that water?

"Beaver dam analogues can be part of post-fire recovery, as well as to respond to drought and climate change."

Last April, the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation offered the BCWF $100,000 to try out the woven wood dams across B.C.

A map of B.C. shows the seven-day average streamflow on waterways across the province according to the River Forecast Centre on Friday. The darker-red dots represent the most drought-affected rivers, and paler dots represent the least drought-affected, compared to their usual water flow. (B.C. River Forecast Centre/National Geographic maps)

Fletcher said a key area for study is how BDAs impact fish. But he said U.S. evidence suggests salmon can often migrate past beaver dams, or take advantage of their pools.

Salewski said the artificial beaver dams' low costs have big appeal — especially if beavers themselves can take over their maintenance.

"Fundamentally, a beaver dam analogue is building the landscape for beavers to move in in 10 to 15 years," he told CBC News.

"This idea … is actually trying to work toward wetland corridors, to create this new mosaic and build a more resilient kind of a waterway here."

 

Contaminants in cannabis and hemp flowers create potential for health risks

Team of researchers urges further study and evaluation of standards for medical use

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE

 

IMAGE: 

MATURE CANNABIS INFLORESCENCES EXHIBIT A LARGE FLORAL STRUCTURE THAT IS COMPOSED OF FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS (PISTILS), INFLORESCENCE LEAVES, AND THE BRACTS SURROUNDING THEM. PHOTO FROM FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY, COURTESY OF Z. PUNJA.

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CREDIT: PHOTO FROM FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY, COURTESY OF Z. PUNJA

Cannabis use, even for medical purposes, could make some people sick due to harmful fungi that contaminate the plants.

That is the finding of a recently published peer-reviewed journal article, whose authors recommend further study and consideration of changes to regulations to protect consumers, especially those who are immunocompromised. They examined data, previous studies, and U.S. and international regulations related to the cannabis and hemp industry.

The article was published in Frontiers in Microbiology. It was researched and written by Kimberly Gwinn, professor of entomology and plant pathology at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture: Maxwell Leung, assistant professor, and Ariell Stephens, graduate student, both from the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University; and Zamir Punja, professor of plant pathology/biotechnology at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

“Hemp and cannabis are new crops, and we are in the early stages of understanding relationships with their pathogens. Several pathogens produce mycotoxins, compounds that negatively impact human health and are regulated in other crops. In this review, we summarize the current literature on mycotoxins in hemp and cannabis products, identify research gaps in potential mycotoxin contamination in hemp and cannabis, and identify potential developments based on research in other crop systems,” Gwinn said.

Cannabis research has mostly focused on the substance and medical uses of the plant, but with the increased legalization of cannabis for various uses, this article addresses the need for more study of potential health risks.

“Although fungi and mycotoxins are common and well-studied contaminants in many agricultural crop species, they have been generally under-studied in cannabis and hemp. This is partly because human health risk assessment methodologies used to regulate food and pharmaceuticals have yet to become standard for the emerging cannabis and hemp industries. Additionally, the wide range of consumer uses of cannabis and hemp flowers, including for medical use by patients with susceptible conditions, makes it uniquely challenging to assess and manage human health risk of these contaminants,” according to the article.

The authors discuss Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium, Mucor, and other fungi that can infect the plants and can produce mycotoxins; review the regulations and assessment methods of the contaminants; and offer recommendations to produce safer products for all consumers. Environmental factors such as where the plants are grown, whether indoors or outdoors, and in soil or soilless media, may impact the kinds of contaminants and ensuing health risks.

Studies reviewed by the authors show some fungi may cause infection on lung and skin tissues, and these infections were most common when smoked and less common in edibles. They also found cancer patients using cannabis to help with nausea and appetite as well as transplant patients and consumers with HIV and type 1 diabetes may be particularly susceptible to infection. Studies also show workers harvesting cannabis could also be at risk. The authors encouraged consumers who are immunocompromised to use products that have been sterilized until better data are obtained.

The authors studied international and U.S. standards for these contaminants, but there is a lack of data on the prevalence of the contaminants and their health impacts. Another issue for consumers is the varying levels of legalization of cannabis products from state to state, which has resulted in each state creating its own regulations. Fusarium mycotoxins, a prevalent class of fungal contaminants in agricultural commodities that can result in vomiting, are not currently regulated.

Assessing and testing for pathogens can be problematic, as the authors found when they studied various methods including culture-based assays, immuno-based technologies, and emerging technologies. The article also examines management of the possible toxins before harvest and after harvest. “A major hurdle faced by cannabis and hemp industries is addressing the disconnect between production-related issues and human safety issues,” the article states. Recreational use of hemp and cannabis is common in many areas and all case studies linking cannabis use and fungal infections, except one, involved patients who were immunocompromised. The authors suggest a potential solution is “to reduce potential harm to medical users of cannabis from toxigenic fungi is to develop a two-tier system that distinguishes products intended for medical and recreational use.”

“We wrote this article to bring these issues to the attention of the scientific, medical, and regulatory communities. We hope to encourage further research in this area, particularly in the areas of mycotoxins in product. Better data and public access to data will allow us to fully evaluate these risks and subsequently ensure safe products for consumers,” Gwinn said.

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is composed of UT AgResearch, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT Extension, and the Herbert College of Agriculture. Through its land-grant mission of research, teaching and extension, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. utia.tennessee.edu.

mycelium (IMAGE)

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE

Proliferation of mycelium of a Fusarium species within cannabis inflorescence tissues under conditions of high humidity.

CREDIT

Photo from Frontiers in Microbiology, courtesy of Z. Punja.

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Microbiology

ARTICLE TITLE

Fungal and mycotoxin contaminants in cannabis and hemp flowers: implications for consumer health and directions for further research

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Oct-2023