It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
“I just have a reminder for the media. He’s your president, too. This is our president. This is our country. We’re celebrating the anniversary, 75 years of D-Day. This is a time where we should be celebrating our President, the great achievements of America. And I don’t think the American people like this constant negativity. There are times when we should be lifting up our president, especially when he’s overseas. He’s trying so hard. He’s never been given a break. But criticism doesn’t stop him. He keeps his foot on the gas. He’s so positive.” – RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, speaking today on Fox News.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, FRANCE — Onofrio Zicari had never been able to bring himself to return to the beaches of Normandy. But this year, at 96, the retired ...
Energy Minister Sonya Savage and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney leave Government House following a meeting with Alberta senators on Thursday, May 23, 2019. DAVID BLOOM/POSTMEDIA
Calgary will play home to the government’s planned oil industry war room, and Energy Minister Sonya Savage promises it’s going to start its work “very soon.”
Establishing a $30-million energy war room to “counter the lies” about the industry was a key plank in the UCP election platform.
Savage said Tuesday morning on her way into cabinet the group will be small, tight and compact, in keeping with her government’s “measured restraint” on spending.
“It’s got to be integrated in with the larger fight-back strategy. That includes things like the litigation fund, the public inquiry,” she said.
“We’re trying to knit all those pieces together to make sure we get it right.”
As for why it will be in Calgary, Savage said, “that’s where the industry is and that’s where the punchy communication experts are.”
Part of a larger strategy
Savage said the war room was the policy that most resonated with her constituents when she knocked on doors during the campaign.
“I think that’s because they saw an approach before that was way too complacent, and that approach had been going on for 10 years,” she said.
“We knew about the tar sands campaign starting back in 2008, and the complacent approach doesn’t work.”
Premier Jason Kenney said during the election the $30-million price tag was a fair one.
“I think it’s the best investment we could possibly make in defending an industry that is the source of about one-third of the jobs in this province, directly and indirectly,” Kenney said at the time.
Kenney’s planned oil strategy includes boycotting banks that won’t co-operate with oilsands financing, demanding the energy industry increase its own advocacy and education efforts, and establishing a $10-million litigation fund “to support pro-development First Nations in defending their right to be consulted on major energy projects.”
He also wants to strip Canadian environmental think-tank the Pembina Institute of provincial funding and launch a public inquiry into what he believes is the large-scale foreign funding of anti-oilsands campaigns.
Postmedia, the parent company of this newspaper, has hired a lobbyist to express interest in a role for its commercial content arm in the provincial energy campaign.
Adebayo Katiiti, the founder of RaricaNow, an organization supporting LGBTQ refugee claimants. He is a transgender man originally from Uganda who sought asylum in Canada. He's seen in Edmonton, on Thursday, May 30, 2019. IAN KUCERAK / POSTMEDIA
Basel Abou Hamrah now has a caseload of more than 100 LGBTQ refugees.
Most arrive absolutely alone, says the settlement practitioner at the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers. Disowned by their families, they don’t seek support from their ethnocultural community either, because it’s the homophobia back home that sent them fleeing.
They end up at homeless shelters, struggle to find housing, get lost in a complex asylum process and, supporters say, sometimes fail to tell their story clearly because of that. For them, deportation can mean death.
In the past, many refugees turned to the Pride Centre, says Abou Hamrah. But their needs and experiences are very different than those of Canadian-born community members. “They don’t fit,” he said. The refugees have been in the closet all their lives; many went to prison, were beaten and saw friends killed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
That’s important context for anyone trying to understand why the traditional Pride Festival isn’t happening this year. It would have launched next week.
As Edmonton becomes better known as an open place, welcoming to the LGBTQ community, more refugees from that community choose to locate here. But help is thin when they arrive.
Other minority groups also feel Pride’s parties, glamour and celebration aren’t matching their experience. That’s why two organizations, RaricaNow and Shades of Colour, wanted a change. They asked for funding to share their story, too, and space at the festival.
In April, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society cancelled the parade and festival. No one from the society was available to comment this week.
MacEwan University’s LGBTQ2S+ community, faculty, staff and visitors paint a rainbow sidewalk as the institution unveils a series of rainbow and transgender-themed crosswalks as Pride month kicks off.IAN KUCERAK /POSTMEDIA
Adebayo Katiiti, RaricaNow founder, says they just want awareness.
In many countries, homosexuality is a crime and police are still raiding Pride events, jailing organizers. “Black transpeople are being killed. People want to celebrate Pride when all this is happening? It’s a life-and-death situation. Cops, military, they’re on the streets arresting LGBTQ people. It’s intense. You just have to stand in solidarity.”
It seems like one step forward, two steps back for LGBTQ rights internationally. On the same day last week, the first same-sex couples were able to marry in Taiwan and Kenya’s high court voted to keep criminal laws against homosexuality.
Katiiti fled Uganda after getting picked up by police at a Pride event. In custody, he was stripped, photographed naked, beaten and tortured. His picture ran on national news and his family disowned him.
But he was scheduled to leave for Canada within two days to attend the International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics Championships. When he got out on bail, he hid at a safe house, then claimed asylum in Edmonton after the competition.
In a recent documentary about local LGBTQ refugees, another transgender man says he fled because his brother planned to gang rape him to prove he was a woman. A transgender woman says her father took her to a witch doctor to be cut and burned in an effort to “cure” her. Her boyfriend was beaten to death by a mob.
Another woman was tortured by police with electric shock at the request of her father until she promised police she would not be gay.
In the case of the transgender woman taken to a witch doctor, her refugee claim and appeal were recently denied. Katiiti and Abou Hamrah say the translator at the hearing was homophobic and didn’t share what the woman said accurately.
She’s gone into hiding, worried she’ll be killed if deported.
“Those are the most heart-breaking situations,” says Heather Razaghi, a member of St. Paul’s United Church who helped Katiiti settle and file his claim as part of the social justice committee. “(Others) haven’t been able to make those claims fairly and equally. If people knew those details, they wouldn’t be so quick to judge.”
Randy Boissonneault, MP and special advisor on LGBTQ2 issues, says no one officially submitted a complaint about homophobic interpreters here. But in an interview, he said he’ll work with the Mennonite Centre to ensure Canada’s immigration boards have access to interpreters claimants can trust.
I know a lot of people are still upset the Pride Festival is cancelled. But Pride is still alive.
On June 8, Evolution Wonderlounge is helping host Pride on 103, an all-day street festival downtown raising money for LGBTQ support organizations. On June 28, there’s a rally commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which kicked off the gay-rights movement in North America. That’s at the Alberta legislature, with an after party to follow. Those are just two of the largest events.
I hope Pride Festival organizers and local activists can sort this out before next year. Life is complex, full of joy and sorrow. The fact people suffer in many countries doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate progress here. But it does mean we should at least make space to listen.
Here’s a mystery: If space at the downtown Dynalife lab is so tight, how did officials carve out offices and labs for five new medical startups?
Because that’s what they’re announcing Monday.
One of these startups is creating a less intrusive urine test for colon cancer. Another is using artificial intelligence to improve prostate cancer screening, reducing the need for a biopsy. Between the five of them, the independent tech startups now have 5,000 square feet in the centre of a facility the public has been told is so crowded, it really can’t continue.
And those are not the only new colleagues the downtown lab is welcoming, said Jason Pincock, chief executive for Dynalife, a private company that holds a public contract for lab services. The Alberta Health Services (AHS) team for immunohistochemistry is moving here from the University of Alberta lab in June, putting public sector employees under a private roof.
Dynalife’s announcement Monday obviously has political undertones.
The Edmonton-based company is in a fight for its life, buoyed by the United Conservative promise to tear up the NDP’s $50-million buyout deal. It’s part of the move to scuttle Edmonton’s proposed Superlab, which had been under construction since March when newly-elected Premier Jason Kenney’s government hit pause.
As an Edmonton resident, it’s hard to know whether to cheer or grieve that decision. Edmonton needs investment in its medical labs — 76 per cent of equipment at the public AHS-run labs is past its useful life. The superlab included that equipment cost.
But at the same time, I don’t think recent narratives about Dynalife have been accurate.
Late last month, I asked former health minister Sarah Hoffman about the situation. She again pointed to Dynalife as the “biggest pressure point,” because it works out of leased space with old equipment.
But the NDP fail to mention Dynalife is leasing space from AIMCo, the investment arm of the provincial government. What can be more secure than that? If the Dynalife contract is serving the public interest, a premier can make that lease continue.
Plus, Dynalife’s equipment is not old, especially not when compared to the government’s own equipment. That’s where the real issue lies. According to the 2017 Health Quality Council report, Dynalife was investing between 25 and 29 cents per test annually in capital upgrades since 2012/13.
For AHS, that number was never higher than 9 cents. That’s why three quarters of the public equipment is ready to age out while, at the private site, Dynalife has made itself a demonstration site for next-generation technologies.
I toured the Dynalife facility Friday morning, watched robotic arms and scanners check the chemical content of blood. I saw where one staff member handles all the diabetes tests for northern Alberta, where all provincial pap smears go for analysis. It certainly felt calm, structured and well ordered.
Pincock says they still have space to expand in the current building, a two-storey structure that fills almost a half-block between the University of Alberta’s Enterprise Square and the Don Wheaton Family YMCA. Plus, he says, they could easily find more space in nearby office towers, if equipped with proper ventilation. Most of their equipment is no larger than a deep freeze.
Dynalife Medical Labs CEO Jason Pincock poses for a photo in front of an image of red blood cells at their downtown headquarters Friday May 24, 2019.DAVID BLOOM / POSTMEDIA
I also asked AHS for a tour of its medical labs. It turned me down. For more than a week I’ve been asking Alberta Health how much of the $590 million Superlab budget was for medical equipment upgrades versus building construction. No response.
Health Minister Tyler Shandro says he’s still seeking legal opinions to determine exactly how much cancelling the construction contract for the Superlab would cost in penalties. The project is on ice now.
We’re doing “due diligence,” he says, “taking a fresh look at this, trying to get all the information.” He would not give a timeline for that review.
Going back to the 2017 Alberta Health Quality Council report, it did not specifically call for buying out Dynalife. That was an NDP decision. The quality council simply said any private contract should be undertaken in the public interest. It recommended the current contract with Dynalife (a geographic approach, clear customer service targets and rewards for innovation) should be taken as a model for any new independent oversight board. Dynalife does not get paid per test.
Andrew Neuner, chief executive of the quality council, said its research stressed the importance of consolidation so the same type of test can be done in batches, increasing efficiency and quality control.
The current approach is like a school system, he says, “where they’ve got English on one side of town and math on the other.”
It’s frustrating because there are still too many unanswered questions to know who’s right and who’s wrong. Dynalife appears to be professional and efficient, but the government data suggest the public labs have been starved for investment for years. It’s time the government stop treating this issue like a political frisbee.
The financial impact of China’s recycling crackdown hit Edmonton much harder than predicted.
In 2018, China cracked down on Western countries shipping bales of poorly sorted recyclables — junk plastic that was melted down and sometimes burned or thrown in waterways from family-run, poorly-regulated recycling shops.
Their crack-down spread to other Asian countries. It changed the global market. Now low-quality plastics and dirty, poorly-sorted paper are nearly impossible to off-load.
It was good news for the Earth; bad news for Edmonton’s budget.
Last year, officials estimated the recycling budget would take a $1 million hit. That was actually $3.5 million, and despite the increased cost, Edmonton recycled less material. It sent 15,640 tonnes of blue bag material to the landfill last year, 4,140 tonnes more than the year before.
It’s time we realize what a failed experiment this version of recycling has been. We believed a fairy tale for decades, virtuously filling blue bags and setting them by the curb. We thought simply collecting the plastic, paper, glass and tin, doing a basic sort and selling it overseas made it just disappear.
Now the pigeons are coming home to roost. Unwanted Canadian trash in the Philippines spun into a major diplomatic row — to the point where the Philippine president threatened to declare war. Across North America, municipalities are burning and landfilling recyclables. Last week, Lacombe cancelled its curb side recycling program all together over the rising costs.
But it’s not all hopeless.
Calgary’s predicament sounded crazy when residents learned their city was spending $300,000 a year just to stockpile 100 shipping containers of hard-to recycle clear clamshell plastics. It refused to give in and landfill the material, now that the clamshell had already been collected and sorted.
That was last month. But Calgary’s dedication is paying off. They’re now sending this clear plastic to the Lower Mainland to get a second, more rigorous sort. Then the plastic gets shipped back to Calgary to be soaked in a caustic solution to remove adhesive and labels.
Clean and uncontaminated, it’s finally shredded, melted and turned into easy-to-process pellets locally. A responsible, albeit expensive and resource-intensive process.
We need a better solution, one that recognizes how much work recycling really is.
Look back up the line. Who is creating all this junk? Yes, blame goes to all of us consumers who get and discard single-use containers with nearly every food purchase.
But the responsibility doesn’t stop there. The companies deciding how to wrap products need to step up. And because it would be foolish to think they’ll reform just to be green, governments need to charge for waste created.
But that’s not just my idea. Every other province either has or is working on a system of “extended producer responsibility” — a program to charge companies based on the amount and type of packaging they create.
The money can add up. Officials told city councillors a system similar to B.C.’s would mean an extra $13 million a year to off-set recycling costs in Edmonton.
The cost of more responsible packaging likely gets passed down to the consumer, but the fees pay for processing waste at the other end. Hopefully, the system also reduces the amount of plastic created in the first place.
Unsurprisingly, all major municipalities are now behind this lobby effort. They’re starting consultation with industry, researching the best approach and trying to secure a joint meeting with Minister of Environment Jason Nixon.
But even that won’t solve all of Edmonton’s problems. Here, the situation is compounded by the fact local equipment is just so old. The recycling facility was built in 1998 and still uses hand sorting, people pulling different types of recyclables off conveyor belts at each station.
What plastic they recover is now going to companies in Ontario, along with the tin. But most paper is still going overseas, now to South Korea instead of China. Only the paper picked from Edmonton’s community bin program with the large boxes in shopping centre parking lots is clean enough to use locally
Officials says sorting equipment needs to be completely replaced at a cost $37 million. But, with council’s blessing, they decided to hold off. The future for recycling is just too uncertain.
“We don’t want to go through any significant changes now,” says Michael Robertson, who’s responsible for Edmonton’s recycling facility. “It’s not the best, but we’re doing the best we can with the situation.”
Funny. If you step back, that comment is actually refreshing, no? For decades, we were sold a bill of goods on how great Edmonton recycling was. Now the city is at least being honest: there is no silver bullet. Recycling is not easy. We need new solutions.
