Two small businesses added to Sandia National Laboratories’ Mentor-Protégé program

Working to grow with Sandia’s guidance and knowledge

Business Announcement

DOE/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

 

IMAGE: AN ELECTRONICS TECHNICIAN AT COMPUNETICS TESTS A HIGH-SPEED CABLE USED IN AN AEROSPACE APPLICATION. (PHOTO COURTESY OF COMPUNETICS) view more 

CREDIT: COMPUNETICS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories grew its Mentor-Protégé program from three companies to five with the addition of Dynamic Structures and Materials, LLC of Franklin, Tennessee, and Compunetics Inc., of Monroeville, Pennsylvania. The program not only helps small businesses develop and grow, but also helps foster long-term relationships that help Sandia achieve its mission.

As one of 17 DOE national laboratories, Sandia’s mission includes: anticipating and resolving emerging national security challenges and innovating and discovering new technologies.

“I am being asked by my customers to do things faster, better and cheaper,” said Norm Padilla, senior manager of interconnects at Sandia. “We already work with a lot of vendors, protégés are different, we are partners. We are going to be working with them for years, figuring out how to meet that goal.”

As part of the program, DSM and Compunetics get on-site visits from Sandia’s experts, gap analysis, workshops, outreach events and other one-on-one guidance. Another benefit is their ability to secure noncompetitive subcontracts from Sandia and DOE Federal agencies up to $7 million.

The DSM team welcomes the Mentor-Protégé team from Sandia National Laboratories during a site visit in March.

CREDIT

Robert Thompson/Sandia National Labs

Dynamic Structures and Materials, LLC

DSM, which builds precision motion systems for extreme or unique environments, has worked with Sandia before. They’ve also worked with the aerospace industry, military, and the US ITER Project, an international collaboration of scientists and engineers to build a reactor-scale burning plasma device that can demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power. “With magnetic fields and radiation in the reactor, the environment is not suitable for normal process valves, so we are making a custom valve that can survive and operate in that environment,” said DSM Director of Mechanical Engineering, Patrick McGirt.  The company is currently working to develop nonmagnetic robotic components for heart surgeries that can perform tiny motions using very little weight and power.

While it might seem like DSM is already a success story, with only 15 employees, it’s still a very small company. Leadership sees the Mentor-Protégé program as a potential boost. “We are excited to work with Sandia because it provides a level of manufacturing that will improve our company; we will be able to get to the next level,” said DSM Chief Financial Officer Jim Bickmore.

Compunetics Inc.

Compunetics is a leading manufacturer of rigid and flexible printed circuit boards and assemblies. They have been used in applications like nuclear control systems, guided missiles and secure communication systems. Compunetics also produces electronics for transportation and medical equipment.

Started in 1968, Compunetics was the vision of Dr. Giorgio Coraluppi, or Dr. C., the same man who developed teleconferencing technology, still widely used today. As an employee-controlled company, Compunetics continues to carry on Dr. C’s vision of innovative cutting-edge technology.

Compunetics sees the Mentor-Protégé program as a potential boost. “We are one of those hidden niches that people don’t know about; being a small company, we don’t have huge resources like Sandia,” said John Gralewski, director of sales. “Our goal is to continue to challenge ourselves and leverage the vast knowledge at Sandia.”

Sandia is currently working with Compunetics to build a flexible cable within 12 months that can fit in a small, contorted space while meeting specific standards. That’s no small feat. “A system won’t work without cables, plain and simple. They are important and need to be done correctly,” Padilla said. “What we do at Sandia is vital. Working with protégés helps them understand why it’s so important.”

The Compunetics team includes Sam Bain, left, Joe Nativio, Mike Pilyih, Joe Kasunich, Chicco Vigano, Erika Choltko, James Tripp. Compunetics is participating in Sandia National Laboratories’ Mentor-Protégé program.

CREDIT

compunetics

The Sandians behind the success

The Mentor-Protégé program has become a big success in its short existence. Started in 2019 with three mentors, it has grown to 127, with the credit going to the many Sandians who dedicate their time to it. That includes program lead Royina Lopez, leadership, mentors and support personnel.

“The mentors are key; they are the ones establishing personal connections with these small businesses. They are the ones who explain what we do and how we do it, in turn making sure these businesses are successful,” said Maria Galaviz, senior manager of product delivery value streams. Galaviz engages protégés and mentors on the production side of the house. She says this program is helping Sandia address the supply chain challenges affecting the country. “We need to have suppliers that can meet our schedule, quality and reliability requirements. It’s a perfect example of a partnership in design, supply chain and production. It’s a win-win-win situation,” added Galaviz.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

PROFIT SHARING IS NOT EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP
Frank Stronach: Profit sharing would be a boon to the working class and spur economic activity

Opinion by Frank Stronach • 1h ago

Frank Stronach: Profit sharing would be a boon to the working class and spur economic activity© Provided by National Post

Do employees have the right to share in the profits they help produce? I believe they do, and I further believe that the government should require all large companies in Canada with more than 300 employees to share their profits with their workers.

Profit sharing is one of seven core principles I outlined in a recent column that spelled out how we could invigorate our economy and improve the living standards of all Canadians. It is a winning formula for economic prosperity.

When a company is small, its owner is much closer to its employees. The owner has to treat the employees well and pay them fairly or they’ll end up leaving. That’s what I did when I started Magna International. I always showed my workers how much money we had in the bank, and I created an informal sort of profit-sharing system.

Basically, I instituted a bonus system to help retain and motivate my employees. If we had a big order and got it done ahead of schedule, everyone pocketed some extra cash. But it was all very informal and ad hoc.

As my company got larger and I was more removed from the day-to-day operations and our growing workforce, I realized that I needed something more formal. That’s when we made profit sharing a core principle of our “corporate constitution.”

We made every employee a partner in profitability and required Magna to share 10 per cent of its annual profits with employees. After we formalized the right to profit sharing within the company’s constitution, I was amazed at the huge gains we made in both productivity and profits.

The reason why is simple: our employees were on the front lines of the factory floor and knew our products and production processes better than anyone else; they knew how to create greater efficiencies and how to work smarter.

Because they knew they would get a slice of the profits we generated, they put their hearts and souls into making quality products at competitive prices. In fact, it became our mantra at Magna: make a better product for a better price.

With profit sharing in place, profits soared. In hindsight, if I could do it all over again, I would have shared 20 per cent of our profits with employees instead of 10, though it was still a sizable chunk.

When a business is small, profit sharing should be left up to the discretion of the owner, who has to worry about reinvesting profits in product development and other issues related to getting the business up and running.

But when companies are making billions of dollars a year, they should have to share some of those profits with their employees. A company can’t make a profit without the hard work and ingenuity of its workers.

The truth of the matter is that although every businessperson wants fewer regulations, restrictions and government oversight, companies also have to realize that government has a higher duty to ensure the overall well-being of society.

Government also has the right to address the growing income inequality in our society. It can do so by imposing higher taxes and redistributing the income from those taxes in the form of social assistance payments and benefits. But in that case, no one wins in the long run because of the stifling effect that increased taxation has on productivity and economic growth.

Another — and I would argue, far better — way government can address income disparity is by requiring large companies to share profits. Under this scenario, everyone wins.

Sharing profits with workers would benefit companies, employees and governments. Companies would see an increase in productivity and profits. Employees would get more income. And governments would gain enhanced tax revenue due to the growth spurred by higher consumer spending.

But if we fail to allow workers to participate in wealth creation, and if the gap between the wealthy and the workers grows wider and wider, society will inevitably drift toward socialism, with growing cries to take from the rich and give to the poor.

Essentially, profit sharing is a philosophy that recognizes that a successful business is driven by three forces — managers, workers and investors — and that all three have a moral right to share in the success of the business.

If a national citizens’ movement adopted profit sharing as a key principle in the effort to restore Canada’s economic health, it would be a policy that millions of Canadians would likely support.

National Post
fstronachpost@gmail.com

Frank Stronach is the founder of Magna International Inc., one of Canada’s largest global companies, and an inductee in the Automotive Hall of Fame.

Frank Stronach: Fixing capitalism by mandating profit sharing

SHARHOLDING WITHOUT OWNERSHIP 

IS CAPITALIST REFORMISM

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EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP IS STILL CAPITALIST REFORMISM
ONLY WORKERS SELF MANAGEMENT
IS SOCIALISM; ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

Global temperature rise could see billions live in places where human life doesn’t flourish, study says

Story by Tara Subramaniam • CNN

May 23.2023

If the current pace of global warming goes unchecked, it will push billions of people outside the “climate niche,” the temperatures where humans can flourish, and expose them to dangerously hot conditions, according to a new study published Monday.

The study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, evaluated the impact on humans if the world continues on its projected trajectory and warms 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, compared to pre-industrial temperatures.

Factoring in both the expected global warming and population growth, the study found that by 2030 around two billion people will be outside the climate niche, facing average temperatures of 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher, with around 3.7 billion living outside the niche by 2090.

Timothy Lenton, one of the study’s two lead authors, said that one third of the global population could find themselves living in climate conditions that don’t support “human flourishing.”

“That’s a profound reshaping of the habitability of the surface of the planet and it could lead potentially to large scale reorganization of where people live,” Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, said in a video shared by the institute.

According to the report, the niche consists of places where the annual average temperature spans from 13 degrees Celsius (55 degrees Fahrenheit) to around 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Celsius). Outside this window, conditions tend to be too hot, too cold or too dry.

The study determined that while less than 1% of the global population is currently exposed to dangerous heat, with average temperatures of 29 degrees Celsius or higher, climate change has already put more than 600 million people outside the niche.

“Most of these people lived near the cooler 13 degree Celsius peak of the niche and are now in the ‘middle ground’ between the two peaks. While not dangerously hot, these conditions tend to be much drier and have not historically supported dense human populations,” said study co-author Chi Xu, a professor at Nanjing University.

If the Earth warms 2.7 degrees Celsius, India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan would be the top five countries with the most population exposed to dangerous heat levels, the study found.

The entire population of some countries, such as Burkina Faso and Mali, as well as small islands already at risk from rising sea levels, would face unprecedented high temperatures.

In the worst case scenarios, if the Earth warms up by 3.6 or even 4.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, half of the world’s population would be outside the climate niche, constituting what the report calls “an existential risk.”


The last eight years have been the warmest on record. 

- Samsul Said/Bloomberg/Getty Images

According to the report, living outside the niche could lead to increased mortality rates, as exposure to temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius could be lethal, especially if humidity is so high the body can no longer cool itself to a temperature that can maintain normal functions.

Extreme heat is also predicted to decrease crop yields, and increase conflict and the spread of disease.

Scientists have long warned that warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius would result in catastrophic and potentially irreversible changes. As the areas within the climate niche shrink as global temperatures rise, a larger swath of the population will also be more frequently exposed to extreme weather events including droughts, storms, wildfires and heatwaves.

Experts say there is still time to slow the pace of global warming by moving away from burning oil, coal and gas and toward clean energy, but the window is closing.

Every fraction of a degree will make a difference, Lenton said. “For every 0.1 degrees Celsius of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat.”

Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization announced that within the next five years, there is a 66% chance that the planet’s temperature will be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels for at least one year.

“We’ve left it so late to tackle climate change properly that we’re now at a point that to achieve the rate of change we need, means something like a five times speeding up of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or the decarbonization of the global economy,” Lenton said.

 CNN.com

Current climate policy to ‘leave two billion exposed to dangerous heat by 2100’


Rebecca Speare-Cole, PA sustainability reporter
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, unprecedented new research suggests.

The paper, published on Monday and co-authored by academics from around the world, examines the “human climate niche” – the temperature range in which humans have lived and flourished throughout history – and how warming could see billions of people falling outside of it.

The researchers from University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, alongside the Earth Commission and Nanjing University, argue that current legally binding climate policies are estimated to produce an average temperature rise of 2.7C by 2100.

They said this could leave two billion people – 22% of the projected end-of-century population – exposed to dangerous heat, defined as an average annual temperature of 29°C or higher.

Forecasts show areas of the world where humans could be exposed to dangerous heat by 2100.

At these high temperatures, water resources could become strained, mortality could increase, economic productivity could decrease, animals and crops could no longer flourish, and large numbers of people may migrate.

However, the forecasts also show that limiting warming to 1.5C in line with the Paris Climate Agreement would leave just 5% outside the niche by 2100, highlighting “the importance of decisive action” to limit the human costs and inequities of climate change.

Professor Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute, said that many areas of the world will “go up to unprecedented temperatures that nobody experienced in the historical climate” when warming hits 2.7C.

More than 600 million people in India and 300 million people in Nigeria could be exposed to dangerous temperatures by 2100, as well as areas of Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Australia, and almost 100% of Burkina Faso and Mali.

The research found that under the worst-case scenarios of 3.6C or even 4.4C global warming, half of the world’s population could be left outside the climate niche, posing an “existential risk”.

Prof Lenton said limiting warming to 1.5C makes a “profound difference” to forecasts, with those exposed to dangerous heat decreasing from more than two billion people to a little over 400 million people.

“The costs of global warming are often expressed in financial terms, but our study highlights the phenomenal human cost of failing to tackle the climate emergency,” he said.

“For every 0.1C of warming above present levels, about 140 million more people will be exposed to dangerous heat.

“This reveals both the scale of the problem and the importance of decisive action to reduce carbon emissions.

“Limiting global warming to 1.5C rather than 2.7C would mean five times fewer people in 2100 being exposed to dangerous heat.”

The researchers said their paper highlights the inequity of climate crisis as the people least responsible for greenhouse emissions could face the most the exposure to dangerous heat.

They also found that the lifetime emissions of 3.5 average global citizens today – or just 1.2 US citizens – expose one future person to dangerous heat.

“We were triggered by the fact that the economic costs of carbon emissions hardly reflect the impact on human wellbeing,” said Professor Marten Scheffer, of Wageningen University, who co-authored the report.

“Our calculations now help bridging this gap and should stimulate asking new, unorthodox questions about justice.”

Prof Scheffer said that migration would be a “very natural adaptation” to the changing world.

He said: “It’s not like the earth is becoming unliveable, it’s just the best place on earth for humans is changing and that is a thing that happens to other species and a normal response to that is to move to the better places.”

But he added that migration will be part of the “human cost” of climate change. “No one wants to move away from the place they are born and it will be a cost for everyone in the world because it has to be accommodated in some way,” he said.

“It opens up a whole discussion about what is the best way for humanity to go ahead.

“One is to put the breaks on global warming but as you can see from the results, it is likely we will have to reaccommodate people on the globe.”

Catch-22: Canada's attempts to phase out fossil fuel might result in it paying the polluters

Kyla Tienhaara, Canada Research Chair in Economy and Environment, Queen's University, Ontario
Mon, May 22, 2023 

US$20 billion: That’s how much American investors think Canadian taxpayers should fork over to compensate them for their failed bid to develop a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Québec.

That’s almost a fifth of the province’s total budget for this year.

Ruby River Capital LLC, the U.S.-based owner of GNL Québec Inc., filed a claim against Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) after its Énergie Saguenay project failed to pass a federal environmental impact assessment.

The proposed LNG terminal had already been rejected by the Québec government over concerns that it would increase greenhouse gas emissions and negatively impact First Nations and marine mammals.

Canada faces a no-win situation — a catch-22. If the government does not rapidly phase out fossil fuels, it will fail to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement to address the climate crisis. But when it takes steps to do so, foreign investors invoke international trade and investment agreements like NAFTA and threaten to drain public coffers.

Paying the polluters

Unlike environmental treaties, trade and investment agreements have teeth. They are enforceable through a system known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that allows foreign investors to bypass local courts and bring claims for monetary compensation to a panel of three arbitrators. More than 1,200 ISDS cases have been launched against governments around the world in the last 25 years.

Read more: World Bank ruling against Pakistan shows global economic governance is broken

Between 1996 and 2018, Canada was sued more than 40 times by American investors through the investment chapter in NAFTA. To date, Canada has lost or settled (with compensation) 10 claims. Canadian governments have paid out more than $263 million in damages and settlements.

When NAFTA was replaced in 2018 with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it did not include an ISDS mechanism between Canada and the U.S. Chrystia Freeland, the then-deputy prime minister of Canada, noted at the time that the removal of ISDS “strengthened our government’s right to regulate in the public interest, to protect public health and the environment.”

Ruby River was only able to launch its case because USMCA allowed firms that had made investments before NAFTA’s termination — on July 1, 2020, — to continue to bring ISDS claims for three years — until June 30, 2023.

Importantly, Ruby River spent only about CDN$165 million on the Énergie Saguenay project proposal. However, the firm is permitted within the ISDS system to seek “lost future profits” based on speculation about the performance of notoriously volatile oil and gas markets.

Risks to climate policy

Québec is a member of the global Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and is the first jurisdiction in the world to ban all oil and gas production. The province is being sued over this ban by several fossil fuel firms — seeking more compensation than was offered — in Québec’s Superior Court.

Had these companies been foreign, and thereby qualified for the protection of an investment treaty, they likely would have chosen ISDS instead. This is because ISDS generally provides broader scope for claims — and larger awards — than domestic courts.




Other jurisdictions need to follow Québec’s lead. The global carbon budget has no room for new coal, oil or gas developments. Construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure also needs to be limited, as it would lock in continued extraction long into the future.

Despite clear messages to this effect from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency, investors continue to propose new fossil fuel projects. They do so in full knowledge that governments need to act to curb emissions in line with their international commitments and that future climate policies may negatively impact their investments.

Allowing these companies to demand billions in compensation creates moral hazard and could dampen necessary policy action.

Read more: A secretive legal system lets fossil fuel investors sue countries over policies to keep oil and gas in the ground – podcast

Governments are increasingly aware of this risk and many are taking action. The European Union is seeking to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty, the largest investment treaty in the world, because it “is not aligned with the Paris Agreement, the EU Climate Law or the objectives of the European Green Deal.”

The Biden administration is committed to not signing up to new agreements with ISDS and a number of Democrats are calling for the removal of the mechanism from existing deals. Other countries such as Australia and New Zealand have worked to exclude ISDS from some of their trade agreements.

Future threats

Canada will soon escape from the legacy of NAFTA. However, the government remains exposed to the threat of ISDS through other trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), as well as dozens of bilateral investment treaties.

When the U.K. officially joins the CPTPP, the risk of ISDS claims from fossil fuel firms will increase dramatically.

The idea that public finance, desperately needed for the energy transition and climate adaptation, will be redirected to compensate fossil fuel firms currently making record profits is offensive.

In light of the increasing body of evidence that documents how the industry has actively obstructed climate action and helped to spread disinformation about climate science, it is communities impacted by climate change that should be compensated by fossil fuel firms, not the other way around.

The Canadian government should adopt a consistent approach to ISDS. The exclusion of ISDS from USMCA should be emulated in any future agreements, and Canada should work with treaty partners to remove access to the system in all current ones.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.

It was written by: Kyla Tienhaara, Queen's University, Ontario.

Read more:


Coastal GasLink and Canada’s pension fund colonialism


A bridge to nowhere: Natural gas will not lead Canada to a sustainable energy future

Kyla Tienhaara receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program and SSHRC (Government of Canada). She collaborates with and provides pro bono advice for a number of non-profit organizations working on climate and investment issues.

House Republicans are planning to vote on a bill this week to deprive over '40 million hard-working' student-loan borrowers of debt cancellation, the White House says — and if passed, Biden will veto it


Ayelet Sheffey
Mon, May 22, 2023 

President Biden.Jacquelyn Martin, Pool

Republicans are planning to bring a bill overturning student-debt relief to the House floor for a vote this week.


The White House said in a Monday statement that Biden will veto the bill if it makes it to his desk.


While the bill could pass the GOP-controlled House, it faces a tricky path ahead in the Senate.

House Republicans are teeing up a vote this week to overturn President Joe Biden's student-loan forgiveness, and as expected, the White House is ready to reject that legislation.

Earlier this month, the House education committee voted to approve a resolution that would block Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers, along with immediately ending the ongoing student-loan payment pause.

First introduced in March by GOP Rep. Bob Good, the resolution used the Congressional Review Act, which is an oversight tool lawmakers can use to overturn final rules put in place by government agencies. A group of Republican senators also introduced a companion version of the bill, and the House is expected to vote on the legislation on Wednesday.

Even before Biden announced his broad student-loan forgiveness plan, many Republican lawmakers launched a series of attacks on the relief, calling it costly and unfair to those who have already paid off their debt. But many Democrats and the Biden administration have maintained confidence in the legality of the relief and said it is necessary to help millions of borrowers financially recover from the pandemic — and the White House is emphasizing its stance in a Monday statement from the Office of Management and Budget.

"This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief," the OMB said.

"Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic," the OMB added. "The Department of Education's action is based on decades-old authority granted by Congress. That authority has been used by multiple administrations over the last two decades following the same procedures to protect borrowers from the effects of national emergencies and has never been subject to the Congressional Review Act. The Department's action here should be treated no differently."

The statement concluded: "If Congress were to pass H.J. Res. 45, the President would veto it."

Biden's broad debt relief plan has been blocked since November due to two conservative-backed lawsuits that paused the implementation of the plan. Currently, millions of borrowers are awaiting a Supreme Court decision on the legality of the relief — expected by the end of June — but GOP lawmakers apparently don't want to wait for that decision, as evidenced by the resolution.

During an education committee hearing last week, top Republican Virginia Foxx said that "the culture of this country has shifted from one in which individuals are responsible for paying for themselves to one in which the government plays nanny to each individual need."

While the resolution could pass the House given the Republican majority, if faces a much trickier path in the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. And 261 advocacy groups also recently called on congressional leaders to reject the Republican attempts to block student-debt relief, writing in a letter that "these CRA efforts would immediately force tens of millions of borrowers into abrupt and unplanned repayment with devastating effects, including adding thousands of dollars of payments and interest onto their loan balances."

CANADA

Deportation order over bogus college admission letter could set precedent: lawyers

The Canadian Press
Sat, May 20, 2023 



TORONTO — An Edmonton woman is facing deportation from Canada this month after a college admission letter that secured her entry into the country five years ago turned out to be fake.

Even though Karamjeet Kaur, 25, proved not to know the letter was fraudulent, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has ruled that she be deported by May 29.

That decision will likely have implications for possibly hundreds of other international students in Canada who reportedly received similar fake admission letters from the same education agent in India -- a situation that shows lack of accountability by border and immigration authorities, according to lawyers and activists who spoke with The Canadian Press.

Kaur, whose poor, rural Indian family spent their life savings so she could be the first among them to study and work abroad, now works as a supervisor for a company in Edmonton.She's married to a Canadian citizen, frequently volunteers, has a work permit valid until November and was on the path to becoming a permanent resident.

Avnish Nanda of Nanda & Company law firm, which has taken on Kaur’s case, said she's the type of person Canada wants. “She’s contributed so much, and she has the kind of character commitment to this country that we want in young immigrants.”

It wasn’t until 2021, during the last stage of Kaur's application for permanent residency, that the Canada Border Services Agency informed her the admission letter from Toronto's Seneca College, which secured her student visa, was fake.

Kaur said that upon her arrival to Canada, the agent in India only told her that her spot at Seneca was no longer available. Kaur eventually went to NorQuest College in Edmonton, where she graduated from a business and administration management program in 2020.

“We thought that the immigration process is very strict, and that they verify everything when they are giving the visa,” Kaur said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “I was really shocked. I’ve already been here five years. Canada is my country now.”

Nanda said immigration officials in both India and Canada believed that Kaur’s college admission letter was legitimate.

The same education agent gave as many as 700 students fraudulent admission letters to Canadian post-secondary schools, according to those trying to help the students who now face removal from Canada. The education agent is now reportedly facing charges in India.

Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed in an email to The Canadian Press that "there are a number of active Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) investigations into cases of misrepresentation, including those related to study permits."

The CBSA did not provide further details, citing ongoing investigations, and said it does not comment on specific cases.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said it's required to hold an admissibility hearing in cases where the CBSA alleges that someone is inadmissible to enter or remain in Canada.

In January 2023, a Federal Court judge dismissed Kaur's request for a judicial review of the Immigration Board's deportation order. The judge found Kaur "genuinely believed" she had been accepted to Seneca College, but noted that she never took any action to verify her acceptance and never contacted the university to query why her purported acceptance had been withdrawn.

Kaur's deportation orderestablished an implied legal precedent for other students awaiting their hearing results, said Nanda. She's has since applied for permanent residency in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and through sponsorship.

Kaur and more than a dozen others protested outside Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s constituency office in Toronto on May 3 to demand culpability for their fake letters’ initial acceptance by Canadian immigration officials. An online petition against the deportations of affected students, launched by Migrant Workers Alliance the next day, has since received more than 940 signatures.

“We’re international students. We’re contributing millions of dollars in Canada’s economy… we stepped up (as essential workers) in COVID. We’re the victims of fraud. (Canada) has to do a proper investigation,” Lovepreet Singh, a victim of the same admission letter fraud, said at the protest. “If we have to go back, it would be an outrageous injustice for us.”

Jaswant Mangat is representing about 40 students in various stages of their admissibility hearingsbefore the immigration boardand said that his clients’ visa processing was done too hastily, often within a week. "There was no oversight or verification system,” he said.

"If agents know that (Canada’s immigration) system is unable to detect fraud, they’ll continue to commit it," said Mangat.

In response to claims that incoming students' permits and visa documents weren't adequately reviewed, the CBSA said that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is responsible for receiving and reviewing study permit applications. They did not confirm or deny the number of possibly fraudulent acceptance letters flagged in 2018. IRCC did not respond to questions about those claims by publication time.

Nanda said that Mendicino and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser should use the powers of their offices to mandate a process to determine whether all implicated students were unaware of the letter fraud, as Kaur proved in her judicial hearing.

"The government can today address this issue in a way that is compassionate and recognizes our domestic migration targets but also the daily lives of these folks who sacrificed everything to come to this country," said Nanda.

The Immigration and Refugee Board said it decides each case "on its merits, based on the law and the evidence and arguments presented by the parties."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 20, 2023

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Kiernan Green, The Canadian Press

Belgian unions demonstrate in Brussels to demand better worker protection

Mon, May 22, 2023 



BRUSSELS (AP) — Almost 20,000 Belgian trade union members mounted a demonstration on Monday to protest what they see as increasingly bad working conditions and the erosion of their right to strike. Action by transport workers paralyzed subway and other traffic in Brussels for most of the day.

The trade unions are irked by companies that seek to impose new contracts on workers that impact their social rights, affect their working conditions and cut their pay. They are specifically protesting the decision by the Delhaize supermarket chain to change the store management setup, directly cutting into the income and rights of staff.

Police authorities estimated the crowds walking through the capital at 18,000.

“We don't want second-class employees. We want respect and equal rights for all,” the socialist ABVV union said in a statement.

The unions are also protesting management measures to stifle strike action through court injunctions against the blocking of company premises, among other issues.

“The defense of our social and trade union rights is being made impossible,” the ABVV statement said.

Apart from public transportation, the day of protest could affect anything from day care centers to garbage collection.

The Associated Press

Meteorites found in Canada cannot be removed from the country without permit

The Canadian Press
Sun, May 21, 2023 


Catch a falling star if you can, and by all means put it in your pocket, but don't try to cross international borders with it lest you run afoul of a little-known Canadian law.

An American museum will have to navigate that law's intricacies should it try to buy portions of a meteorite believed to have landed in New Brunswick last month.

A fireball ripped through the Earth's atmosphere on April 8 and landed somewhere in the province, prompting the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum to offer a US$25,000 reward for the first one kilogram meteorite recovered.

But Chris Herd, a professor at the University of Alberta and curator of its meteorite collection, said obtaining the asteroid fragments won't be as simple as making an offer.

"In Canada, all meteorites are considered Canadian cultural property automatically through the Cultural Property Export and Import Act," he said in an interview. "... "If it's public property, say an American comes in and finds (the meteorite,) they have to apply to export it from Canada. They may not actually take it out of Canada unless they have an approved export permit."

The museum in Bethel, Maine, has openly expressed interest in obtaining some of the space debris if and when it's found.

Darryl Pitt, head of the museum's meteorite division, said doppler radar readings suggest the meteorite — which most likely originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — was likely scattered over the part of New Brunswick straddling Maine.

The museum's interest also extends beyond just the first 1-kg meteorite; a news release said it will buy any additional specimens found.

"Depending on the type of meteorite this is, specimens could easily be worth their weight in gold," Pitt said.

Herd said meteorites can be identified by a dark brown or black outer glassy crust that resembles an eggshell, he said.

"That's a telltale sign that it's come through the Earth's atmosphere from space," he said, noting they're usually dense and surprisingly heavy.

The person who finds a whole or partial meteorite on public property must complete an export application that's reviewed by an expert examiner, said Herd, who is one of several in Canada.

"The expert examiner then might say, 'well, this is of potential outstanding significance and national importance,'" he said.

"If the expert examiner says, 'Oh, I think this is significant, and important,' then (the Canadian Border Services) will recommend refusal of the export permit."

The file then goes to a cultural property export review board, which can disagree with the expert examiner and let the meteorite be exported. Alternatively, it can impose a six-month embargo period during which Canadian institutions can offer to buy the meteorite for a fair market price, he said.

Anyone taking a meteorite out of Canada without the requisite permit can face fines of up to $25,000, as much as five years in prison or both.

Despite its open interest in purchasing the meteorite, Pitt said the Mineral and Gem Museum is well aware of the regulations it must follow to obtain any fragments that surface.

"The museum should always do due diligence ... as to whether the meteorite was obtained legally before they actually acquire it," Herd said.

"If it comes from outside of the U.S., as would be the case in this scenario, then they would need to do their due diligence and make sure that the person exported it legally from Canada."

Pitt said the responsibility of obtaining an export permit lies with whoever finds a meteor. For its part, he said the museum would "immediately get in touch" with Herd to help broker a deal.

"If Canada wants it, it's Canadian," he said. "I hope that we could arrive at an agreement with our Canadian friends so that a sample of it could come to the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum."

Herd said he made a deal with an American dealer for a piece of the Grimsby meteorite that fell in southern Ontario's Niagara region in 2009.

"They realized they weren't going to be able to get it exported because it was a unique fall," he said.

Since Canada is a vast country, Herd said thousands of meteorites may have fallen in remote places.

"I don't think we would actually know how many of them are anywhere in Canada. But they are part of Canada's natural history. The law is there for a reason."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 21, 2023.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press