Indian villagers clash with army over mistaken   DELIBERATELY CALCULATED killings


An Indian army soldier stands guard on a highway on the outskirts of Kohima, capital of northeastern Nagaland state, India, Sunday, Dec. 5, 2021. Angry villagers burned army vehicles in protest after more than a dozen people were killed by Indian army soldiers who mistakenly believed some of them were militants in Nagaland state, along the border with Myanmar, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from here. Nagaland state’s top elected official ordered a probe into the killings, which occurred on Saturday. (AP Photo/Yirmiyan Arthur)

WASBIR HUSSAIN
Sat, December 4, 2021, 

GAUHATI, India (AP) — Angry villagers burned army vehicles in protest after more than a dozen people were killed by soldiers who mistakenly believed some of them were militants in India’s remote northeast region along the border with Myanmar, officials said Sunday.

Nagaland state’s top elected official Neiphiu Rio ordered a probe into the killings, which occurred on Saturday. He tweeted, “The unfortunate incident leading to the killing of civilians at Oting is highly condemnable.”

An army officer said the soldiers fired at a truck after receiving intelligence about a movement of insurgents in the area and killed six people. As irate villagers burned two army vehicles, the soldiers fired at them, killing nine more people, the officer said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

One soldier was also killed in the clash with protesters, he said.

On Sunday, fresh violence erupted when nearly 200 residents attacked the army camp in Mon district, going on a rampage and setting fire to residential quarters. Army soldiers fired live ammunition at the crowd, killing two more people, police and a local student leader, Yuwong Konyaki, said.

Police rushed reinforcements in the area to stop further violence.

An Indian army statement said it “deeply regretted” the incident and its aftermath, adding that “the cause of the unfortunate loss of lives is being investigated at the highest level and appropriate action will be taken as per the course of law.”

"Security forces have suffered severe injuries in the incident, including one soldier who succumbed to the injuries," it added.

The statement said “credible intelligence” on insurgent movements indicated that a “specific operation was planned” in Mon district in Nagaland.

Insurgents often cross into Myanmar after attacking Indian government forces in the remote area.



Indian army soldiers ride past the main town in a convoy in Kohima, capital of northeastern Nagaland state, India, Sunday, Dec. 5, 2021. Angry villagers burned army vehicles in protest after more than a dozen people were killed by Indian army soldiers who mistakenly believed some of them were militants in Nagaland state, along the border with Myanmar, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from here. Nagaland state’s top elected official ordered a probe into the killings, which occurred on Saturday. 

Nyamtow Konyak, a local community leader, said those killed were coal miners.

India’s Home Minister Amit Shah expressed anguish over the “unfortunate incident” and said the state government will investigate the killings.

The army officer said the soldiers had laid an ambush for a week following intelligence that insurgents were planning to attack soldiers in the area, 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state.

Government forces are battling dozens of ethnic insurgent groups in India’s remote northeast whose demands range from independent homelands to maximum autonomy within India.

Indian villagers burn army vehicles as soldiers kill 15 in Nagaland, fearing rebels

AP
Published December 5, 2021 -

In this file photo, Indian forces are seen patrolling in an area. — Reuters/File

Angry villagers in India burned army vehicles in protest after more than a dozen people were killed by soldiers who mistakenly believed some of them were militants in the country's remote northeast region along the border with Myanmar, officials said on Sunday.

Nagaland state’s top elected official Neiphiu Rio ordered a probe into the killings, which occurred on Saturday, and he tweeted, “The unfortunate incident leading to the killing of civilians at Oting is highly condemnable.”

An army officer said the soldiers fired at a truck after receiving intelligence about a movement of insurgents in the area and killed six people.

As irate villagers burned two army vehicles, the soldiers fired at them, killing nine more people, the officer said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to reporters. Earlier the officer had said seven protesters were killed.

One soldier was also killed in the clash with protesters, he said.


An Indian army statement said it “deeply regretted” the incident and its aftermath, adding that “the cause of the unfortunate loss of lives is being investigated at the highest level and appropriate action will be taken as per the course of law.”

"Security forces have suffered severe injuries in the incident, including one soldier who succumbed to the injuries," it added.

The statement said “credible intelligence” on insurgent movements indicated that a “specific operation was planned” in Mon district in Nagaland.

Insurgents often cross into Myanmar after attacking Indian government forces in the remote area.

Nyamtow Konyak, a local community leader, said those killed were coal miners.

India’s Home Minister Amit Shah expressed anguish over the “unfortunate incident” and said the state government will investigate the killings.

The army officer said the soldiers had laid an ambush for a week following intelligence that insurgents were planning to attack soldiers in the area, 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state.

Government forces are battling dozens of ethnic insurgent groups in India’s remote northeast whose demands range from independent homelands to maximum autonomy within India

13 civilians killed by security forces in India's northeast

Nagaland and other states in northeast India, linked to the rest of the country by a narrow land corridor, has seen decades of unrest among ethnic and separatist groups (AFP/Ye Aung THU)

Sun, December 5, 2021

Indian security forces killed 13 civilians in the northeastern state of Nagaland after firing on a truck and later shooting at a crowd that gathered to protest the attack, police said Sunday.

Troops shot dead six labourers returning to their homes on Saturday afternoon in Mon district, near the Myanmar border, after setting up an ambush for insurgents they believed were operating in the area.

Family members and villagers later went looking for the missing men and confronted the troops after finding the bodies.

"This is where a confrontation happened between the two sides, and the security personnel fired, killing seven more people," Nagaland police officer Sandeep M. Tamgadge told AFP.

Tamgadge said the situation in the district was "very tense right now", with nine other civilians wounded in the second incident now being treated in local hospitals.

The Indian army said in a statement one of its soldiers had died during the confrontation, with an unspecified number of troops wounded.

It added soldiers were acting on "credible intelligence" that insurgents were operating in the area and had laid an ambush to intercept them.

"The cause of the unfortunate loss of lives is being investigated at the highest level and appropriate action will be taken as per the course of law," the statement said.

- 'Appeal for peace' -

Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio appealed for calm and announced an investigation into the event.

"The unfortunate incident leading to killing of civilians at Oting, Mon is highly condemnable," he said on Twitter. "Appeal for peace from all sections."

Mon district is about 220 miles (350 kilometres) from Nagaland's capital Kohima, and is more than a day's drive only along poorly maintained roads.

Senior state, police and army officials had reached the district to investigate, a senior state government official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

India's Home Minister Amit Shah expressed his regret over the incident and said the state probe would "ensure justice to the bereaved families".

Nagaland and other states in northeast India, linked to the rest of the country by a narrow land corridor, has seen decades of unrest among ethnic and separatist groups.

The region is home to dozens of tribal groups and small guerrilla armies whose demands range from greater autonomy to secession from India.

Over the years insurgency has waned, with many groups striking deals with New Delhi for more powers, but a large Indian garrison remains stationed in the region.

bb/gle/rbu

Reforming how we pay for electricity in a renewables world

Fixed-charged billing makes sense but provision needs to be made for less well off

Fri, Dec 3, 2021,
John FitzGerald

Wind turbines at the Arklow Bank wind park.

In tackling climate change, we plan to rely more than ever on electricity to heat our homes and to power transport. And as part of a plan to decarbonise electricity production, we aim to use renewables to provide the vast bulk of the electricity that we need.

This increased dependence on electricity poses a number of difficulties. Security of supply is one. However, there are other problems – the increasing demand from data centres, scaling up the electricity grid and funding the huge investment needed in electricity generation.

In principle, the electricity market should incentivise the provision of a secure and carbon-free electricity supply at minimum cost. However, as suggested in a recent ESRI paper, the current market structure, while appropriate a decade ago, needs to adapt to deal with these new challenges.

As a former member of the Northern Ireland Authority for Energy Regulation, I was involved in developing the all-island electricity market which began in 2007.

We considered whether to implement a complicated mechanism, with different prices for electricity across the network, to reflect where there were bottlenecks in the electricity grid. In the end, it was decided that a simpler approach was warranted.

However, an alternative mechanism was not implemented to ensure that key consumers, such as data centres, would be built where they could be cheaply serviced. This is now posing problems for the operation of the system.

Security of supply

We’ve all become more conscious of the potential risks to security of supply, whether from prolonged calm weather, from power stations being out of action or even from a cyberattack. The film Die Hard 4, where terrorists took over the electricity system’s control room, highlighted the chaos that could follow when the electricity system is disabled.

The original design of the all-island electricity market had incentives to make generation available when it was needed. However, the model was altered in 2018 to meet European Union requirements, to allow trading with Britain and to reduce the cost of ensuring adequate capacity.

This modified approach clearly did not work as planned. Initially, it jeopardised a key generation station in Dublin as there was no incentive for it to continue to operate.

The ESRI research argues that a new type of electricity market is needed. Compared with the early 2000s, the problem of designing such a market is more difficult today because of the need to dramatically increase the share of renewable electricity. Generators need to be paid for three different services they provide to society: the electricity they produce, for making power available when needed and for helping make the electricity system work as it should.

Making data centres provide their own back-up power when the wind does not blow may protect security of supply in the short term but it is not a suitable long-term answer. Because larger generators are more efficient than smaller ones, this solution is likely to lead to higher carbon emissions than if the electricity system was responsible for providing a secure supply.
Fixed charges

As renewables form an ever-larger share of supply, we are moving from a situation where, when you switch on the light more gas is burned, to one where you use electricity generated by wind. In the first case the more electricity you use, the more fuel has to be paid for. However, for wind energy, once the windmills are built, the electricity comes for free. All the costs arise from building the wind farms.

This means we need to transition from a billing system based on usage to pay for the fuel used in generation to one based on fixed charges to pay for the windmills. In parts of Australia, this is already the case: consumers pay fixed charges, not by level of use.

This approach is closer to the telephone services bundles which we buy, with individual calls and texts coming for “free”. Such a charging structure would be a more efficient way to fund an electricity system largely based on renewable energy.

However, as the ESRI points out, in a fixed charges system, poor households with modest electricity use would pay the same as rich ones with extravagant use, and this would be regressive. In addition, without any individual incentive to economise on electricity use, in aggregate we would use more electricity. In turn that would mean more investment in generating capacity, whose costs would be added to our bills.

Designing the optimal electricity pricing structure that sets the right incentives for producers and consumers, and is fair, is a challenging task.

Opinion: Proper use for energy sector’s excess cash should be cleaning up wells

Article by Jeffrey Jones, The Globe and Mail

DECEMBER 3, 2021

The site of an abandoned well to be closed by the Alberta Orphan Well Association is pictured near High River, Alta., on August 12, 2020.Todd/Korole

The fortunes of the oil patch have turned to levels not seen in more than half a decade as oil and natural gas become hot commodities again. There’s a lot of talk in Alberta about the energy sector getting its mojo back, and Premier Jason Kenney’s UCP government is doing a lot on that.

This is no surprise. As announced this week, a The revenue shock from the industry goes a long way in reducing the government’s deficit forecast for this fiscal year by two-thirds from the initial budget estimate of $18.2 billion.

But bubbling in the background is the familiar discontent among landlords and environmental advocates about the unpredictability of the industry and how it is being directed to dividends and share buybacks rather than the quick cleanup of idle and spent wells that have been a legacy of the past boom. Is. Then taxpayers stepped in last year to provide $1 billion in stimulus money to help them tackle the mess they didn’t create.

Abandoned oil and gas wells put undue burden on landlords, taxpayers: Study

This is a long-standing problem that the UCP has inherited and, to its credit, has taken steps to solve it. This week, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) finalized a much-needed reassessment of its regulations aimed at reducing multibillion-dollar environmental liabilities and preventing companies that can’t clean up from securing assets.

But the new rules are hit and miss.

Overhauls include new financial checks on companies and their ability to handle future costs of adding and retrieving old sites. It is long overdue.

Based on the regulator’s own estimates, however, a new quota system for industry spending at abandoned sites could take decades to help reduce the backlog that tops 95,000 inactive wells. There will be more sectors That time will stir and, again, put pressure on the industry’s ability to pay bills for cleanup.

These sites dot the province. In fact, there are far more passive wells than active ones. The issue is controversial for industry and Albertans whose properties require cleaning up of old wells. Many wells have been in suspended animation for years.

Controversially, the AER has avoided setting limits on how long wells can remain idle, as do many other jurisdictions. For example, if wells in Texas have been closed for more than a year, operators must apply for extensions that require a security bond. Alberta briefly had a five-year limit in the 1990s, but that ended under industry pressure.

Alberta should ease barriers that discourage businesses from reusing abandoned oil wells: report

AER now has 40 measures to consider when deciding whether a company has the means to cover future cleanup costs, especially if it is also acquiring assets. These include company records with past work and compliance with regulations, as well as financial health and years remaining for cash-generating assets. The regulator may also demand a security deposit to mitigate risk, and is updating that policy.

Earlier, the main criterion was the calculation of assets versus liabilities. The system allowed actions and promises by applicants of future funding instead of meeting that limit. Still, the result was the occasional bankruptcy court and scads of useless wells added to the orphan list.

So what about that backlog? AER has initiated industrywide spending of at least $422 million in 2022 and $443 million next year to be devoted to cleaning up waste wells. The future amount is projected to increase by 5 percent annually until 2026. Every company must meet a mandatory annual target.

These are certainly tougher standards than in the past, but they work quickly if global demand for oil and gas eases in the projected transition to clean energy sources in the coming years, as more wells run out. will not complete.

AER chief executive Laurie Pusher has said it aims to work through the backlog at 4 percent to 5 percent annually. At that rate, just tackling the current list could take two decades or more, says Sarah Hastings-Simon of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. Meanwhile, the energy sector is increasing free cash flow and not directing massive amounts of money into capital expenditure, she explains. Here’s A Fair Use For Some Of Them extra coin.

The companies were under pressure to continue cleaning up during the years of industry turmoil. It makes sense, then, that he should now make a bigger contribution to solving a problem that should have been dealt with earlier as part of his acceptance to drill

Quebec killed Utica Resource's business plan — now the company wants billions of dollars in compensation

Martin Patriquin: Burning fossil fuels has a cost. Keeping them in the ground also has a price

Author of the article:

The Logic
Martin Patriquin
Publishing date:Nov 29, 2021 •

A handout photo of Utica Shale near town of Donnaconna, Quebec. 

PHOTO BY HANDOUT


MONTREAL — Mario Lévesque wants the Quebec government to pay him to not drill for oil and gas.

Lévesque’s company, Utica Resources, holds 33 exploration licences covering over 5,000 square kilometres of Quebec heartland. Were it up to him, he would be drilling roughly 1,500 metres into the ground to obtain his piece of the estimated 31 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas in Quebec’s portion of the Utica Shale, the same formation from which Pennsylvania and Ohio have wrung riches over the last decade.

But it isn’t up to him. Last month, Quebec Premier François Legault announced that the government was effectively banning hydrocarbon extraction in the province. The decision, which Legault said was part of the government’s plan to hit its emissions-reduction targets, effectively killed Utica Resources’ raison d’être .

So Lévesque wants compensation for Utica and the other nine licence-holding companies in the province. The starting bid: “significantly more” than the $3 billion to $5 billion floated by the province’s energy association, Lévesque told me the other day.

It’s an often-overlooked expense in the push to decarbonize the economy. As countries around the world make it more difficult to find, extract and transport hydrocarbons, the companies that make it their business to do so are demanding billions in compensation.

These cases almost invariably end up in court or in trade arbitration, and are potentially very expensive. Consider Calgary-based TC Energy’s Keystone XL Pipeline extension, the proposed conduit for 830,000 daily barrels of oil from Alberta to Nebraska. Presented in 2008, the pipeline extension was rejected in 2015 by the Obama administration, only to have Trump sign it back to life in 2017. Revoking the Keystone permit was among Joe Biden’s first presidential acts.

That penstroke, which delighted environmentalists on both sides of the border, could be costly. TC Energy filed a formal request for arbitration last week, seeking over US$15 billion in damages as a result of what it says is a U.S. government breach of North American trade regulations.

Meanwhile, four companies are suing European governments under the Energy Charter Treaty, an international agreement governing energy security among its 53 signatories. All told, the four companies are seeking just over US$3.1 billion for instituting laws that protect the environment but damage their bottom lines.

The various complaints and lawsuits underscore the fossil fuel industry’s more muscular approach to selling its wares. After decades of trying to be as green as possible—and weathering the resulting accusations of greenwashing—many in the industry are pushing back. Earlier this month, Scott Sheffield, CEO of Texas-based Pioneer Natural Resources, publicly rebuked the Biden administration for its legislative attempts to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels.

The governments of some oil-producing U.S. states have vowed “collective action” against those banks that, in practicing “Woke Capitalism,” refuse to finance coal, oil and natural-gas industries. There is an almost drunken absurdity to the notion that a bank could be the corporate incarnation of Colin Kaepernick. But Big Oil has a point. For all the talk of a carbon-free future, for now we are utterly addicted to the stuff—by some measures, more so than ever before. “Currently, the trade regime and the climate regime don’t align,” Temitope Onifade, affiliated research scholar at the Canada Climate Law Initiative, told me last week.

Quebec is well placed to cash in on this addiction. The value of its shale deposits is quite frankly bonkers—as much as $130 billion, according to a 2013 provincial government report.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault.

“One of the biggest natural-gas discoveries in North America,” as Michael Binnion, CEO of fellow permit holder Questerre puts it. It’s why, though he is cagey about how much Utica is worth, Lévesque says it’s much more than $5 billion. “If this were an open market, Utica Resources would be worth $20 billion to $25 billion,” he told me. (The province’s natural-resources ministry didn’t respond to my questions before deadline).

The province is decidedly not an open market, however. Previous Liberal governments put a moratorium on fracking in 2011, and outright banned the practice in 2018. The province is known as the place where pipeline projects go to die. Lévesque was hopeful when Legault was elected in 2018—while in opposition, the premier once wrote that Quebec should exploit its oil and gas resources “on a large scale”—but has since mostly resigned himself to leaving the shale gas where it is. “It’s too bad, but now we’re in an expropriation situation, and with expropriation comes compensation.”

Lévesque recently had one small victory. In November, a judge ruled the Quebec government was wrong in denying Utica an exploration permit for its subsidiary Gaspé Énergie, which pumps oil from four jacks in the Gaspé. But these, too, will be forced to shut down if the Quebec government implements a blanket ban on hydrocarbon production, as promised.

How other oil companies will fare in court is an open question. TC Energy faces long odds, if only because the U.S. government has a near-perfect record when it comes to North American trade disputes. And a recent European court decision suggests those companies going after the likes of Germany and Italy can’t base their claims on the Energy Charter Treaty.

In a way, though, the outcomes don’t matter much, because the court of public opinion is more politically compelling. The Keystone XL project will remain shuttered for good, even in the unlikely case that the Biden administration loses at the trade tribunal. Similarly, coal will still be on the legislative outs in Europe and beyond even if German energy company RWE is successful in its US$1.6-billion suit against the Dutch government, which said it would shut down coal-fired plants by 2030. There is political capital to be harvested in taking on the oil and gas industry. Premier Legault has certainly figured this out.

© The Logic

Quebec to Pay “Significantly More” than $5B to Jilted Utica Drillers

December 2, 2021

In October the province of Quebec, Canada announced it will expropriate all of the rights for all oil and gas companies in the province to drill and extract oil and natural gas (see Lights Out for All O&G Production in Quebec, Including Utica Shale). It’s all being shut down–including actively producing wells. Shutting down existing businesses in the province is something you might expect in Communist China, or Soviet Russia, or tin-horn dictatorships in South America. It’s not something you expect to see in Western democracies. Yet it’s happening in Quebec, home to a large deposit of the Utica Shale. Now Quebec drillers, those who had planned to tap their vast Utica Shale assets, are demanding Quebec pay up, and the price will be “significantly more” than the $3 billion to $5 billion floated by the province’s energy association.

Yes, the Utica Shale underlies large portions of Quebec. We often get this question when writing about the Canadian Utica because our U.S-centric maps don’t show the Utica reaching up into Canada. But it does:

click for larger version

Canadian producer Utica Resources owns 33 exploration licenses covering over 5,000 square kilometers of Quebec Utica Shale. Mario Lévesque, president and CEO of Utica Resources, wants compensation for his company and the other nine license-holding companies in the province. The only other company with Utica assets we’re familiar with, having written about it over the years, is Questerre Energy (see our Questerre stories here).

Mario Lévesque wants the Quebec government to pay him to not drill for oil and gas.

Lévesque’s company, Utica Resources, holds 33 exploration licences covering over 5,000 square kilometres of Quebec heartland. Were it up to him, he would be drilling roughly 1,500 metres into the ground to obtain his piece of the estimated 31 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas in Quebec’s portion of the Utica Shale, the same formation from which Pennsylvania and Ohio have wrung riches over the last decade.

But it isn’t up to him. Last month, Quebec Premier François Legault announced that the government was effectively banning hydrocarbon extraction in the province. The decision, which Legault said was part of the government’s plan to hit its emissions-reduction targets, effectively killed Utica Resources’ raison d’être .

So Lévesque wants compensation for Utica and the other nine licence-holding companies in the province. The starting bid: “significantly more” than the $3 billion to $5 billion floated by the province’s energy association, Lévesque told me the other day.

It’s an often-overlooked expense in the push to decarbonize the economy. As countries around the world make it more difficult to find, extract and transport hydrocarbons, the companies that make it their business to do so are demanding billions in compensation.

These cases almost invariably end up in court or in trade arbitration, and are potentially very expensive. Consider Calgary-based TC Energy’s Keystone XL Pipeline extension, the proposed conduit for 830,000 daily barrels of oil from Alberta to Nebraska. Presented in 2008, the pipeline extension was rejected in 2015 by the Obama administration, only to have Trump sign it back to life in 2017. Revoking the Keystone permit was among Joe Biden’s first presidential acts.

That penstroke, which delighted environmentalists on both sides of the border, could be costly. TC Energy filed a formal request for arbitration last week, seeking over US$15 billion in damages as a result of what it says is a U.S. government breach of North American trade regulations.

Meanwhile, four companies are suing European governments under the Energy Charter Treaty, an international agreement governing energy security among its 53 signatories. All told, the four companies are seeking just over US$3.1 billion for instituting laws that protect the environment but damage their bottom lines.

The various complaints and lawsuits underscore the fossil fuel industry’s more muscular approach to selling its wares. After decades of trying to be as green as possible—and weathering the resulting accusations of greenwashing—many in the industry are pushing back. Earlier this month, Scott Sheffield, CEO of Texas-based Pioneer Natural Resources, publicly rebuked the Biden administration for its legislative attempts to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels.

The governments of some oil-producing U.S. states have vowed “collective action” against those banks that, in practicing “Woke Capitalism,” refuse to finance coal, oil and natural-gas industries. There is an almost drunken absurdity to the notion that a bank could be the corporate incarnation of Colin Kaepernick. But Big Oil has a point. For all the talk of a carbon-free future, for now we are utterly addicted to the stuff—by some measures, more so than ever before. “Currently, the trade regime and the climate regime don’t align,” Temitope Onifade, affiliated research scholar at the Canada Climate Law Initiative, told me last week.

Quebec is well placed to cash in on this addiction. The value of its shale deposits is quite frankly bonkers—as much as $130 billion, according to a 2013 provincial government report.

“One of the biggest natural-gas discoveries in North America,” as Michael Binnion, CEO of fellow permit holder Questerre puts it. It’s why, though he is cagey about how much Utica is worth, Lévesque says it’s much more than $5 billion. “If this were an open market, Utica Resources would be worth $20 billion to $25 billion,” he told me. (The province’s natural-resources ministry didn’t respond to my questions before deadline).

The province is decidedly not an open market, however. Previous Liberal governments put a moratorium on fracking in 2011, and outright banned the practice in 2018. The province is known as the place where pipeline projects go to die. Lévesque was hopeful when Legault was elected in 2018—while in opposition, the premier once wrote that Quebec should exploit its oil and gas resources “on a large scale”—but has since mostly resigned himself to leaving the shale gas where it is. “It’s too bad, but now we’re in an expropriation situation, and with expropriation comes compensation.”

Lévesque recently had one small victory. In November, a judge ruled the Quebec government was wrong in denying Utica an exploration permit for its subsidiary Gaspé Énergie, which pumps oil from four jacks in the Gaspé. But these, too, will be forced to shut down if the Quebec government implements a blanket ban on hydrocarbon production, as promised.

How other oil companies will fare in court is an open question. TC Energy faces long odds, if only because the U.S. government has a near-perfect record when it comes to North American trade disputes. And a recent European court decision suggests those companies going after the likes of Germany and Italy can’t base their claims on the Energy Charter Treaty.

In a way, though, the outcomes don’t matter much, because the court of public opinion is more politically compelling. The Keystone XL project will remain shuttered for good, even in the unlikely case that the Biden administration loses at the trade tribunal. Similarly, coal will still be on the legislative outs in Europe and beyond even if German energy company RWE is successful in its US$1.6-billion suit against the Dutch government, which said it would shut down coal-fired plants by 2030. There is political capital to be harvested in taking on the oil and gas industry. Premier Legault has certainly figured this out.*

It’s time for Quebec to pay up. We hope the citizens of the province enjoy their indentured servitude to the left, because they’re going to pay big for it.

*Toronto (ON) Financial Post (Nov 29, 2021) – Quebec killed Utica Resource’s business plan — now the company wants billions of dollars in compensation

U.S. Bill Puts Mexico Electric Car Investments at Risk: Minister

Nacha Cattan and Maya Averbuch
Fri., December 3, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Investments in Mexico are being put at risk by a U.S. bill offering tax credits for electric vehicles built with domestic labor, Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier said in an interview.

At least two EV investments may not close in Mexico and eight states could lose out on automaker expansions because of the legislation, Clouthier said via Zoom. She said she’s talking to many U.S. senators to try and change their minds and described the U.S.’s actions as contradictory at a time of close work with Mexico to improve supply-chain bottlenecks and amicable negotiations on issues such as immigration.

“How can it be that we are working so harmoniously in one area with the U.S. and at the same time the senators are doing this,” Clouthier said. “There are impacts in terms of investments for electric cars that are being paused in some states.”

Both Mexico and Canada have accused the U.S. of potential violations of the updated North America free trade accord known as USMCA. They argue that the bill -- which would give an extra tax credit to consumers who buy electric vehicles made by unionized U.S. workers -- would disadvantage automakers in the rest of North America.

Clouthier said earlier this week that her country was willing to go ahead with “all kinds of retaliation” including slapping trade tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada’s Trade Minister Mary Ng said that the proposed legislation puts hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.

The dispute over the EV credit has built upon already simmering tensions over which cars can be sold duty-free based on the percentage of their parts that are regionally made. Mexico requested formal talks on the issue in August and Canada joined as an interested third party.

In her interview, Clouthier said that the U.S. can expect a “Christmas present” or a gift during the Three Kings holiday in early January, meaning that is when Mexico is planning to go formally to an arbitration panel. She said Canada may either join Mexico or act as a third party in the disagreement.

Clouthier said, without providing details, that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will announce a substantial private investment in Mexico on Monday.

She also said that Mexico is about to announce a few other major investments in border states as companies seek to transfer operations from Asia to North America to prevent supply shortages and to comply with USMCA local content rules. Companies are buying up real-estate in northern states as they prepare to shift operations to Mexico in the process called nearshoring, she said.

Chapman's anti-vax boycott officially a failure as people buy freezer loads of ice cream


A boycott of Chapman's Ice Cream totally backfired on anti-vaxxers and the company is now feeling the love from all across Canada.

In November, Chapman's, an Ontario ice cream company based in Markdale, announced they'd be giving a $1 raise to all employees who were fully vaccinated and asked all unvaccinated employees to take a rapid test, on the company dime.

The $1 raise was meant to balance out the costs of doing the rapid tests. In response, a small group of people decided to start a boycott.

The company was flooded with hateful emails, phone calls and even regular mail. But then a counter-movement started with people buying Chapman's Ice Cream just to anger those who started the boycott.

And people have been buying freezers full of ice cream, Ashley Chapman, vice-president of Chapman's Ice Cream tells blogTO.

"We've been getting pictures from people who are going out and they're clearing out the freezers at their local stores, and they're taking pictures and sending it to us," Chapman says.

One group of older ladies got together and decided to buy all the ice cream in their local supermarket.

"They all got together and headed up to the store and cleaned out the entire section in their Loblaws," he says.

Typically November can be a slow month for ice cream sales but this month sales are up. There were promotions this time last year but not this year and the company was expecting a dip in sales.

"We figured that this November, we would be down and we were up a little bit," he says.

The negative messages are still coming in.

"There's still some very, very hateful people out there saying some really horrible stuff," he adds. "Just a few days ago, we had someone actually write in to say, they hope my children get cancer and die."

But the messages have been slowing down and Chapmans is not wavering on their policy.

"We are not we are not backing down ever since the first day of the pandemic our number one focus was to keep our employees safe and our community safe," he says.

The majority of Chapman's 850 employees are vaccinated or nearly fully vaccinated, and in the end only two people left on unpaid leave. He adds that he has received nice comments from unvaccinated people who appreciate the company providing an opition for rapid testing.

The boycott attempt has been a total failure.

"We would just like the bad comments to stop…[but] the more that we get, the better our sales are and the better our company is. So it is really kind of blowing up in the face of these people trying to put us out of business."

Right now, the support and love for the company is outweighing the negativity.

"The outpouring of support from coast to coast, every corner of this country has been overwhelming," says Chapman. "The anti-vaxxers have been a pithy dribble. And the people who love us and what we do and what we try to do have been, it's really been overwhelming."

Sweet vindication for Chapman’s Ice Cream

By Record Editorial

Waterloo Region Record
Thu., Dec. 2, 2021

If you have the good fortune to visit Markdale, Ont., you will appreciate just how different Grey County is when compared to Ontario’s hectic urban environment overall. It’s a slower, gentle, more tranquil pace and place.

How odd, then, that the community — home to the admirably benevolent Chapman’s Ice Cream, purveyor of soothing frozen treats since 1973 — has emerged as an unlikely, though certainly flavourful, flashpoint of the COVID-19 civil war.

The family-run Chapman’s, one of Canada’s largest ice-cream producers, an employer of about 850 people, recently took the praiseworthy step of rewarding its vaccinated workers with a $1-an-hour pay raise.

This was not the first time the company had supported the local community in the battle against COVID-19.

At the end of 2020, when it became known that the first vaccines developed against coronavirus required sub-zero storage, Chapman’s was quick to offer up two medical-grade deep freezers.

It turns out the Markdale mainstay — which has donated millions of dollars to local hospitals, schools and sports facilities — had been approached decades earlier about emergency use of its cold-storage facilities in case of a public-health emergency and it was more than ready when the call came.

And grit? You want to see grit?

In 2009, the company’s century-old wooden creamery building was destroyed after a spark from welding work caught in the rafters.

Where some might have called it quits, Chapman’s built back, recovered and expanded to employ about twice the workers it once did.

This is not an age, however, in which decades of reputation, generosity, local history or context won’t be incinerated in a firestorm of toxic online recrimination.

After the raise became public, when a photo of the bulletin announcing it was posted online, Chapman’s became the target of chronically aggrieved anti-vaccine groups who were outraged at the very thought.

Local divisions of the small and tattered anti-vax army were inflamed at this outrageous assault by Chapman’s on their right to be fools and mounted an online campaign to boycott the company’s products.

The company said it received 1,000 or more emails and attacks on its Facebook group. Much of it was despicable. Inevitably, absurd analogies to Naziism were tossed about.

But, in addition to being rather stoutly anti-science, it appears the anti-vaxxers have no particular flair for numeracy or imagination.

A quick glance at public-opinion surveys or published vaccination rates should have made clear that in the boycott battle they would be hugely outnumbered and were charging off to near-certain defeat.

At Chapman’s itself, fewer than a dozen employees had chosen to remain unvaccinated and been required to go on unpaid leave.

Well, the entirely predictable result soon came to pass.

Voices of reason pushed back, lavishly praising and thanking the company, which saw sales jump and inquiries arrive from far and wide as to where its ice cream could be purchased.

The hashtag #IStandWithChapmans became the call to arms, and seldom was such a thing so delicious.

On its website, Chapman’s is now promoting its “Holiday Moments Collection,” urging the sweet-toothed to “Enjoy a taste of the holiday in each and every bite.”

So, let’s add a tip of the old double-scoop ice-cream cone — waffle, if you please — to Chapman’s for its good corporate citizenship, community-minded initiatives and delightful products.

Long may you prosper.

For a failed presidential candidate, Bob Dole left a memorable pop culture impact

Dole will at least be remembered for the times Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons made fun of him

By Sam Barsanti

Bob DolePhoto: JOYCE NALTCHAYAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Bob Dole, who spent decades as a Republican Senator and ran for president against Bill Clinton in the ‘90s, died today. He was 98 and had been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer earlier this year. You can go elsewhere, like The New York Times, for an obituary that highlights his status as an “old soldier and stalwart of the Senate,” but here at The A.V. Club we believe it’s more appropriate to highlight the surprising impression that Dole left on popular culture—though it’s not surprising because it’s massive, it’s mostly surprising because it exists at all.

Dole wasn’t exactly a charismatic or easily likable figure (and he was a dedicated Trumper long before the Republican establishment embraced that horrific ideology), making him more like a John McCain type without the “I’m a maverick!”-streak that he liked to play up. Still, that made it easy for shows like Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons to poke fun at him.

Norm Macdonald’s impression on SNL was popular enough that Dole actually stopped by for a self-aware cameo in which Macdonald broke character and talked to him about potentially running for president again just so they could keep doing sketches about him falling down. Dole (or whoever ran his social media account) even marked Macdonald’s death earlier this year with a reference to the SNL impression.

Over on The Simpsons, Harry Shearer played Bob Dole opposite Phil Hartman’s Bill Clinton in the now-iconic “Citizen Kang” segment of Treehouse Of Horror VII. A before-it-was-cool satire of the kind of both-sides-ism we deal with a lot these days, the segment involved Clinton and Dole being replaced by aliens and then forcing the American people to still choose between two presidential candidates who will both… take over the world when elected.

Shearer’s Dole gets a couple of standout lines (“What the hell is this, some kind of tube?”), but the former presidential candidate’s greatest contribution to American culture will probably end up being Homer’s reaction to the election: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.”

The world's two top chess players are stuck in stalemate hell

The FIDE World Championship is currently entering Game 6 with zero wins for either competitor

By Andrew Paul
Thursday 1:00PM


It’s starting to get a bit awkward.Photo: GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP (Getty Images)

The FIDE Chess World Championship currently underway in Dubai is either a near-perfect showdown between two genius players in their prime, or an absolute hell collision between two immovable monoliths currently showing no signs of progress. Yesterday saw Game 5's conclusion end in a stalemate between the appropriately named reigning champ, Magnus Carlsen, and his aspiring usurper, Ian Nepomniachtchi...again. In fact, neither have one a single round so far, something that has somewhat enthralled the world of professional chess.

“While neither grandmaster has won a game, their match remains impressive in its own right: It appears to be the most accurate world chess championship ever played, the closest to achieving the game’s Platonic perfection,” explains Oliver Roeder of FiveThirtyEight.

Now, we’ll be totally honest with you: Contrary to our recent chess-related coverage, we aren’t the best chess players out there—we certainly don’t follow the professional sport with any regularity. A bit of additional reading reveals that nobody has actually “won” a world championship regulation match in over five years. But that said, this year’s bouts between Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi have been possibly the most accurate in championship history.

This is thanks in large part to players learning from supercomputer advancements that provide increasingly precise chess strategies and movements. Actual checkmates, when they do occur at this top tier, are generally owed to human error—but, as Roeder succinctly puts it, “these players simply haven’t made mistakes.”

Various solutions have been suggested to break the current chess championship cycle. The simplest change circulating for years now is to shorten the length of time each player has to make their move, thereby increasing the chances of human error and reaction. For his part, Carlsen supports the amendment, although his opponent reportedly isn’t on board for such a break from tradition. In any case, Game 6 is scheduled for tomorrow at 7am EST, so that should be a real nail biter (in the sense that people are waiting for something, anything at all to happen).

UK

A decade of marketisation has left lecturers with no choice but to strike

The shake-up of universities has led to lower pensions, job insecurity and cuts to courses

‘Higher education is one of the most heavily casualised industries in the UK.’ A picket at University College London. 

Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images

Jacob Mukherjee

Sat 4 Dec 2021

Along with tens of thousands of university workers at 58 institutions across the UK, I have been on strike for three days this week over pensions, pay and conditions. For workers at Goldsmiths this national strike has fallen in the middle of an epic, local three-week strike of our own – over management proposals to sack 52 staff, as part of a cost-cutting plan financed by big banks.

The national action and our local strike are connected: the factors that led to a vote for strike action by more than 70% of University and College Union (UCU) members nationally are the same ones that have produced a dramatic confrontation at Goldsmiths. Indeed, the situation at Goldsmiths, a small University of London college specialising in arts, humanities and social sciences, could be a window on to the future of higher education nationally: a future of casualisation, swingeing cuts and the possibility of troubling interventions from financial institutions.

The national dispute encompasses a wide range of elements, the most high-profile of which is pensions: like public sector workers before them, university staff face an attack on our defined-benefit retirement schemes. The employer, Universities UK, is attempting to cut our pensions by more than 30%, using a reportedly flawed valuation taken at a low point in the economic and social crisis caused by the pandemic. The dispute amounts to a cluster of grievances over working conditions known as the “four fights”: pay, equalities, workload and casualisation. Higher education is one of the most heavily casualised sectors in the UK, with two-thirds of researchers and half of teaching staff employed on fixed-term (ie temporary) contracts.

For many younger academics it is casualisation that has spurred us to take action in the national dispute. I spent seven years on seven different casual contracts across three institutions before I got my first permanent position at Goldsmiths this summer. Many of these contacts are desperately low paid; at times I was taking home just £2,000 a year from teaching, and having to work three jobs to survive. But it is also the insecurity that is crippling: it is impossible to plan your career trajectory and life in general without knowing if you’ll be in work next year. Casualised staff are also the first to be laid off in a crisis: Goldsmiths attempted to release nearly 500 of us at the start of the pandemic last spring, though we fought back.


On the picket line at Leeds University: ‘I will strike for as long as it takes’

Read more

The national dispute is the result of what has been called “a decade of marketisation” in higher education. And it is marketisation – the move to turn education from a public service into a commodity – that laid the conditions for our local dispute at Goldsmiths. The overhaul of higher education funding in 2010 by the coalition government, particularly the removal of most direct government funding for courses, meant universities became heavily reliant on the volatile and unpredictable stream of income from student tuition fees. Humanities departments outside of the elite universities have been under pressure ever since, with several (such as politics and history at Kingston) being shut down altogether. Universities have sought to cut staff costs through redundancies and increased use of casualised contracts.

The 2010 reforms also empowered a new generation of university senior managers who see their role as combining “streamlining” and cost-cutting measures with management speak about social justice and inclusion. Goldsmiths’ senior management is archetypal in this respect, with the warden, Frances Corner, dressing up a 2019 plan to axe staff as part of a mission to “secur[e] our legacy as a beacon of progressive, critical thought and in the vanguard of social justice”.

Goldsmiths’ latest move in this direction involves a plan to cut 52 jobs across professional services, English and creative writing, and history courses, centralising administration and likely cutting courses in the process. An alarming aspect of the plan is the mooted role of the banks: Lloyds and NatWest are thought to have insisted on reductions in staff costs as a condition of loans given to the university. If this is the case, it raises the worrying prospect of private banks dictating terms to a public university: an eerie echo of Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story, which imagined a character “studying art & finance at HSBC-Goldsmiths”.

The possibility of an alliance of cost-cutting senior management and finance capital has provoked a heartening response from a militant union branch and a politicised student body: 86% of Goldsmiths’ UCU members, on a 70% turnout, voted to strike. The three-week period of industrial action has featured a varied programme of teach-outs run jointly by students and staff, a march on local branches of Lloyds and NatWest, and a huge solidarity rally addressed by former shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Unless marketisation can be resisted at a national level, the situation at Goldsmiths – in which funding volatility linked to the 2010 reforms has allowed banks to exert influence – will become much more common. These are two struggles we have to win.


Jacob Mukherjee is a lecturer in media, communications and cultural studies, and co-secretary of Goldsmiths UCU

Opinion: Alberta's cuts to post-secondary education based on bad data

Author of the article:Trevor W. Harrison, Richard E. Mueller
Publishing date:Dec 04, 2021 • 

Members of multiple post-secondary unions for staff and students were protesting across Alberta including the Minister of Advanced Education's, Demetrios Nicolaides Constituency office in Calgary on Saturday, January 30, 2021. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK /Postmedia

On April 29, 2021, the Alberta government released Alberta 2030: Building Skills for Jobs, a document outlining a 10-year strategy for transforming the province’s post-secondary education system. Alberta 2030 purports to arise out of a report, commissioned by the government, from McKinsey and Company at a cost to taxpayers of $3.7 million. This report — financed by taxpayers — has still not been made public and the devil is often in the details.

In the tradition of “what is old is new again,” much of Alberta 2030 replicates part of the Klein government’s 1994 White Paper, New Directions for Adult Learning in Alberta. That paper also set out a 10-year plan for the province’s post-secondary system. Overshadowed by fiscal concerns, New Directions detailed plans for increased tuitions, more applied learning, and performance indicators, while also threatening collective bargaining and hinting at doing away with tenure.

These also form key elements of Alberta 2030, but like much of the UCP’s plans for spending (or rather lack thereof) it is sold to the public as necessary to deal with Alberta’s deficits and debt, and is supposedly indicative of the government’s taxpayer-friendly and fiscally responsible approach. In order to sell this broad package to the public, the UCP seems bent on convincing Albertans that their public services, post-secondary education in this case, are more costly than those in the three largest provinces — comparisons first made in the 2019 MacKinnon report.

Because that report is still cited in government documents as justification for the draconian public funding cutbacks to Alberta’s post-secondary institutions, it is important to know if its data is correct. If that data were misleading, would the public still stand for this attack on the province’s universities, polytechnics and colleges?

Our recent report shows the disparities between Alberta and her comparator provinces, as reported in MacKinnon (and repeated in other government documents that followed) are largely overstated. MacKinnon says Alberta spent between $5,000 to $15,000 more per student than the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Using 2018-19 Statistics Canada data, the most recent at hand, we were able to provide a better and more nuanced comparison of expenditures between Alberta’s publicly funded post-secondary institutions and their counterparts in these other jurisdictions.

Our analysis showed that per-student expenditures for university students in Alberta were not quite $4,000 more than in Ontario and Quebec but actually $2,700 less than British Columbia, figures much at odds with those cited in the MacKinnon report. Why this difference? Because MacKinnon lumps all institutions together and averages the expenditures system-wide. This is misleading. The big difference is found regarding expenditures per student at Alberta’s colleges and polytechnics which, relative to the three comparators, are a whopping $9,000 to $15,000 higher than in the other three provinces.

These differences are likely smaller today, given the Kenney government’s draconian cuts since 2019. The key point is that our data is more recent — and likely more accurate — than those in the MacKinnon report which continue to be used to justify government policy.

Alberta’s colleges are some of the province’s most expensive institutions per student. We expect research-intensive universities — those with expensive and specialized programs such as engineering and veterinary medicine — to be expensive, but small colleges with enrolments of less than 2,000 students and with multiple campuses often rival the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary in expenditures per student.

Is this a problem? Not necessarily. Many of these institutions were either established or expanded since the 1960s with the purpose of servicing remote locations and with other economic and social development goals in mind. This is far from a bad policy, but one that is costly and needs to be considered when making budget decisions about the post-secondary system.

Our report makes several criticisms of Alberta 2030. One major one, however, is that the government misuses data — perhaps intentionally — in its attack on Alberta’s post-secondary education system. Good data makes for good policy. The government is using outdated and misleading data for an assault on post-secondary education disguised as fiscal prudence. Why? We will have more to say about this in future op-eds.

Trevor W. Harrison is professor of sociology and Richard E. Mueller is professor of economics, both at the University of Lethbridge.