Thousands march for Palestinians in UK, France, Switzerland

London (AFP) – Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in Britain Saturday calling for a ceasefire as Israel's army intensified its assault on the Gaza Strip. Thousands more demonstrated in France and Switzerland.


SECOND WEEK IN A ROW

About 100,000 people joined the 'March for Palestine' in London according to British media

HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP

Issued on: 28/10/2023 -

As Israel's intense strikes provided cover for its ground forces to step up fighting in Gaza, the United Nations warning thousands more civilians could die.

Israel unleashed its bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing more than 220 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said Israeli strikes had since killed 7,703 people, mainly civilians, with more than 3,500 of them children.

It was the third consecutive weekend that London hosted a large rally in support of Palestinians.

One marcher, Dani Nadiri, 36, said UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's call for a "humanitarian pause" in the fighting to allow aid into Gaza and hostages to leave was not enough.

Many demonstrators in London carried Palestinian flags 

© HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP

"A full ceasefire needs to happen," Nadiri told AFP. "It's time now to do something rather than let it escalate any further."

The demonstrators gathered at a central point by the River Thames at midday, before making their way to the UK parliament in Westminster.
'It can't go on like this'

Noori Butt, from Luton in southern England, said she just wanted the war to end.

"It can't go on like this. The world is dying and I want lasting peace for everybody. That's the way it should be," said the 38-year-old teacher.

About 100,000 people joined the "March for Palestine" in London according to British media, which also reported scuffles with police.

London's Metropolitan Police deployed more than 1,000 officers to patrol the march

 © HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP

London's Metropolitan Police deployed more than 1,000 officers to patrol the march.

Police arrested one protester on suspicion of assaulting an officer, and another for making racist remarks and threats to kill.

Expressing support for Palestinians is allowed in Britain but praising Hamas -- a banned in the UK as terrorist organisation -- is not.

Other rallies took place Saturday in Manchester and Glasgow, Scotland.
Paris marchers defy ban

Thousands of demonstrators took part in rallies across France on Saturday.

Protesters joined one in Paris, defying a court ban issued on public order grounds. A large contingent of police blocked demonstrators in the centre of the capital.

Among the protesters were elected officials, including a green MP and a far-left lawmaker.

"(The need for) a ceasefire is urgent, to stop killing women, children and men," said Elsa Toure, the deputy mayor of Corbeil-Essonnes, south of Paris.

Demonstrator Samia Orosemane carried a sign with the words: "Where has our humanity gone?"

Paris police handed out fines to some of those who defied the ban on the march there 

© Bertrand GUAY / AFP

"It is not right that a ceasefire has not been called, that thousands of civilians are dying and no one is saying anything," she said.

"In the country of human rights, we are prevented from protesting," she said of the ban on the march.

An administrative court on Saturday upheld the ban, citing "the serious risk of disturbing public order" amid "heightened tensions linked to the events in the Gaza Strip with a rise in anti-Semitic acts in France".

There was a 135-euro ($143) fine for taking part. By the evening, police said they had made 21 arrests and issued more than 1,350 fines.

Demonstrators also took to the streets in other French cities.

And in Switzerland, organisers said 7,000 demonstrators gathered in Zurich, with police saying there were "several thousand".

There were 2,000 in Lausanne, 1,800 in Geneva and over a thousand in Bern.

burx/lcm/jj

© 2023 AFP

An American Family Oil Dynasty Ends as Hess Sells

Story by Benoît Morenne  • The Wall Street Journal

 One of the first things you notice when entering the Hess Tower in downtown Houston is the original forest-green truck that Leon Hess drove around New Jersey nearly a century ago to deliver fuel.

Now, the Hess name is set to disappear from the ranks of the world’s prominent oil companies. Chevron on Monday said it would acquire the family company for $53 billion, concluding a 90-year saga bookended by the gruff founding father and his gregarious son, current Chief Executive John Hess.

The merger marks the end of an era as Hess was the last major U.S. oil company controlled by a single family. The enterprise was a throwback to the great family dynasties that propelled American industry, including the Rockefellers and the Gettys, and the luxury and glamour that accompanied them.

An American Family Oil Dynasty Ends as Hess Sells© Provided by The Wall Street Journal

The Hesses transcended plebeian roots to ensconce themselves in Manhattan and the Hamptons. Their oil empire afforded them the perks of outrageous wealth: private jets, Bahamian vacations, luxury real estate and, for a time, owning the New York Jets.

The dynasty has loomed large over the oil patch since 1933, when Leon Hess got tired of lugging bags of coal and started distributing heating oil. Walking in the footsteps of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, he built a fuel-marketing business that covered the East Coast with Hess-branded gas stations. He also ran what was once the world’s largest refiner

In the following decades, the company dotted North Dakota with rigs during the shale boom, drilled in the Gulf of Mexico and helped uncover one of the biggest oil fields in South America.

John Hess, 69, had hoped for his son Michael to take over the business as recently as 2013, but at some point dropped those plans, according to people familiar with the matter. Michael was cultivating other interests beyond the family business and pursuing a career in finance at top firms. Recently, the CEO hadn’t anointed a successor and was prepared to remain at the helm of the company for years.

Michael Hess couldn’t be reached for comment.

In 2013, hedge fund Elliott Management pushed for a board overhaul and a split of Hess into an international and a domestic company, among other changes. It eventually reached a settlement that saw Hess appoint three Elliott nominees on its board, and John Hess relinquish his chairmanship—a heavy price to pay for the dynasty’s survival.

“Many people would say, ‘Oh, well, they won’t want to sell their business because that’s the Hess name, it’s the Hess company,’ ” Marc Lipschultz, a director on the company’s board, said of Hess’s deal with Chevron. “He said, ‘OK, it’s the right strategic thing to do.’ ”

John Hess told employees this week that the merger would allow Hess to combine its growing oil resources with Chevron’s sturdy balance sheet and diverse assets.

“My father always believed that there was something noble about a business that could create jobs for people,” he said during a companywide meeting. “I just want you to know a lot of thought has gone into this.”

Similar to the Rockefellers, the Hesses suffered near-fatal business wounds over the years and decided to spin off their prized retail segment. But they maintained a 9.5% stake in the company, the value of which has soared to more than $4 billion—close to double what it was a decade ago.

The family’s influence radiated from the East Coast, where around Christmastime loyal fans lined up at Hess gas stations to buy the company-branded toy trucks. The toys are held in special reverence by the family: John Hess is personally involved in the design of each new model, as his father was. All the models produced since 1964 are on display at the company’s New York offices.

By age 7, John Hess was being groomed for succession, accompanying his father to foreign oil outposts. During that period, Leon Hess, who served as a petroleum supply officer in World War II, built what became the world’s largest refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands and merged the business with Amerada Petroleum to form Amerada Hess.

The elder Hess wildcatted in search of oil from Alaska to the North Sea, rubbing shoulders with heads of state as he built his empire. To a guest visiting his art-filled Manhattan apartment, he reportedly once showed a Rolodex card with the phone number of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini on it.

A press-shy businessman, Leon Hess became a celebrity to New Yorkers as the owner of the Jets. He became a partial owner of the football team in 1963 before buying it outright in 1984. Despite the franchise’s years of mediocrity, his devotion remained intact. On Thanksgiving Day, the tycoon would attend practice in a folding chair, wearing a knitted green Jets hat.

In 1995, 40-year-old John Hess took over as CEO. He had learned the business from the ground up, pumping gas at 16 and joining the board in his early 20s. He studied at Harvard, where he was eager to learn about oil and geopolitics, said Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global, who met him during a seminar on Middle Eastern oil there.

“He wasn’t ghosting through, he was there to learn about this stuff,” said Yergin, an energy historian. Years later, Yergin would attend energy conferences alongside the oilman and watch as he conversed with Middle Eastern ministers in Arabic, which Hess speaks fluently.

Under John Hess’s leadership, the company forayed into new offshore frontiers and started drilling into shale-rock formations in North Dakota. But it suffered some costly misses in Indonesia, Brazil and Texas, and analysts said the company was spreading itself thin. Hess’s lagging share price gave an opening to activist investor Elliott Management.

After Elliott’s intervention in 2013, Hess shed more than $10 billion worth of assets—including its gas stations—to raise cash and become a nimbler player focused on a few large oil-and-gas projects, such as North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.

John Hess got a reprieve in 2015, when Exxon announced an oil discovery off the shores of Guyana, in South America. Hess had staked a 30% interest in the exploration project, which was later estimated to hold about 11 billion barrels of oil and gas, the largest modern oil find.

But the share price languished and Elliott came charging back in 2017, saying the company should get leaner and buy back more stock. It sought to oust John Hess, saying he had amassed a two-decade record of middling performance. Hess headed off a potentially mortal proxy fight when the company agreed to purchase additional shares.

In the years since, the company’s stock skyrocketed as Guyana has taken off, vindicating the CEO’s strategy to funnel cash from its Gulf of Mexico and Malaysia assets to grow in the Bakken and develop the offshore enterprise. Hess’s stock hit a record high around $166 in the days before the deal.

John Hess had previously discussed a potential tie-up with Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, but Hess’s valuation wasn’t high enough for a deal to happen, people close to him said. Talks picked up pace in the last six months, leading to an agreement for Chevron to buy Hess for $171 a share based on Chevron’s closing price last Friday. John Hess will join Chevron’s board.

“The activist attacks by Elliott, if they had been successful, would have left shareholders with far less than they’re getting in the Chevron transaction,” said Martin Lipton, a founding partner of law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and a longtime Hess adviser.

Elliott Management declined to comment.

On his desk, Lipton keeps a version of the first toy truck made by Hess and last year’s model. The dynasty may disappear, but fans will be able to keep collecting the toys introduced by the elder Hess. “The tradition will continue,” John Hess said in an interview this week. “In fact, next year is the 60th anniversary. I already know what the model is, but I can’t tell you.”

Bradley Olson and David Benoit contributed to this article.

Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com

CANADA

What a Fairer Migrant Farm Worker Program Could Look Like

This summer, The Tyee published a three-part series about exploitation of migrant workers on B.C. farms.

We found cases of physical and financial abuse, reports of workers who lived in chicken coops and barns and massive gaps in oversight that critics say have allowed bad actors to go unfound and unpunished

But we also heard — repeatedly — that the program that brings migrant farm workers to B.C. should not end.

Workers told us this program was vital to providing for their families. Businesses, meanwhile, said their farms could not afford to operate without those workers, most of whom come from Mexico and Guatemala.

What we did hear — from workers, academics, advocates and businesses — were ideas on how to make B.C.’s migrant farm worker program fairer.

In 2004, when B.C. first began allowing temporary foreign workers in the agriculture sector, there were just a few dozen such workers. This year, by conservative estimates, there were more than 10,000.

The vast majority of those workers are on a “closed” work permit, which means they can only work a specific job for a specific employer in a specific location for a fixed period of time.

For employers, that means they don’t have to compete with other farms for workers. For workers, that means they can’t quit their job without losing their right to remain in Canada, and that they have no obvious path to permanent residency or citizenship if they choose to pursue it.

“Because workers are on tied work permits, it’s very difficult for them to change bosses when they experience substandard housing conditions, or if they experience an abusive boss,” said Anelyse Weiler, a professor of sociology at the University of Victoria who has long studied migrant farm labour in B.C.

Right now, the only option for a worker facing abuse is to ask the federal government for an open work permit. Advocates and lawyers say those applications are difficult to complete. The paperwork must be filed in English or French — not Spanish, the language most workers speak. Overall, about half of all requests in B.C. are rejected, with little chance for appeal. The open permit lasts just one year.

Tomoya Obokata said it doesn’t make sense that a worker can change jobs only if they can prove they have been mistreated.

“Why do you have to wait until you’re exploited until you’re moved to a new employer?” said Obokata, the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery. Obokata recently released a report on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program that was critical of the power the program gives employers.

In some cases, Obokata said, conditions were so strict that some migrant farm workers he met also did sex work to make ends meet.

A Canadian Senate committee is currently conducting its own study on that program. Sen. Ratna Omidvar said another drawback of closed permits is that workers cannot look for other jobs when a job falls through.

In British Columbia, for example, many migrant farm workers recently lost weeks of salary or went home early because of unseasonably high heat and devastating wildfires.

“What do these temporary migrant workers do when they’re in a strange place, in a rural outpost, and they have no work?” Omidvar said.

Weiler said she believes the best solution is also the simplest: letting workers switch jobs.

There are various ways to do this. Some migrant advocacy groups have called for permanent residency status for every temporary foreign worker, a proposal they call “status for all.”

Others believe it may be more palatable to offer workers an open permit within a specific industry, like agriculture.

Glen Lucas, president of the BC Fruit Growers’ Association, said such a proposal is interesting but might face pushback. Some farmers, he said, pay to fly workers from their home countries to Canada and would resent losing that money in the event a worker resigns.

Omidvar added that if the federal government is issuing broader permits, it also needs to monitor their effects on different sectors carefully.

Weiler said letting workers switch jobs should be just one part of boosting their power in the workplace. She said migrant workers should have union representation, if they want it, or access to a sectoral bargaining model to boost wages.

“I think pretty much anything else is just going to be a Band-Aid with no dressing,” she said.

For almost all migrant farm workers in B.C., farms are not just employers; they’re landlords.

Businesses and migrant worker groups alike agree the exploding number of migrant farm workers in B.C. has strained their ability to house the new labour force.

In some cases, worker advocate Perla Villegas said, that’s led to employers housing workers in conditions that are unsanitary and even dangerous.

Villegas said she has seen cases where workers are housed in barns or makeshift sheds, or where dozens of workers are crammed into a single house with limited washroom facilities.

“I remember one of the workers telling me, ‘My dog in Mexico lives better than I do,’” said Villegas, who works for Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture, a grassroots non-profit operating mostly in the Okanagan.

In theory, housing — and everything else in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program — is tightly regulated by half a dozen provincial and federal government agencies.

In reality, Villegas and other worker advocates say inspections are often infrequent, perfunctory and ultimately ineffective when it comes to deterring bad behaviour.

“What we need are inspectors. We need the government to know through inspectors the way that workers are really living,” Villegas said.

The provincial government used to have a dedicated team for inspecting labour conditions on farms. But it was disbanded in 2003. Now, most of those inspections are done by Service Canada, which is run by the federal government.

Javier Robles, an outreach worker with KCR Community Resources in Kelowna, said those inspectors are rarely seen on farms. When they are, he said, the inspectors typically don’t speak Spanish, meaning they can’t communicate with workers about what’s happening.

Robles said that is a wasted opportunity, since many outreach workers like him speak Spanish and are funded in part by federal grants.

Obokata said he also found many of those inspections were not random, as they are supposed to be.

“According to migrant workers, many, if not most, are pre-announced, so the employers know exactly when they are coming in,” Obokata said.

He said that “appalling” lack of oversight was compounded by the fact that fines for violations were often fairly small. Weiler said the result is that some employers may view those fines as a business expense rather than a deterrent.

“Honestly, penalties should be sufficiently high to deter non-compliance,” Weiler said.

B.C.’s migrant farm workers are theoretically protected by government agencies that regulate everything from housing to working hours to their immigration status.

In practice, critics say, the many agencies involved means that none take ownership over key parts of how the program operates.

“Nobody seems to know who does what,” Omidvar said.

In British Columbia, for example, the provincial Ministry of Health regulates the standard of housing for work camps, which include farm worker housing. But the ministry itself has no role in inspecting or overseeing that housing — that’s done by federal government.

When asked about problems in the program, Weiler said the two governments often point to each other.

She argued the governments need to streamline responsibilities so that issues in the program can be addressed more quickly.

“There’s a hot-potato issue of jurisdictional football where each layer of government asserts it is not responsible for co-ordinating something,” Weiler said.

Randy Boissonnault, the federal minister who oversees Employment and Social Development Canada, did not respond to an interview request.

B.C. Agriculture Minister Pam Alexis also was not available for an interview.

In a provided statement, she wrote that staff in her ministry “are in regular communication with the Mexican consulate and any concerns are flagged” to the ministry in charge.

But the Mexican Consulate told The Tyee it has also been frustrated by the overlapping provincial and federal jobs.

“There are a lot of agencies that have a very broad mandate,” Mexican Consul General Berenice Díaz Ceballos said.

In some cases, Díaz Ceballos said, her staff have “blacklisted” farms from hiring Mexican workers because of bad behaviour. But nothing stops those farms from hiring workers from other countries.

They can also continue hiring Mexican workers under a different program with less consular oversight.

For years, most migrant farm workers in B.C. came under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, or SAWP, which is brokered between Canada and partner countries like Mexico. Workers in that program work under temporary visas of up to nine months.

But farms can also hire workers through the agriculture stream of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Those visas can last up to two years, and foreign consulates have far less influence and oversight.

The government of Mexico cannot enforce Canada’s own labour laws, Díaz Ceballos said, and provinces should step up to protect these workers.

“They are working for Canada, contributing to Canada and paying their taxes here in Canada. That’s why we are insisting that much more needs to be done by the provincial authorities, and also by the employers,” Díaz Ceballos said.

Lucas of the BC Fruit Growers’ Association told The Tyee many fruit farms in the province would shut down if they no longer had access to foreign workers, or if they were required to pay more for the service.

Lucas said that without them, the province’s industry would no longer be able to compete with farms in the United States and New Zealand, which also rely on foreign workers to get their product to market.

It’s an argument Omidvar said she has heard from employers in a number of industries, from fast-food services to seafood processing to agriculture.

But she said economic gain is no reason to ignore problems in the program.

“We can have both; economic prosperity and justice for workers,” Omidvar said. 

Zak Vescera, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Tyee

Caste listed as discriminatory under Ontario’s new human rights policy

Story by The Canadian Press  

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has become the first in North America to officially  incorporate caste as a discriminatory policy. 

The provincial regulatory authority that advocates for equality and combats discrimination published the updated code on Oct. 26.

“Discriminatory treatment based on xenophobia, that is, dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries, is also contrary to the Code,” said the OHRC statement. So is discrimination based on a stereotype or perception that an individual or group practices a religion or comes from a community associated with the caste system.” 

Many jurisdictions in Ontario and Canada have already passed a motion to add caste as a discriminatory category. Toronto District School Board, approved a motion to address casteism on March 8. Toronto was the first Canadian jurisdiction to create a formal mechanism to acknowledge and address caste issues. 

Burnaby, B.C. and Brampton, Ont. have added caste as a protected category in their city policies. All these motions had referred it to their  provincial human rights commissions to create  further policy guidelines.

“It is a landmark position,” said Vasanthi Venkatesh, associate professor of law, land, and local economies at the University of Windsor.

“The Ontario Human Rights Commission, historically, has always been at the forefront of pushing the definitions of discrimination to include all sorts of marginalization. It (the position) also says that it's intersectional. So that means that caste is not just captured singularly by race or singularly by descent or similarly by ancestry, it is all these grounds together and it's complex.” 

Vijay Puli, founder of the South Asian Dalit Adivasi Network, said the OHRC position will have a direct impact on the school board  motion and Brampton. The Toronto-based  activist organization has been at the forefront of anti-caste activities in Ontario. 

“As a parent, this is the best protection gift I can give to my children and future generations here,” Puli said.

Said Yalini Rajakulasingam, the Toronto District School Board trustee who introduced the caste motion:  “I look forward to all continuing to advocate for caste equity and building more inclusive spaces where we celebrate and empower all identities.”

Hindu groups nationwide have long resisted caste motions. They cite a lack of caste data, concerns about linking casteism to Hinduism, and believe current laws already address the caste system.

The OHRC statement  cites caste-based oppression as an internationally recognized violation of human rights and that it is a global problem.

“A United Nations report states that discrimination based on caste and similar systems of inherited status is a global problem.”

Shilpashree Jagannathan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DALIT 

THERE IS NO ALBERTA PENSION 
UCP set to introduce Alberta Pension Protection Act during upcoming fall legislative session

ITS A SEPERATIST PLAN TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO THE USA

Story by Matthew Black • Edmonton Journal

Danielle Smith, Premier, Nate Horner, President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance and Jim Dinning, chair, Alberta Pension Plan Report Engagement Panel release an independent report on a potential Alberta Pension Plan in Calgary on Wednesday, September 20, 2023.© Provided by Edmonton Journal

Alberta’s United Conservative Party government is set to introduce in the coming weeks its legislation setting the legal framework for a potential provincial pension plan.

Government House Leader Joseph Schow said the Alberta Pension Protection Act will be among the bills brought forward in the upcoming fall legislative session set to begin Oct. 30, the first full sitting since the May 29 election.

“This legislation … will ultimately enshrine into law that should we proceed with an Alberta pension, it will be done through referendum with specific criteria.”

Schow said it would be improper to share further details until the bill is tabled, including if it specifies the wording of a potential referendum question or what the required margin of victory would be.

“You’re going to have to wait and see for it to come out.”

Premier Danielle Smith said earlier this month that the bill will have four components:

• a guarantee that transferred pension assets would stay in the plan
• benefits would be better or equal to those of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP)
• contributions would the same or less compared to the CPP
• an APP must be approved by a provincewide vote

“There isn’t any additional elements in there talking about how the funds would be invested,” she said.

Smith said Wednesday that there would be no referendum without a “hard number” of what assets Alberta could extract from the CPP, something that may be years in coming, possibly as a result of a court battle.

The session is set to run from Monday until Dec. 7, with a weeklong break in mid-November.

New Democrat Opposition leader Rachel Notley said her caucus of 38 MLAs were preparing to fight the bill.

“We are going to do everything at our disposal to stop every single solitary step towards Danielle Smith getting her hands onto the pensions and the retirement security of the millions of Albertans,” Notley said in response to a question asking if her party planned to filibuster the UCP’s pension bill.

Related

• Smith says no pension referendum without firm estimate of Alberta's cut of CPP assets
• 'Deeply concerned': Trudeau, CPP Investment Board each bash province's Alberta pension plan pitch

She also questioned the integrity of a potential pension vote given the growing skepticism around the government’s consultation process , and report claiming Alberta would be entitled to 53 per cent of CPP assets should it elect to withdraw.

“I can’t even begin to imagine the question that they would construct in a referendum,” she said. “But I highly doubt that anybody believes that they can trust them to administer such a process fairly.”

“Any steps to jeopardize the retirement security of Albertans will be resisted with all of our efforts.”

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has estimated Alberta is owed about 16 per cent of the fund, though Alberta has asked to examine the calculations behind that figure.

No province has left the CPP since its inception in 1967, and scholars say the process of doing so would be unprecedented and complex .

mblack@postmedia.com

RIGHT WING PURGE
Entire board at Banff Centre dismissed by Alberta government

By Staff The Canadian Press
Posted October 27, 2023 

View image in full screenThe Alberta government has dismissed the entire board of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and replaced it with a temporary administrator. The Banff National Park entrance is shown in Banff, Alta., on Tuesday, March 24, 2020. Jeff McIntos

The Alberta government has dismissed the entire board of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and replaced it with a temporary administrator.


The centre in the mountain town of Banff, west of Calgary, develops and promotes creative work in the arts, sciences, business and the environment.

The government said in a news release late Thursday that it’s supporting the centre as it focuses on its mandate while “strengthening its future competitiveness and sustainability.”

Minister of Advanced Education Rajan Sawhney said the government appreciated the service of the former board members, including the chair, government appointees and board of governor appointees.

“They have given their time and attention to furthering this important institution, and their collective contributions have positively positioned the Banff Centre for future success,” she said in a statement.

“This change offers an opportunity to focus on a refreshed future for the Banff Centre.”

The province said the temporary administrator, Paul Baay, will review the internal processes and policies at the Banff Centre over the next six to nine months, and take on the responsibilities of the board of governors until a new chair and board can be appointed.

Sawhney said he has a wide range of relevant experience that will make him an effective administrator.

“I am confident in his ability to fulfil his role in place of the board of governors of the Banff Centre until a new chair and board are appointed,” she said.

Baay, who’s president and chief executive officer of Touchstone Exploration Inc., worked for various oil and gas companies in the past 25 years.

He’s also the current chairman of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and served on the board of the National Gallery of Canada for more than 14 years.

In May, the Alberta Securities Commission said in a new release that it had concluded a settlement agreement with Baay after he admitted to tipping, which means he revealed non-public information about his company to another person before general disclosure to the capital markets.

Baay paid $40,000 to the commission and committed to training in best practices for public company governance and disclosure.

McGill University receives rare collection of Voltaire manuscripts

By Gloria Henriquez Global News
Posted October 28, 2023 

One of the collection's documents depicting Voltaire. Oct. 26, 2023. McGill University

He is one of the most influential philosophers of all time: François-Marie Arouet, more widely known by his pen name, Voltaire.


A French man from the Enlightenment period two centuries ago, he lived far away and in a long-gone era.

Despite that, you can now get closer to him through a rare collection of his manuscripts, now calling McGill University home.

The head of the Voltaire Foundation, Nicholas Cronk, deems it one of the greatest collections of Voltaire books and manuscripts in the world.

As you tour the collection, you will discover Voltaire’s inner musings, plastered on paper by his own hand, such as a letter to the king of Prussia telling him how sick he had been.

Voltaire was a popular and busy man who wrote to a lot of people.

“He had 1,800 correspondents,” said Ann Marie Holland, curator of the Enlightenment collections at McGill Rare Books and Special Collections.

Some of that correspondence was with women, including Émilie du Châtelet, a French philosopher and mathematician.

In one of the pages, Châtelet had placed big inky loops over Voltaire’s writing, as if she were trying to make it disappear.

“She actually ended up obliterating contents by Voltaire,” Holland said, as she showed correspondence between the two lovers.

Some of the philosopher’s content was so controversial it was banned.

His famous wit was infamously used to whip organized religion, a powerful institution at the time.

But Voltaire still found a way to spread his word clandestinely, by binding forbidden texts inside books that were allowed to circulate.

Many of the letters were written at his Chateau in Ferney, France near the border of Switzerland, where he was living in semi-exile.

The proximity to the border was deliberate in case he needed to flee.

Voltaire was able to purchase the estate after winning the Paris lottery. With financial freedom, he was able to focus on writing.

“He was actually writing feverishly at this moment,” Holland said.

Years later, the documents found in the chateau were handed to the new owners with a Canadian connection: the Lambert-David family, which includes McGill Prof. Peter Lambert-David Southam.

Four generations of the Lambert-David family would safeguard the documents, until Christopher Lyons, McGill’s associate dean of libraries, convinced Southam to let them go.

“And it’s wonderful, of course, because he could’ve sold this,” Lyons said. “The family were strong Voltarians. I think the fact that Peter Southam’s mother, Jacqueline Lambert-David, was really keen that the material come to Canada because she had married a Canadian, and the fact that Peter Southam himself was really concerned that it would go to a place where it could be used in research, that it had a life itself, was very much in keeping with the family’s belief in the material, in the message of the material, and what it held.”

Lyons said since McGill acquired the collection, phones have been ringing off the hook.

“The interest is global,” Lyons said. “That creates an opportunity. And we’ve had this with other collections, not only to have people come here to look at things, but then to meet each other and to bring researchers together.”

Researchers and curious folk of all kinds are able to see Voltaire’s body of work and related documents at McGill’s library.

“We’re literally a handshake away from Voltaire,” Holland said.

While you can’t literally shake his hand, you can, in a way, meet him through nearly 300 manuscripts and 1,500 pages of text, and become a little enlightened by one of history’s most important philosophers.

As Voltaire would sign off, ‘your most humble and most obeying servant.’

A letter by Voltaire, written by hand. McGill University

‘We claim her, end of story’: Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Piapot family hurt by allegations

Story by Haley Lewis and Melissa Ridgen • 

Buffy Sainte-Marie performs during the Canada Day noon hour show on Parliament Hill in 2017.© THE CANADIAN PRESS / Justin Tang

Artist and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie's Indigenous identity has been challenged by a CBC investigation but her Piapot First Nation, Sask. family stands by the 82-year-old, calling the narrative "ignorant," "colonial" and "racist."

Ntawnis Piapot, speaking for the family, says the bombshell claim that Sainte-Marie has no Indigenous blood has no bearing on her belonging to the Cree family.

Piapot is the great-granddaughter of Emile Piapot and Clara Starblanket, both deceased, who adopted Sainte-Marie some six decades ago.

Piapot says Sainte-Marie connected with the Piapot First Nation after she met her grandfather at a powwow in Ontario.

"There was just things that kind of lined up to her story too," she told Global News.

"My grandparents had 10 children and some of them died because of the Indian Act system, because they couldn't get proper health care on the reserve and so she was at that age where one of their children passed away and they kind of connected on that.

"The adoption process, it took years -- it took days and months and years of getting to know each other and trusting each other and going to ceremony and getting her Indian name (from my mushum) to finally look at her and be like, I acknowledge you as my daughter, you're officially part of our family.

It was done in Cree custom and while Sainte-Marie didn't claimed proof of blood relations, she is accepted as kin because of that ceremony.

"It's really insulting that someone would question my great grandfather's choice and right to adopt Buffy as his daughter," Piapot said.

"No one has the authority to question our sovereignty, we are a sovereign nation, we are sovereign people and our adoption practices have been intact since time immemorial.

"Having someone question the validity of that adoption ... it's hurtful, it's ignorant, it's colonial, and quite frankly it's racist."

Sainte-Marie's authorized biography written by Andrea Warner reads "There's no official record of Buffy Sainte-Marie's birth, not really. At least not a satisfactory and decisive one that answers questions before they're asked, grounded in a family lineage with all the gifts and baggage that accompany that kind of belonging."

The book continues, "born with the given name Beverly, most likely in 1941, on or around February 20th, and probably on a reserve called Piapot in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan. She is Cree."

Sainte-Marie has said she was somehow adopted and raised in Massachusetts by a non-Indigenous family.

But the CBC investigation -- none of which has been verified by Global News -- challenges that. They say a birth certificate shows her parents are Italian and English and aren't her adopted parents at all, but her birth parents. Family quoted by the CBC say there is no Indigenous heritage in their family.

Responding this week ahead of the CBC report Sainte-Marie in a post on social media, said "I am proud of my Indigenous-American identity, and the deep ties I have to Canada and my Piapot family.

"I may not know where I was born, but I know who I am."

In a recent podcast episode, Sainte-Marie spoke about her identity and how she routinely tries to correct misconceptions.

"There's been confusion regarding my Piapot adoption for instance," she said. "I was adopted into the Piapot family, not I was adopted out of Piapot reserve. That makes a big difference."

This recent clarification does however go against the biography on her website and statements made by her biographer in the past about being a part of the 60s scoop.

Among her many accolades, Sainte-Marie won an Oscar in 1983 for best original song, starred on six seasons of Sesame Street, influencing the show's storylines, and founded the Nihewan Foundation -- an organization dedicated to improving education of and about Indigenous people and cultures.

Adoption processes have been happening in First Nations communities for centuries.

The Assembly of First Nations says customary adoption "usually takes place between members of the immediate or extended family, although it may also involve people close to these families, such as friends or community members. By its nature, adoption varies from nation to nation."

Video: Buffy Sainte-Marie’s niece explains how much kinship means to the Piapot family

The allegations against Sainte-Marie caused a shock throughout Indigenous communities with reaction mixed, from disappointment to anger to support, spawning hashtags like #IStandWithBuffy.

News stories that challenge Indigenous identity -- like  Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimer and Carrie Bourrasa -- all raise the same question: Who has the right to decide who is and who isn't Indigenous?

Among the many points to consider in determining identity, ultimate decision-making power lies in the hands of communities, says Metis lawyer Jean Teillet who in the wake of several high-profile Indigenous identity matters, recently penned what's considered the gold standard for addressing identity fraud.

As well, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People states, in Article 3, that "Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination." Self-determination means "the sovereign right and power of the Indigenous group to decide who belongs to them, without external interference."

"No one should be able to question if (Sainte-Marie) is from Piapot because we claim her," said Piapot, who is a former CBC journalist. "She's claimed. She's not kicked out. She claims us, we claim her, end of story."

Her family wants people to keep an open and critical mind as the story unfolds.

"Think about whose voices are included in this story, whose voices are not included in this story and why did that happen? And most importantly, who is telling this story? What is their track record for telling Indigenous stories?"

CBC Report raises questions about Buffy Sainte-Marie's Indigenous claim

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