Blockchain could play an important role in future agriculture and food security

Global food supply chains proved brittle during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading for calls to boost the resilience of global food supply chains through improved efficiency in production, distribution and consumption of nutritious food. How could technologies like blockchain that provide data to producers, distributors and consumers be part of the solution?  

© (Shutterstock) Technological advances can help manage more efficient, sustainable and accountable farming practices.

Big data applications may present opportunities to address inefficiencies from farm to table and improve global food security.

Blockchain, a linked decentralized database that stores auditable data throughout entire supply chains, may change the game for food producers across the globe.

With global-scale food systems such as seafood, nearly 40 per cent of which is traded globally, data transparency and traceability through technologies like blockchain are important for socially and environmentally conscious decision making and to facilitate trust among stakeholders.
Gathering information

Blockchain technologies can be used to consolidate information on the quality of the seed, track how crops grow and record the journey once it leaves the farm. In Canada, for example, Grain Discovery - an online blockchain marketplace - is an example of data being leveraged by those involved in the food system to grow and market globally competitive crops.

The data could enhance transparency in supply chains by providing immutable records from production to consumption. Such data have the potential to facilitate information transfer throughout every step of the supply chain. And if blockchains are implemented with proper validation, it can prevent illegal and unethical production and distribution that undermines sustainability and community food security.

For example, Wal-Mart, Tsinghua University and IBM’s chain-based food traceability platforms have aided in tracing pork and mango in China and U.S. respectively, with positive results in creating trust and transparency in the supply chains.

This transparency also means consumers could make informed decisions to protect vulnerable producers and the environment. Access to product data may allow consumers to reward producers who employ good practices, such as rural smallholder farmers and fishermen who are among the most food-insecure groups.
Tracking pathways

Currently, there is little evidence supporting the claim that blockchain and big data technologies are contributing to global food security. Even though the average farm is projected to generate 4.1 million data points by 2050, up from 190,000 data points in 2014, increases in global food security have not been impressive.

Part of the challenge is how blockchains have been implemented until now. The corporate control of blockchains and big data platforms could even undermine food security.

For example, IBM and Walmart have teamed up to track produce from farm to fork. Producers and processors along the supply chain are required to input information into IBM’s blockchain for the process to be entirely transparent to consumers.

However, there is skepticism around IBM’s definition of blockchain, as privately owned blockchains can be tampered with more easily and are less secure. This is because security of private blockchains are still highly dependent on permissions and controls set by private organizations.

Corporate-owned, centralized databases of information do not meet the traditional definition of a blockchain, which is based on democracy and trust.

Traditional blockchains are decentralized and democratized in order to ensure trust between users. Corporate control of supply chain information could also leave out small-scale farmers that lack the required size, scale and technological know-how to participate. This division between large and small food producers can contribute to global food insecurity, and many researchers believe that small, as well as large farms, are required to feed the world’s growing population.
Data and food futures

Before blockchain and other data technologies can help address food security, a number of challenges need to be addressed.

The implementation of blockchains must be be decentralized to include small farmers and rural people. This will enable sustainable and equitable food systems and allow consumers to make informed decisions.

However, as blockchains place additional responsibility on the end users, challenges such as limited digital literacy among the world’s poor and infrastructure constraints may undermine true decentralization.

Also, they must be integrated into broader food security promotion strategies to make them sensitive to social and environmental values critical to tackling food insecurity among diverse groups.

The untapped potential of harnessing big data through a transparent and decentralized food distribution system may support sustainable food production and provide accountability for food production.

This is crucial for efficient food systems and food security in the future. But it is important that these innovations are deployed equitably so that all stakeholders along the value chain may benefit.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Evan Fraser Professor in the Dept. of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph, 

Abdul-Rahim Abdulai, PHD Student, Geography, Environment and Geomatics/Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph, 

Sarah Marquis, PhD Student, Environmental Sustainability, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa, 

Carling Bieg, PhD Candidate, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph 

Abdul-Rahim Abdulai receives funding from the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph and the International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Carling Bieg receives funding from NSERC.

Evan Fraser receives funding from the Canadian Government, the Ontario Government and George Weston Ltd. He is affiliated with the Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security.

Sarah Marquis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The US has a chance fix its broken climate risk disclosure system

Tim McDonnell 

QUARTZ

4/10/2021

© Provided by Quartz Floods and other climate change impacts pose risks to global supply chains, but it's often difficult for companies to get a good forecast of their risk.

Government and investors are quickly moving to quantify the risks posed by climate change and make that part of their financial decision-making. But many companies remain unsure how to measure the threat of climate change to their business, and whether or how to report those risks to investors and the public.

Financial regulators in the US are grappling with that question now. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opened a 90-day public comment period in March that will inform the first update to federal climate risk disclosure guidelines in a decade. Shareholder groups and asset managers like BlackRock (CEO Larry Fink wrote in February that “climate risk is investment risk”) are pressuring boardrooms to improve corporate transparency around climate risks. Without better disclosure, corporate managers have little incentive to avoid plowing capital into assets and supply chains that could collapse after natural disasters and dump massive costs on insurers, investors, customers, and the global economy.

Right out of the gate, some climate scientists are raising a major red flag. Politico reported in March that the computer models used to forecast physical climate risk—where, when, and how severely impacts like drought and sea level rise are most likely to appear—aren’t very good. Scientists contend they fail to accurately answer crucial questions for investors such as which supplies chains will face shortages or which coastal warehouses are most prone to flooding.

But scientists and federal regulators now have a chance to make better tools available to more companies. In the meantime, more companies should be able to start with information they already have—or lose credibility with investors and face legal repercussions.

Why it’s so hard to measure a company’s climate risk

Companies face two kinds of climate change risk. Transitional risk—how a company’s business model could be disrupted by the global shift away from fossil fuels—can be analyzed through carbon footprint accounting, said Lihuan Zhou, a finance researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI). The more emissions a company emits, the greater risk it faces from economic opposition to fossil fuels (oil companies and airlines, for example, are at high transitional risk).

Physical risk is much harder to pin down. Assessing the climate risk to facilities or supply chains requires complex modeling of the interaction of geophysical forces such as temperature and ocean currents for decades into the future. Predicting likely weather phenomena in a location is even harder. In a Feb. analysis in the journal Nature Climate Change, Australian climate scientists concluded that while the gold-standard computer models developed to evaluate scientific theories about the climate may reliably predict long-term global trends, the hyper-local predictions needed for a rigorous assessment of financial risk are beyond their reach. The difference of just a degree or two of latitude, or a few inches of sea-level rise, for example, may put a company’s warehouse in, or out, of harm’s way.

The tricky business of measuring climate risk

Nevertheless, a number of private consulting firms will, for a few hundred thousand dollars, produce custom physical climate risk evaluations for a company or government agency. These firms use proprietary models whose underlying data and internal assumptions are not always clear to prospective end users or subject to independent scientific scrutiny.

Their forecasts, says Upmanu Lall, a senior scientist at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, should be taken with a big grain of salt. “Most climate scientists in academia will put a lot of caveats on every projection on climate change,” Lall said. “But by the time [a projection] gets to these companies, all the caveats get thrown away.”

Nonprofits like the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures have also laid out voluntary risk disclosure guidelines that companies can follow to measure and disclose risk on their own. But a Feb. report by Zhou and his colleagues at WRI found numerous discrepancies between these guidelines, including which hazards are addressed (sea level rise, usually; extreme precipitation, sometimes; hail, never) and how they suggest companies measure them. That’s a problem, Zhou said, because “especially if we want companies to disclose this information to investors, it needs to be comparable.”

Rich Sorkin, CEO of the risk assessment firm Jupiter, said in an email that the company stands by its models, which were developed in consultation with independent academic experts, and is “committed to accessible, transparent, useful, relevant, and credible information to all our partners and customers.” But he agrees that standards for climate risk disclosure are still lacking: “The metrics of quality, the form that is relevant, actionable and easy to use, and the pathway to affordability are all emergent and evolving in the early days.”

Make the scientific literature accessible to companies

The path to better climate risk disclosure, Zhou said, starts with turning scientific jargon into language the corporate sector understands. A good model is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-supported group of leading global climate scientists. Every few years, it produces a major summary of the latest research. IPCC reports are the most authoritative source on projected climate impacts, and they always contain a summary of their findings designed for policymakers—but not one for the private sector, leaving companies to parse through hundreds of pages of dense scientific text and data on their own. The IPCC and other research groups should do more to make the business-relevant parts of that data available through free public resources like WRI’s Resource Watch, he said.

“The academic literature is there, but not in formats that companies are comfortable with or can access easily,” he said.

That task will be easier if the SEC provides more clarity about which, and how much, data a company needs to disclose on its risks, said Madison Condon, a professor of environmental law at Boston University who co-authored a Feb. report on the SEC’s climate oversight. The SEC could also give better guidance to companies in different sectors about which information—how much water a specific mine uses, for example—they can keep proprietary.

“What’s material in one industry may not be material in another,” Condon said. “The regulators have not figured out how to get investors the data they really need.”

The SEC should also set uniform standards for risk modeling, selecting the best parts of the existing voluntary guidelines, and ensure that they are kept up to date with the latest science, Zhou said. And the agency can step up its enforcement of whatever rules it settles on; since 2010, when it first issued guidelines for climate risk disclosure, its crackdown on shoddy reporting has amounted to just 58 finger-wagging “comment letters” to companies, according to Condon’s report. “They should press harder on companies ignoring obvious risks,” she said, possibly pursuing fraud charges for the worst offenders.

Acting now to head off corporate climate risk

Companies needn’t wait for the SEC to finish its guidelines. Even without precise long-term modeling, Condon said, many sectors like construction, manufacturing, and food and agriculture can identify physical assets at risk from worsening climate conditions. Managers have more incentive to tackle short-term risks than those decades away, she said. “You can do so much just with recent historical weather data to exposure latent risk to corporate supply chains,” she said. “Companies don’t need to hire a climate modeler to do that. Many aren’t prepared for risks that they can reasonably forecast using the back of an envelope.”

Emilie Mazzacurati, global head of climate solutions at the analytics firm Moody’s and a founder of Four Twenty Seven, a risk modeling agency acquired by Moody’s last year, said the agency is upfront with clients about the limits of global climate model forecasts, and uses historical data on storms, elevation, and hydrology to fill in local gaps. As modeling firms proliferate in the coming years, she said, they need to be transparent with the scientific community about their methodology.

“Cutting-edge advancements in representing future climate conditions should undergo a rigorous public peer-review process,” she said. “Further academic review and third-party audits of existing climate service provider methodologies would help strengthen the credibility of the climate services industry.”

Companies that do opt to work with modeling firms should ask questions about the model’s assumptions and data sources, and be prepared for forecasts that are framed as probabilities rather than certainties. Companies will also need to get comfortable being more transparent about their assets. The most important thing, Condon said, is for more companies to take climate risk seriously, and study it with whatever tools are available.

“The biggest concern is that we are unprepared,” she said, “and not thinking about climate risk at all.”

New infrastructure isn't seen as priority by Americans

Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN 

4/10/2021

President Joe Biden is pushing his infrastructure bill, the American Jobs Plan. This bill strays from what has helped him maintain an approval rating above 50% so far during his presidency because, even though the plan polls fairly well, it's not clear that Americans actually think it's all that important.

PENNY PINCHING SELFISHNESS AVOIDING PREVENTATIVE MAINTANENCE FOR 50 YEARS

© Evan Vucci/AP President Joe Biden speaks during an event on the American Jobs Plan in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Wednesday, April 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Numerous polls have asked Americans about their priorities and infrastructure comes out low.

Just 32% said improving the country's roads, bridges and public transportation systems should be a top priority for Biden and Congress, according to a January Pew Research Center poll. That ranked second to last among 19 items asked about in the poll. For comparison, strengthening the economy and dealing with the pandemic were first and second, respectively.

A January Monmouth University poll came to a similar finding. It tested 15 areas for the federal government to address, and a mere 17% said transportation and energy infrastructure was extremely important. That was dead last in the poll. Again, the pandemic and the economy were at or near the topic of the list.

Now, this isn't to say the infrastructure plan will necessarily hurt Biden's popularity. Right now, more Americans support than oppose the bill.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last week showed that 45% backed the bill, while 27% opposed it. A lot of folks (28%) simply were undecided.

An average of polls on the topic does find support a bit higher, with 54% favoring the bill to 23% opposing it. Nearly a quarter of the electorate was neither in favor nor opposed.

A 54% opening favorability for a bill is good, but it's not close to the type of support Biden was getting for his coronavirus relief package. It's also about equal to Biden's overall job approval rating of around 55%.

Among these same pollsters, Biden's Covid relief bill was far more popular than he was, with an average of 66% support to 19% opposition, with just 15% undecided.

The higher number of undecideds in the infrastructure bill makes sense. Unlike with coronavirus relief, infrastructure is not at the top of most Americans' minds. The higher number of undecideds may also be an indication that opinions on the subject may be less entrenched than they were when it came to Biden's Covid relief bill.

Moreover, the data suggests that those who are undecided are disproportionately Republican. This could mean that opposition might jump up as Republicans speak out against the bill.

The good news for Biden is he may not need any GOP votes to pass his infrastructure package. Democrats control the House, and the Senate parliamentarian is of the belief that they could potentially use reconciliation (i.e. needing a simple majority of Senate votes) to pass future bills. If they are able to use it for the infrastructure bill, Democrats have the votes in the House and Senate, as long as they don't have any defections.

That's why it'll be important to watch more moderate Democratic senators to see whether they waver. The lack of import that most voters are putting on infrastructure could work to their advantage.

If most Americans aren't basing their votes on whether this infrastructure bill passes or not, there's likely a better chance that Democrats will toe the party line on a package important to the President.

Singh faces 2nd leadership review as NDP policy convention enters final day
CBC/Radio-Canada 1 hour ago

  

© Justin Tang/The Canadian Press NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is set to face his second leadership review today as the NDP's virtual policy convention enters its third and final day.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh will stare down his second leadership review later today when more than 2,000 convention delegates decide whether they should trigger a leadership race within the party.

The NDP is gearing up for the final day of its virtual policy convention, which has been beset by technical glitches, missing accessibility services at times, and has been slowed by a flurry of points of order and points of privilege from delegates.

On Saturday, delegates passed a controversial resolution calling for Canada to suspend arms sales with Israel and impose sanctions on Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law.

"The measures are similar to what human rights organizations have called for, and I think there is good merit in what they are calling for," Singh said Sunday on Rosemary Barton Live.

"If we want to get peace, it's going to require some pressure, and I think that's important," he said, when pushed by CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton on whether he would adopt the resolution as a position of his party.

Other resolutions passed include a proposal to make long-term care part of Canada's health-care system and a pledge to support Indian farmers protesting that country's new agricultural laws.

On Sunday afternoon, Singh will deliver a speech to assembled delegates, which will be followed by a secret ballot vote to determine whether a leadership race should be called. If more than half of delegates vote in support of a race, an election must take place within a year.

Singh breezed through 2018 review

NDP deputy leader Alexandre Boulerice said Singh shouldn't be too worried ahead of today's review.

"The caucus is united. The feeling, the mood with the activists, the members, the volunteers, is quite good. There's no questioning of the leadership right now. We are ready to go with Jagmeet in an election any time."

In 2018, Singh coasted through his first review at the NDP's policy convention, with 90.7 per cent of delegates voting against holding a race.

Former leader Jack Layton obtained around or above 90 per cent during his reviews, similar to the outcome achieved during Tom Mulcair's first vote in 2013. Three years later with Mulcair still at the helm, more than half of party delegates voted in favour of a leadership election — an unprecedented result for a federal party leader.

While Boulerice feels assured of Singh's chances, he doesn't believe the leader — who handily won the party's top job in 2017 — should get too comfortable.

"His challenges are the challenges of a lot of federal leaders," Boulerice said.

"He needs to connect with areas of the country he knows a little bit less, maybe like the Maritimes ... to have good knowledge about the different realities."

Singh also needs to brush up on his French, Boulerice said. The MP holds the party's only seat in Quebec, a province where the NDP is hoping to make gains.

"He's generally good. But a couple of days without speaking French ... you can feel that."

Membership has strong opinions: Masse

Longtime Ontario MP Brian Masse said it's never good to assume someone will survive a leadership vote.

"If he's not [worried], then that's a problem. I don't think that it's something that he needs to dwell on ... but he has to be cognizant that we have a diverse membership that has strong opinions on a lot of different issues, and he's the person who represents the face of that at the end of the day."

Meanwhile, former NDP campaign manager Brad Lavigne said the NDP's overall performance throughout this minority, pandemic Parliament bodes well for Singh.

"He's led the caucus through a very difficult time in this country. He kept the focus on people and their needs with things like those relief programs," Lavigne said.

"The membership should be rewarding Mr. Singh with overwhelming support to continue on as leader."

Singh to address supporters before review

The NDP's push for pandemic supports is expected to factor heavily into the leader's speech on Sunday.

The leader is also expected to signal that the party is ready for a pandemic election should one be called.

The party cleared its multimillion-dollar campaign debt earlier this year and is prepared to spend up to $24 million for its next election run.

The NDP is currently facing criticism from some grassroots members for keeping 100 per cent of all Elections Canada campaign expense reimbursement, funds that usually go to candidates and benefit electoral district associations or ridings.

Liberal, NDP insiders weigh in on the battle to win the progressive vote

Raisa Patl  CBC 4/10/22021

  

© Sean Kilpatrick / Canadian Press NDP leader Jagmeet Singh meets

with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Parliament Hill in 2019.

As the Liberals and New Democrats staged duelling party policy conventions today, party insiders said they also signalled they're going to be battling each other over many of the same ideas — and voters.

Proposals to implement a universal basic income (UBI), to make the wealthy pay more in taxes and to create a national pharmacare program were just some of the overlapping progressive policy pitches both parties advanced this week as they looked ahead to their election platforms.

"I think it tells you that most of the country, and most of the thinking that's going on around the economy, is focusing on activist government solutions," David Herle, a longtime Liberal strategist and partner at The Gandalf Group, told CBC Radio's The House.

"That's where people's heads are and that's where the experts are in terms of looking at what kind of role government needs to play, whether it's in the provision of child care or greater income security for gig workers. This is post-pandemic."

NDP national director Anne McGrath told The House this isn't the first time Liberals have absorbed some of her party's ideas.

"There has been a history of the Liberals adopting and promoting some fairly progressive proposals, but then not necessarily delivering. And I think that that's really the job for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP in the next election campaign," McGrath said.

"The question, I think, for a lot of voters is going to be, 'Who is actually likely to do anything on these things?'"

Resolutions don't always dictate platforms

On Saturday, delegates at the Liberal convention endorsed resolutions on establishing UBI in Canada and creating a national pharmacare program, but rejected proposals to hike the capital gains tax and place an "inheritance tax" on assets over $2 million.

NDP delegates have yet to vote on UBI or pharmacare, but voted overwhelmingly Friday in favour of a resolution calling on Ottawa to ensure that "the wealthiest Canadians pay their fair share through a tax on wealth."

Passing a resolution does not necessarily mean that policy becomes part of a party's election platform.

"Some [issues] may make it into a platform for an election, whenever that election should be. If it doesn't make it into something in the immediate term, it doesn't get lost. It moves forward," Liberal Party president Suzanne Cowan told The House host Chris Hall in a separate interview.

"This is an ongoing discussion that takes place between conventions."
'The real competition is on the left'

Cowan also rejected the suggestion that progressive proposals wouldn't typically fall under her party's umbrella.

"I am not at all surprised that it is a progressive agenda because we are a progressive party," she said.

"So I think that ... these are Canadians priorities. I would not say that these are NDP issues that we are talking about now. These are our issues."

According to the CBC's Canada Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all publicly available polling data, the Liberals are leading with 35.8 per cent support nationwide. The Conservatives are in second with 29.8 per cent and the NDP is in third with 18.1 per cent.

Overlapping policies won't help either party, said Herle, who predicted the Conservatives will bump up their support and narrow the Liberals' lead.

"If the Conservatives are at a more normal number, then the NDP number ... becomes very damaging to Liberal chances of victory," he said. "So I actually do think that the real competition is on the left."

Herle and McGrath both said that while some party priorities dovetail, it's equally important to put forward distinct identities.

"It's important to point out the contrast with the Liberal government," McGrath said. "And so we have been working hard on making sure that that context is there."

RUN TO THE LEFT GOVERN FROM THE RIGHT
Liberal delegates endorse a universal basic income, reject capital gain tax hike
John Paul Tasker 

4/10/2021

© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press The WE controversy that has been dogging the Liberals is expected to continue to follow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government after Trudeau's appearance before a House of Commons committee Thursday…

Liberal delegates to the party's policy convention have overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution calling for the establishment of a universal basic income (UBI) in Canada, while also rejecting a call to hike the capital gains tax.

By a vote of 77 per cent, Liberal members on hand for the policy plenary today backed a call to permanently implement an income program similar to the Canada emergency response benefit (CERB), which kept millions of people afloat with monthly cheques during the first wave of the pandemic.

With 8.7 per cent of Canadians living below the poverty line and thousands more struggling to make ends meet, backers of this policy say a UBI would "ensure that communities at risk (including Indigenous peoples) are able to feel financially secure."

"Given the success of the CERB program, a UBI will assist seniors and low-income Canadians maintain an adequate standard of living, regardless of working status," the resolution reads.

Speaking to delegates assembled online, Alex Spears of the Young Liberals of Canada said a UBI would ensure the country's "strong and robust social safety net is adapted to the 21st century," adding that a program to send cheques to all families is "completely consistent with our values as a party."

He said the program would "put more cash in the hands of working Canadians and families" and could lift millions out of poverty.

"UBI is not a silver bullet and it ought to be done in conjunction with many other progressive policies, but it is a critical step," he said.

Would a UBI work?

The resolution does not say how such a costly program would be designed and implemented.

Few jurisdictions around the world have successfully enacted programs that make regular payments to all citizens without means tests or work requirements.

The parliamentary budget officer last week concluded that a universal basic income could almost halve Canada's poverty rate in just one year, but at a steep cost: $85 billion in 2021-22, rising to $93 billion in 2025-26.

While the resolutions are non-binding — the government ignored a 2018 convention vote to decriminalize all illicit drug use, for example — the policy endorsements could help inform future government spending and the Liberal Party's election platform.

The government has said it's preparing to spend up to $100 billion this year to kick start the post-pandemic economy even after it reported a record-high deficit of $381 billion in the last fiscal year.

While the idea of a UBI has gained traction in progressive circles — supporters maintain the massive price tag of such a program could be offset by dismantling existing provincial social welfare schemes — academics who study poverty reduction are split on its value.

A 529-page report authored by researchers at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the University of Calgary concluded after a three-year investigation that a basic income for all is not the best way to address poverty and other social problems.

Instead, the report said, governments should boost existing social support programs for vulnerable groups through improved disability assistance, dental care programs and more money to help the working poor pay rent. A more targeted approach to help the disadvantaged, as opposed to a universal program like UBI, would do more to lift people out of poverty, the report concluded.

Conservative MP Ed Fast, the party's finance critic, said pursuing a UBI would be a "risky and unknown experiment that will leave millions more Canadians behind."

He said the Liberal Party is trying to "reimagine" the Canadian economy while the country is still struggling with the pandemic.

Video: Trudeau comments on U.S. treasury secretary's push for minimum global corporate income tax (Global News)

"The fact that UBI was supported at the convention this weekend is par for the course with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. Instead of focusing on creating jobs, they are fixated on implementing risky, expensive and untested economic policies," Fast said.
Delegates endorse pharmacare, 'green new deal'

Liberal delegates also supported other progressive policies, such as the creation of a national pharmacare program and a "green new deal" to dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions.

B.C. members backing the new green-friendly policies say Canada needs a "10-year national mobilization" plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 because "a changing climate threatens human life, healthy communities and critical infrastructure."

While this proposal is also light on specifics, its supporters are calling for an "urgent, transparent and inclusive consultation process" with workers, labour unions and businesses affected by the shift to cleaner fuel sources. Delegates agreed there should be a "just transition" for energy workers who will lose their jobs as a result of move to renewable energy.

Inheritance tax, capital gains hike rejected

At a time when all levels of government are searching for new revenue streams to offset the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, Liberal delegates rejected a resolution from the party's Ontario chapter to hike the capital gains tax.

Currently, when an investment is sold — a stock, a mutual fund or any one of a number of other assets — 50 per cent of any increase in value is taxed as income.

For example, if a person buys a share in a publicly traded company for $20 and sells it for $40 at a later date, then $10 will be added to a person's income for tax purposes; the other $10 earned goes untaxed.

This preferential tax treatment is designed to encourage people to make investments to drive economic growth and provide companies with easy access to capital. Critics maintain this unfairly benefits the rich.

The Ontario chapter proposed reducing the capital gains tax exemption to zero — meaning all investment gains would be taxed as income.

As part of the same proposal, the Ontario chapter pitched an "inheritance tax" on all assets over $2 million. That proposal did not specify the rate at which these assets should be taxed, or how and when such a system would take effect. Delegates rejected the idea along with the suggestion to increase the capital gains tax by a 62-38 margin.
'Please make me pay more taxes'

One delegate, Jake Landau, the president of the Don Valley West Young Liberals, said he considers himself "upper middle class" and he believes the current system is tilted toward the wealthy.

"I am asking everyone, please make me pay more taxes. I want to pay my fair share," he said.

Another delegate named Linda — who also did not give her last name — said she worries that a change to the capital gains tax might open the door to the federal government taxing the sale of primary residences.

In the last election, the Conservative Party warned that a Liberal government would look to cash in on rising home values by levying a capital gains tax on home sales to raise funds — a charge the Liberals have denied.

Right now, sales of primary homes are exempt from capital gains taxes — meaning the owners don't have to pay taxes on any increase in a home's value when it's sold. The same rules do not apply to secondary, seasonal or investment properties, which are taxed like other investments.

"My concern with this is it is a blanket resolution," said Linda. "There are many people relying on capital gains in their home in order to retire and not live in poverty."

'Long-term care can be a nightmare'

Party members also overwhelmingly backed a policy proposal — with 97 per cent in favour — to reform the country's long-term care home system, which has been hit hard with death and disease throughout this pandemic.

"The pandemic has shown us that long-term care can be a nightmare," said one unnamed Liberal delegate. "Seniors will do anything they can to stay out."

The policy calls on the federal government to introduce new legislation to set "enforceable" national standards to prevent a repeat of the COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities that have claimed the lives of thousands.

Kathleen Devlin of the Senior Liberals' Commission said Canadians have been "horrified" by the conditions reported in long-term care homes throughout this health crisis.

She said the Canadian Armed Forces report last summer from the pandemic front lines "embarrassed us all." Soldiers reported that residents in some long-term care homes were bullied, drugged, improperly fed and in some cases left for hours and days in soiled bedding.

"While it's a provincial responsibility to deliver it, there needs to be federal leadership to give all Canadians equity when they're at their most vulnerable," Devlin said. "Sometimes we need a crisis to face what we already know."

According to the resolution, these new standards would address accommodation conditions, staffing levels, qualifications and compensation. The proposed legislation also would demand greater transparency in how homes are operated "and public accountability through random inspections and annual public reporting."

Stacks of logs in pellet plant yards draws critics

The sight of pellet plants along Highway 16 West awash in "whole trees" is raising alarm bells for groups concerned the mills are using more than just wood waste to produce their product.

Pellet plants are traditionally considered the go-to spot for material for which sawmills and pulp mills have no use.

But photos of piles of logs at plants in Smithers, Burns Lake and Houston were released this week along with a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives questioning whether the region's timber supply is being put to its best use.

Report author Ben Parfitt, as well as a handful of environmental groups and a union representing forestry workers, are calling on the provincial government to halt approvals of any new pellet manufacturing facilities pending a review of what the industry is converting into pellets.

"We're calling for a thorough independent analysis of how many logs are going to the pellet industry and what kind of logs those logs are," Parfitt said in a interview.

Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad, the B.C. Liberals' forestry critic, said the piles have been a common sight as he has driven along Highway 16 and that unless things have changed since the NDP took power, the plants are relying exclusively on logs too dry or too defective to be processed by sawmills.

"I don't have a concern with that," Rustad said.

Parfitt acknowledged that many of the logs shown in the photos are "incredibly small diameter logs that would not be suitable for a sawmill but there are also larger-diameter logs in there that could be run through a sawmill."

Exactly what percentage are sawmill worthy, Parfitt could not say.

"That is a question I can't answer but I'm just saying that I think that one just has to be cautious in accepting at face value that there is nothing else that could be done with the wood," Parfitt said.

The three plants depicted in the photos are owned by Pinnacle Pellet, which also owns plants in Quesnel and Williams Lake.

British energy company Drax, owner of the the world’s largest pellet-fueled power station, located in the United Kingdom, is in the process of acquiring Pinnacle for $385 million.

Pinnacle spokesperson Karen Brandt said the company relies entirely on residuals left from sawmilling or harvesting or from fibre that has been rejected by the primary producers including pulp mills.

"We should all be advocating for better forest policy to address the millions of cubic metres of slash left in the forest to burn every year; this will be a focus of our efforts going forward," she added in an emailed reponse.

In answer to a request for comment on the report, a spokesperson at the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development did not directly address the call for a review and a halt on new permits.

The spokesperson did say prices for lumber and pulp are on the rise and that competition for fibre will help direct the material to its best use.

"At the same time, the ministry monitors the quality of the logs that are delivered and consumed by all timber processing facilities in British Columbia," the spokesperson said.

"We try to make sure that the right log gets to the right facility, while low quality, lower-value logs and residuals are being used in pellet mills."

With respect to the percentage of trees used for wood pellets in 2020, 540,000 cubic metres was delivered from the bush to pellet plants in B.C. Of that 200,000 cubic metres was pine beetle wood.

"This represents approximately 1.2 per cent of the provincial timber harvest that went directly to a pellet plant in 2020," the spokesperson said.

Mark Nielsen, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Prince George Citizen

CBE will not test drive controversial new Alberta curriculum this fall

JOINS EPSB AND ECSB

  

© Monty Kruger/CBC In a statement released Friday, the Calgary Board of Education said it would not take part in the provincial government's controversial new draft K-6 curriculum pilot.

The Calgary Board of Education will not take part in the provincial government's controversial new draft K-6 curriculum pilot project this fall.

The board is the latest to join several others across the province to reject the draft — including Edmonton Public and Edmonton Catholic.

The Métis Nation of Alberta and Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations have also rejected the proposed curriculum.

The CBE says it has concerns similar to those expressed by educators, academic staff, parents and community members.

"As the largest public school board in Alberta, we believe it is vitally important to provide Alberta Education with feedback on the draft curriculum," the CBE said in a release on Friday.

"In the fall, we will gather meaningful feedback through focus groups with classroom teachers and curriculum specialists. Staff, parents/guardians and community members are encouraged to continue providing feedback."

© Sam Martin/CBC Education Minster Adriana LaGrange has had to defend the province's new K-6 curriculum. 

HER PEDALOGICAL EXPERIENCE IS RESTRICTED TO TEACHING SUNDAY SCHOOL

The new curriculum has come under fire after being called Eurocentric, and for its approach towards race, Indigenous history and colonialism.

The curriculum has also been criticized for alleged instances of plagiarism and has received pushback from educators and parents.

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange told CBC News last month that school district participation in the pilot project was voluntary, but she hoped to have representation from urban and rural schools.

The ministry intends to have the curriculum taught in all Alberta elementary schools by September 2022.

Education press secretary Justin Marshall said last week that the pilot project should give schools a chance to provide feedback on the curriculum.

"School divisions can opt to pilot all or some of the draft curriculum subjects [math, language arts, etc.]," he said.

"If some school divisions do not wish to pilot, they simply will not be able to provide direct, in-classroom feedback on potential change."
'A strong statement'

Medeana Moussa, executive director of Support our Students Alberta, says the CBE's decision sends a message.

"They're not first out of the door, but they're by no means late. I think they wanted to give it due consideration. And I think they have made a strong statement," Moussa said.

"And I think it's really important that the other school boards show solidarity and follow suit with the largest school board in Alberta and stand up for students."

The CBE said it has carefully reviewed the curriculum, and the decision took into account the pandemic and focusing on the immediate needs of students.

In a statement issued Friday, NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman said kids deserve better than the UCP plan.

"Alberta's largest school board, the Calgary Board of Education, has now rejected Jason Kenney's flawed curriculum. We know that the UCP curriculum will not prepare students for advanced education and their future careers," Hoffman wrote.

"More than 10, including three of the province's four largest school boards, have now taken a stand against the premier's plan for educating Alberta children."

© CBC NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman is pleased to hear that the Calgary Board of Education has chosen not to participate in the province's new curriculum pilot this fall.

Hoffman added that she hopes the UCP government will put a halt to the pilot plan.

The CBE statement indicated they shared a similar goal.

"We trust that government will consider all the feedback gathered across the province and make the necessary changes prior to implementation in September 2022," the CBE said

Albertans express growing frustration over a perceived lack of enforcement of COVID-19 rules

IT STARTS WITH KENNEY'S REFUSAL 

TO LOCK DOWN THE PROVINCE

Dylan Short 

EDMOPNTON JOURNAL

4/10/2021

© David Bloom The RCMP watch as parishioners arrive for Easter Sunday Service at GraceLife Church, in Edmonton Sunday April 4, 2021. The church continues to defy COVID-19 public health orders and restrictions.

Albertans are voicing frustration at neighbours and businesses who are blatantly breaking public health restrictions with little to no consequences a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alberta has been navigating the global pandemic with various levels of public health restrictions with a variety of businesses opening and closing over the past 13 months. People have been dealing with rules around gatherings, eating at restaurants and where they need to wear masks among other things.

Glori Meldrum, who lives in Edmonton, said she has neighbours who have held several large gatherings over the past few weeks with close to a dozen vehicles parking outside each time despite current rules prohibiting all indoor gatherings. She said she has filed complaints but has yet to see anyone enforce the government-mandated regulations.

Several other Albertans have gone to social media to raise concerns over similar situations where neighbours have openly defied orders.

“It’s frustrating. I mean, I’m not gonna say that it’s not,” said Meldrum. “I couldn’t believe it when it was in my own backyard, and nobody would do anything.”

She said she initially called police to file a complaint but was told it was a provincial issue, so she reached out to Alberta Health Services and eventually filled out an online submission. She said it is frustrating to see gathering limits and wearing masks turn into divisive issues that people won’t comply with while she has friends waiting for surgeries that were postponed due to the pandemic.

“There are rules that need to be followed and the government can’t expect us to follow them if there are no consequences,” said Meldrum.

Provincial chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw has said several times that public health orders are enforced by local law enforcement or public health inspectors. Police have the authority to issue fines, but Alberta RCMP have previously said only health inspectors have the authority to close a business.

AHS spokesman Kerry Williamson said the health agency is aware that there are some Albertans openly defying health restrictions but that the majority of people follow them closely.

“Our public health inspectors and teams have been working hard for more than a year now to educate and, when appropriate, enforce compliance,” said Williamson. “The demands on our teams have grown significantly since the beginning of the pandemic.”

Willimason said he understands restrictions are difficult at times and COVID-19 fatigue has set in for many, but he implored Albertans to continue to follow the rules.

Meldrum said a year into the pandemic, the educational approach hasn’t worked, pointing to positive cases beginning to rise in recent weeks.

AHS Tom McMillan said people who violate health restrictions could receive a $1,000 fine.

“Additionally, you can be prosecuted for up to $100,000 for a first offence, and additional measures, including closures, can occur,” said McMillan.

The AHS website shows there are seven active work orders against various businesses in the Edmonton Zone and one active closure order.

This past week, AHS enforced that closure order at GraceLife Church in Parkland County by erecting layers of fencing around the building, physically closing the church after the order was issued in January. The church’s congregation was observed on multiple occasions gathering in large groups without wearing masks or physically distancing from one another.

Meldrum said it was good to see the rules being enforced against the church that openly questioned public health measures but said she’s concerned that it took months for the enforcement. She said she believes a previous lack of enforcement at the church emboldened others to break the rules.

“You need to need to enforce it and they didn’t do that. They just let them go and let them go … that’s just not OK,” said Meldrum. “But when they did it, I was so proud.”

READ MORE: Alberta doctors say new restrictions ‘not enough’ to reduce spread of COVID-19

Related
More fencing, noise complaints around GraceLife Church after shut down
One-quarter of premier's caucus revolts against latest pandemic measures
GraceLife Church shuttered by authorities after months of flouting COVID-19 rules

COVID-19: Rural Alberta restaurant defies public health orders

Sarah Komadina 

GLOBAL NEWS

4/10/2021

One day after the Alberta government prohibited dine-in service at all restaurants, Christopher Scott, owner of the Whistle Stop Café, isn't listening.

© Global News A lineup for food outside of the Whistle Stop Cafe, where people aren't following public health orders.

More than 200 people went to Mirror, Alta., located about 150 kilometres south of Edmonton, on Saturday, with some travelling from Saskatchewan and Ontario, but everyone ignoring provincial health restrictions.

"We have live music, which has been deemed against the rule. We have dine-in service, which is against the rules, we have people congregating and visiting, which is against the rules, and I don't think I've seen one masked person here, which is against the rules," Scott said.

"We started planning this the day of the announcement."

Scott said he isn't surprised with the number of people who showed up.

"What this is about is people being limited in making their own choices," Scott said.

Alberta Health Services did an inspection on Friday when the restrictions for dine-in services came into effect.

AHS told Global News that staff visited the Whistle Stop Café on Friday “in response to public claims by the operator that they would not be complying with COVID-19 restrictions.”

“As a result of non-compliance with (chief medical officer of health) orders, a closure order will be issued to cease dine-in services and further enforcement actions, including suspension of the operator’s food handling permit, will be pursued if the order is not complied with,” AHS said of its inspection of the Whistle Stop Café.

During an update Saturday, Premier Jason Kenney urged people to follow measures put in place.


"It would be tragic if a gathering would result in a superspreader event," Kenney said.

The premier said Alberta is on track to have 2,000 new infections a day and 1,000 people in hospital with COVID-19 by the end of April, and that the third wave is being driven by variants.

Scott said he has no plans to stop holding these types of gatherings in defiance of public health orders.

Edmonton pub defying COVID-19 restrictions, remains open

The owners of a north Edmonton pub said they are not going to close in-person dining despite new COVID-19 measures announced this week requiring them to do so.

© Charles Taylor, Global News Edmonton's Crown and Anchor Pub and Grill defies provincial COVID-19 measures by remaining open for in-person dining, Saturday, April 10, 2021.

Crown and Anchor Pub and Grill owners Theresa and Terry Shaw said they will stand by their values and remain open.

"We are doing this for amazing, dedicated staff and for our loyal customers who value our business and have made the choice to assess their own risk associated with in-person dining," the owners wrote in a statement.

"We will continue to uphold capacity and cleaning standards and cannot emphasize how much we understand the duty and care government and Alberta Health have to Alberta."

Effective noon Friday, Alberta restaurants must now close to indoor dining service. Takeout, delivery, curbside pickup and patios are still allowed to operate under additional public health restrictions announced Tuesday by Premier Jason Kenney.

It is the third time since last March that Alberta restaurants have been forced to close their doors.

The Shaws said they complied with the measures on the previous two occasions but, "That is over. We have done our part. It is time for the provincial government and Alberta Health to do their part."

"The benchmarks have moved so many times these past six months that trust and competence are significantly questionable," the statement read.

A number of other restaurants and pubs around Alberta have defied provincial restrictions and remained opened for in-person dining, including the Whistle Stop Café in Mirror, Alta., and All Jacked Up Bar and Grill in Didsbury, Alta.

"She's a pillar of this community and she's in financial ruin because of this law that we don't think is just," Didsbury resident Gavin Smith said. "They're masking. The rules are being followed."

After the restrictions were announced Tuesday, a spokesperson with Alberta Health said the measures were based on evidence in the province and around the world that show settings like fitness facilities and restaurants are at increased risk of disease transmission.

“Restaurants, as with similar settings where people congregate together, have a higher risk due to people sitting closely together, typically unmasked, for extended periods of time,” Tom McMillan said.

“We have also observed a number of recent cases and outbreaks linked to restaurants and fitness settings across the province.”

The premier said Alberta is on track to have 2,000 new infections a day and 1,000 people in hospital with COVID-19 by the end of April, and that the third wave is being driven by variants.


READ MORE: Alberta restaurants close to in-person dining as COVID-19 restrictions take effect

Video: Central Alberta restaurants stay open in defiance of new health rules

Read more: AHS to issue closure order to small-town Alberta café for flouting COVID-19 rules again

Read more: Some Alberta businesses vow to stay open despite return of COVID-19 restrictions

Mass adoption may take crypto toward centralization

With mass adoption comes the risk that cryptocurrency may lose one of its core value propositions: decentralization.

OPINION

This is the year cryptocurrency finally starts to break into the mainstream. From Elon Musk and Tesla investing in and accepting Bitcoin (BTC) to the recent nonfungible token craze, the days of blockchain tech being the domain of cypherpunks and coders are behind us.

Still, the technology has not quite advanced to the stage where the average person will feel comfortable using it. And the longer the usability of cryptocurrency takes to reach the level where it connects with nontechnical users, the higher the risk that centralized companies will take over the task of improving accessibility instead, harming the censorship resistance of this relatively new technology as it finally surges into the mainstream consciousness.

Let’s look at the state of the crypto usability landscape as it stands today.
Bitcoin’s “Lightning-or-bust” approach faces hurdles

When Bitcoin chose to reject on-chain scaling via big blocks, it essentially placed all its hopes and dreams of being usable as an everyday currency on second-layer scaling solutions, foremost among them being the Lightning Network. While functional today, the Lightning Network nonetheless introduces a whole new host of complexities, including liquidity balancing, opening and closing channels, routing payment paths, maintaining connectivity at all times in order to receive funds and so on. And perhaps most challenging to new users, moving funds off-chain onto the Lightning Network requires an on-chain transaction (as do various other Lightning Network functions), triggering those awful, long confirmation times and high transaction fees. All in all, this is a frustrating experience even for a savvy cryptocurrency user and an absolute non-starter for complete newbies.

Thankfully, tireless developers have deployed a new generation of Lightning Network wallets that significantly improve the user experience to a level where a nontechnical user may be comfortable using them. The second-generation Lightning Network wallets, such as Phoenix, achieve this by outsourcing some of the functionality of a regular Lightning Network node — including opening channels, managing liquidity, automatic backups and more — to the wallet provider.

Essentially, they resemble custodial wallets in almost every way except that they’re noncustodial. That is, the user maintains control over their own funds and the service provider can’t run off with (or deny access to) their money. Basically, two main objectives were prioritized: ease of use and user control over funds, and any and all necessary trade-offs were made in order to achieve this. And the results are pretty good: If you use a second-generation Lightning Network wallet, you can send and receive pretty easily without being exposed to the complicated inner workings of the network, and you still keep full control over your money at all times. You just have to trust the Lightning Service Provider, or LSP, for a lot more than if you were just using Bitcoin on-chain.

The challenge comes in the precedent and direction this sets for the ecosystem. This approach makes an increasing number of users reliant on a shrinking number of large LSPs to move their Bitcoin around with ease, resembling the legacy financial system where transaction processing coalesces around a small number of major payments companies.

Sure, many users would still be able to control their own funds and become protected from inflation and currency manipulation, but save for a hardy few technophiles running their own nodes, most people will be relying on centralized entities in order to transact.
Even “fast” competitors don’t seem like it from the user’s perspective

To be fair, not every cryptocurrency suffers from the complications of a congested main chain and a still-nascent second-layer solution. Plenty of chains, most notably the major Bitcoin forks and projects like Litecoin (LTC), have low on-chain fees and regular confirmation times. However, even this experience is insufficient for an end-user.

No matter what Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fans say, transactions are not, in fact, instant, and paying through many popular payment processors or depositing to exchanges will still necessitate waiting for several confirmations, which can take many from minutes to, sometimes, hours. The average user won’t understand why they have to wait, or why the waiting time is variable, or that the service should have been able to trust zero-confirmation transactions but chose not to. They will only understand that they had to wait, and will be frustrated as a result.

Of course, some coins, such as those based on proof-of-stake, can be considered secure after a single conformation, significantly cutting down on waiting times. Depending on the chain, this may or may not be sufficient to ensure a seamless user experience. Dash (DASH) transactions become permanent after a single confirmation (roughly 2.5 minutes) and can be considered highly secure in under two seconds, creating an experience rivaling or surpassing that of proof-of-stake coins despite being a proof-of-work network.

However, not all exchanges and services fully understand the underlying technology, and so this experience can be hit-or-miss. Still, other networks, like Nano (NANO), reach transaction finality in a matter of seconds. However, this may come with significant network reliability trade-offs. No one cares that they can get a payment instantly finalized if the entire network can become unreliable for days, even weeks, due to spam attacks.
Usernames are centralized, rudimentary, a mess or on a testnet

Even once the problem of fast, reliable transactions is solved, there still remains a major key to usability necessary for mass adoption: usernames. While QR code scanning can be simple enough, for web, remote and other situations, copying and pasting long cryptographic hashes is a non-starter. We need a simple, social way for people to pay, leveraging human-readable usernames and contact lists.

There are quite a few systems out today that accomplish this to a certain degree. However, most have significant trade-offs in either usability or trust, or both. Solutions like Ethereum Name Service simply resolve to a static address, which still often reveals said long, ugly address in the user interface, and creates some troubling privacy issues by exposing your entire transaction history to anyone who can simply paste your address into a block explorer. The Foundation for Interwallet Operability is similar, except with even more complexity due to wallet-specific domains and implementations.

Related: Crypto transactions must be easier. That's it. That's the headline

Another solution is provided by HandCash, a popular wallet for Bitcoin SV (BSV), which does not resolve to a static address and supports contact lists. The problem is that the solution is centralized: Users must rely on the company and its infrastructure entirely. A similar setup across the BSV ecosystem, Paymail, lets users easily resolve to a new address every time without relying on a single centralized system. However, just like with email, Paymail relies on whichever server hosts your domain, with the only option for censorship-resistance being hosting your own server. Also, there is no universal contact list system. Both of these more user-friendly solutions underscore the unfortunate direction toward centralization, as easy-to-use solutions are hard to make decentralized.

Once again, DASH is focused on providing the most elegant solution to the usability problem — building a decentralized application layer that, among other things, offers both usernames and contact lists on the protocol level in an intuitive, user-friendly, completely decentralized form. However, this years-in-the-making solution is still on testnet, and it remains to be seen if a wide public release will happen in time to impact the trend of mass adoption toward centralized services.
The danger that end-users will simply trust bank-like companies

Of course, the real risk isn’t that cryptocurrency ease-of-use solutions will struggle or fail to take hold. The greater risk is that fully custodial solutions will simply win out, returning us to the same old financial system we sought to escape from, only (allegedly) backed by crypto.

We’re already seeing examples of this, from incentivized blogging platform Publish0x encouraging withdrawals directly to centralized exchanges in order to avoid high Ethereum fees to United States fast food giant Chipotle giving away Bitcoin exclusively to exchange accounts. Then there are the forays into crypto that payment giants like PayPal and Visa have made. If we’re not careful, in the future we could be spending our cryptocurrency through the exact same companies and services we used for our fiat currency, still at the mercy of the same players we sought freedom from in the first place.

We’re at a crossroads: Create ease of use in a decentralized way or let mainstream adoption power the death of decentralization. The challenge is formidable, but the stakes are too high to simply concede. Is cryptocurrency up to the task?

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Joël Valenzuela is a veteran independent journalist and podcaster, living unbanked off of cryptocurrency since 2016. He previously worked for the Dash decentralized autonomous organization and now primarily writes and podcasts for the Digital Cash Network on the LBRY decentralized content platform.

Joël Valenzuela

Joël Valenzuela is a veteran independent journalist and podcaster, living unbanked off of cryptocurrency since 2016. He previously worked for the Dash decentralized autonomous organization and now primarily writes and podcasts for the Digital Cash Network on the LBRY decentralized content platform.