Hong Kong allows hamster pet stores to resume business after COVID cull

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Dozens of pet stores that sold hamsters in Hong Kong may resume business from Sunday, Hong Kong's government said, after being shuttered last week and thousands culled over coronavirus fears.

© Reuters/LAM YIK FILE PHOTO: Officers in protective suits at a closed pet shop in Hong Kong

Authorities enraged pet lovers with an order to cull more than 2,200 hamsters after tracing an outbreak to a worker in a shop where 11 hamsters tested positive. Imported hamsters from Holland into the Chinese territory had been cited as the source. All hamster imports remain banned.

The city's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in a statement late on Saturday that it collected 1,134 samples from animals other than hamsters including rabbits and chinchillas, which were all negative.

Five stores, including the "Little Boss" pet shop, which started the outbreak, remained shuttered as they had not yet "passed the virus test," the government said.

"All the other concerned pet shops on the other hand have been thoroughly disinfected and cleaned and the environmental swabs collected from these shops have all passed the COVID-19 virus test," it said.

The government said on Friday it would compensate pet shops trading in hamsters, offering a one-off payment of up to HK$30,000 (US$3,850).

People who had in recent weeks bought hamsters - popular apartment pets in the congested city - were ordered to surrender them for testing and what the government described as "humane dispatch".

Thousands of people offered to adopt unwanted hamsters amid a public outcry against the government and its pandemic advisers, which authorities called irrational. A study published in The Lancet medical journal, which has not yet been peer reviewed, said Hong Kong researchers have found evidence that pet hamsters can spread COVID-19 and linked the animals to human infections in the city.

However, the economic and psychological tolls from Hong Kong's hardline approach to curbing the virus are rapidly rising, residents say, with measures becoming more draconian than those first enforced in 2020.

(Reporting by Farah Master; editing by Grant McCool)

Quebec restaurants are reopening, but some former workers don't plan to go back

MONTREAL — Restaurants in Quebec will be allowed to reopen Monday for the first time in more than a month, but some former workers say they won't be looking for new jobs in the industry

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Milovan Danielou said he decided to start looking for a new job during the province's second closure of restaurant dining rooms in the fall of 2020, when his then-employer, taco restaurant Grumman '78, closed its main location permanently.

With dining rooms closed and no tourists in the city, there was little work to go around. "Everybody was fighting to find even part-time jobs," he said in a recent interview.

Danielou, who now does data entry, said his new job is less interesting, but the $30-an-hour pay is better, and he's not worried about losing his job if the COVID-19 situation worsens.

"Nothing compares to restaurant work, the rush, the drive, the energy, the team, the people you meet. Nothing compares to that," he said. But it's not enough to draw him back. "You have to pay your rent, you have to survive."

Quebec restaurant dining rooms were ordered closed starting Dec. 20 as the number of COVID-19 cases in the province shot up. Under the new rules, restaurants will be able to open Monday at 50 per cent capacity and there will be limits on how many people from different households can share a table.

Liam Thomas, 32, said that while he decided to leave the industry last summer,when restaurants were open, it wasn't a choice he would have made if he hadn't already lived through two lockdowns.

"I was being yelled at for the millionth time in my cooking career and I just walked out and I never went back," Thomas, a former line cook, said in a recent interview. "It was precipitated by the lockdowns and the knowledge that could happen again, and the instability of the work."

Thomas, who said he started working in restaurants at 18, now works as a transport attendant at a Montreal hospital, helping patients get to X-rays and other appointments within the hospital.

While Thomas said he still sometimes misses the rush of the kitchen, his new job is less stressful, better paid and offers more vacation time.

"The issues that the pandemic exposed were always there for restaurant workers," said Kaitlin Doucette of the Canadian Restaurant Workers Coalition, a group that advocates for better working conditions in the industry. She said workers have long lacked health benefits and paid sick days, and that the precarious nature of work in the industry can lead to abuse and sexual harassment.

One of the biggest challenges of the latest closure in Quebec, Doucette said in a recent interview, is that workers were only eligible for $300 a week in federal aid.

Montrealer Michèle Martel, who worked in bars for 25 years, said she started looking for a new job because that wasn't enough to live on.

"I had no choice. With the amount of money they're giving us, my savings would have disappeared for a third time. It's hard to save money, and when the closings come, the money melts away," she said. "And it's not just financial, I also need to work for my morale, to see people."

When bars and restaurants reopened for the second time in June 2021, Martel said she was confident it would last — most Quebecers were vaccinated and businesses had been following public health orders.

But this third closure has left her afraid that it could happen again. While Martel said she plans to look for a job as a bartender, she also intends to keep working at her new job, in a senior's residence, part-time.

Martin Juneau, the owner of Pastaga, a restaurant in Montreal's Little Italy neighbourhood, said he's worried about finding staff for a reopening that he said feels more like opening for the first time.

"We had a lot of employees who finally moved on to something else, who wanted to go in a different direction, in a different industry," he said in a recent interview.

While Juneau said he closed his dining room before he was ordered to by the provincial government, he's worried that he'll have to do it again. “We’re afraid for next fall, and we’re afraid of not having the energy to get to next fall," he said.

He was forced to close some other businesses, including a restaurant and wine shop, a corner grocery and an ice cream shop, early in the pandemic, and he said they won't be coming back. "We're exactly the opposite of expanding," Juneau said.

Benoit Dessureault, the owner of Chez Delmo in Old Montreal, said he was able to keep paying longtime employees with the help of a food truck. While some of his workers did get laid off, he said he found projects to hire them to work on during the closures.

Still, he said the reopening means the restaurant — which had attracted a lunchtime crowd of lawyers and businesspeople — now plans to focus more on dinner.

"The office towers are still empty, so we can't keep the same business proposition as we had before," Dessureault said in an interview.

Dessureault said he hopes that customers will be more patient — and understanding — when they return to restaurants that still face strict public health rules.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 30, 2022.

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

Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press

Few migrants escape Remain in Mexico, despite Biden-era reforms

Rebecca Beitsch 

Just a fraction of migrants subjected to the court-ordered reimplementation of the Remain in Mexico policy are dodging the program despite a concerted effort by the Biden administration to reduce the legal standard needed to bypass enrollment.

© Getty Images U.S. Border Patrol agents look on after Haitian immigrant families crossed the Rio Grande

December figures released by the Biden administration earlier this month shows that just 12 percent of migrants were able to make the case that they would face danger if sent across the border to Mexico while pursuing asylum claims in the U.S.

The figures were alarming to immigration advocates, who have urged the Biden administration to abandon a policy they say releases asylum seekers into dangerous conditions in Mexico only exacerbated by the arrival of vulnerable migrants forced to wait there for months.

"It just points to how this program can't be fixed," said Kennji Kizuka, a researcher with Human Rights First. "They can sort of jiggle the standards, they can adjust the procedures, but at the end of the day, they just can't make it safe, and they can't do the screenings properly or fairly."

The Biden administration reimplemented what is formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in December, following a court order directing it to carry out the policy "in good faith" as they continue to appeal a lower court ruling.

The program still largely bars asylum seekers from entering the U.S. to wait out their case, continuing the Trump-era practice of sending them across the border to Mexico, but the memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) included various reforms meant to help divert some asylum seekers from the program.

"Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has repeatedly stated that MPP has endemic flaws, imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulled resources and personnel away from other priority efforts, and failed to address the root causes of irregular migration," DHS said in a statement about the latest data, noting that it is committed to "implementing MPP in the most humane way possible."

DHS has directed border agents to affirmatively ask whether migrants have a fear of being sent to Mexico rather than wait for asylum seekers to raise the issue themselves.

And the department lowered the legal standard to bypass the program, requiring migrants only show a reasonable possibility they will face danger in Mexico, generally considered a one-in-ten chance - a lower threshold than the "more likely than not" standard used under Trump.

"Obviously, you can't actually do the math on persecution. So this just comes down to the discretion of the officer, and there's no appeal process here," Kizuka said.

Early data on the program shows few asylum seekers have been able to successfully escape MPP even though 91 percent of the 267 people initially enrolled in the program in December said they feared for their safety if sent to Mexico.

The 12 percent figure significantly trails those for asylum interviews conducted over the same period that use the same standard. Government figures for December show that nearly 30 percent of asylum seekers outside of MPP were found to have met the legal requirement to establish fear.

Migrants who travel to the U.S. are often fleeing danger and persecution in their own country before making a risky journey to the border that can often lead to another series of tragic events.

But after being taken into U.S. Customs and Border Patrol custody, asylum seekers must outline concerns that are specific to Mexico. Much like in the U.S., migrants must make the case that they would face persecution in Mexico due to their race, gender, or membership in a particular social group.

Being a migrant could qualify as meeting the social group criteria, given the well-documented history of migrants being targeted for crime because of their vulnerability once sent to Mexico. But migrants are often ill-prepared for what is known as a non-refoulement interview (NRI) that determines whether their fear justifies exclusion from MPP.

"The United States should not and cannot, legally, send people back to a country where they will be harmed because of who they are. So here you have a program where people are being sent back to Mexico, and because of who they are, because they are migrants in this very well-known program called MPP, they are extraordinarily vulnerable to kidnapping, to assault, to violence," said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

"There are literally dozens of reports documenting this extraordinarily high risk of harm. If the standard is being correctly applied, how could anyone not pass their NRI?"

But many migrants struggle to make their case or navigate the labyrinth of requirements for meeting the standard, and they're given just 24 hours to find and consult with an attorney ahead of the interview.

The short timeframe gives little prospect for success as many of the national legal aid groups that provide pro bono legal advice say they won't contract with the government to provide services - a refusal due to both to what some say is the inhumane nature of the program as well as being given a window that is simply too short to meaningfully provide legal advice.

Just 11 migrants secured an attorney ahead of their interview, which is conducted while they are in CBP custody speaking over the phone with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff who weigh their claims.

In the confusion, some migrants may not even understand they need to make Mexico-specific claims or that they aren't being interviewed about their overall asylum plea based on issues in their home country.

"For all they know, they're about to be interviewed about their asylum claim and their fear of returning to their country of origin," said Nicholas Palazzo, staff attorney with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

It's not that those in custody haven't faced danger - he's had clients that were raped and robbed along the journey.

"In the Mexico context, it doesn't suffice to simply show that you were robbed or kidnapped or suffered any egregious form of violence. You have to show that your perpetrators specifically targeted you because of one of those characteristics," he said.

Under the Biden administration, MPP has also been expanded to include Haiti and other Caribbean nations, meaning a number of Black migrants who may not be Spanish speakers will also be sent to Mexico.

It's another group that Palazzo said should readily fit the criteria for exclusion from MPP but who may struggle on their own to show that they were targeted due to their race or not being a native Spanish speaker.

The handful of asylum seekers who did retain an attorney fared better - 36 percent managed to be removed from MPP and can await their full hearing in the U.S.

While few asylum seekers were able to successfully argue for their diversion from MPP, the data shows that the government decided to remove another 10 percent of migrants after determining they had some other vulnerability that would disqualify them from being sent to Mexico.

Mexico only agreed to participate in the U.S. reinitiation of the program after it secured an agreement to exclude from MPP those with health issues, the elderly, and others who might be vulnerable there, including those who identify as LGBT.

But Kizuka said CBP isn't consistently screening out those people who ought to be excluded from MPP without ever needing to claim fear.

"One of those should be fairly easily identifiable is if someone is LGBT. But again, it's not really clear what screening CBP officers are actually doing because most people we talked to hadn't been asked that question at all," he said.

"Part of the issue is that it's not clear what training the CBP officers have got and what they're being told to do. Even when they're doing the screenings, it's really cursory."

How the release of wild cheetahs can conserve the species in Africa


Thousands of feet in the air, Willem Briers-Louw, a wildlife biologist, surveys the Zambeze Delta in Mozambique via helicopter -- seeking the animal populations he helps to conserve and maintain in the bushland.

Cheetahs, one of Briers-Louw's subjects and the fastest land animal in the world, could get a boost to its population if a new conservation method researchers are practicing in Africa is successful.

Biologists in Mozambique released a group of wild cheetahs in a "massive" protected area in the Zambeze Delta in August as part of a reintroduction project they believe is "crucial" to conserve the species, Briers-Louw, a wildlife biologist working on the project with the Cabela Family Foundation, the organization that funded the reintroduction project, told ABC News.

From the two-seat Robinson R22 helicopter, Briers-Louw can track the animals wherever they go and monitor their behavior -- what they're eating, whether they're mating, when a litter of cubs is born. It's one of the perks of the job, Briers-Louw said.

"Watching them at full speed chasing down [cleft-back] antelope is truly incredible to see," he said.

© Tamar Kendon A group of wild cheetahs were released into Mozambique's Zambeze Delta in August 2021 as part of a reintroduction project for cheetah conservation.

The project was suggested by the foundation's wildlife trust coordinators after a similar reintroduction for lions in the Zambeze Delta was successful, Briers-Louw said. In addition to the ample space and limited poaching in the preserve, the cheetahs are not prey for lions and have plenty of food sources to sustain a decent population.

Biologists found historical evidence that cheetahs occupied the area in the past after finding a book from 1914 described the animals, which was imperative for the reintroduction to be successful, Briers-Louw said.MORE: Protecting natural resources could lead to less armed conflict: Report

Eleven cheetahs from South Africa and one from Malawi were transported to Mozambique over the summer. The big cats were stationed in a fenced area for months to get acclimated before the gates were opened to their new home, Briers-Louw said.

Two additional females, described as "valuable additions to the founder population," were released in December. The researchers hope to maintain an interconnected conservation project where different countries work together to maintain as healthy a cheetah population as possible, Briers-Louw said

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© Tamar Kendon A group of wild cheetahs were released into Mozambique's Zambeze Delta in August 2021 as part of a reintroduction project for cheetah conservation.

What makes the project "novel" is the cheetahs were released into a sizable, unfenced area that could possibly support up to 100 cheetahs in the future, he added. In fenced preserves, a male cheetah looking to explore and find females is likely to hit an electric fence and turn around, Tamar Kendon, another wildlife biologist with the Cabela Family Foundation, told ABC News.

"It's totally open, and they're not constricted or not confined to a fenced area, so they can move pretty much wherever they want to," Briers-Louw said. "And so we've seen quite a lot of exploratory movement within the first four or five months.

"MORE: Rhino poaching in South Africa declines dramatically due to COVID-19 lockdown, officials say

The cheetahs' newfound ability to wander causes "a bit of stress" for the researchers and presents a possibility for the need to collect them and bring them back, Kendon said.

Conservationists have been introducing cheetahs in small, fenced preserves since 1999, Briers-Louw said. Once cubs are born, they need new homes because those preserves can't support larger populations.

"So Africa, at that time, was the only country with a growing cheetah population," until biologists began practicing similar efforts around the world, Briers-Louw added.© Tamar Kendon A group of wild cheetahs were released into Mozambique's Zambeze Delta in August 2021 as part of a reintroduction project for cheetah conservation.

All of the cheetahs seem to be thriving in their new habitat and seem to have started fixed movement areas, Briers-Louw said. The researchers track them on the ground, aerially via helicopter and through satellite imagery, which allows them to ensure they're thriving and monitor other behaviors, such as mating, Briers-Louw said. Each cheetah is also outfitted with a GPS collar in case they move outside of the preserve, Kendon said.

Briers-Louw emphasized that it's "not all sunshine and roses" for the health of cheetah populations around the world, and they were "strongly" on the way to extinction for the better part of two decades.MORE: Animal conservation groups to sue federal government over dwindling giraffe population

Cheetahs are currently listed as vulnerable, with their populations deceasing, on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. There are currently about 6,700 mature cheetahs in the world, according to the IUCN.

They only have about 9% of their historic range, and of that population, 30% are in protected reserves, Briers-Louw said. The main threats facing cheetahs are habitat loss, fragmentation of habitat and poaching, but they are also at risk of becoming trapped in snares placed for bushmeat, Kendon said

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© Tamar Kendon A group of wild cheetahs were released into Mozambique's Zambeze Delta in August 2021 as part of a reintroduction project for cheetah conservation.

The Zambeze Delta historically contained thousands of animals, but years of armed conflict and poaching led to a sharp decline of wildlife in the area, Briers-Louw said. While the Zambeze Delta has experienced a massive resurgence in animal populations in recent years, poaching still remains the biggest threat to carnivores in the region.

But the conservationists believe they are at a turning point where wildlife can once again thrive.

"Even though poaching is the biggest threat to the carnivores, we are at the point where it's fairly controlled and limited to the point where it shouldn't have any effect on the population," he said.

ABC News' Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

Ceremony in Quebec City marks fifth anniversary of Quebec City mosque shooting

QUEBEC — At times, Hakim Chambaz paused as he spoke at a memorial marking the fifth anniversary of the Quebec City Mosque attack, overcome with emotion.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Chambaz, one of the survivors of the attack that left six men dead and five others severely injured, spoke with a shaking voice about how the experience will always be with him.

"There was a choice between being silent and trying to forget and between confronting this tragedy and taking lessons from this horrible part of our lives," said Chambaz, who helped start a group that supports victims of other terrorist attacks.

"We hope for a better future for our children, above all for the families of the victims, and we pray to Allah to welcome them in their paradise," he said.

The ceremony at the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre was one of several that took place across Canada to honour the sombre anniversary, as well as the first National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia, which was proclaimed last April.

Aymen Derbali, who was paralyzed in the attack, said the ceremony was part of "our duty to remember our brothers who fell that night under the bullets of hate."

His voice shook as he called on people to work together to ensure that similar events never happen again.

The Quebec City event, outside the mosque in Ste-Foy, a suburban borough of the provincial capital, was largely virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the general public encouraged to watch the commemoration online.

Premier François Legault; Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand; federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, who represents Quebec City in Parliament; and Ghislain Picard, the Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador also spoke at the event.

Marchand described the men who died as Quebecers who were known for their contribution to the community.

"Fathers, who are no longer here to look after their children, participate in the important events of their lives, to take the hand of their wives, share the pride of a great achievement with their colleagues, men who are no longer here to reach out to a friend in need," he said. "These were six of our own."

Among those who spoke at the commemoration was Nusaiba Al-Azem, the vice-chair of the London Muslim Mosque in London, Ont. On June 6, 2021, four members of a Muslim family were killed in that city while taking a walk. Police have said they believe the family members were targeted because of their faith, and the man accused in the case is now facing murder and terrorism charges.

Al-Azem said the commemorations are not for members of the Muslim community, because the Islamophobia is a daily reminder of the deadly attacks.

"We flinch when trucks speed by, we steel ourselves before walking into our places of worship, we feel unsafe in our own backyards, we brush off ignorant comment, after ignorant comment, after ignorant comment," she said. "We are overlooked for work opportunities and promotions, and, in some places, we're unable to earn a living while wearing a hijab, because the state allows it to be that way. We need no reminder, we are commemorating every day."

A commemorative ceremony took place at the London mosque earlier on Saturday.

In Ottawa, organizers of an interfaith, in-person vigil intended to commemorate the attack said they decided to move it online over fears that the event might be targeted by members of a convoy that is in the city to protest COVID-19 regulations.

Fareed Khan, who organized the event with his group Canadians United Against Hate, said while the protestors are describing themselves as being in favour of "freedom," they're depriving others of their liberties.

"They're talking about the freedom to be able to be irresponsible individuals and not be vaccinated and possibly spread COVID-19 around Canada," he said in an interview. "Meanwhile, our freedom has been deprived, our freedom to gather peacefully to remember victims of a brutal crime on a very sacred day. It is frustrating and it's angering."

Khan said that while his group did not receive any direct threats, the decision to move the vigil -- which had been scheduled to take place in downtown Ottawa -- was made after consulting with police and city officials.

He said he'd like to see real action from Canada's political leaders to fight Islamophobia and other forms of hate.

"We can't let voices of hate target minority communities, whether it's Muslims, or Jews, or Blacks, or Indigenous people, Asians, LGBTQ, we've got to make sure we stand up to those voices," Khan said. "We've got to actually at times go into the streets and be visible and say, 'no, we will not stand for this in our country.'"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2022.

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

Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press

The US Supreme Court is leading a Christian conservative revolution

Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been a member of the Supreme Court for less than a month when she cast the key vote in one of the most consequential religion cases of the past century.

© Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images Anti-abortion activists pray outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on October 2, 2021.

LONG READ

Ian Millhiser 40 mins ago

Months earlier, when the seat she would fill was still held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court had handed down a series of 5-4 decisions establishing that churches and other houses of worship must comply with state occupancy limits and other rules imposed upon them to slow the spread of Covid-19.

As Chief Justice John Roberts, the only Republican appointee to join these decisions, explained in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom (2020), “our Constitution principally entrusts ‘[t]he safety and the health of the people’ to the politically accountable officials of the States.” And these officials’ decisions “should not be subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.”

But this sort of judicial humility no longer enjoyed majority support on the Court once Barrett’s confirmation gave GOP justices a 6-3 supermajority. Twenty-nine days after Barrett became Justice Barrett, she united with her fellow Trump appointees and two other hardline conservative justices in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020), a decision striking down the very sort of occupancy limits that the Court permitted in South Bay. The upshot of this decision is that the public’s interest in controlling a deadly disease must give way to the wishes of certain religious litigants.

Just as significantly, Roman Catholic Diocese revolutionized the Court’s approach to lawsuits where a plaintiff who objects to a state law on religious grounds seeks an exemption from that law.

Before Roman Catholic Diocese, religious objectors typically had to follow a “neutral law of general applicability” — meaning that these objectors must obey the same laws that everyone else must follow. Roman Catholic Diocese technically did not abolish this rule, but it redefined what constitutes a “neutral law of general applicability” so narrowly that nearly any religious conservative with a clever lawyer can expect to prevail in a lawsuit.

That decision is part of a much bigger pattern. Since the Court’s Republican majority became a supermajority, the Court has treated religion cases as its highest priority.

It’s made historic changes to the law governing religion even before it moved on to other major priorities for the conservative movement, such as restricting abortion or expanding gun rights. The Court has also taken on new religion-related cases at a breakneck pace. In the eight years of the Obama presidency, the Court decided just seven religious liberty cases, or fewer than one per year. By contrast, by the second anniversary of Barrett’s confirmation as a justice, the Court most likely will have decided at least seven — and arguably as many as 10 — religious liberty cases with Barrett on the Court.

In fairness, many factors contribute to this uptick in religion cases being head by the Court, and at least some of these factors emerged while Barrett was still an obscure law professor. The Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), for example, opened the door to new kinds of lawsuits that would have failed before that decision was handed down. And lawyers for Christian conservative litigants have no doubt responded to Hobby Lobby by filing more — and more aggressive — lawsuits.

This piece did not attempt to quantify the number of times the Court has been asked to decide religious liberty cases, only the number of times it decided to take the case.

But the bottom line is that the federal judiciary is fast transforming into a forum to hear the grievances of religious conservatives. And the Supreme Court is rapidly changing the rules of the game to benefit those conservatives.
The Court’s new interest in religion cases, by the numbers

As mentioned above, the Supreme Court heard fewer than one religious liberty case every year during the eight years of the Obama presidency.

In deriving this number, I had to make some judgment calls regarding what counts as a “religious liberty” case. For the purposes of this article, I’m defining that term as any Supreme Court decision that is binding on lower courts, and that interprets the First Amendment’s free exercise or establishment clause. I also include decisions interpreting two federal statutes — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act — both of which limit the government’s ability to enforce its policies against people who object to them on religious grounds.

I focused on these two constitutional provisions and these two federal laws because they deal directly with the obligations the government owes to people of faith and its ability to involve itself in matters of religion.

My definition of a “religious liberty” case excludes some Supreme Court cases involving religious institutions that applied general laws or constitutional provisions. Shortly after Obama became president, for example, the Court denied a religious group’s request to erect a monument in a public park. Yet, while this case involved a religious organization, the specific legal issue involved the First Amendment’s free speech clause, not any religion-specific clause. So I did not classify that case as a religious liberty case.

In any event, using this metric, I identified seven religious liberty cases decided during Obama’s presidency,¹ the most consequential of which was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

Interestingly, the Court did not decide significantly more religious liberty cases in the three years that Donald Trump was president prior to the pandemic, just four in total.² The Court then did decide a rush of pandemic-related religious liberty cases in 2020, including South Bay and Roman Catholic Diocese.
There’s no doubt that the Court’s new majority is eager break things and move quickly

But things really took off once Justice Barrett was confirmed in the week before the 2020 election. As noted above, the Court handed down Roman Catholic Diocese, a hugely consequential case that reimagined the Court’s approach to the Free Exercise Clause, less than a month after Barrett took office. Just a few months later, the Court handed down Tandon v. Newsom (2021), which clarified that all lower courts are required to follow the new rule laid out in Roman Catholic Diocese.

© Alex Wong/Getty Images Then-President Donald Trump watches as US Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in by fellow Associate Justice Clarence Thomas as Barrett’s husband, Jesse Barrett, holds a Bible on the South Lawn of the White House on October 26, 2020.

Notably, both Roman Catholic Diocese and Tandon were decided on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency decisions and other expedited matters that the Court typically decided in brief orders that offered little analysis. In the Trump years, however, the Court started frequently using the shadow docket to hand down decisions that upended existing law.

On the merits docket, the ordinary mix of cases that receive full briefing and oral argument, the Court decided two religious liberty cases during Barrett’s first term on the Court, Tanzin v. Tanvir (2020) and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021) — though Barrett was recused in Tanzin and the Court announced it would hear Fulton before Barrett joined the Court. Three other religious liberty cases (Ramirez v. Collier, Carson v. Makin, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District) are still awaiting a decision on the Court’s merits docket.

Meanwhile, three other shadow docket cases arguably belong on the list of important religious liberty cases decided since Barrett joined the Court, although these cases produced no majority opinion and thus did not announce a legal rule that lower courts must follow. In Does v. Mills (2021) and Dr. A v. Hochul (2021), the Court rejected claims by health care workers who sought a religious exemption from a Covid vaccination mandate. And, in Dunn v. Smith (2021), the Court appeared to back away from a gratuitously cruel decision involving the religious liberties of death row inmates that it handed down in 2019.

So, to summarize, by the time the Court’s current term wraps up in June, the Court will likely hand down decisions in three merits docket cases — Ramirez, Carson, and Kennedy, although it is possible that Kennedy will not be scheduled for argument until next fall. Add in the two merits docket decisions from last term and the landmark shadow docket decisions in Roman Catholic Diocese and Tandon, and that’s seven religious liberty decisions the Court is likely to hand down before Barrett celebrates her second anniversary as a justice.

Meanwhile, the Court only handed down seven religious liberty cases during all eight years of the Obama presidency.

So what do all of these religion cases actually say?

As the Does and Dr. A cases indicate, the Court’s 6-3 Republican majority still hands occasional defeats to conservative religious parties. It also sometimes hands them very small victories. Fulton, for example, could have overruled a seminal precedent from 1990, and given religious conservatives a sweeping right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. Instead, the Fulton opinion was very narrow and is unlikely to have much impact beyond that particular case.

But, for the most part, the Court’s most recent religion cases have been extraordinarily favorable to the Christian right, and to conservative religious causes generally. Many of the Court’s most recent decisions build on earlier cases, such as Hobby Lobby, which started to move its religious jurisprudence to the right even before Trump’s justices arrived. But the pace of this rightward march accelerated significantly once Trump made his third appointment to the Court.

Broadly speaking, three themes emerge from these cases.
Exceptions for conservative religious objectors

First, the Court nearly always sides with religious conservatives who seek an exemption from the law, even when granting such an exemption is likely to injure others.

The Hobby Lobby decision, which held that many employers with religious objections to birth control could defy a federal regulation requiring them to include contraceptive care in their employees’ health plans, was an important turning point in the Court’s approach to religious objectors. Prior to Hobby Lobby, religious exemptions were not granted if they would undermine the rights of third parties. As the Court suggested in United States v. Lee (1982), an exemption that “operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees” should not be granted. (Indeed, Lee held that exemptions typically should not be granted at all in the business context.)

Initially, the new rule announced in Hobby Lobby, which permits religious objectors to diminish the rights of others, only applied to rights established by federal law. Under the federal RFRA statute, religious objectors are entitled to some exemptions from federal laws that they would not be entitled to if their state enacted an identical law. As mentioned above, religious objectors must comply with state laws so long as they are “neutral” and have “general applicability” — meaning that they apply with equal force to religious and secular actors.

That brings us to Roman Catholic Diocese and Tandon, which redefined what qualifies as a neutral law of general applicability so narrowly that hardly any laws will qualify. (A more detailed explanation of this redefinition can be found here and here.)

Indeed, Roman Catholic Diocese and Tandon permitted religious objectors to defy state public health rules intended to slow the spread of a deadly disease. If the Court is willing to place the narrow interests of religious conservatives ahead of society’s broader interest in protecting human life, it seems likely that the Court will be very generous in doling out exemptions to such conservatives in the future.
Fewer rights for disfavored groups

While the Court has been highly solicitous toward conservative Christian groups, it’s been less sympathetic to religious liberty claims brought by groups that are not part of the Republican Party’s core supporters.

The most glaring example of this double standard is Trump v. Hawaii (2018), in which the Court’s Republican appointees upheld then-President Trump’s policy banning most people from several Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States. The Court did so, moreover, despite the fact that Trump repeatedly bragged about his plans to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

© Win McNamee/Getty Images Protesters demonstrate against then-President Trump’s Muslim travel ban as protesters gather outside the US Supreme Court following a court-issued immigration ruling on June 26, 2018. The 5-4 ruling upheld Trump’s policy imposing limits on travel from several primarily Muslim nations.

The Trump administration claimed that its travel plan was justified by national security concerns, and the Court held that it typically should defer to the president on such matters. But that does not change the fact that singling out Muslims for inferior treatment solely because they are Muslim violates the First Amendment. And, in any event, it’s hard to imagine the Supreme Court would have shown similar deference if Trump had attempted a shutdown of Roman Catholics entering the United States.

Similarly, in Dunn v. Ray (2019), the Court’s Republican appointees ruled against a Muslim death row inmate who sought to have his imam present at his execution, even though the state permitted Christian inmates to have a spiritual adviser present. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause ... is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.”

In fairness, the Court does not always reject religious liberty claims brought by Muslims, even if those claims prevail less often than in similar cases brought by conservative Christians. In Holt v. Hobbs (2015), for example, the Court sided with an incarcerated Muslim man who wished to grow a short beard as an act of religious devotion.

After Dunn triggered a bipartisan backlash, moreover, the Court appeared to back away for a while. Nevertheless, during November’s oral argument in another prison-religion case, this one brought by a Christian inmate who wishes to have a pastor lay hands on him during his execution, several justices appeared less concerned with whether ruling against this inmate would violate the Constitution — and more concerned with whether permitting such suits would create too much work for the justices themselves.

Thus, while the Court typically sides with conservative Christians in religious liberty cases, people of different faiths (or even Christians pursuing causes that aren’t aligned with political conservatism) may be less likely to earn the Court’s favor.
The wall of separation between church and state is in deep trouble

Several of the justices are openly hostile to the very idea that the Constitution imposes limits on the government’s ability to advance one faith over others. At a recent oral argument, for example, Justice Neil Gorsuch derisively referred to the “so-called separation of . . . church and state.”

Indeed, it appears likely that the Court may even require the government to subsidize religion, at least in certain circumstances.

At December’s oral arguments in Carson v. Makin, for example, the Court considered a Maine program that provides tuition vouchers to some students, which they can use to pay for education at a secular private school when there’s no public school nearby. Though the state says it wishes to remain “neutral and silent” on matters of religion and not allow its vouchers to go to private religious schools, many of the justices appeared to view this kind of neutrality as unlawful. “Discriminating against all religions,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested, is itself a form of anti-religious discrimination that violates his conception of the Constitution.

For many decades, the Court held the opposite view. As the Court held in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”

But Everson’s rule is now dead. And the Court appears likely to require secular taxpayers to pay for religious education, at least under some circumstances.
Why is the Court hearing so many religion cases?

There are several possible explanations for why the Court is hearing so many more religion cases than it used to, and only some of these explanations stem from the Court’s new 6-3 Republican majority.

The most significant non-political explanation for the uptick in cases is the pandemic, which triggered a raft of public health orders that religious groups sought exemptions from in the Supreme Court. Though a less ideological Court would not have used one of these cases to revolutionize its approach to the free exercise clause, as it did in Roman Catholic Diocese, the Court likely would have weighed in on many of these cases even if it had a Democratic majority.

Similarly, some explanations for the uptick in cases predate the confirmation of Justice Barrett. The Hobby Lobby decision, for example, sent a loud signal that the Court would give serious consideration to religious liberty claims that once would have been turned away as meritless. That decision undoubtedly inspired lawyers for conservative religious litigants to file lawsuits that they otherwise would not have brought in the first place.

The Court also started frequently using the shadow docket to hand down highly consequential decisions well before Barrett joined the Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the Court was using shadow docket cases to grant “extraordinary” favors to Trump as recently as 2019.

But there’s no doubt that the Court’s new majority is eager to break things and move quickly. Ordinarily, for example, if the Court were going to fundamentally rethink its approach to an important provision of the Constitution, it would insist upon full briefing, conduct an oral argument, and spend months deliberating over any proposed changes. Instead, Roman Catholic Diocese was handed down less than a month after the Court had the votes it needed to rewrite its approach to the free exercise clause.

There are also worrisome signs that the Court’s new majority cares much less than its predecessors about stare decisis, the doctrine that courts should typically follow past precedents. Just look at how the Court has treated Roe v. Wade if you want a particularly glaring example of the new majority’s approach to precedents it does not like.

Roman Catholic Diocese was handed down just six months after the Court’s contrary ruling in South Bay. And there’s no plausible argument that the cases reached different outcomes because of material distinctions between the two cases. The only real difference between the two cases was that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat on the Court in May 2020, and Amy Coney Barrett held Ginsburg’s seat by November. That was enough reason to convince this Court to abandon decades of precedent establishing that religious institutions typically have to follow the same laws as everyone else.

The Court’s current majority, in other words, is itching for a fight over religion. And it holds little regard for established law. That means that a whole lot is likely to change, and very quickly.

¹ The seven Obama-era religious liberty cases that I identified are Salazar v. Buono (2010), Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC (2012), Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014), Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), Holt v. Hobbs (2015), and Zubik v. Burwell (2016).

² The four religious liberty cases from Trump’s pre-pandemic presidency are Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer (2017), Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), Trump v. Hawaii (2018), and American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019).

YouTube fishing star who reels in sea monsters: "I want to have a sustainable fishery"

CBS News 

Josh Jorgensen is obsessed with trying to reel in sea monsters — and more viewers. He's become the world's most popular fishing star on social media — his YouTube videos passed a billion views last year.

© CBS News 0129-cbssatmo-sharkhunter-glor-883581-640x360.jpg

It's been quite a journey for a kid who grew up north of the border, in Windsor, Ontario.

"I've always been absolutely in love with fishing. In 2003, my parents got a condo in Florida and we started coming down here on vacation. I saw a guy catch a shark from the beach and I was like, 'I have to start doing that,'" Jorgensen told CBS News' Jeff Glor.

Jorgensen said he would catch sharks on the beach and then bring pictures of his catch back home to Canada, but no one believed that he caught them on the beach.

"They said, "Oh, you caught it on a boat and brought it to shore. There's no sharks at the beach." So I started filming and posted on YouTube. I didn't know what I was doing," he said.

The videos took off, and in 2008 Jorgenson created BlacktipH. Fueled by advertising dollars from YouTube, he's been on fishing adventures around the world. He's currently based in Jupiter, Florida.

"There's no way we would have ever been able to capture the audience we did without living in Florida. Florida's amazing," Jorgenson said.

On one trip, Jorgenson was pulled out of the boat by a catch. "I was trying to do it all by myself, and that wasn't smart," he said.

For Jorgensen, the filming is just as enjoyable as the fishing. But these days, it is even more challenging. Part of the problem: a numbed audience.

"What worked two, three years ago doesn't work now," he said. "It would always be like the fish would be a major part of the story but we realized that we kind of caught everything, so from a business perspective we need to make it more about the adventure and not so much about catching this one fish."

Adventure and adrenaline may still pay the bills, but they are not BlacktipH's only missions. Jorgenson said protection and preservation are also a critical part of the operation.

"We just really need to focus on our water quality and we need to focus on sustainable fishing regulations, you know? We need to reduce limits, create more slot sizes," Jorgenson said.

He said people shouldn't necessarily catch less, but keep less.

"Do you really need to keep 60 Mahi a day? No. It's ridiculous. You know, it takes hours to filet them and what do you do with 500 pounds of Mahi meat?" said Jorgenson.

"I want my kids to be able to enjoy what I've enjoyed, you know? I want to have a sustainable fishery," he said. "It's really important to respect the fish that you're catching, especially when you're catching a large fish. Large fish are normally breeders, so you want to take good care of them. You want to make sure that they're healthy when you release them. You want to make sure that you don't fight them too long."

He started his journey 15 years ago and said the ocean looks very different now.

"There were so much more fish back then. And that's nothing. Can you imagine what it was like 60 years ago, 100 years ago? If I could have a time machine I would go back and go fishing," Jorgenson said.

The story of Anne Heggtveit, who won Canada's first-ever Olympic alpine ski gold

Kevin Mitchell

Anne Hamilton has a dog to walk, specially-made shoes that let her move around pain-free, and a rowing machine in the garage

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© Provided by National Post Canadian skier Ann Heggtveit takes a corner on a ski run in the Laurentians in this 1954 photo.

“I’m trying to stay fit,” she says with a laugh, “while paying for sins of the past.”

Those sins were committed on a pair of skis, and involved the things she put her body through on various mountain slopes as a young go-getter. In the last 10 years, the 83-year-old woman has had a knee replaced, and ankle-fusion surgery stemming from a decades-old spiral fracture in her leg.

She lives in North Carolina now, far from the Ottawa home of her youth. Some acquaintances know about her 1960 Olympic slalom gold medal, and her status as the first Canadian to win an Olympic event on skis.

Some have no idea.

“It’s not something I really talk about,” Hamilton says. “It’s just another lifetime.”

She was Anne Heggtveit then, and a real natural. Her father, Halvor Heggtveit, was a Canadian cross-country ski champion. Anne’s prowess on the boards got her a mention in the Ottawa Citizen at age two. At six, the “Ottawa mite” was filmed on the slopes by a Canadian army film unit and landed a full feature in the same paper, along with a photo.

And so it went, accomplishments growing, until she’s 21 years old, 115 pounds, perched on two slim boards, winning an Olympic gold medal at Squaw Valley — “digging, swishing and swinging as she went,” wrote the Canadian Press.

“I’m no ski expert.” entertainer Bing Crosby said while watching from up close, “but there was a beautiful run by that Canadian gal, just wonderful.”

Walter Cronkite interviewed her; Ed Sullivan introduced her to America, live and in person, on his show.

She also won the Olympic combined, but the International Olympic Committee did not then give out gold medals for that. If they did, she’d have two.

“This is the greatest thing to happen to Canada in any Olympics,” team manager Andy Tommy unabashedly told reporters after that breakthrough performance.
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Just getting athletes to Beijing Olympics is a logistical nightmare

And then she retired, because there was nothing left to do in the sport, and national-team skiing in 1960 was not like national-team skiing in 2022.

(Photo: Bill Lingard Newton collection, Ottawa City Archives)

“I remember being asked afterwards, how did it feel?” Hamilton says now. “That’s a very difficult question. I trained, in my case, from age two until I was 21. And all of a sudden, what you were raised to do, you achieved. It’s gone. And you’ve got this void you’ve got to deal with, and to figure out who you are. I don’t care if you’re Simone Biles or who you are, you’ve got to — at some point — deal with that.

“We didn’t have the kind of team support they have now. A lot of the fund raising was done at a local level. My ski club, my ski zone. Everybody was scrounging for money; there was no Alpine Canada or anything like that. The minute the Olympics was over, that was the end of our ski team for that year. We were funded to go to the Olympics, and then we go home.”

So Heggtveit, who had also competed at the 1956 Olympics, stepped away from elite skiing at the age of 21, after which she won the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s top athlete for 1960.

She met and married Ross Hamilton, and raised a family. Decades later, she got the itch to return to school, and got her bachelor of science in accounting at 54 years old. She worked in that field for several years, then got into botany and photography. She made and sold flower arrangements; shot weddings; sold cards with her photographic work on them.

She filled the void; chased and found her passions. She has the gold medal safely stashed away, and laughs when asked if she ever just stands and looks at the thing.

“You know, you can’t keep those around the house, though I do have a nice picture of it on the wall, a really good reproduction,” she says. “If I really feel like looking at something, I can look at that.

“The only time I really think about my old life and career,” she added, “is when the Olympics roll around, and I get calls like yours.”© Montreal Star Anne Heggtveit in 1960, surrounded by young fans with ski poles.

But her memory is keen, and she’s full of stories. The night before racing the slalom at Squaw Valley, skiers had a chance to study the hard, fast Papoose Peak courses up close. She declined, because she knew she would then race them in her mind all night long, costing her precious sleep.

The next morning, she climbed the hill and studied the first course, memorized the gates quickly, then did the same for the second course when it was time to run that.

After an excellent first run, she went for broke on the second.

“I decided I was going to crash or stand up,” she told reporters later, and won gold because she did the second and not the first.

Hamilton is a big believer in the mental side of the game. Taped beside her bed back then was a clipping on the power of positive thinking, and even today, when she sits in front of the TV and views the Olympics, she watches with a gold-medalist’s eye.

“You look at the top 20 or 25 women, they’re almost technically the same,” she says. “Really, the edge is all mental. It’s whoever can handle that, the mental aspect of it, at the right time. That’s the whole secret to it.”

Hamilton was a slalom specialist, and also skied the giant slalom and downhill. But Slalom was her focus, and she saw it as the path to an Olympic medal. And that’s how it played out.

“A few of the home-town press who can remain unnamed — I don’t even know if they’re alive at this point — neglected to go to watch the race, because I’d had two 12th-place (finishes) in my two previous events,” she says with a laugh, referring to her showings in the giant slalom and downhill. “They admitted it, and they admitted where they were. Those were the days.”

Hamilton says she’ll watch the 2022 Winter Olympics with great interest — she loves the Summer Games, too — and will “keep hoping for some maple leaves up there on the podium.”

She had her knee replaced 10 years ago and hasn’t skied since, so there’s no chance Canada’s first-ever Olympic slopes winner will try to replicate whatever exploits she sees on the Chinese mountainside.

“You get to the point where to ski the way I like to ski, I’m not in shape to do that, so I’d be stupid to do it,” she says, laughing. “You have to think logically. But it’s fun to talk about it.”

kemitchell@postmedia.com

twitter.com/kmitchsp

Hanna Bunton on the realities of being a women’s hockey star

“WHEN THAT HAPPENS, WOMEN’S HOCKEY IS GOING TO EXPLODE”

By Kristina Rutherford

© Provided by Sportsnet

PWHPA star and 150-pound dog owner Hanna Bunton on the state of the game and her hopes for its future

LONG READ

Hanna Bunton has played professional hockey in China, where she put up nearly a point per game and earned a living wage. She has won a world championship gold medal for Canada, threading a pass to a teammate for a tap-in game-winner in overtime against the Americans. She has graced the cover of Elle Canada along with Brigette Lacquette and Sarah Nurse, fellow members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association. In short, Bunton has had quite the life in hockey — and she’s only 26.

At the top of the women’s game for much of her career, Bunton is currently playing for the PWHPA’s Calgary chapter, while also working as Hockey Canada’s coordinator of hockey development for its U-18 programs. She coaches on the side too. The Belleville, Ont.-born forward took time for a lengthy chat with Sportsnet on a variety of topics, from heavier ones like the state of women’s professional hockey in North America and the need to address racism in the game, to lighter stuff, like her love of the sport, fashion and her 150-pound dog, a mastiff mix named Raider.


SPORTSNET:

What’s Raider up to?

HANNA BUNTON: He’s currently laying on my bed and he’s not supposed to be on my bed. It’s one of the rules, but he looks so comfortable and I know he’ll be quiet while I’m doing this interview if I just let him sleep on the bed. He’s allowed right now, but as soon as this is done he’s getting pushed off the bed [laughs].

He must take up the whole bed.Basically. He is a huge boy, and he is the most fun to have. He gets so much attention and I just love having such a big dog — honestly, like a horse — in my apartment in Calgary.

You’ve lived there a couple of years now. What made you decide to move?When the CWHL [Canadian Women’s Hockey League] folded [in 2019], I was unsure where I wanted to be. I decided I wanted something new, to try a place I’d never lived before. One of my really good friends, [PWHPA forward] Rebecca Leslie, was in Calgary. We ended up living together when I first moved here. I love the decision I made. It’s so fun being close to the mountains, I’ve gotten really into skiing and snowboarding since I’ve been out here.

When are you on the ice next?We’re typically practicing Wednesday nights, later at night, and Sunday nights.

What does later at night mean?

Like 8:45 [laughs] until about 10 or 10:15.

And then you all work the next morning

.Yes. One of my best friends here, Kaitlin Willoughby, she’s a full-time nurse. She starts at 7 a.m. and she’s at practice on Sunday nights till 10:15. It’s pretty impressive what some people do.

I don’t want to dwell on the negative, but I think people who don’t already know should know about the realities here for a lot of the best female players in the world.For sure.

When’s your next game?

We have an exhibition on Friday — it’ll be only our second game of the year. And then our next showcase is March 4 to 6. [Editor’s note: The next PWHPA showcase is in Ottawa in late February, but Calgary isn’t among the four teams featured that weekend.]

How many times a week are you on the ice?

I would say, on average, two. Potentially. Maybe once.

© Provided by Sportsnet

What needs to change about the state of the pro women’s game?

Obviously, if you want the best product on the ice with women’s hockey, the opportunities and the resources need to be there. You’re not going to get the best product when you’re on the ice once or twice a week, you’re not playing games, you’re working, you’re coaching. You can’t be your best at everything you’re doing when you’re spread thin.

We’ve seen so many players in the NHL who hit their peak at 26, 27, and unfortunately that’s just not the case with women’s hockey, because by the time you’re 26, 27 — right around my age — you’re only on the ice maybe once a week, or you’ve already stopped playing because the opportunities aren’t there. I think when those opportunities are there, women’s hockey is going to change drastically. I would love for there to be a league where you can get paid a liveable wage — where you’re able to live day to day comfortably, and you’re able to train every single day. When that happens, women’s hockey is going to explode.

Do you see that happening while you’re still playing?

I hope so. I’ve always said that I will play until someone tells me, “You can’t anymore.” [Laughs.] I will do my best. At the end of the day, I’m well aware of everything hockey has brought to me and I want those opportunities for the next generation. And I hope that, if it’s not in the next couple years, at the very least, in the future the little girls that I coach have those opportunities.

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I feel badly asking you some of these questions, because you and other professional female players hear them all the time. Is it tiring to repeat these same messages about things that need to change and never seem to?

Yeah, I think so. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something to change. [Laughs.] Maybe it’s a little bit tiring but if we don’t keep having these conversations, we’re probably going to go backwards. And I think having these conversations maybe inspires other people to have these conversations and it reaches different people than it’s reached in the past. We want to be having these conversations or we’re not going to see the change.

Well said. Growing up in Belleville, how’d you get interested in the game?

I think I started playing when I was about four or five. The Belleville Bulls were the OHL team that were there at the time and we had season tickets, and I would go with my dad and my grandfather. It was a pretty special excursion, every Wednesday and Saturday were their home games and it was something I always looked forward to. I had a little Bulls bag I would bring. I had a stuffed bull and a jersey. I used to even take stats at the game. So I don’t know, maybe I was more of a nerd watching it, but it was such a fun experience.


Did you aspire to be a Bull?

Yeah, I was always thinking, I want to play and I want to be as good as these guys are. I remember looking up to them, thinking they were the coolest people in the world.


You also played basketball and ran track competitively. Why did you choose hockey ultimately?

When I got older, I saw that hockey could probably take me somewhere.

Where did you think it could take you?

There was a team called the East Coast Selects and they would scout and find players in Ontario. I ended up going to Europe in both Grade 7 and 8 with them for a summer travel experience. We went to three different countries each year and there were girls from all over Ontario and a couple from the U.S. That felt like the first time that I had been noticed from somewhere outside of Belleville and I thought, Oh, this is pretty cool, hockey could take me somewhere.

There was a girl named Jackie Jarrell, who’s from Belleville as well. She’s about 10 years older than me and she went to Mercyhurst and played Division 1 hockey there. So I saw her and thought, Oh wow, I can get a scholarship somewhere.

My last year of midget, I was offered to play in the junior league with Whitby and I decided I was going to stay back and play a year in Belleville. [Editor’s note: With the Bearcats that season, Bunton put up 94 points in 51 games]. I was in Grade 10 and I think it was probably one of the better decisions in my hockey career, because I ended up getting noticed by Team Canada that year. I was able to be a dominant player in Belleville as opposed to going to Whitby and maybe struggling to find myself.

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What was that first experience like with the national team?

I made a series against the U.S. in the summer, my first Team Canada U-18 camp, and then unfortunately I was released for the world [championship] roster. That was a devastating time in my hockey career. But I ended up playing in Whitby [the next season], and we were pretty dominant in the PWHL that year. … I went on to play for Team Canada [in 2013], and we won gold at the U-18 world championships — that was really fun. We had a great team and we were so close, and I went into that tournament knowing that I wanted to be one of the top players and make a difference.

And you did, in overtime. What do you remember about that play?

It’s probably one of the craziest games I’ve ever been a part of. We scored to tie it with 18 seconds left in the game, and then scored in the first two minutes of overtime to win gold. It was my first shift of overtime, and I was out with Karly Heffernan. I cut behind the net, got rid of my defender and I walked along the goal line and saw that she was open in front of the net. I passed it to her and she had kind of a tap-in goal. I remember that moment was so surreal. I think I saw it before it even happened.

The IIHF cancelled that tournament this year and last year because of COVID, but went ahead with the men’s [until they had to cancel the most recent edition due to COVID outbreaks]. What are your thoughts on that?

It was definitely disappointing to see. I have a different lens on it. I coordinate the U-18 program [for Hockey Canada], so just being able to now work for the program that gave me so much is pretty special. When I think back to my friendships and the experiences I’ve had and the development it helped within my own career, I just can’t imagine those girls not having that same experience. It’s happened a couple years in a row now. I hope the IIHF finds a way to make that tournament happen. I think not only do the girls deserve it, but it’s a crucial step in development for these girls to get to the next level in their hockey careers.


Is there a player you want to highlight that’s part of that U-18 program that you think has a bright future?

There’s a player named Avi Adams. She’s going to Cornell University, so maybe I’m a little biased [that’s Bunton’s alma mater]. She’s quite a player and she ended up making that world roster and I was excited to see what she could do at that level.

What happened with your own national team aspirations by the end of your college career?

In college, I played on the U-22 team, which is now the development team, with Team Canada. I had gone to a couple of senior camps and that was definitely my aspiration. But unfortunately my senior year at Cornell, around Christmastime, I wasn’t selected for a tournament with the development team and I had previously been on the team for three years. It was pretty disappointing and they kind of just said my career within Hockey Canada at that point was taking a stop. It was obviously really hard for me. I was about to graduate and thought maybe there would be some opportunities with the senior team, but at the same time I think it took a weight off my shoulders in my senior year and I was able just to play for the love of it. I think that was when I got the best out of my hockey career at Cornell.

Did you wonder whether college was the pinnacle for you?

I think a little bit. Obviously a lot of really talented players end up hanging their skates up even before their career’s at its peak. I knew I was not ready to be done playing hockey, but I knew a career had to take a step forward and the hockey had to take, maybe, a step backwards, which was something that was going to be really sad to me. But what happened with the [CWHL expansion to China] was the perfect timing, just when I was graduating. I feel like I was pretty lucky. Going into China, I felt like I was at the top of where I had been in hockey as well.

How do you describe that experience of playing in China [Bunton played there for two seasons, until the CWHL folded in 2019], helping to grow the game there and also helping develop China’s national team players ahead of the these Beijing Olympics?

It was honestly an experience that’s hard to describe. To be able to be immersed in a culture that otherwise I don’t know if I would have gotten the opportunity to be involved in was quite special. And there’s just so many funny stories you wouldn’t even believe happened. You’re obviously trying to be a professional sport in an area that hasn’t had that sport before. There were so many stories about how they thought ice was ready and there were huge holes in it, and we go in there and we have to tell them: “We can’t play in those conditions.” We’d have people come in and walk through our locker room without thinking twice about it. It was such a funny, unique experience but it was really special. To have all the Canadian teams come over to China, I had a lot of friends on other teams and got to kind of share the experience with them. I had a scooter over there and I’d take them for scooter rides.

© Provided by Sportsnet

Was that the most money you’ve made playing hockey?

Yeah, for sure [laughs].

Star players were paid six figures. 

Did you feel the future of the sport was headed in that direction?

A little bit. I think I was realistic that probably coming back to Canada, that’s not going to be the case. We did a lot of work in the community and with [Chinese-born teammates] to have that salary, but I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t extremely nice to be playing hockey, making a living wage and just getting to train full-time. That’s when I felt I was at the very best in my hockey career, because I was able to train every day, full-time. Then you come back to Canada and you have to work full-time, you’re coaching on the side, you’re practicing maybe twice a week.

That’s your current situation.

Yes.

In your spare time, I hear you’re also very into fashion. Who do you look up to most in the fashion world?

Fashion in the last maybe two or three years has been something I really enjoy. I’d say my biggest fashion icon would probably be Hailey Bieber. I love how simple and elegant her style is, and I love how she does a lot of oversized looks. That’s something I’ve always loved doing.

Who’s the best-dressed in the women’s game? 

Maybe… you?

[Laughs.] I think I would get some heat if I said I was the most stylish. There’s a lot of people. One thing about style that’s fun is that it’s honestly how you see it. How something makes you feel may not be the same as the way it makes someone else feel — that’s the cool thing about it. Someone like Marie-Philip Poulin has great style. I love that she always wears hats to games. That’s super fun.

You have so few games, you could really nail it with your outfits ahead of every one.

It’s actually true. [Laughs.]

Do you know what you’ll be wearing in March to your team’s next showcase event?

I love a good matching set, a suit or something like that, and I slick my hair back in a bun. That’s my go-to look. It’s funny, I had some new outfits for the games that were in Toronto [in December], but I ended up not being able to play in those showcase games, so I have those outfits stored. It was a tough decision, but I ended up not playing because of everything going on with the pandemic at that time, and we were about to be leaving for Europe for our U-18 program, and that was happening within a week of that showcase. I was the lead of that team, so I thought it was in my best interest that I was healthy before going to the world championships for work.

When was the last game you played?

Nova Scotia would’ve been the last one. [Last] November. It’s been so long.

It has. And it’s also been a long time since you posted a vlog. Your last one was in September, and you “committed” back then to two a month. It’s been crickets ever since.

[Laughs.] Yeah, you’re holding me accountable, I like that. I’ll get back at it. It’ll be my new year’s resolution. I had a little ski trip this weekend. We stayed in Banff, and I actually vlogged it, so it’ll probably be going up within the week.


Is that an important part of being a pro hockey player, being visible in that way?

There’s obviously two sides to it. It’s something I really enjoy doing. But I also think as hockey players in general, not just female hockey players, it’s one sport where I feel like maybe we don’t show our personality as much as other sports. I think that’s something that really helps engagement with fans, when they feel like they know who they’re watching.

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Recently you released a statement on your social media about Jacob Panetta, shortly after he was suspended from his ECHL team. [Panetta allegedly made a racist gesture toward Jordan Subban during a game.] Why was that important to you?

It’s obviously a heavy conversation. I just felt it was necessary to release something because I feel like as white people and as white athletes, a lot of the times we rely on our BIPOC community to speak out on these issues and I just felt like it was time. It wasn’t just their job to condemn the racism that was in hockey. Whether it was intentional or not, you have to realize what your gestures could make someone else feel. And you have to be aware of what you’re doing and who you’re doing it to. I think obviously it was disappointing to see. I felt a really strong need to speak out as a white hockey player and not just let the conversation fall on Sarah Nurse, on P.K. Subban, on players like that. When we’re the ones who’ve created the problem, we also need to be the ones to stand up and start the conversation on fixing it.


That was really well-put. Thank you. 

You’re close with a lot of members of Team Canada. How much are you looking forward to watching your friends compete at the Olympics?

I’m so excited. I’ve been around them so much this year, them being centralized in Calgary, and there are so many players I’m really close with. I know they’re so prepared. Since their world championships [in 2021] I can only imagine they’ve gotten so much stronger, being together every single day since then. I think with all the challenges they’ve had this year with the pandemic and cancellations, I’m so excited to see them get over there and compete, and I know that they’re probably the most prepared they’ve ever been. It’s going to be so fun to watch.

What will it be like watching Mélodie [Daoust] compete over there?

 [Bunton and Daoust, a forward for Canada, are dating].I’m so excited to watch her. I’ve known Mélodie for a long time. We actually played in Germany together in a Nation’s Cup when we were on the development team, so we’ve been good friends for a long time. I’ve always been a huge supporter and fan of hers. Obviously getting to watch her compete, being her partner and that side of it is something that’s different for me, but it’s so exciting to watch someone that you love and care about get to accomplish their goals. I’ve always been so impressed with the player that she is and the friend that she is, and she’s always been amazing, but to see it from a different side and be able to cheer her on is going to be so fun and exciting. I’m so proud of how hard she works and I know she’s been through a lot this year, being in Calgary and being away from Mathéo [her son], and this is kind of the end goal. It’ll be really nice to watch her accomplish this for a third time.


How will you cope with the nerves?

I’m honestly a pretty calm person. I think I’ll be pretty relaxed and I feel like in those games I’ve always had my best friends playing. Emily Clark [a forward for Canada] has been my best friend for over 10 years, so I’ve always been really close to the players. I do get really nervous but I feel like I almost try to be a calming presence for them. But it’s honestly harder to be a fan watching than it was even playing those high-stakes games as player.


Let’s hear your gold medal game-winning goal prediction.

You know what, I think I would be a really poor betting person if I did not say Poulin.

Solid bet. Thank you very much for this conversation, for addressing so many topics. Is your dog still asleep on your bed?

Oh my gosh, Raider is now on his back on the bed. He looks like the king of the bed. As soon as I hang up, he is onto the couch and off the bed. [Laughs.]

A couple minutes later, Bunton texted this photo of Raider on the bed, but said she’d given him the boot:

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Photo Credits

Ted Belton; Courtesy Hanna Bunton; Heather Pollock/PWHPA; Courtesy Hanna Bunton; Heather Pollock/PWHPA; Courtesy Hanna Bunton.