Inuit fear ruling on Arctic mine expansion could hasten ongoing narwhal decline

Inuit hunters fear an upcoming ruling on an Arctic mine expansion could hasten the ongoing decline of a narwhal population that they rely on for food.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

Harvesters from Pond Inlet on the northern coast of Baffin Island say numbers of the iconic, single-tusked whale are already a small fraction of what they were before the Mary River iron mine began operating.

They say a decision expected Friday from the Nunavut Impact Review Board could make things even worse by allowing the mine to nearly double the amount of ship traffic through nearby waters.

"We're used to seeing thousands and thousands of narwhal," said Enooki Inuarak. "We used to go to sleep hearing the narwhals breathe.

"The last couple years, there has been barely any."

In a letter sent last week to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, the Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization says the mine is already harming their ability to harvest the important food source.

"Narwhal are less abundant ... narwhal behaviours are changing, and ... hunters are having limited success in their attempts to harvest," the letter says.

The Mary River mine is owned by Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. The mine, considered one of the world's richest iron deposits, opened in 2015 and ships about six million tonnes of ore a year. The company has said the mine's expansion would create 325 jobs.

Aerial surveys conducted for Baffinland suggest summer narwhal numbers in Eclipse Sound declined to about 2,600 in 2021 from 20,000 in 2004.

Meanwhile, shipping in the area — mostly traffic to and from the mine — has increased dramatically. In 2021, nearly 245 trips were made to and from Milne Inlet, where the mine's ore is loaded. In 2015, that figure was 42.

Baffinland said it expects to see 168 visits by ore carriers if the expansion is approved. Josh Jones at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, who is studying the proposal, said that would mean more than 450 individual transits by carriers, icebreakers and other mine-associated vessels.

Other research has linked marine traffic and whale behaviour, said Kristin Westdal, Arctic science director for the environmental group Oceans North. She said vessels create underwater noise that interferes with the animal's ability to locate prey and communicate.

"That research clearly points to an increasing level of sound, sound which overlaps with that of narwhal frequencies.

"The animals are responding to the vessels. They're moving away, they're changing direction."

Baffinland disagrees that constant, low-level disruptions are driving the narwhal away.

"Based on the expert advice of marine biologists ... with the application of the mitigation measures proposed under the Phase 2 proposal, increased shipping does not represent a significant risk to narwhal," Baffinland spokesman Peter Akman said in an email.

He suggested the Eclipse Sound narwhal have simply migrated to Admiralty Inlet on the other side of Baffin Island. Changing ice conditions or "prey/predator dynamics" — killer whales are present in the area — may also be factors, he wrote.

That doesn't help Pond Inlet hunters, who must ask permission to hunt in another community's waters.

"For countless generations we relied on them for our diet," Inuarak said. "It's part of our life.

"We're here because of the wildlife."

Baffinland has promised to impose nine-knot speed limits throughout the shipping corridor, lower than limits in whale habitats elsewhere. It also said it will reduce transits in shoulder seasons, reducing the need for icebreakers.

That won't help, said Westdal.

She said the number of transits should be reduced and icebreaking should be "off the table," restricting Baffinland to the open-water season. She noted that Eclipse Sound is in Tallurutiup Imanga, a national marine preserve.

"We think you can have the marine park and the community and the mine," Westdal said. "But if we keep going in this trajectory, we're just going to have the mine."

The hunters and trappers of Pond Inlet have called for similar measures.

"The Board (should) consider requiring Baffinland to implement adaptive management measures in order to protect the marine environment and to limit impacts to narwhal and Inuit harvesting rights," says their letter.

Baffinland said its willing to talk.

"If our monitoring programs ... identify reasonable linkages between the project and unacceptable changes to narwhal and/or harvesting in the future, Baffinland will respond accordingly," Akman wrote.

He said that could include changes to the shipping season, ship speeds and transit restrictions.

Inuarak is aware of the importance of jobs, but he said only a few people in Pond Inlet depend on the mine. Food is more important, he said.

"It impacts our culture and our traditions. We're being pushed back to the point we have to defend our way of life and our food source."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Indigenous languages 'marginalized all the time' in Canada: Governor General Mary Simon


KANGIQSUALUJJUAQ, Que. — Think of your morning routine — after your alarm goes off and before breakfast, you probably unlock your phone and check emails, social media, text messages. The constant connection is a habit.

But in Canada's North, that isn't the reality much of the time. There's no service on most major cell carriers in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec. Locals are used to wifi dropping out or slowing down.

On Tuesday a student from a Kangiqsualujjuaq school asked Gov. Gen. Mary Simon about a letter her classmates sent last fall about the poor internet access in their community — the village near where Simon was born.

Although governments have put billions of dollars in recent years into improving issues with rural internet capacity and infrastructure, the North lags behind much of the country.

"I think having that gap in technological advances prohibits us from being on equal par with the rest of the country at this stage," Simon said in an interview with The Canadian Press Tuesday.

"It could improve a lot of things, you know. Access is one thing."

Access to more than just social media, of course. During the pandemic, many Canadian children attended school online, and people could access physician appointments and counselling services via video chat when in-person visits weren't possible.

In remote communities where weather impacts travel capacity and travel infrastructure is limited, the ability to connect without being in the same physical space is all the more crucial, and all the more difficult.

Simon said when she lived in Kuujjuaq, from 2006 to 2016, it often wasn't possible to even download documents.

"Unless you got up in the middle of the night and did it in the middle of the night when people were off-line," she said.

Throughout the Governor General's trip to Nunavik this week, access to the internet has been spotty at best. Hotels, schools and community centres frequently deal with outages.

This is just one of the challenges facing the North, Simon said, and one of the realities many Canadians are unaware of.

"There are some changes taking place, but they take place at a fairly slow rate and the need is great," she said.

"I hear that from the people that are talking to me right now. They're very committed, Inuit are very committed people to making life better for each other."

Simon has spent much of her lifetime working to make life better for Inuit as a political leader.

Much of that work has involved negotiating with the federal and provincial governments on behalf of the Crown. Now, Simon represents the Crown itself.

"I don't see the conflict, in relation to how I feel about it," she said.

"Perhaps other people see it differently, but the way I see it, I don't see a conflict. My role is really to be able to talk to people about what's going on in Canada."

Simon wants to see self-determination for her people. But she avoids using the word "reconciliation."

"I kind of stay away from that word a little bit because it gets kind of overused. But that's what it means, it means being able to bring people together," she said.

"One of the things that I have is the ability to convene people … It's really about educating one another and understanding."

For someone who grew up speaking Inuktitut and learned English at a federal day school, that understanding extends to language.

"I think there is a need to understand that Indigenous cultures also depend on their languages to keep their culture and their identity alive," she said, adding that residential schools led to the extinction of many Indigenous languages.

The controversy around the fact that Simon doesn't speak French has made headlines since her appointment. She said she's still committed to learning, but noted that rather than being given the same importance as the two Official Languages, Indigenous languages are "being marginalized all the time" across the country.

"I think there needs to be a much bigger effort to embrace Indigenous languages, and to support them and to help promote the use of the language," she said. "Not just in sort of an academic sense, but in the families and communities."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press

Quebec lost almost $1 billion on COVID-19 protective equipment: auditor general




MONTREAL — Quebec's unpreparedness and its delayed reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the province losing almost $1 billion in its procurement of personal protective equipment, the auditor general said Wednesday.

The government waited too long and then rushed into purchasing items such as masks and gloves at high prices, Guylaine Leclerc said in her report released Wednesday.

By the end of March 2021, the value of the equipment purchased by the province had dropped by $938 million, she said. Of that amount, the province lost $671 million in the value of its stockpile and another $267 million connected to contracts for equipment and prepaid orders.

"The Health Department didn't plan any measures to create a sufficient supply of personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic, such as making prior agreements with suppliers or creating a stockpile," Leclerc wrote.

"It was therefore forced to urgently purchase equipment to protect the population while prices skyrocketed."

Quebec spent $1.4 billion on procedural masks and N95 masks alone, she said.

Leclerc told reporters on Wednesday the government should have acted faster to procure equipment, noting that the first bulk purchases were made on March 22, 2020, despite the fact the first infection in the province was detected on Feb. 27 of that year.

"Quebec's plan against an influenza pandemic was outdated," Leclerc said in her report. "There was no measure put in place to facilitate the supply of personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic and several employees lacked training on how to use the equipment."

The auditor's report noted that the government has launched lawsuits valued at $170 million in connection with orders for equipment that was never delivered or faulty.

"Faced with the urgent need to take action, the government procurement centre didn't always verify the suppliers' integrity and the quality of the personal protective equipment, which contributed to losses of nearly $15 million," Leclerc said.

"Good management requires good planning."

Premier François Legault on Wednesday dismissed the criticism in the report.

He said it's easy to "rewrite history," adding that his government did what it could.

Health Minister Christian Dubé, meanwhile, defended the government by stating the pandemic was unprecedented.

"We learned a lot from the first wave, which took everyone by surprise," Dubé said in statement. "This is why we put in place a plan for the second wave, which included having a reserve of four to six months of personal protective equipment."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 11, 2022.

Jocelyne Richer, The Canadian Press

Over 75% of Canadian nurses burnt out, 42% plan to leave profession, RNAO survey finds

Hannah Jackson - Yesterday 
 Global News


Anew survey conducted by the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) has found that over 75 per cent of Canada's nurses are "burnt out."

According to a news release, the RNAO conducted the survey between May and July of 2021, "during the height of Ontario's third wave" of COVID-19, and collected responses from 5,200 nurses in Canada -- most of which were from Ontario.

The report, titled Nursing Through Crisis: A Comparative Perspective, found that more than 75 per cent of Canadian nurses who responded to the survey were classified as "burnt out," with higher percentages reported among those in hospital and front-line workers.

"This widespread burnout provides some insight about what life is like for a large percentage of Canadian nurses," the report reads. "It also implies that leaving their position or their profession may be a future reality for these nurses."

However, when asked, only 26.2 per cent of nurses surveyed said they had taken time off of work to manage stress, anxiety or other mental health issues related to working during the pandemic, or to prevent or deal with burnout.

Read more:

Hospitals grapple with ‘historical’ staff absences, burnout amid 6th COVID wave

What's more, a total of 69 per cent of nurses surveyed said they planned to leave their position within five years.

Of those who said the wanted to leave their position, 42 per cent said they would leave the nursing profession all together, would seek opportunities elsewhere or would retire.

The survey also found that 73 per cent of nurses said their workloads had increased "moderately or significantly" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sixty per cent of nurses said they were "moderately or extremely concerned about staffing levels, while 53 per cent said that they were "moderately or extremely" concerned about workloads.

Only 34 per cent of respondents said they felt they had adequate support services to spend time with patients or clients.

While the survey found that nurses in all sectors of the practice struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital and front-line nurses reported the highest levels of depression, anxiety, stress and burnout.

CEO of RNAO Dr. Doris Grinspun called the numbers "both sobering and alarming" adding that they "represent a call to action for the government, health employers, educators and nursing associates."

In the press release, the RNAO said the survey highlights the "instability in the nursing profession that, left unchecked, will have profound impacts on the profession, the effective functioning of the health system and the quality of care Ontarians receive."

Included in the report were a number of recommendations which include:

Repealing Bill 124 and refraining from extending or imposing further wage restraint measures.

Increasing the registered nurse workforce by expediting applications and finding pathways for 26,000 internationally educated nurses living in Ontario to join the workforce.

Increasing enrollments and funding for baccalaureate nursing programs,

Developing and fund a Return to Nursing Now program to attract registered nurses back to Ontario's workforce

Expanding the Nursing Graduate Guarantee, reinstate the Late Career Nurse Initiative and bring back retired registered nurses to serve as mentors.

Establishing a nursing task force to make recommendations on retention and recruitment of registered nurses.

Grinspun said without a "detailed health human resources plan that is laser-focused on retaining nurses in the profession and building Ontarios RN workforce, people's health and the system's ability to operate effectively are in danger."

The survey found that the top retention factor for nurses planning to leave the profession was offering better workplace supports, at 68.3 per cent.

A total of 63.3 per cent said reduced workload was a top retention factor, while 58.3 per cent said the ability to adjust their work schedule was a top factor.

Improved benefits and better career development opportunities were also among the top retention factors at 55.4 per cent and 43.4 per cent, respectively.

Read more:

‘They’re scared’: How COVID-19 is impacting the mental health of doctors, nurses

President of RNAO Morgan Hoffarth said the association's call to increase the province's registered nurse workforce has been backed by the Ontario Hospital Association, Ontario's Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission, Colleges Ontario and the Council of Ontario Universities.

In a statement in the release, Hoffarth said nurses play a "central role in the lives of Ontarians, in health and in illness."

"That's why we need to ensure that all nurses feel valued. And, we must pay unique attention to RNs – who are the ones exiting the profession en masse," she said. "We know nurses are committed and have vital expertise, compassion and skills to share. What we need is sustained effort to retain the nurses we have, and ensure welcoming workplaces for new graduates and others who join the profession."

Hoffarth said the "silver lining" is that there has been a 35 per cent in applications to baccalaureate nursing programs across Ontario.

The RNAO said it is launching four program to help address nurses' needs for better workplace supports by offering more professional development opportunities and "more control over their working lives."

The association said it is launching the Advanced Clinical Practice Fellowship program, the Leadership and Management for Nurses program, the Mentorship for Nurses program and the Nursing Student Preceptor for Long-Term Care program.

Parks Canada recovers 45 fossils stolen from Burgess Shale, levies $20K fine

LAKE LOUISE, ALBERTA — A Quebec resident has been fined $20,000 for taking 45 fossils from three Rocky Mountain national parks that include an internationally known fossil collection.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Parks Canada said a member of the public tipped wardens in Lake Louise, Alta., in 2020 about fossils being removed from the Burgess Shale.

An investigation that summer and fall led Quebec wardens and police to search a home in the Montreal area.

"The investigation resulted in 45 fossils being recovered, which were identified by an expert from the Royal Ontario Museum as originating from sites within Kootenay, Yoho and Jasper national parks," field unit superintendent Francois Masse said Thursday at a news conference.

He said most of the fossils came from the Burgess Shale Marble Canyon quarry, an area not accessible to the public, in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia.

Removing natural materials from national parks is against the law.

A man, who Parks Canada is not identifying, pleaded guilty to two charges in a Cranbrook, B.C., court last month. He was ordered to return the fossils, pay the fine and serve a five-month conditional sentence that includes a curfew.

"This is the largest fine that has been levied to date for the removal of fossils from the Burgess Shale and it accounts for the seriousness of the offence and the importance of this site," said Masse.

He said Parks Canada's law enforcement branch has the recovered fossils.

There have been other cases in which people have been caught taking fossils from the Burgess Shale, including one in 2016 when an international tourist was fined $4,000 after he loaded his backpack with them.

Paul Friesen, a Parks Canada warden in Radium Hot Springs, B.C., said the latest investigation was complex because it required confirming a tip, finding a suspect and working with other law enforcement agencies.

"The location of the fossils is in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia and the suspect (was) located in the Montreal area," he said.

Friesen said the investigation revealed the man was trying to sell some of the fossils on the black market.

"There's a variety of prices these would be selling for and it would depend on who is buying them," he said. "They can range from several hundred dollars up into tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how rare they are and the quality of those fossils.

"It just goes to show the importance of those fossils to Parks Canada and the importance that we place on protecting those fossils."

The Burgess Shale is widely known as one of the most significant fossil sites in the world. It contains fossil evidence of some of the earliest animals that existed in the oceans more than 505 million years ago and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.

A fossil site near Stanley Glacier in Kootenay National Park was discovered in 1989 by researchers with the Royal Ontario Museum.

The Marble Canyon quarry was discovered in 2012 and more than 10,000 specimens have been recovered from that site by researchers.

All of the sites are monitored electronically and through other means, Friesen said.

"We also rely on the remoteness of some of these sites as well to keep them protected," he added.

"These locations are very rugged, very remote, experience extreme weather conditions, so we're consistently evaluating what's out there in terms of technology.

"We take the protection of these sites very seriously."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2022.

— By Colette Derworiz in Calgary

The Canadian Press

Amazon fires 2 union organizers tied to first U.S. labor win

Amazon has fired two employees with ties to the grassroots union that led the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history.

The company confirmed Tuesday that it fired Michal, or ‘Mat,’ Cusick and Tristan Dutchin of the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island, New York. But it claims the “cases are unrelated to each other and unrelated to whether these individuals support any particular cause or group.”

Cusick, who worked at a nearby Amazon warehouse from the one that voted to unionize last month, said he was fired due to COVID-related leave. He said he was informed by an agent from the company’s employee resource center that he was allowed to go on leave until April 29 but was later fired because leave period extended only until April 26.

“They now say after the fact, after they terminated me, that the COVID-leave actually only extended to the 26th,” said Cusick, an organizer who works as the union’s communications lead. “That discrepancy is how they fired me.”

Cusick said he was locked out of Amazon’s internal employee system on May 2 without any notice. The following day, he said he called the employee resource center and was told about his termination.

In a letter sent on May 4, the company told Cusick he was fired for “voluntary resignation due to job abandonment.” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement Tuesday that Cusick had “failed to show up for work since an approved leave ended in late April, despite our team reaching out to him and even extending his leave.”

“While we normally wouldn’t discuss personnel issues, we think it’s important to clear up some misinformation here,” Nantel said.

On Monday, Cusick had told the AP his firing may have been an arbitrary decision by Amazon’s automated human resources system, which has been a subject of scrutiny in the past. “If they do not reverse what is a fairly obvious miscarriage of justice here, my presumption is that they are not doing it because they know that I am an Amazon organizer,” he said.

Nantel said Dutchin, another organizer who worked at the facility that voted to unionize, was fired because he failed to meet productivity goals. She said Dutchin “had been given five warnings since last summer for performance issues and was consistently performing in the bottom 3% compared to his peers, despite being offered additional training.”

“We work hard to accommodate our team’s needs, but like any employer, we ask our employees to meet certain minimum expectations and take appropriate action when they’re unable to do that,” Nantel said.

Dutchin did not respond to a request for comment.

Haleluya Hadero, The Associated Press

US Navy chief defends plan to scrap troubled warships even though some are less than 3 years old

Oren Liebermann -

The chief of the US Navy defended the service’s plans to scrap nine relatively new warships in the coming fiscal year even as the service tries to keep up with China’s growing fleet. Three of the littoral combat ships slated for decommissioning are less than three years old.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that the anti-submarine ships could not perform their primary mission.

“I refuse to put an additional dollar against a system that would not be able to track a high-end submarine in today’s environment,” Gilday told the committee. He said the main reason for the early retirement was that the anti-submarine warfare system on the ships “did not work out technically.” The decommissioning of the ships would save the Navy approximately $391 million, according to the service’s proposed FY23 budget.

But that recoups only a fraction of the cost of the nine littoral combat ships, which totaled about $3.2 billion.

The USS Indianapolis, USS Billings and USS Wichita were all commissioned in 2019, which means the Navy plans on decommissioning ships that are only a fraction of the way into their expected service life. The Navy also plans to retire six other littoral combat ships, all of the single-hull Freedom-variant, as opposed to the trimaran Independence-variant. Both variants can achieve speeds of 40+ knots.

Under a 2016 Navy plan, the Freedom-class variants were all homeported Mayport, Florida, mainly for use in Atlantic Ocean operations. The Independence-class variants were homeported in San Diego, and designated for mainly Pacific operations.

The decision amounts to an embarrassing admission that some of the Navy’s newest ships are not fit for modern warfare.

Despite the Navy’s plans to scrap the warships, Congress has the final say on the military budget and has balked at previous requests to decommission ships. Reducing the number of warships may be even more difficult as lawmakers focus on the growing size of China’s navy and the gap between the US and Chinese fleets.

Last August, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the USS Tulsa, one of the Independence-class ships, while it was operating out of Singapore. She touted the Navy’s mission of “helping to guarantee peace and security, freedom of trade and commerce, freedom of navigation” and the role the ship plays in countering an increasingly assertive China in the western Pacific Ocean.



But the embattled littoral combat ships have faced perennial problems, including repeated breakdowns and questions about their limited armament.

The ships were hailed as part of the US deterrent against China as they they were designed to operate in shallow waters like the South China Sea. But the decommissioning of so many in one year appears to be an acknowledgment that the expensive surface combatants have failed to live up to expectations.
‘We can’t use them’

Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said, “We can’t use them, number one because they’re not ready to do anything. Number two, when they are, they still break down.”

“They’re incredibly expensive, and they don’t have the capabilities that we expected. So regardless of how old they are, that’s a lot of money to be spent to get pretty close to nothing,” the Washington state Democrat continued.

Republican Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined in criticizing the Navy.

“With the Chinese Navy steadily climbing to 460 ships by 2030, the unforced errors in Navy shipbuilding, like the Littoral Combat Ship, must stop. Programs that can scale up and grow our fleet must be the priority,” Inhofe tweeted Wednesday.

Many of the myriad problems facing the littoral combat ship program stem from the lack of mission focus during the design process, said Emma Salisbury, a researcher at the University of London focusing on the US military weapons manufacturers.

“The LCS was essentially counted to solve every single one of the Navy’s problems all at once and everything will be wonderful,” Salisbury told CNN with a note of irony. The missions for the ships included surface warfare, mine countermeasures, and anti-submarine warfare, based on a modular design that was supposed to allow the Navy to customize the ship for the role.

“It was basically this magical design that would solve everything,” Salisbury said. “So that was the problem – that, because it had all of these options, it never did any of them very well.”

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby defended the program and the ships at a press briefing in mid-April, saying that “they served a purpose.”

Yet even as the Navy plans on scrapping nine of the Freedom-variant ships, the newest ship in the class was just christened this past weekend. The USS Beloit marked the milestone with members of Congress and Navy officials in attendance, as well as the ceremonial breaking of a bottle of wine across the bow.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in a statement the ship would “be ready to respond to any mission, wherever, and whenever, there is a need.”

The Independence-variant of the LCS has faced its own problems. The Navy has identified structural cracks on six of these ships, requiring updates to inspection procedures and a redesign of the affected areas, according to a statement from Alan Baribreau, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command. The cracks, first reported by Navy Times, were initially discovered in late-2019 in high-stress areas on the structure of the ship.

“The issue was identified following routine quality assurance checks and does not pose a risk to the safety of Sailors on board the ships. Similarly, the issue poses no safety risk to the ships affected nor does it hinder the ability to get underway and execute missions,” Baribeau said.

The Navy plans on retiring two of these Independence-class ships in the 2024 fiscal year.

At the same time, the Navy is working on developing a new class of ships more suited to the challenges from China’s rapidly expanding military and the threat Russia poses. These ships would have “more capability than the LCS” for the potential fights of the future, Kirby said.

On Thursday, Gilday said the Navy was not “sized” to handle two wars at once. When Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, asked Gilday about whether the US Navy would be able to “meet its operational requirements” in the US European Command area of responsibility if the US also had to use Navy ships to deter China, Gilday responded: “I think we’d be challenged.”

“Right now, the force is not sized to handle two simultaneous conflicts. It’s sized to fight one and to keep a second adversary in check, but in terms of two all-out conflicts, we are not sized for that,” Gilday added.

The US currently has 298 “battle force” ships, according to its latest budget request, and it will add nine or more ships every year for the next five years. But because of the Navy’s plans to scrap so many ships, the size of the fleet is expected to drop to 280 ships in that time.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

 A former Canadian central banker got particularly salty in a recent interview when asked about Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre’s assertion that the Bank of Canada is “financially illiterate.” “That’s bulls—t,” former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge told CTV’s Evan Solomon. Dodge added that “they understand what’s going on.” Poilievre has been a harsh critic of Bank of Canada quantitative easing policies, saying they’ve worsened inflation while incentivizing the Liberals to blow out the debt. In the same comments where he accused the Bank of Canada of financial illiteracy, Poilievre said they “promised we’d have ‘deflation’ right before inflation hit a 30-year high.”

FIRST READING: 

Canadian military suddenly takes notice of UFOs

Tristin Hopper - Tuesday

© Provided by National Post

A screengrab from an official video released by the U.S. Department of Defense showing a U.S. Navy pilot encountering

First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.

The Canadian Armed Forces appear to be taking UFOs a bit more seriously after the U.S. military admitted publicly last year that its pilots kept seeing “unidentified aerial phenomena” they couldn’t explain.

Last June, the U.S. intelligence community released a long-awaited report confirming there had been 144 incidents of inexplicable phenomena.

Documents obtained for CTV News last week by reported Daniel Otis showed that, in advance of the U.S. release, the top echelons of the Canadian military called in Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s most prominent ufologist, for a briefing .

“Yes, I was asked to provide info on UFOs in Canada for a briefing to the Minister of Defence,” Rutkowski reported on LinkedIn following the broadcast of the CTV story .


© The Canadian Press/John Woods

Chris Rutkowski in 2016.

In May 2021, George Young, chief of staff to then-minister of defence Harjit Sajjan, wrote to the Canadian Armed Forces requesting a briefing for Sajjan on “any and all research that has been done by CAF/DND; any sightings that have been reported in recent years; any historical information that may be on file.” “ It should/could be expected that the imminent US release of information will prompt questions domestically and with Defence-related implications ,” the email says.

Canada has one of the world’s largest proportions of alleged UFO sightings. Roughly 1,000 such sightings are annually phoned in to Ufology Research, the organization operated by Rutkowski since 1989. While the majority of these reports are easily explained as aircraft or astronomical phenomena (such as a passing satellite), there have been a handful of incidents in which credible sightings of unexplained shapes or lights have been recorded by trained pilots .

One of the most notable is a 2016 incident in which the pilots of an Air Canada Jazz flight over British Columbia reported a “steady red light” that could not be explained. The details of the sighting — which can be viewed on CADORS , a federal government database of civil aviation incidents — have the flight crew witnessing what they believe to be “another aircraft with a steady red light” while on a nighttime flight from Prince Rupert to Vancouver . “No other aircraft was known to be in that vicinity or observed on radar,” it reads.


© CADORS

Detail of the CADORS report describing a 2016 incident of unexplained aerial phenomena over B.C.

The CTV briefing note mentions two others.

Just before Christmas, 2018 in Yarmouth, N.S., two witnesses (one on land, the other at sea) saw unexplained lights in the sky . What made the sighting particularly notable was that radar returns from the area showed an unexplained object right around where the two witnesses spotted the lights.

In August 2021, a “ bright green flying object ” was spotted near Gander, N.L. by two separate aircraft: An RCAF supply flight to Europe and a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight from Boston to the Netherlands. “ It flew into a cloud, then disappeared ,” reads the CADORS report.


© CADORS

CADORS report describing an encounter with a “bright green flying object” over Newfoundland and Labrador.

Voices within the Canadian aviation community have previously criticized Ottawa for an apparent lack of curiosity regarding credible UFO reports .

A 2021 investigation by VICE traced the federal response to the 2016 Air Canada Jazz sighting. Despite being called in by Vancouver air traffic controllers as a “vital intelligence sighting,” the federal government’s response seemed to consist of little more than reviewing RCAF radar data and then shelving the report once they couldn’t find anything matching the Air Canada’s pilot’s description. “All I know is I’m not impressed with the level of investigation,” veteran RCAF pilot John Williams told VICE at the time.

Critics of the lacklustre federal response don’t necessarily see UFOs as signs of extraterrestrial activity, but note that they could be sightings of unknown aircraft or drone technology that could pose a risk to national security .

This is certainly the position of U.S. authorities . “UAP (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena) clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security,” reads the June report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Although the evidence was slight, the report didn’t rule out the possibility that UFOs were “foreign adversary collection platforms” or signs that “a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology .

Hydro-Québec in U.S. court to save US$1B Maine power line after failed referendum

PORTLAND, Maine — The fate of Hydro-Québec's US$1-billion interconnection line went before Maine's Supreme Court on Tuesday, which will have to decide whether to validate the project even though a majority of voters in the state rejected it.



Fifty-nine per cent of Maine voters last November voted against the project — a 336-kilometre power line that would bring electricity from Quebec to Massachusetts. Voters didn't want the line running through their state.

But Quebec's hydro utility and its partner, New England Clean Energy Connect, allege the referendum results are unconstitutional. They say the project has an acquired right to move ahead, as NECEC has already spent nearly US$450 million on the proposal, which is about 43 per cent of its anticipated costs, according to court filings.

Most of the proposed power transmission line — about 233 kilometres — would be constructed along existing corridors. However, a new 85-kilometre section must be built through the Maine woods to reach the Quebec border.

Critics contend the environmental benefits are overstated and that the project would forever change the forestland. Supporters, meanwhile, argue bold projects are necessary to battle climate change and that the electricity is needed in a region heavily reliant on natural gas.

Work on the electricity export project has been suspended since November's referendum.

Maine's Supreme Court is hearing two appeals on Tuesday involving the hydro project. Firstly, the court has to decide whether the referendum results are unconstitutional. Secondly, the court is being asked to green-light permits for a 1.6-kilometre portion of the line, which were invalidated by a Maine Superior Court judge, even though the permits were first granted by the state government in 2014.

A spokeswoman for the Quebec utility says a ruling on either case isn't expected until later in the year.

NECEC is contractually obligated to complete the line by Aug. 23, 2024, but could extend that deadline by a year for a penalty of US$10.9 million. The project was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022.

Despite the setbacks, Sophie Brochu, Hydro-Québec's president and CEO, told a Quebec parliamentary hearing last week she still believes in the merits of the project.

The contract was expected to bring in nearly $10 billion in revenue over 20 years for Quebec's utility, which has said the project would reduce greenhouse gases by three million tonnes, the equivalent of taking 700,000 cars off the road. If the project doesn't go ahead, Hydro-Québec estimates that it will have to record a loss of $536 million.

In 2019, Hydro-Québec also recorded a loss of $46 million after the Northern Pass project failed to get approval. That transmission line would have carried Quebec's electricity to Massachusetts through New Hampshire. The utility abandoned that export plan because of public opposition.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2022.

— with files from Stéphane Rolland in Montreal and The Associated Press.

The Canadian Press