Suncor Fort Hills deal hints at new strategy for Canada oil sands mine replacement

By Nia Williams and Rod Nickel

FILE PHOTO: Suncor Energy facility is seen in Sherwood Park, Alberta© Reuters/CANDACE ELLIOTT

(Reuters) - Suncor Energy's acquisition of a larger stake in the Fort Hills oil sands project is a sign that Canada's second-largest oil company is looking for alternatives to extending the life of its biggest mine, which has run into political obstacles, industry observers said.

The purchase indicates Suncor is looking to acquire new bitumen supply to replace production from its Base Mine instead of, or in addition to, developing its own oil sands leases, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie said, raising expectations of more deals.

Suncor's Base Mine is a key part of the company's operations in northern Alberta, producing around 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of bitumen used to feed upgraders at its oil sands base plant that produce higher-value synthetic crude. The open pit mine, operating since 1967, is expected to run out of bitumen by the mid-2030s.

The company proposed the Base Mine Extension project, an expansion of the existing mine to produce 225,000 bpd from around 2030, but the federal government said in April that the mine would not pass an environmental review because projected emissions are too high..

Canada's oil sands hold the world's third-largest crude reserves and the long-life projects can produce for decades. However, carbon-intensive new mines are difficult to square with Ottawa's goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, making it important to keep existing ones running.

Last week Suncor agreed to buy Teck Resources' Fort Hills stake for about C$1 billion ($737 million) in cash as "part of our Base Plant mine replacement strategy". The deal increases Suncor interest in the project to 75.4%, giving it higher share of bitumen output.

"This is the first time Suncor has hinted at the risk that (Base Mine Extension) may not be going ahead," said Mark Oberstoetter, Wood Mackenzie's head of Upstream Americas.

Oberstoetter said the extension is likely still Suncor's base-case scenario, but interim CEO Kris Smith's comments around Fort Hills suggested the company was looking at alternatives.

Suncor did not respond to requests for comment. It releases quarterly results on Wednesday.

Other acquisition targets could include French major TotalEnergies' stake in Fort Hills and its 50% share of the Surmont thermal oil sands project, Oberstoetter added.

Last month TotalEnergies said it plans to spin off its Canadian oil sands assets into a separate company.

Jamie Bonham, director of corporate engagement at NEI Investments, a Suncor shareholder, said for oil companies, consolidation seemed a safer bet than developing new assets that may have cost overruns or become stranded assets if oil demand wanes faster than expected during a transition away from fossil fuels.

"This doesn't increase the overall number of barrels being added, (so) it could be aligned with a low-carbon transition path," Bonham said.

The Fort Hills deal is the latest move by Calgary-based Suncor to focus on its core oil sands business. Earlier this year the company sold its wind and solar assets and Norwegian oil assets.

It is unusual for companies to make big acquisitions while under an interim CEO, but prioritising core assets was a key demand of activist firm Elliott Investment Management, which disclosed a Suncor stake in April.

Suncor's previous CEO Mark Little resigned in July after a string of fatalities at Suncor sites.

(Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Ripple effect: As global freshwater basins dry up, the threat to ecosystems and communities grows

Xander Huggins,

 PhD Candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering (University of Victoria) 

and the Global Institute for Water Security (University of Saskatchewan)

THE CONVERSATION



When people use freshwater beyond a physically sustainable rate, it sets off a cascade of impacts on ecosystems, people and the planet. These impacts include groundwater wells running dry, fish populations becoming stranded before they are able to spawn and protected wetland ecosystems turning into dry landscapes.


Hundreds of freshwater basins across the world, including the dried-up Santa Olalla permanent freshwater lagoon, in Spain's Doñana National Park, are the most likely to experience social and ecological impacts due to freshwater use.© (Donana Biological Station/CSIC)

Developments in computer models and satellites have fostered a new understanding of how freshwater is being redistributed around the planet and have made clear the central role that people play in this change. This human impact is so significant that organizations like the United States Geological Survey are redrawing their water cycle diagram to include the impacts of human actions.

Equally important to understanding how people affect freshwater availability, is understanding how people and ecosystems will respond to amplified freshwater challenges including drought, water stress and groundwater depletion. While these challenges impact localized sites, their impacts are scattered across the world. To address this global water crisis, global action is urgently needed.

In our recent study, we identified the basins of the world that are most likely to be impacted by two central and interrelated aspects of water scarcity: freshwater stress, which occurs when the consumption of water surpasses renewable water supply, and freshwater storage loss, which is the depletion of freshwater in reservoirs or in groundwater bodies due to persistent overuse.

Global basins impacted by water scarcity

We identified 168 basins across the world that are the most likely to experience social and ecological impacts due to insufficient freshwater availability. These hotspot basins are found on every continent — a clear indication of the widespread, global nature of these challenges.


Hotspot basins (in orange and red), which are the most likely basins to experience severe social and ecological impacts due to limited freshwater availability.© (Xander Huggins)

To identify these hotspot basins, we assessed patterns in freshwater stress and freshwater storage trends and compared these to patterns in societal ability to adapt to environmental hazards and freshwater-based ecological sensitivity indicators.

The hotspot basins are most vulnerable largely because they are likely to experience social and ecological impacts at the same time. People and societies depend on freshwater ecosystems for drinking water, irrigation water, water filtration, erosion control, as cultural sites and for recreation. This means that ecological impacts of freshwater stress and storage loss double as social impacts through degraded ecosystem services.

Managing vulnerable basins

Hotspot basins are vulnerable as they are likely to face impacts such as low streamflow that harms aquatic biodiversity, reduced food security as agriculture is heavily reliant on freshwater supply, wells running dry and higher potential for social unrest.



Declining freshwater supply can affect food security as the agriculture sector heavily relies on it.© (Shutterstock)

Reducing vulnerability in intertwined societal and environmental systems requires improved policy and management integration across sectors. Integrated Water Resources Management considers and balances social, ecological and hydrological sustainability goals by co-ordinating management across water, land and other related resources. Its inclusion in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal framework highlights its importance.

Our research found that countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Egypt, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Somalia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Yemen have hotspot basins yet low implementation levels of much-needed integrated management practices.

Prioritizing hotspot basins

The location of hotspot basins across the world emphasizes the need for global and urgent action. Prioritizing regions based on their potential to experience social and ecological impacts can improve the effectiveness of global freshwater sustainability initiatives.

Our study calculated how vulnerable all the basins in the world were to the social and ecological impacts of freshwater stress and storage loss. We identified the most vulnerable basins as hotspots for global prioritization. However, while we focus on the identified hotspot basins, this does not mean that impacts cannot occur in basins with lower vulnerabilities.


A dry section of the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island, B.C.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kevin Rothbauer

For instance, only a number of Canadian basins — all located in the prairies — are identified with moderate vulnerability in our global study. Yet, dry streams on Vancouver Island, falling groundwater levels in the Lower Mainland, crop yields affected by drought throughout the prairies and potential for salt-water intrusion along the East Coast are all instances of freshwater security challenges being faced in Canada.

With massive expansion planned for irrigated agriculture in Saskatchewan and increasing water scarcity across British Columbia, Canada’s current (and enviable) position of being able to act proactively on water security challenges is rapidly shrinking.

Global action starts locally

While our study took a global focus, the approach of mapping vulnerability to guide priority setting can be applied at other geographical scales. For instance, this analysis could be refined and applied to Canada or specific provinces or cities using globally unavailable data that may be available for these jurisdictions.

These insights could help boost urgency to act on the emerging national water crisis, aid the modernization of the Canada Water Act or help identify communities that would benefit most from water sustainability plans in British Columbia.

While global studies, such as ours, are helpful at systematically highlighting regions for prioritization, they do not — and should not — provide explicit solutions. Rather, in such intricate social and ecological environments, actions to reduce impacts need to be attuned to place-based social norms, cultural values, hydrological conditions and local knowledge systems.

Our hotspot basins can help guide such community-driven local action to help conserve freshwater resources that are most under threat and mitigate the ripple effects of these threats on people and ecosystems.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
How Canada can solve its emerging water crisis

IPCC report: Half the world is facing water scarcity, floods and dirty water — large investments are needed for effective solutions

Xander Huggins receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a doctoral Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Metal detectorist stumbles across Viking treasure hoard in Norway

JoAnna Wendel 

Many people dream of finding buried treasure, but very few people actually do. For one man in central Norway that dream became a reality just before Christmas last year, when he took his metal detector for a stroll in a field near his home and unearthed a hoard of silver fragments from the Viking Age.


null© Brigit Maixner

At first, Pawel Bednarski wasn't sure of the value of the fragments he'd found buried under just a couple of inches of soil. There were a pair of rings, what looked like chopped-up Arabic coins and fragments of a silver bracelet, among other pieces. But when he reached out to local historians and archaeologists, the truth became clear: This was a significant find.

"It's been many years since such a large Viking treasure was found in Norway," Birgit Maixner, an archaeologist at Norway's University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, said in a statement.

Related: 2 Viking swords buried upright might have connected the dead to Odin and Valhalla

The silver fragments date back around 1,100 years to the eighth and ninth centuries — during the Viking Age, which lasted for about 200 years between the ninth and 11th centuries. The fragmentation of the objects suggests that these pieces were not just personal belongings but were also used as money. Vikings operated under a so-called bullion economy rather than a bartering economy, which means that rather than trading good-for-good, such as a sheep for a cow, they traded pieces of precious metals at set weights for goods. Minted coins were not commonly used in Norway until the late ninth century.

The weight system "was in use in the transition between the barter economy and the coin economy," Maixner said.

The 46 silver fragments weigh 1.5 ounces (42 grams), or about the weight of a golf ball. Maixner said that based on what we now understand of the Vikings' value system, the silver was worth a little more than half a cow — quite valuable for a time when owning five cows was about average for a medium-size farm.

While the silver fragments may have once been used by Vikings, Maixner isn't sure how the treasures ended up in Norway. The Arabic coins, which was the main source of silver in Scandinavia during the Viking Age, are older than what is usually found in Norway. Archaeologists usually find Arabic coins from the ninth and 10th centuries in Norse treasure, but these coins are from the eighth century. And the silver bracelet looks more like jewelry that's typically found in Denmark.

"The fact that this person had access to an entire broad banded bracelet, which was primarily a Danish item, might suggest that the owner had been to Denmark before traveling to this area in mid-Norway," Maixner said.

As for why or how the treasure ended up in the field, no one can say, Maixner said. Perhaps the owner was stashing it to retrieve later, or was leaving it as an offering to the gods.

World’s largest container shipping firm Maersk, a barometer for global trade, warns of 'dark clouds on the horizon'

Elliot Smith - 16h ago


The Danish giant, widely seen as a barometer for global trade, reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $10.9 billion for the quarter.

CEO Soren Skou said the "exceptional results" were driven by a continued rise in ocean freight rates, but said it was clear that these have peaked and will begin to normalize in the fourth quarter.


Maersk on Wednesday posted a record third-quarter profit but warned of 'dark clouds on the horizon' as shipping container demand weakens.© Provided by CNBC

Maersk, the world's largest container shipping firm, on Wednesday posted record profit for the third quarter on the back of high ocean freight rates, but noted a slowdown in demand.

The Danish giant, widely seen as a barometer for global trade, reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $10.9 billion for the quarter, above consensus analyst projections of $9.8 billion and up around 60% from the same period a year ago.

The company confirmed its full-year guidance for underlying EBITDA of $37 billion and free cash flow above $24 billion.

CEO Soren Skou said the "exceptional results" this year were driven by a continued rise in ocean freight rates, but said it was clear that these have peaked and will begin to normalize in the fourth quarter amid falling demand and an easing of supply chain congestion. Skou flagged that earnings in Maersk's ocean operations will come down in the coming months.

"With the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis in Europe, high inflation, and a looming global recession there are plenty of dark clouds on the horizon," Skou said in a statement Wednesday.

"This weighs on consumer purchasing power which in turn impacts global transportation and logistics demand. While we expect a slow-down of the global economy to lead to a softer market in Ocean, we will continue to pursue the growth opportunities within our Logistics business."

In its second-quarter report, Maersk flagged an impending slowdown in global shipping container demand amid weakening consumer confidence and supply chain congestion.

The company said Wednesday that global container demand is expected to contract between 2% and 4% in 2022, down from a previous projection of +1% to -1%, noting that freight and charter rates declined in the third quarter as demand moderated and Chinese Covid-19 restrictions diminished.

Maersk shares were down 6% during early trading in Europe

Russian journalists defy Putin to report on casualties in Ukraine

Markus Ziener - Yesterday

Soldiers from Buryatia, a small Republic in Siberian Russia, were among the first to be sent to the front lines in Ukraine. And they were among the first to die there.


The body of a Russian serviceman lies near destroyed Russian military vehicles on the roadside on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 26, 2022. (Sergey Bobok / AFP/Getty Images)© Provided by LA Times

When journalist Yelana Trifonova heard about a memorial service for the fallen, she immediately bought a ticket for the eight-hour trip from her home in Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia. “I wanted to know what was going on there,” said the 46-year-old who works for the online platform Lyudi Baykal. “I wanted to feel the atmosphere, and I wanted to look into the faces of the relatives.”

Trifonova and fellow reporter Olga Mutinova, 44, reported the story of the funeral; Trifonova wrote it, and it was published on April 28 on the landing page of Lyudi Baikala, with photos and video.

Trifonova said she had to do the story, no matter the consequences. But the consequences of defying the Russian government can be steep.

One third of the roughly 1 million people of Buryatia, which shares a border with Mongolia, are ethnic Buryats and mostly of the Buddhist faith. The average monthly salary in Buryatia is about one-third of what people earn in Moscow, and the Russian military is an attractive employer for young people.

Beginning in early March, mourning ceremonies for soldiers who died in Russia’s war on Ukraine were held in the large hall of the Lukodrome, a sports complex in the center of Ulan-Ude. When Trifonova arrived, traffic police had already blocked off the entrance for cars.



A Buddhist funeral service is held for a Russian soldier in the city of Ulan-Ude in East Siberia, Russia. (Lyudi Baykal)© (Lyudi Baykal)

Inside, rather than the one coffin that was originally announced, there were four. The first held 24-year-old Naidal Zyrenow, a local student of the year in 2016, who served in the Russian army as a paramedic. Naidal’s hands were crossed on his gray uniform jacket. One hand was bandaged.

The second coffin held the remains of 35-year-old Bulat Odoev, who served in the 5th Armored Brigade and is survived by a pregnant wife and daughter. The body of Shargal Dashiev, 38, who left behind a pregnant wife and two daughters, was in the third. Vladislav Kokorin, 20, who grew up in a children’s home and then went into foster care, was to be buried in the fourth.

Three of the dead were Buddhists and were buried according to traditions associated with the religion. In her story, Trifonova wrote that three Buddhist lamas stood up and began to walk around the coffins — as did the relatives. Not one sound of weeping could be heard.

Buddhists, Trifonova wrote, are not supposed to mourn loudly. After death, the soul must make its way to heaven to then return — after 49 days — in a new body. Tears would block the journey of the deceased and prevent him from letting go.

The ceremony brought clarity for Trifonova. “It became so clear to me why Russia was sending the Buryats first,” she said. “They belong to a small people in Russia, they are poor, they are humble, they are not Slavs — and they do not complain.”

Many of the families, she added, did not want to blame the government, even at the moment of their greatest grief.

“But this isn’t fair,” Trifonova said. “They don’t dare to take people from Moscow or St. Petersburg, so they turn to the ones who are showing the least resistance like Buryats, Tuvans or Dagestans.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia started to enjoy a lively and pluralistic media landscape. New journals and dailies sprang up, and some of the more established ones were shedding their roles as mouthpieces for the government. Even a government newspaper like Izvestia became informative and readable in the ’90s.

But when Vladimir Putin came to power, expressing dissenting views became increasingly difficult. Pressure on the media to conform with government regulations was stepped up. A number of journalists were killed in Russia, the most prominent of whom was Anna Politkovskaya, who reported about the war in Chechnya for the Novaya Gazeta and died in 2006.



A woman places flowers before a portrait of slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow. (Pavel Golovkin / Associated Press)© (Pavel Golovkin / Associated Press)

Eventually, the Russian government withdrew the licenses of the few remaining independent news organizations, and they had to shut down. A relatively new law forbids contradicting the Kremlin’s language rules, which prohibit the use of certain words (“war," “invasion”) to describe the fighting in Ukraine.

Before moving to Lyudi Baykal, Trifonova and Mutinova worked for more than 10 years at Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda, a newspaper that was founded shortly after Russia's October Revolution of 1917 and is based in Irkutsk. But in the last few years, it had been increasingly toeing the line of the local government.

“The censorship didn’t come overnight, it came gradually,” Mutinova recalled. “Ten years ago, it was still possible to criticize the governor. Five years ago, this was already a no-go.”

The limits on reporting became tighter every year as the newspaper became more dependent on state funding. “If we wanted to write about the conditions in the local prison or even mention the name of Alexei Navalny we crossed a red line,” Mutinova said, referring to Russia's best-known dissident. “The same was true if we simply wanted to report on protests taking place in the main square in Irkutsk.” What was left to write were innocuous stories about nature or the local hospital, she said. “This is not the journalism we stand for.”


Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears on a screen at Moscow City Court on May 24, 2022. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / Associated Press)

Shortly after the Russian war in Ukraine started, Mutinova and Trifonova assumed editorial responsibility for Lyudi Baikala. The website used to belong to Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda but had become independent thanks to a private investor. There they reported and wrote stories — concentrating their reporting on the Irkutsk/ Baikal region — about the dead and the wounded, about the tragedies of war, about the mobilization of soldiers and about cases of corruption.

“Once reporters were there to control the people in power,” Mutinova said. “This is what we are supposed to do.”

Now, however, the journalists have to publish behind an invisible curtain.

On April 16, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal media regulator, declared, without giving any reason, that it would block access to the news outlet. The website can be accessed only through a virtual private network, or VPN, which connects users to a private server that encrypts internet traffic and allows them to bypass restrictions. According to Trifonova and Mutinova, Russians are increasingly turning to VPNs to get independent information.

After Lyudi Baikala was officially blocked, Mutinova and Trifonova said donations rose and messages of encouragement and gratitude poured in. “The story about the funeral in Ulan-Ude was read about 80,000 times,” Mutinova said. “Some of our videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.”

Trifonova added: “People have been brainwashed for months by official propaganda and repeated their version of why we are at war with Ukraine” — that the operation was necessary to cleanse Ukraine of Nazis, to liberate the oppressed people of the Donbass and to show the West that Russians can’t be bullied around. “But now as the war is getting closer, and the victims and the sufferings can no longer be concealed, more and more are waking up.”

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, thousands of Russian journalists have paid a price for spreading “fake” news about the military. Sanctions have ranged from fines to sentences of five days in jail to years in prison.

Journalists who attended the funerals in Ulan-Ude were questioned by the police and told to stop reporting on them. On Sept. 23, Mutinova and Trifonova were handcuffed and arrested by local police in Irkutsk, and freed after three hours of interrogation. No charges were filed. A case is currently underway against them for allegedly distributing fliers that say, “No to war.”

Mutinova and Trifonova were arrested only two days after the partial mobilization of 300,000 Russian military reservists was announced. The measure led to many thousands of younger Russians fleeing the country to escape the draft.



A Buddhist funeral service is held for a Russian soldier in the city of Ulan-Ude in East Siberia, Russia. (Lyudi Baykal)© (Lyudi Baykal)

“The mobilization is the big game changer,” Olga says. “Now no one can claim that the war is none of their business. The war has arrived in every house, in every apartment.”

Lyudi Baikala is publishing a running list of the dead. So far, 336 Buryats and 78 soldiers from the Irkutsk Oblast have returned in wooden coffins. Russian authorities long ago stopped publishing any numbers.

Back in March, when the funeral ceremony at Ulan-Ude’s Lukodrome was drawing to a close, officials stepped up to the microphone. Bair Tsyrenov, deputy chairman of the government of the Republic of Buryatia, said of the fallen soldiers. “They died for the greatness of Russia, for the end of bloodshed in Ukraine.”

Ulan-Ude Mayor Igor Shutenkov announced: “They fell to defend the future of our country.”

Lt. Col. Vitaly Laskov, commander of the 11th Airborne Assault Brigade, added, “The paratroopers took their last leap into the sky.”

“There was no sobbing,” Trifonova recalls. “Only pain-filled silence.”

Markus Ziener is a special correspondent.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Greta Thunberg: It's time to overthrow the West's oppressive and racist capitalist system

India McTaggart - TELEGRAPH

From a climate change campaigner to presenting a new far-Left political agenda against “racist” capitalism - meet the new Greta Thunberg.


Greta Thunberg - Tim Whitby/Getty Images© Tim Whitby/Getty Images

The 19-year-old Swedish activist has announced that as well as tackling her usual area of climate action and awareness-spreading, she has now thrown her weight behind defeating the West’s “oppressive” capitalist system.

Calling for a “system-wide transformation” at her book launch in London, she claimed that the world’s current “normal” - dictated by the people in power - has caused the climate breakdown.

She said: “We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet.

“It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”

Ms Thunberg added: “If economic growth is our only priority, then what we are experiencing now should be exactly what we should be expecting.”

Appearing at London’s Royal Festival Hall to launch her new book, The Climate Book, on Sunday night, she decided to venture into political waters in her speech - having previously avoided doing so.

Released last week, the book includes around 100 contributions from various climate experts, including writer Naomi Klein, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief of the World Health Organization, and Thomas Piketty, the economist.

Expressing views that seemed more radical than in the past, she added that the climate crisis “has its roots in racist, oppressive extractivism that is exploiting both people and the planet to maximise short-term profits for a few”.

People were quick to point out the political emphasis on social media, with one best-selling author saying “this is proof that Greta hates capitalism for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with climate change”.

Related video: Greta Thunberg: 'In order to create societal change, we need people leading the way'  Duration 2:07  View on Watch

Michael Shellenberger, an American author, posted on Twitter that the “whole capitalist system” Ms Thunberg referred to has led to larger food surpluses than at any point in history, average human life expectancy to rise from 30 to 70 and a drop in total deaths from natural disasters.

Ms Thunberg told Samira Ahmed, the BBC journalist, during a question and answer part of the evening that “fascist movements offering easy, false solutions and scapegoats to complex problems are growing and becoming more normalised”.

When asked by Ms Ahmed whether she thought it was as simple as making laws that outlaw things, she responded: “There are many [things we can do], but while we do these things that we can do within our current system, we have to realise that we need a system-wide transformation.

“We need to change everything because right now our current system is on a collision course with the future of humanity and the future of our civilization”.



Thunberg - Kate Green/Getty Images© Provided by The Telegraph

Ms Thunberg also described the upcoming Cop27 as a forum for “greenwashing” and said she would not be attending.

The teenager, who is widely hailed as the world’s spokesman for climate change, shot to worldwide fame after attending her first United Nations climate conference in 2018, when the then 15-year-old said: “I expected it to be more action and less talking.”

During the question and answer session on Sunday, she said: “I’m not going to Cop27 for many reasons, but the space for civil society this year is extremely limited.”

This year’s conference, taking place from Nov 6 to 18 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, will see world leaders - including Rishi Sunak - gather to discuss the pressing climate crisis.

“Of course, it’s very symbolic that it’s held in a tourist centre - a tourist paradise - in a country that violates most of the basic human rights - and many world leaders are too busy to go there,” she added.

Addressing the coverage of her political take in the new book on Wednesday morning, she posted on Twitter:

Ms Thunberg attached an image of an excerpt from the book alongside the post, which she said was her take on “systems and ideologies”.

'#TrumpIsDead' is trending on Twitter after a verified user apparently decided to test moderation of the platform under Elon Musk's reign

insider@insider.com (Kali Hays) - 

Elon Musk (left) and Donald Trump. Andrew Kelly, Gaelen Morse/Reuters© Provided by Business Insider

A comedian intentionally started the claim, in what could be a test for Elon Musk.

The claim was trending on Twitter. Trump's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

Musk's handling of moderation on the platform has quickly become an issue under his leadership.

A comedian and actor is putting Elon Musk's control of Twitter and its moderation practices to the test.

Tim Heidecker, known for his standup and TV work with fellow comedian Eric Wareheim, on Tuesday started the hashtag #TrumpIsDead on Twitter, owned by Musk since Thursday. In a short series of tweets regarding former president Donald Trump, Heidecker wrote "Trump is dead (died badly) and tagged Musk in saying the billionaire "suppressed this news (or has he?)"

"Many are sad by the news," Heidecker went on. "I heard he died in a sad and sick way (not as a dog, but this reporting could change soon)." The comedian is verified on Twitter, with a blue check mark by his name.

Within an hour, Heidecker's tweets had amassed close more than 20,000 likes, thousands of retweets and #TrumpIsDead began trending on Twitter on Tuesday. Musk had yet to respond to or comment on the posts. He has remained a very active user since his takeover, tweeting and responding to other tweets numerous times each day.

Twitter and Musk did not respond to a request for comment. An email sent to Trump's office seeking comment did not get a response on Tuesday evening.

Moderation misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and other problematic content on Twitter has quickly become an issue under Musk's leadership -- so much so that Musk changed his Twitter bio on Monday from Chief Twit to Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator.

The use of slurs and hate speech grew exponentially in the days following Musk's takeover. The platform has also limited the number of employees allowed to remove such content since he took over, as Bloomberg reported. Although Twitter's head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, said Twitter's rules were "still being enforced at scale" amid the Musk transition.

"This is exactly what we (or any company) should be doing in the midst of a corporate transition to reduce opportunities for insider risk," Roth said of the reduced access to moderation tools.

Heidecker's thread could prove a notable trial for Roth and Musk. Commenters on the thread quickly hopped onto the joke, proposing numerous satirical but fake additions to what did or may have become of Trump, from an attack of bees to a death involving McDonald's.

GOOD NEWS

Courts, government bills are unravelling Harper-era crime laws

Ben Andrews - 

The list of criminal laws passed by the Stephen Harper government that have since been struck down by Canadian courts is growing steadily.


Criminal laws introduced under former prime minister Stephen Harper imposed mandatory minimum sentences and otherwise bolstered punishment for a range of criminal offences.© John Woods/Canadian Press

The trend's latest casualty came Friday, when the Supreme Court of Canada overturned a 2011 change to the Criminal Code that required sex offenders to be automatically added to the National Sex Offender Registry — a lifelong designation for anyone convicted of two sex offences or more.

In a split decision, the court found that the law was "over-broad" and cast "too wide a net" because it captured offenders who presented a low risk of re-offending.

The decision is just the most recent in a long series of court rulings that have undone Harper-era sentencing reforms.

"The Harper sentencing law legacy has caused many years of litigation at extraordinary public expense, but it is slowly but surely being undone," Lisa Kerr, a professor of criminal law at Queen's University, said in an email.

Three laws creating mandatory minimum sentences that were passed by Harper's Conservative government have now been struck down by the Supreme Court, and another 25 have been struck down in various provinces and territories, according to research by Toronto-based lawyer Matthew Oleynik.

Taken together, the rulings suggest that Canadian courts are likely to reject future attempts by lawmakers to limit the decision-making power of judges in sentencing, or to enforce blanket approaches to punishment, several criminal and constitutional law experts told CBC.

'One-size-fits-all' approach

Many of the Harper-era criminal law reforms were contained in three major pieces of legislation: the omnibus Safe Streets and Communities Act in 2012, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act in 2014 and the Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act in 2015.

These acts, among others, introduced mandatory minimum sentences and otherwise bolstered punishment for a range of criminal offences.

Eric Gottardi, a Vancouver-based lawyer and defence attorney, said "law and order" policies remain popular with voters — despite research from Canada and the United States suggesting that longer jail terms and harsher penalties do little to reduce crime.

Gottardi said he testified at committee hearings during Harper's time in office to warn lawmakers that the bills might be unconstitutional.

"The prior government just tried to paint whole classes of people with a broad brush," Gottardi said. "Justice doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all kind of approach."

Carissima Mathen, a professor of constitutional and criminal law at the University of Ottawa, said blanket rules on sentencing are "often just too crude of a tool."

But mandatory minimum sentences agreed with the "tough on crime" messaging of the government at the time, University of Guelph professor of political science Kate Puddister said in an email.

'A critical shift in the law'

Conservative justice critic Rob Moore questioned the latest Supreme Court decision.

Because of the ruling, he said, many people convicted of sexual offences will be exempted from being listed on the registry. He said the original legislation was supported by all parties when it was passed.

"This is a critical shift in the law and it disproportionately impacts women and children. It must be taken very seriously," Moore said in an email statement.

Other Harper-era crime laws may soon face challenges.

The Supreme Court will rule Friday on a case that tests the constitutionality of a law that prevented a judge from allowing a young Indigenous woman to avoid jail by serving a conditional sentence.

And the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing back Harper-era sentencing changes as well. Legislation is before the Senate that would eliminate mandatory minimum penalties for 14 firearm and tobacco-related offences and six drug offences.

"Any mandatory minimum penalty is on difficult footing," Gottardi said.

Surrey teachers call for more staff, specialists to deal with 'impossible workload'

CBC/Radio-Canada - 



Teachers in Surrey, B.C., are calling on the local school district, federal politicians and school trustees to help recruit more specialist teachers to improve classroom working conditions and provide student services.


A student is pictured at an elementary school in Surrey, B.C. Teachers in the district are asking for more specialist teachers to help deal with "impossible workload" and improve working conditions.© Ben Nelms/CBC

The B.C. Teachers' Federation (BCTF) reached a tentative contract agreement on Monday that offers significant salary gains and other important benefits.

However, the president of the Surrey Teachers' Association says the new agreement does not do enough to address the "impossible workload" teachers are currently experiencing, especially when it comes to providing services for students with behavioural challenges.

"When specialist teachers are absent, and when programs and services cannot be maintained, then there are more opportunities for students to become dysregulated," Jatinder Bir said in a written statement on Monday.

The Surrey School District has more than 78,000 students and 13,000 staff and is the largest and fastest-growing district in B.C.

Bir said teachers have been making distress calls to the union about overcrowded classrooms and loss of service because there is not enough staff or specialists like school counsellors, psychologists and speech pathologists. Some teachers have taken early retirement, while others have gone on medical leave.

"New and veteran teachers are looking for ways to leave the profession."

Specialists not replaced immediately

Lizanne Foster, the first vice president of the Surrey Teachers' Association, says specialist teachers are not replaced from the first day they are absent, and some staff are not replaced until the new school year.

"All these specialists that help students ... when they are absent, they are not replaced. When they go and leave, they are not replaced. Sometimes the school psychologist is not replaced for an entire year," Foster told CBC's The Early Edition on Tuesday.

Last month the district asked the province to build more schools after welcoming 1,300 more students than it had projected last spring.

"A lot of those students are refugee children ... and they might not have gone to kindergarten, they might not have gone to first year. After the pandemic, lots of kids had learning loss ... and specialist teachers can fix that," she said.

Foster says students continue to fall behind in numeracy and literacy because of prolonged absence or redirection of specialists in schools.

"Currently, in the best-case scenario, some specialists are replaced after three days of absence, some are not replaced for the entirety of the school year," Bir said.

He said other school staff are often tasked with covering classroom teacher absences, which means students could lose out on things like music class and time in the library.

"I have on multiple occasions seen students cry upon being told that they were missing music for that day ... and we've had times where students miss weeks of music in a row due to failures to fill," said a Surrey school music teacher.

The dispute between Ontario's government and education workers, explained

Laura McQuillan - 

As contract talks between Ontario's government and thousands of education workers devolve into a legal battle, labour experts are split over whether the workers' big pay raise request is a reasonable one — and whether the public will be on their side.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is asking for an 11.7 per cent annual raise for 55,000 workers, including education assistants, early childhood educators, custodians and administrative assistants.

The pay hike request may appear staggering to many Canadian workers, who won't get a raise anywhere near that scale this year, even with inflation at about seven per cent.

But labour economists who spoke with CBC News say there's a deeper context behind the education workers' pay hike demand — including a decade of frozen wages that CUPE says has left the workers struggling to afford to live.

Here's a look at where the dispute stands and how the workers' pay raise request stacks up.

What's the latest?

On Tuesday afternoon, CUPE said its negotiators at the bargaining table would propose a "counter-offer" to the government. It was not immediately clear what the union was prepared to concede — or whether the government would accept it.

For now, the education workers still plan to walk off the job in protest on Friday, after Doug Ford's government introduced legislation on Monday to ban the workers from striking following a breakdown in collective bargaining.

Ontario's government also said it would use the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to avert any constitutional challenges to the legislation.

Several school boards, including the Toronto District School Board, Peel District School Board, Ottawa Catholic School Board, Thames Valley District School Board, Waterloo Catholic District School Board and Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, said they would close for in-person learning on Friday if the walkout went ahead.

What do the education workers want?

The education workers are asking Ontario's government for an 11.7 per cent annual raise, as well as overtime at twice the regular pay rate, 30 minutes of paid prep time per day for educational assistants and early childhood educators, an increase in benefits and professional development for all workers.



CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn is shown in Toronto on Monday. The union represents 55,000 education workers who are seeking an 11.7 per cent annual pay increase.© Evan Mitsui/CBC

CUPE says the workers earn, on average, about $40,000 a year. An 11.7 per cent raise would give them $3.25 extra an hour, or about $4,800 extra per year (based on being paid for 35 hours per week for 43 weeks each year).

The Progressive Conservative government's final offer was a 2.5 per cent annual raise to workers making less than $43,000, and 1.5 per cent for those earning more, either of which would mean a raise of about $1,000 per year.

What's behind the 11.7 per cent figure?

Although CUPE is asking for a much higher pay raise than most workers, or even other unions, are seeking this year, it says it's trying to make up for years of stagnant pay.

From 2012 to 2021, the education workers' wages increased about 8.5 per cent. Over the same period, inflation in Ontario rose 17.8 per cent, meaning the workers essentially took a massive pay cut over that period.

How unionized wages in Ontario compare to rising inflation

"We should try and avoid the sticker shock of the [11.7 per cent] number," said Charles Smith, an associate professor of political science at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon who researches labour history and unions.

"CUPE workers in the education sector have had, essentially, wage freezes for over a decade and haven't seen a significant cost-of-living increase."

How does it compare to other workers' raises?

Other unionized workers have settled for far less this year.

In Ontario, the average annual wage increase in settlements ratified so far this year is 2.6 per cent, above the national average of 1.8 per cent, according to provincial and federal government data.

Given those figures, CUPE's pay ask may rub other Canadians the wrong way — and even pit them against the education workers.

"[It] might not be palatable to unionized workers, [and] you would hear from scores of thousands of private-sphere workers that are not only not getting a raise, but they are either suffering from downsizing in their jobs, layoffs, terminations and, certainly, salary freezes," said Toronto employment lawyer Sunira Chaudhri.

"I think that's exactly where the Ford government is going to get some support."

It's unclear what level of support the workers might have from parents, who want their children to stay in class after two years of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions.

Labour studies expert Paul Christopher Gray suggests other workers should try to maintain some empathy for the protesting Ontario education workers.

"I would say: Look at how low the wage is; look at the broader context of what is in effect real wage cuts over the last decade that these workers have experienced; look at the increase in inflation and see how modest, actually, the demand they're making is," said Gray, an assistant professor of labour studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.

"And instead of 'why them,' ask 'why not me as well.'"

Is there any middle ground?

Bruce Ally, a mediator and arbitrator in Toronto, points out that unions always head to the negotiating table "asking for the stars" but are prepared to meet in the middle. He said CUPE's 11.7 per cent request would have been no different.

"We need to look at the justification, and is it realistic or not?" he said. "What are other people getting paid doing the same job? What are other provinces doing? What's the cost of living? How does that impact the salary earned?"



A sign in front of Brock Public School in Toronto on Tuesday morning shows support for education workers. Labour experts are divided over whether there will be public support for the workers' pay raise request.© Shawn Benjamin/CBC

It's unclear whether the two sides will be able to negotiate a deal or if the dispute will be decided in court, as the government is now rushing a bill through the provincial legislature to impose a contract on the education workers that will prevent them from striking. The union has said it will explore every avenue to fight the bill.

CUPE Ontario's president Fred Hahn said Tuesday that the workers would stick to their plan to walk off the job if there was no deal by Friday.