It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Canada launches group to lobby for more countries to use carbon pricing
OTTAWA — Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says Canada is issuing a challenge to the rest of the world to expand the use of carbon pricing in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions.
But his challenge comes as a new survey suggests a majority of Canadians want the Liberal government to freeze its own carbon price until inflation has receded.
Guilbeault is in Egypt for the annual United Nations climate talks, where this year’s goal is an agreement focused on getting countries to actually implement the climate promises they’ve already made.
Efforts are still underway to push the world to do more, though, and Guilbeault said Canada sees an expansion of carbon pricing as one of the ways to do that.
“We’re inviting more countries around the world to put a price on pollution,” he said.
About 23 per cent of global emissions are currently subject to carbon pricing, and Guilbeault said the goal of the challenge is to increase that to 60 per cent by 2030.
He said carbon pricing is one of the most effective ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and its use sends a signal to polluters that pollution isn’t free.
The opposition Conservatives — who have been actively campaigning against carbon pricing for more than a decade — are now saying that the policy is adding to the cost of inflation.
In his criticisms, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre doesn’t mention the quarterly rebates the government sends families to offset the carbon price in the four provinces that use the federal system.
But despite the payouts, a new poll suggests Canadians are in Poilievre’s corner.
A survey for The Canadian Press by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies suggests that Canadians want the federal Liberals to freeze the carbon price until inflation recedes.
The poll of 1,537 adult Canadians, conducted online between Nov. 11 and Nov. 13, cannot be given a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.
A large majority of respondents — 77 per cent — agreed that the carbon price should be frozen until inflation eases and prices begin to moderate. Only 14 per cent disagreed.
The approval of a freeze was consistent across supporters of all parties, including the governing Liberals. Seventy-two per cent of respondents who identified as Liberal supporters agreed with a freeze, versus 73 per cent of NDP supporters and 91 per cent of Conservative supporters.
Support for pausing the policy was also above 80 per cent in every province except for Quebec, where it was at 71 per cent, and Ontario, where it was at 75 per cent.
Guilbeault did not know about the poll when he was interviewed for this story, but said from Egypt that he knows not all Canadians are convinced about carbon pricing.
Still, he still believes it works and that Canada and Chile, the country co-leading the carbon pricing challenge, will be able to bring others on board.
Eight other countries and the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, signed on to the challenge to start. All of them already have or are already developing carbon pricing policies.
The U.S.-based Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which keeps a running tab of carbon pricing systems around the world, lists at least seven other countries that have carbon prices but aren’t yet part of Canada’s challenge. It says about 23 per cent of global emissions are subject to some level of carbon pricing.
Carbon pricing can include direct levies on fuels based on their emissions, and cap-and-trade systems where emitters that exceed a set emissions cap must buy credits from those who emit less. Canada has both, with some provincial systems following cap-and-trade, and others using the direct levy.
Four provinces that don’t have an existing provincial system are using the national one, which also sends rebates to households.
John Morton, the United Kingdom’s special envoy on climate at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt, said in a conversation with Guilbeault on Tuesday that the U.K. is all in.
“Carbon pricing is going to be hugely important in order to keep us on track for a 1.5 C ceiling on global warming,” he said.
The carbon pricing challenge is similar to the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which Canada launched with the U.K. at COP23 in 2017 to push for ending the use of coal as a source of electricity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2022.
Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press
Nursing in Canada: Report says more needs to be done
With Canada’s health-care system struggling to keep its head above the water amid a flu epidemic, the continuing pandemic, staff shortages and worker burnout, the role of nurses is more important than ever — but more needs to be done, a group of unions says, to retain and support nurses.
A new report released Thursday by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), called Sustaining Nursing in Canada, laid out a list of solutions that could help to address the shortage of nurses during this dire situation for Canada’s health care system.
“From emergency room closures to children’s hospitals overrun with sick kids, health care is at a breaking point in every corner of the country,” Linda Silas, president of CFNU, said in a press release.
“At the heart of this crisis is a dire shortage of nurses. Between years of persistent underfunding and the constant pressure of COVID-19, nurses are in desperate need of real change and support.”
Among the issues facing nurses in Canada’s health-care system today are chronic shortages, ongoing burnout, consistent overtime, poor mental health and poor working conditions, according to the report.
In order to address the issue and keep more nurses in the field, the report laid out a “multi-layered” strategy with three steps: retain and support, return and integrate, and recruit and mentor.
Solutions from the report were among the suggestions presented during the discussions between federal, provincial and territorial health ministers at a two-day meeting in Vancouver last week.
But health ministers left the meeting without assurances of new federal funding. A statement from Canada’s premiers outlined that there had been “no progress” regarding the continued call to increase the federal share of provincial and territorial health-care costs from 22 per cent to 35 per cent. Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos claimed at a separate news conference afterwards that it was premiers who halted talks by not allowing health ministers to accept any conditions from the federal government in discussions.
CFNU expressed disappointment in its press release Thursday that there were no new agreements on how jurisdictions could provide relief and support for nurses.
“There is no time for political games – the health and, in some cases, the lives of Canadians hang in the balance,” Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, one of the University of Ottawa researchers who authored the CFNU report, said in the release.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HELPING NURSES
CFNU’s report stated that the first step in addressing the nursing shortages and issues in Canada should be to focus on strategies that will retain the current workforce and support it in the workplace.
Solutions for this could be reducing workloads, fostering safe and healthy work environments, supporting mental health of nurses, and using retention strategies targeted at specific populations within nurses, the report suggested.
Between the first and second years of the pandemic, more than 600 registered and licensed practical nurses left long-term care or community health agencies, the CIHI report revealed.
This was decline of 2.2. per cent overall in nurses within long-term care alone.
The same report found that nursing inpatient services made up more than 9,770,000 overtime hours for staff in 2020-21, and that 27 per cent of nurses were consistently logging overtime.
Nurses have also reported some of the highest mental health effects due to the pandemic.
A Statistics Canada report looking into the pandemic’s impact on workers found that 92 per cent of nurses reported feeling more stressed at work — a higher percentage than any other health-care profession, with the next highest group being physicians at 87 per cent.
More than 45 per cent of health-care workers surveyed by StatCan said their mental health was worse in 2021 than it was before the pandemic.
CFNU also stated in their report that they had surveyed more than 4,400 practicing nurses in their 2022 national survey, and found that 45 per cent of nurses report experiencing severe burnout, up from 29 per cent pre-pandemic.
“Calling nurses resilient is patching up the problem,” Claire Marshall-Catlin, an emergency department nurse in Vancouver, said in the CIHI report. “If nurses are resilient, they can manage working short, they can return to work after a death in the waiting room, they can stay longer than 12 hours when there is no replacement coming.
“We don’t want to be resilient. We want safe staffing levels, safe patient care and safe work environments. The environment in the ER has taken away our ability to care for patients and families the way we want to, and the way they deserve to be cared for.”
When StatCan surveyed health-care workers who weren’t planning on retiring about whether they intended to leave their current job within the next three years, almost one in four nurses said they were considering leaving their current job or having a career change, the highest proportion of all professions surveyed.
In CFNU’s survey, that number was even higher — more than half of the nurses surveyed said they were considering leaving their current job within the next year, with 19 per cent stating they were considering leaving the profession completely.
Citing StatCan data, CFNU said that nurse vacancies had increase by 133 per cent between 2019 and 2021
CFNU laid out specific recommendations to try and address issues driving nurses from the workforce.
It suggested a legislated minimum nurse-to-patient ratio in order to cut down on unmanageable workloads, a “promising initative” which has been implemented in some health-care settings in Quebec and is a “leading international practice … in reducing nursing workloads especially in acute care settings.”
Creating more capacity for float teams — health-care workers who could flexibly work across several teams to support them — could also take pressure off of nurses, CFNU said.
Staff should also have dedicated mental health days and peer-support programs, the report suggested. In terms of strategies targeted towards retaining specific populations within the nursing workforce, the report identified recent graduates of registered nursing programs as needing additional support in the transition to clinical settings, and also suggested nurses who have been in the workforce for a long time could be reinvigorated if there was more access to continuing education and salaried research opportunities.
The second major step the CFNU report recommends is one that is often overlooked when this topic comes up, according to the report: incentivizing nurses who have left to return to this career, and investing in those who may have been educated internationally but haven’t been able to get licensed within Canada yet.
Part of this issue is nurses who have left for the private care sector.
Between 2020 and 2021, while 612 nurses were leaving public long-term care work, the CIHI report found that there was an increase of 1,251 registered nurses and 667 licensed practical nurses in direct patient care jobs at private nursing agencies and health centres, as well as those working independently.
“Intricately connected to the poor work conditions within many public health care organizations, nurses are quitting to work in private agencies where they may receive higher wages and greater control over their working hours,” the CFNU report stated.
In Ontario, nurses have had their wage growth curtailed by Bill 124, which limits wage increases to one per cent a year for public-sector contracts, including nurses. It was introduced in 2019, but during the pandemic, nursing organizations have called for it be repealed numerous times, to no avail.
For nurses who have retired from the career altogether but may be considering returning, CFNU suggested incentives could include offering a flexible return to work and providing mentorship options.
But it is internationally trained nurses that represent the largest untapped resource in this section, with CFNU stating that there are potentially thousands of educated nurses who simply aren’t able to practice in Canada.
The registration process to transfer those skills and be licensed in Canada can be “complex, costly and time-consuming,” the report stated.
It called on governments to expand programs that fast-track the immigration process for skilled workers in order to process more nurses, and to eliminate some of the confusing steps in the registration process, which can sometimes include resubmitting similar documents to numerous regulatory bodies.
“One example to expedite the process is the Manitoba government’s funding to support (internationally educated nurses) by covering costs associated with certification and ordering the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba to allow IENs already licensed in other jurisdictions to work in Manitoba,” the report stated.
The final step CFNU outlined was investing more in recruiting.
Some solutions to this include increasing the number of nursing faculty in order train an increased number of students, forging better partnerships with Indigenous and Black nursing organizations, expanding French-delivered nursing programs, offer more student-loan forgiveness to nurses who agree to work in remote locations, and providing free nursing education in exchange for them agreeing to work within certain regions once they’ve graduated.
The CFNU report also called for more comprehensive data on nursing across the country to be collected so that more barriers to nursing can be identified and then strategies can be created to tackle them.
“Nurses are at the heart of solutions,” Dr. Ben Ahmed, a University of Ottawa researcher and co-author of the CFNU report, said in the press release. “Retaining and supporting nurses still working, returning and integrating nurses who have left the public health system, and recruiting and mentoring new nurses into a healthier environment – it is through these evidence-based best practices that we can bring Canadian health care back from the brink.”
NURSES HELPING PRIMARY CARE GAPS
One of the big reasons nursing is such a pressing issue is that there are currently huge gaps in primary care, gaps which nurses could help to fill, those in the industry say.
“Over one million Ontarians are without a primary care provider, and as a result, over 30 per cent of residents are turning to hospital emergency rooms, causing unbearable wait times for care that a primary healthcare provider offers,” Dana Cooper, executive director of the Nurse Practitioners’ Association of Ontario, said in a Nov. 14 press release. “Primary care is becoming virtually impossible to obtain in Ontario, and the government has the opportunity to involve Nurse Practitioners in primary care settings to alleviate the barriers Ontarians face in receiving health care.”
The term “nurses” encompasses a range of more specific professions with different skill sets — nurse practitioners (NPs) are registered nurses who have received additional training and education that allows them to diagnose and treat illness, prescribe medication and do other more advanced tasks that registered nurses can’t. NPs are present in all health-care settings, including hospitals, primary care clinics, long-term care and rehabilitation.
These skills could be leveraged to help address the gap in Canada’s supply of family doctors, NPAO suggested, as nurse practitioners are able to handle many of the issues a family doctor might see on a regular basis.
“Nurse practitioner-led clinics are a great answer to reduce hallway medicine,” Julia Jacobs, operation manager of a nurse-practitioner led clinic in Windsor-Essex, told CTV News Windsor in August. “It prevents patients from going to walk-in clinics and emergencies for care.”
According to NPAO, their skillset could be leveraged to help fill the gap in Canada’s primary care system, particularly in more remote locations.
Within Ontario, there are 25 nurse practitioner-led clinics, NPAO stated. It is urging the provincial government to increase funding for these clinics in the province so that more Ontarians can access this care.
In some other regions of Canada, nurse practitioner led clinics are fewer and far between — in B.C., for instance, only opened its third nurse-practitioner-led clinic in 2020.
WORKERS CAPITAL Ontario Teachers’ to invest approximately US$805 million in part to support NextEra Energy Partners’ acquisition of approximately two-gigawatt renewable energy portfolio – Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan
November 18, 2022 By Megan Johnson Transaction marks second investment with NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners and adds to Ontario Teachers’ growing portfolio of green assets
TORONTO, ONTARIO (November 18, 2022) – Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’) today announced that it has signed an agreement to invest approximately US$805 million in a convertible equity portfolio financing with NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: NEP). Ontario Teachers’ committed to the investment as part of the sale of renewable energy assets from NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) to NextEra Energy Partners.
The approximately two-gigawatt portfolio comprises four newly constructed and nine operating wind, solar and energy storage assets, which are geographically diversified across U.S. power markets. The assets have in place long-term power purchase agreements with diversified, investment-grade counterparties.
This investment is the second in as many years by Ontario Teachers’ with NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners, following on the acquisition of a direct interest and convertible equity portfolio financing agreement originally announced in November 2021.
“We are pleased to build on our partnership with NextEra Energy Resources and NextEra Energy Partners, a world leader in renewable energy generation, and to make another significant investment in a portfolio of high-quality wind and solar energy assets,” said Chris Ireland, Senior Managing Director, Greenfield and Renewables at Ontario Teachers’. “This portfolio of assets based across the U.S. is a strong complement to our existing portfolio and gives us additional exposure to the U.S. market.”
The investment is being made by the Greenfield and Renewables team, which is part of the Infrastructure & Natural Resources department at Ontario Teachers’. Current investments include development-focused platforms such as Cubico Sustainable Investments, Anbaric Development Partners, Equis Developments and Corio Generation, as well as a direct ownership stake in a portfolio of operating assets alongside NextEra Energy Resources. Total pro-rata capacity of the Greenfield and Renewables portfolio equals approximately 5.6 gigawatts.
Ontario Teachers’ expects to close the transaction later this year or in early 2023, subject to customary closing conditions and receipt of certain regulatory approvals.
Ontario Teachers’ financial advisor was TD Securities and legal advisor was Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
About Ontario Teachers’ Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’) is a global investor with net assets of $242.5 billion as at June 30, 2022. We invest in more than 50 countries in a broad array of assets including public and private equities, fixed income, credit, commodities, natural resources, infrastructure, real estate and venture growth to deliver retirement income for 333,000 working members and pensioners.
With offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, San Francisco, Singapore and Toronto, our more than 400 investment professionals bring deep expertise in industries ranging from agriculture to artificial intelligence. We are a fully funded defined benefit pension plan and have earned an annual total-fund net return of 9.6% since the plan’s founding in 1990. At Ontario Teachers’, we don’t just invest to make a return, we invest to shape a better future for the teachers we serve, the businesses we back, and the world we live in. For more information, visit otpp.com and follow us on Twitter @OtppInfo.
Ontario Teachers leads bidding for UK SSE Networks stake
Dinesh Nair and Ruth David, Bloomberg New
November 18, 2022
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board is emerging as the frontrunner to acquire a stake in SSE Plc’s multibillion-pound electricity networks, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The Canadian pension fund is negotiating terms of a deal to invest in SSE’s transmission and distribution grid assets, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Several other infrastructure investors that were previously pursuing a deal are no longer in the running, the people said.
London-listed SSE said in November last year it plans to sell about 25 per cent of its transmission and distribution grid units to help fund an increase in spending on net-zero infrastructure. The assets could be valued at more than £10 billion (US$12 billion) in any deal, Bloomberg News has reported.
The stake sale is part of a strategic plan unveiled by SSE after it rejected a proposal from activist investor Elliott Investment Management to split the company in two by separating the renewables business.
While discussions are at an advanced stage, there’s no certainty they will reach an agreement, and another buyer could still emerge, the people said. Representatives for Ontario Teachers and SSE declined to comment.
A consortium backed by Ontario Teachers and Brookfield Super-Core Infrastructure Partners agreed last year to buy SSE’s remaining stake in a Scottish natural gas network for £1.2 billion. Ontario Teachers was also previously a shareholder in SSE’s smart meter venture, which was eventually sold to Equitix.
CLIMATE CRI$I$ CO$T
Alistair Vigier: Floods will have a larger impact on B.C. real estate prices than interest rates
Flooding in Abbotsford, 2021 | Photo: Stefan Labbe
Many people ignore the looming threat of climate change, despite the ever-present haze of summer wildfire smoke, and now – just weeks later – flood warnings.
Climate change will undoubtedly upend life as we know it all over the province, but some regions will surely be hit harder than others.
Real estate prices in flood-prone regions will tank. Young families looking to get a foothold in less pricey parts of the province will have to balance their desire for stability with the economic realities of buying into a potentially disaster-prone market. People who live in places like Richmond and Delta already know the flood dangers of living at or below sea level. Ocean levels are predicted to rise, and those who can afford it might seek out higher terrain in places such as North and West Vancouver.
For people living in Metro Vancouver, the board’s own projections warn of warming temperatures, waning snowpacks and more extreme rainfalls the rest of the time. In general, Metro Vancouver residents can bet on more extreme weather events in the future as global climate change takes hold.
Whether it’s another extended deadly heat dome or catastrophic flooding after an atmospheric river rainfall event, there’s little that will remain untouched by the destructive hand of climate change. We will, unfortunately, be forced to adapt to more frequent extreme weather events. But what about everyone’s favourite subject, real estate prices in Vancouver B.C.?
Real estate prices in Vancouver
The picture for areas affected by flooding is not pretty. According to Metro Vancouver, there is a problematic trend of increased demand for water as populations increase while snowpacks decrease.
The city says that increased extreme rainfall events will lead to mudslides and erosion, which will impact real estate prices, and affect the drinking water supply.
As well, every city in the province will have to find the money to shore up their drainage and sewer systems, as projections indicate that more intense storm activity will “put significant pressure” on regional infrastructure. If they fail to do so, they can expect to get sued by people who lose their livelihoods in flood events that were either predictable or preventable or both.
Devastating flooding and heavy rain
This is not speculation, since the City of Abbotsford, the Province of British Columbia and the Fraser Valley Regional District are all facing a lawsuit from residents of Sumas Prairie, which was devastated by flooding and heavy rain in November 2021. The plaintiffs in the class action claim municipal, provincial and regional governments were all aware as far back as 2015 that the dikes in the area weren’t good enough to hold back the swelling waters of the Nooksack River.
It’s not only governments that need to fear lawsuits over flooding, either. The logging industry, despite how vital it is to the provincial economy, is also in the legal crosshairs of residents affected by flooding. Two years ago, people living in Grand Forks sued the provincial government and several logging companies, claiming clear cutting in the area caused or contributed to devastating flooding back in 2018.
But the toll on the provincial economy caused by climate change is hard to focus on when the human toll is measured in people losing their homes and livelihoods and, by extension, their futures.
There are still reasons to be optimistic, though. Most cities and towns in British Columbia have plans in place to deal with and adapt to the effects of climate change. This offers a faint light at the end of the tunnel.
With that in mind, new city councillors and mayors across the region should avoid the short-sightedness bred by the short shelf lives of municipal administrations, and continue to tackle the problem head-on. If they fail to do so, they run the risk of that faint tunnel light revealing itself to be a runaway train barrelling towards them and derailing our collective future.
None of these issues are unique to Vancouver. Every city around the world will need to think about how climate change will affect them. If politicians do not take serious action on climate change, real estate prices in places like Richmond will be destroyed.
Alistair Vigier is CEO of ClearWaylaw.com, an online legal marketplace, and is deeply concerned about climate change.
Saskatchewan
SGI, other Sask. organizations prepare followers for the possibility of Twitter's demise
Social Sharing
Facebook
Twitter
Email
Reddit
LinkedIn
Sask. RCMP, SGI, province say they have other ways to
Many on Twitter are worried the site is in its end days, due to mass amounts of employees exiting the company. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
The future of Twitter has been a hot topic on the social media site over the last two days. The Saskatchewan government, businesses and influencers are responding to that uncertainty.
Late Thursday evening, as the hashtag #RIPTwitter continued to trend on the troubled platform, SGI tweeted to its followers, directing them to other platforms where they can follow the government service in case Twitter does indeed kick the bucket.
"Seeing a bunch of tweets about the potential imminent demise of Twitter, it made me think, well, maybe this is something that we should remind our audience. Part of it was a bit tongue in cheek, I would say," said Tyler McMurchy, manager of media relations for SGI and overseer of all the company's social media accounts.
The Crown corporation tweets every day from two accounts. But it also uses Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and a TikTok account.
So what is causing all this uncertainty on billionaire Elon Musk's new toy?
Thousands of Twitter employees are estimated to have decided to leave the beleaguered social media company following a Thursday deadline from new owner Elon Musk that told staffers to sign up for "long hours at high intensity," or leave.
The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter's employees to remain at a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce, including top management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.
Musk took to Twitter late on Thursday and said that he was not worried about resignations as "the best people are staying."
Now, many of the site's users are scrambling to download their data.
The departures from the company include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.
On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began slowing down, according to one source familiar with the matter, who estimated that the public version of Twitter was at risk of breaking during the night.
What would happen
Even though Twitter is not where SGI has its biggest audience — that accolade goes to Facebook — McMurchy said the platform is still very important, as its two accounts have been live since 2010 and 2011.
"In spite of what my personal feelings about Twitter and my own personal consumption of it is, which is probably not always healthy, we would definitely lose out not having Twitter," said McMurchy.
He said Twitter allows SGI two-way communication with its audience.
"When you are on Twitter, you are able to share info very quickly with people and that's obviously something that we've appreciated, whether it's a sharing company news or information about traffic safety."
Twitter employees are seen entering the offices in New York City on Nov. 9, 2022. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
SGI has also used the platform to warn people about scams.
"The fact that people can quite easily retweet that, that amplifies that message and help, hopefully providing information that will keep others out of trouble."
McMurchy said SGI also uses the platform to engage with partners like law enforcement and organizations like MADD, SADD and other safety organizations.
"If Twitter were to disappear tomorrow and we weren't able to do that, we would miss out."
Still, McMurchy said he wouldn't describe Twitter's potential demise as "catastrophic."
Tyler McMurchy, manager of media relations for SGI and overseer of all the company's social media accounts, says losing Twitter would be unfourtunate. But the company is confident it can mantain communication with its audience. (Kirk Fraser/CBC)
Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan RCMP told CBC in a statement that it does not rely solely on any one platform, such as Twitter, to share stories, news or public safety information.
"Should any of these communication tools —Twitter, for example — cease to exist, we will continue using a variety of other means to share our messaging," said the RCMP.
The Saskatchewan government echoed this sentiment in its statement to CBC on the matter.
"We are confident in our ability to continue communicating effectively with the people of Saskatchewan," said the province.
In fact, the province recently launched a new Highway Hotline app. Highway Hotline's Twitter account is known for its frequent tweets on weather conditions, but the province is confident the app will fill that need.
For now, the world waits for more dramatic news about Twitter and its new owner.
On Friday afternoon, we learned that Elon Musk had asked any of the Twitter employees who “actually write software” to “email [him] a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.”
As VP of technology at Slate, my first thought when I read this was “what a tremendous waste of engineering time.” Second only to “that’s a lot of bullets to read.”
“Code commits” in software development are the changes that engineers make to a code base. Typically, software engineers use systems called “version control” that keep track of the changes that they make with notes about why they made them (sort of like “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word). Commits in isolation can be pretty boring. For example, here’s one of mine from a few days ago:
Greg Lavallee
As you can see, this code commit changed the word true to false for a configuration of an ad in one of our newsletters. Really gripping stuff!
Not all commits are one line. Some commits are huge! To ship a really big feature on a site or app, you might change thousands of lines of code. Of course, most software engineers will tell you that this is a terrible practice. Ideally, code changes touch as few lines as possible so that when products inevitably have bugs, it’s easier to track down which commit caused the issue and isolate the problem.
If we squint and put on our CEO-of-too-many-companies hats, we can kind of imagine what Musk’s hoping for with his request. It’s like a self-review for software engineers. If you ignore the “code commits” part, you could read this as him asking engineers to talk about their achievements. But we can’t ignore that “code commits” part because then he followed it up with an ask for screenshots.
Being judged by your ability to self-promote is a time-honored American mistake, but adding judgment of screenshots of your code by a guy who has never committed to your code base is an extra level of dumb. There are numerous problems with the idea of looking at a screenshot of a piece of code and then using it to judge an engineer’s abilities.
First, Musk lacks the context for why the code was written at the time it was written and who was writing it. Code written at the last minute to satisfy some advertiser’s specific request is going to be a lot different than code resulting from a multimonths effort to re-architect a system. Code written by a junior engineer probably won’t be as terse as a senior developer’s code.
Code that’s undergone only one iteration will probably look worse than a more mature product that’s been built over time. Often, the first commit for a feature is the simplest version that lets a product team test whether it will work—not whether it’s scalable or bulletproof. Should engineers show that to Musk, or is he after mature code that makes him say “wow”?
There’s also the matter of coding style. As we say in software development, There’s More Than One Way To Do It (or TMTOWTDI, pronounced tim-toady). In practice, teams will often develop preferred ways to do things to keep there from being a dozen variations of the same basic concepts. Some teams are comfortable with terseness where a lot gets done in one line of code (like list comprehensions in Python, for example). Other teams will flag cleverness during code review as hard to read and a trap for more junior programmers when they’re introduced to the code base. Would Musk understand these tradeoffs as he flips through hundreds or thousands of screenshots on his phone while he flies around in his private jet?
Even more fraught, in most real code bases, the same files are touched by dozens if not hundreds of different developers over time. One screenshot is very likely the conglomeration of hundreds of code commits over a dozen years.
This last point is, perhaps, the biggest pitfall to Musk’s approach and telling of what he doesn’t seem to understand at Twitter. Code is written by teams. Musk is asking for presentations from individuals. Many of the engineers at Twitter have worked there a long time with the same teammates. They’ve developed camaraderie, culture, and a way of doing things.
As of Friday evening, this meeting may have already taken place. I can’t help but wonder how this actually went. Did he ask engineers to get up in front of each other and explain their screenshots? Were they even allowed into the building? Did he actually get any value out of this or was it a loyalty test?
In October, there were reports of Musk authorizing Tesla engineers to review Twitter code. Bringing in senior engineers who write software for cars because they are “10x programmers” isn’t necessarily going to make a team more productive. In fact, it might have the opposite effect as those more familiar with the product feel sidelined or like they have to waste their time trying to explain the context for all their coding decisions to someone who is probably aching to type code and not listen to their explanations.
Musk is clearly going with what he knows (code) and not what he should be working on (culture). Assuming that he can read the code of Twitter’s software engineers and use it for any kind of decision making is pure hubris. But what did we expect? This is Elon Musk. He will likely continue to plow headfirst into Twitter pushing anyone out of his way that pushes back. He’ll look at a room full of engineers and silently judge them because he’s sure he’s the smartest one in the room all the while confusing cleverness with wisdom.
Just like Musk said in December 2017, I love Twitter. I hope it doesn’t go away. I’m still not sure I entirely understand what needs fixing about it. But if he thinks Twitter is going to code its way out of its problems or that code was the problem with Twitter in the first place, he’s got some surprises ahead of him.
'As temperatures cool down and natural gas and power rates rise, it's squeezing [low-income renters] more and more,' says the CEO of the Saskatchewan Landlord Association. (David Donnelly/CBC)
The recent rise in rental and utility costs across the province — on top of increasing inflation — is leading to an "alarming trend" of evictions among low-income renters, according to the CEO of the Saskatchewan Landlord Association.
"It's kind of a perfect storm for the cost-of-living crisis that we're seeing right now," Cameron Choquette said.
Last July, SaskEnergy said it would implement a 17 per cent increase to its natural gas rates effective Aug. 1, which works out to roughly $12 more per month for the average ratepayer. The Saskatchewan Rate Review panel will have until next month to review the hike and provide its recommendations.
The provincial government also approved a four per cent increase to SaskPower rates in July, which — starting in September — added another $5 to the average ratepayer's monthly power bill.
"Especially as temperatures cool down and natural gas and power rates rise, it's squeezing [low-income renters] more and more," Choquette said.
"It could lead to utility arrears for Crown corporations — but, ultimately, it will lead to eviction, if those arrears aren't paid."
He said that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, rental costs remained mostly steady due to reduced demand — largely because immigration was down and fewer post-secondary students were attending in-person classes.
But this year, with more students returning to class full time and immigration picking up again, most landlords across the province played catch-up with inflation and increased their rent by 10 to 15 per cent, Choquette said.
Income support inconsistencies
He said another major factor contributing to the spike in evictions is inconsistency with financial assistance benefits, such as the Saskatchewan income support program.
Before 2019, a similar program saw the province paying landlords directly for rent. It also covered utilities, ensuring that housing costs didn't fall into arrears and result in evictions.
However, when the SIS program was introduced, that responsibility was passed over to the recipient.
After months of criticism, the Saskatchewan government announced last fall it would tweak the income support system to allow direct payments for rent and utilities on behalf of some "high-needs" clients who are at risk of homelessness.
Peter Gilmer, an advocate with the Regina Anti-Poverty Ministry, said the income support program remains one of the biggest housing barriers his clients face.
"Even people with homes are in crisis because, after they're done paying their rent, they're looking at issues of food insecurity and not being able to meet their other basic needs," Gilmer said.
Two rallies were held in Regina and Saskatoon in October 2021 to demand changes to the Saskatchewan income support program. (Dayne Patterson/CBC)
Under SIS, a single adult in Saskatoon or Regina receives $575 per month for shelter and utilities, and another $285 each month for food and all other expenses.
Choquette said the landlord association is still pushing for the province to directly cover rent for more people in order to prevent evictions.
"Ultimately, it's a personal decision and if a tenant or a rental housing provider agree that direct payment needs to be reinstated, it should be," he said.
"If we're going to use a housing-first model here in Saskatchewan to prevent homelessness and protect our citizens, then let's do that by making sure the rent is paid to keep a roof over their head."
Jessie Anton is a Regina-based journalist with CBC Saskatchewan. She began sharing stories from across the province on television, radio and online in 2016, after getting her start in the rural weekly newspaper world. Email her at jessie.anton@cbc.ca.
