Easing rules for parental benefits created inequities among parents, documents say


OTTAWA — Newly released documents show federal officials have been aware since the fall that some new parents might be receiving a smaller amount of money than they would have if not for a change in the way COVID-19 pandemic benefits are delivered to Canadians.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

That is due to a shift in late September, when the employment insurance system kicked back into gear and three new benefits rolled out to replace the Canada Emergency Response Benefit that was supporting Canadians who had lost income since the spring.

On Sept. 27, eligible recipients started moving on to the decades-old EI system where the minimum weekly payment was set at $500 in line with the three "recovery" benefits.

Prior to that date, benefits were calculated based on earnings, meaning any new parent that started their EI claim before the change could receive less than $500 a week.

The documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act note the policy created inequities, and point to a similar effect for parents who will start claims after Sept. 25 this year, when the temporary rules are set to expire.

Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough's office says the government will make any necessary changes so new parents don't face "additional barriers accessing maternity or parental benefits as a result of COVID-19."

Changes to the EI program can take anywhere between three and 18 months to come into force, and they generally take effect on a particular date.

Claims made before that date are often ineligible unless the change is simple and very specific to avoid what the document describes as the need to review claims that began "as much as 100 weeks in the past."

But the undated memo outlines multiple, rapid changes and revisions to parental benefit rules in the wake of the CERB. When partial or retroactive changes were made, more problems seem to have cropped up.

There were issues with how the system handled soon-to-be-mothers applying for emergency aid, which denied them CERB payments until changes to the system could be made and back payments processed.

As well, other new parents, or those waiting the birth of their child, were put directly on EI benefits if they had enough hours to qualify, while those that didn't were put on the CERB until the government came up with a fix.

That fix meant a one-time reduction in the number of hours needed to qualify for benefits to address concerns that some parents would lose out on benefits because they lost work hours through no fault of their own.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 35 per cent of new mothers outside of Quebec, which has its own system, didn't qualify for federal benefits.

The pandemic has shone a light on the long-standing issue around the hours requirement, said Brock University's Andrea Doucet, an expert on parental-leave programs.

"This was made even worse as women lost jobs and reduced (their) hours," Doucet said.

"The reduction in insurable hours was presented as temporary, but will it lead to more inclusive policies that enable more parents to make claims?"

Kate Bezanson, an expert on family and labour market policy, said the document points a need for a rethink of the parental leave program, noting that leave policies work hand-in-hand with child care and employment efforts.

The Liberals have said they want to create a national child-care system, part of a plan to help more mothers enter the labour market.

"We want people to have babies, and take care of those babies happily, and also have jobs to return to and be able to do that seamlessly," said Bezanson, associate dean of social sciences at Brock University.

"This is one of those moments where if we're looking holistically and we're looking globally at our policy portfolios, let's put them together and get them to talk to each other and make the changes that have been long overdue."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2021.

Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

New work permit program for international 

graduates in Canada taking applications

A new work permit program for international students in Canada is taking applications starting today.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The federal government announced the program this month as part of a bid to convince more people to settle in Canada permanently.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said at the time that former students with post-graduation work permits that have expired or will soon expire can now apply for open work permits.

The program will offer affected people 18 more months to stay in the country to look for work.

The federal department estimates that about 52,000 graduates could benefit.

Sarom Rho, who leads a migrant student campaign with Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, says the "massive" change will benefit many, but others are still left out.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2021.

The Canadian Press

US CANADA INFRASTRUCTURE CRISIS THE SAME

Lawmakers Are Worried ISPs Can't Deliver on Their Rural Broadband Promises

Last week, 160 members of Congress sent a letter to the FCC raising concerns about some Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) winners’ ability to provide rural America with the broadband access they promised. The letter did not call out individual internet service providers or organizations by name, but it did call on the FCC to “redouble its efforts to review the long-form applications” auction winners must provide as the last step to access their funds.

© Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images) A farmer drives a tractor

 down a rural road on Jan. 17, 2019 near Ottawa, Ill.

“Transparency and accountability must be part and parcel of the administration of any program, and we urge you to thoroughly vet the winning bidders to ensure that they are capable of deploying and delivering the services they committed to providing,” said the letter.

The Congressional letter-signers have asked the FCC to do a thorough review of all grant recipients to make sure every one has the “technical, financial, managerial, operational skills, capabilities, and resources” to roll out internet to under and unserved areas of rural America. Could a company like SpaceX or Frontier manage such an ambitious task?

Lawmakers have also asked the FCC to better assess every single recipient of the RDOF Phase I auction, which the agency held last month. ISPs like Frontier and CenturyLink have missed FCC-mandated deadlines to roll out more broadband to rural America with money they received from the Connect America Fund Phase II grants in 2015. Both companies received a combined total of $633.3 million from the RDOF Phase I auction last month, which will be distributed over the next 10 years.

One of the fund recipients, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), supports the lawmakers’ call for a better and more transparent long-form application review process. Electric co-ops snatched a total of $1.6 billion in funds to expand broadband access in the communities they serve. The NRECA is national trade association representing nearly 900 local electric cooperatives, with a focus on environmental protection and broadband access, among several other issues.

In fact, it was the NRECA that urged lawmakers to send that letter in the first place.

“Many of the winning applicants claim they will deliver levels of service with certain technologies that are only achievable in extremely limited conditions and terrain—or still not commercially available,” said Kelly Wismer, NRECA’s lobbyist on broadband issues.

The letter also calls on the FCC to “make as public as possible the status of its review and consider opportunities for public input on the applications.”

If the FCC agrees to such a review process, that means the public would have a chance to weigh in on the likes of Frontier, CenturyLink, SpaceX, and other internet providers actually getting a piece of the RDOF.

Bringing back the ‘most endangered bird’ in the U.S.

Ashleigh Blackford has seen her share of dramatic bird releases over the years. She vividly recalls California condors soaring high into the sky and San Clemente loggerhead shrikes fluttering free. The tiny Florida grasshopper sparrow, on the other hand, merely hopped out of an open screen and skittered along the ground, says Blackford, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

© Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark

At the end of the 2020 breeding season in August, researchers counted some 112 Florida grasshopper sparrows in the wild.

 

© Photograph by Joel Sartore, Nat Geo Image Collection

A Florida grasshopper sparrow is taken out of a mist net at the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. It's one of 12 subspecies of grasshopper sparrows, known for their insect-like buzzing sounds.

Still, it was a thrilling moment to witness: one of the most endangered birds in the continental U.S.—one that just two years ago seemed doomed to extinction—had begun a remarkable comeback.

“It wasn’t visually exciting,” Blackford says, “but it was emotionally exciting.”

No more than five inches long, Florida grasshopper sparrows have flat heads, short tails, and black and gray feathers that camouflage their nests, built in the low shrubs and saw palmetto of the state’s grassy prairies. Their name comes from their call, which consists of two or three weak notes followed by an insect-like buzz

.

© Photograph by Carlton Ward

The family of Subway co-founder Fred DeLuca donated 27,000 acres of undeveloped near Yeehaw Junction, in Osceola County, for preservation. It contains about half of all Florida grasshopper sparrow breeding pairs.

The Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus) was first described in 1902 by a U.S. Army surgeon, Major Edgar A. Mearns. Back then the birds were widespread across central and South Florida. By the 1970s, though, most of the prairies that form their habitat had been ditched, drained, and converted to pastures or sod production.

By 1986, the sparrow population had plummeted to a mere thousand. By 2013, fewer than 200 of the little songbirds remained.

“This is an emergency, and the situation for this species is dire,” Larry Williams, head of the South Florida office of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Vero Beach, said at the time. “This is literally a race against time.”

To many, they’re just little brown birds. They’re not especially beautiful or exciting or awe-inspiring. And that is part of the challenge in saving them.

“It’s easy to rally support for the tiger and the gorilla,” says Joel Sartore, who began photographing the species’ slide toward extinction for the National Geographic Photo Ark. “Doing the same for the Florida grasshopper sparrow means you’ve really accomplished something. In terms of degree of difficulty, it’s Mount Everest.”

In a last-ditch effort to save the species, federal officials decided to launch a captive-breeding program. Such programs are often expensive and labor-intensive, and sometimes they do not work. (Related: Why some question whether breeding pandas in captivity is worth the effort.)

In the 1980s, something similar happened with a relative of the Florida grasshopper sparrow, a bird called the dusky seaside sparrow. By the time federal officials decided to go ahead with captive breeding, there were only five duskies left—all of them male. The last one died in captivity at Walt Disney World in 1987.

If the Florida grasshopper sparrow goes extinct, it would be the first American bird species to do so since the dusky died out 34 years ago.
A breakthrough

No one had ever tried to breed Florida grasshopper sparrows before. In an attempt to minimize impact on the wild population, biologists decided to launch the recovery program by incubating and hatching eggs taken from nests, rather than bringing in adult birds to breed.

“We know it's going to be hard,” Williams said at the start of the program in 2013. “They’re small birds living in dense vegetation, and they're secretive by nature.”

To start, biologists practiced on a surrogate species. They spent three years exploring captive breeding and rearing techniques on the eastern grasshopper sparrow, which is not classified as endangered. Only when they felt confident in their skills did they try the real thing.

In 2015, scientists followed male Florida grasshopper sparrows’ buzzy chirps to nests hidden amid central Florida’s prairies and carefully removed only eggs and five nestlings, young birds that likely would have died if left in the wild. They also caught two independent juvenile birds and a pair of adults to serve as parents, who could help the captive-reared birds learn how to behave in the wild. (Read about other creative ways scientists are working to save endangered species.)

The eggs went into incubators at a pair of breeding facilities. One was at the Rare Species Conservatory in Loxahatchee, an organization affiliated with Florida International University, on the state’s Atlantic coast. The other was at the White Oak Conservation Center in northeastern Florida.

Despite their experience with the other sparrows, the scientists didn’t get it right immediately. Figuring out the proper temperature, humidity, and other key details for incubation took a year and required the collection of more eggs from the wild.

But on May 9, 2016, the first four captive-bred Florida grasshopper sparrow chicks hatched in the Rare Species Conservancy’s laboratory, an event hailed as a major breakthrough.

The hardest part, Williams said in a recent interview, was the uncertainty. “Five years ago, we didn’t know if we could raise these birds in captivity,” he says. “We didn’t know the right light-and-dark cycle for them. How much or what they needed to be fed, or even will they eat in captivity.”

They also didn’t know if captive-bred birds, once released back into the Florida prairies, would know how to protect themselves from predators such as skunks and snakes. That was what the older birds were for, to teach the younger ones those important survival skills.

But the captive breeding program soon faced a complication: In 2016, a previously undetected intestinal parasite began spreading and killing the birds.

The lead scientist with the Rare Species Conservancy, Paul Reillo, worried that releasing the birds would spread the disease to the wild population, but White Oak and government biologists argued that it was worth the risk. The dispute grew so heated that in February 2019, the Fish and Wildlife Service ended its contract with the Rare Species Conservancy and transferred its birds to White Oak.

Meanwhile, the sparrows’ wild population continued to plunge. By 2018, only 80 birds remained in the wild, including just 20 breeding pairs, says Craig Faulhaber, avian conservation coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. If this trend continued, “there was a strong possibility for extinction,” he says.

State and federal agency officials consulted with biologists from the National Audubon Society and the Archbold Biological Station in central Florida. Ultimately, they concluded the risk of seeing the parasite spread through the wild population wasn’t as dangerous as the risk of seeing the wild population spiral toward oblivion, Williams says.

They began releasing the captive-bred birds in May 2019.

Into the wild

Since then, some 250 captive-bred grasshopper sparrows have been set free in Florida, released every few weeks, even through the pandemic. (Follow Nat Geo’s coronavirus coverage here.)

The coronavirus did not hamper their work. The biologists minimized the number of people in the field at any one time and wore masks while transferring the birds, says Ken Warren, spokesperson for the federal agency.

The release routine went like this: State and federal biologists would pick up the captive birds from White Oak and do a final health check on each one. Then they would place the birds into specially designed crates, Faulhaber says, and drive them four hours south to a release site. (The locations are kept confidential because some are on private lands.)

The birds then went into a screened aviary, about 60 feet by 20 feet, where they’d get mealworms, water, and a couple hours’ acclimatization before being set free.

When the biologists open the screen, some of the birds immediately hop out, but others are reluctant to spread their wings. They need encouragement.

“We allowed an hour for natural movement, and then if there were still some birds inside, a crew member would walk through in a zigzag pattern and encourage those birds to go out the door,” Blackford, the federal biologist, says.

Oteyza and the other biologists tracked each captive-reared bird. When the males warbled their special mating song to attract females, they listened in. When the sparrows built nests, they put dirt underneath to prevent flooding. Then they built low fences around the nests to ward off predators that might eat the eggs.

Approximately 30 percent of the juveniles survived, which is about average for captive-raised animals released into the wild. Some were picked off by predators, and some were killed by the parasite, but there is no indication that the disease is spreading throughout the population, Williams says.

If nothing else, the captive breeding “buys us time so we can find the cause of their decline and reverse it,” says state wildlife commission biologist Juan Oteyza.

To the biologists’ delight, all of the captive-raised birds “behaved like wild birds,” Oteyza says. When hawks flew overhead, they knew to hide. And while some captive-bred birds mated with others of the same background, some mated with wild birds. Then the females laid eggs and tended them until they hatched—another milestone.

At last, in September, the season’s young birds took flight for the first time. About 65 percent of them had one or both captive-bred parents.

It was what the scientists had been waiting for: They’d proven that the offspring of captive-bred grasshopper sparrows could thrive on their own and boost the wild population.

Tiny bird, big expense

To photographer Sartore, this marks a dramatic turnaround. “It’s been a remarkable story,” he says, “I thought it was over for them.” (Go inside Sartore’s Photo Ark.)

The wild population now numbers about a hundred, with 30 breeding pairs. It’s an improvement, Faulhaber says, although still far from the point of declaring them no longer endangered, so the captive-breeding program continues.

Meanwhile, in a deal announced in November, the family of deceased Subway co-founder Fred DeLuca donated 27,000 acres of undeveloped ranchland for preservation—land that contains about half of all the breeding pairs.

Getting to this point has cost more than $1.2 million, mostly in federal Endangered Species Act funds. Why go to such lengths and expense to save such a tiny bird?

First, grasshopper sparrows help disperse seeds and serve as food for a variety of animals. Furthermore, Faulhaber says, conserving the grasshopper sparrow in its natural habitat means protecting the ecosystem for “all the other beautiful, valuable species that go together with them.”

“When we care about the ‘least among us,’ it can lead to broader environmental thinking, from consumer spending to saving rainforests,” Sartore says. “I think of the Florida grasshopper sparrow as a gateway drug for nature.”

Perhaps it’s the gateway needed to save the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, another rare sparrow species in Florida teetering on the brink of vanishing, Blackford says. Only 3,000 remain, all in the swamps of the Everglades.

“What we learn from saving the Florida grasshopper sparrow,” she says, “could inform the actions we take to try to save the Cape Sable seaside sparrow.”

Great Lakes ice cover shrinks, with big toll on leisure, erosion, ecosystems

Ice coverage on the Great Lakes hit record lows in January and is well below the seasonal average, prompting concerns from experts about the environmental impact caused by a lack of ice.

As of Jan. 25, 7.7 per cent of the Great Lakes have frozen over, based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a U.S. science agency.

Ice levels were as low as 1.8 per cent on Jan. 15, a record-low for the mid-January period.

The abnormally low levels in 2021 reflect a longstanding trend of Great Lakes ice coverage declining by about 5 per cent per decade since the 1970s.

“The downward trend is a trend by global warming,” said Jia Wang, an ice climatologist with U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But this year’s significant low is the result of local weather patterns, which have the biggest impact on ice formation on the lakes.

“On the Great Lakes, our local climate, like surface air temperature, is the main determinant of if the ice is severe or mild,” Wang said.

He projects the maximum ice coverage this year will be 30 per cent, sometime in February or early March. The long-term average is 53 per cent.

Lake Huron is hovering around 15 per cent ice coverage. The late-January long-term average is about 35 per cent.

Erie, one of the shallowest lakes, is sitting at 8.8 per cent ice coverage as of Jan. 25, and that figure had been less than 1 per cent as early as last week, a far cry from the almost 50 per cent average.

Wang said low ice levels bring a “negative impact more than a positive impact.”

Save for a potential boon for lake freight shipping, which would be less reliant on ice breakers, lack of ice can devastate the Great Lakes environment.

“What’s worrisome is this higher frequency of lower ice,” said Michael McKay, executive director of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor, adding years with abnormally low ice are becoming more common.

Since 2000, 14 of the last 21 years have had ice coverage levels below the 53 per cent average.

McKay said ice cover on the Great Lakes has dropped 70 to 75 per cent in the past 40 to 50 years. “It has really run parallel to what we’re seeing the arctic and Antarctic,” he said.

The effects of low ice on the Great Lakes can be felt throughout Southwestern Ontario.

“This is going to exacerbate other problems we find in the lakes,” McKay said.

One major challenge is the increased risk of shoreline erosion without the protection of ice coverage.

“Ice cover in the winter can help protect coastal communities from erosion,” McKay said. “In Southwestern Ontario, we’ve seen regions on the Lake Erie coast that have caved in … in part because it no longer has had that protection because of ice cover and waves just keep slamming.”

The runoff effects extend to inland communities too, like London and Huron and Perth Counties, which often are hit by lake effect snowstorms.

Without ice on the lakes, prevailing winds pick up more precipitation and dump it in communities downwind.

“We’ll continue to get hit by large snowfall when lakes remain ice-free,” McKay said.

Blooms of cyanobacteria which have plagued the Great Lakes in recent years, also can be made worse by a lack of ice.

Ice cover calms lake water in the winter and allows some runoff nutrients and contaminants to settle in the sediment.

Without ice cover, more resuspension events occur, reintroducing the contaminates into the water, which contributes to cyanobacteria blooms.

Fish too are impacted, with some species, like white fish, spawning in winter months and needing still waters so their eggs are not disturbed.

And beyond the environmental impacts, McKay said less ice on the Great Lakes means losing a “cultural identified” for Canadians.

“It's part of our identity, certainly in Canada, to have outdoor skating and ice fishing,” he said.

While McKay said it may be past the point where actions to slow climate change could yield visible results within our lifetime, he said attention should still be paid to mitigating the effects that are indirectly related to the declines in Great Lakes ice cover.

The good news, he said, is the waters are resilient.

“Time and again, we’ve seen the lakes assaulted by various pressures, usually human-induced, things ranging from containments to invasive species, the (cyanobacteria) blooms,” McKay said. “It may not be exactly the same as it was before, but there’s a lot of resiliency in the lakes and they seem to bounce back and still be intact and important ecosystems.”

(AS OF JAN. 25, 2021)

Superior: 4 per cent

Michigan: 6.7 per cent

Huron: 15.3 per cent

Erie: 8.8 per cent

Ontario: 1.1 per cent

St. Clair*: 33.8 per cent

Great Lakes average: 7.7 per cent

*Lake St. Clair is not technically a Great Lake

maxmartin@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/MaxatLFPress

Max Martin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, London Free Press

Alberta must ‘recognize where the world is going’ and embrace renewables, clean tech: Notley

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Alberta's Leader of the Opposition Rachel Notley speaks to reporters outside the McDougall Centre. Monday, Jan. 18, 2021. 

PHOTO BY BRENDAN MILLER/POSTMEDIA

Alberta needs to take better advantage of global investment in renewables and clean tech if it wants to continue to be an energy leader, NDP Leader Rachel Notley says.

In an address to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, Notley pointed to U.S. President Joe Biden’s revocation of the Keystone XL permit last week as proof the province needs to be more aggressive in its economic diversification plans, including in petrochemicals and recycling.

“We need to take control of our own destiny, and not tie our fortunes to projects outside our jurisdiction, subject to another nation’s politics,” she said.

Notley said setting the agenda as a global energy superpower is Alberta’s “birthright,” and that the oil and gas sector will continue to have a place in the province’s economy for decades to come.

But it is undergoing an unprecedented restructuring, she said, referring to the recent merger of Cenovus and Husky and subsequent layoff of thousands of workers.

“We have to recognize where the world’s going, and we must move with it,” said Notley.

In a press conference following her address, Notley said the energy industry is becoming more efficient, so even when prices recover, the industry won’t be the same as it was before.

“Which is why it’s so critically important that this government make their front-and-centre daily focus on how we diversify the economy,” she said.

Notley’s speech, her first since she was premier in 2019, also touched on jobs, highlighting the importance of local competitiveness, post-secondaries, working conditions and quality of life.

Taking questions from chamber members, otley said despite the province’s need to revisit its finances, a sales tax in Alberta should not be introduced in the short-to-medium termN — a position she shares with Premier Jason Kenney and Finance Minister Travis Toews.

“I would support having a very transparent and open conversation with Albertans with expertise at the table about what we do to deal with our fiscal future, once we’ve instituted a much fairer tax system, and once once the economy is up off the mat and starting to operate on all cylinders.”

lijohnson@postmedia.com

twitter.com/reportrix

Keystone XL legal risks highlight dangers of putting investors before climate change

The chickens have come home to roost for Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. Kenney bet around $1.5 billion of public money on a very risky prospect — the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

© (AP/Nati Harnik) Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrate in Omaha, Neb., on Nov. 1, 2017.

U.S. President Joe Biden, to the surprise of no one but Kenney, followed through on an election promise and cancelled a key permit for the pipeline on the first day of his administration. Now the premier is scrambling for a way to recoup some of Alberta’s losses, and he sees a trade agreement as offering some hope.

The former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contained a chapter on investment that allowed foreign investors to sue governments in international arbitration. The owner of Keystone XL — TC Energy (previously TransCanada) — used NAFTA to launch a US$15 billion lawsuit in 2016 after President Barack Obama cancelled the project.

At the time, some legal experts thought the company had a reasonable chance of winning. We will never know, because the case was dropped when President Donald Trump indicated he was willing to let the project proceed.  

ROGUES GALLERY

© (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) President Donald Trump approves a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline on Mar. 24, 2017.

This time may be different if TC Energy chooses to proceed with a claim. NAFTA has been replaced by a new agreement — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Unlike NAFTA, USMCA does not permit Canadian investors to sue the U.S. government (or American investors to sue the Canadian government).

Legacy claims for investments that had occurred prior to the USMCA coming into force are permitted until 2023. But TC Energy’s claim may now be weaker because the permit issued by the Trump administration explicitly stated that it could be rescinded, essentially at the president’s whim.

Nevertheless, many investors have proceeded with claims on the basis of much weaker cases. Investors bet on positive outcomes in arbitration, as much as they bet on governments not taking action to halt catastrophic climate change. This is because the anticipated rewards, in both instances, are high.
Risky business

One example of an incredibly dubious investor claim is the one launched by Westmoreland Mining Holdings against Canada in 2018. Ironically, this case concerns action that the previous Alberta government took to address climate change.

Alberta’s 2015 Climate Leadership Plan included a provincial phaseout of coal power, which left Westmoreland — an American coal mining firm — without a future market for its coal. The company is arguing that Alberta’s failure to provide Westmoreland with “transition payments,” like those that power companies received, is a breach of NAFTA.

Read more: The fossil fuel era is coming to an end, but the lawsuits are just beginning

The case is ongoing and outcomes of arbitration are very difficult to predict. But it demonstrates a concerning trend, as do other cases that have emerged in Europe.

Fossil fuel companies have been well aware of the damage their industry causes for decades, yet they have exerted substantial efforts to try to slow climate action. They have taken bets on risky investments in the hopes that governments would continue to dither as the planet burns. Now that climate action is starting to ramp up, they want to be “compensated” for their losses.© (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, announces he’s rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline because he does not believe it serves the national interest, on Nov. 6, 2015.
A global problem

Climate activists may be tempted to dismiss the threat that investment treaties pose to action on climate change. After all, the Canadian and U.S. governments have the resources to rigorously defend themselves in arbitration and they often win. Indeed, the U.S. has never lost a case. Furthermore, governments already subsidize the industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year, so is a few more billion in “compensation” really going to make much of a difference?

The problem is that climate change is a global issue and so too is the coverage of investment treaties. Many of the fossil fuel reserves that need to stay in the ground and assets that need to be stranded in order for us to remain below 1.5C of warming are in the Global South.

© (Kyla Tienhaara and Lorenzo Cotula) Number and percentage of foreign-owned coal plants protected by at least one treaty with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in place, by host state.

For example, a large number of planned and newly operating coal-fired power plants are in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam. A recent study found that many of these plants are protected by investment treaties. These countries have fewer resources for fighting claims and a much poorer record of success in arbitration.

A real concern is that even the threat of a big investor claim could be enough to dissuade one of these governments from taking action to phase out coal.
A global solution

We need climate action to happen everywhere, not just in the countries where governments can afford to fight legal challenges. This is one of the reasons why many are calling for radical reform or complete abolition of international investment treaties.

In Europe, campaigners are making headway on efforts to remove protection for fossil fuel investments from the Energy Charter Treaty. Countries like South Africa are pushing for investment treaties to be aligned with the Paris Agreement and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Researchers have also suggested that the problems with investment treaties could be addressed with a Global Green New Deal.

In the meantime, the Canadian public should make it clear to TC Energy and Jason Kenney that they should drop any plans to pursue a legal challenge, and own up to the fact that they alone are responsible for their own poor investment decisions.

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

Kyla Tienhaara receives funding from the Government of Canada through the Canada Research Chair Program and through SSHRC. She occasionally collaborates on research projects with non-profit environmental organizations.

Members of Kenney's UCP caucus nix NDP bid to seek details of failed Keystone XL deal

EDMONTON — Members of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s caucus have refused an Opposition NDP bid to make public details of Alberta’s $7.5-billion investment in the failed Keystone XL pipeline project.  

The eight members of the governing United Conservative caucus unanimously rejected an NDP motion in public accounts committee Tuesday.

The motion was to seek from Kenney the details, along with any financial risk advice, he was given when he made the Keystone investment last March.

NDP energy critic Kathleen Ganley, who moved the motion, noted the UCP members voted it down without giving reasons.

"I had hoped that some of them would have shown a deeper sense of duty to Albertans to be open, honest and transparent, but they failed on every front," Ganley told reporters.

"This is a party that claims to be transparent and responsible stewards of the public purse."

Alberta has directly invested $1.5 billion with another $6 billion in loan guarantees, but the NDP says Albertans need to know the rationale and advice Kenney used to make what it calls a risky decision. They also want to know what the final bill will be now that the project is shelved.

"There could be more costs, including (site) reclamation and legal fees associated with the deal," Ganley told the committee, noting the motion comes after the government has declined other requests from the NDP caucus for the information.

Keystone XL, a TC Energy Corp. project, was to take more Alberta oil through the Midwest and on to refineries and ports along the U.S. Gulf Coast to fetch a better price on overseas markets.

When Kenney invested in the project, Keystone XL line was facing multiple court challenges, and the emerging Democrat party candidate, now President Joe Biden, was on record against it.

Biden promised in his election campaign to cancel Keystone and did so last week on his first day in office, saying more product from Alberta’s oilsands does not mesh with his larger goal of combating climate change.

Kenney has called Biden's decision an insult to Canada, given its close and mutually beneficial trading relationship. He has called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to, as a last resort, impose economic sanctions in response. He is also pressing for direct compensation.

Ganley's motion was upheld by her two other NDP colleagues, but rejected unanimously by the eight UCP members sitting on the committee.

UCP member Miranda Rosin instead put forward a motion to have Energy Minister Sonya Savage's department release to the committee details on Alberta's financial exposure on Keystone XL.

Rosin said that would balance the needs of the public to know the details while respecting the confidentiality of sensitive business information, similar to the secrecy surrounding $3.7 billion in contracts signed by the former NDP government to deliver more oil by rail.

"Albertans do deserve to know where the money is spent (and) how much of it has been spent," Rosin told the committee.

"It's important as members of this committee and, just frankly, as ethical legislators to ensure that we have transparency in our governments."

Rosin's motion passed 8 to 3, again along party lines.

The NDP dismissed the motion as a public relations stunt, given it does not address the key information they seek and is information the government would have to make public anyway when the 2021-22 budget is unveiled next month.

"What the government caucus is trying to do here is some performance art," said NDP committee member Marlin Schmidt.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 26, 2021.

AP sources: Biden to pause oil and gas sales on public lands

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is set to announce a wide-ranging moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on U.S. lands and waters, as his administration moves quickly to reverse Trump administration policies on energy and the environment and address climate change.

Two people with knowledge of Biden’s plans outlined the proposed moratorium, which will be announced Wednesday. They asked not to be identified because the plan has not been made been public; some details remain in flux.

The move follows a 60-day suspension of new drilling permits for U.S. lands and waters announced last week and follows Biden’s campaign pledge to halt new drilling on federally controlled land and water as part of his plan to address climate change. The moratorium is intended to allow time for officials to review the impact of oil and gas drilling on the environment and climate.

Environmental groups hailed the expected moratorium as the kind of bold, urgent action needed to slow climate change.

“The fossil fuel industry has inflicted tremendous damage on the planet. The administration’s review, if done correctly, will show that filthy fracking and drilling must end for good, everywhere,'' said Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has pushed for the drilling pause.

Oil industry groups slammed the move, saying Biden had already eliminated thousands of oil and gas jobs by killing the Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office.

"This is just the start. It will get worse,'' said Brook Simmons, president of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma. "Meanwhile, the laws of physics, chemistry and supply and demand remain in effect. Oil and natural gas prices are going up, and so will home heating bills, consumer prices and fuel costs.''

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas drillers in Western states, said the expected executive order is intended to delay drilling on federal lands to the point where it is no longer viable. Her group pledged to challenge the order in court.

"The environmental left is leading the agenda at the White House when it comes to energy and environment issues,'' she said, noting that the moratorium would be felt most acutely in Western states such as Utah, Wyoming and North Dakota. Biden lost all three states to former President Donald Trump.

Video: Study: Fossil fuel production set to exceed Paris agreement limit (Global News)

The drilling moratorium is among several climate-related actions Biden will announce Wednesday. He also is likely to direct officials to conserve 30% of the country’s lands and ocean waters in the next 10 years, initiate a series of regulatory actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and issue a memorandum that elevates climate change to a national security priority. He also is expected to establish a White House office on environmental justice to serve low-income and minority communities that suffer disproportionately from air and water pollution and industrial waste and are often located near hazardous sites such as power plants, landfills and incinerators.

Biden also will direct all U.S. agencies to use science and evidence-based decision-making in federal rule-making and announce a U.S.-hosted climate leaders summit on Earth Day, April 22.

The conservation plan would set aside millions of acres for recreation, wildlife and climate efforts by 2030, part of Biden’s campaign pledge for a $2 trillion program to slow global warming.

Under Trump, federal agencies prioritized energy development and eased environmental rules to speed up drilling permits as part of the Republican’s goal to boost fossil fuel production. Trump consistently downplayed the dangers of climate change, which Biden, a Democrat, has made a top priority.

On his first day in office last Wednesday, Biden signed a series of executive orders that underscored his different approach — rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, revoking approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada and telling agencies to immediately review dozens of Trump-era rules on science, the environment and public health.

A 60-day suspension order at the Interior Department did not limit existing oil and gas operations under valid leases, meaning activity would not come to a sudden halt on the millions of acres of lands in the West and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico where much drilling is concentrated. The moratorium also is unlikely to affect existing leases. Its effect could be further blunted by companies that stockpiled enough drilling permits in Trump’s final months to allow them to keep pumping oil and gas for years.

The pause in onshore drilling is limited to federal lands and does not affect drilling on private lands, which is largely regulated by states.

Oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of annual U.S. production. Extracting and burning those fuels generates the equivalent of almost 550 million tons (500 million metric tons) of greenhouse gases annually, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a 2018 study.

Under Trump, Interior officials approved almost 1,400 permits on federal lands, primarily in Wyoming and New Mexico, over a three-month period that included the election, according to an Associated Press analysis of government data. Those permits, which remain valid, will allow companies to continue drilling for years, potentially undercutting Biden’s climate agenda.

The leasing moratorium could present a political dilemma for Biden in New Mexico, a Democratic-leaning state that has experienced a boom in oil production in recent years, much of it on federal land. Biden's choice to lead the Interior Department, which oversees oil and gas leasing on public lands, is New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland. If confirmed, she would be the first Native American to lead the agency that oversees relations with nearly 600 federally-recognized tribes.

Haaland, whose confirmation hearing has been delayed until next month, already faces backlash from some Republicans who say expected cutbacks in oil production under Biden would hurt her home state.

Tiernan Sittenfeld, a top official with the League of Conservation Voters, called that criticism off-base. “The reality is we need to transition to 100% clean energy” in order to address climate change, she said Tuesday. "The clean energy economy in New Mexico is thriving,'' Sittenfeld added, citing gains in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Rob Black, president of the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce, said the expected moratorium would be “devastating” to his state, while failing to reduce carbon emissions in the Southwest.

A leasing moratorium “won’t reduce demand for oil,? Black said, but would merely move production from federal lands to private lands in New Mexico and Texas, where an oil boom is occurring in the Permian Basin. Only 2% of land in Texas is federally controlled, compared with about one-third in New Mexico.

The Biden administration has pledged to spend billions to assist in the transition away from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, and Biden has said creating thousands of clean-energy jobs is a top priority.

Matthew Daly, The Associated Press

Mysterious 'kick' just after the Big Bang may have created dark matter

DARK MATTER IS ETHER 2.0

One of the lingering mysteries of the universe is why anything exists at all.  EXESTENTIALISM

© Provided by Live Science An artist's concept of the Big Bang.

That's because, in the universe today, matter and its antimatter counterpart should form in equal amounts, and then these two oppositely charged types of matter would annihilate each other on contact. So all the matter in the universe should have disappeared as soon as it formed, canceling itself out on contact with its antimatter counterpart.

But that didn't happen. Now, new research hypothesizes that early in the universe, there was a mysterious "kick" that produced more matter than antimatter, leading to today's imbalance. And that imbalance may have also led to the creation of dark matter, the mysterious substance that tugs on everything else yet doesn't interact with light.

Coincidence or conspiracy?

We don't know what dark matter is, but it's definitely out there. It makes up about 80% of all the matter in the universe, far outweighing the stars, galaxies, dust and gas that we can see.

And while dark matter is certainly a heavyweight in our universe, it is, oddly, not that much of a dominating factor.Typically, in physics, when one process dominates an interaction, it really takes over. Unless other physics comes into play, rarely do two competing forces come out in balance. For example, when the forces of gravity and electromagnetism compete inside a giant star, eventually gravity always wins and the star collapses. So the fact that dark matter is 80% of the mass in the universe — and not 99.99999% — and regular matter is 20% as opposed to zero, strikes physicists as odd. An 80/20 split doesn't seem even when it comes to, say, sharing lotto winnings, but to an astronomer, the two amounts are practically the same.

Compounding the issue is that, as far as we know, the generation of regular matter and dark matter had absolutely nothing to do with each other. We have no clue how dark matter originated in the early universe, but whatever it was, it's currently outside the bounds of known physics.

And regular matter? That's a whole other kettle of particles. In the extremely early universe (when it was a second old), physicists suspect that regular matter was in perfect balance with antimatter (which is the same as normal matter but with an opposite electric charge). We suspect this even split because we see this kind of symmetry play out today in our particle colliders, which can replicate the extreme conditions of the early universe: If you have a high-energy reaction that generates regular matter, it has an equal chance of generating antimatter instead.

But at some point (we're not exactly sure when, but it most likely happened when the universe was less than a minute old), the balance between matter and antimatter shifted, and regular matter flooded the universe, relegating antimatter to obscurity.

So, on one hand, we have a massive symmetry-breaking event that led to regular matter winning over antimatter. On the other hand, we have a completely mysterious event that led to dark matter becoming the dominant — but not super dominant — form of matter in the universe.Perhaps these two processes are connected, and the birth of dark matter was related to the victory of matter over antimatter, the new study proposes.
Mining for goldstone

In the study, published online Dec. 29, 2020, in the preprint database arXiv and not yet peer-reviewed, researchers make this claim by relying on something called the baryon number symmetry. Baryons are all of the particles made of quarks (such as protons and neutrons). The symmetry simply states that the number of baryons entering an interaction must equal the number exiting it. (They're allowed to change identities, but the total number must be the same.) The same symmetry holds for reactions involving antiquarks.

This symmetry reigns in all of our experiments in the present-day universe, but it must have been violated in the early cosmos — that's how we ended up with more matter than antimatter.

And in physics, every time a symmetry of nature gets broken, a new kind of particle, known as a "Goldstone boson," pops up to enforce the breaking of the symmetry. (In the modern universe, for instance, the pion is a kind of Goldstone boson that appears when a symmetry of the strong nuclear force is broken.)

Maybe the dark matter is a kind of Goldstone boson, associated with the breaking of baryon number symmetry in the early cosmos, the study proposes.
Kicking the can

The researchers behind the idea call it "the kick." Baryon number symmetry is never broken in our experiments, but something exciting must have happened in the early universe. It was a violent but brief event, snuffing out almost all antimatter. And whatever exotic mix of conditions happened, the baryon number symmetry broke, allowing a new Goldstone boson to appear.

So, the thinking goes, during that singular event, the universe became flooded with dark matter particles. But then, whatever conditions that led to the symmetry breaking ended, and the universe returned to normalcy. By then, however, it was too late; the dark matter — and all the rest of the matter — remained.

So after that first epic minute of the universe's history, once symmetry returned to the universe, dark matter was relegated to the shadows, never to interact with normal matter again.

And the reason that there is (very roughly) the same amount of dark matter and regular matter is that they were related, the study claims. The new model doesn't predict the exact 80/20 split between dark and normal matter. But it does suggest the reason that dark matter and normal matter are in roughly equal balance is because they had their origins in the same event.

It's a very clean and intriguing idea, but it still doesn't explain exactly how that early symmetry breaking took place. But that's for another paper.

Originally published on Live Science.

Related: The 11 biggest unanswered questions about dark matter

Related: 7 strange facts about quarks