Is That All There Is? Why Burnout Is A Broken Promise

Whizy Kim 1 day ago

In the story of our lives, we might be the main character, but work is the dominating theme, our constant motivation. It’s the central thing we do as adults, the primary focus of our mental function for most hours of the day, most days of the week. The types of jobs we have influence who we know, where we live, how much society respects us. Being jobless, then, isn’t only difficult because of the financial instability — it’s also a kind of social death. As such, the fate of the jobless — the attendant derision or pity is often used as a cautionary tale. And the warning works: Most of us are terrified of losing our livelihoods.

The so-called Great Resignation has been making headline after headline for months now, as people have been quitting their jobs in droves. There were predictions that when federal pandemic benefits expired just after Labor Day, industries facing a labor shortage would find an influx of job seekers. And yet, snatching away benefits hasn’t worked that way. So far, there hasn’t been a dramatic increase in applicants. It’s not just a perplexing economic problem. People rejecting available jobs runs counter to what we’ve been taught since childhood — that work isn’t just how we live our lives, it’s why we live our lives.

It’s a sign of the times — and of how fed up people are with the conditions of work — that people are now rejecting this worldview, and doing so to such a degree that it’s become a movement. If the movement has a motto, it would be the word that’s been on everyone’s lips over the past 18 months: burnout. According to an Insider survey of over 1,000 American workers, 61% said they were currently “at least somewhat burned out.” An Indeed report from March found that the majority of respondents said their burnout had worsened during the pandemic, with 52% overall saying they were currently burned out. You’ve probably heard — or said yourself — the following things repeated ad nauseum: “I’m so tired. I’m so exhausted. I can’t believe we have to keep going.“

But burnout isn’t just fatigue. It’s far more insidious and complicated.

“Work burnout happened to me when I worked at a large corporation and realized that although I was putting in long hours, doing good work, and it looked good on paper — I was going nowhere,” says Alexis, 38, who works in the PR industry. “Then I saw a meme [that said] ‘if you died tomorrow, your job would be posted faster than your obituary,’ and it sucked all the joy out of everything I did.”

“Burnout happens when work consumes your mind outside of the office, yet your only opportunity for a long time is to tread water while killing yourself,” she says.

Camilla, 29, saw her health deteriorate. “For me, the burnout was serious when I relapsed badly into anorexia nervosa,” she says. She worked in health and safety in the meat industry. “It took me a year to recover to the point where I could work again, and even at that, I only work part time out of the house. Anything more, and I can easily slip back.”

Her husband, who works in hospitality and retail, is burned out, too. “[He] realized it was bad months ago, but felt trapped. He has since handed in his notice with no job to go to, because he simply can’t take it anymore,” Camilla says. “He feels suicidal, exhausted, and hopeless. But having put in his notice, he instantly felt better.”

Camilla has come to the exact same morbid conclusion as Alexis: “At the end of the day — your job will be posted before your funeral notice ever will be. Remember that.”

Maybe a telltale sign of burnout is when you start thinking in such extreme terms, ruminating on life and death as it pertains to your work satisfaction. If you’re wondering what would happen if you died tomorrow, and weighing how deeply your workplace would feel the loss of you, you’re not just tired. You’re preoccupied with existential questions related to meaning and purpose. And they’re all related to your job.

Alice, 28, felt suddenly and wholly burned out after her company announced a major restructuring. It soon became clear that there was no longer a future for her there, but it was a job she had sincerely loved. She had worked hard at it for years.

“I sobbed,” she recalls. “And I was like, I haven’t cried like this since I was dumped by my abusive ex.” It was as painful as any romantic betrayal, she says: “I felt empty.” Only, unlike a breakup, Alice still is connected to her employers, “because I’m financially dependent on them.”

There’s a lot of debate about what exactly burnout is: A medical condition? A philosophical matter? Is it just the cost of doing business? Of being alive? According to the World Health Organization, it’s an “occupational phenomenon.” But that seems to be an anodyne way of saying that the exact nature, cause, and solution to burnout aren’t entirely clear.

And there certainly does seem to be variance on what we talk about when we talk about burnout. Does burnout imply a length of time that you’ve gone without a break, or a certain degree of severity? Can you be burned out even if you don’t have an extreme workload? If you’re recharged after a few days of PTO, is that not burnout? Does it come with depression? Can you love your particular job but still be burned out? Does burnout cause a fundamental shift in how you think about your work?

For some, burnout is just another way to say their stamina has been used up, and they need a vacation. But for others, “burnout” is a term that encompasses a kind of melancholic meditation on the unrelentingness of work; more recently, the pandemic and climate crisis anxiety seem inseparable from it.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is a test developed by psychologists to measure this “phenomenon” on three scales: exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy. An online test on MindTools asks you to rate yourself on statements like, “I am harder and less sympathetic with people than perhaps they deserve,” and “I feel that I have no one to talk to.” It also includes a statement on perceived workload, but it doesn’t include a numeric scale of the average number of hours worked. Overwork in sheer hours seems to be too simple a metric to diagnose burnout.

For a long time, “burnout” was a word most commonly used in the medical industry. In 2014, Dr. Richard Gunderman wrote an article for The Atlantic in which he argued that the reason medical students seem to suffer higher rates of burnout compared to other college students isn’t because the work is intrinsically more difficult, but rather because the way they were being taught was often soul-crushing. It was an educational environment, he claimed, that did little to nurture compassion — ironic, considering these were training to care about the wellbeing of others. Gunderman contends that burnout is not, then, necessarily caused by stress and overwork, but “the sum total of hundreds and thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose, each one so minute that it hardly attracts notice.”

Thinking of burnout as a form of betrayal is illuminating, because it frames burnout not as a solitary experience — an agony you battle alone, something that’s your sole responsibility to heal from — but a relationship in conflict. For those medical students, the conflict comes from being let down by their professors and mentors, and their subsequent interrogation of whether this path would allow them to be the kind, empathetic doctors they wanted to be. For others experiencing professional burnout, the details of the conflict vary, but the core problem remains the same: Workers feel betrayed by their employers.

This is why burnout hits when work fails to live up to our expectations of it. Many of us were raised on the mantra: “It’s not work if you love what you do,” and so we want to believe that our jobs can not only provide financial stability, but also emotional and spiritual nourishment. Not all work is a calling, but the journey toward finding the right job can be likened to a pilgrimage. In a time of increasing secularism, work remains our steadfast religion.

In Peggy Lee’s 1969 anthem Is That All There Is, she sings about the end of a great romance. But she’s not despairing over the extreme pain that came with losing love — rather, she’s disappointed that the end of her relationship wasn’t more ruinous. “I thought I’d die,” she sings, “But I didn’t. And when I didn’t, I said to myself: Is that all there is to love?”

Lee’s disillusionment isn’t just about mourning something tangible, but is also about the loss of a fantasy — that this love was the most important thing to her being, that it was necessary for her survival. For many suffering from professional burnout, there’s a similar disillusionment. When your dream job disappears, shouldn’t you be allowed to disappear, too? Instead, not only can’t you disappear, but you’re also staring at many more decades of meaningless work until you can retire. How do you cope with that? The disappointment can be staggering.

And yet, in the depths of disillusionment and burnout, there can also sometimes be a strange sense of freedom in recognizing that work might never provide the purpose and emotional sustenance you once believed it would. And that’s okay. You’ll survive. Collectively, we will simply need to come up with a new way of thinking about work. It turns out, work — like any relationship — isn’t the be-all, end-all we’d thought it could be

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Journalist Anne Helen Petersen, who wrote a viral Buzzfeed article on burnout that garnered millions of views, agrees, and believes purpose-driven passion is a particular trap for burnout. In her book, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, she observes, “The desire for the cool job that you’re passionate about is a particularly modern and bourgeois phenomenon — and, as we’ll see, a means of elevating a certain type of labor to the point of desirability that workers will tolerate all forms of exploitation for the ‘honor’ of performing it.” Studies have also shown that “obsessive passion” can increase work conflict, which in turn increases the chance of burnout.

Connected to the “cool job” being a bourgeois preoccupation is the recognition that the omnipresence of the burnout conversation right now is due to relatively privileged workers experiencing it — including many who work in media, whose thoughts on burnout are inherently going to be more amplified. But, burnout, after all, has long been a regular feature of many low-wage, precarious jobs.

“That’s the thing — when middle class people realize it, it bumps it over into a majority realization,” says Petersen. “Because, ostensibly, middle class people are the largest component of the United States or of most countries. And so that bumps it over into more shared public consciousness. I mean, it kind of sucks, right? You have to wait for the people who have previously been comfortable to realize something for it to become part of a larger conversation.”

Now that burnout is a well-established part of the conversation, is it time to just throw up our hands and reject any notion that we might find work we love? Not exactly. In fact, it’s not that we should be seeking jobs we feel nothing for, or feel ashamed for loving our jobs — it’s more that we should recognize that passion can make an already unequal relationship even more unequal. It’s realizing that “passion” is irrelevant to the reciprocal obligations between employers and employees. It’s acknowledging that it’s okay to have a completely transactional relationship to work, especially when facing the threat of burnout.

In order to survive without a passion for labor, work itself has to be less necessary for survival. But that’s hard to imagine — a world where work doesn’t take center stage, where you don’t mention your job within minutes of meeting someone new. The concept of a post-work world has existed for a while now, but the idea that people should care less about their jobs, let alone work less, often causes deep moral outrage. This isn’t all that surprising, considering how much of our identities are defined by work. It’s as if, without work anchoring all of our lives, society itself will disintegrate.

“I have internalized capitalism — which is when you really think of yourself only in terms of your ability to work,” says Petersen.

She also reveals that while she’s gotten some pushback from older generations on the idea that work doesn’t need to be the great, overwhelming passion of your life, not everyone feels that way: “I think some [boomers] have gotten to this point in their life where they have a midlife crisis and are radicalized, like, ‘I shouldn’t do this. I look back on my life, and what do I have to show? What is a career? Who did I serve with my career?'”

Throughout her book, Petersen not only surveys what burnout looks like, but lays out the ways in which it’s a structural rot. If a bridge collapses, we wouldn’t just tell people how to drive around it, we would demand it be repaired. In the same way, we need to repair the crumbling infrastructure of work, not get emails from HR about how to “practice self-care” and be told to take PTO without ensuring that we can realistically take time away from their jobs, or any guarantee that things will be better once we’re back from vacation.

Petersen has some ideas about what to do: “It has to be things like making emailing after hours or slacking after hours into something that you actually get a talking-to about,” she says. “A negative performance review instead of something that’s implicitly praised because you’re working all the time.”

Petersen is also in favor of a four-day workweek. “If we were actually working four days, then you would see some shifts, because people would have time for things that give them sustaining recharge every week,” she continues. “This is very different from taking a week off one time.”

“We’re talking about really reorganizing the way work finds its place in your life,” says Petersen. “We have to think about, What if work wasn’t the center of our lives? How do we reorganize our entire life, our entire society, so that even if we are spending the most time doing it, that it is not the number one priority. It is not the way that we define whether we are successes and failures. It is not the primary access of our identity.”
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However much it feels like “everyone” is quitting their jobs, we should be wary of thinking that all, or even most people have the ability to do so. It’s also unclear yet that we’re seeing a major shift in power between workers and employers. The Great Resignation has likely been bolstered by stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits. But most of us need jobs as a matter of financial necessity, and quitting on the spot remains only a pleasant fantasy for many, rather than a plausible reality.

Still, though, what it represents is a hopeful blip, and a reminder to employers that their futures are also precarious if they don’t take care of their workers. Perhaps it could be an inspiration toward implementing a long-term bulwark against burnout. Instead of encouraging vacations, discrete periods of rest, it’s time to enact labor protections that guarantee higher wages, that end at-will employment, that boost unemployment benefits permanently, that disentangle healthcare access from employment status. In other words, creating a world where workers who aren’t being treated well, who aren’t satisfied with their jobs, can simply quit without a backwards glance. Until that happens, burnout will continue to be endemic in our society, and individuals will continue to find their own solutions for how to cope.
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Alexis, who identified her burnout thanks to a meme, is currently working at a different company — and that change alone has helped. “I feel phenomenal,” she says. “They treat me like a person who deserves kindness and a future they want. I know it feels like a low bar, but I’ve been amazed at the people I’ve met here who feel the same way.”

“Maybe burnout is what led me to a better place. But traveling through the muck to get here was about as painful as it gets,” she says.

Camilla is doing better, too. “I’m happily working at a deli in a local shop,” she says. “It’s not what I spent thousands training for, but I’m happy doing that part-time while I write.”

Alice, though, is still at her burnout job, finishing up a long-term project that could take anywhere from six months to a year. “I dream of working 30 hours max a week,” she says. “I would love to take a year off. But I don’t have the money.”

When psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined the term “burnout” in the 1970s, it was a very personal endeavor, a result of his attempt to describe what he was feeling in his own line of work. “I don’t know how to have fun,” he observed in a voice recording describing his symptoms. “I don’t know how to be readily joyful.”

He didn’t explicitly ask, “Is that all there is?” But he might as well have. After all, part of the recovery from burnout is making a promise to prioritize being joyful, in whatever ways we can. If the old career adage promised that as long as you do what you love, you’d never work a day in your life, the new one is simply: Work is just work. And life is too short and important to be wholly dedicated to it. As Peggy Lee sings: If that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing.

Names have been changed to protect identity.

After a paid week off, refreshed employees return to Señor Froggy restaurants in Kamloops


One week after taking time off for their mental health — a week away from work with pay — Señor Froggy owner Rob Stodola said his employees are reporting feeling happy to be back at work and appreciative for the break.

From Sept. 13 to Sept. 20, the downtown and North Shore locations of the local Mexican restaurant shut down operations to give all staff a paid break after reported burnout amidst the effects of this summer’s heat wave, a month-and-a-half of smoke, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and findings of probable graves on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

“I think it was a very worthwhile thing to do,” Stodola told KTW. “It seemed to rejuvenate everybody.”

Stodola said he has noticed more smiles, laughter and joking around in his two restaurants since the reopening on Sept. 21, adding he would do it again if need be.

“Everybody was happy with that [time off]. Half of them wanted more,” Stodola said with a laugh.

He noted it was clear how overstressed staff members were by the fact most of them reported doing “virtually nothing” and just relaxing during their time away from work.

“It was surprising, a little bit worrisome, how many of them had several days where they just couldn’t move,” he said. “They needed that time and, obviously, their bodies were going on adrenaline.”

As for Stodola, the small-business owner took that week off and avoided work-related emails and voicemails.

“I had to be very disciplined in that,” he said.

Instead, Stodola spent time with his kids, went for drives around town with his wife and completed some household projects.

While there is a financial hit to weather, and it will be about three or four months until that’s fully realized, Stodola said it was worth it.

“Everything in business costs. Yes it’s a financial hit, but we had decided that to begin with. We went into it with eyes wide open,” Stodola said.

He said the restaurants were busy before the week and off and continue to be upon reopening.

The restaurants opened amid the new public health order requiring proof of vaccination to attend certain non-essential businesses and events.

With Señor Froggy being a fast food, counter-service restaurant, checking customers’ vaccine status is not something employees will have to do, though Stodola is encouraging staff and customers get vaccinated.

Michael Potestio, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Kamloops This Week

Widespread labour shortage not going away any time soon: BDC report


CALGARY — Nikita George was a fine arts grad looking for a job in the music industry when the COVID-19 pandemic hit

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

With concert venues shut down and music schools closed, the Calgary woman quickly realized she had two choices — sit home and wait for things to improve, or set out on a completely new path.

She chose the latter, enrolling in a six-month rapid-training program offered by Calgary tech training non-profit InceptionU. Last week, George started her new job as a full stack developer for Acuspire, a Calgary tech startup.

"At first I was a little bit scared, because it's a big jump from music and teaching to tech," George said. "I thought about just waiting (for the pandemic to end), but then I thought maybe I should take advantage of this. Use the pandemic to learn something, develop a new skill, so that there are other opportunities I could go for."

Much has been written in recent months about Canadian employers struggling with labour shortages 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic. A report released Wednesday provides additional evidence, with more than 60 per cent of Canadian businesses saying that widespread labour shortages are limiting their growth.

The report, produced by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), combines the findings of two surveys — one that polled 1,251 Canadian entrepreneurs in May 2021 and a survey of 3,000 Canadian employees conducted in June 2021. Its findings suggest 49 per cent of business owners have had to delay or have been unable to deliver orders to clients due to a lack of labour.

It also says many small- and medium-sized business owners report job vacancies sitting empty for three or four months at a time, with 61 per cent saying they've had to increase their own hours or their employees' work hours as a result.

“It’s very serious, because it’s slowing down the growth of many businesses in Canada, and as a result is going to slow down the growth of the economy,” said Pierre Cléroux, BDC’s chief economist.

However, the report also pokes holes in some of the established narratives we've heard so far about the labour shortage. Contrary to popular opinion, Cléroux said, the pandemic didn't create Canada's labour shortage — it just made an existing problem worse. While COVID-19 certainly disrupted the Canadian labour market by temporarily cutting off the flow of immigrants to the country and by prompting some workers to quit rather than risk being exposed to the virus on the job, Cléroux said the key problem is simple demographics.

"Today, 16 per cent of Canadians are over 65. In the next five years, many Canadians are going to retire," Cléroux said. "And not a lot of young people are entering the job market."

Some employers struggling to hire have suggested that the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and other government assistance programs could be making it more attractive for employees to stay at home rather than return to the workforce as the economy opens up. But the BDC report suggests the phaseout of CERB and programs like it won't fix the problem.

While sectors like accommodation and food services, retail, and manufacturing have lost thousands of jobs during the pandemic, professional and business services, education, public administration, and health care actually gained workers during the pandemic. In fact, the report says that a full 20 per cent of workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic are now, like Nikita George, working in an entirely different field.

"Now they prefer that job, so they don’t go back. That makes the situation worse for some sectors of our economy,” Cléroux said. "We want to send a signal to businesses that this is a long-term issue."

Cléroux suggested employers should look to automation and technology to help address workforce challenges, as well as offer a "total compensation package" that includes perks such as benefits, training and flexibility to help attract applicants.

In a report released in August, the Business Council of Alberta also concluded that pandemic-era support programs like CERB are not the driving factor behind the labour force shortage. About one quarter of businesses surveyed by the council said that income supports are a barrier to finding workers, but only seven per cent said they are the most significant obstacle.

The group said "increased compensation, more remote work flexibility, improved skills training and micro-credentialing" may be necessary for employers seeking to attract workers and reduce job turnover.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2021.

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

WHY FARMERS CREATED THE CANADA WHEAT BOARD

Farmers in 'dire straits' over unfulfilled grain contracts


Unfulfilled grain contracts are pinching Saskatchewan farmers' pocket books.

Farmers losing grain revenue are in "dire straits" as they face penalties and administrative costs while attempting to leave contracts they have no hope of fulfilling, said Agricultural Producers Association vice president Bill Prybylski.

"Farmers are facing, in some cases, very significant financial penalties (for) contracts that — through no fault of their own — they're not able to fulfil due to the unprecedented drought," Prybylski said, adding that rising fertilize costs will only tighten the squeeze.

Many farmers are wrapping up their harvest after a drought baked their fields. Eighty-nine per cent of the province's crop is in the bin — far above the five-year average of 63 per cent for this time of year, last week's crop report noted.

“A lot of farmers simply don't have the grain this year due to the drought and with no 'Act of God' clause in some of the contracts, prices have continued to climb and the cost to buy out those contracts is now substantially higher,” Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities president Ray Orb said in a prepared statement.

He wants the Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA) to work with producers to reduce penalties and eliminate administration fees — which typically aim to prevent farmers from ducking out of a contract to capture a slightly higher price, a SARM statement said.

Early in the season, optimistic farmers eyeing high prices forward sold their contracts; grain companies did the same in domestic and international markets, said Wade Sobkowich, executive director of WGEA.

"The damage to the crop which occurred in late June and July has caused everyone to be short — farmers on contracts and grain companies on export commitments."

Grain companies see contracts as a competitive issue, so the WGEA can't influence how they price producer buybacks, he said.

Sobkowich said there's some cases where farmers oversold their production levels, but others where they oversold their "comfort level." In those cases, the grain company will ask the farm to send as many tonnes as it can before determining if it's short, he said.

"If there is any notion that the current scenario is a windfall for grain companies, I can say with certainty that no company is interested in receiving a farmer payment in lieu of a delivery."

That may not be enough for NDP agriculture critic Trent Wotherspoon, who has called on the province to pass emergency legislation allowing farmers to carry over their obligations to future years without incurring "unreasonable penalties."

He also wants an independent grain contract arbitration board, with farmers comprising at least 75 per cent of its members, to resolve grain contract disputes, he said.

Agriculture Minister David Marit wrote in a prepared statement that the province is contacting major grain companies to discuss the seriousness of the drought, asking them to be "lenient with producers and (to) consider scaling back their administration fees and penalties."

We won’t be overreacting with wholesale changes to how our producers market their grain in this province," he said.

Nick Pearce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The StarPhoenix

Ottawa will require vaccinations in the public service — but MPs may not face the same rule

Nick Boisvert 

© Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press 

Parliament will resume before the end of the fall, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.

Members of Parliament returning to work in the coming weeks could be doing so without a firm COVID-19 vaccination requirement — a rule that's expected to be introduced for hundreds of thousands of federal public servants and workers in federally regulated sectors.

If such a requirement is not introduced, it would mean that politicians deciding on vaccination protocols for much of the Canadian public wouldn't necessarily have to get vaccinated themselves.

But with the House of Commons scheduled to resume at some point this fall, there is already pressure to create a similar rule for returning MPs.

"They get fully vaccinated or they stay home," Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said today.

"[If] the price to be paid for this Parliament to start working fully and rapidly again is to force everybody walking in the building to be fully vaccinated, then let's do that."

The House of Commons has introduced a variety of health and safety measures during the pandemic — such as the masking rule and the suspension of non-essential activities — but the group responsible for devising those rules has not yet decided if vaccines will also be required.

MPs designated as spokespeople for the Board of Internal Economy, the governing body of the House of Commons, have not responded to requests from CBC News about the prospect of a vaccination requirement.

It may be possible for MPs to impose a vaccination mandate by a majority vote in the House of Commons. There's little precedent for such an action, however.

Liberal MP Hedy Fry, a doctor, said Parliament has an obligation to set an example.

"We cannot have two sets of rules," Fry told CBC News. "We are the ultimate public servants and I think we have to obey the rules."

The Office of the Prime Minister says its planned vaccine mandate will apply to ministers and staff in their offices, though it cannot decide rules for Parliament as a whole.
Public service mandate a priority for Trudeau

The federal government announced in August that it would require vaccination across the federal public service and for travellers by air, rail and ship within Canada, though that rule is not yet in effect.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that implementing the mandate is at the top of his government's post-election to-do list.

Ottawa says it also expects Crown corporations and employers in federally regulated sectors — such as banking and telecommunications — to require their employees to be vaccinated.

An estimated 1.3 million people work in federally regulated sectors.

The proposed mandate could also cover political staff who work in Parliament, the House of Commons and the Senate, since they are generally covered by health and safety protections under the Canada Labour Code.

Details on how the mandate will be applied in the public sector have not yet been announced. Ottawa has said the mandate will go into effect by the end of October.
Most MPs already fully vaccinated

Both the Liberals and NDP required that their candidates be vaccinated during the election campaign, though they did not extend that requirement to staff members. The Bloc Québécois said all of its candidates have been vaccinated, which prevented the need for a party-wide mandate.

"Getting vaccinatedis the right thing to do and elected leaders have a responsibility to set a good example by following public health advice," said NDP MP Peter Julian in a statement.

The Conservatives and Greens, meanwhile, only recommended that their candidates be vaccinated during the election campaign.

The Conservatives did not say if they would support a vaccine mandate for MPs, but a party spokesperson indicated that its members would follow whatever health and safety directives are created.

"Vaccines are safe and effective. They are the most important tool in combating COVID-19. Conservatives will continue to respect all public health guidelines," wrote Chelsea Tucker, the Conservatives' director of communications.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said during the election campaign that he opposed making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for public servants and travellers. He said that alternative measures, such as rapid tests, could be used for unvaccinated workers and travellers.

Unvaccinated Conservative MPs should 'stay home' from Parliament: Bloc leader


OTTAWA — Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said Wednesday the next session of Parliament should happen in person with any members who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 staying home.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Questions remain about what the return to Parliament will look like for Canada's 338 elected representatives after the recent federal election saw the Liberals re-elected with a minority government.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will name his cabinet next month and Parliament will resume sometime in the fall.

Since the pandemic hit in March 2020, the House of Commons and committees had been functioning with some MPs working from Ottawa, but many others appearing virtually, including, later on, to vote, before the election was called.

Blanchet said he wants to see Parliament resume quickly with MPs having to be fully vaccinated in order to be there in person because now vaccines against the novel coronavirus are more widely available.

His party, along with the New Democrats and Liberals, made it a rule that candidates had to be fully vaccinated in order to hit the doorsteps, but the Conservatives did not.

"They get fully vaccinated or they stay home," Blanchet said of Conservative MPs who might not have had their shots.

"Parliament should not come back under any kind of hybrid formation … now we know that we can go on with the way this building is supposed to work, and we should not refrain from doing so because a few persons don't believe that the vaccine works. This belongs to another century."

NDP MP Peter Julian said in a statement that because Canada is battling a fourth wave of the virus, the party wants to talk to others about continuing some of the hybrid practices when Parliament resumes.

"All of our NDP MPs are vaccinated and we’ve been very clear that federal government employees must be vaccinated too. Getting vaccinated is the right thing to do and elected leaders have a responsibility to set a good example by following public health advice," Julian said.

The Liberals and Conservatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The Conservatives saw 119 MPs, including incumbents and new candidates, elected on Sept. 20, after the party spent the race dogged by questions about its opposition to making vaccines mandatory as a tool to defeat COVID-19.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole refused to say on the campaign trail whether he knew how many of those running for the Tories had been fully vaccinated, saying he told campaign teams that those who are not immunized against COVID-19 should take daily rapid tests.

O'Toole is himself vaccinated and has been encouraging others to get their shot, but the Conservative leader says he also respects the personal health choices of Canadians and attacked Trudeau for using the issue to sow division in the country.

Conservative MPs will make their way to Ottawa next week to have their first caucus meeting since the election, where they will have to decide whether they want to review O'Toole's leadership.

The call for MPs to be vaccinated comes as Trudeau works on bringing in a mandate requiring the federal civil service, along with those working in its federally regulated industries, to be fully vaccinated.

His government has promised to make it a rule by the end of October that travellers flying or taking a train in Canada have to be immunized in order to board.

Many provinces have already introduced a vaccine passport system requiring consumers to provide proof of immunization to access non-essential businesses like restaurants and sports and entertainment venues.

"For the safety of House of Commons staff, translators, pages, security, other MPs and their staff, all parliamentarians should show proof that they are fully vaccinated in order to take their seats in the House," tweeted former Liberal cabinet minister Catherine McKenna, who didn't seek re-election, but served for six years in government.

As of Friday, Health Canada reported that around 79 per cent of people 12 and older as having being fully vaccinated, with about 85 per cent receiving at least one dose.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept 29, 2021.

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

Youngest Albertan dies of COVID-19 in Central Zone


The fifth COVID-19 death for the Town of Drumheller since the start of the pandemic was reported by the province on Wednesday, September 22; on the same day a total of 20 deaths due to COVID-19 were reported across the province and included the youngest death in the province-an 18 year old from the Central Zone.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) was unable to provide any further information regarding this case. The Central Zone encompasses a total of 30 hospitals across 95,000 square kilometres and stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Saskatchewan border, and from north of Calgary to the southern boundaries of Edmonton.

“We need to move past short term restrictions,” says Dr. Rithesh Ram, owner and operator of Riverside Medical Clinic. “What we need are long term policies and procedures that will help us now and into the future, otherwise every subsequent wave has the potential to be deadlier and deadlier.”

He adds, despite beliefs the government has created a mess of the pandemic, government officials are not the ones rioting outside hospitals and harassing staff at restaurants and small businesses who have enacted the Restrictions Exemption Program (REP) and require proof of vaccination.

Dr. Ram also notes the politicians in charge of putting restrictions and policies in place are not medical experts and rely on expert advice to enact these decisions.

“Clearly, given how poorly Alberta has done, they are not receiving the best advice on how to move forward,” he says.

Dr. Ram says all eligible Albertans need to get their COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible to protect the overwhelmed healthcare system, which is currently “under attack from a tsunami of unvaccinated patients.”

Some 8,073 residents of the Starland County-Drumheller region, or 78.1 per cent of residents 12 and older, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine; 67.2 per cent of the same population, or some 6,946 people, are fully vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine.

As of Monday, September 27 there are a total of 40 active, 525 recovered cases of COVID-19 and five deaths reported for the Town of Drumheller.

In Starland County there are 11 active cases, 87 active cases in Kneehill County, and 24 active cases in Wheatland County.

Lacie Nairn, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Drumheller Mail

'State of crisis': National medical group urges lockdowns in Alberta and Saskatchewan

CALGARY — If you think of COVID-19 like a fire, one Grande Prairie doctor would describe Alberta's blaze as out of control with too few resources dedicated to fighting it.

 

Dr. Alika Lafontaine said if the province doesn't strengthen public health measures to extinguish a relentless fourth wave then the health-care system will burn to the ground.

"At the end of everything, the whole system won't come out unscathed," he said. "A lot of us within health care don't feel that this wave will end until we have decisive leadership."

Lafontaine is president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association, which released a statement on Wednesday calling for lockdowns in Alberta and Saskatchewan to protect health-care systems it says are crumbling under pressures caused by COVID-19.

Both western provinces are setting hospitalization records, and intensive care capacity is running slim to none.

Dr. Katharine Smart, president of the national group, is urging the provincial and federal governments to take immediate action.

"This is beyond anything that the health-care system has ever faced in modern times," Smart said in a phone interview.

"What we're seeing now is essentially no ability to provide any other acute-care medicine beyond care to people with COVID. So, in essence, the health-care system has already collapsed."

The association is calling for short, controlled lockdowns — often called firebreakers or circuit-breakers — that would close schools and non-essential businesses.

It also wants mandatory vaccinations in health-care settings and an increase in the mobility of health workers and intensive care capacity between provinces.

Saskatchewan's proof of vaccination program for health-care employees will begin Thursday and allows workers to show a negative test every seven days as an alternative.

Alberta Health Services is requiring all staff to be fully immunized by Oct. 31.

A group called Health Workers United recently sent a letter to Alberta Health Services objecting to vaccine passports for health-care workers. It was signed by more than 3,500 people, including 75 doctors and more than 1,000 nurses, some of whom did not provide their full names.

Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping said the claims in the letter are misleading and incorrect. He debunked many of them in a statement released Wednesday.

“We need to make decisions based on good information and good advice from health-care professionals. We’re in a crisis due to our low vaccination rate, and the one sure way out of it is for more of us to get vaccinated," said Copping.

Smart said both provinces — which have COVID-19 mortality rates about three times the national average — are facing the "dire realities" of relaxing public health measures too soon.

"There is a lot of resistance from both political parties to really step up with any significant changes in their public health mitigation strategies," she said. "We've seen lots of sort of tinkering around the edges, but no real commitment to doing something meaningful to change this trajectory."

Smart added it's time for "courageous action" and noted that politics must be put aside to allow for collaboration between levels of government.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to help Alberta should it enter another lockdown. Federal supports for businesses and individuals would be reinstated if that happened, he said Tuesday.

He reiterated his support during a phone call with Kenney on Wednesday, the premier's press secretary Harrison Fleming said in a statement. He said Kenney asked Ottawa to supply doses of Janssen vaccine, which require only one shot, to the province and spoke about needing rapid antigen tests for employers.

Kenney said Tuesday the province has been in conversations with Ottawa, the Canadian Armed Forces, other provinces and counterparts in the United States for aid, should it be required.

Smart said that need is now.

Despite the ability for provinces like Alberta to add surge capacity to intensive care units, human resources are finite, she said. Health-care workers are facing "huge amounts" of burnout and psychological trauma, she said.

"People cannot keep doing this indefinitely and the system is already totally overrun and collapsing," said Smart, who added that patients and health workers are experiencing unfathomable choices.

"What is happening is as heartbreaking as it was preventable. We are now in a situation where it's all hands on deck to address the state of crisis."

Alberta has more than 20,000 active cases, dwarfing totals in other provinces, thousands of non-urgent surgeries have been cancelled and doctors are being briefed on how to decide who gets life-saving care when resources run out.

Intensive care capacity was at 84 per cent with surge spaces on Wednesday, said Alberta Health Services in a statement. Without 200 additional spaces, the provincial capacity would be at 181 per cent.

There were 313 patients in Alberta ICUs, most of them with COVID-19. Thirty-four deaths were also reported — the highest count since mid-January.

In Saskatchewan, there were 4,585 active cases on Wednesday and 295 COVID-19 patients in hospital. Of those, 67 are in ICU.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2021.

Alanna Smith, The Canadian Press

MENNONITES/HUTTERITES/ANABAPTISTS 
This Manitoba community has a vaccination rate of 24% against COVID-19. Here's why

 The Rural Municipality of Stanley about 100 kilometres south of Winnipeg has the lowest COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Manitoba.

Ian Froese CBC

©Jaison Empson/CBC

Outsiders depict his rural Manitoba community as one divided over COVID-19 vaccines, but that isn't how Willie Penner sees it.

Within the company he keeps, Penner, who is unvaccinated, doesn't hear any discord.

Nobody in his bubble is vaccinated against COVID-19. Not his wife working in health care, nor his brothers and sisters living near and far. His in-laws and his good friend have no interest in the vaccine. His church says the choice is his.

In the Rural Municipality of Stanley, 100 kilometres south of Winnipeg, Penner is living in a bubble of the unvaccinated. He wouldn't have it any other way.

"Only [person] I feel pressure from is Dr. Roussin in Winnipeg,"he said, naming Brent Roussin, Manitoba's chief public health officer and the person who in many ways is the public face of the province's pandemic response.

"That's where you feel the pressure. He wants people to get vaccinated and everybody has the right not to."

© Ian Froese/CBC

Willie Penner lives in the Rural Municipality of Stanley and isn't vaccinated against COVID-19, like most of the people he knows.

Penner's rural municipality — an overwhelmingly conservative, white, deeply Christian community where German is the second most-common language — has been treated like a pariah by some fully inoculated persons, given Stanley's stubbornly low vaccination rate.

Only24 per cent of eligible people, as of Tuesday, have received their first dose, according to the province's data. (In the City of Winkler, which the municipality surrounds, 41.3 per cent have rolled up their sleeves).

In fact, Stanley's vaccination rate is the lowest of any Manitoba health district and the second-worst vaccination rate reported by any Canadian province. CBC found only one province reporting a lower vaccination rate — High Level, Alta., which had a 20.7 per cent rate for first doses in a region spanning a large northwestern chunk of the province, as of Tuesday

.

© Ian Froese/CBC A sign espousing opposition to vaccine mandates is seen in the Rural Municipality of Stanley. The region has played host to a number of anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandate rallies over the course of the pandemic.

This reality is unsettling to public health officials, who have warned the severity of the pandemic's fourth wave will be driven by the unvaccinated.

Manitoba's Southern Health region, which encompasses the RM of Stanley, made up roughly half of the province's new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, but is only home to around 15 per cent of the population.

An explanation for Stanley's low vaccination rate cannot be attributed to a single cause, residents and historians say.

Any account deserves a nuanced, layered understanding, they say, but it stems at least partially from generations of conservative Christians who feel the government has repeatedly turned on them

.

© Jaison Empson/CBC 

People who live in the rural municipality and historians say vaccine hesitancy stems at least in part from generations of conservative Christians who feel the government has repeatedly turned on them.

"There is this long history of viewing the social structuring parts of government, and if you think in terms of religious terms, as the encroachment of the world on the Christian," said Hans Werner, a retired Mennonite studies professor from the University of Winnipeg.

Farmyards dot this land, with homes sometimes separated by a kilometre or more. Many other residences are in small villages with Low German-speaking origins, such as Reinfeld, Schanzenfeld and Chortitz, that have survived for a century and counting.

KROPOTKIN FOUND THEM THIS AREA 
MENNONITES/HUTTERITES/DUKHBOURS

Historically known as the West Reserve, the area is shaped by immigration. Rejecting Russia's offer of working in forestry in lieu of compulsory military service, thousands of Russian Mennonites settled in the southeastern areas of Manitoba in the 1870s. They took up arable land before venturing further west, including parts of the eventual RM of Stanley, where these trained agriculturalists built farms and livelihoods.

They were lured to Manitoba under a promise of exemption from military service and control of their own education system, among other measures, said Conrad Stoesz, archivist at the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg.

"Over time, some of those things have been eroded, often by provincial legislation."

A simmering distrust of government boiled over roughly 100 years ago when Manitoba began to force Mennonite communities to send their children to public schools. While many Mennonites assimilated to the demands of provincial decision-makers, others, particularly in the West Reserve, which Werner said was more resistant to modernist trends, fled to countries like Mexico and Paraguay. © Ian Froese/CBC Candace Grenier owns Pure Anada cosmetics. She refuses to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but knows she isn't alone in the Rural Municipality of Stanley.

Other waves of migration ensued, including Mennonites fleeing Russia in the 1920s and decades later an influx of arrivals from Germany and the return of some families who had headed to Mexico.

"That's an interesting mix of people from various different migration histories and stories, but they all share a common thread where they have not always been very fairly treated by the governments that they lived under in Canada, Ukraine and the Soviet Union," Stoesz said.

In some circles, that distrust lingers to this day, he said, and it contributes to vaccine hesitancy.

"By pushing them" to get vaccinated, "I think they're going to just resist more and more," Stoesz said.

A strong sense of community has kept these small villages alive, through periods of decline and rejuvenation, Stoesz said, unlike some other Mennonite communities in the East Reserve long since defunct.

Werner, who lived in the RM of Stanley for about 25 years, said the municipality is "still viewed as a wonderful place to raise your children with Christian values," whereas Winnipeg and Winkler are perceived by some locals as places better to visit or work than live.

It is in Winkler, the city that Stanley surrounds, where vaccine division is widespread, as proof-of-vaccination cards and mask mandates have led to rallies, hostility toward business staff and a police chief writing that "drug traffickers and career criminals are more respectful to law enforcement." A petition hit city council to turn Winkler into a "sanctuary city," which would exclude it from public health orders.

Life for Stanley residents is intertwined with the city's, but some people say the animosity that's come out at rallies against the pandemic measures and pushback at businesses following the rules isn't present in their day-to-day lives.

After all, the unvaccinated are overwhelmingly the majority in their communities.

© Jaison Empson/CBC 

Historians say that Mennonites who settled in Manitoba began to distrust the provincial government about 100 years ago when they were forced to send their children to public schools. Many Mennonites assimilated, but others moved to Mexico and Paraguay.

Candace Grenier lives in a secluded sliver of the RM of Stanley, atop a hill, shielded by trees, but she doesn't feel separated from everyone else.

Instead, she speaks of solidarity. She will not get the COVID-19 vaccine, no matter what, and she knows she isn't alone in her municipality.

"If you know that you're not the only one, you're not as afraid to stand up for your belief system."

At first, she was nervous to express her vaccine resistance on Facebook. She was worried of the impact it would have on Pure Anada, her cosmetics company. Grenier said she's heard from many customers who say they'll never buy her products again.

"But the honest truth is our business has only grown," she said. "That's probably a reflection of the stance of the people in the RM of Stanley and Winkler and Morden that we now have more support, I feel, than ever."

She attributes her apprehension to a personal choice, despite the science and statistics to the contrary.

The COVID-19 vaccines reduce the risk of contracting the coronavirus and significantly dampen the chance of any severe complications, legions of scientists, medical professionals and public health officials have said.

To date, 80 per cent of eligible Manitoba residents have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Of those 940,193, only 940, or 0.1 per cent, have experienced breakthrough infections and 18, all above 60 years of age, have died, according to the latest provincial data.

© Jaison Empson/CBC

 Jake and Barb Penner run an environmental waste and recycling company called Penner Waste just outside Winkler, Man. They're both vaccinated against COVID-19, but don't want to pressure their employees to do the same.

Conversations in the municipality show the reasons for vaccine reluctance are diverse, ranging from religion to distrust of science and a prevailing belief in a person's autonomy to make their own health decisions and a belief the government shouldn't.

Premier Kelvin Goertzen has encouraged Manitobans to reach out to vaccine-hesitant people in their own lives. He said they shouldn't use forceful language to make their point.

"I don't know of anybody who's changed their mind in an argument on Facebook," Goertzen said earlier this month.

The scourge of misinformation is evident in some of the discussions CBC had in the municipality. Among them, a retired nurse offered an array of debunked falsehoods, including ivermectin — a horse dewormer that also has a different formulation for prescribing to people with parasitic worms — being a cure for COVID-19, the local hospital filling up because people got vaccinated and even a person becoming blind because they were inoculated. None of those statements is factual.

The Stanley health district has reported 138 cases of COVID-19 and three deaths during the pandemic, although Roussin, the province's top doctor, has said southern Manitoba has a lower per capita testing rate than other areas of the province.

© Ian Froese/CBC

 Physicians and other health-care workers at Boundary Trails Health Centre, which is just outside Winkler, have told CBC News on multiple occasions that many of their COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated. Many patients believe the pandemic is a hoax.

Despite an entangled web of explanations, many people in the RM of Stanley seem to be unified. Vaccinated or not, people CBC spoke with say they're against the division government has sowed by restricting access to certain places, like restaurants, to only the inoculated.

"The other day, we went out for lunch at a popular restaurant and there was hardly anybody in there," said Harold Falk, a former farmer who moved to the municipality a few years ago.

Falk is fully vaccinated, but doesn't talk about it unless he must flash his vaccine card. He won't bring it up at his work with a farm equipment supplier. He doesn't try to persuade hesitant family members.

In fact, he said the fully vaccinated are hurting their cause by being more fearful of the virus than people who are not vaccinated.

© Jaison Empson/CBC 

The province has tried to boost vaccine rates, but the effect in the Rural Municipality of Stanley has been minimal.

Barb and Jake Penner run an environmental waste and recycling company just outside Winkler that tries to make a difference in the community. They got vaccinated for the same reason.

"I want to do my part and do the best I can to protect the people that work for us and the people around us," Barb Penner said.

But otherwise, the team behind Penner Waste stays neutral in the vaccine debate. They'll leave it up to their neighbours to get vaccinated, if they choose.

"Pressure has never worked," Jake Penner said. "I don't believe in pressuring somebody into something. That doesn't work."

Manitoba has tried to boost vaccine rates among the unvaccinated by limiting the places they can go, but its impact on the RM of Stanley appears to have been negligible. Since the program's announcement in late August, the vaccination rate has increased by 1.8 per cent, public health figures show.

Three-quarters of adults remain unvaccinated. Grenier is one of them — a businesswoman with a warm smile who said she's trying to do good for her five children.

"I have been enjoying life because I really enjoy the simple things," she said.

"I've got kids. I've got a deck. I can have a fire. And those are the things that I really enjoy about life.

"No, you haven't taken that away from me, actually."

Manitoba Metis Federation officially no longer part of Métis National Council

After waiting two years for the Métis National Council (MNC) to reassert that the “true Métis Nation” has its roots in the Red River, and after not getting that assertion, the Manitoba Metis Federation formally withdrew from the MNC today.

“The MNC no longer represents the Métis Nation. It represents a pan-Aboriginal, other Indigenous and some non-Indigenous peoples. So it’s a different creature altogether,” said MMF President David Chartrand.

The MMF’s concerns centre on a move by the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) to open its membership to people who connect to historical Métis communities in Ontario but who may not have proven connections to Métis in the west. The MNO is a member of the MNC.

In 2019, 3,000 MMF members unanimously directed Chartrand to withdraw the MMF from the MNC if all of Ontario’s members were included as part of the MNC as those thousands of additional members would “dilute” the MNC.

“I warned (MNC) we need to hold Ontario accountable, and we need to protect our homeland and our Nation because we worked too hard to get to where we are. We devoted our entire lives to where we are and now we can’t risk it to open the floodgates and that’s what’s going to happen,” said Chartrand.

Chartrand was so sure that changes wouldn’t happen with the MNC that he made the decision to withdraw MMF on the very day of a court-ordered special sitting of the MNC general assembly. The court-approved agenda included an item on the status of the MNO.

He said the presidents of the MNO, Métis Nation of Alberta, Métis Nation-Saskatchewan and Métis Nation British Columbia argued in an Ontario corporate court that the MNC general assembly had no jurisdiction or authority to suspend the MNO as a member of the board of governors. MNC suspended MNO in 2020.

“So in my view, they don’t respect the assembly. They actually made it clear if the assembly voted against this issue, they’d probably go back to court. So what’s the purpose of the assembly if its own presidents don’t recognize its purpose or power?” he said.

Chartrand says the MMF will continue to focus on representing Red River Métis across Canada and internationally.

Right now, he says, he’s getting a “flood” of requests for citizenship cards for MMF. He’s even looking at hiring more staff to process them, which will include confirming genealogy.

“People from the west are telling us loud and clear they don’t want to be part of this anymore. This is not what they dreamed would happen to them,” he said.

Chartrand says the self-government recognition and implementation agreement signed with Canada this past July will now become the focus.

“MMF will have a modern day treaty and we’ll sit down with our First Nations brothers and sisters and co-exist in sharing the lands and respecting each others territories,” he said.

The special sitting of the general assembly will also be electing a new president for the MNC on Sept. 30. Clement Chartier, who held the position for 18 years, will not be seeking another term. The court-approved agenda did not allow any time for Chartier to give a farewell speech.

The last few years with Chartier at the helm had been contentious, seeing a lack of Board of Governors meetings and Chartrand often taking over as spokesperson. The last general assembly was held November 2018.

However, as Chartier was convener of the meeting before the new chairs were elected, he managed to address the delegates.

“I believe the Métis Nation will move forward in great strength. I believe in my heart and I leave with that feeling. The politics of the Métis National Council, I believe in my heart that in the long run the integrity of the Métis Nation will remain intact. Its identity, citizens and homeland will remain intact and that our future generations will look back on this period of time and say, ‘Yes, although there was some turmoil there was also progress,’” he said.

Revisiting the status of the MNO was in progress at press time.

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com

KAHNAWAKE NATION

Asbestos report delayed ‘at least a few weeks,’: Diabo

A report into the dumping of asbestos containing materials into the community will be delayed slightly after the transition between councils and extra documentation caused the report’s reception to lag slightly, said the Chief responsible for the file said in an interview last week.


“With the orientation of the new Council and entering the fourth wave of the pandemic,” Mohawk Council of Kahnawake Chief Cody Diabo, who is the lead on the environment file for the MCK, said. “We didn’t want it to drag on too long, but we understood there would be delays.”

Since the report will not arrive by September 30, MCK issued an announcement last week saying the Deloitte Forensic report would be delayed due to ‘community issues,’ among other reasons. In addition, Diabo said there was far more documentation for Deloitte Forensic to sift through than was anticipated.

“The goal was to start in May and not have it dragging on too long. Originally, we thought there would be about 15 interviews to do,” he said, but that number nearly doubled when work began in earnest and investigators did 29 interviews, he added.

“The goal was those soft targets,” he said “We’re suspecting mid-October. That’s kind of what we’re shooting for. About two or three weeks for that (to arrive). We don’t have an exact date set yet.”

At that point both the MCK and community observer Doug Lahache will look at the reports and then it will be released to the community, Diabo added.

It’s been about two years since the discovery that old sewage pipes that were crushed and disposed of in the community were contained asbestos, which was used as a bonding agent in concrete in the past. Asbestos can be hazardous to health in humans.

“In 2019, this all came to light, and since April of 2020, we’ve been looking at how to address it,” but the COVID-19 pandemic took some of the focus off that project.

Diabo said he’d like to have a plan in place for ridding the community of the ACM by November of this year.

“We’re working now on the global strategic plans in place to address it,” he said. “More areas sort of came to light. We had the 106 area, more pipes were found on the island and so my goal, my deadline is sometime in November, maybe around the end of November we will have that plan presented to council.”

Diabo said he would like to finalize the plan for disposing of the ACM over the winter and be ready to go when the snow melts in 2022.

“Then we can take the winter to really work out the schematics and be ready for next Spring,” he said.

Marc Lalonde, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Iori:wase

Documents Suggest Catholic Church Hasn’t Followed Through On ‘In-Kind’ Commitments

(ANNews) – The Catholic Church appears to have not followed through on its legal commitment to provide $25 million in “in-kind services” to residential school survivors, according to documents obtained by the Globe and Mail.

The documents contain an “in-kind log” of services provided by Catholic entities, which were mandated under a national settlement reached by Indigenous groups, residential school survivors, the federal government and religious groups in 2006.

The log was last updated in September 2011 and includes training for pastors, unspecified “community work,” outreach services and a bible studies program. The documents don’t indicate whether these services were provided specifically for Indigenous people, nor whether the church would have already provided them without a settlement.

Out of 192 log entries, nearly half list “community work and presence” of a pastor or nun.

Other entries include the participation of a bishop and two priests in a healing pilgrimage, participation in a conference, and support for a pilgrimage to the Vatican.

“It’s just completely against the spirit of the settlement agreement, which was supposed to be about reconciliation,” Aideen Nabigon, former director general of policy and partnerships for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, told the Globe.

Mike DeGagné, former executive director of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, told the Globe that the content of these documents warrant a full review of past Church obligations.

“I certainly support drilling down on these activities to see what was a genuine attempt to provide healing services and what would ordinarily be an activity of the Catholic Church,” he said.

The documents were obtained via an access to information request the Globe made on Aug. 24, requesting the Department of Justice’s dealings with the Catholic Church under the residential schools settlement, including a copy of both the in-kind services list and the cash commitment list.

The in-kind services list was a point of contention in a 2014 Saskatchewan court case between the federal government and the organization established to administer the Church’s portion of their residential schools settlement.

Under this agreement, a group of dozens of Catholic Church entities agreed to make three forms of payments — $25 million in in-kind services meant to enhance healing and reconciliation efforts, $29 million in cash, and a $25-million national fundraising campaign to benefit survivors. The fundraising campaign ultimately collected $3.7 million.

The feds raised questions about the church’s accounting practices in a factum filed with the court.

However, the case was settled in 2015 and the Church was released from any remaining obligations from the settlement agreements, including questions about the nature of its in-kind services.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a law professor and academic director of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia, told the Globe there needs to be a thorough review of how the settlements obligations were established, how they were carried out and accounted for, and why the government released the Church from its obligations.

“What did survivors get?” Turpel-Lafond asked about the in-kind services. “What did the communities get? Did they get records? Did they get the services they wanted? Did they get acknowledgments and apologies and reconciliation activities related to residential schools? That’s a hard question.”

Jeremy Appel, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Alberta Native News

Federal Court backs ruling that Canada must compensate indigenous foster children for discrimination

By Moira Warburton and Anna Mehler Paperny

(Reuters) -Canada's Federal Court on Wednesday upheld a human rights tribunal ruling ordering the Canadian government to compensate indigenous children and families in foster care for suffering discrimination.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2016 that the federal government allocated less funds for child and family services of indigenous people than for non-indigenous people, pushing more indigenous children into foster care.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government appealed the tribunal's follow-up order in 2019 that Ottawa pay each affected child C$40,000 ($31,500), the maximum allowed under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The tribunal also said that with some exceptions, parents or grandparents of the children would also be eligible for compensation.

The tribunal's ruling could cost the federal government billions of dollars.

Federal Court Justice Paul Favel rejected the government's appeal and encouraged the two parties to continue negotiating.

"The parties must decide whether they will continue to sit beside the trail or move forward in this spirit of reconciliation," Favel wrote, referring to an indigenous parable about a man who sits beside a trail for so long that it grows over and he loses his way.

Trudeau's government could appeal the court's decision. His government has argued in the past that although the human rights tribunal was correct in finding discrimination in the system, it overreached by ordering compensation.

The government is reviewing the decision and more information "will be forthcoming," Marc Miller, minister for indigenous services, said in an emailed statement.

"Canada remains committed to compensating First Nations children who were removed from their families and communities," he added.

Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society that brought the original complaint, said the ruling was "a complete rejection of all the government’s spurious arguments, and a complete win for kids."

The Canadian government's legal battles with indigenous people have come under increased scrutiny after hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered at the sites of former residential schools.

Until as recently as 1996, Canada's residential school system separated children from their families and sent them to boarding schools where they were malnourished, beaten and sexually abused in what the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission called "cultural genocide" in 2015.

($1 = 1.27 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Richard Pullin and Peter Cooney)

'Put down your sword': Federal Court dismisses feds' Indigenous child-welfare appeals

OTTAWA — A prominent child-welfare advocate wants Canadians to ask their MPs to urge Ottawa to cease its court battles around services and compensation for First Nations children after the Federal Court upheld two key rulings on Wednesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal had earlier ruled Ottawa had "wilfully" and "recklessly" discriminated against Indigenous children by knowingly underfunding child and family services on reserve.

In September 2019, it ordered the federal government to pay $40,000, the maximum the tribunal can award, to each First Nations child removed from their home after 2006, as well as to their parents, because of the discrimination.

It was estimated that around 54,000 children and their parents could be eligible to receive compensation, which would likely cost the federal government more than $2 billion.

The second legal battle stems from a separate ruling in 2020 that expanded the scope of Jordan's Principle, which is a rule stating when there is jurisdictional disagreement over what level of government should provide a service to First Nations children, Ottawa takes on the responsibility and worries about the costs second.

The tribunal ruled the principle should apply to children who are members of a First Nation even though they don't have status under the Indian Act as well as kids whose parents are eligible for status when they are not.

"No one can seriously doubt that First Nations people are amongst the most disadvantaged and marginalized members of Canadian society," Federal Court Justice Paul Favel wrote in his decision released Wednesday.

"The Tribunal was aware of this and reasonably attempted to remedy the discrimination while being attentive to the very different positions of the parties."

Favel found that the government failed to establish that either of the tribunal's decisions were unreasonable.

"In my view, the procedural history of this case has demonstrated that there is, and has been, good will resulting in significant movements toward remedying this unprecedented discrimination. However, the good work of the parties is unfinished," Favel wrote.

"The parties must decide whether they will continue to sit beside the trail or move forward in this spirit of reconciliation."

Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, which is one of the parties fighting for Indigenous children to be compensated, said the judicial reviews Ottawa launched took direct aim at central calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada regarding child welfare and Jordan's Principle.

"This is the moment for Canadians, with the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation tomorrow and knowing that these are some of the top calls to action, to get ahold of their elected officials and say, 'put down your sword.'"

"They have been fighting this case against First Nations kids to get equitable services and their families to get help to recover from the residential school trauma for now 14-and-a-half years … the Canadian people are now at a place where they want to see the TRC calls to action realized."

The parties have 30 days to appeal Favel's ruling.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said the government is reviewing the Federal Court’s decision.

"Canada remains committed to compensating First Nations children who were removed from their families and communities and to continue implementing significant reform of the First Nation Child and Family Services Program, recognizing that class actions have been filed, including by the Assembly of First Nations and Moushoom," Miller said in an emailed statement.

Miller said that Jordan’s Principle continues to ensure that First Nations children can access the products, services and supports they need when they need them.

He said the government continues to work with Indigenous governing bodies to implement an Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families, under which First Nations are enabled to exercise their jurisdiction in relation to child and family services and make decisions in the best interest of their children.

"These are important steps in redressing the intergenerational impacts of colonization."

Blackstock said the work has been done to set up a system to provide payments to First Nations children and their families who are eligible to be compensated.

"We're ready, as soon as the federal government puts down its sword and stops fighting these kids," she said.

Opposition parties and Indigenous leaders have criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to fight both of these rulings, saying that's not the appropriate course of action for a government committed to reconciliation.

“Today was an absolute victory for First Nation children. For six years Justin Trudeau spent millions fighting the rights of Indigenous children and trying to overturn a ruling that found his government guilty of 'wilful and reckless' discrimination against vulnerable Indigenous kids. The court has thrown his case out," NDP MP Charlie Angus said in a statement Wednesday.

He called for the government to immediately end its legal battle in the matter and focus on closing funding gaps and chronic denial of services to First Nations children.

"Given that tomorrow is the first-ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, it is imperative that the federal government finally take clear steps towards truth, justice and reconciliation for all Indigenous people in Canada," he wrote.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2021.

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

Truth and Reconciliation Day personal for new governor general, Mary May Simon 


OTTAWA — Governor General Mary May Simon has some very personal reflections on the eve of Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

As the daughter of a white father and Inuk mother, May Simon says in a statement that she was not made to attend a residential school.

She stayed behind and was home-schooled while other children were ripped away from their homes, separated from their families and sent to residential schools where they were not allowed to speak an Indigenous language or honour their culture.

May Simon, who was born in an Inuit village in northern Quebec, recalls visiting families where the absence of children was a "palpable void."

She says she became a "stand-in, a well-loved substitute" for parents who desperately missed their own children.

Residential school survivors told their stories at a ceremony Wednesday night on Parliament Hill ahead of the inaugural Truth and Reconciliation Day.

The Peace Tower was illuminated in orange and the survivor flag was raised at half-mast in honour of residential school survivors.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he applauds the courage of survivors and acknowledged that it cannot be easy for them to tell their stories.

Canada is seen as a peace-loving place that respects the rights of people, but it is also a country that has made "huge and terrible mistakes," Trudeau said.

"It's harder to reflect on the truth, of the mistakes, of the evil that we did in the past."

Reconciliation simply doesn't mean looking back and understanding the mistakes made in the past but note that they are shaping the country even today, he said. The challenges facing First Nations such as injustice, inequality, discrimination and racism can be traced back to the decisions made generations and decades ago, he added.

Truth and Reconciliation Day is not just for Indigenous people but for all Canadians because everyone needs to learn from the choices and actions made in the past, Trudeau said.

"And all of you as you go about your daily lives, take a moment to listen to the stories of a survivor, to an Indigenous elder who shares their perspective, their experiences in this country," he said.

"And know that that story, their story, is your story as well."

Truth and Reconciliation Day is intended to honour the lost children and survivors of residential schools, 140 of which operated across the country from 1831 to 1998.

Some 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend the church-run schools, where many suffered physical and sexual abuse, malnutrition and neglect. More than 4,000 are believed to have died.

"We all felt it. The sorrow of missing a part of our community," May Simon said.

"The legacy of colonization has had devastating repercussions for Indigenous peoples, including the loss of language, culture and heritage. This pain has been felt from generation to generation, and it continues today.

"These are uncomfortable truths, and often hard to accept. But the truth also unites us as a nation, brings us together to dispel anger and despair, and embrace justice, harmony and trust instead."

In June, Parliament fast-tracked a bill making Sept. 30 a statutory annual holiday for federal workers.

The bill was passed shortly after the tragic discovery of what are believed to be the remains of 215 Indigenous children in unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Since then, unmarked graves have been discovered at several other former residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, while other former school sites are still being explored with ground-penetrating radar.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2021.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

Profiting off pain? Why you should verify your orange shirt is helping Indigenous groups

By Simon Little & John Hua Global News
Posted September 29, 2021 

Orange Shirt Day organizers are asking you to avoid wearing clothing that exploits Indigenous artists. John Hau explains.

With thousands of Canadians expected to don orange shirts Thursday to mark Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous designers are asking people to be cautious about where they get the apparel.

The new federal statutory holiday falls on Sept. 30, a date that has served as Orange Shirt Day for close to a decade.

In that time, orange shirts have become a symbol of recognition of the harms caused by the residential school system and support for survivors, and Indigenous groups have been using unique designs to help raise funds to further the cause of reconciliation.

But orange shirts have also been popping up in various online stores, sometimes with the designs stolen outright, by people apparently looking to profit off the movement.

READ MORE: Warning issued about scams capitalizing on tragedies impacting Indigenous Peoples

“It’s very maddening and frustrating to say the least, to see businesses who aren’t Indigenous owned or operated make a profit off the cause,” Langley-based Indigenous artist and orange shirt designer Tina Taphouse told Global News.

“It’s important for people to buy orange shirts that are sold by Indigenous organizations … or to search around for an indigenous artists who makes them themselves because all First Nations have been affected by residential school, whether we attended, our parents grandparents or ancestors.

“Each is made with honour and respect towards them.”

0:52Supporting indigenous makers on Orange Shirt Day

Taphouse’s mother put her up for adoption to keep her out of the Kamloops residential school, a facility most of her relatives attended — a fact she says remains front of mind while she’s producing every shirt.

A third of the proceeds from every shirt she sells goes to the Indian Residential Schools Survivor Society.

Meeting and speaking with the people who buy the shirts is also important part of the reconciliation process, she added.

“What I love is I get to have a conversation with each of them about me, and a lot of times people will apologize to me, they have tears, we share some time together,” she said.

“That’s what I find amazing about this, is to be able to have conversations.”

The Better Business Bureau has previously issued a warning about scammers looking to cash in on orange shirts, some of which even fraudulently claim money is going to survivor groups. The BBB advises people to make sure they research the seller before committing to buy anything.

4:22 Creator of Orange Shirt Day on raising awareness for National Truth and Reconciliation Day – Sep 16, 2021

Jerome Beauchamp, president of the Orange Shirt Society, said the idea of well-intentioned dollars being directed away from Indigenous groups was “frustrating” and “upsetting.”

“This isn’t short-term work. There’s a long road ahead and the funding really helps a lot,” he said.

Beauchamp said those resources have allowed Indigenous communities and groups like his to support residential school survivors and do difficult work towards reconciliation.

READ MORE: Canada set to mark 1st National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Here’s what’s happening

“If you’re just making a shirt and selling it for profit, you’re not involved in any of that, and that’s the big piece for us,” he said.

“If people are making shirts and selling them and using the proceeds for furthering reconciliation, that’s a good thing because they’ve made a bigger impact than just having people wearing shirts.”

Beauchamp encourages anyone buying an orange shirt to ask the seller where the money is going, or to check on the Orange Shirt Day website for a list of verified partners.