USA
500,000 people have signed a petition supporting nurses' demands for safer working conditions. Meet the nurses leading the charge.

insider@insider.com (Allana Akhtar) -

© Provided by Business Inside

rNurses Abby Donley and Blake Lynch launched a petition calling for better working conditions for healthcare workers. Their petition is the fourth most-signed on Change.org in the last 12 months. Abby Donley and Blake Lynch

500,000 people signed a petition demanding better working conditions for nurses.
The petition launched by Nurses Abby Donley and Blake Lynch is Change.org's 4th largest in the last year.
Donley and Lynch said the aim to raise awareness about why nurses need to work with fewer patients.

Abby Donley, an intensive care nurse based in New York, believes she has post-traumatic stress disorder from the first COVID-19 wave in March 2020.

"The whole ICU was full of my patients," said Donley, who left hospital work in 2021 after 13 years as an ICU nurse. "To see all of your patients...paralyzed, sedated on a ventilator, and ultimately expired, it was pretty traumatic for me."

Donley said her hospital was over capacity due to the influx of coronavirus patients, and she felt that she couldn't give her patients the care they needed because she was stretched too thin due to understaffing. If hospital nurses don't have enough time with patients, Donley explained, they cannot adequately preform their job duties.

California is currently the only state that sets nurse-to-patient ratios in hospitals, often referred to as "safe-staffing ratios" that limit the number of daily patients a nurse can adequately treat at one time. ICU nurses in California, for example, can care for just two patients at once.

In an effort to make working conditions better for her peers, Donley, cofounder of the non-profit IMPACT in Healthcare, and fellow nurse Blake Lynch, who worked in hospitals for 8 years, launched a petition calling for hospitals to ensure nurses work with a safe level of patients at once.

At more than 500,000 signatures, Donley and Lynch's safe-staffing petition is currently the fourth-most-signed campaign on Change.org over the last 12 months, a company spokesperson told Insider. The petition ranks in the top 10 largest healthcare campaigns of all-time.

"This is one of several petitions started by nurses on Change.org during the pandemic that have seen remarkable signature growth," Change.org campaign director Alex Rapson said in an email to Insider. "Nurses are proving time and again that they are leaders in social change."
Nurses say without immediate change, they will reach a breaking point

Donley and Lynch said short-staffing was worsening before the pandemic. Healthcare worker burnout reached record levels the year before COVID-19 hit.

Keeping the number of patients assigned to a nurse low both saves lives and decreases hospital expenses, according to data from Australia, which began regulating nurse-to-patient ratios in 2016. Since the laws went into effect, researchers found that 145 patients deaths were avoided and hospitals saved anywhere between $54 to $81 million as fewer people needed to be re-admitted.

The pandemic magnified hospital staffing problems, prompting 1 in 5 healthcare workers to quit during the pandemic, with many citing burnout as their reason for leaving.

Lynch worked in a hospital setting until 2019, when he transitioned to making videos about nursing for his roughly 3.5 million followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Lynch said he wants to help the public and other healthcare workers better understand how nurse-to-patient ratios impact care.

"We want to point out that nurses aren't being treated with respect or dignity when they've gone through the hardest time in their profession the past two years with," he said. "It's just getting worse and worse."

Lynch and Donley are calling for better oversight of hospitals to ensure workplaces enforce safe-staffing policies. The two nurses want the Joint Commission, a non-profit that accredits hospitals and makes sure they are complying with nationwide safety standards, to require hospitals limit the number of patients per nurse. The Joint Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

"I have four patients in the ICU — I should only have two paralyzed, intubated, or sedated COVID patients that need a lot of care — and I come home and I feel like I harmed those patients because the bare minimum is all they got," Donley said. "That's not nursing."

Supreme Court of Canada considers if mandatory listing on sex registry is constitutional

The fallout from a 2011 Edmonton sexual assault case has come before the Supreme Court of Canada.


© Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The Supreme Court of Canada held a virtual hearing Tuesday morning to consider the sentencing of an Edmonton sex offender.

Janice Johnston - 

cbc.ca

Tuesday

The country's top court has been asked to consider striking down two sections of Canada's sex offender laws as unconstitutional.

In 2011, the Stephen Harper's CONSERVATIVE government altered the Criminal Code so the names of sex offenders would automatically be placed on the sex offender registry.

The changes meant judges no longer had discretion on whether to submit names of sex offenders to the registry. It also mandated that anyone convicted of two sex offences or more would automatically be placed on the registry for life.

On Tuesday morning, appearing virtually in the Supreme Court, Edmonton defence lawyer Elvis Iginla asked the justices to replace mandatory placement with judicial discretion.

Iginla represents Eugen Ndhlovu who pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault in 2015. He admitted that in 2011, when he was 19 years old, he sexually assaulted two women at a house party.

Ndhlovu was sentenced in provincial court to six months in jail followed by probation for three years.

Ndhlovu had no prior criminal record and was deemed a low risk to reoffend but, because he was convicted on more than one count of sex assault, his name was automatically added to the registry for life.

Ndhlovu filed an appeal with the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta, arguing his charter rights had been violated.

The Court of Queen's Bench judge agreed. Justice Andrea Moen struck down the 2011 legislative changes, meaning that sex offenders in Alberta convicted of two or more offences would no longer be automatically placed on the list.

"In my view, the mandatory registration for all sex offenders upon conviction of two or more offences, without regard to the seriousness of the offences or the offender's propensity to reoffend, is overbroad," Moen wrote.

The case advanced to the Alberta Court of Appeal, where there was a split decision. Two of three judges ruled automatically adding the names of sex offenders to a national registry for life does not violate the offender's charter rights.

The third justice dissented, ultimately leading to Tuesday's hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Crown argues for status quo

Alberta Crown prosecutor Jason Russell argued in favour of maintaining the current legislation.

"The objective is to formulate a comprehensive database for law enforcement," Russell said. "We just don't have the tools to say which offender is going to re-offend."

Russell compared automatic listing on the registry to mandatory DNA orders for certain designated offences.

He acknowledged there's a modest impact on the offender's privacy rights, but argued that for most offenders the information remains unused in a highly secured database unless they are suspected of re-offending.

The subject of judicial discretion led to some spirited debate between the judges and lawyers.

"Let's cut to the chase," Justice Malcolm Rowe said to Russell. "The parliament of the day said, 'We don't like judges exercising their discretion. We want to make this an iron rule with no exceptions. It's plain on its face. We don't care what the circumstances are.'

"And you're saying that's perfectly fine."

Russell agreed.

The court also heard from interveners representing attorneys general for Canada and three provinces.

Five additional interveners representing criminal lawyers associations, civil liberties groups and the Ontario HIV Legal Network filed factums in support of Iginla's appeal.

Iginla said he thought that overall the hearing went well.

"They knew what the issues were," Iginla told CBC News following the hearing. "They asked some very tough questions.

"Anytime you appear before an appellate court, all you can really hope for is that they listen to you … and the point you're trying to make.

"So I couldn't have asked for more."

The court has reserved its decision.

NUCLEAR WASTE

CNL seeks support for disposal facility

Pembroke – It is a crucial year for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) with the pending hearings on the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) and President and CEO Joe McBrearty is hoping all municipalities in the county will lend a voice of support for this massive clean-up effort.

“It enhances the protection of the river and the environment,” he told Renfrew County council recently. “The material is already there. It is in our 40-year-old buildings. It is in our soils.”

He was at council not only asking for support, but delivering an update on the facility, including informing council of the innovative cancer therapy studies currently underway there. CNL is at a pivotal point now, dealing not only with waste from seven decades of research and work, but also rehabilitation as it looks forward to continuing research.

“Our primary mission is environmental restoration of legacy stuff that was a result of 70 years of incredible effort at the Chalk River campus, which has benefited the entire world,” he said.

CNL plays an important role in the county with around 2,800 employees, mostly in the Chalk River/Deep River and Pembroke and Petawawa areas. He said the economic impact is spread throughout the county.

The priorities for CNL – outlined in Vision 2030 – are to restore and protect the environment, provide clean energy for today and tomorrow and improve the health of Canadians. This is done through conducting the largest and most complex remediation in Canada, spanning three provinces, as well as supporting the CANDU and LWR industry, and additionally being involved in SMR/vSMR (Small Modular Reactors) demonstration, advanced fuels and materials and hydrogen sciences. He pointed out in the last five years 100 structures on site have been taken down with the land being remediated.

“It reduces risk to our public. It reduces risk to our workforce,” he said. “It reduces risk to our precious environment.”

The current nuclear remediation process is the most complex in Canada, he added.

“It takes awhile because we have to do it in a very painstaking manner to protect our workforce and protect our environment,” he said.

The “heart and soul” of CNL has been isotope production and this continues with work on a new isotope which targets cancer tumours with very little impact on other cells, he said. The Ac-225 radioisotope program is a very exciting development in fighting cancer, he said. The Actinium 225 is attached to a targeting molecule and when the isotope decays, it emits high energy alpha particles. Those particles kill the cancer cell, leaving nearby healthy cells unharmed. He said this is being considered as a potential treatment for a number of cancers, including prostrate, pancreatic and bladder cancer, as well as leukemia.

“If we can save even one life through our research here, that is incredibly important,” he said.

The need for this material is expected to increase by 100 to 300 times in the next 10 years.

“We believe we can be at the forefront of this,” he added, noting this is a project for the next two decades and more.

The vision is for a new facility housing a cyclotron particle accelerator co-located with a pharmaceutical grade isotope processing capability. This will not only save lives in Canada but put Canada in the forefront as a global provider of a rare medical isotope. It will also generate high tech employment opportunities.

Meggan Vickerd, the general manager of waste management, spoke about the NSDF, noting CNL is viewing this as a key element.

“The NSDF is key to improving the state of our waste storage,” she said.

The waste has been onsite for decades and this is dealing with that waste, she stressed.

“The proposed NSDF will protect the public and the environment in every stage of the facility,” she said.

Having this facility demonstrates waste is no longer a problem and clears the way for future research, she added. It also enhances the protection of the Ottawa River, she said.

This year is important in the hearings for the facility. She noted any interventions to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission must be submitted by April 11. As a result, CNL will be reaching out to the municipalities in the county looking for support. The preference is for in-person recommendations.

“We are hoping for positive interventions from all our communities,” she said.

The hearing is scheduled for late May and will be held in Renfrew County.

Municipal Support

Warden Debbie Robinson said it is not only important for the county to speak out in favour of the NSDF, but also municipalities.

“We need more than one voice from the county supporting CNL,” she said. “We need 18 voices. The county and the municipalities.”

The warden said the request for support will go to the Development and Property Committee for a recommendation and come back to council.

Laurentian Hills Mayor Jed Reinwald said he has been involved in the nuclear industry for about 35 years. Recently a lot of work has been done at the local site, he added.

“I see the improvements that have been made there in the last 10 to12 years,” he said.

Mayor Reinwald said he will be in support of the NSDF.

“Our council is very much behind it,” he remarked.

Mayor Michael Donohue of Admaston/Bromley said the role of nuclear remains very important.

“I cannot see there is any path addressing climate change moving forward without nuclear energy being a part of that,” he said.

The fact most of the material being disposed of at the NSDF is already on site at Chalk River is not widely known and should be, he said.

“By in large the waste is generally what has been generated on site,” he said.

If this waste is not entombed then it will have to be moved off site through the highway elsewhere, he noted.

Renfrew Reeve Peter Emon pointed out when the Go-Co (Government Owned Contractor Operated) model was first presented to the County of Renfrew a decade ago there was much unknown and there was a desire for more information on how this would work and the impact locally.

“Our asks at the time were engagement and information, which we are getting,” he said.

The importance of CNL (AECL at the time) and the need for a future vision for the facility were key to a desire to see the site flourish, he said. Since then, CNL has kept the county informed and there has been a lot of engagement locally, he said.

“We know we have to give back to Canadian taxpayers,” Mr. McBrearty noted.

Debbi Christinck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eganville Leader

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPTIALI$M

A sign of ransomware growth: Gangs now arbitrate disputes


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Cyber criminal gangs are getting increasingly adept at hacking and becoming more professional, even setting up an arbitration system to resolve payment disputes among themselves, according to a new report by the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom that paints a bleak picture of ransomware trends.

Ransomware gangs, which hack targets and hold their data hostage through encryption, caused widespread havoc last year with high-profile attacks on the world’s largest meat-packing company, the biggest U.S. fuel pipeline and other targets. Western governments have pledged to crack down on the cyber criminals, who operate largely in and around Russia, but have little to show in the way of progress.

The new report on 2021 ransomware trends highlights the growing maturity and specialization of the ransomware market, with independent operators filling a lucrative niche market. Specialists now range from the hackers who can break into networks or develop ransomware to the nontechnical operators who negotiate payments with victims. The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre said it's seen some ransomware gangs offer a 24/7 help center to victims to expedite ransom payments and restore encrypted data.

There's even money to be made by arbitrators who can settle payment disputes among the various ransomware criminals, according to the report.

“The criminal marketplace is incredibly, incredibly efficient and constantly evolving," said John Hultquist, vice president of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. "The fact that they can operate like this, it’s evidence of our failure to get a good grip on this problem.”

The report also describes the growing technical skills of ransomware gangs, which have been able to target cloud infrastructure — often touted as a safer alternative to storing data locally — and developed code to stop industrial processes. U.S. authorities said they'd seen ransomware attacks involving 14 out of 16 designated critical infrastructure sectors, including the defense industrial base, agriculture and information technology sectors.

“When critical infrastructure is held at risk by foreign hackers operating from a safe haven in an adversary country, that’s a national security problem,” National Security Agency Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce said in a statement, adding that addressing ransomware is a “significant focus” of the NSA.

The joint report was issued Wednesday by the FBI, the NSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the U.S. as well as the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

The report said that after major highly disruptive hacks on the Colonial Pipeline in the U.S. in May and on Brazilian meat processor JBS SA in June, "ransomware groups suffered disruptions from U.S. authorities in mid-2021" and have targeted midsize victims to reduce scrutiny.

But the UK and Australian authorities said they'd not seen any similar trend in their countries. Kaspersky Labs reported in December that ransomware-related incidents in 2021 accounted for 47% of its global response, up from 38% the previous year. In the U.S., however, targeted ransomware attacks that its intelligence network detected were down 33% in 2021 compared with the previous years. That compares with a 30% rise globally.

In the past month, ransomware victims have included operators of maritime fuel depots in Belgium and Germany and media outlets in Portugal. A cyberattack on the wireless provider Vodafone in Portugal this week had all the hallmarks of ransomware, though the company's CEO for Portugal said it received no ransomware demand.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.

Alan Suderman, The Associated Press

SEC Chair Gary Gensler wants to know more about what hedge funds and private equity are doing

Bob Pisani - Yesterday CNBC

SEC Chair Gary Gensler is pushing forward with key measures focused on hedge funds and private equity.

There are more than 50 proposed rules that Gensler is considering this spring, one of the largest regulatory pushes by the SEC in decades.

The agency also wants more disclosure from companies regarding cybersecurity risks and attacks.


© Provided by CNBC

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, July 30, 2013.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has kicked off an ambitious regulatory agenda — and his agency is pushing forward with key measures focused on hedge funds and private equity.

The federal agency is meeting on Wednesday to consider three new rules: more disclosure from hedge funds and private equity funds, more disclosure regarding cybersecurity risks and attacks, and shortening the date on which stock transactions must be settled, a fallout from the GameStop saga.

There are more than 50 proposed rules that Gensler is considering this spring, one of the largest regulatory pushes by the SEC in decades.
More disclosure from hedge funds and private equity funds

Gensler wants more disclosure from private funds (hedge funds and private equity funds). In a speech in November, he noted that private funds (mainly private equity and hedge funds) had gross assets under management of $17 trillion and that many of the investors were state government pension plans, nonprofits and university endowments. As a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, many private fund advisors were required to register with the SEC and to report information about their holdings through a so-called Form PF filing.

Gensler has said he wants to "freshen up" that Form PF filing and require additional disclosures, saying more information on what private funds are doing was critical to the SEC's role of protecting investors. For example, he wants funds that have had "significant stress" (i.e., big losses) to report what has happened within one business day.

The proposal also would decrease the reporting threshold for large private equity advisors from $2 billion to $1.5 billion in private equity fund assets under management

Gensler also wants more transparency around fees and expenses. He has noted that there has been little change in private fund expenses even as mutual fund and ETF costs have come down significantly, and that the average private equity fees were estimated to be 1.76% in annual management costs and 20.3% in performance fees in 2018 and 2019.

The SEC chair wants a quarterly statement to investors with a detailed accounting of all fees and expenses paid by the private fund during the reporting period; he also wants investors to be provided information regarding the private fund's performance. Such information would not be available to the public.

The gist of this is that the changes would help to shine more light on fund performance and on whether private funds really do outperform public funds when all expenses are considered.

The proposal would also require an audit at least annually to check on private fund advisors' valuation of the fund's assets.

Cybersecurity risk management

The SEC also wants more disclosure from companies regarding cybersecurity risks and attacks. Proposed changes would require advisors and funds to adopt written policies that are "reasonably" designed to address cybersecurity risks. They must also report significant cybersecurity incidents and maintain cybersecurity-related books and records.

The regulatory agency has said for years that significant cybersecurity incidents need to be disclosed, but it is getting more aggressive enforcing that requirement. Separately, the SEC has signaled it will also go after companies that are misleading investors about the extent of cybersecurity breaches.

In 2021, for example, British publishing company Pearson PLC paid a $1 million fine to settle charges that it misled investors after a 2018 breach, in which millions of student records were stolen. Real estate services company First American Financial Corp. also paid a nearly $500,000 penalty for lack of disclosure after a vulnerability in its system exposed Social Security numbers and financial information.
Shortening the settlement-transaction date

Reducing the time between the execution of a trade and its settlement reduces risk. In 2017, the SEC shortened the date on which stock transactions must be settled from three business days after the trade date — known as T+3 — to two business days, or T+2.

The SEC is now considering shortening the settlement cycle further, to one business day, or T+1.

This became an issue during the GameStop saga in January 2021, when wild price swings in that stock caused clearinghouse deposit requirements to skyrocket for Robinhood. The retail broker halted purchases of the stock, causing a huge controversy.

"It's time for T+2 to go," Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev tweeted shortly after that incident almost brought the company down.
The broad theme: more disclosure from everyone

Surveying the more than 50 rules that are currently proposed or being finalized by the SEC, Shane Swanson, senior analyst at Coalition Greenwich, expressed amazement at their breadth.

"This is an aggressive agenda from the SEC," he told me.

Swanson noted a common thread: "The broad theme is more disclosure and more reporting — it's driving across all these issues."

He also noted that part of the aggressive agenda — such as the focus on payment for order flow and shortening the settlement cycle — is a result of the GameStop controversy, and that it is understandable for Gensler to want to move on these issues while they are still fresh in the public mind.

"They have a lot of ideas that have been kicked around for a while, and in particular they want to act while there is focus on some of these issues [because of GameStop], like moving the settlement cycle," Swanson said.

"So there's a bit of 'let's make things happen' while they still have the public's attention," he added.

Despite pandemic, Canada's population grows at fastest rate in G7: census

Despite the pandemic, Canada remains the fastest-growing country in the G7, thanks in large part to immigration, according to 2021 census data released Wednesday.

© Andrew Lee/CBC

More than 27 million of Canada's 37 million people lived in one of 41 large urban centres, according to 2021 census data. Here, pedestrians cross a street in downtown Vancouver on Dec. 30, 2021.

Peter Zimonjic - CBC - Yesterday 

The newly released census numbers put Canada's population at 36,991,981 in the spring of last year, with close to 27.3 million Canadians living in one of Canada's 41 large urban centres.

There are approximately 1.8 million more people living in Canada than there were five years ago, a growth rate of 5.2 per cent between 2016 and 2021.

While Canada's population growth sits on top in the G7, it is ranked seventh in the G20, trailing Saudi Arabia, Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico, and is on par with India.

The newly released census population figure is a snapshot of Canada at a specific moment in time — in this case from May 2021. Statistics Canada also provides population estimates which differ from census data because of the way the estimates are calculated.

Other census highlights:

The Maritimes grew at a faster pace than the Prairie provinces for the first time since the 1940s.
For the first time since the 1986 census, more people moved to the Maritimes from other parts of Canada, 134,841, than moved away, 98,086.

The Yukon's population grew at the fastest pace nationally, with a growth rate of 12.1 per cent.
Newfoundland and Labrador was the only province to see its population decline from 2016 to 2021, falling by 1.8 per cent.

The province with the fastest growth rate was Prince Edward Island, which grew at a rate of eight per cent.

Despite the pandemic, Canada's population grew at almost twice the pace of other G7 countries from 2016 to 2021.

Immigration — not birth rate — was the driver in Canada's population growth from 2016 to 2021. It was also the main reason for a slowdown starting in 2020, as border restrictions were imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Pandemic impacts growth rate

While Canada's overall population growth rate from 2016 to 2021 — at 5.2 per cent — was greater than the five per cent growth seen over the previous five-year cycle, the pandemic had a significant impact.

Most of the population growth actually took place before the pandemic kicked off. In 2019, for example, the country's population grew by 583,000, or 1.6 per cent — a record high.

In 2020, however, with the introduction of global border and travel restrictions implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19, population growth from immigration declined to less than one-quarter of what it was the previous year.

Deaths from COVID-19 also had an impact on population growth in 2020, but only marginally.

The number of deaths recorded in 2020 stood at 307,000, which was about 22,000 more than the previous year. That increase, combined with the immigration decline, resulted in 2020 seeing the lowest annual rate of population growth since the First World War.

Immigration driving increases

Four-fifths of Canada's population growth from 2016 to 2021 was attributable to immigration, while only one-fifth of Canada's growth was due to natural increase, or the difference between the number of births and deaths.

That means the natural increase fell from a rate of 0.3 per cent in 2016, to just 0.1 per cent by 2021 — the lowest rate on record. Despite that decline, Statistics Canada said that unlike the G7 nations of Italy and Japan, where the natural increase has gone negative, Canada is expected to maintain a positive natural increase for the next 50 years.

Population counts by province and territory

The immigration story, however, is not the same for all provinces. At the time of the 2016 census, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba had the fastest growth rates, but five years later the story is very different.

While immigration rates in the other provinces increased significantly in the years leading up to the pandemic, they stayed almost the same in the Prairie provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba also saw more people move out of these provinces than move in from other parts of the country.

As a result Alberta, which had led provincial population growth for five consecutive census cycles, has fallen to sixth place, as it marked the first decline in interprovincial migration over a five-year period since the 1991 census.
Urban vs. rural growth rates

The number of Canadians living in rural areas in 2021 was 6,601,982, an increase of 0.4 per cent over 2016, but that growth rate was far below that of Canada's urban centres, which grew at a rate of 6.3 per cent.

The number of large urban areas, or census metropolitan centres (CMAs), with populations greater than 100,000 in 2021 was 41. That compares to just 35 at the time of the last census.

A CMA, according to Statistics Canada, is counted by counting one or more municipalities that are centered on a downtown core. To be considered a CMA, the large urban area must have a population of more than 100,000 with at least 50,000 people living in the downtown core.

Population growth across Canada

Of the six new CMAs, none were in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. Three were in B.C., including Kamloops, Chilliwack and Nanaimo. The others were Fredericton, Drummondville, Que., and Red Deer, Alta.

Resort areas such as Squamish, B.C., Canmore, Alta. and the Ontario towns of Wasaga Beach and Collingwood were among the fastest growing towns in Canada.

Toronto remains Canada's most populous CMA with 6,202,225 residents, with Montreal coming second at 4,291,732, followed by Vancouver with 2,642,825 people.

From 2016 to 2021, the CMAs fo Toronto and Montreal grew at the same pace of 4.6 per cent. Toronto's pace of growth, however, was slower compared to what was seen in the 2016 census, when Toronto grew at a rate of 6.2 per cent. Montreal, by comparison, grew slightly faster than the 4.2 per cent growth rate recorded in the last census.

While the growth of Canada's two largest CMAs was below the national average of 5.2 per cent, they received a record number of permanent or temporary immigrants compared to previous years.

The three other Canadian CMAs with a population over one million in 2021 are: Ottawa–Gatineau at 1,488,307, marking a rise to fourth place again after temporarily losing that title in 2016 to Calgary; Calgary, which now has a population of 1,481,806; and Edmonton, with a population of 1,418,118.

US Fed denies release of correspondence on pandemic trades made by policymakers

By Howard Schneider

(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by Reuters, said there are about 60 pages of correspondence between its ethics officials and policymakers regarding financial transactions conducted during the pandemic year 2020.

But it "denied in full” to release the documents, citing exemptions under the information act that it said applied in this case.

The disclosure of trading by two regional reserve bank presidents during the pandemic led them to resign last fall, and prompted Fed chair Jerome Powell to overhaul Fed ethics rules and request the central bank's inspector general to investigate.

The FOIA responses to Reuters for the first time quantify how much back and forth may have occurred over policymakers’ personal trading in a year when markets first cratered, then rebounded on the basis of both massive federal fiscal stimulus and an aggressive rescue effort by the Fed.

Reuters requested release under the information act of any 2020 communication "regarding the propriety of individual financial transactions" exchanged between the Fed's general counsel or ethics staff and members of the Board of Governors, then Dallas Fed president Robert Kaplan, or then Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren.

Fed FOIA officer and deputy board secretary Margaret McCloskey Shanks responded to Reuters that staff had identified "approximately 47 pages of information" involving Fed board members and around 13 pages involving either Kaplan or Rosengren. However release of the documents was denied.

"The responsive documents contain predecisional and deliberative information, as well as information that is subject to attorney-client privilege," she wrote. There was, she said, nothing in the documents that was "reasonably segregable" and not exempt from release under FOIA.

Demands for more disclosure from the Fed about the ethics controversy has been widespread, with public interest groups and elected officials including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, calling on the central bank to release more details about policymakers' stock trading and the guidance or opinions provided to them by ethics officials.

Gunita Singh, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the FOIA exemption cited by the Fed is meant to "protect agency candor" so U.S. government staff and officials can discuss issues freely as decisions are being made.

The response from Shanks did not detail what current discussions or deliberations warranted withholding the information.

The inspectors general’s investigation of Fed trading during the pandemic is still underway. The Fed is also still finalizing the procedures and rules for the new ethics regulations adopted because of the controversy.

The Fed has released the substance of one email sent from its ethics office to policymakers at the height of the crisis. In late October, after a New York Times report, the Fed released a March 23, 2020, email from its ethics officer which noted that Fed rules were meant to avoid even the appearance that officials used their access to market moving information for personal profit.

Policymakers were advised to "consider observing a trading blackout and avoid making unnecessary securities transactions for at least the next several months," or until Fed meetings and decisions moved back to normal from the emergency footing of that spring.

The ethics scandal blindsided the Fed last fall after reports in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg about Kaplan's active trading in stocks during the pandemic and Rosengren's investment in real estate securities.

That activity was noted in the annual financial disclosure reports that Fed policymakers are required to file. Both officials initially responded that their trades complied with Fed ethics rules, but said they planned to divest nevertheless. They eventually resigned.

(Editing by Edward Tobin)

Census data suggests Alberta economy shifting but growth expected to stay strong

EDMONTON — Laid off twice from energy-related jobs, Calgary engineer Bill Copeland figured it was time to move with the times.

"(Energy) is what you know and what you're used to," said Copeland, who spent 15 years as an engineer and a sales rep. "It was a difficult decision."

Copeland made the call to learn how to adapt his considerable skill set to a new industry. Now a project manager at an IT company, he's moved on.

"I'm having fun. I'm learning something new every day."

It's a story playing out across Alberta, reflected in new census data from Statistics Canada that suggests the nation's one-time boomtown is starting to look a lot like its other provinces.

For years, Alberta enjoyed population growth that towered over the rest of the country's. Energy sector jobs and plenty of them — some offering six-figure paycheques with no university requirement — drew the young and ambitious from sea to sea to sea.

But the 2021 census shows the province has actually fallen behind the national average in growth. There are now 4,262,635 Albertans, 4.8 per cent more than in 2016. The Canadian growth rate was 5.2 per cent.

It's quite a switch. The 2016 census showed Alberta growing at the rate of 11.6 per cent — more than double the national rate.

Ten years ago, seven of Canada's eight fastest-growing census districts were in Alberta. This year, the situation is almost reversed — Alberta has seven of the 10 fastest-shrinking municipalities in the country.

For the first time in over 25 years, Calgary isn't among Canada's five fastest-growing cities.

Still, don't look for tumbleweeds blowing down the main streets of Wild Rose Country just yet. Analysts say Alberta is shifting to an economy that looks a lot more like the rest of Canada's, maybe even a little stronger.

"The source of growth and opportunity going forward will be very similar to what you see in other economies," said Trevor Tombe, a University of Calgary economist.

"The growth will be driven by services and increasingly tech. Alberta's economy is stronger than others, even though the pattern of its growth will approach what we see elsewhere."

Ten years ago, billions of dollars a year were pouring into the province's energy industry, especially the oilsands. Those mines and processing plants are now built.

"I don't think we have any prospect for those kind of unusual growth rates because they were driven in large part by investment in these incredibly expensive large oilsands facilities," said Tombe. "Most of that past growth was tied to investment flows that are very, very unlikely to return."

Oil production reached an all-time record last year. But jobs in the sector haven't entirely recovered and remain below their 2019 peak.

Albertans are adapting, said Brad Perry of Calgary's economic development office. In 2019, his organization began offering a seven-month program for oil and gas professionals to learn to use their skills in other sectors such as finance, clean energy or agriculture.

It's the program that helped Copeland switch careers.

Its first year saw 1,100 applications for 100 spots. About 70 per cent of its graduates got jobs in their new fields. This year, the Energy to Digital Growth Education and Upskilling Project has filled all of its 320 spaces.

"It's akin to your stock portfolio," Perry said. "Maybe we've over-indexed (in energy) a little bit and we need to let some of these other sectors start to get a little bit of sunshine."

Statistics Canada has noted an outflow of young people from the Alberta in recent years.

But the province's affordable housing market is expected to help attract and keep young people. Although prices have risen, they're nowhere near the 25-per-cent growth seen in some Ontario and British Columbia markets.

A recent study from the mortgage brokerage Edison Financial found Edmonton and Calgary had the second- and third-highest rates in the Canada of home ownership among people aged 20-39.

"Millennials are finding it very favourable to put in roots in the Edmonton area and start families and making this their home because it's more affordable than other places," said Paul Gravelle of the Realtors Association of Edmonton. "I think it's a pretty big factor."

Alberta will be OK, said Tombe.

"Alberta's economy is stronger than others, even though the pattern of its growth will approach what we see elsewhere. The growth rates will be slower than we've historically seen … (but) over the long term, Alberta remains poised to be the growth leader in Canada."

It took nerve to change careers, said Copeland.

"How do you do it?" he recalls asking himself. "There was definitely elements that were difficult, the uncertainty of moving to a new industry."

But it was worth it.

"I haven't looked back."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2022.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Rural population growth concentrated near urban centres, StatCan says


Kelly Rae, the administrator of Arran, Sask., says the denizens of dwindling rural communities like her own are clinging to a vanishing way of life in Canada.

Between 2011 and 2021, the village west of the Manitoba border saw its population slashed in half to just 20 people,Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday, as it released the first tranche of data from last year's census.

The share of Canadians living in rural areas has declined for the ninth census in a row, the agency said, dropping from 18.7 per cent in 2016 to 17.8 per cent in 2021.

However, the count showed that Canada's rural population grew faster than any other G7 country, ticking up 0.4 per cent over the five-year period to 6.6 million people in May 2021.

This rate trails behind the 6.3 per cent increase reported in urban areas. But analysts say that some of the metropolitan sprawl is spilling over into neighbouring rural outposts, while remote communities like Arran struggle to keep their remaining residents.

"It's just a disappearing village. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. We have nothing here," said Rae. "People just don't want to live in little municipalities anymore."

Rae said she's seen locals leave to be closer to schools, health-care providers and other services that have become clustered in urban centres such as Yorkton, Sask., about an hour-and-a-half drive southwest.

All that's left in Arran is the rural municipality's office and a bar that's rumoured to be up for sale, Rae said.

But maintaining roads and water systems costs just as much whether there are 50 or 10 taxpayers footing bill, said Rae.

The "million-dollar question" rural communities face is how to cover these routine infrastructure costs without making it more expensive for residents to stay, said Rae.

Rae said Arran has come up with a new approach to this problem: council is considering selling off lots to be turned into campsites where visitors can enjoy recreational activities such as hunting, fishing and snowmobiling.

"The problem in a lot of these disappearing communities is instead of thinking of other initiatives, they're stuck in thinking … 'We'll just raise taxes.' But if you raise taxes, you're going to chase your people away," she said.

"I think if (council) is successful, we'll be able to be solvent and keep our tiny village and our way of life."

Statistics Canada's definition of "rural" is an area with fewer than 1,000 people and a population density of fewer than 400 individual per square kilometre.

Laurent Martel, director of the centre of demography at Statistics Canada, said a wide variety of communities fall within these criteria.

"Very often people think that the rural areas of the country are homogeneous, but that's not the case at all," he said. "The population growth among these different types of rural areas are very different, one from the other."

Martel said the census showed that one of the key drivers of rural demographic change was geographic proximity to urban areas and the size of those population centres. Statistics Canada uses these factors to classify regions on an index of remoteness.

The agency found that the areas that were deemed least remote reported a growth rate of 5.9 per cent between 2016 and 2021, compared to a 2.7 per cent decline in the most remote areas.

Martel said rural areas near some of the country's largest urban centres have experienced accelerating growth since the last census.

For example, he said, several census divisions outside Montreal — including L’Assomption, Joliette, Marguerite-D'Youville, Mirabel and Roussillon — each saw greater population gains than the previous five-year average.

The census only captures the first year of the COVID-19 crisis, and data on the pandemic's demographic disruptions is still emerging, said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

But Norris said early evidence suggests the flexibility of remote work has made the allure of rural life that much more attractive to city-dwellers searching for affordable real estate and a slower pace of life.

"That's where you can have your cake and eat it," said Norris, who spent 30 years at Statistics Canada.

"You get out from the urban rush, but if you want to go to the theatre, you can still drive downtown in maybe an hour."

But in the far reaches of Canada, rural-to-urban migration, aging populations and lower rates of immigration have decimated many rural communities over the past two decades, and there are no signs of the drain slowing down, Norris said.

Ashleigh Weeden, a doctoral candidate in rural studies at the University of Guelph, cautioned against conflating rural development with urbanization, noting that both population growth and decline can strain communities.

A rapid influx of people may overwhelm existing infrastructure, she said, while shrinking populations deplete municipal resources to maintain it.

Weeden said the focus should be on investing in infrastructure to afford rural communities the same standard of living as their urban counterparts, including access to internet, roads, health care and education.

But rather than falling prey to the view of rural areas as leisurely havens for out-of-towners, Canada needs to empower communities to succeed on their own terms, she said.

"What's really needed is not to look at rural decline and urbanization as twin sides of some inevitable horrible coin," she said.

"What happens if we change this from things we're just doing to rural communities, and instead viewing it as: How do we support a rights-based lens for rural lives and livelihoods so your geography doesn't determine the quality of your life?"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Feb. 9, 2022.

— with files from Jordan Press in Ottawa

Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press

RIGHT WING TRUCKER CONVOY OPPOSES IMMIGRATION
Immigration — not fertility — driving Canada’s population growth

Immigration, not fertility, drove Canada’s population growth over the past five years, says a Statistics Canada study as Ottawa plans to announce its new 2022-2024 immigration intake levels plan.

“Although the pandemic halted Canada’s strong population growth in 2020, it continued to be the fastest among G7 countries,” said the study released on Wednesday.

The report’s authors said immigrants are far more likely to settle in an urban area rather than a rural setting. Consequently, rural Canada’s population has grown at a slower pace than urban centres.

Some of the key findings in today’s report that provides a portrait of Canada’s population growth include:

- Population growth accelerated in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia over the past five years when compared with the previous census cycle (from 2011 to 2016), while population growth slowed in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Population growth also accelerated in Canada’s three largest provinces of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia;

- British Columbia was the lone province in Western Canada that saw more people move into the province from elsewhere in Canada than move out from 2016 to 2021, with interprovincial migration gains (+97,424) reaching their highest level since 1991 to 1996;

- While Yukon (+12.1 per cent to 40,232) led the country in population growth, it was the sole territory that grew at a faster pace than Canada overall;

- Quebec, Canada’s second most populous province (8.5 million people), saw its share of the total population decline for the 11th consecutive census period;

- Population growth in large urban centres relies much more on immigration than other areas of Canada, with more than 9 in 10 new permanent immigrants settling in a metropolitan area. Over one-third of Canadians (13.1 million people) live Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver.

- Four of the five fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country were located in British Columbia from 2016 to 2021: Kelowna (+14.0 per cent to 222,162), Chilliwack (+12.1 per cent to 113,767), Nanaimo (+10.0 per cent to 115,459) and Kamloops (+10.0 per cent to 114,142).

- Several of the smaller urban centres known for being tourist destinations or resort cities also saw population increases. While being close to nature, these small urban centres are not among the most remote and are generally less than a one-hour drive from a large urban centre, meaning they are also close to the amenities of larger urban centres.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Sean Fraser is expected to announce Canada’s new 2022-2024 immigration intake levels plan by the end of the month, which will also outline the programs under which these newcomers will be admitted.

According to the latest government data, IRCC has an estimated 1.8 million applications in queue waiting to be processed because of pandemic-induced delays.

The Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA) is calling on Ottawa to stabilize the immigration system before seeking more ambitious newcomer targets.

“While using this year as an opportunity for IRCC to catch its breath would be far from ideal, it would be beneficial for several reasons,” said a statement on CILA’s website. “It would allow many of those who have been waiting in limbo during the pandemic to finally land as permanent residents.”

Fabian Dawson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media