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quebec
'The Pyrocene Is Well and Truly Here': Climate Crisis Made Eastern Canada's Fires 2 Times More Likely
Seasons like this one will only become more likely and intense if policymakers allow global temperatures to rise by 2°C above preindustrial levels.
Aug 23, 2023
The hot, dry conditions that fueled eastern Canada's unprecedented wildfire season were made at least two times more likely by the climate crisis, the latest study from World Weather Attribution has found.
The study, published Tuesday, also found that, by the end of July, Quebec's fire season was 50% more intense than it would have been without the human-generated release of greenhouse gas emissions.
"The Pyrocene is well and truly here, thanks to our continued burning of fossil fuels," study co-author and Imperial College London physicist Friederike Otto tweeted.
Canada's wildfire season has been the worst on the record books since late June, but the weather conditions that fueled it began the month before. The entire May to July period was the nation's warmest since 1940, according to World Weather Attribution (WWA). As of August 16, the Canadian government calculated that 5,753 fires had ignited to burn a total of 13.7 million hectares—that's 123% more fires and 602% more land burned than normal.
The fires have had a devastating impact on human communities, killing at least 17 people, damaging at least 200 buildings, and forcing more than 150,000 to flee their homes, WWA said in a statement.
"The wildfires had disproportionate impacts on Indigenous, fly-in, and other remote communities who were particularly vulnerable due to lack of services and barriers to response interventions," WWA wrote.
"Now we are able to put the number or an estimate on to what extent those conditions that we have seen this year are caused actually by climate change—and the numbers are very high."
The dangerous smoke from all this combustion has menaced the air quality in cities from Ottawa and Toronto to Washington, D.C. and New York City, where pollution neared a record June 7 with an air quality index of 341.
"The consequences from the wildfires reached far beyond the burned areas with displaced impacts due to air pollution threatening health, mobility, and economic activities of people across North America," WWA added.
For the study, the Canada-, U.K.- and Netherlands-based team looked specifically at the fires in eastern Canada, which were particularly abnormal and contributed the most to the smoke that drifted down over the U.S. East Coast and Midwest. They studied the daily severity rating, which defines how hard it is to put out a particular fire. To establish how extreme the season was at its peak, they also looked at the year's highest seven-day moving average of the fire weather index.
"Climate change made the cumulative severity of Quebec's 2023 fire season to the end of July around 50% more intense, and seasons of this severity at least seven times more likely to occur," the study authors concluded.
They also found that this peak fire weather was at least twice as likely and around 20% more intense.
Yan Boulanger, one of the study authors who works as a research scientist for Natural Resources Canada, told CBC News that the results were "shocking."
"We know that those extreme fire-prone weather conditions are occurring more frequently," he said. "Now we are able to put the number or an estimate on to what extent those conditions that we have seen this year are caused actually by climate change—and the numbers are very high."
The study authors also found that seasons like this one will only become more likely and intense if policymakers allow global temperatures to rise by 2°C above preindustrial levels.
"Until we stop burning fossil fuels, the number of wildfires will continue to increase, burning larger areas for longer periods of time," Otto told The Guardian.
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Quebec Premier Vows Health Tax for the Unvaxxed
"We heavily tax cigarettes and alcohol," said one Canadian doctor. "So makes sense."
Jan 12, 2022
As the Omicron-driven surge in coronavirus infections strains their nation's healthcare resources, Canadian progressives are balancing urgent public health concerns with respect for civil liberties after the province of Quebec said Tuesday that it would begin levying fines on residents who refuse Covid-19 vaccinations.
"I think the government has still not exhausted other alternatives that are more equitable and more fair."
CBC reports Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced that "adults who refuse to be vaccinated for non-medical reasons" will be hit with a "health contribution" of an indeterminate but significant amount--believed to be more than $50-$100--after the policy is set "in the coming weeks."
"These people, they put a very important burden on our health-care network," Legault said of the unvaccinated. "I think it's reasonable a majority of the population is asking that there be consequences."
The Canadian Medical Association responded to Legault's announcement by tweeting "the measures announced today in Quebec demonstrate how precarious the situation is. Get the vaccine. It is still the best tool we have in our arsenal."
Around 90% of Quebecers have received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccination.
There is, however, pushback against the punitive policy among civil libertarians in terms of the way such a penalty could impact divergent segments of those choosing to remain unvaccinated.
Universite de Montreal bioethics professor Vardit Ravitsky noted that a flat penalty--a regressive tax, in other words--"that targets all these groups the same... has a harder time respecting the principle of equity and justice compared to other measures the government could choose."
Unlike other parts of the world, like the 27-nation European Union, "we still have not implemented vaccine passports for all non-essential services," she told CBC.
Ravitsky addressed the equity issue during a Tuesday interview on CBC's "Politics & Power" program.
She said that "$100, $500, may not be a terrible price to pay for you or I, but for some families, it's a huge amount of money."
"It's not that I have issues with increasing the pressure on those who are not vaccinated by choice to go get the vaccine," Ravitsky clarified. " But I think the government has still not exhausted other alternatives that are more equitable and more fair."
Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association--which opposes the tax--says the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects individual bodily and medical autonomy.
"Allowing the government to levy fines on those who do not agree with the government's recommended medical treatment is a deeply troubling proposition," she told CBC, calling the tax "divisive and constitutionally vulnerable."
The new policy comes as coronavirus infections have thinned the ranks of Quebec's public health personnel, with CBC reporting some hospitals have canceled up to 80% of non-urgent and semi-urgent surgeries so that staff can care for Covid-19 patients.
Julius Grey, a Montreal-based constitutional and human rights attorney, told Global News that the proposed penalty could be contested in court.
"Discriminatory taxes can be challenged but I'm not sure that's what this is," he said. "What Premier Francois Legault is trying to do is make vaccination obligatory."
On one hand, the government could argue that the benefits of fighting the Covid-19 pandemic--which is threatening to overwhelm the healthcare system--outweigh concerns over the erosion of individual liberty.
"On the other hand," said Grey, "people would say this is very serious violation of the Charter. It touches your personal integrity, physical integrity, by doing things to people they are not willing to have done."
Some European nations levy fines on people who refuse to submit to Covid-19 vaccination.
Austria currently imposes the most severe penalties--up to EUR3,600, or about $4,115--for unvaccinated people over age 14.
Greece has enacted a EUR100 ($115) monthly fine for unvaccinated people older than 60.
In Italy, people age 50 and older face fines as high as EUR1,600 ($1,830) if they enter their workplace while unvaccinated.
These measures come as the highly contagious Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is driving an unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases in many nations.
According to Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center, there were more than 17.1 million new reported infections worldwide on January 9, a nearly 300% increase from about a month ago. Over that same period, daily reported deaths around the world have declined by about 20%.
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Remembering the Islamophobic Attack on Quebec City Mosque: Why Have So Many Canadians Forgotten?
The willful denial of anti-Muslim racism secures and maintains this national amnesia surrounding the 2017 Québec mosque massacre.
Jan 29, 2021
On January 29, 2017, six Muslim men were shot dead in a Quebec City mosque. An armed white nationalist terrorist went on a shooting rampage in the Islamic Cultural Centre in Laval, Quebec, just after evening prayers. It remains the worst mass murder in a house of worship in Canada's history.
A halal grocery store owner, a professor at Universite Laval, three civil servants and a pharmacy worker were slain by Alexandre Bissonnette. These men originally came from Morocco, Algeria and Guinea. The murder victims were: Ibrahima Barry, 39; Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Khaled Belkacemi, 60; Aboubaker Thabti, 44; Abdelkrim Hassane, 41; and Azzedine Soufiane; 57. Nineteen other worshippers were injured, including Aymen Derbali, who was paralyzed in an attempt to stop Bissonnette.
The federal government has now announced that January 29 will become a National Day of Remembrance for the victims of the mosque attack and that it will be used to promote action against Islamophobia.
This unprecedented act of violence has fallen prey to willful forgetting and national amnesia rather than being a part of our collective remembrance and commemoration as a nation.
Bissonnette had browsed websites linked to white nationalist ideologues. He also made more than 800 online searches of U.S. President Donald Trump. Bissonnette later confessed to police that he had been motivated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's message of welcome to refugees following Trump's travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.
Bissonnette was sentenced to 40 years with no parole. The sentence angered Quebec's Muslim community, which sought a harsher penalty. The Quebec Court of Appeal recently ruled that Bissonnette's sentence violated Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms and would subject him to "cruel and unusual" punishment. He will now be eligible for parole in 25 years.
The court's decision prioritized the rights of the perpetrator over justice for the victims, adding further insult to injury.
National amnesia
The documentary "The Mosque: A Community's Struggle" shares the stories of the survivors, victim's families and the local community. Some of those interviewed spoke of how they felt "forgotten," especially by the government and politicians, in the aftermath of this tragedy. This unprecedented act of violence has fallen prey to willful forgetting and national amnesia rather than being a part of our collective remembrance and commemoration as a nation.
Using the hashtag #IRememberJanuary29, the Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF) and Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East (CJPME) launched a campaign for the federal government to recognize January 29 as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia and other forms of religious discrimination. In addition, more than 70 Muslim organizations and dozens of community partners called upon the federal government to commemorate the attack.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault rejected a proposal to have January 29 declared a Day of Action Against Islamophobia, saying there was "no Islamophobia in Quebec." He later backtracked by qualifying that discrimination exists but is not widespread. Statistics Canada found that hate crimes against Muslims in Quebec tripled to 117 in 2017 from 41 in 2016.
Montreal Imam Hassan Guillet characterized Legault's comments as "voluntary blindness." The willful denial of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism secures and maintains this national amnesia surrounding the Quebec mosque massacre.
Canada officially designated December 6 the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women to commemorate the murders of 14 young women at Polytechnique Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989. The day has become an important part of our collective memory as a nation.
Canadian Islamophobia
It took four years for the federal government to commemorate this tragedy and address the Islamophobia that led to it.
The lack of support for commemorating the mosque massacre was underscored by negative public attitudes toward Canadian Muslims. A 2017 poll revealed that 46 percent of Canadians held unfavourable views of Islam as compared to other faiths.
Commemorating the Quebec mosque massacre with a national day of remembrance ensures that we will not forget the lives that were lost and the communities that are affected by this violence.
A Radio-Canada poll that coincided with the mosque attack found 23 percent of Canadians favored a ban on Muslim immigration. The level of support rose to 32 percent in Quebec.
In the aftermath of the Quebec mosque attack, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid tabled Motion 103, calling on the government to address systemic racism and religious discrimination. This proposal was met with virulent Islamophobic rhetoric and hate. A parliamentary committee held hearings on the motion and wrote a report in response.
The report makes 30 recommendations, and only two of these reference Islamophobia. The report did recommend a national day of remembrance, yet it largely remains silent on specific action against anti-Muslim racism. A 2018 survey found that more than half of Canadians acknowledge that Islamophobia is "an increasingly disturbing problem in Canada." Sixty percent agreed that the government "must take action to combat Islamophobia" in Canada.
Last year, Quebec City inaugurated a memorial entitled "Vivre Ensemble" in honor of the victims of the mosque shooting. The monument, located near the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec in the city's Ste-Foy district, includes the names of the six murdered men and is adorned with intricately patterned aluminum leaves inspired by their countries of origin.
This poignant tribute is an important site for healing and reflection upon this tragedy and the Islamophobia that led to it.
Commemorating the Quebec mosque massacre with a national day of remembrance ensures that we will not forget the lives that were lost and the communities that are affected by this violence.
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Masters of Our Domain: Foxconn and State Minions Seize Land
Eminent domain is supposed to support projects for the public good. In Wisconsin, it’s been harnessed instead for private gain
Jan 15, 2019
A government's right of eminent domain is typically used to condemn and buy up property that stands in the way of projects purportedly serving direct public needs, such as roads or large-scale public transit. But in Wisconsin, the rationale has been harnessed at the expense of the public good.
The village of Mt. Pleasant, for example, is using Wisconsin's eminent domain laws to force out homeowners on land coveted by the Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn for a television and computer-screen plant in southeastern Wisconsin, about twenty miles south of Milwaukee. The nearly four-square-mile project is already slated to receive up to $4.5 billion in state and local subsidies. It will also be exempt from paying taxes due to Wisconsin's existing laws, will benefit from an exemption to smog control regulations (thanks to former EPA chief Scott Pruitt), and the waiving of water quality protections for wetlands and Lake Michigan.
Homeowners in Mt. Pleasant have been forced to sell in heart-wrenching decisions. The home sales worked out particularly badly for Sean McFarlane, a disabled father of four whose story was shared on the podcast "Reply All." When he was forced to leave a home for people with disabilities that his mother had owned, he received a relocation fee of just $22,000. He ended up in temporary lodging with no provision for his wheelchair, and problems with heat and water.
"I told my kids that this would work out," he told the village board in a voice choked in emotion. "The village won't screw you." But McFarlane soon discovered that the village was playing by different rules.
Protections against the misuse of eminent domain are supported both by people on the left, who fear the extension and abuse of corporate power, and those on the right, who champion homeowner rights. In 2006, Wisconsin was one of many states that enacted protective legislation to ensure that eminent domain served the public interest, "prohibiting the use of eminent domain to condemn non-blighted properties to be transferred to another private entity."
Crucial protections against misuse of eminent domain were wiped out when Wisconsin's GOP-dominated legislature inserted an amendment to the 2015-17 state budget.
However, crucial protections were wiped out when Wisconsin's GOP-dominated legislature inserted an amendment to the 2015-17 state budget. The maneuver was expressly designed to give Enbridge Energy, a Canadian oil pipeline company, the power to condemn private property for oil pipeline operations and projects. This authority was previously granted only to private corporations licensed to do business in Wisconsin.
In the Foxconn case, the misuse of eminent domain has been coupled with designating the land surrounding property as a "tax incremental district." This will allow the village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County to dole out $764 million in bonds to aid the project. These will be "repaid" by tax revenue to the city from the project--which it would have had to pay anyway--over next twenty-five years.
The tax incremental district plan, like the distorted use of eminent domain, has spurred citizen outrage. Last summer, Kelly Gallaher, a long-time resident, challenged the village board at a rally last summer--just as a boastful President Trump was conducting a groundbreaking for Foxconn. "Please, do us a favor and spare us the baloney that 'I'm doing this is for the good of the county,'" Gallaher declared. "This is what's good for Foxconn and the $760-million-dollar hole you have dug for us."
The eminent domain doctrine, which some states have modified to protect property owners in recent years, has gained notoriety over the past several decades because of glaring abuses. General Motors and the city of Detroit successfully argued in the early 1980s that eminent domain could be used to justify a new plant that would require the destruction of the tightly-knit and historic Poletown community, inspiring strong resistance. In December 2018, GM announced the plant's permanent closing despite high profits and rising production in Mexico.
The potential abuse of eminent domain was widened by a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding its use for new development in New London, Connecticut, because it would generate new jobs and tax revenue. The chief beneficiary of the decision was the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. As a result of the ruling, a neighborhood was razed--yet Pfizer closed the plant after just eight years, leaving behind a swath of barren land. Dozens of homes were razed to make room for a hotel, stores, and condominiums--none of which were ever built.
Meanwhile, at Foxconn, there are growing questions over how many production jobs will actually be created and what they will pay relative to those for engineers and other professionals. Also unknown is the planned degree of automation, the plant's product lines, and the actual size of the plant and workforce.
Wisconsin homeowners are also contending with a hazardous "Line 66" oil pipeline sought by Enbridge, which appears intent on using the new, corporate-friendly eminent domain law to expand a line running the length of the state. The pipeline will carry highly volatile oil drawn from Canadian tar sands. An exploding tar sands pipeline in Lac Megantic, Quebec, killed fifty people in a 2013 accident. Seven Wisconsin county boards have passed resolutions against Enbridge and other oil corporations using eminent domain to seize land for building pipelines.
These latest distortions of eminent domain serve as a reminder of the extent to which corporate power can so persuade local and state governments to bend the law to serve private profit over public good.
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More Oil Moving by Rail Now Than at Time of Megantic Disaster
How is it that a preventable tragedy of this magnitude has passed into media and political oblivion—even though the circumstances that led to the crash remain essentially unchanged?
Nov 23, 2018
With Donald Trump attacking the mainstream media, I find myself warming to it as never before -- and thereby losing sight of its many failings.
It gives abundant coverage to celebrities and powerful people, while giving short shrift to issues that threaten the planet, and dropping important stories after a short burst of attention.
I'm reminded of these serious failings after reading Bruce Campbell's magnificent new book, The Lac-Megantic Rail Disaster, which not only vividly captures the horror of the 2013 derailment inferno that killed 47 Quebecers, but also shows how little Ottawa has done to prevent a similar catastrophe from happening again.
"After the 2013 disaster, oil by rail declined for a while, but is now back with a fury -- and is projected to soon reach a level almost three times higher than 2013."
How is it that a preventable tragedy of this magnitude, which received huge coverage and political attention at the time, has passed into media and political oblivion -- even though the circumstances that led to the crash remain essentially unchanged?
As Campbell meticulously documents, the crash of that runaway train, with 72 cars carrying almost 10,000 tons of highly combustible oil, was rooted in dozens of decisions by Canadian political leaders that reduced Ottawa's role in overseeing rail safety -- all in the name of making things easier and more profitable for the rail industry.
Although deregulation mania reached a peak under Stephen Harper's Conservatives, Justin Trudeau's government remains committed to weakening, removing or blocking regulations that annoy business, despite signs of ongoing safety problems. Recent figures from the Transportation Safety Board, for instance, show a 21 per cent average annual increase in runaway trains in the years since the rail disaster.
And let's not forget that train sped through Toronto before crashing in Lac-Megantic. Similar kilometre-long trains, laden with oil, pass directly through the heart of Toronto daily.
The Lac-Megantic fire soared to 1,650 C; water streaming from fire hoses simply evaporated in the intense heat. There were no injured survivors; everyone engulfed in the flames in the little town died. If a derailment like that happened in Toronto, the toll would be in the thousands.
Another key factor leading to the disaster was the enormous boom in transporting oil by rail, which skyrocketed in Canada from 500 carloads in 2009 to an incredible 160,000 carloads in 2013 -- even as the rail safety budget was reduced, notes Campbell.
After the 2013 disaster, oil by rail declined for a while, but is now back with a fury -- and is projected to soon reach a level almost three times higher than 2013, says Campbell.
And, no, the answer isn't more pipelines. The answer, for God's sake, is proper regulation of our railways -- and every other aspect of our economy that requires government oversight to protect us from corporations whose only interest is bottom-line profits.
Above all, the Lac-Megantic tragedy is a story about increasingly aggressive corporations in the era of hedge funds and bare-knuckle profiteering, and about the supine governments that acquiesce to their demands.
We've allowed ourselves to be lulled into believing we're safe. After all, there are government agencies out there with reassuring names like the "Rail Safety Directorate" and the "Transportation of Dangerous Goods Directorate."
But these agencies have been largely stripped of their regulatory muscle, and now operate under political masters who've drunk the Kool-Aid of a new dogma: that corporations should regulate themselves, and that the proper role for government is to "get out of the way."
" Stephen Harper and his government were never held accountable for their reckless cuts and deregulation. Nor were the greedy rail barons who pushed -- and continue to push -- for relaxed safety laws."
That was the foolish thinking that led to the disaster in Walkerton, Ont. A judicial inquiry blamed cutbacks and lax oversight by Mike Harris' Conservative government for seven deaths and 2,300 illnesses from contaminated water. Shortly afterwards, Harris resigned.
In the more serious Lac-Megantic tragedy, there was no public inquiry. Three railway workers were tried for criminal negligence, and acquitted. Outside the courtroom, someone yelled: "It's not them we want."
Stephen Harper and his government were never held accountable for their reckless cuts and deregulation. Nor were the greedy rail barons who pushed -- and continue to push -- for relaxed safety laws.
Five years later, they're scot-free, while 27 children in Lac-Megantic are without parents due to the catastrophe.
Meanwhile, later today, a massive train loaded with highly flammable oil will be barrelling through Toronto. Let's hope our luck holds.
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'Shameless': Trump Repeals Rule Meant to Prevent Oil-Carrying 'Bomb Trains' From Derailing and Exploding
"Apparently there's no limit to the lengths the Trump administration will go to prioritize the desires of polluting industries over the health and safety of the American people."
Sep 25, 2018
In a move that outraged environmentalists and increased the chances of deadly and destructive accidents, the Trump administration's Department of Transportation (DOT) has repealed an Obama-era rule that mandated safety upgrades for "dangerous" oil tanker trains to reduce the possibility of derailments, explosions, and spills.
"This commonsense rule was put in place in response to a series of deadly accidents, and this shameless decision to repeal it will mean more workers and communities are put at risk."
--Kelly Martin, Sierra Club"This commonsense rule was put in place in response to a series of deadly accidents, and this shameless decision to repeal it will mean more workers and communities are put at risk," declared Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director Kelly Martin.
The rule required trains carrying oil and other flammable materials--sometimes called "bomb trains"--to install electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes that decrease the likelihood of derailment by 2021.
While it was initially criticized by green groups that said it did not go far enough to protect communities, the Monday reversal was regarded as yet another move by the administration to appease polluters at the expense of the public.
"Apparently there's no limit to the lengths the Trump administration will go," Martin said, "to prioritize the desires of polluting industries over the health and safety of the American people."
The repeal was initially proposed in December of 2017, but finalized by the DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) on Monday. PHMSA claimed that a congressionally-mandated analysis concluded "that the expected costs of requiring ECP brakes would be significantly higher than the expected benefits of the requirement." The change does not prevent railroads from using ECP brakes but the safety upgrade is no longer mandated.
"The electronically controlled brakes would have been a long-awaited safety improvement," Fred Millar, an independent consultant specializing in chemical safety and transport, told BuzzFeed News.
By repealing the safety requirement, Millar added, "the cost will be borne by the people who die or are injured or who have terrible property damage."
"About 20 derailments of trains carrying oil and ethanol that have led to spills, fires, and, in some cases, evacuations have occurred since 2010 in the U.S. and Canada," according to Fortune.
Perhaps of the most high-profile derailment in recent years occurred in Quebec in 2013. A train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded, destroying the small downtown of Lac-Megantic and killing 47 people. Five years after the tragedy, CBC reported in July, rail safety advocates say the Canadian government also has not done enough to prevent future disasters.
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'We Don't Know... How Bad It Is': 31-Car Oil Train Derails Into Iowa Floodwaters
Amid worries of drinking water contamination, tankers looked as if they had been "thrown around like Legos"
Jun 22, 2018
Adding to the mountain of evidence that "oil trains are a disaster for our health, our safety, and our climate"--an argument environmentalists have been making for years--a 31-car freight train derailed in Iowa and started leaking crude oil into floodwaters on Friday morning, forcing evacuations of nearby homes and raising concerns about drinking water contamination.
The Sioux County Sheriff posted a video depicting the aftermath of the derailment near Doon on Facebook:
The derailment occurred around 4:30am local time near the Sioux-Lyon County border, and one or more train cars spilled oil into the floodwaters of the Rock River. Rock Valley Mayor Kevin Van Otterloo told Iowa's Des Moines Register that within a few hours, oil had reached his city, about 5 miles downriver.
Although officials on the scene told the Associated Press they are still unsure what caused the train to leave the tracks, Jacob Faber, who lives near the site of the derailment and spent the Thursday night volunteering with flood recovery efforts, said, "There was water on the train track and the train tried to go over it."
Noting that the massive oil-filled tankers looked as if they had been "thrown around like Legos" across the floodwaters, Faber added that the entire area reeked of exhaust fumes: "You can't describe how strong that oil smell is when you're close to it."
A spokesman for BNSF railroad told the AP the company does not know how much oil has leaked into the floodwaters. He did not say how much oil the tankers were carrying. Ken Hessenius of the Iowa Natural Resources Department said cleanup crews are at the site, working to contain the spill.
"Our first major concerns are public water supplies," he said. Multiple towns downriver from the site draw drinking water from wells near the waterway, and the state has notified local officials of potential contamination.
The environmental advocacy group STAND.earth tweeted in response:
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Nearly 800 Quebec Doctors Demand Their Pay Raises Go To Nurses, Improving Healthcare Overall
"These increases are all the more shocking because our nurses, clerks, and other professionals face very difficult working conditions, while our patients live with the lack of access to required services because of the drastic cuts in recent years."
Mar 09, 2018
Hundreds of doctors in Quebec, Canada are asking the Ministry of Health to cancel a proposed pay raise it wants to give them, imploring the government to instead redirect the funds to other healthcare workers and patient care in the province.
"We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations," wrote Medecins Quebecois Pour le Regime Public (MQRP), in a letter signed by nearly 800 physicians. "We, Quebec doctors, are asking that the salary increases granted to physicians be canceled and that the resources of the system be better distributed for the good of healthcare workers."
"If you ask physicians in the street, most will tell you that they would rather have more support and have a good working environment and have other professionals to refer their patients to, rather than having more money." --Isabelle Leblanc, MQRPQuebec's healthcare system, administered by the province's Ministry of Health, has suffered "drastic cuts" recently, note the doctors, which they say should be reversed with the funds the government plans to use for raises.
The province's 20,000 doctors make an average of $198,000 to $314,000, and the government has proposed annual raises of 1.4 to 1.8 percent, costing Quebec about $1.2 billion over the next five years.
"These increases are all the more shocking because our nurses, clerks, and other professionals face very difficult working conditions, while our patients live with the lack of access to required services because of the drastic cuts in recent years," wrote the MQRP.
The funding cuts are the result of austerity measures taken by the province's health minister, Gaetan Barrette. In February, nurses staged a sit-in at a hospital in the Montreal suburb of Terrebonne to denounce overwork, echoing the concerns of Emilie Ricard, a young nurse who posted a photo of herself in tears and looking exhausted after working a night shift in which she alone cared for more than 70 patients. Nurses' unions say funding cuts have reduced the number of full-time positions available.
The cuts also appear to have caused the quality of patient care to suffer. Quebec's health and welfare commissioner found in 2016 that the province had the longest emergency room wait times in the West, with 35 percent of patients waiting five hours or more for care.
"If you ask physicians in the street, most will tell you that they would rather have more support and have a good working environment and have other professionals to refer their patients to, rather than having more money," Isabelle Leblanc, the president of MQRP, told the Guardian.
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Asylum Seekers, Fleeing Trump's Hostility, Overwhelm Quebec's Refugee Resources
Crossing at remote locations along the border, thousands have left the U.S. for Canada in hopes of attaining refugee status
Aug 03, 2017
So many asylum seekers are pouring over the Canadian border from the United States that authorities opened Montreal's Olympic stadium--a 56,000-seat arena and one of the city's most famous landmarks--as a temporary welcome center on Wednesday.
Between January and June 2017, more than 4,000 people hoping to attain refugee status crossed the U.S.-Canadian border at remote locations, with nearly 80 percent of them entering Quebec. Last month, more than a thousand asylum seekers arrived in the province, according to Francine Dupuis, who runs PRAIDA, a government-funded program that helps asylum claimants adjust to life in Canada.
"It's really quite a bit more intense than what we're used to."
--Francine Dupuis, PRAIDA
"It's really quite a bit more intense than what we're used to," Dupuis said.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre tweeted on Wednesday that as many as 2,500 asylum seekers entered Quebec via the United States during July, and about 500 people are currently being held at St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, where Quebec borders New York State.
About 70 percent of asylum seekers who have recently arrived in Quebec are Haitian, according to the province's Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil. Many Haitians fear their fate if they remain in the United States, because of the anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions by the Trump administration.
In May, then-head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Gen. John Kelly, extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some 59,000 Haitians affected by the catastrophic 2010 hurricane in Haiti--but only by six months, rather than the typical 18-month extension. The prospect of facing deportation as early as January 2018, coupled with mounting anti-immigrant hostility from Trump, has motivated many Haitians to cross the border into Canada.
"They think the Trump administration will fly them back to Haiti and they don't want to take a chance," Dupuis said. Coderre, on Twitter, welcomed Haitian arrivals and criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies.
Even Trump's campaign and election coincided with an influx of asylum seekers fleeing the United States for its northern neighbor. As Reuters reported earlier this year: "More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)."
Although 2004's Safe Third Country Agreement requires asylum seekers to "request refugee protection in the first safe country they arrive in," the thousands entering at remote locations along the border aim to avoid the agreement's main tenet, arguing that the U.S. is no longer a "safe" place for them.
Last month, the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Council of Churches, launched a legal challenge to the treaty, asking a Canadian federal court to strike it down in light of the Trump administration's war against immigrants.
"Our organizations have pressed repeatedly, expecting that Canada would move to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement as regard for the rights of refugees has rapidly plummeted under the Trump administration," said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.
"To our astonishment and disappointment, however, the Canadian government continues to maintain that the U.S. asylum system qualifies as safe," Neve added. "We are left with no choice but to turn to the courts to protect refugee rights."
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A More Equitable Economy Exists Right Next Door
- Business owners gather at an elegant Montreal event center to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a large-scale economic partnership. The former chief of Quebec's largest bank is the guest of honor.
- Sidewalks bustle with people walking in and out of homes, offices, bank, pharmacy, workout studio and coffee shop at Montreal's Technopole Angus-- a development that already sports 56 business with 2500 employees and will eventually encompass a million-square-feet of real estate.
Mar 27, 2017
- Business owners gather at an elegant Montreal event center to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a large-scale economic partnership. The former chief of Quebec's largest bank is the guest of honor.
- Sidewalks bustle with people walking in and out of homes, offices, bank, pharmacy, workout studio and coffee shop at Montreal's Technopole Angus-- a development that already sports 56 business with 2500 employees and will eventually encompass a million-square-feet of real estate.
- Morning-shift workers unload barrels of paper onto conveyor belts emptying into giant shredding machines on the shop floor of Recyclage Vanier, a Quebec City firm specializing in secure disposal of confidential documents.
- A line snakes down the street for a matinee at the Cinema Beaubien, an art deco moviehouse in a quiet Montreal neighborhood. Taxis line up across the street waiting for customers who will soon be getting out of the early show.
- Leonard Cohen's gravelly voice rings through the taproom at La Barberie Brewery, located near Quebec City's business district. Their Belgian-style saisons and bestselling blackberry blanc beers are enjoyed throughout the province. A few blocks away, an 18th century monastery inside Quebec City's historic walls has recently opened its doors as a hotel and spa.
Welcome to everyday life in Quebec--Canada's 2nd largest province with 8.2 million people. Yet these scenes of economic activity are different in a notable way from similar ones occurring throughout North America.
Each enterprise involves a cooperative or non-profit organization--which together make up 8-10 percent of the province's GDP. More than 7000 of these "social economy" enterprises ring up $17 billion in annual sales and hold $40 billion in assets (Canadian dollars). They account for about 215,000 jobs across Quebec.
Quebec's social economy (also translated as "solidarity economy") extends far beyond the province's two major cities, and includes manufacturing, agricultural cooperatives, daycare centers, homecare services, affordable housing, social service initiatives, food coops, ecotourism, arts programs, public markets, media and funeral homes. The capital that fuels all this economic activity comes from union pension funds, non-profit loan funds, credit unions, government investment and philanthropy.
"We always say the social economy is simply the formalization of the commons. It's social ownership, the goal of which is a sustainable, democratic economy with a market--instead of a market economy," explains Nancy Neamtan, co-founder of Chantier de l'Economie Sociale, a network of social economy organizations whose anniversary banquet is described above. "Our mission is building a broader vision of what the economy actually is."
"When Chantier started out, a lot of people said it wouldn't work. We had unions, women's organizations, green groups, and many thought it was too diverse," Neamtan says. "But it does work." Evidence for her assertion is visible all around--Chantier's office is tucked into a six story building that takes up most of a city block, all of which is filled with social economy organizations.
Not all of these social businesses are new--some of the credit unions, cooperatives and union pension funds go back a hundred years. "But they were largely invisible to many people until the name social economy became popular," Neamtan adds.
Quebec's social economy ranges from a video game creator's cooperative to a social integration program for Haitian immigrants to a coop grocery in a remote town on the Gaspe peninsula to a network of 8000 home healthcare workers, half of whom were on welfare before being trained for the field. Here are more examples showing the range of these enterprises:
Groupe Paradoxe: Chantier de l'Economie Sociale's 20th Anniversary celebration was staged in a renovated church run by Groupe Paradoxe, which teaches at-risk young people job skills in the booming audio-visual presentation, events and meetings industries.
Desjardins Group: The banker honored for his work at Chantier's banquet was former president of the Desjardins credit union, founded in 1900 and today the province's largest financial institution.
The Nitaskinam Cooperative: Also on hand at the banquet was Nitaskinam, an Inuit-run cooperative which designs clothing inspired by art of the Atikamekw people, which has doubled from three to six members in its first year. "The social economy is our traditional economic model and fits with our values," explains co-founder Karine Awashish, who is also an economic development official of this tribal nation. "I see good opportunities for us to create new social economy jobs in forestry, health services, tourism, arts festivals and youth projects."
UTILE Student Housing Cooperative: One of the youngest entrepreneurs at the banquet, Laurent Levesque, helped launch a student housing development organization with other activists involved in the headline-grabbing 2012 Quebec Student Strike, collaborating with Chantier de l'economie Trust. "Students pay 70-80 percent more in rent on average," he explained, "which creates an inflationary spiral" that hurts not just them, but their low-income neighbors. With start-up capital from the Concordia Student Union and further funding from social economy partners like Desjardins and the province of Quebec, UTILE is set to break ground on apartments for 160 students.
Technopole Angus: It's no coincidence that that the Desjardins credit union has a branch in the new Technopole Angus sustainable urban village, which brings opportunities to a working class neighborhood that was rocked when the Canadian Pacific Railway shuttered its machine shops in 1992. A number of historic brick structures were repurposed, and new eco-friendly buildings constructed, with more planned for the project's phase II. The community will eventually include 500 affordable housing units, 450,000 square-feet of office space, 20 local shops, four public squares, a bike-pedestrian main street and a one-acre urban farm growing organic produce.
Recylage Vanier: A non-profit organization started 30 years ago by two out-of-work men who realized the recycling industry could benefit the disadvantaged as well as the earth, Recylage Vanier offers training for people struggling to find work because of low job skills, recent immigration, substance abuse, mental illness, disability, or other challenges. Jobseekers arrive here for a 24-week program that emphasizes work readiness and life skills as well as on-the-job experience. Most are long-term unemployed, who have been sent by the Quebec employment bureau and social service groups.
"They have to get along with a boss, get along with colleagues, master simple tasks and then take on new ones with more responsibility, all the way up to driving a forklift," says Nicolas Reeves, one of Vanier's managers. For the final four weeks, they split their time between the recycling plant and job hunting with the help of staff counselors. About 85 percent of graduates find work, and 10 percent seek further education, according to Reeves. Recylage Vanier faces stiff competition from two private companies in the field, so clients who value the organization's mission are important to their success--including the province of Quebec, which provides about half their business.
Cinema Beaubien: This is non-profit neighborhood moviehouse explicitly proclaims its mission to "defend the primacy of persons and labor over capital in the distribution of its surpluses and incomes." The cinema's importance as a community gathering spot can be witnessed in the long lines at the ticket booth, where patrons merrily chat with one another rather than staring at their phones. Taxis wait across the streets to whisk moviegoers to their next destination, about half of which are from the Taxi Coop Montreal. (In Quebec City, all taxi drivers belong to a cooperative.)
La Barberie Cooperative Microbrewery: Operating as a worker cooperative for the past 20 years explains the success of this brewery and brewpub, says general manager Jean-Francois Genest, who joined La Barberie three years ago after running his family's bookstore and later converting another bookstore into a cooperative. "The coop is a good plan to keep a place going. Sharing the profits means you attract the best workers. For our part, we try to make their jobs as interesting as possible, offer more holidays and higher pay." Emilie DuMais, who's tended bar here for eight years, notes, "You have much more ambition working for yourself than working for someone else."
Le Monastere des Augustines: A convent dating back to 1700s in the heart of Quebec City's walled city has just opened as an elegantly renovated hotel, spa, museum and conference center. It is organized as a non-profit in accordance with the social mission of nuns still living there to promote holistic health and spiritual renewal. Besides tourists, spa patrons and participants in corporate meetings, guests also include activist groups holding retreats and health care workers seeking a reprieve from the stress of their jobs.
RISQ: In 1997 Chantier created RISQ (Reseau d'Investissement Social du Quebec), which has invested $25 million in technical aid and capital for social economy businesses, resulting in: 1786 new jobs, 5,119 jobs maintained and job training for 1527 marginalized workers across Quebec, according to their calculations. RISQ financial analyst Nathalie Villemure, who worked for many years in private banking, notes that they see fewer defaults than commercial lenders. "These people have a cause bigger than themselves, so they work harder and we help them find solutions."
Fiducie: In 2007 Chantier launched Fiducie, a $50 million "patient capital" (or slow money) fund that provides long term, non-guaranteed loans of $50,000-1.5 million to promising cooperatives and non-profits with less than 200 employees. "We don't expect to see anything in repayment for 15 years," says General Manager Jacques Charest. Thirty million of the investment came from union pension funds with the rest from the federal and provincial governments.
What We Can Learn from Quebec's Social Economy
While Quebec possesses a distinct culture and history, the emergence of a strong social economy across the province provides practical lessons for other places.
*Recognize the Social Economy When You See It
Cooperatives and non-profit initiatives already exist throughout the US and most other countries, so the first step is seeing, naming and claiming the social economy as part of the commons we all share.
*Look Widely for Inspiration & Ideas
Neamtan points out that the American tradition of community organizing was a big influence on their early work, especially community development corporations (CDCs) that arose to tackle problems of disinvestment in urban neighborhoods. The Dudley Street Initiative, which transformed a low-income community in the Roxbury district of Boston, was a particular inspiration for her. The proliferation of cooperatives in the Basque and Catalonian regions of Spain provided another model for bottom-up economic development.
*Seek Solidarity
Social economy initiatives benefit from the longstanding sense of solidarity in Quebec, where French speakers were discriminated against and their local economy dominated by English-speaking Canadians, Americans and English. A analogous situation can be found among racial and social minorities, and in rural and deindustrialized regions where economic power is wielded from outside.
*Tap the Power of Government
Government agencies have been a partners and funders in many projects through the years. Social economy initiatives often arose even when conservative politicians were slashing government programs to provide a more humane alternative to strictly market-oriented development. Legislation passed by the left-center Parti Quebecois in 1997 gave the social economy movement a big boost by offering local governments more leeway in supporting community and cooperative efforts to create jobs and promote entrepreneurship.
*Partner with Unions
"The labor movement boosted the social economy by making the choice in the 1980s not to just negotiate contracts but to create jobs and support civic enterprises," explains Neamtan, which led to the creation of the landmark Quebec Solidarity Fund, an $11-billion-dollar pension fund, of which 65 percent is invested in small- and medium-sized Quebec-owned businesses.
*Partner with Faith Organizations
Historically, the Catholic church controlled many aspects of life in the province, and priests enthusiastically promoted cooperatives and non-profit institutions as models of the church's social teaching. By the end of the 20th century when the church's influence waned in the face of increasing secularization, social economy organizations found numerous opportunities to set up shop in closed churches and convents. The church remains an ally, Neamtan notes, "especially now that Pope Francis talks all the time about the Solidarity Economy."
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