Manning urges federal Conservatives to weaponize his Alberta COVID response report

The chair of a taxpayer-funded panel reviewing Alberta’s COVID-19 response is urging the federal Conservatives to weaponize his findings in the next election against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governing coalition.

Preston Manning, the former head of the Reform Party, made the pitch last week in an email sent to Conservative MPs on the same day the report from the panel he chaired was published.

In the email, dated Nov. 15, Manning wrote, “If the response of the Liberal/NDP coalition to the 2020-2023 COVID crisis should become an election issue in 2024, there may be some material in this report that could be used by the CPC to say `what should have been done to cope with the COVID crisis and what should be done to cope with future public emergencies.”’

He added, “Some of its content may also be useful in attacking the record of the Liberal/NDP coalition in this area.”

In the email, Manning also congratulates the federal Conservatives on recent upticks in polling, adding “with any luck and some hard work you should be in government next year.”

Manning also encouraged a “closer practical relationship” between Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives and the federal Conservatives to promote shared interests, adding “Everybody benefits, especially Alberta.”

In a statement Monday, Manning drew a distinction between his time on the panel and off it.

“The Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel was a non-partisan panel tasked with providing advice to the Government of Alberta to improve Alberta’s response to future public health emergencies,” wrote Manning.

His comments meshed with comments by Danielle Smith during the COVID-19 pandemic when she, too, publicly questioned the efficacy of rules and gathering restrictions, particularly when compared with the potential for long-term harms to mental and physical well-being.

Smith at that time questioned the mainstream science approach to the pandemic and endorsed debunked COVID-19 treatments, such as horse dewormer ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10104439/alberta-covid-preston-manning-federal-conservatives/| globalnews.ca/news/10104439/al…

#abpoli #manning #report #CPC #Liberals #NDP #covid

She’s a grad student juggling 3 jobs. Canada’s cost of living may force her to move elsewhere

Shramana Sarkar, a 24-year-old aspiring geologist, an earth sciences teaching assistant at Memorial University, takes her job seriously. That’s why she’s here in Newfoundland, after all, far away from her aging parents in Kolkata: for a rigorous education and, eventually, a doctorate degree.

But in recent months, Sarkar has found less and less time to study, her dream of becoming a scientist chipped away by the low-paying, precarious jobs that she needs to survive here.

“It’s just taking such a huge toll on me,” Sarkar says, describing her chaotic schedule in a living room barely big enough for the CBC’s camera.

It wasn’t always this way. Sarkar moved to St. John’s for her bachelor’s degree in 2018. Back then, she only needed one part-time job to make rent for the month, at a going rate of $350 for a room in a house near MUN’s campus.

But times have changed.

“Slowly, over the years, I’ve had to take on more jobs,” she says. “I’ve seen the shift where from one job, now I have three.”

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suspects as many as one in five Canadian workers have precarious jobs. And even those working part time by choice have seen their wages stagnate relative to the cost of consumer goods, according to Statistics Canada.

“Past generations of young Canadians entering the workforce could look forward to favourable tailwinds lifting real incomes over their working lives,” wrote David Williams, a policy expert with the Business Council of British Columbia.

“That’s no longer the case … young people entering the workforce today will not feel much of a tailwind at all. Rather, they face a long period of stagnating average real incomes that will last most of their working lives.”

Today, Sarkar’s rent has doubled. Groceries are 20 per cent more expensive than they were two years ago. But her wages haven’t kept up. And none of her three jobs — her teaching position, or either of her two barista gigs — offers enough hours to cover all the basics.

Julia Smith, a labour historian at the University of Manitoba, says Sarkar’s plight could describe countless workers across the country.

“I think many people are finding right now it’s really hard to even just get out of bed each day and keep going,” Smith says.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘I’m going to work really hard while I’m in grad school for a couple years, but then I’m going to get that job.’ But when you have that sense of, ‘I’m just going to work really hard forever and I might not even be able to own a home of my own, or ever have a pension,’ that’s pretty demoralizing.”

“The problem is that in a capitalist system … the priority is profit. That is what a capitalist system is intended to do, is to maximize profit,” Smith said.

“And so we have a bit of a mismatch, where we are living in a capitalist system and we’re kind of expecting it to have a different outcome, you know — where it’s going to provide us all with good, meaningful lives.”

(Steve’s note: Another article on the CBC website today says, “Billions to be announced for housing construction in federal fiscal update” and another article I read about Alberta was that the provincical government was going to put a few million into the foobanks. They want to keep us alive to work, but they don’t want to address the real problem of wages and job insecurity. This must be what happens when a capitalist society runs amok) |Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/grind-precarious-work-1.7025414| cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundlan…

#cdnpoli #nlpoli #capitalists #starvation #wages #CostOfLiving #jobs #gigs #benefits #precarious #workers

Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Lennox Island, PEI – A view of Lennox Island, PEI captured live in CLIVE with +2m sea-level rise. The coloured outlines represent coastlines from 1968 (red) to 2010 (yellow) and to 2100 (dark blue)

Capping global temperature rise at two degrees Celsius over baseline is no longer seen as enough to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels that would decimate the earth’s coastlines and displace hundreds of millions of people, climate scientists warn.

A report released Thursday by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, compiled by more than 60 scientists and policy experts, is sounding the alarm on new modelling data that indicates the 2015 Paris Agreement is woefully out-of-date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0bKxgyEvTc

The consortium is urging world leaders to take stock of new research ahead of the United Nations’ COP28 climate conference later this month. According to the report, the only road forward is ensuring that global temperatures do not rise over 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, much lower than the two degree maximum set at the Paris Climate Accords.

“We have time, but not much time,” reads the report’s preface, written by the president of Chile and prime minister of Iceland. “We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice.”

If global average temperatures rise by two degrees, the Earth faces a sea-level rise of more than 12 metres, or 40 feet — and that’s the conservative estimate.

The report states sea levels could rise up to 20 metres, or 65 feet, citing a “compelling number of new studies, taking into account ice dynamics, paleo-climate records from Earth’s past, and recent observations of ice sheet behaviour.”

If this is allowed to happen, the planet faces “extensive coastal loss and damage well beyond limits of feasible adaption,” the report warns.

Experts warn seawall damage sign of things to come amid sea level rise and climate change. |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10098366/sea-level-rise-20-metres-report-climate-change/| globalnews.ca/news/10098366/se…

#cdnpoli #SeaLevel #GlobalWarming #COP28 #CoastalLoss #environment