‘Starlight tour’: Mi’kmaq fisher allegedly dumped without boots or phone feared death

HALIFAX – Hours into a barefoot trek in the middle of the night along a highway in rural Nova Scotia, stranded without a phone, Mi’kmaq fisher Kevin Hartling says he and his friend felt that if they stopped walking they might die.

Hartling, who is from Membertou First Nation, and Blaise Sylliboy, from Eskasoni First Nation, say that last week they were detained by federal fisheries officers for fishing near Shelburne, N.S. The two men from Cape Breton say that at around 1 a.m., they were left at a gas station far from home without footwear or cellphones and ended up walking for about six hours before they used a borrowed phone to get through to a friend, who picked them up.

“It’s basically a starlight tour, ” Hartling said in an interview Wednesday, referring to a practice where police in Canada have taken vulnerable Indigenous people to a secluded location and left them to find their way home, sometimes in freezing conditions. “That’s what was going through my mind the whole time …. If we stop moving, we’re going to die. If we go and just sit somewhere to rest and fall asleep, we’re dead.”

Hartling, 29, and Sylliboy, 25, were apprehended in the late evening on March 26 as they fished for baby eels, known as elvers. They say three fisheries officers put them into a vehicle and confiscated their phones and hip waders before leaving them at a gas station about a 45-minute drive from where they had been fishing.

The pair said when they were dropped off, they asked the DFO officers if they could have supervised access to their cellphones to write down contact information, or cut the feet off the waders so they wouldn’t have to walk barefoot, and Hartling said they were turned down.

“They said: ‘No. That’s not our problem,”‘ Hartling said. Sylliboy gave a similar account in a Facebook post and during remarks at a protest Tuesday. |Read more https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/starlight-tour-mi-kmaq-fisher-allegedly-dumped-without-boots-or-phone-feared-death-1.6832346| atlantic.ctvnews.ca/starlight-…

#nspoli #Mi‘kmaq #StarlightTour #injustice #law #indigenous #treatment #cruel #inhumane #environment #politics

Facebook Really, Really Doesn’t Want You to Read This One Story

Facebook’s content-moderation calls often leave people struggling to figure out what’s off limits, but for most of Thursday a Kansas newsroom had no trouble discerning what Meta’s flagship social network found unacceptable: the entirety of its work.

“This morning, sometime between 8:20 and 8:50 a.m. Thursday, Facebook removed all posts linking to Kansas Reflector’s website,” a post on that Topeka-based site explained Thursday afternoon. “This move not only affected Kansas Reflector’s Facebook page, where we link to nearly every story we publish, but the pages of everyone who has ever shared a story from us.”

The notifications Facebook sent to readers after removing their posts sharing Reflector stories falsely suggested violations of its cybersecurity policies: “It looks like you tried to gather sensitive information, or shared malicious software,” read one such note as shared by a reader as a screenshot posted on Bluesky.

The Thursday story by Reflector Editor-in-Chief Sherman Smith and Opinion Editor Clay Wirestone said this bulk deletion happened hours after the site published an opinion piece from filmmaker Dave Kendall headlined “When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future.”

Kendall’s piece recounted how Facebook rejected his attempt to pay to boost a post about his climate-change documentary Hot Times in the Heartland because it “doesn’t comply with our Ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics policy.” |Read more https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-really-really-doesnt-want-you-to-read-this-one-story| pcmag.com/news/facebook-really…

#facebook #climate-change #policy #right-wing #kansas #news #blocked

Rural Ontario man finds high levels of radioactive gas in new home — wants others to check

Radon is an odourless, invisible, radioactive gas naturally released from rocks, soil and water that can seep into homes through small cracks and holes that build up over time.

It’s also the second-leading cause of lung cancer deaths after cigarettes, according to the Canadian Lung Association (CLA). Radon exposure is estimated to be the cause of 16 per cent of lung cancers.

“It’s extremely difficult to heal, so what happens is when we breathe in radon at sufficient levels it damages the DNA in our lungs and leads to genetic mutations,” said Dr. Aaron Goodarzi, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine.

Kids, he said, are at an even higher risk because they have a longer life expectancy.

Goodarzi, who’s also the scientific director of the Evict Radon National Study, said genetic mutations can take anywhere from 10 to 30 years to develop — meaning there’s more potential for children exposed to radon to develop lung cancer in their lives.

Radon gas can be found in any home that has contact with the ground; however, rural communities across the country have a 30 per cent increased risk of high levels, according to Goodarzi.

The amount of time you spend in the home, and for how many years, can also factor into the chances of you getting lung cancer, he said. |Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/cedar-springs-radon-gas-1.7156915| cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ced…

#cdnpoli #onpoli #environment #radon #carcinogen #lung-cancer #Radioactive

Trudeau proposes new reforms for renters amid housing crunch

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new measures he says will help protect Canadian renters and help them break into the housing market ahead of the 2024 budget.

He said Wednesday that the proposed three new reforms will “make the playing field fairer for renters” amid an affordability crisis making homeownership out of reach for many.

Wednesday’s press release notes that the new measures are both about protecting renters and about “generational fairness” for millennials and Generation Z, who make up a large part of Canada’s rental market.

A Statistics Canada report Wednesday highlighted a number of affordability issues staring down renters and younger generations that put them at risk of missing key financial milestones, particularly achieving the dream of homeownership.

“Sustained food inflation, elevated housing prices, and increasingly unaffordable rental costs across much of the country are casting a shadow over the homeownership dream for many households — and, in particular, for young families,” the report says. |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10387043/trudeau-renter-reforms-2024-budget/| globalnews.ca/news/10387043/tr…

#cdnpoli #housing #affordability #homeownership #renters #fairness #credit #renovictions

Ottawa signs memorandum of understanding with Germany for Canadian hydrogen

HALIFAX – Canada and Germany signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday for the future sale of hydrogen produced from proposed projects in Atlantic Canada.

The agreement signed in the northern German city of Hamburg by federal Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck is aimed at securing early access to the German market for Canadian hydrogen producers.

“Hydrogen represents a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for Atlantic Canada,” Wilkinson told reporters during a conference call from Hamburg. “These actions underline that Canada intends to be a key supplier to provide Germany and Europe with the clean energy it needs to achieve its climate and energy security goals.”

The minister said the agreement builds on the Canada-Germany Hydrogen Alliance that was signed in Stephenville, N.L., in August 2022, with the intention of permitting the export of Canadian hydrogen by 2025. That alliance was signed several months after Russia invaded Ukraine, which forced German leaders to rethink their energy dependence on Russia and search for new sources of cleaner fuel.

As things stand, World Energy GH2’s proposed wind-to-hydrogen project on Newfoundland’s Port au Port Peninsula is awaiting approval under a provincial environmental assessment. In Nova Scotia, EverWind Fuels and Bear Head Energy have plans, which have received provincial approval, for hydrogen plants in Point Tupper.

The projects in both provinces would use wind power to create hydrogen and ammonia. That ammonia would be shipped to Germany, where it can be used as fuel to replace natural gas, or converted back into hydrogen. |Read more https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/atlantic/ottawa-signs-memorandum-of-understanding-with-germany-for-canadian-hydrogen/article_86b3b7b8-6461-58fa-950f-e5da6297845d.html| thecanadianpressnews.ca/atlant…

#cdnpoli #nspoli #PointTupper #AtlanticCanada #Hydrogen #Germany #mou