Help Wanted: Sask. business sectors ‘gutted’ by effects of pandemic beginning recovery efforts: Sask. employers are attempting to find footing in a rebounding economy, but labour analysts are saying the worker shortage remains a hurdle.

Young adults aged 15
to 24 years old have remained the demographic with the highest rate of
unemployment for several months now, at 6.8 per cent in August. Males
within that age group reported at 7.6 per cent and females at 6.3 per
cent.

Saskatchewan
Federation of Labour president Lori Johb said workers are reporting
that one of the largest hurdles preventing the filling of job openings
comes down to dollars.

“I don’t believe it’s so much a
workforce shortage as a wage shortage,” said Johb. “Workers are there.
They just can’t afford to accept positions that aren’t going to get them
through.”

Saskatchewan currently has a minimum hourly wage of $11.81 per hour, but plans to increase to $13 per hour this October, with a goal of reaching $15 per hour by 2024.

For
many, said Johb, those long-overdue additional dollars will be too
little, too late to keep pace with rising inflation and taxation,
including recent increases to the provincial sales tax.

The market doesn’t care about your grandma:

Trickle down apartments

The current crisis in housing as it is playing out in Nova Scotia has been well described by Sam Krawec and others:
rapidly increasing housing costs, low vacancy rates, no permanent
system of rent control. There’s a general lack of protections for
tenants, who are increasingly seen as the only thing standing between
greedy landlords and the big payouts they feel entitled to.

The Conservative provincial government has fully embraced the
commodification of housing. For them, the primary purpose of all
property is as an investment to yield profit. So their spending on
housing has prioritized rent supplements, which subsidize the profits of
private landlords, and large payouts to private developers to
fast-track for-profit housing. This includes a small portion of
ambiguously-defined, time-limited “affordable” units, most of which
won’t be built for another few years.

Premier Tim Houston, is trying to convince us that this is just a
simple problem of supply and demand. But this is coming from a
Bermuda-based accountant for 12 years who was named in the Paradise
Papers, and whose transition team was chaired by the CEO of a prominent
private development group. His government has argued that, by increasing
the supply of housing, any housing, we can solve the current crisis. We
are expected to believe that more homes in lakeside subdivisions and
more luxury condos will let affordable apartments just trickle on down.

As market prices soared and public money flowed, many owners of
actually-affordable rental units saw an opportunity: demolish low-rise
affordable rental buildings, and use millions of dollars in public funds
for new buildings. But the small number of “affordable” units in these
buildings will rent for hundreds of dollars more than the units they
replace.

Adapting to climate change faster will save Canada billions, new analysis shows | CBC News: Given the current rate of inflation, it’s not hard to understand why some politicians might try to focus their criticism on anything that imposes an additional cost on consumers (even if, in this case, the revenue from the levy is rebated and most households receive more than they pay directly).

But given the current state of places like Port aux Basques, the logic of curtailing climate action is not obvious.

The Conservatives try to get around this logic problem by claiming — without substantial evidence — that the price on carbon isn’t leading to lower emissions. They also insist there are easier ways to reduce emissions. On Tuesday, Poilievre said Conservatives would invest in “technology,” such as small nuclear reactors and carbon capture.

But the Conservatives don’t currently have an actual plan that outlines exactly what they would do, how that would differ from what the federal government is already doing, and how it would add up to significant emissions reductions.

Atlantic Canada Reels as PM Links Storm Fiona to Climate: On his trip through the region, Trudeau was asked whether the
solution to a catastrophic storm like Fiona is to build back
differently.

“There’s always lessons to be learned,” he told
reporters in Stanley Bridge, where a massive storm surge and
hurricane-force winds upended buildings and tossed fishing boats onto
the shore. But “unfortunately, the reality with climate change is that
there’s going to be more extreme weather events. We’re going to have to
think about how to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes at us.”

CP
says Trudeau also paid a brief visit to the Cape Breton community of
Glace Bay, where he met with residents and surveyed a blustery,
rain-soaked neighbourhood where he was shown two homes with their roofs
torn off.

Afterwards he was asked whether it’s time to consider
stronger building codes given the increasing intensity of storms. “How
we make sure that families don’t have to go through this level of
anxiety is certainly part of the conversation we can have around
building codes, around expectations,” he said.

As for whether it’s
time for Ottawa to invest more in burying overhead power lines, “we’re
looking at ways of building more resilient infrastructure.” But “the
reality is that extreme weather events are going to get more intense
over the coming years because our climate is changing.”

Jeremy Mackenzie, leader of the controversial Diagolon movement, arrested on Canada-wide warrant | CBC News: Mackenzie is a prolific podcaster and the leader of an online group
known as Diagolon. A June 2022 House of Commons report identified the
organization as an ideologically motivated violent extremist
organization.

“It’s made up of former members of the Canadian
Forces, individuals with real combat training, with real capabilities
and who have grown increasingly radicalized, especially because of
COVID,” the report says, quoting Mubin Shaikh, a professor of public
safety at Seneca College.

The report notes there are connections
between Diagolon and extremists who were arrested at the Coutts, Alta.,
border crossing during the February convoy protest. It said those
extremists “were ready to engage police in a firefight.”

Members
of Diagolon have been tied to the convoy protests and two Diagolon
patches were found on body armour seized during the execution of RCMP
search warrants at Coutts.