Canada

Fracking Operation Ordered To Shut Down After Earthquake

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A Repsol fracking operation was ordered to shut down this week after an earthquake shook the region around Fox Creek, Alberta.

The earthquake measured 4.8 on the Richter scale — large enough to rattle pictures handing on walls, according to Fox Creek mayor Jim Ahn, who reported that he thought a truck had rolled by his building when the 1.5-second earthquake took place.

That was enough, though, for Alberta Energy Regulator to shut down the Repsol Oil & Gas site 35 kilometers north of the town.

Jim Ahn
Fox Creek mayor Jim Ahn

The province’s energy regulator shuts down any fracking site when there is an earthquake of 4.0 or greater magnitude in the area.

Scientists will now investigate whether fracking was the cause of the earthquake. If confirmed to be the cause, the quake would be the largest found to be caused by fracking in Canada.

Currently, the largest fracking-caused earthquake in Canada is a 4.6 magnitude quake that took place in northeastern B.C. last summer.

By Andy Stern

BC University Is Giving Students A Nap Room

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BCIT is providing a power-nap room, hoping to allow some of their students — already sleeping in other parts of the school — to boost their energy levels.

The sleep room, launched Monday, is available to book for hour periods between 12:30 and 5 p.m. four days per week — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Students can check bed availability at any time on the university’s online portal.

There are 10 beds in the low-lit room — which is also a racquetball court — and a station where students can pick up clean pillow cases and sanitizer. Students are required to spray and wipe the vinyl beds after use.

The nap room has a set of rules provided by the BCIT Student Association. Cell phone noise and talking is prohibited in the nap room and beds are not allowed to be pushed together.

The room was initiated after BCIT authorities noticed students sleeping all over the campus and realized that their students must be very tired. In addition to the benefits of alertness during classes, the school also hopes to cut down on driving accidents. Many BCIT students commute to the university from significant distances.

BCIT nap room schedule
Students are already using BCIT’s new nap room

The new nap room will be available to students for one booking per week “to start,” according to the BCITSA, and they have plans to eventually allow one booking per day.

BICTSA
Photos: BCITSA

Canada Selling Bottled Air To China

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A Canadian company is now selling bottled air to China, and supplies are selling out.

Vitality Air, and Edmonton-based company, is bottling air from Banff and Lake Louise, world-famous Canadian vacation destinations. The hand-bottled air is then shipped around the world.

For around $13 per bottle, Chinese are buying stocks out.

“We shipped a sample of 500 [bottles] to China,” Vitality Air co-founder Moses Lam said this week. “They sold out within a week-and-a-half.”

The company already has sold 1,000 of their next shipment of 4,000 bottles to China as well.

The air is being sold in orders of 10 bottles, according to the company, which markets their product on China’s eBay equivalent, Taobao.

India has also started to buy Vitality’s air.

The company is having a hard time keeping up with demand since starting selling online last June, due to the hand-bottling involved in their product.

Each bottle contains 3 liters of air, which equates to approximately 80 breaths. In a relaxed state, breathing steadily, it would take 4 minutes to breathe the air contained in one can, although consumers may prefer to draw out their enjoyment by sipping at the air over a longer period of time.

By Andy Stern

BC Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Trinity Western’s Law School

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CHILLIWACK, British Columbia — In the latest of the trials over Trinity Western University’s planned law school, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has found in favor of the school, rejecting the Law Society of BC’s rejection of TWU.

The Law Society had not properly maintained its discretion when it went back on its initial approval of Trinity Western’s law school after holding a referendum among its disapproving members, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson found.

“I conclude that the benchers permitted a non-binding vote of the LSBC membership to supplant their judgment,” said Hinkson.

“In so doing, the benchers disabled their discretion under the [Legal Profession Act] by binding themselves to a fixed blanket policy set by LSBC members. The benchers thereby wrongfully fettered their discretion.”

The matter at issue is Trinity Western’s “Community Covenant,” which all staff and students must sign. The covenant is a pledge that an individual will maintain the teachings of the Bible and refrain from sex outside traditional marriage.

The Langley, B.C.-based school — Canada’s largest Christian university with 4,000 students — applied for and received permission from the British Columbia Law Society in 2013.

Afterwards, responding to the disapproval of its members — B.C. lawyers — the LSBC held a referendum. After finding that 74 percent of its members wanted to deny graduates of Trinity Western to practice, the Law Society changed its decision and withdrew its approval.

Hinkson concluded that, besides allowing their discretion to be clouded by popular sentiment, the Law Society had infringed on the freedom of religion guaranteed by the nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hinkson ordered the Law Society to return to its original decision to allow Trinity Western’s graduates to practice law in B.C.

Provincial courts across Canada have been hearing Trinity Western’s case — some are finding for the school, some against. It is expected that the matter will proceed to the Supreme Court of Canada to be settled.

Canada And Sweden Sign Arctic Agreement

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Canada and Sweden have signed a new cooperative agreement based on science in the Arctic. The deal may have a special meaning for Canada, because the nation’s claims to a large tract of the Arctic is contested by other claimants Russia, Denmark, the U.S., and Norway.

Canada’s claim depends upon proving that the boundaries of its continental shelf extends beneath the North Pole. However, proving the extent of the shelf is challenging because much of the Arctic is still uncharted and work in the area is expensive and dangerous.

The new five-year “Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement” was completed by Canada’s Science Minister Kristy Duncan and Sweden’s Polar Research Secretariat head Bjorn Dahlback, and was announced by Ottawa Saturday.

According to international law, countries are entitled to 200 nautical miles of water as a coastal economic zone.

Currently, Canada, the U.S., Russia, Denmark and Norway are working with the United Nations to resolve jurisdictional boundaries in the Arctic. Rewrites have been made, including a 2013 rewrite by Canada’s Conservative government which included a claim to the North Pole, and a 2015 claim by Russia claiming 1.2 million square kilometers of the Arctic shelf. Denmark also claims the North Pole.

By Andy Stern

Alberta Premier Says NDP Might Not Raise Minimum Wage To $15

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Alberta’s Premier said this week that she was not sure the provincial government would raise the minimum wage to $15 after all, citing the state of the Alberta economy and the possibility that raising the minimum wage might lead to job losses.

The NDP came to power in May, the first non-Conservative party to govern the province in 44 years. Among the NDP’s election campaign promises was that the minimum wage would be increased to $15 dollars per hour by 2018. The plan angered businesses, but the NDP indicated that raising the wage would create jobs and insure a better standard of living for all.

In June, Notely reasserted that they would “stick to that promise,” and in October the NDP raised the minimum wage from $10.20 to $11.20.

However, Wednesday Premier Rachel Notley said the government would examine the wage issue in light of continuing economic trends — Alberta has been in recession and predictions for the next couple of years are significantly worse.

Notley said that they would now consider the best available research before making a decision about raising the minimum wage.

She said that the $15 target was an idea rather than a plan.

“[I]n fact,” said Notley, “what we’ve said all along is the pace is something that needs to be sensitive to the current economic situation — the depth and breadth of which we are still, all of us, are still coming to understand. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

By Andy Stern

Vancouver Cyclists’ Safest City

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Vancouver is a city of 100,000 bike rides per day — higher than any other Canadian city — and these cyclists are also the safest, according to a recent report.

“There are more streets in Vancouver that have cycling lanes than in any of the other cities,” said Nithya Vijayakumar, senior advisor at the Pembina Institute and an author of the report, “and despite being the smallest area, there are also over 100,000 daily trips by bikes in Vancouver, which was higher than any of the other cities in the study,”

The study sought an understanding of how well cycling networks serve residents in each of the cities analyzed, as well as how each city is developing cycling resources.

Over the past several years, Vancouver has taken on the task of creating new bike lanes, despite the limited space available in the geographically small city, and the allocation of real estate and tax money for bike paths has been the topic of significant debate.

But, as Vijayakumar commented, Vancouver’s bike routes model is not really just one of separated lanes.

“I think that one of the most interesting things about the Vancouver network is the majority of their cycling infrastructure is actually just signed routes on residential streets that are shared with cars.”

For less busy routes, separate lanes were not always necessary, the researchers found.

“It’s all about finding the right fit for the environment.” commented Vijayakumar.

Of five major cities looked at in the study, Vancouver was seven times less dangerous than the city with the most bike crashes, Montreal.

For every 100,000 bike trips in Vancouver, there is one bike crash, the scientists found. Even the next safest city, Ottawa, was three times as dangerous.

By Andy Stern

The full report: “Cycle Cities“

Peter Mansbridge Inducted Into Canadian News Hall Of Fame

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CBC News Chief Correspondent Peter Mansbridge was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame this week. The news veteran delivered a speech as his induction Tuesday thanking the journalists he has worked with during his career as well as sharing his thoughts on the future of CBC journalism.

Mansbridge said he didn’t want to dwell on the “golden years” of the CBC or the “struggle” to succeed among an increasingly large field of news competition. Instead, he sees these things as a challenge and a chance to set CBC apart.

The two things that remain always in news, Mansbridge said, were facts and great storytelling, noting that CBC was rating among the best in the world in these areas.

Mansbridge highlighted the continuing importance of public broadcasting with five points:

– It’s clear of outside influences. This is critical and must be protected.
– Its mandate is to reflect the country and those living in it – all those who live in it.
– Our country is changing: how it looks; how it feels; what it believes.
– Our job is to find those common threads and expose them.
– It’s not about being popular; it’s about being relevant.

He said that CBC should focus on doing news that matters — that has an impact — rather than just what gets shared on social media.

Mansbridge also mentioned — more than once — his faith in the young journalists now entering the corporation, where he sees “the future of this incredible country.”

H noted CBC’s recent funding cuts, staffing cuts, and criticism, and said the CBC had to be prepared to take risks:

“I have faith that Canadians will continue to believe, as the surveys show they do today, in a national public broadcaster. They believe that the future for the CBC can be even better than its illustrious past and its award-winning present.

“And so do I.”

To read CBC’s reproduction of Mansbridge’s full speech, visit CBC. 

By Andy Stern

Sucker Punched Man Gets Brain Surgery In Vancouver

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In the past year, three people in Vancouver have been killed by sucker punches and others have been placed in hospital, including a young man one punched while on a walk through downtown with his wife Thursday.

“We’ve had about 10 of these incidents in Vancouver this year that have resulted in serious injury like this — comas, head trauma, brain injuries. Three of them have resulted in death,” Vancouver Police’s Constable Brian Montague said at a press conference following the most recent incident.

The incident involved a 26-year-old man Vancouverite walking down the street with his wife. Two groups of people were arguing with each other on the street when the couple passed them. The 26-year-old was knocked to the ground by one of the men in the group who had turned and swung at him. He was rendered unconscious before he hit the ground. Knocking his head on the ground, he suffered a brain injury that was later treated in hospital with surgery that removed a part of his brain.

“This could happen to you or me walking down the street. There is that possibility,” Montague told reporters Thursday. “We do have individuals that come into the city that are looking for trouble, that are looking to get into fights, and unfortunately this is the result sometimes.

“In speaking with our investigators, they’re seeing more of them — or at least have seen more of them — recently. I don’t know if you’d consider it a ‘trend,’ but it’s something that is very disturbing to us.

“Some are random. Some are individuals that have a dispute in or outside of a bar. Someone bumps into each other, they may not know each other prior,” said Montague.

Because many of those one-punched are innocent bystanders, Montague said, he did not know how people could protect themselves. He said police were focusing on warning the perpetrators that there would be repercussions for their actions.

Currently, Vancouver police are recommending a charge of manslaughter. Manslaughter carries no minimum penalty. The maximum is life in prison.

By Andy Stern

Canada’s New Minister of Defense

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Canada is excited about the nation’s newly appointed defense minister, Harjit Sajjan, called “the breakout celebrity of Prime Minister Trudeau’s new cabinet.”

The former Vancouver gang unit officer said that he took a different route from many of the Indo-Canadian youths who became gang members while he transferred schools and later joined the police force. He still reflects back with wonder that he made that choice, and attributes a large part of it to having had a strong mentor early in life.

“I had a good mentor that inspired me that I could do more,” Sajjan said. It was his grade 9 social studies teacher, a navy veteran, who encouraged him step by step and helped him to stop making excuses for what he wanted to do but was not pursuing.

After the police force, Sajjan joined the military as a trooper and moved up the ranks to become an officer — Canada’s first Sikh-Canadian to command an army reserve regiment.

Described by those who worked with him as a genuine and honest person, Sajjan also attributes his success in places such as Bosnia to being genuine and building rapport.

Sajjan was sworn in one day before the terrorist attacks on Paris’ Bataclan Theater.

When asked about ISIS and Canada’s withdrawal of military forces, Sajjan said ISIS was nothing new in the world — certainly not for himself, who served in Afghanistan. “It’s just more public now,” he said.

“When you deal with threats, we have to fight smart,” said the defense minister, commenting on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to suspend air strikes. “We will be contributing in a meaningful way to be part of that fight against ISIS.”

Sajjan, a Liberal politician elected in this year, represents the South Vancouver riding.

CTV News, who interviewed Sajjan after his appointment, called Sajjan “the breakout celebrity of Prime Minister Trudeau’s new cabinet.” Nationwide, he is being referred to as a “badass” minister.

Sajjan has experienced trials and tribulations associated with his minority status while progressing in his career. He maintained his right to wear his cultural headdress in the police force and military, but expressed determination and resolve in working for Canadians as a Canadian.

“You may not like me, but I have a job to do and I’m going to preform.”

By Andy Stern

25% Of BC’s HIV-Positive Do Not Know They Are Infected

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25% Of BC's HIV-Positive Do Not Know They Are Infected
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HARRISON HOT SPRINGS, British Columbia — The province’s public health authorities are calling for universal testing for HIV for all citizens. One-fourth of British Columbians carrying the life-threatening disease do not know they are infected, according to B.C.’s Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, who spoke on the need for testing Monday.

“They do not know that they are infected, and they do not even expect that they are infected,” said Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the Centre for Excellence.

“It is critical that we find that 2,000 people who are affected.”

The public health officer called for universal testing, which means that every person in the province would be tested for HIV.

Montaner said it was necessary to find the thousands of British Columbians in order to offer them treatment, and more importantly, he said, prevent further HIV transmission.

The province should be motivated not just because of humanitarian issues, said Montaner. Treating and preventing diseases like HIV is also about saving money.

“This is exponentially a lifesaver and a money-saver in the world,” said Montaner, referring to the higher costs involved in treating already-affected disease sufferers once their condition worsens as well as the costs involved in treating the higher numbers of HIV-infected that will result from not finding those currently infected.

There is no real model for B.C. to follow in fighting HIV, Montaner said, because the province is already at the forefront of fighting HIV globally. It will have to pioneer the path.

“We don’t just recommend stuff. We recommend it and we implement it,” he said.

Montaner also asserted positively that HIV could be wiped out if proper measures were implemented.

“Yes we can,” said Montaner. “We have demonstrated that by treating patients, we can make them virtually non-infective.”

The health authority is aiming for 90-90-90 by 2020. The plan holds that if 90 percent of those infected with HIV know their status and 90 percent receive treatment — full viral suppression with anti-viral therapy — we will see a 90 percent reduction in AIDS and AIDS deaths.

Alberta To Introduce Economy-Wide Carbon Tax Of $20/Ton

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Alberta will begin to phase out it’s cheapest energy source at the cost of an extra $320 per household in 2017 and $500 per household in 2018, setting its sights on 30 percent renewable energy by 2030.

The plan was announced by the provinces first non-Conservative party in 44 years. Premier Rachel Notley of Canada’s New Democratic Party assumed the role of premier last month.

The plan is expected to reduce carbon emissions in the province, despite an expected increase in population and industry, and at a cost born by all Albertans.

Currently, the cheapest form of electricity in Alberta is coal-fired power. Coal-fired power is to be phased out under the new plan, and coal-fired electricity generators are expected to cease business, according to energy authorities.

“I think the expectation would be that they would be ceasing their operations,” Gerard McInnis, Ernst & Young’s Canadian sector leader for power and utilities, commented.

The price of consuming carbon will begin at $20 per ton on Jan. 1, 2017, and rise to $30 per ton in 2018, and everyone will pay it. Currently, only the largest carbon producers — those who emit 100 megatons per year — pay such a levy.

For most Albertans, the price will be felt at the pump and when opening home electricity bills. Gas prices will rise 5 cents per liter next year — 7 cents per liter by 2018. Natural gas-fired furnaces will be more expensive to run — rising over a dollar per gigajoule next year and up to an additional $1.62 in 2018.

The levy may continue to increase indefinitely. An NDP-formed panel published a “Climate Leadership” report this week which contains proposed increases to the levy every year to 2030. The report recommends an increase from 2017’s $20 per ton to $100 per ton in 2030.

The plan includes a goal that 30 percent of Alberta’s electricity will come from renewable sources in 2030. Currently, 9 percent of the province’s electricity generation comes from sun and wind.

The money paid by Albertans for carbon-emitting power is expected to generate $3 billion annually for the government. Alberta has faced a deficit since oil prices began to collapse in 2014 — the current deficit is $6.1 billion.

Also part of the new plan, oil sands emissions will be capped out, but above current levels of 70 million tons. The limit will be 100 million tons, allowing the industry to continue to grow.

By James Haleavy