Events:
Today is the last open day for apple-picking at MacPhee's orchard in Woodville Mills, 10AM-until they run out or 6PM.  Good eating and winter storage varieties available.
Facebook page

Other U-pick orchards are winding down for the season, too, but roadside fruitstands will have stock for a while.

PEI Symphony Orchestra, 2:30PM, Zion Presbyterian Church, corner of Prince and Grafton Streets.  Tickets at the door.   First concert of the year.
Symphony details.

-----------------------------------------

A sardonic but true description from the Canadian web newspaper National Observer, from this week: 

Turns out we can all relax about last week’s scary report by the world’s climate scientists - Donald Trump’s got it covered. Apparently he didn’t just inherit a mountain of cash but also a “natural instinct for science.”
National Observer has been following the implications of that report for our country. The editors have been beating the drums calling for political leaders to read the damn thing and tell us what they plan to do.

You can follow this story through the reader-supported series Race Against Climate Change.

The House of Commons did finally hold a debate on climate breakdown. Short version: the Conservatives showed no interest at all, the Liberals aren’t promising anything new, the NDP says they should, and Elizabeth May got to give a killer speech.

The incomparable Sheila Watt-Cloutier wrote a powerful argument for humanizing the climate debate. "While Inuit and the world’s other Indigenous peoples are among the most seriously affected by climate change, we do not accept the role of victims"
The paper gives some free articles, has regular subscriptions and usually has subscription sales a few times a year.
National Observer website

-----------------------------------------

One of my Island heroes, Joan Diamond:
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/letter-big-enough-to-effect-change-251839/

LETTER: Big enough to effect change - The Guardian Letter to the Editor

The old adage “if you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem” is ringing more and more true these days. Amid a firestorm of discussions about ways to change the trajectory of global warming, I have come across many who say things like: “P.E.I. is so small, we won’t make any notable impact” and “I am only one person, it’s on governments and corporations to make this right.” While I agree that it is most certainly up to governments and corporations to change, it’s citizens who dictate changes by advocating for them every chance we get.

We can do it in many ways, including voting for people who are taking actions to fight climate change, contacting your local municipal, provincial and federal representatives to urge them to take immediate action, and getting involved in groups and movements that are making change happen.

There are also a multitude of small things that we could change, but sadly, many are content either to not think about it at all, or to believe it is up to someone else to take charge. News flash – it is up to us. Stop using drive-thrus, put a no flyer notice on your mailbox, lower your energy consumption by using transit, walk or cycle when you can, support renewable energy initiatives and for God’s sake, put on a sweater, rather than turning up your thermostat.

It is this attitude of not being big enough to make a difference that fuels the entire problem.

Joan Diamond, New Dominion

------------
Keep in mind to join people, Wednesday, October 24th, 9AM, bringing the IPCC Climate Change reports to MPs' offices on the island.  More info (including Wayne Easter's office dot in the wrong location, but that will get fixed, and there is no mention of Lawrence MacAulay):
https://gofossilfree.org/canada/

----------------------

(and if you are one of those people who confuse affect and effect -- or one of those who thinks it's as simple as the former is always a verb and the latter is always a noun -- this "Grammarly" web article explains why "to effect change" is correct (toward the middle of the article)
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/affect-vs-effect/

Farmers' Markets open in Charlottetown (9AM-2PM) and Summerside (9AM-1PM).

Murray Harbour Farmers' Market, (9AM-12noon), honouring veterans today with special displays. "Saturday, the Murray Harbour Farmers Market recognizes the service of those who answered the call and served Canada in time of unrest and in times of peace. We are thrilled to have a display featuring our local heros who served Canada and a variety of pieces o& memorabilia. If you have a picture or items you would like to include in the display, it’s not too late. Just make sure you drop it off at the market before 9AM.  Our regular vendors will be on hand and the treat of the day is war cake and bannock.  So see you at the Market and take some time to honour a veteran!"
Facebook event link

Events:
Victoria-By-the-Sea Christmas Stroll, various shops hosting special events, 10AM-7PM (various), including craft fairs at the The Grand Victorian and the Orient Hotel.  Shops open and many with major sales.
Sunday -- 11AM-7PM (various), featuring horse & buggy rides, carols in the street, and various other events.  
Facebook event link.

Tonight:
Up With People Day PEI, 6-9PM, Central Queens United Church, Hunter River.  From Up With People (UWP) alumnus Brad Trivers (now MLA for Rustico-Emerald):  "Come learn about 'Up With People' at this simple community-style potluck followed by music and stories. Open to the public - ALL WELCOME. For those who traveled, this will be a time to reconnect with alumni you already know, connect with new alumni, rejuvenate your UWP spirit and connect with UWP Canada which is officially back! Also a great time for potential UWP students to chat with alumni. After supper will be an 'open mic' - so bring your instruments and/or stories! Bring a photo from your year along with your memories to share with friends old and new. We’re also going to be collecting non-perishable food items to support the local food bank. Please bring some items if you’re able.
In 1991 I traveled with a musical group called "Up With People". Up With People uses music and personal interaction to unite people and communities. International casts of students travel and put on musical shows worldwide. The goal of Up With People is to help build a more hopeful, trusting and peaceful world. Thousands of people have traveled with Up With People over the years. It is no surprise that several Up With People alumni live on Prince Edward Island! In the coming years I hope many more Islanders travel with Up With People."  from:
Facebook event link

Sunday, October 21st:
Annual Development and Peace – Caritas Canada Fall Action Workshop, 2PM, MacKenzie Room, St. Pius X Church, Parkdale. Guest Speakers: Rebecca Rathbone and refugee panel. Theme: "Share the Journey, the Plight of Refugees." There will be a sharing table.
-----------------------------------------

Tony Lloyd explains things: 
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/letter-natural-gases-post-threat-251626/

LETTER: Natural gases post threat - The Guardian Letter to the Editor

Published on Friday, October 19th, 2018

In early October, LNG Canada, an energy consortium, announced a 40-billion-dollar pipeline, terminals, storage and ship system to transport gas from British Columbia to Asia. LNG means liquefied natural gas. Natural gas is any gas which comes from the earth; the four lowest molecular weight commercial natural gases are methane, ethane, propane and butane - all carbon plus hydrogen molecules.

The 670-kilometre pipeline will cost $6 billion. The liquefaction and storage plant will cost $18 billion with completion date 2025. Some 14 million tonnes of LNG will be shipped per year with options to double capacity.

Burning natural gas with oxygen produces carbon dioxide (CO2), water and heat. For example, methane; one carbon atom (atomic weight 12) and 4 hydrogen atoms (total atomic weight 4), so three-quarters of methane's weight is carbon. The molecular weight of CO2 is 44. The 14 million tonnes of methane becomes 38.5 million tonnes of CO2 – per year.

If six degrees Celsius of climate change takes place then 95 percent of species on earth will die; a human induced extinction. You don't fix solar radiation depositing heat in the earth by exhausting CO2 into the atmosphere.

In 2000 AD, the Gulf of St. Lawrence didn't freeze over. How? Answer: Canada's albedo was changed by massive systematic deforestation. Moving the Boreal forest northward to warm Canada up is at the basis of unusual fire, flood and storm phenomena experienced today. Climate change begins with changing the earth's albedo; a human induced experimental disaster.

Tony Lloyd, Mount Stewart

This morning:

Standing Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries, 10AM, Coles Building.  Public welcome in the Gallery or you can watch on the Legislative Assembly website
or their Facebook page.

Public Lecture: Living Well With Differences: Reflections from a Northern Irish Peace Activist, 7-8:30PM, Our Lady of Assumption Parish Hall, 151 Stratford Road, Stratford. Sponsored by the Council of Canadians PEI Chapter. Free, but donations accepted.
"Guest lecturer Paul Hutchinson is a mediator, therapist, artist and retreat leader who has worked on the International, National, Corporate, Institution and Individual Levels helping people to reconcile differences

Two future dates to note:
Next Sunday, October 27th:
27th Annual Daniel O'Hanley Memorial Lecture:  Hon. David MacDonald presenting If You Love This World: Climate Justice and Indigenous Wisdom, 2PM, Our Lady of Assumption Parish Hall, Stratford.  All welcome. Entertainment and refreshments will follow the lecture.
"The Honourable David MacDonald is a well-know Islander, a United Church of Canada minister since 1961. He has climate change credentials that go back to the late 1980s. As MP, he chaired the first permanent House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment. Atmospheric issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion and most of all, climate change were the central focus of its five-year mandate. In 1998, he was appointed by the United Church of Canada as a Special Advisor to address widespread Canadian and church concerns arising from the tragic and troubling history of Indian Residential Schools. His work centred primarily on facilitating negotiations with Indigenous leaders, survivors, the federal government, and church organizations. He actively participated in negotiations towards a Comprehensive Settlement Agreement, including a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that began in 2008 and concluded its mandate in 2015."

Saturday, November 3rd:
People's Forum on Just Trade and Development, 1:30-4:30PM, Farm Centre, 420 University Avenue, Charlottetown.  "Hosted by members of Trade Justice PEI and the Mawi'omi Centre of UPEI, the guest speakers will be Pam Palmater and Gavin Fridell.
Pam Palmater is Associate Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. She is a member of the Eel River First Nation, New Brunswick, and one of the organizers of Idle No More. Pam specializes in laws that have an impact on First Nations, and has a 25-year history of activism on social, political and legal issues. Pam’s topic will be 'The Impact of International Trade Agreements on Indigenous Peoples.'
Gavin Fridell is an author and Associate Professor of International Development Studies at St Mary’s University and a Canada Research Chair. His specialty is examining the political economy of fair trade, free trade, global trade governance and how trade issues play out among social movements and states. Gavin’s topic will be 'Alternative Trade; Lessons for the Future.' "
Facebook event link

-----------------------------------------
Congratulations to Glenaladale Heritage Trust!
It is one of eight organizations selected for the National Trust for Canada's Governors' Awards:    

"Glenaladale Heritage Trust for its impressive accomplishments to date in securing an exciting future for the historic Glenaladale Estate in PEI."
Also, the "Chase the Cow" fundraiser continues; see their Facebook page for details about this fundraiser and the whole project.  Congrats to Aggi-Rose Reddin and Mary Boyd and many others for their dedication to this project.
----------------------------------
Veteran social activist and commentator Maureen Larkin sizes up "Afta' NAFTA", the USMCA, and it comes up lacking.
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/opinion-a-blow-to-rural-canada-250471/

OPINION: A blow to rural Canada - The Guardian Letter to the Editor

Published on Wednesday, October 17th, 2018

We now have USMCA - the new trade deal with the U.S. - and rural P.E.I. is facing yet another assault on its dairy farmers and all Islanders are facing another increase in the cost of drugs. How did this happen?

As recently as last November, the big banks, as well as civil society, produced reports indicating that the economic impact of not having NAFTA would not be insurmountable. A trade expert told CBC Charlottetown that the impact on P.E.I. would be “fairly modest.” Seven out of P.E.I.’s top 10 exports to the U.S. would remain tariff-free under WTO rules. Those included fresh and frozen lobster, mussels, oysters and aircraft parts. At the same time, the Bank of Montreal said the termination of NAFTA would be "a manageable risk that policymakers, businesses and markets would adjust to in relatively short order."

Somehow, between the government and the mainstream media, the impression was left that without NAFTA, the ‘sky would fall in.’ All serious discussion of how Canada might move forward without NAFTA was blocked and P.E.I. is paying the price.

Canada’s supply-management system has been eroded by our Liberal Government with each agreement it has signed. First, the EU agreement (CETA) and then the CP-TPP. Government’s own calculations indicated that P.E.I. dairy farmers would lose about $32.3 million as a result of the CP-TPP alone.

Now USMCA gives up another 3.49 per cent of market share to the U.S. The Dairy Farmers of Canada say that market-share losses from recent trade deals is around 18 per cent. It is irksome that our federal government is suggesting that supply-management is still intact. Because it isn’t. P.E.I. farmers are right to be angry. Their quotas are losing value and their ability to make ends meet is severely challenged.

Similarly, Canada conceded to the demands of Big Pharma for a second time. CETA increased drug costs to Islanders by approximately $3.6 million annually. Now the USMCA agreement will increase them further. Canada agreed to the extension of the minimum "data protection" period for biologic drugs. This will delay the entry into the marketplace of cheaper generic versions. This cost increase will come out of Islanders’ pockets whether it is borne by Health P.E.I. or by individuals at the pharmacy counter, and will make it more difficult to develop a pharmacare program in Canada.

Just like other trade agreements, USMCA is essentially a book of rules which give corporations rights and little to anyone else. Take, for example, the regulatory co-operation regime which gives corporations an opportunity to nip proposed public interest regulation in the bud if it interferes with trade - before Canadian citizens even know about it.

Aside from some gains for Mexican workers, this agreement has the same weak and unenforceable Labour standards as the CP-TPP, no gender chapter, no environment chapter and no mention of climate change. The “progressive” spin has completely disappeared from the government’s talking points.

The one triumph for civil society and social movements on both sides of the border is the withdrawal of the controversial Investor State Dispute Settlement process. Ironically, we have Trump’s administration to thank for this, specifically Lighthizer, Trump’s trade representative. So, little thanks to Justin Trudeau here.

As the dust settles we have to ask: “When will we stop engaging in trade agreements in which the interests of multinationals consistently obstruct important social policies which benefit us all?” We need a new model for doing trade which is rule-based and designed to address human and planetary needs.

- Maureen Larkin is a member of Trade Justice P.E.I.

------------------------------------------

When will we stop engaging in trade agreements in which the interests of multinationals consistently obstruct important social policies which benefit us all? We need a new model for doing trade which is rule-based and designed to address human and planetary needs.

--Maureen Larkin, in the opinion piece, above

Events:

Forage PEI (Two-day symposium) starts today, with interesting sessions in Charlottetown, and tomorrow a road trip to Chef Michael Smith's Fireworks in Bay Fortune (not sure if a side trip to the Aqua-Bounty GMO fish producing facilities is available) and ending back in Charlottetown at Hopyard. Forage PEI's website says "Forage Prince Edward Island is an annual two-day industry symposium that celebrates food culture on PEI. It’s all about sharing stories, real food experiences, education and networking. Ultimately it’s an industry movement that will strengthen the Island’s food culture and brand."

-----------------------------------------

Later this week:

Friday, October 19th:
Standing Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries, 10AM, Coles Building, "The committee will meet to receive a briefing from representatives of the PEI Fishermen’s Association on concerns related to the new waste water treatment facility at the Pictou County, NS Northern Pulp mill."
Well, new wastewater treatment facility being proposed at the Pictou County pulp mill....

-----------------------------------------

Elizabeth May spoke for ten minutes about Climate Change Monday night in Parliament at the "emergency debate" granted for the topic.  While I am not sure what MPs did at the end of debate -- how a heart of stone could not be moved by May's words -- here is a link to the video of her speech, and the text at the end of this newsletter.

Video:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/newspolitics/elizabeth-may-delivers-impassioned-speech-during-climate-debate/vi-BBOsvWL?ocid=se
------------------------

The Leap Manifesto has said for a couple of years now, what the United Nation's report last week emphasized, that we need to deal with climate change now and with humanity's needs in mind.

A practical application of this is in emphasizing what Canada Post could do for people and the planet.  From Bianca Mugyenyi of The Leap, with links to an op-ed by Avi Lewis and a petition about the postal workers' proposal:

Last Tuesday, postal workers and their allies took over a Toronto post office to bring to life their vision of Canada Post as a centre of community care, and a leader in the transition to a green economy.

During a week when the world’s leading climate scientists made it clear that nothing short of total economic and political transformation can prevent the worst effects of climate change from unfolding within our lifetimes, this action gave us reason to hope.

Yes, the facts about the scale and speed of the climate crisis are terrifying. But we also see this moment as a huge opportunity to catalyze a leap to a clean economy that works for everyone.

Right now, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation with Canada Post, with strike action authorized. In its contract negotiations, CUPW has been advancing key planks of the Delivering Community Power proposal — a vision of Canada Post as the engine of a green, justice-based energy transition in Canada.

If CUPW embeds Delivering Community Power in its next contract, our post offices could be powered by renewable energy and boast services like postal banking and electric charging stations in just a few short years.

Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finally reached the realization that gave rise to the Leap Manifesto three years ago — that small steps are no longer enough. It’s time to leap to a more caring and livable economy.

Thank you to our postal workers for leading the way!

With hope and momentum,

Bianca Mugyenyi, The Leap
Links:

Op-ed from The Star on the Postal Workers' proposal
"Delivering Community Power" petition

------------------------------------------------------------

Elizabeth May's text from her speech, Monday, October 15th, 2018: - HANSARD  House of Commons

Elizabeth May

2018-10-15 20:08 [p.22414]
 

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand here today and I acknowledge we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin peoples. To them I say meegwetch.

I am very honoured to be part of an emergency debate tonight on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. I appreciate the Speaker accepting the arguments I made, which were also made by the hon. member for Beaches-East York and the NDP caucus.

I want to begin by quoting some words. "Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment, whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war." Those words were the opening sentence of the consensus scientific report from the Toronto conference in June 1988, when this country was in the lead on climate change, working with the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. The warnings from science were clear then and they remain crystal clear now.

That was in 1988. I have had a ringside seat for the decades during which we could have arrested climate change before our glaciers were melting, before we were losing the Arctic, before our forests were on fire, before we saw draught and climate refugees, and before we had tornadoes in Ottawa. We had a chance in the 1990s and we blew it. We had a chance in the first decade of this century, but every time there has been a warning from scientists, the alarm bell has rung and society has hit the snooze button.

I am increasingly drawn to the conclusion that our biggest problem is the short-term mindset that preoccupies political parties not just in Canada but around the world. Where is the bravery? Where is the courage? There are all those people surrounding every politician saying, "You cannot win an election by telling the public the truth. You cannot tell people they are going to have to stop using an internal combustion engine and leave fossil fuels in the ground. Do you want to tell them that? That is not going to be politically popular."

If we are grown-ups in this place, then we should face the science clear-eyed with a serious intent that acknowledges we cannot afford to hit the snooze button on this one report because this time the scientists are telling us that 1.5° is far more dangerous than we thought it was. It reminds me of what Al Gore once said, that if we let the climate crisis continue apace, it will feel like a nature walk through the Book of Revelation.

We have allowed greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere to increase to such an extent that we have already changed the chemistry of the atmosphere; we cannot change it back. We are leaving that hospitable period within which human civilization took root. We got up and started walking on two legs, and then became the dominant force on the planet in a geological lifespan. In the blink of an eye, humanity became the dominant force on this planet. We are entering the Anthropocene, where what we do has a bigger effect than anything else on life on earth. In the Anthropocene, now we are being told that we as homo sapiens, the clever species, the smart ones, have at most 10 to 12 years to ensure that we stop greenhouse gas emissions rapidly, ramp up sequestration to protect every forest, and replant as many forests as possible. We will have to do some things besides that too if we want to ensure we hold the global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5°C above what it was before the industrial revolution.

Parts of this report could have been much worse. We know this from those in the IPCC negotiations. Bear in mind that this is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yes, it is composed of scientists, but they were appointed by government and this is a negotiated document. Pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia led to removing parts of the report that would have warned us further. If we miss the 1.5° mark, it is bad, and that is in the report, but if we hit 2°, it is much more dangerous. They took out the part about runaway global warning. We do not know when we will hit a tipping point of irreversible self-acceleration where the ultimate consequences are not about bracing for bad weather, but about bracing for millions of species going extinct. Even if humanity can hang on now, can we imagine hanging on to human civilization in a world with a 4°, 5°, 6°, or 7° rise in temperature? The answer is no.

We have one chance, one chance only, within which all the nations on earth agree that we meant what we said in Paris, that we must hold the global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5°. This IPCC special report contains good news because it says we can do it. It says there are no physical, geological or geochemical conditions of planetary existence, technical or economic, that will prevent us from achieving the goal of protecting our children's future, not future generations in the hypothetical, the children who are here now. I am talking about the grandchildren I tuck into bed at night, those children, not hypothetical children. All of us know those children. They are our children. We have one chance to ensure that in their natural lifespan they enjoy a hospitable biosphere that has sustained humanity since we first got up and walked on two legs.

The issue tonight is not to debate Canada's current carbon plan, Canada's current climate plan. This is not a status quo debate. We should not be scoring political points because one party did this and another party did that. We should be here as humanity, human beings, elected people for our constituencies who know full well that if we do not change what we are doing as a species, we will face an unthinkable world. The good news is we still have a chance to save ourselves.

I increasingly am drawn to thinking about the five days in May 1940 when Winston Churchill was surrounded by people, the Lord Halifaxes and the Chamberlains, who said, "Face the facts. We cannot not defend this island. The Nazis are invading. Our entire army is stranded at Dunkirk. There are 300,000 men, and we cannot get them off because there is no way." They sat and surrendered. This is the moment when real political leadership steps up. This is when we need our Prime Minister to go to the negotiations in Poland, or to dispatch the Minister of Environment to the negotiations in Poland, and say, "We are stepping up. We are going to rescue everybody. We are going to be the heroes in our own story. We are going to adopt what the IPCC says we must do: 45% reductions by 2030." Churchill of course, surrounded by naysayers, thought up a miracle, one that is clearly undoable. He asked, "How many civilian boats are there in Dover? We could get those civilians to cross the English channel and rescue over 300,000 men." Really? It was hardly plausible.

In this time and age we need to face the facts just as squarely. We need to tell Canadians that we have hope, to not despair or think it is too late. They should not turn away from the IPCC reports. They should not be afraid because we cannot breathe in British Columbia in the summer because of forest fires. They should not give up. We will rally and marshal every small town, every big city, every Canadian group, rotary clubs, church groups, and we will tell those naysayers who think that climate change is about a cash grab that they are in the way of our future and that they must get out of the way.

We also sadly must say to our own Minister of Environment that it is not true that we cannot change our target for five years. The Paris Agreement says clearly that any country can replace its own target anytime. The IPCC report has said to us as a country that our target is approximately 50% too little. We need to do twice as much. I know that is hard, but to save the lives of our children, what would we not do? Why will we not rally around the call that we go to COP24 and say we are not going to wait five years? It is an unthinkable thing what the minister has said to us. She said we are going to wait until 2023. "Read between the lines," is what she just said. We must go to the next climate negotiation as leaders in the world with the target assigned us of totals we must have. Then we must stand up and challenge the others by asking where is their target, where is their goal, because we are not prepared to tell our children we are a failed species. We are not going to do that because we are responsible human beings. We are Canadian parliamentarians and together we can achieve the pathway that has been put before us by world science.

Time is not on our side. History may not be on our side, but by God, we better be on our side. We better grab this chance and make it real.

Events:
Tuesday, October 16th:

Health and Wellness Committee, 1:30-3:30PM, Coles Building.
"Briefing by Lisa Cooper, Chief and President of the Native Council of PEI regarding health issues and policy recommendations for off-reserve Indigenous community members."

First of the Preserving Series Food Exchange Workshops, 6-8PM, Farm Centre, with Chef Sarah Forrestor Wendt.   Hosted by the PEI Food Exchange.  Free but pre-register to reserve a spot email <foodexchangepei@gmail.com>
"Spaces are limited to 12 people per workshop, there are a few spaces left.
Learn to safely preserve tomatoes and ideas how to use them to make meals. A couple of recipes will be demonstrated (salsa, stewed tomatoes). The information can be applied to most veggies.
This is a hands on workshop - bring your favourite knife and an apron if you like. You will get a jar of preserved tomatoes to take home.
Chef Sarah is the owner of My Plum, My Duck where she serves up a wide array of preserves. Sarah's super power is being able to prepare healthy tasty food on a limited budget.She can make a masterpiece meal out of slim beginnings."  Facebook event link

Island Studies Lecture: “Island way of life” Lost When the Ferry
Becomes a Bridge?, 7PM, UPEI, SDU Main Building Faculty Lounge, free

---------------------------------------------------------

Communities, Land and Environment Minister Richard Brown went to Souris West on the weekend to the workplace of the volunteer mayor (former Community Council Chair), whom he dismissed a couple of weeks ago with a lot of muddly promises about looking into the Municipal Government Act and maybe the Federation of Municipalities helping out with some of the troublesome requirements now.  He also said that his letter to Pat O'Connor didn't get mailed.
CBC online story:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-souris-west-municipal-amalgamation-1.4864019

-----------------------------------------

Last evening in the House of Commons, there was an "emergency debate" on climate change and the recent United Nations report, after Elizabeth May, Guy Caron and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith all requested it, and many citizens phone and wrote the Speaker urging him to schedule it.

I only saw a part of it, and here is a general story about it from CBC

350.org wrote earlier in the evening that there were four things to look for (and the first two are also a good review of things):

• A recognition that we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. The IPCC made it clear, we need to stop expanding fossil fuel projects and get off fossil fuels entirely by the middle of the 21st century. That means we shouldn’t build massive new fossil fuel projects like the TransMountain pipeline, offshore oil rigs in the Atlantic, the Teck Frontier tar sands mine, or the gargantuan new fracked gas facility planned for Northern BC.

• A commitment to build a 100% renewable energy economy that works for everyone -- and upholds Indigenous rights. We can rise to the challenge the IPCC report lays out for us, but to do that, politicians need to get serious about building a 100% renewable energy economy that works for everyone. That means ignoring what the big oil billionaires want and finding ways to ensure that every single worker, family and community is able to make the shift from fossil fuels to a 100% renewable economy that works for people,planet and takes leadership from Indigenous peoples.

• Who leaves their talking points at the door. We’ve all heard Justin Trudeau and his ministers echo their line that the environment and the economy go together, but the IPCC report makes it crystal clear that their plan isn’t enough. Catherine McKenna herself admitted it last week when she told the Canadian Press that “we all know we need to do more” when it comes to climate change. This emergency debate is a chance for our government to be bold and be honest, that means leaving their talking points at the door.

• Who shows up. It’s sad to say, but we want to know who is going to skip this emergency debate. Will the Liberal Government's Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna show up? Will Justin Trudeau end the climate silence he’s been practicing since the IPCC report came out? Will any of the Conservatives who are attacking climate action day in and day out make an appearance? We’ll be keeping track of who shows up and who doesn’t.

Any more summaries with those points in mind will be shared.

Here is a recent article from The National Post on how Canada is doing. 
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/canadas-goals-well-below-whats-needed-to-stop-catastrophic-climate-change-un

Canada's goals well below what's needed to stop catastrophic climate change: UN - The National Post article by Mia Rabson

Published on Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

OTTAWA — Canada would have to cut its emissions almost in half over the next 12 years to meet the stiffer targets dozens of international climate change experts say is required to prevent catastrophic results from global warming.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there will be irreversible changes and the entire loss of some ecosystems if the world doesn’t take immediate and intensive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions far more than is occurring now.

That means trying to limit the increase in the average global ground temperature to 1.5 degrees C, rather than 2 C as specified in the Paris climate change accord. At 2 C, everything from melting sea ice to droughts, famines and floods will be significantly worse than at 1.5 C, the report says.

If people don’t act now, the report says, we will hit 1.5 C somewhere between 2030 and 2052. To prevent that, the world has to cut the amount of emissions released each year by 2030 so that they are no more than 55 per cent of what they were in 2010. For Canada, that means emissions would need to fall to a maximum of 385 million tonnes a year.

In 2016 they were almost twice that, and the Canadian government’s current aim is to only cut to about 512 million tonnes a year. Even that more modest goal is out of reach for now despite plans such as the controversial national carbon price, making buildings more energy efficient and eliminating coal as a source of electricity by 2030.

“It’s clear that the consequences of acting slowly are devastating for the planet and our way of life,” said Merran Smith, executive director of the group Clean Energy Canada.

She said Canadians do not need to change what they do to cut emissions, but rather need to change how they do it. That means, she said, electrifying everything.

The report comes as Canada is embroiled in a new round of political arguments about the best way to proceed, with the federal Liberals’ planned national price on carbon being challenged by a growing number of provincial governments.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna believes the report is another wake-up call that underscores why her government is pricing carbon and introducing regulations for the country’s biggest emitters. However, she says Canada will not increase its targets to cut emissions until the plan laid out in 2016 is fulfilled.

“My focus is making sure we actually do what we said we were going to do and then we can be more ambitious,” McKenna said.

Her government has also approved new fossil fuel projects, including last week’s $40-billion liquefied natural gas plant in British Columbia, which will increase emissions from the energy sector. She said LNG is part of the solution because it emits less than burning coal for electricity, and if LNG is going to be used she would rather it be Canadian LNG.

Dale Marshall, national program manager at Environmental Defence, said the ongoing political fight over carbon pricing and criticism of Liberal energy policies is scaring the government into being more timid about its climate plan, while the report shows being timid is not going to cut it.

“Parties and governments that actually understand the science and believe in action need to be more courageous than they’re being,” he said.

NDP environment critic Alexandre Boulerice said it’s time for the Liberals to hit the reset button on their climate plan and come up with something stronger. “I want the plan to succeed but the plan is not ambitious enough and right now we’re seeing that it’s going nowhere.”

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who is on a trip to India touting new infrastructure to ship more oil and gas overseas, said he will leave the findings of the IPCC report to the scientists. But Scheer said his party remains adamantly opposed to a carbon tax, which he does not think will actually reduce emissions, and instead revert back to the regulatory approach taken by the former Conservative government.

“When it comes to public policy as to how to address environmental challenges, the Conservative Party is on the right track,” he said.

The only regulations introduced by the former government involved coal-fired power plants. Scheer says the Conservatives will release a full climate plan in advance of the general election next year.

— With files from Mike Blanchfield

----------------------------------------

Events tonight:
Meet Jamie Larkin, Candidate for Charlottetown Mayor, 6:30-9:30PM, Jenny and Wayne's Chinese Restaurant, 71 St. Peter's Road.
Facebook event link

Progressive Conservative Party Pints and Politics, 7-9PM, Upstreet Craft Brewing, Allen Street, Charlottetown.
Facebook event link

---------------------------------
TOMORROW:
Tuesday, October 16th:
Health and Wellness Committee, 1:30-3:30PM, Coles Building.
"Briefing by Lisa Cooper, Chief and President of the Native Council of PEI regarding health issues and policy recommendations for off-reserve Indigenous community members."

Island Studies Lecture: “Island way of life” Lost When the Ferry
Becomes a Bridge?, 7PM, UPEI, SDU Main Building Faculty Lounge, free.

The Island Lecture Series kicks off its 2018–2019 season with a discussion on how the addition of a fixed link affects “the Island way of life.” The event features the  research of Master of Arts in Island Studies graduate Janice Pettit.....Politicians began talking about building a fixed link between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick in the late 1980s, and while this was not the first time the topic was broached, the premier of the day suggested a plebiscite to determine Islanders’ interest. Both those opposed and those in favour of the link rallied at public meetings prior to the vote to ensure their messages were heard. The “no” side raised a number of issues, but their main concern centered on the perceived loss of the “Island way of life.” During the 1989 plebiscite, Islanders voted almost 60 per cent in favour of a fixed crossing, and in 1997, the Confederation Bridge opened to the public.
Given all that was said and written regarding concerns about the loss of “islandness”, it is somewhat surprising that, until now, research had not been conducted to determine if the bridge has, in fact, had this impact. Have Prince Edward Islanders lost their “island way of life”? This presentation, drawn from Pettit’s exploratory thesis research, provides some insight into whether Prince Edward Island residents still consider themselves islanders and if their island identity has been affected by the fixed connection to the mainland.  Janice Pettit graduated from the MAIS program in May of 2018 and is a Senior Policy Advisor with the Government of Prince Edward Island."  from: UPEI Communications page

-----------------------------------------
An article from last month that highlights one Legislative Standing Committee's work and issues therein: https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/opinion-obstructing-committees-work-244086/

OPINION: Obstructing committee’s work - The Guardian Guest Opinion by Douglas Campbell

Published on Monday, September 24th, 2018

MLA Allen Roach unfairly implies that request to GEBIS to appear is racist and anti-immigrant

There are serious problems within the P.E.I. Legislative Standing Committee on Communities, Land and Environment; which is attempting to examine land holdings on Prince Edward Island. One of those problem lies with committee member Allen Roach, Liberal MLA for District 3, Montague – Kilmuir.

In November 2017, the committee passed a motion to invite Cavendish Farms, Vanco Farms and GEBIS (Buddhist monks) to appear before the committee to discuss their land holdings. Letters were to be sent to each entity.

In January 2018, when Roach became a member of this committee, he unsuccessfully tried to have GEBIS excluded from the motion. Roach seems to have made it his personal mandate to convince everyone that GEBIS is within the land holding limits of  The Lands Protection Act, as well as to keep the group from having to appear before the committee to openly answer questions about their land holdings. He seemed entirely focused on GEBIS. As of today, none of the named entities have appeared before the committee.

Allen Roach has been condescending and demeaning to groups who are providing sound information and asking for full transparency of land holdings. He has also been less than respectful to the other committee members. Some observers have used the word bullying. To view Roach in the March meeting and the recent September 6th meeting, which members of the Potato Board appeared, Islanders can go to the Legislative Assembly website.  (LINK BELOW)

Perhaps most harmful and insulting to all Islanders is his implication that the request to GEBIS is racist and anti-immigrant. He doesn’t even mention the other two corporations. How sad that Roach is resorting to trying to shame Islanders who legitimately wish to know, and have the democratic right to know, if the spirit and intent of the Lands Protection Act is being broken by any company. And if so, why isn’t the current government standing behind the law and preventing such violations. If there is one thing we don’t need is Roach trying to deflect from the land issue by implying the want of honest answers is racist and anti-immigrant.

If GEBIS and other companies are following the Lands Protection Act there should be no reason not to appear before the committee and tell their story; putting to rest all “those anecdotal things” Roach is talking about. Islanders have had a long hard struggle to protect their primary resource, the land. All that is asked of anyone wishing to make P.E.I. home and/or a place to do business is to respect the land ownership laws, which are constitutionally sound. This is extremely important in an age of the worldwide land grab.

Islanders have good reason to question Roach’s behaviour and motives on the committee. If he is not there with the intent to examine the issues openly, but rather to obstruct, which does appear to be the case, he needs to step down or be removed by the Premier immediately. Roach has already made it known he will not be running in the next election. However, he is still a representative of the people – so, he needs to act like one.

- Douglas Campbell is a dairy farmer in Southwest Lot 16, and District Director of the National Farmers Union

The Standing Committee on Communities, Land and Environment's Transcripts page, with a list and links to their previous meeting transcripts, audio and video recordings, here:

http://www.assembly.pe.ca/committees/meetingTranscripts.php?cnumber=18

The general page for the Standing Committee (which has no meetings scheduled at this point in time) is here:

http://www.assembly.pe.ca/committees/getCommittees.php?cnumber=18

-----------------------------------------

“Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the welder, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.”

― Suzy Kassem (b. 1975) , writer, her website

Time to dismiss, but not discuss - The Guardian Guest Opinion by Pat O'Connor

Minister sends letter advising council dismissed for rural municipality for contravention of MGA

October 13, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

October 12, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Events today:
Friday, October 12th:
Documentary: Sea of Life, 1PM, Duffy Amphitheatre, UPEI.  Rounding out UPEI Environmental Week with the screening, in which "filmmaker Julia Barnes takes audiences on a provocative journey, through the most stunning and threatened ecosystems on the planet and the rallying movement to save them, leaving audiences around the world inspired to fight for our oceans - and our future."
Facebook event link

Meet Joe Byrne, NDP Leader, 7-8PM, St. Luke's Parish Hall. O'Leary Corner. All welcome, refreshments and good conversation.
Facebook event link

Next Friday and Saturday:
Friday, October 19th:
Public Lecture by Global Peace Activist Paul Hutchinson,  "Living Well with Difference: Reflections from a Northern Ireland Peace Activist", 7-8:30PM, Our Lady of Assumption Church, Stratford. Hutchinson was former Director of the Corrymeela Peace and Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland.  Sponsored by the Council of Canadians, PEI Chapter. Free and all welcome.

Saturday, October 20th:
Workshop: "Peace and Reconciliation: What on Earth?", 10AM-3:30PM, Our Lady of Assumption Church, Stratford.  Reconciling Differences workshop, fee $75; contact Betty at (902) 672-2650 or email <jbwilcox2010@hotmail.com> as soon as possible.
-----------------------------------------
Events from a few years back:
Friday, October 12th, with a leap year or so, means it's been six years since the Friday, October 12th, 2012, about 4PM, when:

"Chris, we've got cops on site."

A terse message on my home answering machine, from the unflappable Gail Rhyno, camper, artist and protester dynamo.

I actually only listened to that searing message much later that night.  About 4PM, I was heading to town for a kid's event (which I never got to), saw some police cars and a different look to the wonderful roadside protesters.   I called RCMP Staff Sergeant Micheal Murphy, who made it clear they had been ordered in to remove protestors at the camp on the proposed highway site; this violated the gentlepersons' agreement we had to continue the camp at least through the weekend (while we worked on any legal case we could muster and could properly attend to the closing of the Sacred Fire Keptin John Joe Sark had lit a few days earlier). 


Keptin John Joe Sark blesses the Sacred Fire, Plan B Camp, October 8th, 2012.

Murphy was unable to say who had ordered them in, and he "allowed" me to cross the police barricade down to the construction site and see what was going on.


Just following orders, October 12, 2012

Some caring souls scooped up burning logs from the sacred fire and renewed the fire at the base camp up from the highway site, on the angelic person's private property we had generously been given access to that Fall.

Treecutting machines came in -- the saw screams still echo -- Crawford's Stream was crossed (but environmentally soundly, and they had a permit, assured one of the Environmental Department people, who at least came on-site to check).

People flowed to the roadside protest area, and many others returned on the usual back paths in, and soon a whole crowd was back, but the police had finished their work and were pretty much gone. (They were very human about the afternoon's events.)

Former orderly village gear was piled in a sodden heap, to be carried up and sorted and reassembled at now the only Camp, to be the vantage for watching the construction and making sure the Environmental Impact Plan and then-Environment Janice Sherry's Conditions were adhered to.


Then-Environment Minister Janice Sherry approved the Plan B project with some conditions, from October 2nd, 2012, screenshot of The Guardian's website.
--------

It became obvious it was then-Premier Robert Ghiz who ordered the overwhelming RCMP force to the Plan B protest site, blocking public roads, evicting the few peaceful campers and dismantling the beautiful little camp in the Hemlock Grove, on a rainy late Friday afternoon. 

Ghiz -- who we didn't know that Fall was up to his eyebrows in the secret e-gaming scheme crumbling around him, with calls for PNP investigations, and with whatever else ridiculous and iniquitous was going on in that little world, little wonder he and his coterie (many of whom are still in the MacLauchlan government) -- swatted away at the old and young, the formerly mild and meek, with his government's usual power and arrogance; for it was an easy score, knocking over a few tents, hauling away wiry women and graybeards, and raising the GDP with all that federal construction money.

But as we fairly drenched folks warmed up by the renewed fire that night, and caring people (as always) came with food and drink, we knew this was not the end, but the beginning of the next chapter, one in which we would have to work together for the long haul on electoral reform, good governance and a real commitment to environmental rights.  And in time the positive energy from the Stop Plan B fight formed into the Citizens' Alliance.

-----------------------------------------

The day before was this "commercial" appeared:
Plan B Realty Video (one minute)

-----------------------------------------

And Leon Berrouard shared this:

Heading for the Hemlocks
by Leon Berrouard
October 2012

It's raining & I'm heading for the trees
The old growth area
Of huge pines twisted
And shaped by the snows and winds
Of Canada's east coast: forms -
As in my brother's bonsai forest.

In Prince Edward Island there are
Two century old hemlocks
Rooted with the pines
And envious yellow birch.
Holding hands under the earth,
Holding the soil below
Sheltering the birds above.

Spruce & tamarack & maples
Wait & Listen -- you'll hear the birds call:
Clean air we love, trout water,
Salamander land.

Hemlock habitat like that
For two hundred years?
No, more than that!
Trees that grow, die,
And renew - reminding us
Of this holding of hands for a while
Of this intertwining of real roots.

My brother protects a tiny forest
Day after day, sometimes with a mist spray
He studies the shape of sorrow & storms
He's a Bonzai artist who watches forms

And I am heading for the hemlocks
At 130km per hours & I know no Mounties
Will be stopping me for speeding
And I slow a little when blinking away tears.

I'm heading for the the tall hemlocks, pines,
And yellow birch, the spruce, the maples
In this fall foliage of gold & quivering red.
I'm heading to where the trees will soon be dead.

I'm driving for half an hour to see,
To protest the cutting of the Island's oldest trees
these trees that will give no more seeds
Because politicians want a road that no one needs.

--Leon Berrouard
October 2012
in PEI

October 11, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Events today:
LAST Farm Centre Farmers' Market, 4-7PM, Farm Centre, 420 University Avenue.

Green Drinks Summerside, 7-9PM, Evermoore Brewing Company.  "Green Drinks is a monthly informal gathering hosted by local members of the Green Party of Prince Edward Island. Always a good time, this is a great place to get to know Green Party leaders and supporters in a casual setting, and connect with others who are passionate about Prince Edward Island's future."
Facebook event link

"Meetup for francophones" focus groups, 7-9PM, Carrefour de l'Isle-Saint-Jean, (near QEH).
Monday, October 15th: Deblois, Centre acadien de Prince-Ouest.
Monday, October 22nd, Rollo Bay, Pavillon de l'Est.
"Ever learned French or wanted to learn French but just never get the chance to use it? Would you like to be more involved in PEI's French activities? We'd like to hear from you! We'll be doing focus groups across the Island in the coming weeks to speak to people who would like to integrate more use of the French language in their lives. The meetings will be held mostly in English. If you can't make it to the meeting in your area, please feel free to join us at one of the other meetings."
from: Facebook event link
----------------
Friday, October 12th:
Documentary: Sea of Life, 1PM, Duffy Amphitheatre, UPEI.
"Hosted by the UPEI Environmental Society and the UPEI Student Union as part of Environmental Week at UPEI.  About Sea of Life: With access to renowned environmental experts and breathtaking underwater cinematography, award-winning filmmaker Julia Barnes takes audiences on a provocative journey, through the most stunning and threatened ecosystems on the planet and the rallying movement to save them, leaving audiences around the world inspired to fight for our oceans - and our future.
Believing that people will change the world once they know what’s happening, Julia picks up a camera and sets out on a mission to expose the reality of the world’s oceans in this full length feature documentary. Through compelling footage she sheds light on crucial environmental issues, revealing not only how the oceans are in jeopardy but how each of us has the power to turn things around."
Facebook event link

Meet Joe Byrne, NDP Leader, 7-8PM, St. Luke's Parish Hall. O'Leary Corner.  "Joe Byrne, leader of Island New Democrats will be in West Prince to meet supporters who want to make a difference. We welcome your input. Open to all. Refreshments served."
Facebook event link
------------------
Saturday, October 13th:
Lennon House Live Auction, 7-9:30PM, Summerside Silver Fox Entertainment Complex.  The very giving of his time Moe Monaghan will auction a variety of goods and services as a fundraiser for Lennon House Recovery Centre.  Page with poster to share: https://lennonhouse.ca/check-out-our-new-poster-for-our-october-13th-live-auction/

Mark the date, and get tickets soon:
Wednesday, October 24th:
Step Up to the Plate, fundraising dinner for the P.E.I. Food Exchange, 5PM onward, P.E.I. Farm Centre.  "The fifth anniversary Step Up to the Plate fundraising dinner...(u)nder the direction of Chef Emily Wells of the Mill in New Glasgow this vegetarian dinner (with vegan/gluten-free option) highlights local seasonal produce prepared in an exciting, healthy, and delicious way.
“Appie” hour is from 5:00 – 6:00 pm (no ticket required, drop ins are welcome) and the dinner is from 6:00 – 8:30 pm.
Tickets are $25. To purchase one send an e transfer to foodexchangepei@gmail.com (password SUP2018), get a ticket at the Voluntary Resource Centre at 81 Prince Street or call Cindy at 902-330-1413."
-----------------------------------------

The Salty publication covers the Island food production scene.  Here is a recent article, by Katie McInnis, with photos (on the link) by her brother, former Guardian photographer Brian McInnis

Honey, I bought the Apiary - Salty Island magazine article by Katie McInnis

New owners of Honeydew Apiaries busy settling into PEI life

by Katie McInnis, in this month's Salty Island magazine
Link: http://saltyisland.com/honey-i-bought-an-apiary/

In Canoe Cove, overlooking the sparkling waters of Northumberland Strait, sits Honeydew Apiaries. While it has been there for a number of years, the honeybee business was recently purchased by Jennifer and Mickael Jauneau. Jennifer hails from Vancouver, BC while Mickael calls the Loire Valley in France his birthplace.

Their journey to PEI didn’t follow a straight path. Jennifer, an HR professional, needed a change so she decided to travel. Mickael, a mechanic, was also travelling and the two met in Australia while working on a pepper farm. In 2013 they travelled to France to be married. Instead of a traditional honeymoon, the couple decided on a working holiday in New Zealand. Employed on an asparagus farm that had beekeeping as the primary business, Mickael was asked to assist with the bees. Reluctantly, he decided to try it for a week but it didn’t interest him. Jennifer persuaded him to give it another week and that was long enough to infect him with the “beekeeping disease,” as he calls it.

For five years Mickael travelled between France and New Zealand learning a great deal about beekeeping. Because the seasons are reversed, he was able acquire ten years’ of experience in five. By that time the couple had a son, Thomas, now two, they had tired of the travel and were ready to settle down.

So began their internet search for a place small enough for two people to operate and yet close to a city with amenities. Honeydew Apiaries turned out to be that place. In March of this year, Mickael and his father-in-law travelled to PEI. It was ideal. For Mickael, the countryside reminded him of his home and Jennifer loved being back in Canada. With 2-year-old Thomas in tow, Jennifer moved from New Zealand to PEI without ever having seen the place. Fortunately it was June and the Island charmed her.

Currently the Jauneaus have 200 hives but are aiming for 300 in the future. Each hive contains about 70,000 bees. Their primary sales are honey, both liquid and creamed, that they sell at a stand at the end of their driveway and also at the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market. Some of their hives are in blueberry fields and that enables them to make blueberry honey. The remainder are in areas with wildflowers so the honey’s taste depends on what nectar the bees collect.

One of the many things they love about PEI is that honey can be sold on the honour system. There has been the occasional theft, but the stand is a favourite for regular customers. Tourists often discover their place by accident as they drive past and frequently inquire about how to order honey when they get back home. The Jauneaus are beginning the process of getting registered to be able to sell off Island.

In addition to honey, they also sell 100 percent beeswax candles, soap, skin cream, and lip balm. The skin cream is made from propolis (a resin the bees collect from tree buds and use to repair their hives), beeswax, and olive oil. It has antifungal and antibacterial properties and is said to be very effective on dry skin and eczema.

Beekeeping appeals to the couple because it is a quiet and primarily outdoor activity. They must be organized and creative since plans are made in the current year for the next season. Mickael’s mechanical abilities are put to use making some of the equipment himself. Jennifer makes the beeswax products in a small trailer in their backyard. Their long term plans include redesigning and likely renaming their business, raising some chickens, and growing their own produce including a few walnut trees which are a favourite of Mickael’s.

The couple are happy here and are expecting a sibling for Thomas in the winter. As Mickael said “it is mostly for the lifestyle, not the money.” Given that Honeydew Apiaries offers them this lifestyle, it would seem that the Jauneaus have found their place to grow their business and their family.

-----------------------------------------

Bees are a bit stressed, to say the least, especially on the Island with the intense crop-growing methods and the new push for their use increasing pollination of berry crops.  Philip Chandler's book (quoted below) is one of several books to discuss beekeeping in the context of the whole environment; another is Ross Conrad's excellent Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture.

"And we should always remember that, in matters of evolution, nature will select for the ability to adapt and survive, not for maximum convenience to mankind."
-- Philip Chandler, author of The Barefoot Beekeeper

October 10, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

There is no Wednesday Farmers' Market in Charlottetown today, but tomorrow from 4-7PM is the last Farm Centre Farmers' Market.

-----------------------------------------
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report earlier this week on the closing window to limit climate change.

The report page with links to each chapter and summaries is here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

A Guardian (U.K.) article is here (link after the headline):

We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN - The Guardian UK

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
 
And here is a link to a nine minute interview and transcript from the PBS Newshour, the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States) 2018 (October 8), “World needs to make near-revolutionary change to avoid imminent climate disaster. Is there hope?” 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/world-needs-to-make-near-revolutionary-change-to-avoid-imminent-climate-disaster-is-there-hope

Thanks to Bradley Walters at Mount Allison University for those two article links.
-----------------------------
And here are some invigorating and yet comforting words from Avi Lewis of The Leap:

https://theleap.org/portfolio-items/ipcc-report/

Three takeaways from the IPCC’s new report  - The Leap post by Avi Lewis

Posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is out, and it is a dramatic development [1].  The threat advisory from the world’s scientific climate community just went from orange to flashing red.

But here’s the key takeaway: limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible, and will require a rapid transformation of our economy. The great news is that this need for fundamental change is now recognized by the world’s leading climate scientists, who advise the United Nations. And as we’ve been arguing for years, the wider opportunities and benefits of that unprecedented transition are vast: a global green new deal, millions of new jobs, deep change anchored in justice.

The call to action in this report is why we started The Leap. Transforming our economy and society on the scale this crisis requires is the most powerful opportunity we’ve ever had to build a more caring, liveable planet.

So don’t look away. While the understandable reaction is to avoid, avoid, avoid (hey, we have this feeling too!) we find relief in engaging with the facts. Here are 3 takeaways from The Leap on this unprecedented UN report.

1. Don’t doubt what your senses are telling you.

Yes, the climate crisis is unfolding even faster and more furiously than expected. At current emissions rates, we could hit 1.5°C of global warming as soon as 2030 — and we’re on track for far more. If that happens, the worst impacts of climate change — previously predicted to take place closer to the end of the century — will likely begin within our lifetime. Food and water shortages across the globe. The death of all coral reefs. Hundreds of millions of people impacted by deadly heat or rising waters. And a predicted economic cost counted in tens of trillions of dollars. Trillions. Overall, the more than 6,000 scientific papers behind this report are telling us that 1.5°C is more dangerous than previously predicted, and it’s all happening sooner than we thought. We have less than a decade to turn our global emissions trends around.

2. Beware of doom merchants.

After this report, get ready to start hearing two new angles from pundits and deniers. First, that we’re doomed anyways, so … let’s not do anything at all. We got a first glimpse of this tactic in August, from the Trump administration. In a draft environmental impact statement, it argued that warming of 4°C is indeed on its way — so the fact that the administration was axing fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks didn’t really matter [2].

The second take we can expect to hear more of is the idea of the “moonshot.” That things are so dire that it’s time to start radical climate experiments, or “geo-engineering” to counteract global warming. These sci-fi schemes include terrifying ideas like dimming the sun by releasing sulfur into the upper atmosphere.

The good news is: this report doesn’t back such doomsday approaches. It warns against the substantial risks of untested geoengineering strategies. And it is up front about the fact that while the situation is dire — responses based on hopelessness are not what we need.

3. We can still turn this around. And it’s going to take a leap.

With this report, the UN has suddenly reached the very realization that gave rise to The Leap Manifesto in 2015: the only thing that can save us now is the total transformation of our political and economic system. And it’s possible: we could reduce global emissions by one third in just a few years, simply by imposing “a limit on the per-capita carbon footprint of the top 10% of global emitters” [3]. That may not seem politically possible right now. Our job is to make it politically irresistible.

This is the most hopeful note: more and more people are coming to the conclusion that this escalating crisis, ever-harder to deny, can galvanize change on the scale that is really needed. Nothing less will do. The idea of a “Green New Deal” is gaining momentum around the world.

This is white-knuckle terrifying stuff, but don’t turn away: the report makes clear that the worst effects of global warming can still be prevented, and the urgency of transformative change should excite and empower all of us who are fighting for justice anyway.

This is a time to use our fear as fuel, and ratchet up our determination. Let’s take a good, hard, clear-eyed look at the f***d-up future we are headed for, and decide — collectively — to leap to a safer, better place.

The un-asterisked letter with the reference footnotes are at this link from The Leap, as above.

-----------------------------------------

from the interview on the PBS Newshour with Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

"But there's a lot of movement going on elsewhere in the world, in Europe, in China, in Japan. There's a lot of new things moving along there. So I'm not totally in despair. But the key thing to remember from this report is that it's clear that the best time to have reduced emissions was 25 years ago.

But the second best time to reduce emissions is right now."
--Gavin Schmidt

October 9, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Events:
Today:
Coffee with Kim, 9-10AM, Tuesdays and Fridays.   Charlottetown mayoral candidate Kim Devine is hosting twice-weekly coffee drop-ins at her campaign headquarters in the Subway building at University and Belvedere Avenues.
Facebook event link

The Guardian features the four candidates in today's paper (Philip Brown, Kim Devine, Jamie Larkin and Cecil Villard).  I will pass on any events if people send me notices. 
-----------------------------------------
Article:

About Commentator Michael Harris:

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry and three of his books have been made into movies. His book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, was a number one best-seller.

Michael Harris on the Pictou pulp mill:
article and biography from:

https://ipolitics.ca/2018/10/08/the-fight-to-keep-a-pulp-mill-from-poisoning-the-northumberland-strait/ 

The fight to keep a pulp mill from poisoning the Northumberland Strait - iPolitics online article by Michael Harris

Published on Monday, October 8th, 2018 on iPolitics.ca

‘Whatever lives in that water can’t speak for itself. We have to be that voice.’
----
Justin Trudeau likes to say he’s a torchbearer for the environment.

The prime minister also claims he’s a champion of Indigenous peoples.

And he is every bit of that — on paper.

But he risks becoming the Pontius Pilate of the Environment and another double-talking Indian agent if he doesn’t change his tune on Boat Harbour.

Admittedly, it is not a comfortable spotlight for any politician.

There is no monster project to announce in this tiny slice of rural, seaside Nova Scotia. There is no LNG Canada deal bringing a $40 billion investment into the country — the sort of thing that lights up a press conference and a campaigning politician’s eyes.

There are just two desperate, defiant communities here in need of help: the fisherman of Northumberland Strait and the members of Pictou Landing First Nation. They have come together over a mutual threat. Both have solid reasons to fear that power politics and pollution may be about to overwhelm them.

It comes down to this: After years of receiving industrial scale effluent from the local kraft pulp mill, Boat Harbour is scheduled to be closed by the provincial government. That means the company, Northern Pulp, must come up with a new treatment plan for its effluent.

Though no formal plan has been filed by the company, the proposal for now is to build a 10 km, $19 million pipe and dump the treated sludge from the mill directly into the Northumberland Strait.

Northern Pulp has committed to a new $70 million oxygen delignification system to improve the quality of the effluent it wants to discharge into the Strait. Fishermen and First Nations peoples are adamant that the idea is a bad one, and with good reason.

Parts of this once stunning estuary in Pictou County have already become a national disgrace. According to people who live here, the affected areas are in the same league as the poisoned tailing ponds of the Alberta tar sands and the Sydney tar ponds on Cape Breton. What was once a tidal bay supporting a variety of marine life is now a toxic lake. One resident described Boat Harbour as being “the colour of Pepsi.”

“Boat Harbour is as dead as a door nail. Black, dead water. I wouldn’t stick my finger — or anything else in it,” Merigomish resident, and longtime lobster fishermen, Percy Hayne told iPolitics.

On first seeing it, Green Party leader Elizabeth May described it as “a sulphurous, festering pond, steaming and clotted with sludge around the edges.”

The prime minister recently came to Nova Scotia to announce the twinning of a highway and snap the usual selfies. When asked if he was sidestepping the mess at Boat Harbour, Trudeau brushed off reporters. “That is me respecting areas of provincial jurisdiction,” he quipped.

There are those who beg to differ.

Hayne, citing lessons learned from decades on the stern of a boat, was categorical that Trudeau has it wrong.

“I’ve been around the fishery for 40 years. Of course it’s federal jurisdiction, no doubt in my mind. How that idea popped out of the friggin’ basket is beyond me. Go out and do something wrong in the fishery and who charges you? The federal government charges you, that’s who. Trudeau should be ashamed. This is not a pipe that becomes a problem when it ruptures, like the ones they worry about out West. This is a pipe designed to pollute prime fishing grounds.”

Brian Hebert is the lawyer for the Pictou Landing First Nation.

For 17 fruitless years he has tried to negotiate a solution to the Boat Harbour debacle with various governments. Five different provincial governments and political parties of every stripe have promised to close or clean it up.

No one has delivered.

Despite Trudeau’s renunciation of federal jurisdiction, Hebert points out that there are clear legal grounds for Ottawa to step in.

“If you look at the test for a federal assessment, there’s certainly potential for harm to Pictou Landing First Nation, under their treaty rights. That triggers the federal jurisdiction,” he said.

“But there is also the public outcry given what’s at stake. The very fact that it is interprovincial and a significant number of people are opposed to this, that would clearly be enough for the feds to accept some jurisdiction.”

So why would the prime minister take a pass on getting involved in preventing Boat Harbour 2.0?

Hebert has a theory.

“I would have to say that if the decision is that they’re not going to get involved, that they will rely on Nova Scotia, that is purely political. It is a Liberal federal government staying out of the way of a Liberal provincial government.”

Trudeau is not the only member of the government whose response has been underwhelming.

Just a few weeks ago, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna paid a visit to Nova Scotia. She was invited by Chief Andrea Paul of the Pictou Landing First Nation to visit Boat Harbour to see and smell for herself what the band has been living with for 50 years.

McKenna, who was in Nova Scotia for the G7 environment and energy ministers’ meetings, went missing in action on the issue. She thanked the chief for her invitation, and explained why she wouldn’t be coming: “Unfortunately, as a result of scheduling constraints, I am unable to accept your invitation.”

There was no mention in the minister’s letter about setting another date.

Despite being too busy to visit Boat Harbour, McKenna did find time during her trip to tour national parks for photo-ops. The snaps were lovely, but the minister’s priorities didn’t impress citizens who were expecting something better from her than pretty pictures.

Joan Baxter, the author of The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest, an award-winning book about Boat Harbour, said McKenna’s decision was “very disappointing,” and “a slap in the face” to Pictou Landing First Nation.

Chief Paul agreed.

“Minister McKenna, they say that Mi’Kmaq people are too nice. It’s time we stopped being so damned nice,” she told iPolitics. “You need to listen to the people. We’ve been here and we’ve suffered long enough. We need to bring some calm back into our world.”

It is a world that needs a lot of calming. The first time Clean the Mill activist Dave Gunning saw Boat Harbour, he cried.

Like lobster fisherman Percy Hayne, Gunning was appalled by the defilement of air, land and water. Over the years, it has had five different owners, the latest being the super-wealthy Widjaja family of Indonesia.

The mill was originally intended to operate for 20 years. Thirty years beyond its expected lifespan, it is still producing kraft pulp, clouds of smoke and toxic effluent. The plant is so old that Gunning said connecting it to a new treatment system is like putting “a solid gold muffler on a jalopy.”

“For years they ran with no filtration on their stacks, nothing on their boilers,” he said. “And for decades, there were no regulations on dumping the sludge into the ocean.”

As the treatment site for Northern Pulp’s mill on Abercrombie Point, the once pristine waters of Boat Harbour have undergone a terrible transformation.

“The treatment facility is dead water. Where the treated effluent goes, 300 acres, you won’t find a frog there. Where the treated effluent flows is now dead,” Gunning said.

In her book, Baxter conjured up what the place was like before the mill was built in 1967, and how quickly things changed.

“This was originally a tidal estuary — a source of food for the Pictou Landing First Nation, a place to fish for eel and keep their boats, a place for recreation. The tidal estuary became a basin after being dammed. The effluent water was lethal to fish, few creatures survive there…It is dark froth where it goes over the dam, and hard green scum after it settles.”

Members of Pictou Landing First Nation observed that fish and seals began dying en masse just days after the waste from the mill began to flow all those years ago.

The source of this industrial-scale pollution is effluent from Northern Pulp, which produces and exports approximately 280,000 tonnes of bulk raw material for toilet paper, tissues and other paper products every year. It is then manufactured into finished products in other countries.

Northern Pulp is an important employer in Pictou County. It employs 339 people at the mill itself, but that is just part of the economic benefit. According to the company’s polished public relations campaign, Northern Pulp has created the equivalent of 2,040 full-time equivalent jobs, with those workers as a group drawing wages of over $101 million.

The mill operates virtually year-round and makes a heavy demand on precious natural resources. It uses up to 90 million litres of fresh water a day, which critics say is more than the municipal water use of Halifax. That water then comes out of the treatment process as toxic effluent.

For that vast amount of fresh water, Northern Pulp pays the princely sum of $100,000 a year to the provincial government. The mill also uses chlorine compounds to produce the whiter than white products that the market demands.

The effluent in Boat Harbour contains dioxins, furans and a witch’s brew of heavy metals, including mercury, zinc and chromium.

After being treated, the effluent goes from Boat Harbour to Boat Harbour Basin. There, it mixes with other fresh water rivers and streams that flow in there. It is retained for up to 30 days before being discharged into the saltwater at the Pictou Landing shoreline.

Under Northern Pulp’s public proposal, and based on the company’s new activated sludge treatment system, effluent would not be retained in Boat Harbour Basin at all. That means no additional cooling, settling, dilution or mixing with other fresh water sources.

Instead, all the treated effluent would be dumped directly into the Strait via the pipe. KSH Engineering has interpreted what that will mean.

Based on a conservative flow from the plant of 70 million litres of effluent every 24 hours, the pipe would deposit 945 kg of solids in the Northumberland Strait each and every day. Under the company’s old treatment system, those solids never reached the saltwater, both because of the lengthy retention in Boat Harbour Basin and the fact that the Basin is dammed.

The bottom line of Northern Pulp’s plan and the essence of the widespread opposition to it? Boat Harbour isn’t being closed. It is being moved.

If history is any guide, the mill might just get its way. As late as 2014, Northern Pulp was allowed to emit nearly 11 times more particulate matter from its recovery boiler than pulp mills in the United States. And then, with a spectacular spill on the territory of the Pictou Landing First Nation that same year, the environmental nightmare of Boat Harbour seemed to be ending.

It took an epical disaster, which saw 47 million litres of untreated effluent spilled on the land from a ruptured pipe. Coincidentally, a lot of Canadian pulp mills during the 1960s and 1970s were built on or near First Nations lands. Some people here have called that practise “environmental racism.”

Blocked by Pictou Landing First Nation from repairing the ruptured pipe, Nova Scotia Environment Minister Randy Delorey finally made the decision to close Boat Harbour for good. There was even a shutter date: 2020. The government also undertook to “remediate” the poisoned harbour and basin.

If it can be done at all, this Herculean task won’t be cheap. The low estimate is over $200 million, and according to sources familiar with the extent of the degradation, it could take as much as $700 million.

Northern Pulp, which is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, is not responsible for a penny of those remediation costs. That’s because Nova Scotia entered into an unprecedented indemnity agreement with the mill that left the people of Nova Scotia literally holding the garbage bag for the company.

Incredibly, the province took responsibility for the mill’s effluent and its treatment. In other words, the regulator owns the waste of the operation it regulates, making it the de facto business partner of the mill.

As such, the provincial government has supplied a never-ending subsidy to Northern Pulp of hundreds of millions of dollars. It also set aside a fund of $217 million to remediate Boat Harbour once a new treatment system is in place. These disastrous decisions continue to bedevil residents here.

“I haven’t figured it out,” Baxter said. “I can’t place myself in the minds of politicians from the 60s and 70s. Was it complete naïveté and possibly the influence corporations have over governments? If defies reason.”

According to several stakeholders who spoke to iPolitics, Northern Pulp did not consult with fishermen and First Nations members about their new treatment proposal, but rather the company informed them of what it had decided to do.

Allan MacCarthy, a representative of the Northumberland Fishermen’s Association (NFA) described the process his organization took part in during 2017.

“We were in consultation over last winter, but it wasn’t consultation, it was dictation. No other options were talked about. It was made clear to us. No pipe, no mill.”

Ron Heighton, the president of the NFA, echoed the sentiment that the talks weren’t really talks at all, just the company’s hard line on what would happen next — or else.

“We didn’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling. I highly doubt they are telling us the whole truth. They weren’t willing to look at anything else. (It was) very frustrating. They did come up with a few silly suggestions — taking it out to sea in tankers or trucking it away. It would take a truck leaving the plant every eleven minutes to do that.”

What did Baxter think of the “no pipe, no mill” mantra from Northern Pulp?

“It’s a threat. It’s a bully statement, my way or the highway. That’s the way the mill has operated since it opened,” she said. “It has bullied everybody. I was bullied. They bullied Coles bookstore into cancelling my book signing. The excuse was threats to the bookstore’s staff. Threats? If there were really serious threats, go to the police. Don’t cancel my book signing.”

An excerpt from a letter put out by Northern Pulp, expressly referring to Baxter’s book signing, bears out the author’s comments. “…This book is a non-factual rhetoric filled account of the mill and its history, and quite frankly, something that is offensive to anyone who has an association with the mill.”

In the wake of Baxter’s cancelled event, John Hamm, chairman of Northern Pulp’s board, said he believed in freedom of the speech. But he added the press had to be “evidence-based.”

Neither Hamm, Northern Pulp, nor current Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil showed much interest in supplying “evidence” as it relates to the mill. None of them agreed to Baxter’s request for a tour of the plant or interviews for her book. In Hamm’s case, the author even sent him a registered letter. It went unanswered.

The heart of the concern by the fishing community is that their abundant fishery could suffer irreparable harm from what spews from the pipe and an antiquated mill operating well beyond its projected lifespan.

“It’s a major concern of ours,” Heighton said. “Effluent and fish don’t get along. There will be mortality. We have a very lucrative lobster fishery right now. Chemicals coming out into one of the most productive places for lobster spawning could be a disaster.”

Hayne puts it more bluntly:

“The stuff they’re sending out into the ocean is heated to 37 degrees, so the temperature of the water will rise. The colour of the water will not let sunlight in and that will interfere with spawning and juveniles,” he said.

“They want to put this pipe near one of the main herring spawning grounds. The rising tide will take the effluents right onto the herring grounds. The falling tide will take the spawn down into the shit pile.”

Melanie Griffin is a marine biologist and the scientific advisor to the Prince Edward Island Fishermen’s Association. Having grown up in Pictou, she remembers as a child driving with her parents across the causeway near Abercrombie Point and seeing the mill for the first time.

“I asked my mother, ‘Is that the place where they make clouds?’”

Proponents of the pipe argue that the effluent has been discharged into the Northumberland Strait for 50 years with no harm done. Griffin counters that no one really knows what damage the mill has already done to the environment, or the scale of what might happen if the pipe goes through.

“With my job background as a marine biologist, what it comes down to is sustainability between a healthy fishery and a healthy ocean,” she said. “In terms of keeping the ocean healthy, this is a giant step backwards.

“If that pipe goes in, fishermen will have to worry for years. It is so ironic. In P.E.I., you can hardly get a plastic straw at a restaurant — and especially on beaches. We don’t want plastic in the ocean. So if we are concerned about a person with a straw, why not worry about 90 million litres of heated effluent going into fishing grounds?”

Griffin said that she has already been told by a physical oceanographer at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who is an expert on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, that the pipe “will definitely cause direct damage to the area.” The only question is how far the effluent will flow.

In other words, the only question is how big the dead zone will be?

Northern Pulp claims that its new process, with multiple diffusers at sea, will be better than the system that turned Boat Harbour into a toxic wasteland.

Griffin isn’t so sure.

“My thoughts are that the two practices are completely different. No time to settle, just directly pumped into the Northumberland Strait, into world-class fishing grounds,” she said.

“Although the mill has been there since 1967, there were no protocols back then on such dumping, no control sites years before we ever started releasing anything. We simply don’t know that it hasn’t caused problems.”

Up until the early 1990s, there were no federal regulations on pumping pulp mill effluents into the ocean. The current regulations, which permit such dumping within limits, have been widely criticized as inadequate and are now under review.

For those who trust in the federal regulations, Gunning has a simple message: Don’t.

“The LC50 test is the test that Northern Pulp would have to pass. They do not test saltwater fish (as part of that), and 50 per cent of the freshwater fish tested can die within the test period, and it is still considered a test pass,” he said.

The members of the Pictou Landing First Nation have many of the same concerns about the pipe as Northumberland Strait fishermen. They are backed in their opposition by all 32 Maritime First Nations bands.

For Indigenous peoples, it is simply time to stop using the ocean as a garbage can.

“Some people just look out there and see an empty body of water. They think there’s nothing there. They’re idiots,” Hayne said. “They haven’t got a clue about what they are interfering with.”

Chief Paul’s band knows how alive the Northumberland waters really are. Pictou Landing First Nation is a small band, 450 members on reserve, another 150 off reserve. Fishing is a vitally important industry here.

“In fishing season, we have probably about 100 people directly employed. We have our captains and deckhands and others, and security for our traps. We have fishermen who fish for themselves, and also community licenses. If the Pipe goes in and harms species, it will have a huge impact on our community. It could impact our treaty,” she said.

It isn’t all about commerce, however.

Chief Paul says there are broader dangers at play here involving the entire Gulf ecosystem, a contention supported by a new study from Washington University. The research found that large scale climate change is already dangerously lowering oxygen levels in the Gulf. That in turn threatens marine life in this profoundly important body of water into which the Great Lakes drain.

The record of the Trudeau government on the marine environment, including in the Gulf, is sub-par to mediocre, augmented by windy words.

Belated protection for the endangered North Atlantic right whales and southern resident killer whales; an estimated 15-fold increase in tar sands bitumen tankers in Pacific waters; a flotilla of LNG tankers in northern British Columbia coastal waters; permission for exploratory oil wells, and sonic exploration in Atlantic waters. Nation-wide, the federal government has done nothing for 11 out of 14 endangered or threatened species of marine mammals.

No wonder the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development called out the Trudeau government for its slackness in protecting marine mammals. According to WWF-Canada, at-risk populations have actually declined by an average of 28 per cent since the Species at Risk Act was introduced in 2002.

Something is terribly wrong.

“Everybody should be concerned,” Chief Paul said.

“Step up, be a voice. When I talked to the chiefs, I said, ‘Whatever lives in that water can’t speak for itself. We have to be that voice.’ The pipe is not just a financial worry.”

Like Northumberland Strait fishermen, Chief Paul has no faith in either Northern Pulp or the provincial government to do the right thing. Both are telling her band that the new treatment process that will feed the pipe is an improvement over what exists now. Paul isn’t buying the sales pitch.

“The mill says that the new treatment process will be much better than the old one. We (have) never seen the new system. We know what we know, and what we know is Boat Harbour.”

History is the fountainhead of Chief Paul’s enduring skepticism.

Baxter writes that back in 1967, the band was “tricked” into agreeing to the mill by both the provincial and federal governments. The absence of trust between the band, governments and the mill goes back to those days. Chief Paul said she will never forget the deception.

“They tricked my predecessors into accepting the mill. They took them to a facility in New Brunswick and showed them its clean water. They said that’s what we would get. It wasn’t even a pulp and paper operation. It was a sewage treatment plant that wasn’t even operating. That was like a punch in the gut.”

The band received $65,000 back in 1967 for approving a mill they were assured would do no harm. More than 26 years later, the federal government made an out-of-court settlement, outside the terms of the Indian Act, to pay the band $35 million for the damage the project had done to Pictou Landing First Nation.

Another reason Chief Paul and other opponents of the pipe don’t trust what they are being told is that Northern Pulp and the Nova Scotia government continue to be joined at the hip. As one resident told me, “When the government says something, we hear the mill talking.”

Little wonder.

Hamm, the chair of Northern Pulp’s board, was the premier of Nova Scotia when the provincial government extended the company’s 30-year lease.

Bernard Miller, the lawyer who for years acted as Northern Pulp’s advisor on environmental compliance, was handpicked by current Premier McNeil to work for his government.

Miller is currently working as a senior advisor on the executive council of Nova Scotia. The McNeil government says he is excluded from all discussions about the mill. Of course, the government really had little choice, after the province’s Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Merlin Nunn, said Miller was in a conflict of interest arising from his close association with the mill.

All of that adds up to a crisis of trust.

Opponents of the new treatment process for the mill are aware of the hopeless conflict of interest that arises out of the provincial government’s special relationship with Northern Pulp. No environmental assessment done by the province will ever be seen as impartial.

“To me, you cannot be both a proponent, covering costs of a project, and a detached regulator,” Baxter said.

And that is exactly why fishermen and First Nation peoples here believe that Ottawa — and Ottawa alone — is capable of doing a proper environmental assessment of the pipe.

They reason that if the government of Stephen Harper could hand over $28.1 million to Northern Pulp in 2011, as a “green” subsidy, surely Trudeau should accept Ottawa’s responsibility with the prospect of open-ocean pollution in the offing.

The pipe’s opponents in Pictou make one thing crystal clear: No one is asking that the mill be shut down. They just want to ensure it treats its effluent in a manner that doesn’t poison the environment and threaten an industry that can go on forever if it is managed and protected. That means honestly assessing the environmental threat and using the latest technology to mitigate ocean pollution.

Griffin said, as a marine biologist, she is “100 per cent” certain that a proper, full-scale environmental assessment by Ottawa needs to be done before the pipe goes in.

“Big changes are happening in the Gulf due to global warming. Shifting ecosystems, whales following food into new areas, thousands of squid washed up on the shores of P.E.I. That’s never happened before,” she said

“We need a science-based federal assessment. This is not a provincial issue. Ottawa says it wants to better protect the ocean. That goal should apply now to this situation.”

Trudeau is still popular in these parts, just no longer the rage. Some people, like Gunning, have personal reasons for hoping that the prime minister will ride to the rescue.

“If I could talk to Trudeau face to face, I’d remind him that a mutual friend introduced me to him at a steakhouse in Ottawa the night before his big fight with Patrick Brazeau. I knew then, and I know now, that he’s got it in him, he’s got the jam in him,” Gunning said.

“I’m being kind. What I mean to say is, that’s what I felt when I shook his hand the night before he fought Brazeau. He surprised the whole country by coming through. We’re waiting for the next big surprise from him down in Pictou County, where we badly need a good surprise.”

Baxter sees Boat Harbour and the mill as a way for the prime minister to burnish some of his faded lustre on two key files, the environment and Indigenous affairs.

“It is a perfect place for Justin to show that he is committed to both of those things, even though he hasn’t come through on other promises…This is a moment when the feds should step in and say, ‘We have jurisdiction in this, and we are going to step in and protect the fishery.’”

Chief Paul remains cautiously hopeful that when the prime minister gets the full story, he may change his mind on the jurisdiction issue.

“With the environment, I haven’t been extremely happy with Trudeau. But he has a lot of projects coming his way, so we don’t try to read too much into it,” she said.

“Everyone is waiting to see what he will do once Northern Pulp files its plan.”

Beneath her admirable attempt to be fair to the government, and to respect the heavy workloads that the prime minister and his ministers undoubtedly have, Chief Paul’s emotions are close to the surface.

“I met with Minister Carolyn Bennett a few weeks ago. I asked her if Trudeau is fully aware of the complex situation that is happening here. She is our rights and reconciliation minister, she has to step up, that’s her job. I didn’t want to sound angry, but how can you not be angry? I am angry.”

She’s not the only angry person in Pictou County.

Mary Gorman, a tireless defender of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a woman who has been voted a green champion for her 30 years of environmental advocacy, is unhappy that residents have to go begging for a federal environmental assessment of the pipe.

“I find it appalling that we even had to go to this effort. We shouldn’t be fighting for an assessment. That’s what these politicians are elected to do. That’s what these departments were created for,” she said.

“Five provinces feed off the Gulf. PEI and New Brunswick lobsters spawn in the Northumberland Strait. They migrate. DFO doesn’t have a clue where lobsters are outside the commercial fishing seasons. So how can they let the pipe go directly into their spawning grounds?”

The potential losses are unimaginable. Nova Scotia is Canada’s number one exporter of seafood. In 2017, exports totalled $2 billion, including $947 million in lobster sales. By comparison, exports of chemical wood pulp accounted for $241 million.

There is also another worry about the mill and Boat Harbour that few people talk about.

What happens if the mill isn’t able to build its new treatment system before the deadline in 2020? With 2018 drawing to a close, Northern Pulp still hasn’t filed its project plan.

If the new system isn’t in place by the deadline, what does the Nova Scotia government do? Enforce the Boat Harbour Act and close the operation down? Or grant an extension to the company that would allow Northern Pulp to continue using Boat Harbour to treat its effluent?

Hebert, the lawyer for Pictou Landing First Nation, thinks there is a distinct possibility that Northern Pulp will not be able to do all the things it needs to do before the 2020 deadline. The company has not produced a fisheries impact assessment, nor filed an environmental assessment which must be part of its project application.

“At this stage, what I’m concerned about most is the timing,” he said.

And so the residents here remain in a state of suspended animation, waiting for the company.

With the prime minister denying jurisdiction in the matter, fishermen here are facing the distinct possibility of a Kinder Morgan at sea scenario in the waters of the Northumberland Strait. If Nova Scotia approves Northern Pulp’s new treatment system and Ottawa remains a bystander, fishermen will be the last line of defence against the pipe.

“We don’t have a plan. We have an attitude,” MacCarthy said of his fellow fisherman. “There will be no pipe in the Strait.”

He said they had the biggest rally in Nova Scotia history over the pipe, which saw 3,500 people and 200 boats come out on a very poor day.

According to Gunning, an armada of fishermen is prepared to sail and to stand up for the ocean and their livelihood, if that’s what it comes to.

“There are 95 fishermen ready to go to jail over this, and thousands more behind them. If they want to put that pipe in the Strait, they’re going to have to send down the Navy.”

(end)
-----------------------------------------

Quote:

‘Whatever lives in that water can’t speak for itself. We have to be that voice.’  -- from the Pictou mill protest article

October 8, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Some events today:
"Family and Friends" Apple-picking at The Mount, 9AM and later. Facebook event details here as some sort of pre-registration required.

"Movie: Forrest Gump , (1994), 1:30PM, City Cinema, admission $10 (plus tax), hosted by the Charlottetown Film Society and L'Ipeen.  Facebook event link.

-----------------------------------------
From last week:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-sears-tim-banks-apm-1.4850812

Local developer plans to purchase Sears property, turn it into retail centre - CBC online article by Shane Ross

Tim Banks says he has agreement to purchase vacant building and land

CBC On-Line Thursday, October 4th, 2018

A local developer is planning to purchase the Sears property in Charlottetown and convert it into a "power centre" featuring retail stores.

"We've got a contractual agreement with the trustee to purchase the building," said Tim Banks, CEO of APM Group.

Also included are about six hectares of land, Banks said.  "So there's some other developable land with it," he said. "Essentially we're buying the property and we're going to de-mall it, essentially what that means is that area out there is more in tune to a power centre as opposed to an indoor mall."

Banks said he expects to take possession of the property in the next week or so, and stores could start to open in the spring.  He said stores will include national tenants that have yet to move to P.E.I., as well as stores in the province that he expects to relocate there. By subdividing the 109,000-square-foot Sears building and developing the accompanying land, Banks said there could be room for at least 10 stores.

The development will be called the Royalty Power Mall, he said. "I think Islanders will be excited when they see the final product."

APM Group received a loan from the province of $4 million for the purchase.  Banks declined to say how much the property is being purchased for, but it was listed, at one point, at $7 million.

APM Group originally built the building and sold it to Sears about 10 years ago. Sears officially closed its doors in January.

-------------

"Power Centre" is a new term for some of us:

from: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/power-center.asp

A power center is a large (250,000 to 750,000 square ft.) outdoor shopping mall that usually includes three or more "big box" stores. This type of property might include smaller retailers and restaurants that are either free-standing or located in strip plazas and surrounded by a shared parking lot. Power centers are built for the convenience of motorists. Unlike traditional big box stores, power centers often have distinctive architectural features.

Another name in the business lexigon is just "retail centre".
-----------------------------------------

"Without reverence we [people] will gradually descend into ecocide. In the degree that the imperatives of the market - the temple of the Mall - govern our lives, we are in escalating danger of destroying the commonwealth of all sentient beings - bugs and bees and buntings - on which we depend for a luxurious life on planet earth."
-- Sam Keen (b. 1931), American philosopher

October 7, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Happy Thanksgiving Sunday!

Events:
Pumpkin Festival at Arlington Orchard, 12noon-4PM, Arlington Orchards near Tyne Valley.  Also open for apple picking. Website
Facebook Event Link

Yesterday's pumpkin weigh-off at Vesey's Seeds looked pretty busy and the winning pumpkin was 802kg and grown by  Eddy Shaw. Photos  CBC Story

Monday, October 8th and Friday, October 12th:
Apple U-Pick at the Mount, 9AM and other times, Mount Edward Road in Charlottetown.  Tickets (free preregistration) required.  When you get there, you buy a bag to fill (five or ten pounds, $10 or $20; they are still working on details).  Fundraiser for the growing facility.  Facebook event link.

P.E.I. Apple Growers Association has information about its members, links to their contact info, varieties information and recipes.  (Not all growers or U-picks are members of the Association.)
website: http://islandapples.com/
Facebook page

-----------------------------------------
On Friday, Cardigan MP Laurence MacAulay and provincial Transportation Minister Paula Biggar went to Pooles Corner to make an announcement on roads, but Island dairy farmers and supporters had a message, too, that they feel the federal government has sold them out on the recently announced NAFTA trade agreement replacement on dairy import capitulations.
  from: Guardian story on the protest
<snip>
Bloyce Thompson, another dairy farmer, said the 165 dairy farms on the Island have been hit bad again.

“It’s almost too much to bear,’’ Thompson said. “It’s affecting our incomes and our livelihoods, and we’re here to protect the family farm. Our markets are being taken away by the American product. It’s (a) cheaper, less superior product that’s coming and it’s going to affect our bottom line.’’

Despite repeated calls from the protesters on Friday to vote against the deal, MacAulay said he won’t be voting no.

“I can understand, truly, how they feel being a dairy farmer myself, but I can tell you $2 billion a day (of trade crosses) the border. We cannot have that stop. (They) had to pay a price and that’s unfortunate. I am fully aware it's not easy.’’ <snip>

[I am not sure who "had to pay a price" -- the federal government to get the trade deal, or the farmers (though the tense is wrong and they haven't paid the price...yet).]

Dairy groups are urging consumers to look for the Canadian Milk symbols before buying commercial dairy products.  More info:
Dairy Farmers of Canada webpage on "USMCA" and Dairy
Dairy Farmers of Canada Facebook




(left) "old" and (right) current 100% Canadian dairy content product logos

(Personal note: I appreciate there are many facets in dairy production, consumption, government-recommended amounts in the diet, etc.  But if people consume cheese and milk and such, local or specially-made is usually a better choice for local economies and communities.   Buying Canadian-only dairy products will probably come to price points, and that will make it hard for some families.)

-------------------------------

MacAulay and Biggar did make the roads announcement, in an all-good-news and self-congratulatory fashion, basically for paving upgrades to a big handful of secondary roads scattered around the province.

While improving the roads we have (and adding shoulder material and such for cycling and other uses) is welcome, the idea we needed to wrangle a good deal out of the feds to pay for half of regular upkeep and small improvements to existing roads should make Islanders think twice.

One of the major points of the Plan B highway protest six (!) years ago this month was that the project was too big for the natural area and small communities it was ripping through, and we weren't maintaining the roads we already had adequately. (Deja vu with the Cornwall Bypass now.) So there may not be cause for celebrations here, though most will be thankful for the new asphalt, even if the taxpayer is paying in federal taxes for the upkeep of the roads.

CBC story on roads announcement/dairy protest
P.E.I. Government media release on roads announcement

-----------------------------------------

Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.
  --Oliver Goldsmith, 18th century Irish writer

October 6, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Saturday Markets will be brisk as it is a big food shopping day before Thanksgiving meals. Bring money and patience.

Cardigan, 10AM-2PM **Last day for this market**
Murray Harbour, 9AM-noon
Charlottetown, 9AM-2PM
George's Island Market, Bedeque, 9AM-1PM
Summerside, 9AM-1PM 
Here is a link to a CBC article last week about Summerside Farmers' Market 10th Anniversary

Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off, 10AM-2PM, Vesey's Seeds, York on Rte. 25.  Weigh-Off is at Noon, free for the public and lots of family activities.  It is the 25th anniversary of the competition and the usual fee to enter the weigh-off has been weighed.  (Pumpkins need to be received between 8-10:30AM.)
Facebook event link

Future events:

Conflict Resolution Public Lecture and Workshop, with Northern Ireland Peace activist Paul Hutchinson

Friday, October 19th:
Public Lecture,  "Living Well with Difference: Reflections from a Northern Ireland Peace Activist", 7-8:30PM, Our Lady of Assumption Church, 145 Stratford Road, Stratford. Donations accepted at the door. All welcome.

Saturday, October 20th:
Workshop: "Peace and Reconciliation: What on Earth?", 10AM-4PM, Our Lady of Assumption Church, Stratford. Hutchinson was former Director of the Corrymeela Peace ad Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland.  He was invited to speak and facilitate here in addition to his annual visit to Nova Scotia.  Sponsored by the Council of Canadians, PEI Chapter.  Workshop cost $75 and if interested, contact Betty at (902) 672-2650 or email <jbwilcox2010@hotmail.com> as soon as possible.

-----------------------------------------

Saturdays often mean a call to support local food,and this week it's joined by a call to support local journalism (and, of course, support journalism period).

Island entrepreneur Alesia Napier wrote on social media yesterday:

"Find a paper you like. Support them. Buy their copies. Better yet, get a subscription. We all appreciate a free press, and it's a small and relatively easy way to support democracy on a daily or monthly basis.
Thanks to all the journalists I know. I appreciate your work and energy."

and showed Paul MacNeill's social media posting of a blank, totally blank, front page of the Eastern Graphic (The West Prince Graphic was also purposely blank).

October 1-7th is National Newspaper Week
Newspapers Matter #NowMoreThanEver

(And of course a free press does not mean the cost is necessarily free.)

Here is a good article with global and Canadian references from The Washington Post, from March 21st, 2018
A Once Unimaginable Scenario:  No More Newspapers
by Douglas McLennan and Jack Miles

excerpt:
For generations, many newspapers have called themselves The Mirror, The Daily Mirror, The Hometown Mirror, or the like. The title of Canada’s Public Policy Forum report is “The Shattered Mirror.” Imagine your home without a mirror or any mirror surrogate, like a cellphone camera. Imagine that you could never see your own reflection. Now imagine that your country has lost its national mirror, and you can never see an honest reflection of what it looks like. Worse, substitute that lost mirror for a fun-house mirror of pervasive and overwhelming attempts to dissemble, lie and spread fake news. <snip>

---

I can make fun of The Guardian and its infamous bad polls or incomplete reporting, but we are pretty lucky, and especially this weekend, I am thankful for newspapers.

-----------------------------------------

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, then be crowded on a velvet cushion."
        --Henry David Thoreau

October 5, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Events:

Progressive Conservative Party of PEI Happy Hour with guest MP Shannon Stubbs from Alberta, 4-5:30PM, Upstreet Brewing Company.
Facebook event link

The Nathan Condon Memorial Concert for Suicide Prevention, 7-10PM, Trinity United Church, Spring Street in Summerside. "Nathan Condon was a son, father, band member, carpenter and a very talented musician who had everything to live for. Tragically, he died from suicide in August of 2017 at the age of 32 years ...100% of the proceeds will go to Suicide Prevention through Lennon House in North Rustico, PEI. Lennon Recovery House Association adopts a holistic approach to recovery to provide individuals with the opportunity to recover and heal from substance abuse and subsequent mental health issues. If you would like to make a donation but cannot attend the concert, you can do so on the Lennon House web site at lennonhouse.ca"   More details at the Facebook event link

Todd MacLean's Solo CD Long John June Launch, 7:30PM, Pourhouse (above The Old Triangle, Great George Street).  Doors open for dining at 6:30PM.  Tickets $20 which includes a copy of the CD.  Music, stories, etc. from the editor of Global Chorus: 365 Voices on the Future of the Planet and an all-around caring and giving individual.

Future event:
Wednesday, October 24th:
Step Up to the Plate fundraising dinner for PEI Food Exchange, 5-8:30PM. Farm Centre. Lovely dinner and easy ways to give money to help this group that finds ways to share food with so many, and share skills, too. 
Facebook event link
-----------------------------------------
News:
Congratulations to the several Prince Edward Island Senior Islanders of the Year award winners -- especially Kaye Larkin, who works constantly in ways big and small to help the environment, and Ann Sherman, whose big heart matches her brain in social justice and legal issues. 

The Order of PEI Awards were given out earlier this week to Mark Arendz, Irene Jewell and Heather Cutcliffe, and these Islanders sound like amazing citizens. (It appears the awards are recovering from the besmirchment of Robert Ghiz handing it out to fit his whims.)
---------------------
It appears the e-gaming trial is set to resume Tuesday, October 9th, and the situation and new developments are neatly explained in this recent article by Guardian political reporter Stu Neatby.  (It should be noted that former Guardian political reporter Teresa Wight's diligently wrote about the apparent greed and money-making schemes of the Robert Ghiz time, too.)  Neatby is sizing up PEI issues pretty well and the use of the term "saga" is kind of humorous.
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/news/local/documents-raise-questions-about-role-pei-law-firm-played-in-e-gaming-saga-247241/

Local Documents Raise Questions about Role PEI Law Firm Played in E-Gaming Saga - The Guardian article by Stu Neatby

McInnes Cooper claims to have acted solely as representative of Confederacy, but was paid entirely by government funds

Published on Thursday, October 4th, 2018

Days before a $50 million lawsuit is set to be heard in court, newly released documents have raised further questions about the role played by local law firm McInnes Cooper in the e-gaming saga.

The public court documents, which include excerpts of email communications between McInnes Cooper lawyers and several public officials involved in the e-gaming initiative, were obtained by the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Capital Markets Technologies, Inc. The correspondence shows that McInnes Cooper was identified as the project manager for the e-gaming initiative in government briefing notes and that the law firm lowered its budget for services it billed the province despite acknowledging it would incur cost overruns.

McInnes Cooper has maintained it only offered representation to the Mi’kmaq Confederacy of P.E.I., not to the province.

Between 2009 and 2012, the province and the MCPEI attempted to establish the Island as a regulatory centre for internet gaming sites. The e-gaming initiative was abandoned in 2012 after the province spent at least $1.5 million on the initiative. Most of the funds were disbursed to McInnes Cooper.

The court documents show that McInnes Cooper originally submitted a budget to the Island Investment Development Inc. for $1,195,000 in expenses related to the e-gaming initiative but later dropped the budget down to $950,000.

It is unclear whether McInnes Cooper was able to obtain the $245,000 discrepancy between the two budgets through other funding means.

“The change from $1,195,000 to $950,000 did not reflect any change in the scope of anticipated costs of the project but rather was changed to allow the confederacy to meet the funding thresholds of Innovation P.E.I. It was understood that the actual cost of the project would likely exceed $950,000,” wrote McInnes Cooper board chairman Kevin Kiley in a Sept 25, 2012, memo to McInnes Cooper lawyer Mike O’Brien.

An IIDI loan of over $1 million would have required approval by cabinet, which would have been made public through an order-in-council.

In her 2016 report on the e-gaming saga, P.E.I. auditor general Jane MacAdam was critical of the $950,000 loan to McInnes Cooper, stating it was “essentially a grant,” as there was little expectation of repayment.

MacAdam also noted $600,000 of costs had been incurred by McInnes Cooper prior to the loan application and that costs were incurred despite “high risks, no tangible assets and only intellectual property as security.”

Gary Scales, a regional lead partner with McInnes Cooper, is named as one of the defendants in the e-gaming lawsuit. In a statement of defence filed on behalf of Scales, it is claimed that neither he nor McInnes Cooper provided project management or legal services to the province, and that the government had retained a separate firm as its external counsel.

CMT has named a total of 14 defendants in the lawsuit, including former Premier Robert Ghiz, former minister of finance Wes Sheridan and current deputy minister of finance Neil Stewart, as well as Scales.

CMT alleges that government officials committed “misfeasance of public office,” and that malicious harm was done to the company, which was in talks with the province to establish a financial services platform. A previous $25 million lawsuit filed by CMT was dismissed in 2016.

The first hearing in the lawsuit is set to be heard on Oct. 9 in Charlottetown.
-------------------

And what about the PNP saga?  Wayne Carver suggests an audit.

LETTER: Islanders deserve forensic audit - The Guardian Letter to the Editor

Published on Friday, September 28th, 2018

https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/letter-islanders-deserve-forensic-audit-245496/

Minister Palmer’s proclamation that Islanders were never satisfied with the PNP is an understatement. It is obvious that the minister has been in the portfolio for a short time, consequently he is not really aware of how closely Islanders have been following this debacle and how fed up they are with the abuses of public process.

The merit of the PNP has been called into question several times. Complaints have been made to law enforcement officials but to no avail. The inability to investigate the matter has been a public embarrassment and the dismissal of competent civil servants to protect the party has painted high ranking elected officials as cruel ruthless zealots interested in their own well-being.

Citizens are awaiting with bated breath, the outcome of the CBSA criminal charges and hopeful that the outcome will shed more light on the highly secretive and badly abused program. The outcome could be such that the auditor general will be called upon to conduct another audit of the program, in fact, the knowledge that CBSA is investigating nearly 1,000 fraudulent immigration cases should be enough to warrant a full-out investigation.

This time around it would not be uncharitable to call for a full forensic audit by the national police force, Islanders deserve nothing less.

Wayne Carver, Long Creek

-----------------------------------------

“In 1990, I had a great teacher named Bill Hogg at Eliot River Elementary School,” in Cornwall, PEI. “We had a slogan that went ‘there is no away,’ meaning you can throw stuff in the garbage but it doesn’t really go away.”
  -- Todd MacLean, musician, writer, and environmentalist (excerpt from an Atlantic Books Today interview, with a small spelling correction of Mr. Hogg's name)

October 4, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Events:
Infrastructure and Energy Standing Committee meeting, 1:30PM, Coles Building. "The Committee will receive a briefing on the topic of vehicles passing school buses."
You can usually watch these live at the Legislative Assembly website:

Farm Centre Farmers' Market, 4-7PM, P.E.I. Farm Centre, 420 University Avenue.  Produce, local products, and often a gardening workshop.

Tomorrow, Friday, October 4th:
"Significant Roads Announcement", 1PM, Kaylee Hall, Pooles Corner. Cardigan MP Laurence MacAulay will make an announcement with Provincial Minister of Transportation, Infrastructure and Energy Paula Biggar, according to the ad in today's Guardian.

Future:
Provincial municipal elections are on Monday, November 5th.

The P.E.I. Legislature will open for the Fall on Tuesday, November 13th at 2PM.  It may be Charles MacKay's last session as Clerk of the Legislative Assembly.

----------------------------------------
Two articles:

Lack of oxygen in Gulf of St. Lawrence needs emergency action, says activist - CBC News online article by Norma Jean MacPhee

Recent study says oxygen levels in the gulf are on the decline

CBC News On-line posted Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/elizabeth-may-gulf-of-st-lawrence-oxygen-levels-mary-gorman-environment-1.4847848

An environmental activist in Merigomish, N.S., believes House of Commons Speaker Geoff Regan made a bad call when he turned down a request Tuesday morning to hold an emergency discussion on the environmental state of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

The request was made by Green Leader Elizabeth May in response to a scientific study released in September that said the oxygen levels in the gulf are rapidly decreasing. 

"Fish are like the rest of us, they cannot live without oxygen," said Mary Gorman, founder of the Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition. "And if our Gulf of St. Lawrence waters are deoxygenating, this is an emergency matter."
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, isn't lightweight commentary.

It was funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Spain's Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Research Council, and co-authored by researchers from universities such as the University of Washington, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the University of Rhode Island, University of California and Dalhousie University.  Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Princeton University's national oceanic and atmospheric laboratory were also involved.

The study cites temperature shifts in the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current as a reason for the deoxygenation as warmer water cannot hold as much oxygen. 

May told the House of Commons on Tuesday there could be dire consequences if the issue isn't addressed.  "The emergency is that the death of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is a disaster economically, ecologically and socially," May was quoted as saying in Hansard.  "The terminus of the moment to save it could be as soon as four years from now which requires real action on an emergency basis."

Regan responded that May's request did not fit the necessary criteria for Standing Order 52, which would cause an emergency debate to supercede the already planned proceedings of the House. 

He is quoted in Hansard as saying: "I do not find that this, while there is no question it seems to be very important in interest, I do not find that it meets the exigencies of the strict wording of the Standing Order."

Gorman, who has been advocating for the Gulf of St. Lawrence for 30 years, said that response is not responsible. "If the multibillion-dollar fisheries that feed the coastal economies of half the provinces of this nation, if that doesn't constitute an emergency for the federal government, can they tell me what does?" 

Gorman said it's not just climate change causing the deoxygenation, but industrial plants that "simply treat our ocean like they're a great, vast toilet."

She said she'd like to see the federal government create immediate policies to curtail further degradation.   "In an ideal world, the entire Gulf of St. Lawrence should be declared a marine-protected region with sustainable fisheries only allowed. And they have to stop with all the reckless pollution."

-----------------------------

Jane Ledwell,executive director of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women, wrote this opinion piece after the #MeToo movement's first year milestone was passed.
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/opinion-metoo-what-next-245944/

#MeToo: What Next? - The Guardian Guest Opinion by Jane Ledwell

Published on Monday October 1st, 2018

Victims of sexual misconduct have lived with the consequences for too long, while perpetrators have often faced none

“I believe you.” “I am so sorry this happened to you.”

Many of us on social media left these responses on post after post last year as a staggering, heartbreaking wave of friends and family told us: #MeToo.

Last year, almost every woman and non-binary person I knew, and numerous men, used two simple syllables to tell the world they had experienced sexual misconduct.

The stories behind those syllables were varied, but they all pointed to one conclusion: victims of sexual misconduct have lived with the consequences of violence for too long, while the perpetrators have too often faced none.

Make no mistake: sexual misconduct is a show of power that discriminates against a person as a result of their gender, age, race, ability, or other traits. Sexual misconduct creates harm, with physical and mental effects, and also with material effects of limiting options and careers and reducing or removing victims’ voices and visibility in the public sphere.

Sexual misconduct can affect anyone of any gender, but it is a tool of social control, so the groups most affected are those who do not have, but seek, their equal place in the world. Whether individual women have experienced direct or indirect attacks, it affects #UsToo. And moreso women who are also part of other disadvantaged groups.

So, what can we do when we see perpetrators of sexual harm flourish while their victims disappear – into themselves, into the effects of trauma, into lesser careers, or away to other provinces? What can we do when we see that women’s safety is so easily sacrificed for the success of men who harmed them? Perpetrators who left them creeping uncomfortable, unsafe, and self-loathing in their own skins?

It is galling to see people in high-profile, well-paid roles be rehired after settled cases of sexual harassment – their violation of others’ human rights. It is appalling when elected officials with histories of sexual misconduct continue to harass after being elected but are not held accountable through codes of conduct. It is terrifying when teachers are subject to little investigation or censure after complaints of misconduct in public schools.

When well-intentioned promotion committees or government leaders or principals are more comfortable waiting for more or better evidence than believing and supporting those harmed, it tells victims they are worth less.

And it is not enough to wait for violations to be addressed as criminal matters: there are countless barriers to victims achieving justice for sexual misconduct through criminal trial.

Since #MeToo, we’ve seen examples of guilty verdicts or career consequences for a few perpetrators: these have often only come after numerous victims and much time. And significant consequences are still so rare as to be met with shock – and sometimes outrage about the consequences’ effects on perpetrators’ reputations and relationships.

What can we do? It is government’s responsibility, on behalf of us all, to ensure that public and publicly funded institutions have robust policies to prevent and address sexual misconduct. We must be prepared to begin by believing reports of sexual misconduct, and follow up with appropriate third-party investigation that puts the survivor in the centre and doesn’t revictimize. We can ensure that community mental health systems and not-for-profit victim-serving agencies are well-resourced to help survivors heal when they are ready for help, without waiting lists, whether the trauma occurred last week or last century. We can amplify the voices of victims and survivors. We can promote their careers and restore their visibility in the world.

Society must move towards restorative justice that begins to truly restore what was stolen from survivors: their dignity and the privacy of their intimate lives, their human rights, their lost or abandoned careers and opportunities. We can expect perpetrators to take responsibility, to make apologies and to make amends, and to make reparations to the people they harmed. We can hold unrepentant perpetrators accountable.

We can hold ourselves, our organizations, and our systems, large and small, responsible to support people who experience sexual misconduct – and not to reward perpetrators.

Jane Ledwell is the executive director of the P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women and is a writer and editor based in Charlottetown. The Guardian reached out to Ledwell to write this guest opinion to mark the first anniversary for the #MeToo movement. To read more submissions on #MeToo, go to Theguardian.pe.ca.

October 3, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Today is the last Wednesday Charlottetown Farmers' Market for the Fall, 9AM-2PM.

Mark Carr-Rollitt is looking into alternatives to "single-use-plastics" for serving food and drinks at public events.  Many of the vendors at the Farmers' Market are working on this and balancing cost and accessibility.  Nancy Russell reports in CBC's "Waves of Change" series:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-wheat-bran-plates-poland-1.4840638

Tonight:
Art Show Opening with special guest reading: Well Read Art Show Opening, 7-9PM, The Guild Art Gallery, Queen and Richmond Street.  Described as a "PG-13 multi-media art show by Jenni Zelin, about books." Jenni is an Island physician, mother, local food proponent, and artist. Dave Ackinson will be reading and telling stories. 
from: Facebook event link
"How can an artist represent and honour beloved literature through art? This is the question that motivated Island artist Jenni Zelin’s latest solo show. Paying tribute to literature ranging from children's picture books and young adult novels to classic and contemporary literature, nonfiction and stage text, Zelin’s show also reflects her work in multiple media, including pieces in acrylic, ink, felt, clay, ceramics, found materials, and comic strip art.  One of the pieces serves as a miniature and functioning lending library offering books to the public to borrow, trade, or read during gallery hours.
(revised by Chris :) Opening night will be author and former CBC reporter Dave Ackinson reading and telling stories.  The opening also kicks off a two-week silent auction of many of Zelin’s art pieces from the show, with the proceeds being donated to the Confederation Centre Public Library."

Tomorrow:
Thursday, October 4:
Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Energy Meeting, 1:30PM, Coles Building.  "The Committee will receive a briefing on the topic of vehicles passing school buses (relating to Bill No. 101 – An Act to Amend the Highway Traffic Act) from: -Superintendent Mac Richards, Criminal Operations Officer, RCMP L Division Other presenters to be confirmed."
-----------------------------------------
The Council of Canadians have taken a closer look at the reworked North American Free Trade Agreement, which the United States wants called USMCA but could be known as NAFTA 2.0 (or repeating some CBC's As It Happens listeners for suggestions of "Afta' Nafta", USCAM, and MUSCRAT-- "Mexico, US, Canada Ratified Agreement on Trade")
https://canadians.org/blog/nafta-20-better-still-deeply-flawed

NAFTA 2.0: better but still deeply flawed - The Council of Canadians website article by Maude Barlow, Honourary Chairperson

Published on their website on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018

Canadian and American negotiators came to agreement on a new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), or NAFTA 2.0.

First, the good news. Thanks to Council of Canadians supporters fighting for trade that is truly fair, together over the last year we pushed relentlessly for and won two significant changes in this new deal:

• Chapter 11 between Canada and the U.S. is gone. The investor-state dispute settlement provisions that were in NAFTA 1.0 have allowed U.S. corporations to sue Canada for billions over policies and laws that infringed on corporate profits even if they were done in the public interest.
   
• Energy proportionality is also gone, which required Canada to send a set percentage of its energy resources to the U.S. even in times of shortages.

In addition to the elimination of these two harmful provisions, Canada was able to retain the cultural exemption clause from NAFTA 1.0. And there are promising signs of improved labour standards too, including increased wages and collective bargaining freedoms for Mexican workers, which the Council of Canadians also strongly advocated for in partnership with labour allies in the U.S. and Mexico.

These are major victories for all of us who sounded the alarm on how these dangerous provisions affect our ability to protect the public interest and the environment.

Together with tens of thousands of supporters and our tireless network of chapter activists across the country, we were able to run and sustain several effective strategies, including:

• A national public education and engagement campaign that reached more than 1 million people that included our hard-hitting TV ad that ran on CBC’s The National, a series of informational videos breaking down key problem areas, and our NAFTA Toolkit that helped ordinary people take the NAFTA fight directly to their own MPs.
   
• Mobilizing more than 35,000 people to make individual submissions to the federal government’s public consultations on what they want to see in any new NAFTA deal, including the elimination of both Chapter 11 and energy proportionality.
   
• Presenting to the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade to bring our collective concerns directly to Parliamentarians.
   
• Producing hard-hitting research and timely reports on why energy proportionality should be out of NAFTA, and what was needed to make NAFTA a good deal for people and the planet.
   
• Organizing numerous public forums and rallies in communities across Canada to help people better understand what’s at stake and how to get involved.

Unfortunately, the news isn’t all good.

Our farmers will pay a heavy price as NAFTA 2.0 opens Canada’s market to more U.S. dairy products, including products that contain bovine growth hormone (BGH), a genetically modified hormone that is injected in cows to make them produce more milk. BGH has been banned in Canada due to its link to serious health concerns.

There will be increased deregulation and harmonization of rules to accelerate approvals for massive pipelines to be built.

Patents on pharmaceuticals, like biologic drugs, have also been extended, which will mean it will take longer for generic drugs to get to the market. This will keep drug prices higher – and often unaffordable – for longer and could have an impact on Canada’s attempt to implement a national pharmacare plan.

You can read even more analysis on the NAFTA 2.0 from the Council’s Trade Campaigner, Sujata Dey, in her blog post from last night.

So while there is much to celebrate today, I do so with cautious reflection about what is still to come.

What is also clear is that NAFTA 2.0 – which negotiators refer to as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – is still based on a flawed trade model that protects corporate interests over people and the environment.

This new NAFTA deal doesn’t address climate change and it could still leave our water vulnerable to corporate interests that want to buy and sell it. It also does not, as promised, include provisions on gender equality or Indigenous rights.

In many ways, I fear NAFTA 2.0 is cut from the same cloth as the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

And that’s why you and I must remain vigilant and continue to speak out for a new trade model that puts people and the environment first.

If there’s one clear positive takeaway with NAFTA 2.0, it’s that we have shown it’s possible for the people of this country to change things that were once thought unchangeable in trade agreements – and that gives us all tremendous hope.

You can trust that we will continue to monitor how this new deal unfolds over the coming days and weeks. Our fight is far from over.

-----------------------------------------
Sad news to hear of the passing of Anna Miriam (Pratt) Fraser, who was 95.  I had only met her late in what must have been a full and loving life, in 2012, when she was most concerned about the Plan B Highway proposal and was speaking out, encouraging people to sign the petition, etc.  She came to one of the rallies and addressed a couple of politicians, a tiny but fierce lion in the cold April wind pointing out the waste of land and resources to then Premier Robert Ghiz and Transportation Minister Robert Vessey, who at least acknowledged her politely, even if they didn't listen to her wisdom.  Many of us did, and I appreciated our correspondence.

Obituary and visitation and memorial service details for Anna Fraser

-------------------------

"Anyone in an influential position especially should exert every effort to maintain the peaceful beauty and rare ecology of our province."
-- The late Anna Miriam Fraser, in 2012, in a letter imploring Philip Brown, assistant to then-MP Gail Shea, to see the big picture and encourage the cancellation of the Plan B highway project

October 2, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Tonight:



Water Law: A Look at the new PEI Water Act, 6-8PM, Farm Centre main floor, hosted by East Coast Environmental Law and the Coalition for the Protection of PEI Water, free and refreshments will be served.  Facebook event link.

----------------------

This afternoon:
Legislative Committee on Health and Wellness Meeting, 1:30PM, Coles Building.  The Committee will meet to discuss its workplan.  Visitors welcome.  More details here.

Also, tonight:
Nature PEI monthly meeting, 7:30PM, Beaconsfield Carriage House. Brendon Kelly will be speaking on the decline in bird numbers, with beautiful photography.  Guardian article

-----------------------------------------------

If you can get to one thing tonight, the Water Act workshop would be very useful. 

• It will remind us what's actually in, and not in, this Water Act (that was passed in the provincial legislature in the fast and furious last day of the Fall 2017 sitting).
• Second, it will help us figure out how the regulations are written and what kind of public consultation would be useful.
• It shows continued interest in this issue, that Islanders are watching, and that they have noticed a lack of any consistent, coherent dialogue on the Act and the regulations by the current Environment Minister.

-----------------------------------------

The ocean is regarded as some sort of bargain basement....People don't realize that water in its liquid state is very rare in the universe. Away from Earth it is usually a gas.  This moisture is a blessed treasure, and it is our basic duty, if we don't want to commit suicide, to protect it.
-- Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau

October 1, 2018

Chris Ortenburger's CANews

Events: 
Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 2nd:
Water Law:  A Look at the New PEI Water Act, 6-8PM, Farm Centre room 106-107.  All welcome to hear a discussion of what is in the Act, what could be in the regulations, and what citizens should pay attention to and be involved in.  With Lisa Mitchell and Ryan Cutcliffe from East Coast Environmental Law, who have been working with the Coalition for the Protection of PEI Water on the Water Act issue for quite a while, and members of the Water Coalition presenting. 
-----------------------------------------
Regarding the NAFTA deal -- renamed the USMC which may stand for the United States Marine Corps but apparently also for the United States Mexico Canada agreement)
--Canada may well have sold the cow for a handful of magic beans.
I am borrowing some articles that Ian Petrie sent out early this morning, with thanks.  The first and last in their entirety, and the middle ones just links for your information:

from The Globe and Mail:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-us-reach-outline-of-nafta-deal-pending-approval-of-trump/

Canada, U.S. reach tentative NAFTA deal; Trump approves pact - The Globe and Mail web article by Robert Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief

Published on Sunday, September 30th, 2018 (web article is updated continuously)

Canada and the U.S. have reached a tentative deal to overhaul the North American free-trade agreement after intensive weekend talks, trading access to Canada’s protected dairy market for the preservation of a key dispute-resolution system and exemption from threatened auto tariffs.

President Donald Trump signed off on the agreement late Sunday night, said four sources with knowledge of the closed-door negotiations. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a late Sunday cabinet meeting at his office in Ottawa. The Mexican Economy Ministry, meanwhile, said it presented text of the preliminary deal to the Mexican Senate.

NAFTA will be renamed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement – or USMC, with the United States posting the text of the agreement online. Mr. Trump had previously indicated he wanted to do away with the phrase “NAFTA."

In a statement late Sunday, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland confirmed that Canada and the United States had settled upon a “new, modernized trade agreement for the 21st Century: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.”

Canada preserved the Chapter 19 dispute settlement provision, satisfying Mr. Trudeau’s long-standing red line in the negotiations. The deal will also keep in place protections for Canadian cultural industries.

Mr. Trump, for his part, gained the right for American farmers to sell more products into Canada’s tightly-controlled supply managed dairy system, his major trade complaint with Canada over the last year and a half.

Three sources said a side agreement would see the Trump administration guarantee it will not impose tariffs on most auto imports from Canada.

The deal would also allow Canadian consumers to purchase five times more foreign merchandise online without paying import duty than they are currently allowed, the two sources said.

While the agreement did contain some Canadian concessions, it mostly limited the damage to Canada from Mr. Trump’s protectionist trade policies. But Canada failed to conclude a deal to get steel and aluminium tariffs lifted. Mr. Trump imposed the levies in June, insisting they were the consequence of Canada not signing onto a NAFTA deal, but two U.S. officials speaking at a background briefing said there was no agreement to lift them despite Canada agreeing to the deal. Those officials said there have been negotiations over the tariffs, but they have not reached a conclusion.

Canada also agreed to increase protections for pharmaceutical patents to 10 years, a significant victory for the U.S. in an area it has long pushed Canada on, the U.S. officials said. Canada has long resisted increasing protections for pharma in order to keep drug prices low and help its own generic drug industry.

The U.S. dropped a major demand to gut Chapter 20, a different dispute resolution provision, and it will instead remain exactly as it is now, the U.S. officials said. Chapter 11, however, will be phased out between the U.S. and Canada, the officials said. The provision had allowed corporations to sue governments at special tribunals for interfering in their business. The chapter will, however, remain in place in a scaled-back form in Mexico.

The U.S. has been pressing Canada to make a deal since late August, when the Trump administration reached a preliminary NAFTA pact with Mexico.

Mr. Trump wants to send text of the deal to Congress Monday, starting a 60-day countdown to a final signing. He has repeatedly threatened to decimate Canada’s auto industry with 25-per-cent tariffs if an agreement is not reached.

Canadian and American negotiators spent all weekend in talks, conducted via videolink, in a bid to reach the deadline, said two government and industry sources.

Ms. Freeland and Ambassador to the U.S. David MacNaughton hunkered down with Mr. Trudeau’s top aides, Katie Telford and Gerald Butts, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa to work through the deal.

Mr. MacNaughton said the negotiating team was pleased with the result. “If a few months ago you had told me we would get a deal like this, I would have taken it in a nanosecond."

Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff, who sits on the government’s NAFTA advisory panel, said the tentative deal "will be a relief for industry but also for our members who are worried if the industry is not protected.” Mr. Yussuff noted Mr. Trudeau will hold a news conference Monday to lay out the details of the deal.

Canada will give U.S. farmers access to the Canadian dairy market greater than the 3.2 per cent granted to 10 other countries under the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ottawa will also change a rule that had largely excluded U.S.-made ultrafiltered milk, a cheese-making ingredient, from Canada.

The deal will preserve Canada’s supply management system, which uses a combination of quotas and tariffs to guarantee returns for Canadian farmers.

But giving a larger percentage of the market to the U.S. without tariffs is certain to rankle the dairy lobby, which wields significant political influence, particularly in Quebec, which holds a provincial election Monday.

“As the national association of dairy farmers in Canada, we have not been consulted by the government” about the potential concession, said Lucie Boileau, a spokeswoman for the Dairy Farmers of Canada.

For its part, Canada will keep Chapter 19, which allows it to challenge punitive American tariffs on imports at binational panels rather than in the U.S. court system.

The system has proven useful in the past for protecting softwood-lumber exports from duties.

Canada also bowed to U.S. demands to raise its de minimis threshold – the amount of online merchandise consumers can buy across international borders without paying import duty – from $20 to $100, said the sources.

The move, which was opposed by the Canadian retail industry, was agreed to by Canada in exchange for still being able to collect sales tax on the purchases, a source said.

The framework deal also includes a side agreement to have Mr. Trump exempt Canadian autos from future levies. In exchange, Canada agreed to an auto quota system similar to one Mexico accepted in August, said two industry sources.

Under the terms of the deal, all Canadian-made autos and auto parts under a specific quota – which is higher than current export levels – are exempted from any possible Section 232 national-security tariffs.

In addition, any Canadian-made autos that exceed the quota but that meet stringent new auto-content rules would also be exempted. Therefore, Washington could only impose tariffs on autos that exceed the cap and fail to meet the new rules.

One U.S. industry source briefed on the talks said Canada and the U.S. had discussed quotas or export restrictions on steel and aluminium, which designed to exempt current Canadian exports while discouraging steel and aluminium from other countries being routed through Canada into the U.S. market.

Jesus Seade Kuri, the chief negotiator representing Mexico’s president elect, Andres Manuel López Obrador, said he was delighted and relieved with that it was a trilateral deal. ""The fact that Canada is in will be very popular across the board."

He predicted that the deal would be broadly popular with Mexicans, although the tougher rules of origins on cars would draw criticism - but in the long term they will prove positive, he said, since "you have a whole region that is becoming more protectionist ... and now we are inside the curtain. That's beneficial for Canada and Mexico."

He said that in hindsight, it was possible that Mexico could have got through the negotiations without giving up as much as it did. “Probably Mexico could have been tougher and resisted concessions -- in the car industry, for example -- it probably was a little too much but at same time that’s difficult to say, because Trump was so hell bent on getting out of NAFTA.”

With files from Stephanie Nolen in Mexico City

Bloomberg's Josh Wingrove and company explain the highlights of the deal:

Cars, Cows and a Crisis Averted -- Highlights of a New NAFTA Deal
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/cars-cows-and-a-crisis-averted-highlights-of-a-new-nafta-deal-1.1145341
--------

iPolitics Kelsey Johnson explains what part of the cow has been sold:

New Trade Deal Opens up Canada's Dairy Market, Kills Class 7
https://ipolitics.ca/2018/10/01/new-trade-deal-opens-up-canadas-dairy-market-kills-class-7/
-----------------------------------------
The New York Times published this interview with American farmer, essayist, and respecter of the land Wendel Berry, and Ian Petrie sent it out perhaps as the antidote for concern about the new trade deal.  (More about Ian's McRobie lecture from last week, with the similar ideas in a P.E.I. format, another day.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/wendell-berry-agriculture-farm-bill.html

Wendell Berry’s Right Kind of Farming - The New York Times Opinion piece by Gracy Olmstead

Agricultural choices must be made by these inescapable standards: the ecological health of the farm and the economic health of the farmer.

Published on Monday, October 1st, 2018

How we farm matters. For the past two centuries, America’s farms have expanded and homogenized, and farming equipment and chemicals have replaced personnel. Farmers have grown older and more isolated and are retiring without successors.

Our embrace of industrialization and “factory farming” has not resulted in greater economic security for most American farmers. The nation has suffered a historic slump in prices for corn, soybeans, milk, wheat and other commodities. It has lost half its dairy farmers in the past 18 years. And The Wall Street Journal warned in early 2017 that “the next few years could bring the biggest wave of farm closures since the 1980s.”

The farmer, essayist and poet Wendell Berry has long argued that today’s agricultural practices are detrimental to ecology, community and the local economies that farms once served. A native Kentuckian, Mr. Berry has written over 40 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Humanities Medal and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

Mr. Berry argues that healthy forms of agriculture require intentional cultivation on the part of both consumers and farmers. Americans presume there will always be enough — money, clean soil, healthy water — to fulfill our desires. But our ravenous economic disposition goes against the very nature of our world and its finite resources. Advocates for sustainable agriculture argue that we ought to recognize the limits of our world and, as Mr. Berry writes, “live in it on its terms, not ours.”

This year’s proposed Farm Bill awards millions of dollars to wealthy agribusiness and factory farms in the form of commodity subsidies and crop insurance, while cutting funds for important conservation and stewardship programs and offering little to beginning farmers and ranchers or local farmers markets and local food promotion.

Mr. Berry, as an ally of Wes Jackson of the Land Institute and others, has long argued for a 50-year Farm Bill that would rejuvenate our nation’s ecosystems while fostering long-term food security in the United States.

Gracy Olmstead: The Farm Bill usually promotes short-term economic gains over long-term ecological health (something the 50-year Farm Bill seeks to fix). How do we get Washington politicians to support more sustainable forms of agriculture?

Wendell Berry: The problem here is not so much that of the shortness of the term of planning or of shortsightedness as it is of ecological and agricultural ignorance and a sort of moral blindness. The problems we ought to be dealing with are not problems because they are going to cause us trouble in the future. They are problems because they are obviously and clearly causing trouble right now. We ought to be doing our best to solve them right now.

If politicians and journalists want to know about the problems of agriculture, they are not likely to go out into “rural America” to observe the condition of the fields and the waterways or to talk to the farmers and the ex-farmers, the ex-merchants of the small towns, or to talk to the mayors and county judges of rural counties. Instead, they are very likely to talk to academic and bureaucratic experts, who are tightly bound within the industrial structure of agriculture, agri-science and agribusiness.

Alan Guebert was right when he said in one of his columns that this farm bill will be much like the last one insofar as it will not address the real problems of agriculture. Those problems, as you know, are soil erosion, soil degradation, the pollution of waterways by sediment and toxic chemicals, various ecological damages, the elimination of small farms, the destruction of the cultures of husbandry and the ruin of country towns and communities. And maybe we should add specifically the curse of overproduction, which at present, as often before, is the major and the cruelest problem.

Those problems could be summed up as the triumph of industrialism and industrial values over the lives of living creatures, and over the life of the living world. The preferences and choices of industrialism do not imply a limit of any kind. They rest instead upon the premises of limitless economic growth and limitless consumption, which of course implies limitless waste, and finally exhaustion.

Nothing can take form except within limits. No cure is possible, either in policy or practice, except within understood limits, which is to say within a correct diagnosis. This requires patience. A good solution has to begin with a description of the problem that is full, clear, and reliable.

Olmstead: The Farm Bill addresses many issues, including “rural development” — and rural communities desperately need help these days. Could the government help combat these issues, in your community and elsewhere?

Berry: A farm bill sincerely intending to help rural communities might begin by proposing a program of production controls and price supports for every product of farming and forestry. At present, for example, the dairy “industry” is increasing milk production by millions of gallons every year, thus reducing prices and driving small dairies out of business. This of course serves the interests of large dairies.

A bill intending to help rural communities, furthermore, might forbid the large chain stores to underprice their goods in order to destroy locally owned small stores. I don’t see why the government should not enforce honest prices for the same reason that it enforces honest weights and measures. I am sure that a lot of conservatives would object loudly to such “regulation.” But for small farms and small businesses, the “free market” is not a “level playing field.”

Olmstead: Many conservatives and libertarians see the Farm Bill’s handouts to large agribusinesses as the opposite of a free market. If small farmers are given a level playing field, they argue, more will succeed — and industrial agribusiness will no longer have a government-provided financial cushion.

Berry: I distrust entirely the terms “free market” and “level playing field.” Those phrases are intoned as if they were the names of gods, but what do they mean? How exactly do the conservatives and the libertarians think small farmers would be served by the free market and the level playing field?

The problem that has impoverished and destroyed farmers nearly always is that of low prices resulting from surplus production. That is also, obviously, a land-destroying problem. The only solution to that problem that can sustain the small farmers is the combination of production control and price supports as exemplified by the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association as it was reorganized in my region under the New Deal in 1941. I dislike recommending my own writing, but that organization and its work are explained pretty fully in “The Art of Loading Brush.” The conservative politicians and their friends in the Farm Bureau hated that program because it protected the small farmers, and they finally killed it. In its absence, our troubles have multiplied.

Recently, for example, 100 family dairy farms have been put out of business in this region, two of them in my county, because Walmart is building its own milk-bottling plant in Indiana. And so 100 self-employed, self-supporting, self-respecting farm families are being severely damaged or destroyed in order to increase the wealth of a family already far too rich. I am unsure what the farmers themselves have concluded, but I can conclude only what I already knew: They have no friends among the conservatives and libertarians. And if the Democrats and the liberals were to capture the government, those small farmers would find no friends among them, as they now are.

Both of the political sides, so far as I am concerned, have to accept responsibility for the emergence of Donald Trump, the autonomous man, the self-made man, economically “free” and sexually liberated, responsible only to himself, starting from scratch and inventing his own way of doing things. To get outside the trajectory that produced Trump, we will have to go back to tradition. I am unsure when we began to think of, for instance, the 15th Psalm and Jesus’s law of neighborly love as optional. They are not optional, as I think the Amish example proves, and as proved by present failure.

Olmstead: Our trade war with China has highlighted American farmers’ reliance on the global market. Do you believe this reliance is a necessary risk in today’s globalized economy? How can these farmers safeguard their own self-sufficiency and well-being?

Berry: I have been arguing for a long time, and I still argue, that an economy worthy of the name should begin with proper care of its sources in the natural world and in the local cultures of land use. Beyond that it should be based upon the principle of a reasonable self-sufficiency, from the household to the local community and on through the categories of political organization.

Such an economy, within the variables of weather and human capability, would be formed within certain prescribed limits. To the extent that it would be limited and formed or formal, we might assume that it would be stable. Because such an economy has never been tried, we should not think of it with too much confidence. But there is certainly nothing limited or stable in our present casting about the “globe” for supplies and demands. This, like our present society, is disorderly if not chaotic.

The so-called global economy, because it is predicated on the exhaustion of natural sources and of the land-use economies, is far from a sure thing. An interesting question, then, is whether we might intentionally reform our economies upon the principle of self-sufficiency or be forced to do so by the failure of the global economy. Farmers by themselves can’t protect themselves in a “free market” economy whether it is national or global. At present they have only the very limited self-protection of supporting their own lives so far as possible from their own land — that is, by producing their own food and fuel, and by harvesting energy from their own sunlight.

Olmstead: An Iowa farmer recently told me that industrial agriculture is inevitable — the natural fruit of technological progress and globalization. The farmer reminded me of others I have talked to who, when asked about farming practices that are industrialized and isolating, reply by saying “We must feed the world.”

Berry: If you can persuade farmers that their hardships are “inevitable,” then you have got them very securely trapped and they can be safely forgotten by their political representatives and exploited by agribusiness corporations. Inevitability and objectivity, like pessimism and optimism, are the names of programs offering freedom from choice and responsibility. If “technological progress” is the same as technological determinism, then there are no remedies.

It can pretty well be demonstrated, however, that technological progress is the result of choices that have been made all the way from the inventors and manufacturers of technologies to the people who buy and use and pay for them. The important questions all have to do with the standards by which these choices are made. If the standards were different, different choices would be made.

And in fact we have plenty of evidence that choices can be made that evidently were not made by your Iowa farmer. That the alternative choices often have to be made against powerful social pressures does not mean that they cannot be made or that they are not valid choices. The finally inescapable standards by which agricultural choices must be made are the ecological health of the farm and the economic health of the farmer.

The problem of feeding the world should be addressed, first of all, by calculating the waste — from farmland and topsoil to thrown-away food — in the world’s “food systems.” Perhaps somebody has done this. If so, that is the place to start. The people, fairly numerous and highly credentialed, who argue that only industrial agriculture as we now have it can feed the world are arguing in fact that we can feed the world only by an agriculture that destroys both farmland and farmers. There is a point, obviously, beyond which this kind of agriculture will not be able to feed much of anybody.

Olmstead: As farmers grow older, we seem unable to attract or keep young people on the land. For some, this is because of the cost of procuring land and starting a farm. But I have also talked to farmers who were told they were “too smart” to farm by high school counselors and mentors. These admonitions align with a larger cultural prejudice against manual labor and blue-collar work. Considering the challenge to farming’s future which this represents, how can we foster and renew a passion for farming?

Berry: That smart people are “too smart” to farm is one of the set of clichés by which industrial agriculture has maintained itself. Another is that farming is “drudgery” or “mind-numbing work.” Another is that ex-farmers have been “liberated” from their hard, narrow, and depressing lives.

These clichés are sustained by the “larger cultural prejudice against manual labor,” which you mention. But there also are active prejudices against farmers, country people, the country, small-town people and small towns. This at least begins the description of a large cultural problem. Because of such prejudices, and also because of economic adversity, farmers encourage their children to leave farming. Their departing children, so few of them as they now are, amount to an invaluable cultural and economic resource, to which our present economy attaches no value at all.

What can we do about this? First, those of us who care must keep trying to bring about improvements, which we can do, and are doing, locally — where, in any event, the improvements will have to be made. Second, we have got to be patient. That this is a cultural problem means that it can’t be simply or quickly solved. What you speak of as a “passion for farming” can grow only from an understanding of the intelligence and the learning involved in the right kind of farming, and we should add an understanding of the better cultures of husbandry and of the traditional agrarian values. These things we must try to keep alive, not because of their “potential value” but because they are now and forever right.

Gracy Olmstead is an Idaho native living and writing outside Washington.