2022-13

Thursday April 13, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 13, 2022

Will War Make Europe’s Switch to Clean Energy Even Harder?

At the Siemens Gamesa factory in Aalborg, Denmark, where the next generation of offshore wind turbines is being built, workers are on their hands and knees inside a shallow, canoe-shaped pod that stretches the length of a football field. It is a mold used to produce one half of a single propeller blade. Guided by laser markings, the crew is lining the sides with panels of balsa wood.

November 10, 2021

The gargantuan blades offer a glimpse of the energy future that Europe is racing toward with sudden urgency. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia — the European Union’s largest supplier of natural gas and oil — has spurred governments to accelerate plans to reduce their dependence on climate-changing fossil fuels. Armed conflict has prompted policymaking pledges that the more distant threat of an uninhabitable planet has not.

Smoothly managing Europe’s energy switch was always going to be difficult. Now, as economies stagger back from the second year of the pandemic, Russia’s attack on Ukraine grinds on and energy prices soar, the painful trade-offs have crystallized like never before.

Moving investments away from oil, gas and coal to sustainable sources like wind and solar, limiting and taxing carbon emissions, and building a new energy infrastructure to transmit electricity are crucial to weaning Europe off fossil fuels. But they are all likely to raise costs during the transition, an extremely difficult pill for the public and politicians to swallow.

Wednesday April 13, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 13, 2022

Just how bad is COVID-19’s sixth wave?

Hamilton’s public school board is writing a letter to the provincial government asking for the now-lifted mask mandate to be restored. Halton is back to having outbreaks at long-term-care facilities and at least one Haldimand-Norfolk LTC facility is back to restricting visitors, again due to COVID.

July 25, 2020

Further afield, some schools in the London area are reverting to online learning because their staff and student ranks are so hard hit. And one hospital in Waterloo Region is closing its emergency room overnight because it no longer has staff to keep it open.

Anecdotally, more and more of us are saying we now see more COVID among our families, friends and networks than at any other time during the pandemic. And, most ominously, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths are climbing — again.

Tuesday April 12, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 12, 2022

Zelenskyy says Ukraine is defending its basic human rights

“We are defending the ability for a person to live in the modern world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.

March 1, 2022

In an interview taped Wednesday in Kyiv, Zelenskyy told Pelley his country remains united because it has no other choice.

“We united as a nation” Zelenskyy said to Pelley, speaking through an interpreter. “The weakest people became strong. The strong people became the strongest, most powerful, so powerful that nobody could have outdone them. In this way, our nation of strong and weak people has transformed into one solid, strong force. And one strong community.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the Ukrainian presidency in 2019 with 73% of the vote. He told Pelley he was urged by multiple people leave the country at the start of the war but chose to stay.

“Before I do something, I analyze the situation. I’ve always done it calmly, without any chaos,” Zelenskyy said through an interpreter. “I might not be the strongest warrior. But not I’m willing to betray anyone.”

Saturday April 9, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 9, 2022

What Toronto wanted in the federal budget for housing — and what it got

April 7, 2017

One of the central pieces of the federal budget unveiled Thursday was affordable housing — $10 billion earmarked to tackle the crisis country-wide.

It’s a mix of funding for projects and policy changes aimed at making housing more affordable.

So what was Toronto looking for and what did it get?  And what will the budget mean for one of the least affordable cities in the country?

Much of the $10-billion investment focuses on boosting the supply of homes, something that is key for Toronto. 

February 1, 2017

The city was eyeing an extension of funding for a project it’s partnered on with the federal government: the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI).

That wish was granted. The budget proposes to extend the program, which creates new affordable rental housing for marginalized people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness, at a cost of $1.5 billion over two years.

May 7, 2014

The largest portion of the $10-billion budget pledge is $4 billion dedicated to what the government is calling a “Housing Accelerator Fund.” The money will be for municipalities like Toronto to speed up housing development by slashing red tape, and the federal government estimates it can create 100,000 new units over five years.

When it comes to speeding up development, Bailão says the city has projects on the go for which they’d like to partner financially with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) — mainly its Housing Now initiative, which activates city-owned sites for the development of affordable housing within mixed-income, mixed-use, transit-oriented communities.

November 20, 2019

“I think all orders of government need to work together because if they really want to build 100,000 units … we have 15,000 here in the pipeline that need their financing and we need to make sure that financing is there,” said Bailão.

The question among many advocates is how quickly some of these measures can be implemented in big cities like Toronto, and how much coordination there can be between different levels of government.

“For this city, what’s needed is significant amounts of money and funding that can be spent quickly,” said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute and a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto.

“We’re in this crisis. We need all hands on deck, and we need that real coordination and we need a sense of urgency to back it up.” (CBC) 

 

Friday April 8, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 8, 2022

Budget doesn’t address lessons learned during the pandemic, health groups say

March 23, 2022

After a pandemic that has left Canada’s health-care system buckling under the strain of staffing shortages and surgical backlogs, Thursday’s federal budget drew criticism from health groups, while committing billions to a national dental plan.

Dental care, a pillar of the governing agreement struck between the Liberals and New Democrats two weeks ago, emerged as the centrepiece of the federal government’s health-care spending. The government committed $5.3 billion over the next five years to launch the national program.

But urgency around the plight facing health-care workers in this country was absent from the budget, experts said.

“The big miss in this budget was providing care for Canadians. Everything from health care to long-term care to home care is in crisis,” said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and an Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. “There’s just no reference to the people that provide the care that are burning out and dropping out.”

December 24, 2021

The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) has argued that COVID-19 exacerbated long-standing issues already slamming the health-care system. According to Statistics Canada, 70 per cent of health-care workers reported their mental health worsened during the public health crisis, with about 32,000 regulated nurse positions needing to be filled.

The federal government has estimated that the pandemic delayed approximately 700,000 surgeries and other medical procedures, leading to wait-lists and backlogs for medical care.

CFNU president Linda Silas said the budget largely ignores health-care workers, something she said came as a “surprise” given assurances from Ottawa that retaining and recruiting talent is a priority.

“We’ve been having meetings with every politician of every stripe, at every level of government, and everyone understands that we’re dealing with a health human resource crisis in this country,” Silas told the Star. “Those words and actions weren’t part of budget 2022.”

December 21, 2016

The budget also doesn’t offer additional top-ups in health-care transfer payments to provinces and territories.

The document instead repeats the commitment of a one-time top-up of $2 billion to the Canada Health Transfer to clear surgical backlogs. That falls short of the $6 billion the Liberals promised in their election platform to “immediately invest” in eliminating health system wait-lists.

Premiers have repeatedly called on Ottawa to increase its share of health-care costs from 22 per cent to 35 per cent — an additional $28 billion per year — with no strings attached.

The budget primarily addresses the crisis facing health-care workers by pledging $26.2 million over four years, starting in 2023, to increase the amount of forgivable student loans by 50 per cent. That would result in up to $30,000 in loan forgiveness for nurses and up to $60,000 for doctors working in rural or remote communities.

March 31, 2021

There is also a promise to give $115 million over five years to Canada’s foreign credential recognition program to allow up to 11,000 health-care professionals trained abroad to find work here.

Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Katharine Smart said Thursday’s budget signals that Ottawa has similar priorities to the health sector, “but it’s very clear that much, much more needs to be done to actually bring about that change, and the deep investments that are going to be needed.”

The Mental Health Commission of Canada, meanwhile, had hoped to see movement on the Liberals’$4.5 billion campaign pledge to set up permanent transfer payments to the provinces and territories for mental health. (The Toronto Star)