As a citizen and as a former wife of a police officer who had an inside view of the police community, I am very worried about the de facto power of police forces in Canada. Yes, it is not to the extreme of some third world countries but it is far worse than the average Canadian wants to believe. Here is a current example.
Secret recordings obtained by CBC News offer proof that Toronto police conducted illegal eavesdropping on a former police board chair.There have been allegations for years that police began spying on their civilian boss, Susan Eng, beginning in May 1991, days after she was sworn in.Then police chief Bill McCormack and Julian Fantino — superintendent of detectives at the time and later police chief and OPP commissioner — have repeatedly refused to say whether they requested or were aware of the surveillance.But now CBC News has obtained the tape recordings of Eng talking to her confidant and friend, Peter Maloney, about everything from police business to the very personal.At the time, police had gone to a judge claiming Maloney may have ties to drug dealers.
The judge granted officers authority to wiretap his phone, but they were ordered to shut down the wiretap after a minute if the calls involved anyone, such as Eng, not listed on the paperwork.Police ignored the order and recorded Eng, with some recordings lasting 20 or 30 minutes.
Eng expresses disgust
Eng, a lawyer who is now vice-president of advocacy for CARP, which represents retired people, told CBC News recently that she's disgusted and worries this kind of thing is still going on."You know there's a law against illegal wiretapping," said Eng. "Police are supposed to uphold that law, not go out and break it when they feel like it."
In the early 1990s Toronto police were under fire over several shootings of young black men. The province appointed Eng, a civilian, to bring in reforms.The officer who made the tapes, Det. Garry Carter, claimed he was acting on orders.Carter left the force in 1995, but later pleaded guilty to stealing $47,000 in connection with the missing money from the police investigative fund. He was sentenced in 2002 to a year of house arrest.A report written by Carter and leaked to CBC News in 2007 said Fantino was extremely concerned Maloney, Eng's political ally and a Toronto criminal lawyer, could pose a security risk.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/19/toronto-police-recordings-eng.html#ixzz15poyRVR9
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The Sexiest Man Alive is Canadian!
This site is dedicated to Canadians who make a difference and its hard to ignore when a Canadian wins 'The Sexiest Man Alive' Title so today we pay homage to Ryan Reynolds.
Today's news is that People magazine has named Ryan Reynolds -- our Ryan Reynolds -- the sexiest man alive. The Vancouver-born actor, most recently seen in the claustrophobic thriller Buried, first came to our attention in the sitcom Two Girls and a Guy, which proved to be a great showcase for his comic elan. Since then, he's become a bankable box-office star (Definitely Maybe, The Proposal) who devotes an ungodly amount of time to ab-sculpting. Today also marks the release of the first full-length trailer for Reynolds' new movie, The Green Lantern. See it below!
Today's news is that People magazine has named Ryan Reynolds -- our Ryan Reynolds -- the sexiest man alive. The Vancouver-born actor, most recently seen in the claustrophobic thriller Buried, first came to our attention in the sitcom Two Girls and a Guy, which proved to be a great showcase for his comic elan. Since then, he's become a bankable box-office star (Definitely Maybe, The Proposal) who devotes an ungodly amount of time to ab-sculpting. Today also marks the release of the first full-length trailer for Reynolds' new movie, The Green Lantern. See it below!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Canada's real war- antibiotic resistant organisms
Bacteria outbreak closes Ont. hospital unit
A hospital in Peterborough, Ont., stopped admitting patients to one of its units as of Friday because of an "uncommon" outbreak of three different bacteria, including two superbugs.Peterborough Regional Health Centre is investigating several cases of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).
There have been 11 cases of MRSA since Nov. 5. The first of seven C.difficile cases dates back to Oct. 22. There are two cases of VRE.Hospital spokesman Jonathan Bennett said it isn't uncommon for two or three of the bacteria to be present in small numbers around the hospital, but to have an outbreak of even two superbugs is unusual."It's uncommon for us to be in an outbreak situation on a single unit with two organisms," Bennett said on Saturday.
"It's quite concerning to us to find that we've got fairly significant numbers of transmissions in the same unit of two, which is C. diff and MRSA." He said the hospital is taking the situation "very seriously." Patients have been put into isolation, housekeeping staff are cleaning patient rooms and the hospital is re-educating staff on the importance of handwashing.The C. difficile outbreak is close to being declared over, if a series of tests come back negative on Monday, Bennett added.
Until tests give the all clear, no patients will be admitted to or transferred from the acute care unit.
The number of visitors to the unit was also being restricted to two family members per patient.C. difficile is a common infection found in hospitals and long-term care centres. Symptoms include diarrhea, fever, nausea and abdominal pain.
If left untreated, MRSA skin infections can cause life-threatening complications like blood, bone or lung infections.Symptoms of drug-resistant bacteria VRE infections include fever, wound infections, inflammation and pneumonia.The hospital said no new cases of C. difficile were found in the last 10 days.The last new case of MRSA was found Nov. 8 and the hospital will conduct a third screening on Monday.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/11/13/peterborough-hospital-bacteria-outbreak.html#ixzz15GwWnSQH
A hospital in Peterborough, Ont., stopped admitting patients to one of its units as of Friday because of an "uncommon" outbreak of three different bacteria, including two superbugs.Peterborough Regional Health Centre is investigating several cases of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).
There have been 11 cases of MRSA since Nov. 5. The first of seven C.difficile cases dates back to Oct. 22. There are two cases of VRE.Hospital spokesman Jonathan Bennett said it isn't uncommon for two or three of the bacteria to be present in small numbers around the hospital, but to have an outbreak of even two superbugs is unusual."It's uncommon for us to be in an outbreak situation on a single unit with two organisms," Bennett said on Saturday.
"It's quite concerning to us to find that we've got fairly significant numbers of transmissions in the same unit of two, which is C. diff and MRSA." He said the hospital is taking the situation "very seriously." Patients have been put into isolation, housekeeping staff are cleaning patient rooms and the hospital is re-educating staff on the importance of handwashing.The C. difficile outbreak is close to being declared over, if a series of tests come back negative on Monday, Bennett added.
Until tests give the all clear, no patients will be admitted to or transferred from the acute care unit.
The number of visitors to the unit was also being restricted to two family members per patient.C. difficile is a common infection found in hospitals and long-term care centres. Symptoms include diarrhea, fever, nausea and abdominal pain.
If left untreated, MRSA skin infections can cause life-threatening complications like blood, bone or lung infections.Symptoms of drug-resistant bacteria VRE infections include fever, wound infections, inflammation and pneumonia.The hospital said no new cases of C. difficile were found in the last 10 days.The last new case of MRSA was found Nov. 8 and the hospital will conduct a third screening on Monday.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/11/13/peterborough-hospital-bacteria-outbreak.html#ixzz15GwWnSQH
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Dreams of Canadian Space Flight live on
Former X Prize contender seeks venture capital for 2011 test flight
By Emily Chung, CBC News
The XF1, shown in this drawing, is designed to take off from a runway, fly to a launch altitude of over 50,000 feet, and then fire its rocket engines to leave the Earth's atmosphere. (Brian Feeney/DreamSpace Group)A new, Canadian commercial spacecraft prototype could launch as soon as next year, a former contender for the Ansari X Prize hopes."We feel extremely confident that we can be airborne within 2011," said Brian Feeney of the new spacecraft project that grew out of the Toronto-based Da Vinci Project.
"Are we getting to space by the end of 2011? You can't say for absolute certainty until you're airborne and you're flight testing," he said Friday.
The Da Vinci Project and the London, Ont.-based Canadian Arrow were among the 26 teams from seven countries vying for the Ansari X Prize. The competition promised $10 million to the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometres above the Earth's surface, twice within two weeks.In 2004, it was awarded to the Scaled Composite team for their craft SpaceShipOne, which became the prototype for Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson.
But neither of the Canadian teams gave up after losing the race.
The Canadian Arrow now likely won't fly as a space tourism vehicle, said Geoff Shirin, who led the project. A prototype of the spacecraft is displayed in New York in 2002. (Associated Press)Geoff Sheerin, president of Canadian Arrow, teamed up with U.S. entrepreneur Chirinjeev Kathuria to form Chicago-based Planetspace Corp. in 2005. According to the company's website, it specializes in space services such as transporting cargo and crew to the International Space Station, space tourism and the delivery of satellites into orbit.
Meanwhile, Feeney and his team of 1,000 volunteers continued working on the Wildfire, a ballistic rocket-style craft that was to be lifted to its launch altitude by a helium balloon. In the end, the rocket never did blast off. Feeney shut down the project in 2006 and founded a private company called DreamSpace Group to work on a new, airplane-like commercial tourism spacecraft called the XF1: "It's got wings, it takes off from a runway, it flies by itself up to a launch altitude of 50,000 feet plus, it fires its rocket engines, it goes up into space, it re-enters, and it lands on the same runway."
Biofuel powered
Feeney plans to run the new spacecraft entirely on biofuel from non-food sources such as algae, using liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. The Da Vinci Project's Wildfire rocket, shown at a 2005 space expo called the X Prize Cup, was designed to be carried to its launch altitude by a helium balloon. (DreamSpace Group)Like the Wildfire, the XF1 will use carbon fibre as a structural material. A lot of the experience from the Da Vinci project in developing flight software, life support systems to maintain cabin air pressure in space and developing and testing engines is being incorporated into the development of the new spacecraft, Feeney said. But the huge, unwieldy team of 1,000 Da Vinci Project volunteers has been replaced by just half a dozen DreamSpace Group staff. Half a dozen more people are working on the XF1's propulsion system through a private partner company based in California.
Up until now, the project has relied on funding left over from the Da Vinci project from sponsors like the online casino GoldenPalace.com. But Feeney estimates he will need $2.5 million in venture capital funding to build an XF1 prototype carrying one person and another $12.5 million to build two commercial three-person spacecraft. He hopes to launch a new website and begin approaching investors in December, but admits it poses a challenge."In a young industry that's not proven, you're always running up against the 'Can you demonstrate to…the venture capital community that you can manage the risk and get to the marketplace?'"
Brian Feeney estimates he will need $2.5 million in venture capital funding to build an XF1 prototype carrying one person. In this 2005, he poses with Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. (DreamSpace Group)Feeney himself is confident in the profitability of the space tourism market and hopes to charge between $50,000 and $100,000 per flight for space tourists — less than half of what Virgin Galactic says it will charge. The company also intends provide transport into space for scientific experiments. In a document provided to NASA in February, Feeney estimated that the company would charge $89,000 to carry a full load of scientific equipment on an unmanned flight, and would charge $49,900 to bring one person and half a load, provided another passenger had purchased the other seat and agreed to the deal.
As for the Canadian Arrow team, the company is now likely not going to fly a Canadian Arrow rocket as a space tourism vehicle, Sheerin wrote in an email to CBC News earlier in November. The technology from the project remains part of the new company's inventory, but Sheerin said he could provide no further details pending a legal challenge involving NASA.The company filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Jan. 2009 over NASA's decision not to award Planetspace a contract to transport cargo the International Space Station after the space agency retires its shuttles in 2011.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/11/12/spaceflight-x-prize-feeney-da-vinci.html#ixzz15ArYCP1f
By Emily Chung, CBC News
The XF1, shown in this drawing, is designed to take off from a runway, fly to a launch altitude of over 50,000 feet, and then fire its rocket engines to leave the Earth's atmosphere. (Brian Feeney/DreamSpace Group)A new, Canadian commercial spacecraft prototype could launch as soon as next year, a former contender for the Ansari X Prize hopes."We feel extremely confident that we can be airborne within 2011," said Brian Feeney of the new spacecraft project that grew out of the Toronto-based Da Vinci Project.
"Are we getting to space by the end of 2011? You can't say for absolute certainty until you're airborne and you're flight testing," he said Friday.
The Da Vinci Project and the London, Ont.-based Canadian Arrow were among the 26 teams from seven countries vying for the Ansari X Prize. The competition promised $10 million to the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometres above the Earth's surface, twice within two weeks.In 2004, it was awarded to the Scaled Composite team for their craft SpaceShipOne, which became the prototype for Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson.
But neither of the Canadian teams gave up after losing the race.
The Canadian Arrow now likely won't fly as a space tourism vehicle, said Geoff Shirin, who led the project. A prototype of the spacecraft is displayed in New York in 2002. (Associated Press)Geoff Sheerin, president of Canadian Arrow, teamed up with U.S. entrepreneur Chirinjeev Kathuria to form Chicago-based Planetspace Corp. in 2005. According to the company's website, it specializes in space services such as transporting cargo and crew to the International Space Station, space tourism and the delivery of satellites into orbit.
Meanwhile, Feeney and his team of 1,000 volunteers continued working on the Wildfire, a ballistic rocket-style craft that was to be lifted to its launch altitude by a helium balloon. In the end, the rocket never did blast off. Feeney shut down the project in 2006 and founded a private company called DreamSpace Group to work on a new, airplane-like commercial tourism spacecraft called the XF1: "It's got wings, it takes off from a runway, it flies by itself up to a launch altitude of 50,000 feet plus, it fires its rocket engines, it goes up into space, it re-enters, and it lands on the same runway."
Biofuel powered
Feeney plans to run the new spacecraft entirely on biofuel from non-food sources such as algae, using liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. The Da Vinci Project's Wildfire rocket, shown at a 2005 space expo called the X Prize Cup, was designed to be carried to its launch altitude by a helium balloon. (DreamSpace Group)Like the Wildfire, the XF1 will use carbon fibre as a structural material. A lot of the experience from the Da Vinci project in developing flight software, life support systems to maintain cabin air pressure in space and developing and testing engines is being incorporated into the development of the new spacecraft, Feeney said. But the huge, unwieldy team of 1,000 Da Vinci Project volunteers has been replaced by just half a dozen DreamSpace Group staff. Half a dozen more people are working on the XF1's propulsion system through a private partner company based in California.
Up until now, the project has relied on funding left over from the Da Vinci project from sponsors like the online casino GoldenPalace.com. But Feeney estimates he will need $2.5 million in venture capital funding to build an XF1 prototype carrying one person and another $12.5 million to build two commercial three-person spacecraft. He hopes to launch a new website and begin approaching investors in December, but admits it poses a challenge."In a young industry that's not proven, you're always running up against the 'Can you demonstrate to…the venture capital community that you can manage the risk and get to the marketplace?'"
Brian Feeney estimates he will need $2.5 million in venture capital funding to build an XF1 prototype carrying one person. In this 2005, he poses with Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. (DreamSpace Group)Feeney himself is confident in the profitability of the space tourism market and hopes to charge between $50,000 and $100,000 per flight for space tourists — less than half of what Virgin Galactic says it will charge. The company also intends provide transport into space for scientific experiments. In a document provided to NASA in February, Feeney estimated that the company would charge $89,000 to carry a full load of scientific equipment on an unmanned flight, and would charge $49,900 to bring one person and half a load, provided another passenger had purchased the other seat and agreed to the deal.
As for the Canadian Arrow team, the company is now likely not going to fly a Canadian Arrow rocket as a space tourism vehicle, Sheerin wrote in an email to CBC News earlier in November. The technology from the project remains part of the new company's inventory, but Sheerin said he could provide no further details pending a legal challenge involving NASA.The company filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Jan. 2009 over NASA's decision not to award Planetspace a contract to transport cargo the International Space Station after the space agency retires its shuttles in 2011.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/11/12/spaceflight-x-prize-feeney-da-vinci.html#ixzz15ArYCP1f
Friday, November 12, 2010
The Edmund Fitzgerald
Edmund Fitzgerald sinking mystery endures
It has been 35 years since the big ship went down in a fierce storm on Lake Superior, but the mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald lives on.The sinking was the inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald and the subject of a documentary. (CBC)
The sinking of the ore freighter claimed 29 lives on Nov. 10, 1975, in what is considered the worst disaster in Great Lakes maritime history.The sinking was the inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the subject of a documentary.But despite an investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard, the mystery of exactly why she went down in that fierce storm has never been solved. The coast guard once blamed the crew, saying they failed to fasten the hatches properly.
Members of the maritime community have said that isn't likely in light of the dangerous weather on the lake that night.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/windsor/story/2010/11/10/windsor-edmund-fitzgerald-sinking-anniversary.html#ixzz14u67mDCo
It has been 35 years since the big ship went down in a fierce storm on Lake Superior, but the mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald lives on.The sinking was the inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald and the subject of a documentary. (CBC)
The sinking of the ore freighter claimed 29 lives on Nov. 10, 1975, in what is considered the worst disaster in Great Lakes maritime history.The sinking was the inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the subject of a documentary.But despite an investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard, the mystery of exactly why she went down in that fierce storm has never been solved. The coast guard once blamed the crew, saying they failed to fasten the hatches properly.
Members of the maritime community have said that isn't likely in light of the dangerous weather on the lake that night.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/windsor/story/2010/11/10/windsor-edmund-fitzgerald-sinking-anniversary.html#ixzz14u67mDCo
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Johanna Skibsrud wins Giller Prize
CBC News
A tearful Johanna Skibsrud shows off her Giller Prize trophy. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)
Montreal-based writer and poet Johanna Skibsrud has won the $50,000 Giller Prize for The Sentimentalists, her first novel.
The prize was awarded Tuesday night by founder Jack Rabinovitch at a glitzy Toronto gala.
Skibsrud's novel deals with complexities of the father-daughter relationship.
"The Sentimentalists charts the painful search by a dutiful daughter to learn — and more importantly, to learn to understand — the multi-layered truth which lies at the moral core of her dying father's life," the Giller jury wrote in its citation. "Something happened to Napoleon Haskell during his tour of duty in Vietnam that changed his life and haunted the rest of his days. At the behest of his daughters, he moves from a trailer in North Dakota to a small lakeside town in Ontario, where his family can only watch as his past slips away in a descending fog of senility. The writing here is trip-wire taut as the exploration of guilt, family and duty unfolds."
The jury was made up of CBC broadcaster Michael Enright and novelists Claire Messud and Ali Smith.
The Sentimentalists is a debut novel by Johanna Skibsrud. (Gaspereau Press/Canadian Press)Skibsrud, 30, said she got the idea for the setting from Flagstaff Lake, which covers four now-underwater townships in northern Maine, where she once worked for a summer.
One of the sparks of the story was autobiographical — her own father began to speak to her in 2003 about his own experiences in the Vietnam War and she found herself incorporating a war story in the work.
The book is an examination of the resonance of memory and "how everything we do now is always affected by the past," she said.In her acceptance speech, a tearful Skibsrud thanked among others her late father "for sharing his stories with me. "I can't imagine how proud he would've been," she said.
Only 800 copies of The Sentimentalists were originally printed by small publishing house Gaspereau Press in the first run. The book's inclusion among the Giller Prize finalists forced the small five-person operation to print about 1,000 copies a week in an attempt to keep up with demand. A Giller win usually leads to an explosion in sales, so the small press may face a struggle in the weeks ahead.
Skibsrud's first poetry collection, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys, was published in 2008 by Gaspereau Press and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Scotsburn, N.S., she now lives in Montreal.
Each of the finalists for the award wins $5,000. They are:
• David Bergen of Winnipeg for The Matter with Morris.
• Sarah Selecky of Toronto, for This Cake is for the Party.
• Alexander MacLeod of Dartmouth, N.S., for Light Lifting.
• Kathleen Winter of Montreal for Annabel.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2010/11/09/giller-prize-2010.html#ixzz14wGjttfY
A tearful Johanna Skibsrud shows off her Giller Prize trophy. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)
Montreal-based writer and poet Johanna Skibsrud has won the $50,000 Giller Prize for The Sentimentalists, her first novel.
The prize was awarded Tuesday night by founder Jack Rabinovitch at a glitzy Toronto gala.
Skibsrud's novel deals with complexities of the father-daughter relationship.
"The Sentimentalists charts the painful search by a dutiful daughter to learn — and more importantly, to learn to understand — the multi-layered truth which lies at the moral core of her dying father's life," the Giller jury wrote in its citation. "Something happened to Napoleon Haskell during his tour of duty in Vietnam that changed his life and haunted the rest of his days. At the behest of his daughters, he moves from a trailer in North Dakota to a small lakeside town in Ontario, where his family can only watch as his past slips away in a descending fog of senility. The writing here is trip-wire taut as the exploration of guilt, family and duty unfolds."
The jury was made up of CBC broadcaster Michael Enright and novelists Claire Messud and Ali Smith.
The Sentimentalists is a debut novel by Johanna Skibsrud. (Gaspereau Press/Canadian Press)Skibsrud, 30, said she got the idea for the setting from Flagstaff Lake, which covers four now-underwater townships in northern Maine, where she once worked for a summer.
One of the sparks of the story was autobiographical — her own father began to speak to her in 2003 about his own experiences in the Vietnam War and she found herself incorporating a war story in the work.
The book is an examination of the resonance of memory and "how everything we do now is always affected by the past," she said.In her acceptance speech, a tearful Skibsrud thanked among others her late father "for sharing his stories with me. "I can't imagine how proud he would've been," she said.
Only 800 copies of The Sentimentalists were originally printed by small publishing house Gaspereau Press in the first run. The book's inclusion among the Giller Prize finalists forced the small five-person operation to print about 1,000 copies a week in an attempt to keep up with demand. A Giller win usually leads to an explosion in sales, so the small press may face a struggle in the weeks ahead.
Skibsrud's first poetry collection, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys, was published in 2008 by Gaspereau Press and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Scotsburn, N.S., she now lives in Montreal.
Each of the finalists for the award wins $5,000. They are:
• David Bergen of Winnipeg for The Matter with Morris.
• Sarah Selecky of Toronto, for This Cake is for the Party.
• Alexander MacLeod of Dartmouth, N.S., for Light Lifting.
• Kathleen Winter of Montreal for Annabel.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2010/11/09/giller-prize-2010.html#ixzz14wGjttfY
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Northernmost mosque in North America opens in Canada
The mosque travelled some 4,500km along both rivers and roads before arriving in Inuvik
Pre-built mosque's 2,000 mile trip
The northernmost mosque in North America has opened in Inuvik, in Canada's Northwest Territories, where there is a growing Muslim population. After being erected in the city of Winnipeg, the building travelled some 4,500km (2,800 miles) along both rivers and roads to get to its destination.The mosque, which has been nicknamed "the little mosque on the tundra", doubles as a community centre.Inuvik has roughly 3,200 residents, some 80 of whom are Muslim.
"It's a very personal achievement for all of us because we were in a small building, the old one, and now we have this one," Ahmed al-Khalaf told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.The new 1,554-sq-ft (473-sq-m) building is a step up from the one-bedroom trailer Muslims in the town have used for prayer services over the past 10 years. At one point during the mosque's journey to the small town in the Arctic Circle, the building almost tipped over but was saved by a road construction crew. "For the whole town of Inuvik, it's another new building in town, and everybody's welcome here," Mr Khalaf said.
Pre-built mosque's 2,000 mile trip
The northernmost mosque in North America has opened in Inuvik, in Canada's Northwest Territories, where there is a growing Muslim population. After being erected in the city of Winnipeg, the building travelled some 4,500km (2,800 miles) along both rivers and roads to get to its destination.The mosque, which has been nicknamed "the little mosque on the tundra", doubles as a community centre.Inuvik has roughly 3,200 residents, some 80 of whom are Muslim.
"It's a very personal achievement for all of us because we were in a small building, the old one, and now we have this one," Ahmed al-Khalaf told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.The new 1,554-sq-ft (473-sq-m) building is a step up from the one-bedroom trailer Muslims in the town have used for prayer services over the past 10 years. At one point during the mosque's journey to the small town in the Arctic Circle, the building almost tipped over but was saved by a road construction crew. "For the whole town of Inuvik, it's another new building in town, and everybody's welcome here," Mr Khalaf said.
NDM-1 superbug cases jump to 8 in Canada,
NDM-1 superbug cases jump to 8 in Canada, Public Health Agency confirms
Published: Wednesday, November 10, 2010
12:01 PM ET
Canadian Press The Canadian Press
TORONTO - There's been a significant jump in recorded cases of an emerging antibiotic-resistant superbug within Canada.The Public Health Agency of Canada says eight cases of NDM-1 bacterial infection have been confirmed, up from three as of late August. Dr. Michael Mulvey of the federal agency says two of the patients died, although not directly from NDM-1 bacteria.One was a 76-year-old B.C. woman who died of complications from sepsis, while the other patient was from Quebec and succumbed to cancer. At least five of the eight people had travelled to India or Pakistan, where NDM-1 superbug infections are becoming more widespread. NDM-1 is an enzyme that has been found in several types of bacteria and made them resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics.
Published: Wednesday, November 10, 2010
12:01 PM ET
Canadian Press The Canadian Press
TORONTO - There's been a significant jump in recorded cases of an emerging antibiotic-resistant superbug within Canada.The Public Health Agency of Canada says eight cases of NDM-1 bacterial infection have been confirmed, up from three as of late August. Dr. Michael Mulvey of the federal agency says two of the patients died, although not directly from NDM-1 bacteria.One was a 76-year-old B.C. woman who died of complications from sepsis, while the other patient was from Quebec and succumbed to cancer. At least five of the eight people had travelled to India or Pakistan, where NDM-1 superbug infections are becoming more widespread. NDM-1 is an enzyme that has been found in several types of bacteria and made them resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics.
Elizabeth MacRae
Elizabeth "Betty" MacRae Born Montreal , Quebec University of Toronto In 1982 the young medical doctor moved to Calgary to practice as Canada
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Canadians produce blood from skin cells
Blood created from human skin
Human blood has been made from human skin in a groundbreaking experiment at a Canadian university.
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton report that they converted patches of skin directly into blood. Their process doesn't involve any intermediate conversion of skin stem cells into multi-purpose stem cells that can create almost any other type of cells."We have shown this works using human skin. We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process," stated Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. "We'll now go on to work on developing other types of human cell types from skin, as we already have encouraging evidence."The process was repeated several times over a two-year period and was conducted using skin cells from people of various ages. The discovery could alleviate blood shortages and provide people needing repeated transfusions, such as cancer or anemia patients, with an assured supply of their own blood type. In the past, many patients who required bone marrow transplants and could not find suitable matches died.
Clinical trials could begin in 2012, the authors say.
The study, published in the journal Nature, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Stem Cell Network and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.
Human blood has been made from human skin in a groundbreaking experiment at a Canadian university.
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton report that they converted patches of skin directly into blood. Their process doesn't involve any intermediate conversion of skin stem cells into multi-purpose stem cells that can create almost any other type of cells."We have shown this works using human skin. We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process," stated Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. "We'll now go on to work on developing other types of human cell types from skin, as we already have encouraging evidence."The process was repeated several times over a two-year period and was conducted using skin cells from people of various ages. The discovery could alleviate blood shortages and provide people needing repeated transfusions, such as cancer or anemia patients, with an assured supply of their own blood type. In the past, many patients who required bone marrow transplants and could not find suitable matches died.
Clinical trials could begin in 2012, the authors say.
The study, published in the journal Nature, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Stem Cell Network and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Huguette Labelle
She has had a long career of public service, played groundbreaking roles on behalf of women and spends half her time travelling the world representing international organizations. Yet it seems Huguette Labelle has just begun.
She was the first woman to head the Red Cross in Canada and the first francophone woman to rise to the position of deputy minister in the federal government. She advanced the cause of women as head of the Public Service Commission and was the longest serving president of the Canadian International Development Agency.
But Dr. Labelle hesitates to single out a particular position she has held, because she has been so deeply committed to each one that she has to be prodded to advance to the next. And for her, more opportunities and contributions lie ahead.
"The job I am in is always the best one," she says.
Dr. Labelle, chancellor of the University of Ottawa and chair of the board of Transparency International, is being honoured today by the Women's Exchange Network as one of 15 "Trailblazers and Trendsetters," pioneering women who have contributed to society.
What she calls her "smorgasbord life" began on a farm near Rockland, Ont., a francophone area east of Ottawa. She was the youngest of three children. Her father grew crops, raised dairy cattle and worked for a company that made ducts for new construction.
Her mother acted as a nurse-midwife to local women, at times turning the family's living room into a delivery room.
At 15, she was sent to learn English at a high school in Ottawa, where hers "was the only francophone name on the list." She went on to get an undergraduate degree in nursing, a master's in educational administration and a PhD in education, all from the University of Ottawa.
One of her early inspirations was her godmother, her mother's sister Betty, who worked in the government, fiercely believed in education and set goals for her niece.
Nurse training was her early focus, but while running the health science program at Algonquin College in Ottawa in 1973 she found herself "co-opted into the government," one of only five women among 700 civil servants at the executive level. She began as an adviser to the deputy minister of health and rose through a series of senior jobs, but says she refused promotions and ignored job offers a number of times because "whatever I was doing was the most important job in the world."
She was encouraged to stretch the limits by managers who "believed in me an awful lot more than I did myself." One was Bert Wisking, in charge of executive staffing for the Public Service Commission, who lectured her to not sit comfortably in one position when her talents were needed elsewhere and she could act as a role model for women.
"He really gave me a guilty feeling," Dr. Labelle says, "And he pushed me along."
By 1980, she was made a deputy minister as under-secretary to the Secretary of State, only the third woman in history and the first francophone woman to rise to that level in the government. That same year, she became the first female president of the Canadian Red Cross.
She remained a deputy minister for 19 years, becoming associate secretary to the cabinet and deputy clerk of the Privy Council, chair of the Public Service Commission, deputy minister of transport, deputy head of the Millennium Bureau of Canada and president of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), a position she held for almost seven years.
As under-secretary in 1982, she read out the proclamation giving Canadians a new Constitution before the Queen and then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau signed it at a ceremony on Parliament Hill. Characteristically, it was a job she offered to relinquish. "I suggested to Mr. Trudeau there would be many ministers who would love to do that — I wasn't running for election — but he said, 'Don't complicate my life, this is part of your job, let's not change that.'"
At the Public Service Commission, she was charged with improving the lot of women, who held fewer than 1 per cent of senior positions in the bureaucracy. The key was not to set quotas but to give women an even footing and the encouragement to apply for positions, much as she had been encouraged, she says, noting that women today hold about 30 per cent of executive jobs in government. "It's still not 50-50, but the change has been tremendous."
Working women can pay a price on the home front, she says. "You have a big guilt bag on your back, because you know that you're carrying many things at the same time, and you'd like to do each one better." Despite her own 70-to-80-hour work weeks, her family "always found time to be together."
She was offered a post as ambassador but decided not to uproot her children Chantal and Pierre, then teenagers, and preferred to remain a deputy minister. "The capacity to influence policy was huge."
She retired from the government in 1999, determined to immerse herself in organizations, institutions and causes that reflected her passions of higher education, governance and the environment.
Her largest focus these days is Transparency International (TI), based in Berlin, an organization created in 1994 to combat corruption. She came to know TI's work while at CIDA, which was an early supporter of the organization. In 2000, she joined TI's advisory council, and was elected chair in 2005.
She travels to TI's Berlin offices eight or nine times a year, participates in conferences and visits the organization's 100 chapters around the world. In a period of nine days last month, she held bilateral talks with the presidents of Indonesia and Latvia and the head of the caretaker government in Bangladesh.
Peter Eigen, TI's founder and past chair, says Dr. Labelle works strategically and sensitively, building consensus and finding ways to get things done.
"She is truly respected in prominent circles, among presidents and prime ministers and heads of international organizations," he says.
Three-quarters of what Dr. Labelle currently does, including her work with TI, is voluntary. She refuses two-thirds of the invitations she gets to join boards and support organizations, although "I always keep myself open for something I can't say no to."
She has accrued more than a dozen honorary degrees, received a number of medals and awards and is a Companion of the Order of Canada. As Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, a position she has held since 1994, she plays an honorary and advisory role, presiding over official functions and academic matters.
She works long hours at the home in Ottawa she shares with life partner Arthur Kroeger, who was also a long-serving federal deputy minister. "The computer is too close — and the BlackBerry and the telephone," she notes.
Other organizations she is involved with include the Council of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, UN Global Compact, Katimavik, World Bank Institute and Canadian Bureau for International Education. She also provides advisory services to national and international institutions.
Her destinations in the coming weeks include South Africa, Rome, Greece, New York, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Davos, Switzerland, where she attends the World Economic Forum.
"I don't see myself ever stopping working, I don't know what I would do," she says. "Life is short, you've got to do as much as you can as long as you can."
She feels she has been able to help women both by example and by ensuring they are considered for jobs equally to men. She advises women to be open to new opportunities and experiences. "Just do your best at what you're doing today, and people will notice."
Special to The Globe and Mail
___________________________________________-
\
She was the first woman to head the Red Cross in Canada and the first francophone woman to rise to the position of deputy minister in the federal government. She advanced the cause of women as head of the Public Service Commission and was the longest serving president of the Canadian International Development Agency.
But Dr. Labelle hesitates to single out a particular position she has held, because she has been so deeply committed to each one that she has to be prodded to advance to the next. And for her, more opportunities and contributions lie ahead.
"The job I am in is always the best one," she says.
Dr. Labelle, chancellor of the University of Ottawa and chair of the board of Transparency International, is being honoured today by the Women's Exchange Network as one of 15 "Trailblazers and Trendsetters," pioneering women who have contributed to society.
What she calls her "smorgasbord life" began on a farm near Rockland, Ont., a francophone area east of Ottawa. She was the youngest of three children. Her father grew crops, raised dairy cattle and worked for a company that made ducts for new construction.
Her mother acted as a nurse-midwife to local women, at times turning the family's living room into a delivery room.
At 15, she was sent to learn English at a high school in Ottawa, where hers "was the only francophone name on the list." She went on to get an undergraduate degree in nursing, a master's in educational administration and a PhD in education, all from the University of Ottawa.
One of her early inspirations was her godmother, her mother's sister Betty, who worked in the government, fiercely believed in education and set goals for her niece.
Nurse training was her early focus, but while running the health science program at Algonquin College in Ottawa in 1973 she found herself "co-opted into the government," one of only five women among 700 civil servants at the executive level. She began as an adviser to the deputy minister of health and rose through a series of senior jobs, but says she refused promotions and ignored job offers a number of times because "whatever I was doing was the most important job in the world."
She was encouraged to stretch the limits by managers who "believed in me an awful lot more than I did myself." One was Bert Wisking, in charge of executive staffing for the Public Service Commission, who lectured her to not sit comfortably in one position when her talents were needed elsewhere and she could act as a role model for women.
"He really gave me a guilty feeling," Dr. Labelle says, "And he pushed me along."
By 1980, she was made a deputy minister as under-secretary to the Secretary of State, only the third woman in history and the first francophone woman to rise to that level in the government. That same year, she became the first female president of the Canadian Red Cross.
She remained a deputy minister for 19 years, becoming associate secretary to the cabinet and deputy clerk of the Privy Council, chair of the Public Service Commission, deputy minister of transport, deputy head of the Millennium Bureau of Canada and president of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), a position she held for almost seven years.
As under-secretary in 1982, she read out the proclamation giving Canadians a new Constitution before the Queen and then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau signed it at a ceremony on Parliament Hill. Characteristically, it was a job she offered to relinquish. "I suggested to Mr. Trudeau there would be many ministers who would love to do that — I wasn't running for election — but he said, 'Don't complicate my life, this is part of your job, let's not change that.'"
At the Public Service Commission, she was charged with improving the lot of women, who held fewer than 1 per cent of senior positions in the bureaucracy. The key was not to set quotas but to give women an even footing and the encouragement to apply for positions, much as she had been encouraged, she says, noting that women today hold about 30 per cent of executive jobs in government. "It's still not 50-50, but the change has been tremendous."
Working women can pay a price on the home front, she says. "You have a big guilt bag on your back, because you know that you're carrying many things at the same time, and you'd like to do each one better." Despite her own 70-to-80-hour work weeks, her family "always found time to be together."
She was offered a post as ambassador but decided not to uproot her children Chantal and Pierre, then teenagers, and preferred to remain a deputy minister. "The capacity to influence policy was huge."
She retired from the government in 1999, determined to immerse herself in organizations, institutions and causes that reflected her passions of higher education, governance and the environment.
Her largest focus these days is Transparency International (TI), based in Berlin, an organization created in 1994 to combat corruption. She came to know TI's work while at CIDA, which was an early supporter of the organization. In 2000, she joined TI's advisory council, and was elected chair in 2005.
She travels to TI's Berlin offices eight or nine times a year, participates in conferences and visits the organization's 100 chapters around the world. In a period of nine days last month, she held bilateral talks with the presidents of Indonesia and Latvia and the head of the caretaker government in Bangladesh.
Peter Eigen, TI's founder and past chair, says Dr. Labelle works strategically and sensitively, building consensus and finding ways to get things done.
"She is truly respected in prominent circles, among presidents and prime ministers and heads of international organizations," he says.
Three-quarters of what Dr. Labelle currently does, including her work with TI, is voluntary. She refuses two-thirds of the invitations she gets to join boards and support organizations, although "I always keep myself open for something I can't say no to."
She has accrued more than a dozen honorary degrees, received a number of medals and awards and is a Companion of the Order of Canada. As Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, a position she has held since 1994, she plays an honorary and advisory role, presiding over official functions and academic matters.
She works long hours at the home in Ottawa she shares with life partner Arthur Kroeger, who was also a long-serving federal deputy minister. "The computer is too close — and the BlackBerry and the telephone," she notes.
Other organizations she is involved with include the Council of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, UN Global Compact, Katimavik, World Bank Institute and Canadian Bureau for International Education. She also provides advisory services to national and international institutions.
Her destinations in the coming weeks include South Africa, Rome, Greece, New York, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Davos, Switzerland, where she attends the World Economic Forum.
"I don't see myself ever stopping working, I don't know what I would do," she says. "Life is short, you've got to do as much as you can as long as you can."
She feels she has been able to help women both by example and by ensuring they are considered for jobs equally to men. She advises women to be open to new opportunities and experiences. "Just do your best at what you're doing today, and people will notice."
Special to The Globe and Mail
___________________________________________-
\
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Foreign Take overs of Canadian businesses
The 'net benefit' of foreign takeovers
The 2008 takeover of B.C.-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates by an American firm stands as the only instance of a foreign takeover being formally turned down by Industry Canada in more than 25 years. (Richard Lam/Canadian Press)
Most foreign takeovers of large Canadian companies in the last four decades have gone through some kind of formal review process. In the early 1970s, the federal government set up the Foreign Investment Review Agency (FIRA) following growing public concern about foreign takeovers of Canadian companies.FIRA ended up approving most of the proposed takeovers it faced, but many in the business community complained about the process.In 1984, the Mulroney government replaced FIRA with a new review process and a new mandate governed by the Investment Canada Act. The ultimate decision on whether to allow a takeover rests with the federal minister of Industry (except for takeovers in the cultural industry, which are decided on by the minister of Canadian Heritage).
When must a review take place?
There are a number of thresholds that trigger a mandatory review.
When the buyer is from the 153-member countries of the World Trade Organization (which is normally the case), the book value of the target company's assets must be over $299 million (the 2010 threshold). That threshold is scheduled to eventually rise to $1 billion.Where the buyer is from a non-WTO member, the threshold is just $5 million for a direct acquisition and $50 million for an indirect acquisition.For businesses in the cultural industry, the threshold is also $5 million, regardless of whether the buyer is from a WTO- or non-WTO country.
What's required for approval?
The key test under the Investment Canada Act is whether the takeover provides a "net benefit" to Canada. What does "net benefit" mean? Well, the Investment Canada Act doesn't actually define it, but there are guidelines that say the minister should consider a number of factors:
• The effect of the takeover on employment.
• Technology development.
• Productivity.
• Competition.
• The effect on national policies.
"An investment will be determined to be of net benefit when the aggregate net effect is positive, regardless of its extent," says one guideline from Industry Canada. A relatively recent amendment to the Investment Canada Act also allows the government to reject a takeover on national security grounds. Any foreign takeover of a Canadian enterprise can be blocked on these grounds, regardless of how big it is.
Ultimately, the decision to approve or reject is a political one.
If approval is granted, is the takeover a done deal?
The federal government will often attach conditions to a takeover, such as keeping employment at a certain level or keeping plants open. Investment Canada is supposed to follow up on those commitments to make sure that the acquiring company is complying with the undertakings it agreed to. Critics say it's too easy for companies to backtrack on these commitments by saying market conditions have changed, and point to Xstrata's acquisition of Falconbridge, Vale's acquisition of Inco and Rio Tinto's takeover of Alcan as cases where job promises were later abandoned. In only one case has Ottawa pursued a foreign company for allegedly violating its takeover commitments. In 2009, U.S. Steel shut down two steel mills in Ontario, prompting the federal government to say this broke employment and production promises the company made when it bought Stelco in 2007. Ottawa is suing U.S. Steel, seeking fines of $10,000 a day.
What if a takeover is rejected?
Following an initial review, if the Industry Minister finds there's no net benefit of the takeover to Canada, the takeover company has 30 days to make representations to the minister and perhaps change its bid to satisfy the net benefit test.
How many foreign takeovers have been rejected?
Between 1985 (when the Investment Canada Act came into force) and Sept. 30, 2010, Industry Canada reviewed 1,638 foreign acquisitions worth almost $600 billion, and had approved all but one. In 2008, Richmond, B.C.-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) tried to sell its information systems, satellite and space mission businesses to Alliant Techsystems of Edina, Minn. This was the part of the company that developed the distinctive Canadarm for the U.S. space shuttle program. That sale was eventually blocked by Ottawa over national security issues related to MDA's Radarsat-2 satellite. In November 2010, Industry Minister Tony Clement rejected BHP Billiton's proposed $38.6-billion US acquisition of PotashCorp. If the initial rejection stands, it would be only the second takeover Ottawa has formally reviewed and rejected. Between 1999 and 2008, Heritage Canada reviewed 101 foreign acquisitions of cultural business, approving 98 and rejecting three.
Isn't this process just a rubber stamp?
Approval figures like that have given rise to accusations from opposition politicians and nationalists that the whole foreign investment review process has been little more than a rubber stamp for decades.
Various governments and cabinet ministers typically have two responses to that.
First, they point out that if Canada doesn't allow relatively open access to direct foreign investment, Canadian companies will quickly run into trouble when they try to buy foreign companies (and the stats show that Canadian business does a lot of cross-border shopping). They also say that direct foreign investment, notwithstanding the complaints, is usually very good for the economy.The second point they make is that some foreign takeovers of Canadian companies don't even get to the formal review stage because the would-be buyers know, or suspect, or have been given broad hints from Ottawa, that their acquisition won't pass the net benefit smell test.
On that point, unfortunately, there are no stats
The 2008 takeover of B.C.-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates by an American firm stands as the only instance of a foreign takeover being formally turned down by Industry Canada in more than 25 years. (Richard Lam/Canadian Press)
Most foreign takeovers of large Canadian companies in the last four decades have gone through some kind of formal review process. In the early 1970s, the federal government set up the Foreign Investment Review Agency (FIRA) following growing public concern about foreign takeovers of Canadian companies.FIRA ended up approving most of the proposed takeovers it faced, but many in the business community complained about the process.In 1984, the Mulroney government replaced FIRA with a new review process and a new mandate governed by the Investment Canada Act. The ultimate decision on whether to allow a takeover rests with the federal minister of Industry (except for takeovers in the cultural industry, which are decided on by the minister of Canadian Heritage).
When must a review take place?
There are a number of thresholds that trigger a mandatory review.
When the buyer is from the 153-member countries of the World Trade Organization (which is normally the case), the book value of the target company's assets must be over $299 million (the 2010 threshold). That threshold is scheduled to eventually rise to $1 billion.Where the buyer is from a non-WTO member, the threshold is just $5 million for a direct acquisition and $50 million for an indirect acquisition.For businesses in the cultural industry, the threshold is also $5 million, regardless of whether the buyer is from a WTO- or non-WTO country.
What's required for approval?
The key test under the Investment Canada Act is whether the takeover provides a "net benefit" to Canada. What does "net benefit" mean? Well, the Investment Canada Act doesn't actually define it, but there are guidelines that say the minister should consider a number of factors:
• The effect of the takeover on employment.
• Technology development.
• Productivity.
• Competition.
• The effect on national policies.
"An investment will be determined to be of net benefit when the aggregate net effect is positive, regardless of its extent," says one guideline from Industry Canada. A relatively recent amendment to the Investment Canada Act also allows the government to reject a takeover on national security grounds. Any foreign takeover of a Canadian enterprise can be blocked on these grounds, regardless of how big it is.
Ultimately, the decision to approve or reject is a political one.
If approval is granted, is the takeover a done deal?
The federal government will often attach conditions to a takeover, such as keeping employment at a certain level or keeping plants open. Investment Canada is supposed to follow up on those commitments to make sure that the acquiring company is complying with the undertakings it agreed to. Critics say it's too easy for companies to backtrack on these commitments by saying market conditions have changed, and point to Xstrata's acquisition of Falconbridge, Vale's acquisition of Inco and Rio Tinto's takeover of Alcan as cases where job promises were later abandoned. In only one case has Ottawa pursued a foreign company for allegedly violating its takeover commitments. In 2009, U.S. Steel shut down two steel mills in Ontario, prompting the federal government to say this broke employment and production promises the company made when it bought Stelco in 2007. Ottawa is suing U.S. Steel, seeking fines of $10,000 a day.
What if a takeover is rejected?
Following an initial review, if the Industry Minister finds there's no net benefit of the takeover to Canada, the takeover company has 30 days to make representations to the minister and perhaps change its bid to satisfy the net benefit test.
How many foreign takeovers have been rejected?
Between 1985 (when the Investment Canada Act came into force) and Sept. 30, 2010, Industry Canada reviewed 1,638 foreign acquisitions worth almost $600 billion, and had approved all but one. In 2008, Richmond, B.C.-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) tried to sell its information systems, satellite and space mission businesses to Alliant Techsystems of Edina, Minn. This was the part of the company that developed the distinctive Canadarm for the U.S. space shuttle program. That sale was eventually blocked by Ottawa over national security issues related to MDA's Radarsat-2 satellite. In November 2010, Industry Minister Tony Clement rejected BHP Billiton's proposed $38.6-billion US acquisition of PotashCorp. If the initial rejection stands, it would be only the second takeover Ottawa has formally reviewed and rejected. Between 1999 and 2008, Heritage Canada reviewed 101 foreign acquisitions of cultural business, approving 98 and rejecting three.
Isn't this process just a rubber stamp?
Approval figures like that have given rise to accusations from opposition politicians and nationalists that the whole foreign investment review process has been little more than a rubber stamp for decades.
Various governments and cabinet ministers typically have two responses to that.
First, they point out that if Canada doesn't allow relatively open access to direct foreign investment, Canadian companies will quickly run into trouble when they try to buy foreign companies (and the stats show that Canadian business does a lot of cross-border shopping). They also say that direct foreign investment, notwithstanding the complaints, is usually very good for the economy.The second point they make is that some foreign takeovers of Canadian companies don't even get to the formal review stage because the would-be buyers know, or suspect, or have been given broad hints from Ottawa, that their acquisition won't pass the net benefit smell test.
On that point, unfortunately, there are no stats
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Calgary-born researcher wins prestigious international neurobiology award
Growing up, Christopher Gregg would never have described himself as a science geek or lab rat. A far more right-brained pursuit — being an artist — was much closer to the mark. But a switch to science when he entered the University of Lethbridge has paid off for the Calgary-born Gregg, who has won a prestigious international award for his research. Gregg, 35, has been awarded the Eppendorf/Science Prize for Neurobiology for his work on how inherited maternal and paternal genes affect the brains of children.
"I was extremely surprised and delighted to win the award," Gregg said from Cambridge, Mass., where he is a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard. "There were some really outstanding people that are the finalists and the people who have won the award in the past are really outstanding scientists."
Gregg's choice to pursue science as a career is not so surprising, given his own family background: his brother is a surgeon, an uncle is a pediatric anesthesiologist and his mother was managing director for the Canadian Congress of Neurological Sciences before retiring. But it was his father, a computer programmer with a keen interest in science, who he believes encouraged him to take up the subject in Lethbridge, where he graduated with a degree in biochemistry.
An opportunity to earn his PhD at the University of Calgary under the guidance of an award-winning stem cell researcher sealed the deal. "I had a great mentor — Sam Weiss — right at the start of my career and that makes such a big difference," said Gregg. "His mentorship was a real driving force behind my choice to pursue science as a career and he continues to be an inspired leader in Canadian science." In 2006, he moved to Harvard as a post-doc in the lab of molecular neuroscientist Catherine Dulac, where he altered his research focus to utilize a then-emerging technology called next-generation genetic sequencing.
"I can't think of anyone more deserving," Dulac said of Gregg winning the award. "He's an extremely talented scientist and he's done a piece of work that's absolutely remarkable. So I'm absolutely delighted for him."
His research, as detailed in a 1,000-word essay submitted to the competition for young scientists, earned him the $25,000 grand prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Germany-based life sciences company Eppendorf. The essay appears in this week's issue of the journal Science, published by the AAAS.
"The general premise is trying to understand how the information we inherit from parents influences brain function and behaviour," he explained. "There are other things at a basic biological level where parents can influence the expression of genes in your brain, and the expression of those genes changes depending on whether you inherited them from your mother or your father." Gregg, himself a married father of two young children, said these parental genes — along with environmental factors — could determine whether a person has an underlying susceptibility to neurological disorders and diseases.
So far, his research suggests that mothers have dominant control over gene expression during brain development in the fetus, while fathers have more control over gene expression in the adult brain.
Currently, his work is focused on understanding whether maternal and paternal gene expression in the brains of offspring is altered according to stresses and environmental effects experienced by parents. These insights could lead to a new understanding of how to improve the lifelong health of children, with potential relevance to neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis as well as cancer, diabetes, obesity, eating disorders, depression and addiction.
In mid-2011, Gregg will be moving his research from Harvard to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where as an assistant professor he will have his own laboratory. Dulac, who is also a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said being awarded the international prize is a significant boost for a scientist about to set up a lab, and it should help Gregg attract talented researchers to his team.
"It really is rewarding for me to know that he's going to have his own group and be a successful scientist on his own."
"I was extremely surprised and delighted to win the award," Gregg said from Cambridge, Mass., where he is a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard. "There were some really outstanding people that are the finalists and the people who have won the award in the past are really outstanding scientists."
Gregg's choice to pursue science as a career is not so surprising, given his own family background: his brother is a surgeon, an uncle is a pediatric anesthesiologist and his mother was managing director for the Canadian Congress of Neurological Sciences before retiring. But it was his father, a computer programmer with a keen interest in science, who he believes encouraged him to take up the subject in Lethbridge, where he graduated with a degree in biochemistry.
An opportunity to earn his PhD at the University of Calgary under the guidance of an award-winning stem cell researcher sealed the deal. "I had a great mentor — Sam Weiss — right at the start of my career and that makes such a big difference," said Gregg. "His mentorship was a real driving force behind my choice to pursue science as a career and he continues to be an inspired leader in Canadian science." In 2006, he moved to Harvard as a post-doc in the lab of molecular neuroscientist Catherine Dulac, where he altered his research focus to utilize a then-emerging technology called next-generation genetic sequencing.
"I can't think of anyone more deserving," Dulac said of Gregg winning the award. "He's an extremely talented scientist and he's done a piece of work that's absolutely remarkable. So I'm absolutely delighted for him."
His research, as detailed in a 1,000-word essay submitted to the competition for young scientists, earned him the $25,000 grand prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Germany-based life sciences company Eppendorf. The essay appears in this week's issue of the journal Science, published by the AAAS.
"The general premise is trying to understand how the information we inherit from parents influences brain function and behaviour," he explained. "There are other things at a basic biological level where parents can influence the expression of genes in your brain, and the expression of those genes changes depending on whether you inherited them from your mother or your father." Gregg, himself a married father of two young children, said these parental genes — along with environmental factors — could determine whether a person has an underlying susceptibility to neurological disorders and diseases.
So far, his research suggests that mothers have dominant control over gene expression during brain development in the fetus, while fathers have more control over gene expression in the adult brain.
Currently, his work is focused on understanding whether maternal and paternal gene expression in the brains of offspring is altered according to stresses and environmental effects experienced by parents. These insights could lead to a new understanding of how to improve the lifelong health of children, with potential relevance to neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis as well as cancer, diabetes, obesity, eating disorders, depression and addiction.
In mid-2011, Gregg will be moving his research from Harvard to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where as an assistant professor he will have his own laboratory. Dulac, who is also a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said being awarded the international prize is a significant boost for a scientist about to set up a lab, and it should help Gregg attract talented researchers to his team.
"It really is rewarding for me to know that he's going to have his own group and be a successful scientist on his own."
Better Tools to Successfully Prosecute and Impose Mandatory Prison Sentences on Human Smugglers
Human smuggling is a criminal enterprise that spans the globe. It involves organizing the illegal entry of persons into a country in order to receive a financial or other material benefit. Human smuggling is big business, generating significant profits for sophisticated criminal organizations and others who engage in this crime and abuse Immigration systems designed to help those in genuine need.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) already contains stiff penalties for human smuggling: fines up to $1 million and up to life imprisonment for smuggling 10 or more people. Yet by strengthening the current legislation, law enforcement and prosecutors would have an enhanced ability to more effectively investigate and prosecute human smugglers. The proposed changes in the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act would strengthen the criminal law's responses to human smuggling, better protect the integrity of Canada's refugee system, and enhance the ability of law-enforcement and prosecutors to effectively investigate and prosecute human smugglers.
Under the proposed legislative changes, provisions related to human smuggling would be broadened to better capture the different ways that the crime of smuggling occurs and to make it easier to prove that the offence was committed. Currently, the ability to prosecute for human smuggling requires proof that the accused knew that the individuals who were being smuggled did not possess the documents lawfully required to enter Canada.
The proposed amendments would expand the scope of the ability to prosecute for human smuggling to include ANY violation of IRPA. For example, this would include the act of bringing people into Canada in a way that avoids their presenting themselves for examination, as required by the Act. In addition, the proposed amendments would include the additional element of recklessness into the offence. This would mean that a prosecutor could prove this offence of human smuggling had occurred by demonstrating that the accused was aware (but didn't know with certainty) of the substantial risk that the smuggled person was or would be entering Canada illegally, but simply didn't care.
The amendments also provide for escalating mandatory prison sentences for persons convicted of smuggling, reflecting the Government's intention to more effectively deter and denounce this criminal activity. Under the proposed legislation, the number of people smuggled and the presence of aggravating factors would determine which mandatory prison sentence would be imposed upon conviction.
The two aggravating factors are:
■The offence was committed for profit or for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal organization; and
■The person, in committing the offence endangered the life or safety, or cause bodily harm or death to, any of the persons smuggled.
The mandatory prison sentences would be, where less than 50 persons are smuggled:
■3 years imprisonment if one of the above aggravating factors was present.
■5 years imprisonment if two of the above aggravating factors were present.
The mandatory prison sentences would be, where 50 or more persons are smuggled:
■5 years imprisonment if one of the above aggravating factors was present.
■10 years imprisonment if two of the above aggravating factors were present.
The proposed amendments in the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act would further ensure that the definition of "criminal organization" used for criminal law purposes in the current law is consistent with the definition used in the Criminal Code.
An additional aggravating factor, namely, whether the life or safety of any person was endangered by the offender during the commission of the offence, will also be added to s. 121 of IRPA. Lastly, the amendments would expand the limitation period for summary conviction offences to five years, from the current six months.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) already contains stiff penalties for human smuggling: fines up to $1 million and up to life imprisonment for smuggling 10 or more people. Yet by strengthening the current legislation, law enforcement and prosecutors would have an enhanced ability to more effectively investigate and prosecute human smugglers. The proposed changes in the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act would strengthen the criminal law's responses to human smuggling, better protect the integrity of Canada's refugee system, and enhance the ability of law-enforcement and prosecutors to effectively investigate and prosecute human smugglers.
Under the proposed legislative changes, provisions related to human smuggling would be broadened to better capture the different ways that the crime of smuggling occurs and to make it easier to prove that the offence was committed. Currently, the ability to prosecute for human smuggling requires proof that the accused knew that the individuals who were being smuggled did not possess the documents lawfully required to enter Canada.
The proposed amendments would expand the scope of the ability to prosecute for human smuggling to include ANY violation of IRPA. For example, this would include the act of bringing people into Canada in a way that avoids their presenting themselves for examination, as required by the Act. In addition, the proposed amendments would include the additional element of recklessness into the offence. This would mean that a prosecutor could prove this offence of human smuggling had occurred by demonstrating that the accused was aware (but didn't know with certainty) of the substantial risk that the smuggled person was or would be entering Canada illegally, but simply didn't care.
The amendments also provide for escalating mandatory prison sentences for persons convicted of smuggling, reflecting the Government's intention to more effectively deter and denounce this criminal activity. Under the proposed legislation, the number of people smuggled and the presence of aggravating factors would determine which mandatory prison sentence would be imposed upon conviction.
The two aggravating factors are:
■The offence was committed for profit or for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal organization; and
■The person, in committing the offence endangered the life or safety, or cause bodily harm or death to, any of the persons smuggled.
The mandatory prison sentences would be, where less than 50 persons are smuggled:
■3 years imprisonment if one of the above aggravating factors was present.
■5 years imprisonment if two of the above aggravating factors were present.
The mandatory prison sentences would be, where 50 or more persons are smuggled:
■5 years imprisonment if one of the above aggravating factors was present.
■10 years imprisonment if two of the above aggravating factors were present.
The proposed amendments in the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act would further ensure that the definition of "criminal organization" used for criminal law purposes in the current law is consistent with the definition used in the Criminal Code.
An additional aggravating factor, namely, whether the life or safety of any person was endangered by the offender during the commission of the offence, will also be added to s. 121 of IRPA. Lastly, the amendments would expand the limitation period for summary conviction offences to five years, from the current six months.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Munsch book contest won by Labrador town
Robert Munsch visited Rigolet, Labrador, about 20 years ago. The town will be the focus of a new book by the author. The northern Labrador town of Rigolet has won a competition to be the focus of the next book by children's author Robert Munsch.Rigolet won the highest number of votes among three communities – including Fort McMurray, Alberta and Brussels, Ont. – competing online in the contest held by Scholastic Canada.
The Pick-A-Munch competition, which drew 150,000 votes, encouraged people to pick their favourite Munsch story idea.
The former schoolteacher, who lives in Guelph, Ont., created a story based in Rigolet after he visited the community about 20 years ago. He has performed it at readings, but it has never been published in a book.
The story is about an ice-fishing trip featuring a young girl named Cheryl that takes an unexpected turn.Munsch, author of dozens of children's books, including the bestelling Love you Forever, is expected to visit Rigolet in May.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/11/01/nl-munsch-labrador-1101.html#ixzz142W1uffs
The Pick-A-Munch competition, which drew 150,000 votes, encouraged people to pick their favourite Munsch story idea.
The former schoolteacher, who lives in Guelph, Ont., created a story based in Rigolet after he visited the community about 20 years ago. He has performed it at readings, but it has never been published in a book.
The story is about an ice-fishing trip featuring a young girl named Cheryl that takes an unexpected turn.Munsch, author of dozens of children's books, including the bestelling Love you Forever, is expected to visit Rigolet in May.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/11/01/nl-munsch-labrador-1101.html#ixzz142W1uffs
Monday, November 1, 2010
study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Stroke rate slashed at prevention clinic
Last Updated: Friday, October 29, 2010
3:48 PM ET Comments21Recommend39
CBC News
A new stroke prevention clinic in Ottawa is helping patients treated for mini-strokes from developing the full-blown version, doctors report. A transient ischemic attack, or TIA, is a mild stroke that causes stroke symptoms such as sudden numbness of the face, arm or leg. The symptoms last for less than 24 hours and then resolve on their own without disabling neurological effects, but it is a marker for early risk of stroke.
At the Ottawa Hospital Stroke Clinic, patients with TIA symptoms are quickly assessed in the emergency department (ED) and referred to the stroke clinic for brain imaging, medication adjustment, counselling about stroke risk factors and surgery in some cases. Dr. Mukul Sharma, deputy director of the Canadian Stroke Network, and his co-authors found that 3.2 per cent of people who experienced TIA at the stroke prevention clinic developed a full-blown stroke within 90 days, compared with about 10 per cent at other centres. "The beauty of this is that we added very few staff," said Sharma, lead author of the study in the November issue of the journal Stroke, and director of The Ottawa Hospital Stroke Clinic.
A booking clerk was one of the few staff that was added as part of the program. "It really is that ability to juggle bookings and the acuity of the visit that I think make this process work. I've likened it to getting an orchestra playing the same tune." The study looked at 1,099 patients diagnosed with TIA, and 1,004 or 92 per cent of them were referred to the stroke clinic for assessment.
Stroke warning signs
• Weakness, numbness or tingling in face, arms or legs, especially on one side of the body.
• Trouble speaking or understanding speech.
• Sudden blurring, double vision or loss of vision.
• Sudden severe headache.
• Dizziness, loss of balance.
The hospital uses a triaging system to ensure patients with the highest stroke risk are seen as soon as possible."We believe that the reduced stroke rate can be attributed to the system of care that combines the ED care and the clinic process," the study's authors concluded.
Under the new system, staff in the emergency department tick off boxes on a checklist when diagnosing the TIA, order tests, and prescribe medications right away.The checklist is faxed to the stroke clinic, where the investigations are quickly processed to confirm TIA and decide on the best treatment.The treatment includes lifestyle changes that evidence suggests have the same magnitude of benefits as medications that are prescribed, Sharma said.
The rate of admissions was less than two per cent under the new system, which helps both the patients and the health-care system, the researchers said. Before the new process, it took four months to get patients into the clinic. Now the clinic aims to see patients considered at high risk in 48 hours and a week for those at low risk, Sharma said. The researchers said one of the limitations of the study was that they lacked baseline MRI or CT information to tell whether early strokes were due to progression of initial symptoms or a new event.The study's authors called for more studies with those images to explore their finding of a difference between the timing of stroke versus another TIA.Almost one-third of the full strokes occurred within two days of the TIA, the study's authors found. In comparison, almost half of the recurrent TIAs occurred between 30 days and 90 days.
The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Last Updated: Friday, October 29, 2010
3:48 PM ET Comments21Recommend39
CBC News
A new stroke prevention clinic in Ottawa is helping patients treated for mini-strokes from developing the full-blown version, doctors report. A transient ischemic attack, or TIA, is a mild stroke that causes stroke symptoms such as sudden numbness of the face, arm or leg. The symptoms last for less than 24 hours and then resolve on their own without disabling neurological effects, but it is a marker for early risk of stroke.
At the Ottawa Hospital Stroke Clinic, patients with TIA symptoms are quickly assessed in the emergency department (ED) and referred to the stroke clinic for brain imaging, medication adjustment, counselling about stroke risk factors and surgery in some cases. Dr. Mukul Sharma, deputy director of the Canadian Stroke Network, and his co-authors found that 3.2 per cent of people who experienced TIA at the stroke prevention clinic developed a full-blown stroke within 90 days, compared with about 10 per cent at other centres. "The beauty of this is that we added very few staff," said Sharma, lead author of the study in the November issue of the journal Stroke, and director of The Ottawa Hospital Stroke Clinic.
A booking clerk was one of the few staff that was added as part of the program. "It really is that ability to juggle bookings and the acuity of the visit that I think make this process work. I've likened it to getting an orchestra playing the same tune." The study looked at 1,099 patients diagnosed with TIA, and 1,004 or 92 per cent of them were referred to the stroke clinic for assessment.
Stroke warning signs
• Weakness, numbness or tingling in face, arms or legs, especially on one side of the body.
• Trouble speaking or understanding speech.
• Sudden blurring, double vision or loss of vision.
• Sudden severe headache.
• Dizziness, loss of balance.
The hospital uses a triaging system to ensure patients with the highest stroke risk are seen as soon as possible."We believe that the reduced stroke rate can be attributed to the system of care that combines the ED care and the clinic process," the study's authors concluded.
Under the new system, staff in the emergency department tick off boxes on a checklist when diagnosing the TIA, order tests, and prescribe medications right away.The checklist is faxed to the stroke clinic, where the investigations are quickly processed to confirm TIA and decide on the best treatment.The treatment includes lifestyle changes that evidence suggests have the same magnitude of benefits as medications that are prescribed, Sharma said.
The rate of admissions was less than two per cent under the new system, which helps both the patients and the health-care system, the researchers said. Before the new process, it took four months to get patients into the clinic. Now the clinic aims to see patients considered at high risk in 48 hours and a week for those at low risk, Sharma said. The researchers said one of the limitations of the study was that they lacked baseline MRI or CT information to tell whether early strokes were due to progression of initial symptoms or a new event.The study's authors called for more studies with those images to explore their finding of a difference between the timing of stroke versus another TIA.Almost one-third of the full strokes occurred within two days of the TIA, the study's authors found. In comparison, almost half of the recurrent TIAs occurred between 30 days and 90 days.
The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Canada's Pavilion at Expo in China
SHANGHAI, CHINA--(Marketwire - Oct. 31, 2010) - The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, today underlined the resounding success of Canada's participation at Expo 2010. Today's closing of Expo 2010 in Shanghai was marked at the Canada Pavilion by a salute to the flag attended by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
"Canada really shone at the largest international exposition ever held," said Minister Moore. "The Canada Pavilion took top honours at Expo 2010 Shanghai, and all Canadians can be proud of the image it projected of Canada. As well, it presented Canada as a nation that is modern, inclusive, proud of our natural heritage, and eager to strengthen its ties with China."
Since its opening on May 1, the Canada Pavilion has welcomed more than 6 million visitors. The numbers far surpassed the most optimistic predictions and the initial attendance goal of 5 million visitors. With the involvement and imagination of Cirque du Soleil, Canada built a pavilion that showcased the theme "The Living City: inclusive, sustainable, creative." The public presentation invited visitors on a virtual journey where they could experience the energy and vitality of Canadian cities and discover some of Canada's urban best practices.
The Canada Pavilion offered visitors a feeling of life in a vibrant, diverse, and green Canadian city. The pavilion showed 6 million visitors the image of a modern Canada where cultural diversity, technological expertise, and pride in our environment are all assets that make the country an ideal destination for doing business, studying, or travelling.E xpo 2010 gave Canada an opportunity to advance its foreign policy and international trade goals, reinforce diplomatic and cultural ties with China, and strengthen Canada's brand image in China.
For more information about Canada's participation at Expo 2010, visit www.expo2010canada.gc.ca.
Canada participated at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which closes today (October 31, 2010). With 242 participating countries and organizations and more than 72 million visitors, it was the largest international exposition ever held. Canada's theme at Expo 2010 was "The Living City: inclusive, sustainable, creative," which showcased our country's artistic, cultural, and democratic values and reflected the overall Expo 2010 theme chosen by China: "Better City, Better Life."
Canada's participation at Expo 2010 consisted of several elements. The Canada Pavilion was the focal point. A large portion of the pavilion was devoted to a public presentation; our participation also included a cultural program, a business program, and a culinary program.
The Canada Pavilion
Over the six months of the exposition (May 1 to October 31), the Canada Pavilion welcomed more than 6 million visitors. The numbers far surpassed the most optimistic predictions and the initial attendance goal set by Canada of 5 million visitors. As well, 18,000 Canadians visited the Canada Pavilion, a clear indication of their support of Canada's participation at Expo 2010 Shanghai. The design and structure of the Canada Pavilion reflected Canadian values of inclusivity, sustainability, and creativity. The three-story structure was the product of a partnership between the Government of Canada and Cirque du Soleil, with building expertise from SNC Lavalin.
The Cultural Program
The Cultural Program allowed 165 Canadian artists from the visual, literary and performing arts to showcase their work at the Canada Pavilion and to demonstrate their talent by participating in various events at the Expo 2010 presentation sites.
In all, performing artists gave 63 live performances, including 5 major shows in large venues, featuring several artists together on stage in front of a large audience.
The Business Program – Conference Centre
The Canada Pavilion Conference Centre and Visitors' Lounge welcomed more than 10,000 visitors to its business and networking activities. VIPs included 12 federal ministers, 5 provincial premiers, and 25 mayors from across Canada. About 100 events were held, including the signing of several agreements in principle. For example, on May 16, 2010, Manulife-Sinochem Life Insurance Co. (Canada) and Bohai Bank (China) signed a $30-million agreement.
The Culinary Program
Six young chefs from across Canada joined Chef Wayne Murphy and the culinary program at the Canada Pavilion.The young chefs served meals to more than 6,000 visitors to the Canada Pavilion, and enjoyed introducing guests and VIPs to Canadian cuisine.
The Canada Pavilion in the Chinese Media
The Canada Pavilion was ranked one of the most popular pavilions at Expo 2010. The Chinese media praised the Canada Pavilion as the most entertaining, interesting, and "wired" pavilion at Expo 2010.
Awards and Honours
The Shanghai Morning News awarded the Canada Pavilion the Expo Oscar for most environmentally responsible pavilion. SNC Lavalin, the company in charge of the construction of the Canada Pavilion, was named Canada Chinese Business Council "Member of the Year" at an awards ceremony held in Beijing, China, on October 13, 2010. The date also marked the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and China.
The Expo Organiser magazine and the Chinese financial daily Diyi Caijing Ribao awarded the Canada Pavilion their "Most Commercially Valuable" designation.
(1) In July, the Canada Pavilion was consistently rated one of Expo's "top attractions." In an article entitled Five Expo "Bests," the popular Chinese website www.163.com described the Canada Pavilion as the "friendliest pavilion" in Shanghai.
"Canada really shone at the largest international exposition ever held," said Minister Moore. "The Canada Pavilion took top honours at Expo 2010 Shanghai, and all Canadians can be proud of the image it projected of Canada. As well, it presented Canada as a nation that is modern, inclusive, proud of our natural heritage, and eager to strengthen its ties with China."
Since its opening on May 1, the Canada Pavilion has welcomed more than 6 million visitors. The numbers far surpassed the most optimistic predictions and the initial attendance goal of 5 million visitors. With the involvement and imagination of Cirque du Soleil, Canada built a pavilion that showcased the theme "The Living City: inclusive, sustainable, creative." The public presentation invited visitors on a virtual journey where they could experience the energy and vitality of Canadian cities and discover some of Canada's urban best practices.
The Canada Pavilion offered visitors a feeling of life in a vibrant, diverse, and green Canadian city. The pavilion showed 6 million visitors the image of a modern Canada where cultural diversity, technological expertise, and pride in our environment are all assets that make the country an ideal destination for doing business, studying, or travelling.E xpo 2010 gave Canada an opportunity to advance its foreign policy and international trade goals, reinforce diplomatic and cultural ties with China, and strengthen Canada's brand image in China.
For more information about Canada's participation at Expo 2010, visit www.expo2010canada.gc.ca.
Canada participated at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which closes today (October 31, 2010). With 242 participating countries and organizations and more than 72 million visitors, it was the largest international exposition ever held. Canada's theme at Expo 2010 was "The Living City: inclusive, sustainable, creative," which showcased our country's artistic, cultural, and democratic values and reflected the overall Expo 2010 theme chosen by China: "Better City, Better Life."
Canada's participation at Expo 2010 consisted of several elements. The Canada Pavilion was the focal point. A large portion of the pavilion was devoted to a public presentation; our participation also included a cultural program, a business program, and a culinary program.
The Canada Pavilion
Over the six months of the exposition (May 1 to October 31), the Canada Pavilion welcomed more than 6 million visitors. The numbers far surpassed the most optimistic predictions and the initial attendance goal set by Canada of 5 million visitors. As well, 18,000 Canadians visited the Canada Pavilion, a clear indication of their support of Canada's participation at Expo 2010 Shanghai. The design and structure of the Canada Pavilion reflected Canadian values of inclusivity, sustainability, and creativity. The three-story structure was the product of a partnership between the Government of Canada and Cirque du Soleil, with building expertise from SNC Lavalin.
The Cultural Program
The Cultural Program allowed 165 Canadian artists from the visual, literary and performing arts to showcase their work at the Canada Pavilion and to demonstrate their talent by participating in various events at the Expo 2010 presentation sites.
In all, performing artists gave 63 live performances, including 5 major shows in large venues, featuring several artists together on stage in front of a large audience.
The Business Program – Conference Centre
The Canada Pavilion Conference Centre and Visitors' Lounge welcomed more than 10,000 visitors to its business and networking activities. VIPs included 12 federal ministers, 5 provincial premiers, and 25 mayors from across Canada. About 100 events were held, including the signing of several agreements in principle. For example, on May 16, 2010, Manulife-Sinochem Life Insurance Co. (Canada) and Bohai Bank (China) signed a $30-million agreement.
The Culinary Program
Six young chefs from across Canada joined Chef Wayne Murphy and the culinary program at the Canada Pavilion.The young chefs served meals to more than 6,000 visitors to the Canada Pavilion, and enjoyed introducing guests and VIPs to Canadian cuisine.
The Canada Pavilion in the Chinese Media
The Canada Pavilion was ranked one of the most popular pavilions at Expo 2010. The Chinese media praised the Canada Pavilion as the most entertaining, interesting, and "wired" pavilion at Expo 2010.
Awards and Honours
The Shanghai Morning News awarded the Canada Pavilion the Expo Oscar for most environmentally responsible pavilion. SNC Lavalin, the company in charge of the construction of the Canada Pavilion, was named Canada Chinese Business Council "Member of the Year" at an awards ceremony held in Beijing, China, on October 13, 2010. The date also marked the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and China.
The Expo Organiser magazine and the Chinese financial daily Diyi Caijing Ribao awarded the Canada Pavilion their "Most Commercially Valuable" designation.
(1) In July, the Canada Pavilion was consistently rated one of Expo's "top attractions." In an article entitled Five Expo "Bests," the popular Chinese website www.163.com described the Canada Pavilion as the "friendliest pavilion" in Shanghai.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Bonar Law- Canadian Prime Minister of England
Andrew Bonar Law PC (16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923), commonly known as Bonar Law, was a British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister. Born in the crown colony of New Brunswick, he is the only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the British Isles. He was also the shortest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, spending 211 days in office.
Law was born to a rural preacher and his wife in New Brunswick, where he spent his early life. A few years after his mother's death in 1861, his father remarried, and in 1870 Law moved to Helensburgh, Scotland, to live with his mother's sister Janet and her family, who ran a successful merchant bank. After an education at a preparatory school in Hamilton and the High School of Glasgow, Law left school aged sixteen to gain a "commercial education" at the family firm. A few years later the firm was sold to the Clydesdale Bank, putting Law's career in jeopardy until his uncles loaned him the money to buy a partnership in an iron merchants firm. Through hard work and his business acumen the firm flourished under Law, and by the time he was thirty he was a comparatively rich man.
Law first entered politics in 1897, when he was asked to be the Conservative Party candidate for the seats of Glasgow Bridgeton and then Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, accepting Blackfriars. Despite a large Liberal Party majority in his seat, Law campaigned successfully for the 1900 general election and was returned to Parliament. In the House of Commons he became noted for his excellent memory and oratory, and soon gained a position on the Conservative front bench. A strong supporter of tariff reform, Law was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade in 1902. The issue of tariff reform split the Conservative Party, and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour resigned, prompting a general election in which the Conservative Party were forced into opposition. In opposition Law continued to argue for tariff reform, both in Parliament and within his party, largely avoiding the constitutional crisis surrounding the People's Budget in 1909. His appointment as a Privy Councillor that year marked him out as a conservative frontrunner, and when it became clear that Arthur Balfour would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party, Law put his name forward. Despite trailing third before Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain Law eventually won the election when the strong possibility of a draw between Long and Chamberlain that would split the party forced both to withdraw.
As Leader of the Conservative Party, Law focused his attentions on two main areas; tariff reform, which he supported, and Irish Home Rule, which he was opposed to. As leader of the opposition he was in no position to make active changes, but his strong campaigning, particularly on Home Rule, turned Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War.
Law was born to a rural preacher and his wife in New Brunswick, where he spent his early life. A few years after his mother's death in 1861, his father remarried, and in 1870 Law moved to Helensburgh, Scotland, to live with his mother's sister Janet and her family, who ran a successful merchant bank. After an education at a preparatory school in Hamilton and the High School of Glasgow, Law left school aged sixteen to gain a "commercial education" at the family firm. A few years later the firm was sold to the Clydesdale Bank, putting Law's career in jeopardy until his uncles loaned him the money to buy a partnership in an iron merchants firm. Through hard work and his business acumen the firm flourished under Law, and by the time he was thirty he was a comparatively rich man.
Law first entered politics in 1897, when he was asked to be the Conservative Party candidate for the seats of Glasgow Bridgeton and then Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, accepting Blackfriars. Despite a large Liberal Party majority in his seat, Law campaigned successfully for the 1900 general election and was returned to Parliament. In the House of Commons he became noted for his excellent memory and oratory, and soon gained a position on the Conservative front bench. A strong supporter of tariff reform, Law was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade in 1902. The issue of tariff reform split the Conservative Party, and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour resigned, prompting a general election in which the Conservative Party were forced into opposition. In opposition Law continued to argue for tariff reform, both in Parliament and within his party, largely avoiding the constitutional crisis surrounding the People's Budget in 1909. His appointment as a Privy Councillor that year marked him out as a conservative frontrunner, and when it became clear that Arthur Balfour would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party, Law put his name forward. Despite trailing third before Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain Law eventually won the election when the strong possibility of a draw between Long and Chamberlain that would split the party forced both to withdraw.
As Leader of the Conservative Party, Law focused his attentions on two main areas; tariff reform, which he supported, and Irish Home Rule, which he was opposed to. As leader of the opposition he was in no position to make active changes, but his strong campaigning, particularly on Home Rule, turned Liberal attempts to pass the Third Home Rule Bill into a three year struggle eventually halted by the start of the First World War.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Jessie Catherine Gray
Jessie Catherine Gray. Born Augusta , Georgia , U.S.A. Canada College Hospital in Toronto
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Turbine can power home or business
A Canadian-made turbine designed to fit on roofs and help power homes and small businesses will go on sale in December. The Honeywell wind turbine is designed for the roofs of homes and small commercial or agricultural operations. (WindTronics)The Honeywell Wind Turbine measures 1.8 meters across and weighs 84 kg. It can begin producing power at wind speeds of three km/h. It is being manufactured at a new factory in Windsor, Ont.
Reg Adams, president of manufacturer WindTronics, told CBC News the turbines will appeal to commercial and agricultural operations, as well as homeowners who are environmentally conscious, or need emergency backup power."We are complete emergency home standby systems," he said in an interview. "It's like the replacement of a home standby generator. We can build a battery support, and if the power outage is because of a storm, it will have wind. If not, we have charged batteries."Each turbine comes with a computerized smart box and inverter that will allow the unit to feed directly into the ac power system of a home or business, or feed the energy back into the electricity grid.'The Honeywell turbine makes wind technology affordable and accessible.'
—Reg Adams, WindTronicsThe design is intended to maximize power output while minimizing noise and vibration. The unit differs from industrial wind turbines in that it looks more like a fan than windmill and generates power through the tips of the blades rather than turning a generator."The Honeywell turbine makes wind technology affordable and accessible to the vast majority of Canadian homeowners, who have great wind resources," said Adams.
24 years to payback
When its installed in an area with high winds, the turbine can produce up to 2,700 kilowatt hours a year. Based on Ontario's peak power rate of 9.9 cents per kWh, a turbine could save $272 in power costs each year.However, at a cost of $6,500, with an additional $3,000 for installation, it would take 24 years for it to pay for itself. Adams says the company is currently negotiating with the Ontario government to have the turbines included in the Feed-in Tariff Program, which pays a premium for green-power energy. He said if the Ontario government agrees to pay 50 to 55 cents per kilowatt-hour, it will make the turbines far more appealing to everyday homeowners. If Ontario residents were able to feed power back into the grid under such an arrangement, the turbine would earn about $1,500 per year and be paid for in 4½ years.The turbines will be sold at Home Depot and other major retailers across Canada.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/27/con-turbine.html#ixzz13c9Zrj2r
Reg Adams, president of manufacturer WindTronics, told CBC News the turbines will appeal to commercial and agricultural operations, as well as homeowners who are environmentally conscious, or need emergency backup power."We are complete emergency home standby systems," he said in an interview. "It's like the replacement of a home standby generator. We can build a battery support, and if the power outage is because of a storm, it will have wind. If not, we have charged batteries."Each turbine comes with a computerized smart box and inverter that will allow the unit to feed directly into the ac power system of a home or business, or feed the energy back into the electricity grid.'The Honeywell turbine makes wind technology affordable and accessible.'
—Reg Adams, WindTronicsThe design is intended to maximize power output while minimizing noise and vibration. The unit differs from industrial wind turbines in that it looks more like a fan than windmill and generates power through the tips of the blades rather than turning a generator."The Honeywell turbine makes wind technology affordable and accessible to the vast majority of Canadian homeowners, who have great wind resources," said Adams.
24 years to payback
When its installed in an area with high winds, the turbine can produce up to 2,700 kilowatt hours a year. Based on Ontario's peak power rate of 9.9 cents per kWh, a turbine could save $272 in power costs each year.However, at a cost of $6,500, with an additional $3,000 for installation, it would take 24 years for it to pay for itself. Adams says the company is currently negotiating with the Ontario government to have the turbines included in the Feed-in Tariff Program, which pays a premium for green-power energy. He said if the Ontario government agrees to pay 50 to 55 cents per kilowatt-hour, it will make the turbines far more appealing to everyday homeowners. If Ontario residents were able to feed power back into the grid under such an arrangement, the turbine would earn about $1,500 per year and be paid for in 4½ years.The turbines will be sold at Home Depot and other major retailers across Canada.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/27/con-turbine.html#ixzz13c9Zrj2r
Maud Lenora Menten
Maud Leonora Menten. Born Port Lambton, Ontario University of Toronto Germany British Columbia
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Bertram Brockhouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Bertram N. Brockhouse)
Born July 15, 1918
Lethbridge, Alberta
Died October 13, 2003 (aged 85)
Hamilton, Ontario
Nationality Canada
Institutions McMaster University
Notable awards Nobel Prize in physics
Bertram Neville Brockhouse, CC, FRSC (July 15, 1918 – October 13, 2003) was a Canadian physicist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1994, shared with Clifford Shull) "for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter", in particular "for the development of neutron spectroscopy".
Life
Brockhouse was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, and was a graduate of the University of British Columbia (BA, 1947) and the University of Toronto (MA, 1948; Ph.D, 1950).From 1950 to 1962, Brockhouse carried out research at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory.In 1962, he became professor at McMaster University in Canada, where he remained until his retirement in 1984.
Awards and recognition
He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics with American Clifford Shull for developing neutron scattering techniques for studying condensed matter. In 1982, Brockhouse was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1995. In October 2005, as part of the 75th anniversary of McMaster University's establishment in Hamilton, Ontario, a street on the University campus (University Avenue) was renamed to Brockhouse Way in honour of Brockhouse. The town of Deep River, Ontario has also named a street in his honour.
The Nobel Prize that Bertram Brockhouse won (shared with Clifford Shull) in 1994 was awarded after the longest ever waiting time (counting from the time when the award-winning research had been carried out).In 1999 the Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (DCMMP) and the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) created a medal in honour of Brockhouse. The medal is called the Brockhouse Medal and is awarded to recognize and encourage outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter and materials physics. This medal is awarded annually on the basis of outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter physics. An eligible candidate must have performed their research primarily with a Canadian Institution.
Born July 15, 1918
Lethbridge, Alberta
Died October 13, 2003 (aged 85)
Hamilton, Ontario
Nationality Canada
Institutions McMaster University
Notable awards Nobel Prize in physics
Bertram Neville Brockhouse, CC, FRSC (July 15, 1918 – October 13, 2003) was a Canadian physicist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1994, shared with Clifford Shull) "for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter", in particular "for the development of neutron spectroscopy".
Life
Brockhouse was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, and was a graduate of the University of British Columbia (BA, 1947) and the University of Toronto (MA, 1948; Ph.D, 1950).From 1950 to 1962, Brockhouse carried out research at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory.In 1962, he became professor at McMaster University in Canada, where he remained until his retirement in 1984.
Awards and recognition
He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics with American Clifford Shull for developing neutron scattering techniques for studying condensed matter. In 1982, Brockhouse was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1995. In October 2005, as part of the 75th anniversary of McMaster University's establishment in Hamilton, Ontario, a street on the University campus (University Avenue) was renamed to Brockhouse Way in honour of Brockhouse. The town of Deep River, Ontario has also named a street in his honour.
The Nobel Prize that Bertram Brockhouse won (shared with Clifford Shull) in 1994 was awarded after the longest ever waiting time (counting from the time when the award-winning research had been carried out).In 1999 the Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (DCMMP) and the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) created a medal in honour of Brockhouse. The medal is called the Brockhouse Medal and is awarded to recognize and encourage outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter and materials physics. This medal is awarded annually on the basis of outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter physics. An eligible candidate must have performed their research primarily with a Canadian Institution.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Volcanic eruption led to B.C. salmon boom: scientist
CBC News
The volcanic eruption led to a massive bloom of special phytoplankton called diatoms — an unusually rich source of food for the growing salmon. A volcanic eruption might have helped produce B.C.'s largest sockeye salmon run since 1913. The 34 million salmon that returned to B.C.'s Fraser River this year were "adolescents" in the Gulf of Alaska when the underwater Kasatochi volcano erupted there in 2008, said Tim Parsons, a research scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C.
The ash from that eruption fertilized the ocean, leading to a massive bloom of special phytoplankton called diatoms — an unusually rich source of food for the growing salmon. "When you have an adolescent of any kind [and] you give them lots of food, they have lots of energy, and they build strong bodies," Parsons said. "So, we get back, in my hypothesis, 34 million salmon — which was totally unpredicted — instead of the 1.5 million salmon of the previous year, which fed on a diet — which was the normal diet of the Gulf of Alaska — composed of very small plankton." Parsons said he based his hypothesis on the recent research results reported by Roberta Hamme, an assistant professor at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. Hamme, who observed the plankton bloom using satellite imaging, said in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that it was one of the largest such blooms observed in the subarctic North Pacific. Parsons said the 2009 sockeye run was small because the fish in that run were older, closer to adulthood, and were starting to move out of the Gulf of Alaska at the time the eruption happened.
The link between the plankton bloom and the huge sockeye run of 2010 is consistent with Parsons's own research. In one 1970s experiment, the sockeye run increased seven fold after he fertilized a lake on Vancouver Island. In other studies, he found salmon populations in the Gulf of Alaska depend on the density of phytoplankton.
Parsons suggests that if his hypothesis proves true, it could help fisheries managers make better predictions about salmon populations. A federal inquiry into the state of B.C.'s wild salmon stocks opened in Vancouver on Monday.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/25/volcano-bc-eruption-sockeye-salmon.html#ixzz13PXtK4qF
The volcanic eruption led to a massive bloom of special phytoplankton called diatoms — an unusually rich source of food for the growing salmon. A volcanic eruption might have helped produce B.C.'s largest sockeye salmon run since 1913. The 34 million salmon that returned to B.C.'s Fraser River this year were "adolescents" in the Gulf of Alaska when the underwater Kasatochi volcano erupted there in 2008, said Tim Parsons, a research scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C.
The ash from that eruption fertilized the ocean, leading to a massive bloom of special phytoplankton called diatoms — an unusually rich source of food for the growing salmon. "When you have an adolescent of any kind [and] you give them lots of food, they have lots of energy, and they build strong bodies," Parsons said. "So, we get back, in my hypothesis, 34 million salmon — which was totally unpredicted — instead of the 1.5 million salmon of the previous year, which fed on a diet — which was the normal diet of the Gulf of Alaska — composed of very small plankton." Parsons said he based his hypothesis on the recent research results reported by Roberta Hamme, an assistant professor at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. Hamme, who observed the plankton bloom using satellite imaging, said in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that it was one of the largest such blooms observed in the subarctic North Pacific. Parsons said the 2009 sockeye run was small because the fish in that run were older, closer to adulthood, and were starting to move out of the Gulf of Alaska at the time the eruption happened.
The link between the plankton bloom and the huge sockeye run of 2010 is consistent with Parsons's own research. In one 1970s experiment, the sockeye run increased seven fold after he fertilized a lake on Vancouver Island. In other studies, he found salmon populations in the Gulf of Alaska depend on the density of phytoplankton.
Parsons suggests that if his hypothesis proves true, it could help fisheries managers make better predictions about salmon populations. A federal inquiry into the state of B.C.'s wild salmon stocks opened in Vancouver on Monday.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/25/volcano-bc-eruption-sockeye-salmon.html#ixzz13PXtK4qF
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Dr. Frances Gertrude McGill
Sometimes dubbed the "Sherlock Holmes of Saskatchewan," Dr. Frances Gertrude McGill, is a pioneer in many ways. Graduated in medicine at a time when few women ventured into this area, she devotes most of his career in forensic pathology, a discipline then emerging in Canada. She works officially for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) From 1943 and is considered as the "first police horse" of the police force. Renowned for its professionalism and for his unfailing unfailing availability, she built a solid reputation in a world of men. Its success is embodied in the motto probably endorsed it: "Think like a man, act like a lady and work like a dog."
Frances G. McGill was born in 1877 in Minnedosa, Manitoba. She grew up on a farm and a family of Irish origin, where the medical vocation is everywhere: one of his brothers is a doctor and his sister is a nurse. Frances G. McGill is no exception: she obtained her medical degree in 1915 from the University of Manitoba. She abandons her brief teaching career she began after her training at the Winnipeg Normal School to pay for college. Gifted student, she succeeded with flying colors and received his education, including the gold medal Hutchison for its excellent academic results.
After a year of internship at Winnipeg General Hospital, she began a postgraduate course to provincial laboratories in Manitoba, under the supervision of the Director of the institution, the renowned Gordon Bell, Ph.D. In 1918, the Dr. McGill is appointed by the bacteriologist provincial Ministry of Health in Saskatchewan. She works diligently, especially during the serious epidemic of Spanish influenza. In 1920, she accepted the post of provincial pathologist, and two years later, the director of the laboratory of the province where she is working primarily to resolve cases of suspicious deaths. She works closely with various police forces, including the RCMP and a reputation as a great criminologist. His testimony in court and are deemed by his painstaking work it helps to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. His investigations led him to crisscross the province in difficult conditions; travel are many, in all climates and by all means of transportation: dog sledding, snowmobiling, seaplane ...
When in 1937 the RCMP opens its own forensic laboratory in Regina, the workload of Dr. McGill decreases considerably. She nevertheless continued her work with the local police until his retirement from the position of provincial pathologist in 1942. For Ms. McGill, this retreat does not mean inaction. In addition to his private practice, she engages in effect at many recreation including hunting, fishing, horse riding and bridge. She even finds time to support the war effort by knitting wool socks for soldiers involved in various associations including the Business and Professional Women's Club and Regina Women's Canadian Club.
In 1943, Dr. McGill became head of the Forensic Laboratory RCMP. It then starts its investigations throughout the province. Alongside this work, it gives future police and detectives in the country during the medical jurisprudence, pathology and toxicology. Communicative and with a proverbial sense of humor, she said that humor prevented a morbid depression. She knows to convey her valuable expertise. She teaches them how to collect and preserve evidence, how to study a crime scene, how to distinguish human blood from animal blood, etc..
After officially ended its work with the RCMP Dr. McGill remains a consultant to the Force as honorary surgeon, as it receives 16 January 1946. Between his appointment and her death, January 21, 1959, Dr. McGill remains active. This includes furthering her private practice specializing in the treatment of allergies and skin diseases. We can summarize her career at what she said: "It was a lot of hard work and lots of fun ... and when the work is fun, it's never really hard ". McGill Lake located north of Lake Athabasca, Saskatchewan, bears her name.
Resources
Fund of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, clippings from the personal file of Frances McGill, RG18-G, File G455-198, Volume 3573.
Bannerman, John MacKay. Leading Ladies Canada Belleville, Mika Pub, 1977.
Churchman, Jim. "Initio" R.C.M.P. Quarterly, Vol. 38, No.o3 (July 1972), pp. 20-25.
Hacker, Carlotta. The Indomitable Lady Doctors, Halifax: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 2001.
Holmlund, Mona and GAIL Youngberg, ed. Inspiring Women: A Celebration of Her StoryRegina, Coteau Books, 2003.
Petersen, Myrna. "McGill, Frances (1882-1959)." The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan: http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/mcgill_frances_1882-1959.html%20(Accessed 3 June 2008, link in English only).
Salterio, Joe L. "McGill, Frances G., M.D.. R.C.M.P. Quarterly, Vol. 12, No.o1 (January 1946), pp. 25-32.
"MI Frances Gertrude McGill, (1877-1959). " University of Manitoba: www.umanitoba.ca / libraries / units / health / resources / womhist / fgmcgillf.html (Accessed June 3, 2008).
"Frances Gertrude McGill 1877-1959. Museum of Science and Technology Museum: http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/francais/about/hallfame/u_i23_f.cfm%20(Accessed June 3, 2008).
"Historical Notes - Women in the RCMP", Site of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/hist/hnud-nhut/women-femmes-fra.htm (Accessed March 26, 2009).
Burgun, Isabelle. "Frances McGill, working for justice"
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Emily Howard Stowe
Emily Howard Stowe (née Jennings Norwich , Upper Canada (Ontario United States and in 1868 became the first Canadian woman to practice medicine in Canada Medical College in Toronto
Friday, October 22, 2010
Canada's first cross dressing doctor
James Miranda Stuart Barry. (née Bulkeley [?]) Born England Edinburgh University British Empire and gained a reputation as an outstanding surgeon. In 157 Dr. Barry was posted to Canada
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Keeping Canada's unique Gaelic culture alive
Some folk music forms still heard in Cape Breton, like at the Celtic Colours International Festival, have been lost in Scotland and reintroduced from Canada. Musicians, folk culture enthusiasts and teachers have been spearheading attempts to revitalize a unique Gaelic culture on an island off Canada's Atlantic coast. Brandy Yanchyk reports from the Celtic Colours International Festival on Cape Breton.
Several hundred years after Canada's Nova Scotia province was settled by refugees from the Scottish Highlands and islands, the Gaelic culture they brought with them survives, just.
On the island of Cape Breton, Gaelic has endured even as the language came under intense pressure from Canada's English-speaking majority.The island's road signs are printed in Gaelic and English. Some Gaelic supporters say the people's Celtic roots are evident in their humour and story-telling traditions."In teaching the language here I find that they already have the blasts, the sound of the Gaelic even in their English," says Margie Beaton, who was brought over from Scotland in 1976 to help revitalize the Gaelic language. "It's part of who they are, you can't just throw that away. It's in you."
For the past week and a half, fiddles, harps and Gaelic songs have delighted crowds at the 14th annual Celtic Colours International Festival, a key part of the island's efforts at cultural revival.“We are just like the native peoples here," poet Lewis MacKinnon says of "indigenous" Gaelic culture.Local musicians and songwriters were joined by musicians from Scotland and Ireland, in a bid to celebrate Celtic song and keep the language alive.Malcolm Munro, a singer from the Scottish band Meantime, said he had noticed a resurgence in Gaelic in Cape Breton since he first visited 17 years ago.
Younger generations have made learning the language a priority and have helped keep Scottish traditions like fiddle music, step-dancing and piping alive, Mr Munro says."I've seen fresh roots of recovery here in Cape Breton," he says.Cape Breton residents and officials' desire to keep the Gaelic language alive goes beyond the festival.In 1995, Nova Scotia schools began offering Gaelic language as a core subject, after years in which the province lacked the funding to do so.
Adults keen to brush up on their Gaelic can take an immersion course called "Gaidhlig Aig Baile" (Gaelic in the community), in which groups meet weekly to practice speaking Gaelic and learn traditional Scottish pursuits like milling frolics, where Gaelic songs are sung in rhythm while beating a woven wool blanket across a table-top.And Nova Scotia's Office of Gaelic Affairs hopes to develop an all-immersion Gaelic curriculum in schools.
Scottish settlers
The efforts come after a long decline in Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia, as generations of Gaelic speakers have passed away, taking their knowledge of the culture with the Street signs on Cape Breton island are printed in both English and Gaelic
An estimated 2,000 people speak Gaelic across Nova Scotia now, officials estimate. Roughly 25,000 Gaelic speakers settled in Nova Scotia from Scotland in the 1770s. Gaelic's decline coincided with the rise of formal English-language education in Nova Scotia in the mid-19th Century. Students were punished for speaking Gaelic in school, and by the 1930s many parents stopped passing down Celtic traditions, believing that to get ahead their children had to assimilate into English-speaking culture."We are just like the native peoples here, our culture is indigenous to this region," says Lewis MacKinnon, a musician and Gaelic poet from Cape Breton and head of the Nova Scotia Office of Gaelic Affairs."We too have suffered injustices, we too have been excluded, we too have been forgotten and ridiculed for something that is simply part of who and what we are. It's part of our human expression and that story needs to be told."
Canadian Gaelic dialect
The community's isolation has helped preserve traditions that sailed across the Atlantic with the original settlers but have since declined in Scotland. Gaelic language teacher Margie Beaton hears "blasts" of Gaelic in the island's vernacular English."The dialect of Gaelic that I speak... doesn't exist anymore in Scotland," Mr MacKinnon says.
And Mr MacKinnon says styles of step dancing and fiddling found on Cape Breton have been lost in Scotland, with efforts underway to reintroduce them there.Ms Beaton, the Gaelic language teacher, said Scots also feel the connection to their new world cousins."The motto they have for Nova Scotia is 'Ach an cuan' which translates as 'but for the ocean', meaning 'but for the ocean we'd actually be together.' There's only an ocean separating us," explains Mrs Beaton."We're like another island off the coast of Scotland but we have an ocean separating us instead of a strait or a channel."
Several hundred years after Canada's Nova Scotia province was settled by refugees from the Scottish Highlands and islands, the Gaelic culture they brought with them survives, just.
On the island of Cape Breton, Gaelic has endured even as the language came under intense pressure from Canada's English-speaking majority.The island's road signs are printed in Gaelic and English. Some Gaelic supporters say the people's Celtic roots are evident in their humour and story-telling traditions."In teaching the language here I find that they already have the blasts, the sound of the Gaelic even in their English," says Margie Beaton, who was brought over from Scotland in 1976 to help revitalize the Gaelic language. "It's part of who they are, you can't just throw that away. It's in you."
For the past week and a half, fiddles, harps and Gaelic songs have delighted crowds at the 14th annual Celtic Colours International Festival, a key part of the island's efforts at cultural revival.“We are just like the native peoples here," poet Lewis MacKinnon says of "indigenous" Gaelic culture.Local musicians and songwriters were joined by musicians from Scotland and Ireland, in a bid to celebrate Celtic song and keep the language alive.Malcolm Munro, a singer from the Scottish band Meantime, said he had noticed a resurgence in Gaelic in Cape Breton since he first visited 17 years ago.
Younger generations have made learning the language a priority and have helped keep Scottish traditions like fiddle music, step-dancing and piping alive, Mr Munro says."I've seen fresh roots of recovery here in Cape Breton," he says.Cape Breton residents and officials' desire to keep the Gaelic language alive goes beyond the festival.In 1995, Nova Scotia schools began offering Gaelic language as a core subject, after years in which the province lacked the funding to do so.
Adults keen to brush up on their Gaelic can take an immersion course called "Gaidhlig Aig Baile" (Gaelic in the community), in which groups meet weekly to practice speaking Gaelic and learn traditional Scottish pursuits like milling frolics, where Gaelic songs are sung in rhythm while beating a woven wool blanket across a table-top.And Nova Scotia's Office of Gaelic Affairs hopes to develop an all-immersion Gaelic curriculum in schools.
Scottish settlers
The efforts come after a long decline in Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia, as generations of Gaelic speakers have passed away, taking their knowledge of the culture with the Street signs on Cape Breton island are printed in both English and Gaelic
An estimated 2,000 people speak Gaelic across Nova Scotia now, officials estimate. Roughly 25,000 Gaelic speakers settled in Nova Scotia from Scotland in the 1770s. Gaelic's decline coincided with the rise of formal English-language education in Nova Scotia in the mid-19th Century. Students were punished for speaking Gaelic in school, and by the 1930s many parents stopped passing down Celtic traditions, believing that to get ahead their children had to assimilate into English-speaking culture."We are just like the native peoples here, our culture is indigenous to this region," says Lewis MacKinnon, a musician and Gaelic poet from Cape Breton and head of the Nova Scotia Office of Gaelic Affairs."We too have suffered injustices, we too have been excluded, we too have been forgotten and ridiculed for something that is simply part of who and what we are. It's part of our human expression and that story needs to be told."
Canadian Gaelic dialect
The community's isolation has helped preserve traditions that sailed across the Atlantic with the original settlers but have since declined in Scotland. Gaelic language teacher Margie Beaton hears "blasts" of Gaelic in the island's vernacular English."The dialect of Gaelic that I speak... doesn't exist anymore in Scotland," Mr MacKinnon says.
And Mr MacKinnon says styles of step dancing and fiddling found on Cape Breton have been lost in Scotland, with efforts underway to reintroduce them there.Ms Beaton, the Gaelic language teacher, said Scots also feel the connection to their new world cousins."The motto they have for Nova Scotia is 'Ach an cuan' which translates as 'but for the ocean', meaning 'but for the ocean we'd actually be together.' There's only an ocean separating us," explains Mrs Beaton."We're like another island off the coast of Scotland but we have an ocean separating us instead of a strait or a channel."
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Canadian citizenship: What it takes
The 2006 census listed 6,186,950 people as being born outside of Canada. Here are the top 10 countries of origin:
Country Immigrants
U.K. 579,620
China 466,940
India 443,690
Philippines 303,195
Italy 296,850
U.S. 250,535
Hong Kong 215,430
Germany 171,405
Poland 170,490
Viet Nam 160,170
Source: Statistics Canada
Applicants must:
•Be at least 18 years old (or a child's guardian, parent or adoptive parent may apply on his/her behalf).
•Have permanent resident status and not be involved in an immigration investigation, inquiry or removal order.
•Have lived in the country for at least three years (1,095 days) over the past four years. Children are exempted from this requirement.
•Have knowledge of either French or English.
•Must have a clean record. Applicants cannot be in prison, parole or probation; have been convicted of an indictable offence, or be under investigation for or convicted of a war crime or crime against humanity.
•Must understand the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and have an understanding of Canadian history, society and symbols.
How long does it take to process a claim for citizenship?
Routine applications normally take 15 to 19 months to process.
However, any number of factors could delay approval, such as if the person submits an incomplete application or misses a citizenship test, hearing or ceremony.
Top 10 countries of origin for immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006
Country Immigrants
China 155,105
India 129,140
Philippines 77,880
Pakistan 57,630
U.S. 38,770
South Korea 35,450
Iran 27,600
Romania 28,080
U.K. 25,655
Colombia 25,305
Applicants may be asked to submit fingerprints in order toverify their identities and confirm that they do not have any criminal charges or convictions that could affect their applications. Delays can also occur if authorities request further information to confirm that applicant have an acceptable understanding of French or English, meet residency requirements and aren't subject to any immigration, criminal or security prohibitions.
Which family members can accompany someone who immigrates to Canada?
A person who becomes a permanent resident can move to Canada with his/her:
•Spouse or common-law partner.
•Dependent child, or that of a spouse or common-law spouse.
•The dependent child of a dependent child.
Parents, grandparents or other family members are not eligible. But an immigrant can later apply to sponsor them to come to Canada.
Is it necessary to hire a lawyer to navigate through the immigration process?
No. It's not mandatory to hire a lawyer or immigration consultant, and hiring one won't speed up the process or guarantee approval. Immigration representatives can offer advice and assistance to help people through the process.There are two types of representatives: paid and unpaid.
Paid immigration representatives must be lawyers who are in good standing with a provincial or territorial law society, immigration consultants who are members in good standing with the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, or notaries who are members in good standing with the Chambre des notaires du Québec.An unpaid consultant can be a family member, friend or member of a non-governmental or religious organization.
What are the requirements for people who want to immigrate to Canada and open a business?
They must have managed a business and have owned a part of a business for at least two years in the period that begins five years before they submit their application and ends when a decision is made on the application. Businesses operated primarily for the purpose of deriving investment income are not eligible.Their assets and those of their spouses or common-law partners must exceed their combined liabilities by $300,000.Applicants also have to prove that none of their net worth comes from criminal activity.
As well, they must pass a medical examination and security and criminal checks.
Prospective immigrants can also apply to come to Canada as investors. They would have to show that they have business experience and a net worth of $800,000 that was obtained legally. They would also have to show that they could make an investment of at least $400,000.
How does a person claim refugee status?
Canada provides refugee status to individuals in need of protection and to those who meet the definition of a convention refugee, as outlined in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. For more information on the refugee process, see our Flight to Canada FAQ.
How much does it cost to apply for citizenship?
The cost for an adult is $200. It's $100 for a child under 18.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/10/18/f-canadian-citizenship-faq.html#ixzz12u32VTfV
Country Immigrants
U.K. 579,620
China 466,940
India 443,690
Philippines 303,195
Italy 296,850
U.S. 250,535
Hong Kong 215,430
Germany 171,405
Poland 170,490
Viet Nam 160,170
Source: Statistics Canada
Applicants must:
•Be at least 18 years old (or a child's guardian, parent or adoptive parent may apply on his/her behalf).
•Have permanent resident status and not be involved in an immigration investigation, inquiry or removal order.
•Have lived in the country for at least three years (1,095 days) over the past four years. Children are exempted from this requirement.
•Have knowledge of either French or English.
•Must have a clean record. Applicants cannot be in prison, parole or probation; have been convicted of an indictable offence, or be under investigation for or convicted of a war crime or crime against humanity.
•Must understand the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and have an understanding of Canadian history, society and symbols.
How long does it take to process a claim for citizenship?
Routine applications normally take 15 to 19 months to process.
However, any number of factors could delay approval, such as if the person submits an incomplete application or misses a citizenship test, hearing or ceremony.
Top 10 countries of origin for immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006
Country Immigrants
China 155,105
India 129,140
Philippines 77,880
Pakistan 57,630
U.S. 38,770
South Korea 35,450
Iran 27,600
Romania 28,080
U.K. 25,655
Colombia 25,305
Applicants may be asked to submit fingerprints in order toverify their identities and confirm that they do not have any criminal charges or convictions that could affect their applications. Delays can also occur if authorities request further information to confirm that applicant have an acceptable understanding of French or English, meet residency requirements and aren't subject to any immigration, criminal or security prohibitions.
Which family members can accompany someone who immigrates to Canada?
A person who becomes a permanent resident can move to Canada with his/her:
•Spouse or common-law partner.
•Dependent child, or that of a spouse or common-law spouse.
•The dependent child of a dependent child.
Parents, grandparents or other family members are not eligible. But an immigrant can later apply to sponsor them to come to Canada.
Is it necessary to hire a lawyer to navigate through the immigration process?
No. It's not mandatory to hire a lawyer or immigration consultant, and hiring one won't speed up the process or guarantee approval. Immigration representatives can offer advice and assistance to help people through the process.There are two types of representatives: paid and unpaid.
Paid immigration representatives must be lawyers who are in good standing with a provincial or territorial law society, immigration consultants who are members in good standing with the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, or notaries who are members in good standing with the Chambre des notaires du Québec.An unpaid consultant can be a family member, friend or member of a non-governmental or religious organization.
What are the requirements for people who want to immigrate to Canada and open a business?
They must have managed a business and have owned a part of a business for at least two years in the period that begins five years before they submit their application and ends when a decision is made on the application. Businesses operated primarily for the purpose of deriving investment income are not eligible.Their assets and those of their spouses or common-law partners must exceed their combined liabilities by $300,000.Applicants also have to prove that none of their net worth comes from criminal activity.
As well, they must pass a medical examination and security and criminal checks.
Prospective immigrants can also apply to come to Canada as investors. They would have to show that they have business experience and a net worth of $800,000 that was obtained legally. They would also have to show that they could make an investment of at least $400,000.
How does a person claim refugee status?
Canada provides refugee status to individuals in need of protection and to those who meet the definition of a convention refugee, as outlined in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. For more information on the refugee process, see our Flight to Canada FAQ.
How much does it cost to apply for citizenship?
The cost for an adult is $200. It's $100 for a child under 18.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/10/18/f-canadian-citizenship-faq.html#ixzz12u32VTfV
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
David Suzuki's Dirty Dozen
The dirty dozen:
1 – BHA and BHT. Used in moisturizers as preservatives, the suspected endocrine disruptors may cause cancer and are known to be harmful to fish and other wildlife
2 – Coal-tar dyes such as p-phenylenediamine and colours listed as CI followed by five digits. Used in some hair dyes, may be contaminated with heavy metals toxic to the brain.
3 – DEA, cocamide DEA and lauramide DEA. Used in some creamy and foaming moisturizers and shampoos. Can react to form nitrosamines, which may cause cancer. Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
4 – Dibuytl phthalate. Used as a plasticizer in some nail-care products. Suspected endocrine disrupter and reproductive toxicant. Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
5 – Formaldehyde releasing preservatives such as DMDM hydantoin, diazolidinyl urea, imidazolidinyl urea, methenamine, quarternium-15 and sodium hydroxymethylglycinate. Used in a variety of cosmetics. Slowly release small amounts of formaldehyde, which causes cancer.
6 – Paraben, methylparaben, butylparaben and propylparaben. Used in a variety of cosmetics as preservatives. Suspected endocrine disrupters and may interfere with male reproductive functions.
7 – Parfum. Any mixture of fragrance ingredients used in a variety of cosmetics. Some fragrance ingredients can trigger allergies and asthma. Some linked to cancer and neurotoxicity. Some harmful to fish and other wildlife.
8 – PEG Compounds such as PEG-60. Used in some cosmetic cream bases. Can be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which may cause cancer.
9 – Petrolatum. Used in some hair products for shine and as a moisture barrier in some lip balms, lip sticks and moisturizers. A petroleum product that can be contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which may cause cancer.
10 – Siloxanes: cyclotetrasiloxane, cyclopentasiloxane, cyclohexasiloxane and cyclopethicone. Used in a variety of cosmetics to soften, smooth and moisten. Suspected endocrine disrupter and reproductive toxicant (cyclotetrasiloxane). Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
11 – Sodium laureth sulphate. Used in some foaming cosmetics, such as shampoos, cleansers and bubble bath. Can be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which may cause cancer.
12 – Triclosan. Used in some antibacterial cosmetics, such as toothpastes, cleansers and deodorants. Suspected endocrine disrupter and may contribute to antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
Courtesy the David Suzuki Foundation
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/19/suzuki-dirty-dozen.html#ixzz12qdaBF2i
1 – BHA and BHT. Used in moisturizers as preservatives, the suspected endocrine disruptors may cause cancer and are known to be harmful to fish and other wildlife
2 – Coal-tar dyes such as p-phenylenediamine and colours listed as CI followed by five digits. Used in some hair dyes, may be contaminated with heavy metals toxic to the brain.
3 – DEA, cocamide DEA and lauramide DEA. Used in some creamy and foaming moisturizers and shampoos. Can react to form nitrosamines, which may cause cancer. Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
4 – Dibuytl phthalate. Used as a plasticizer in some nail-care products. Suspected endocrine disrupter and reproductive toxicant. Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
5 – Formaldehyde releasing preservatives such as DMDM hydantoin, diazolidinyl urea, imidazolidinyl urea, methenamine, quarternium-15 and sodium hydroxymethylglycinate. Used in a variety of cosmetics. Slowly release small amounts of formaldehyde, which causes cancer.
6 – Paraben, methylparaben, butylparaben and propylparaben. Used in a variety of cosmetics as preservatives. Suspected endocrine disrupters and may interfere with male reproductive functions.
7 – Parfum. Any mixture of fragrance ingredients used in a variety of cosmetics. Some fragrance ingredients can trigger allergies and asthma. Some linked to cancer and neurotoxicity. Some harmful to fish and other wildlife.
8 – PEG Compounds such as PEG-60. Used in some cosmetic cream bases. Can be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which may cause cancer.
9 – Petrolatum. Used in some hair products for shine and as a moisture barrier in some lip balms, lip sticks and moisturizers. A petroleum product that can be contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which may cause cancer.
10 – Siloxanes: cyclotetrasiloxane, cyclopentasiloxane, cyclohexasiloxane and cyclopethicone. Used in a variety of cosmetics to soften, smooth and moisten. Suspected endocrine disrupter and reproductive toxicant (cyclotetrasiloxane). Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
11 – Sodium laureth sulphate. Used in some foaming cosmetics, such as shampoos, cleansers and bubble bath. Can be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, which may cause cancer.
12 – Triclosan. Used in some antibacterial cosmetics, such as toothpastes, cleansers and deodorants. Suspected endocrine disrupter and may contribute to antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Harmful to fish and other wildlife.
Courtesy the David Suzuki Foundation
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/19/suzuki-dirty-dozen.html#ixzz12qdaBF2i
"Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature" was written by Pavan Sukhdev
In Canada, the report found that Canada's northern boreal forest is worth $191 billion a year, for all of the services it provides, from storing greenhouse gases, to filtering water. And the greenbelt that surrounds the Greater Toronto Area contributes $2.6 billion annually worth of flood control, waste treatment, and clean air — roughly $3,487 per hectare. The emerging carbon market will make the boreal forest more valuable as a carbon sink than for its timber, Elgie says. And once people see nature's true price tag, they might be careful what they buy, he hopes.
A recent OECD report ranked Canada 29th of 33 countries in creating economic incentives to reduce pollution and conserve nature. Aside from progress such as recent expansion of national parks and protected marine areas, Liberal Environment critic Gerard Kennedy says Canada is an environmental laggard."[Canada] needs to do more than simply put nature in a museum in a restricted area," Kennedy said. "Outside of those parks, Canada's nature is in distress."
"Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature" was written by Pavan Sukhdev, a banker who heads the UN's green economy initiative.
It found that nature provides trillions of dollars in "free" services to the global economy every year, and having to account for all of those services being removed would significantly reduce the world's economic output and cost far more."From an economic point of view, the flows of ecosystem services can be seen as the ‘dividend’ that society receives from natural capital," the report said."Because we get nature’s services for free, we tend to use them wastefully," said Prof. Stewart Elgie, chair of think-tank Environmental Prosperity, which contributed to the UN's report. "Like a tenant that doesn't pay for electricity, [we tend] to leave the lights on."
Taking an economic perspective, the report proposes that economic instruments can be used to incentivize sustainable environmental practices, and was full of global examples of that in action. Reducing forest loss by half would generate $3.7 trillion worth of greenhouse gas reductions, the report found, and the largest 3,000 companies in the world cause $2.2 trillion in uncounted environmental costs — the equivalent of more than a third of their annual profits.'Like a tenant that doesn't pay for electricity, he tends to leave the lights on'—Prof. Stewart Elgie
Fifteen years ago in New York State, Elgie notes, officials had to replace a water treatment plant. A man-made facility would have cost between $6 and $8 billion US, plus between $300 and $500 million annually to maintain. "Instead they paid a bunch of landowners and farm owners in the Hudson river watershed to restore forests … it cost them about $1 billion US," he said, "[and] water rates in New York were 80 per cent lower than they would have been otherwise."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/10/19/un-economy-environment-ecosystem.html#ixzz12qbKbGwV
A recent OECD report ranked Canada 29th of 33 countries in creating economic incentives to reduce pollution and conserve nature. Aside from progress such as recent expansion of national parks and protected marine areas, Liberal Environment critic Gerard Kennedy says Canada is an environmental laggard."[Canada] needs to do more than simply put nature in a museum in a restricted area," Kennedy said. "Outside of those parks, Canada's nature is in distress."
"Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature" was written by Pavan Sukhdev, a banker who heads the UN's green economy initiative.
It found that nature provides trillions of dollars in "free" services to the global economy every year, and having to account for all of those services being removed would significantly reduce the world's economic output and cost far more."From an economic point of view, the flows of ecosystem services can be seen as the ‘dividend’ that society receives from natural capital," the report said."Because we get nature’s services for free, we tend to use them wastefully," said Prof. Stewart Elgie, chair of think-tank Environmental Prosperity, which contributed to the UN's report. "Like a tenant that doesn't pay for electricity, [we tend] to leave the lights on."
Taking an economic perspective, the report proposes that economic instruments can be used to incentivize sustainable environmental practices, and was full of global examples of that in action. Reducing forest loss by half would generate $3.7 trillion worth of greenhouse gas reductions, the report found, and the largest 3,000 companies in the world cause $2.2 trillion in uncounted environmental costs — the equivalent of more than a third of their annual profits.'Like a tenant that doesn't pay for electricity, he tends to leave the lights on'—Prof. Stewart Elgie
Fifteen years ago in New York State, Elgie notes, officials had to replace a water treatment plant. A man-made facility would have cost between $6 and $8 billion US, plus between $300 and $500 million annually to maintain. "Instead they paid a bunch of landowners and farm owners in the Hudson river watershed to restore forests … it cost them about $1 billion US," he said, "[and] water rates in New York were 80 per cent lower than they would have been otherwise."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/10/19/un-economy-environment-ecosystem.html#ixzz12qbKbGwV
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