FROLITICKS

Satirical commentary on Canadian and American current political issues

Sep 28

Prohibited ‘Assault-Style’ Weapons Have No Place in Canadian Society

by bcurry

On December 6, 1989, a man entered a mechanical engineering classroom at Montreal’s École Polytechnique armed with a semi-automatic weapon.  After separating the women from the men, he opened fire on the women while screaming, “You are all feminists.”  Fourteen young women were murdered, and 13 other people were seriously wounded.  The shooter then turned the gun on himself.  After the events of that tragic December, the Coalition for Gun Control was formed in Canada.  Their efforts contributed to the 1995 adoption of Bill C-68, the federal firearm control legislation.  Its stipulations included mandatory registration of all firearms and licensing for firearm owners; a national registry for all weapons; background checks; and verification processes and controls on ammunition sales.

On April 18–19, 2020, a gunman committed multiple shootings in the province of Nova Scotia, killing 22 people and injuring three others before he was shot and killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).  Two assault-style weapons were used in shootings, although it appears that they were not legally acquired and the gunman was known to police.  Subsequently and effective immediately in May 2020, the federal government introduced legislation to ban a total of 1,500 assault-style firearms for use, sale, import or transport in Canada.  It includes a two-year amnesty period for current owners.  Eventually, there will also be a buyback program, but those details were still being worked out.

This September, in an obvious political move, the provincial government of Alberta announced steps to oppose federal firearms prohibition legislation and the potential seizure of thousands of assault-style weapons.  It intends to ask the RCMP not to take part in the confiscation of these weapons.  Alberta’s chief firearms officer proclaimed: “The planned confiscations represent a fatal approach to reducing violence in Canadian society and are unwarranted and unacceptable infringements on the property rights and personal freedoms of Albertans.”

A survey, conducted in May 2020 exclusively for Global News, found that 52 percent of Canadians polled, living in nine major centres, agree that all types of guns should be made illegal.  The polling was completed between March 24 and April 2, before the above noted mass shooting happened in Nova Scotia.  The poll by the Angus-Reid Institute showed about 80 percent of Canadians also support a ban on “assault weapons.”  Canada is not the only country to ban assault-style weapons.  In March 2019, New Zealand banned all military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles after a deadly shooting killed more than 50 people. 

Interestingly, there is no constitutional right to bear arms as in the U.S.  Indeed, one can Make a case that it is a weak argument in Canada that the banning of such weapons is an infringement on someone’s rights and personal freedoms.  I would argue that, just as owning and driving a motor vehicle, owning a gun is a privilege requiring training in its use, registration and other prescribed requirements for licensed users as regulated by law.  Just as there are restrictions on the ownership and use of a motor vehicle and one’s driving license, so must there be restrictions on acquiring certain types of guns as a matter of public safety.  No one should be surprised that after the Nova Scotia shootings some sort of inevitable government gun control action would occur, especially as the vast majority of Canadians appear to be in support of such initiatives.  During the 2019 federal election campaign Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted that: “These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time”.

Although I do not own a gun, like many Canadians I believe strongly that the possession of either handguns or military-style semi-automatic weapons is not a fundamental right.  The fewer these weapons are around and accessible, the better off and safer we will all be.  One only has to look at the American tragic situation involving an increasing number of mass shootings using assault-style weapons every year, including those in schools, malls and workplaces.  Canada should do everything possible to avoid going down the same road!

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Sep 19

We Need to Adjust to Climate Change Now, Not Later

by bcurry

There are very few areas that aren’t affected by the consequences of climate change.  There are the number of extreme weather events that cause immediate damage and casualties, ranging from tornados and hurricanes to extreme heat and drought conditions.  Whether we can adjust to dealing with their consequences is a major question on many people’s minds, including mine.  Trying to slow up climate change appears to be a long-term goal.  This includes the introduction of new technologies to reduce the use of fossil fuels to heat and cool our homes, produce our electricity and transport people and goods.  Some refer to the increased interest in electric vehicles and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and thermodynamics — all long-term in nature.  While this is all good and dandy, there appears to be a greater need for conservation and adjustment efforts on the part of all of us, especially in the short-term.

Increasingly, governments are being faced today with emerging issues resulting from the direct and indirect impacts on their citizens.  For example, it has been pointed out that Congress has helped cover Americans’ winter heating costs for decades.  But sweltering summers have made Americans’ energy bills soar, straining this key national safety net.  Under recent extreme heat events, Americans have died.  California has even recently introduced a new alert system designed to warn Californians of extreme heat forecasts.  In addition, these events place a great strain of the electricity infrastructure, forcing authorities to place embargos on the use of electricity, including that for air conditioning, during certain periods.  A significant proportion of the population, including the homeless, need to have access to cooling areas so as to avoid negative health impacts.  These health impacts in turn place a further burden on already strained health care facilities and emergency services.

The recent flooding of the Pearl River resulted in a temporary decrease in water production across the city of Jackson, the capital city of Mississippi.  According to state and local officials, the water system is failing.  Boil water alerts have become common place and can last for weeks.  Infrastructure from roads to water treatment is greatly in need of repair and many cases replacement.  During extreme heat events, roadways have even been known to buckle.  Bridges have been compromised and damaged due to flooding of local tributaries as a result of extreme rain events.  This in turn can cut communities off from emergency and support services, including access routes for supplies and people.  People are losing their homes.  Serious consideration must be given now to where homes are being constructed in known flood plains.

Of course, major droughts can lead to wildfires in many regions of the country, threatening towns, homes and agricultural lands.  Wildfires are unplanned and uncontrolled fires in natural areas, like forests and grasslands.  For example, the province of British Columbia (B.C.) has always experienced wildfires, but none as bad in recent years.  Evacuations of affected towns have become increasingly required.  One can’t forget the “out of control” wildfire that destroyed much of Lytton, B.C. during the summer of 2021.  Longer, hotter summers lead to more droughts and a longer wildfire season.  It is hoped that funding partnerships and community-led work, such as Firesmart, will reduce wildfire risks in B.C.  B.C. is also using climate information to set goals for resource management and to increase the resiliency of its forests.  Serious consideration must be given as to where homes are located in areas dominated by forests in particular, especially where access fire roads are few and far between.

In the area of conservation, there are a number of things that individuals and families can do.  For example, air conditioners (AC) and electric fans now account for about 10 % of electrical energy consumption all over the world.  Air conditioning can account for a whopping 60 to 70 percent of electrical power demand during peak hours.  Currently, there are companies that are in the process of developing new air conditioning technologies, thereby reducing the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are greenhouse gases.  Hopefully, these ACs will become affordable and available in the near future.  Apparently, they could be two to three times more productive than the most common ACs on the current market.  In the meantime, people should now use their ACs in a restrained and sensible manner.

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Sep 16

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis – Treating People Like Garbage

by bcurry

It’s an old phenomenon, municipalities with full landfills end up transporting their garbage — although always under contract — to other jurisdictions.  Such was the case years ago when Toronto decided to truck its garbage all the way to Michigan state.  After all, locally no one wanted a landfill in their backyard.  In very recent years, there have been examples of provinces or states doing the same thing, but this time with human beings.

In Canada, this happened when former Alberta premier Ralph Klein cut welfare rates in the 1990s and offered one-way bus tickets to welfare recipients to travel to sunny British Columbia (B.C.).  A similar incident occurred in 2016 in Saskatchewan when two young homeless First Nations men were each given one-way bus tickets by Social Services from North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to Vancouver and Victoria, B.C.  Needless-to-say, the B.C. provincial and municipal governments were not too happy about any other jurisdictions’ policies to simply dump people when their own support services were already under severe stress.

Now we have Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, whose administration flew, on Florida taxpayers dime, two planes of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.  Apparently, they were not flown out of Florida but the flights actually originated in Texas.  Massachusetts of course is currently a Democratic-run state.  DeSantis said that Florida — not a sanctuary state — was sending migrants to Democrat-led states in response to their previous “virtue signaling” by declaring themselves sanctuary jurisdictions during former President Donald Trump’s years in office.  Around the same time, roughly 100 migrants aboard two buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, were dropped off in Washington, D.C. 

However, what about the impact on those migrants?  No one expected to land in Martha’s Vineyard, having reportedly been told they were going to Boston.  There is even some suggestion that, if the migrants were lured on to the plane under false pretences then it could have been illegal to do so.  Imagine, landing on a small offshore island with a population of about 20,000 people, an island accessible only by air and sea.  Obviously, the local authorities had few resources to care for these migrants.  As a result, Massachusetts authorities had to move the migrants voluntarily from Martha’s Vineyard to a military base in Cape Cod so they could find shelter and chart their next steps.  President Joe Biden responded, and rightly so, that the administration has a process in place to accommodate migrants at the border and Republicans shouldn’t interfere with such obvious “political stunts.”  The President further stated that “Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props. What they’re doing is simply wrong.”

As in Canada, any influx of migrants is covered under federal laws and the federal jurisdiction should be responsible for enforcing those laws.  Canadian federal authorities are expected to coordinate settlement programs with the provinces, often funded by the federal government, that are designed to accommodate the arrival of and application by migrants or refugees as part of the process used to facilitate their landed status.  This process was used to deal with a significant number of migrants who entered Canada from the U.S. during the Trump administration, fearing their deportation in the U.S. back to their countries of origin at the time.

But what of the extreme confusion, disorientation and trepidation that such migrants must feel when they are suddenly transported to other jurisdictions without due process under the law or a clear awareness of the circumstances.  In the case of those Venezuelan migrants who had endured harsh and dangerous conditions to arrive in the U.S., one can only imagine how the Congressional Hispanic Caucus reacted.  Just as past inappropriate interjurisdictional policies were condemned in Canada, so must Americans condemn these inhumane policies which leave localities scrambling to secure resources in support of the normal needs of human beings.  I must say that I’m not surprised that Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott stooped so low as to implement such inhumane policies in order to gain some sort of political brownie points.  After all, we’re not dealing with garbage here!

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Sep 13

New Therapies Emerge To Deal With Climate Anxiety Symptoms

by bcurry

When I was a voluntary mentor to high school students as part of a community-based program, among the topics that young people wanted to discuss was that of climate change.  It was a topic for years that could not be avoided in light of existing discussion sites on the Internet and social media.  As we are seeing more and more severe weather events and their impact on people across the globe, but more importantly right here in North America, one cannot but help to wonder what the psychological impact is on youth.  Interestingly enough, there is now an emerging psychology field specializing in treating what has become referred to as ‘climate stress’ or ‘eco-anxiety’.

Recently, studies have indicated that eco-anxiety is particularly prevalent among college students.  For this reason, a number of college campuses have introduced group counselling sessions and individual therapy to allow students to talk through fears and frustrations of a world impacted by climate change.  However, it is recognized that many therapists and counsellors aren’t trained to provide students with this specific type of support, in part because of a lack of research about climate stress as a distinct phenomenon.  In addition, whether or not a therapist or counsellor believes in climate change, treating such anxiety must be done as in the case of any other anxieties.  Many leaders in mental health maintain that anxiety over climate change is no different, clinically, from anxiety caused by other societal threats, like terrorism or school shootings.  Interestingly, professional certification programs in climate psychology have recently begun to appear.  According to The New York Times, a group called the Climate Psychology Alliance now provides an online directory of climate-aware therapists.

While some will question the legitimacy of eco-anxiety, experts have come to recognize the range of feelings someone may have in response to climate change.  They point out that climate stress therapy is an effort to validate these emotions, help clients process their responses to climate change and provide coping strategies.  As for the causes of eco-anxiety, many individuals perceive that they are very real.  In January 2022, the publication Lancet in a 10-country survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 reportedly found startling rates of pessimism. Forty-five percent of respondents said worry about climate negatively affected their daily life. Three-quarters said they believed “the future is frightening,” and 56 percent said “humanity is doomed.”

There is little doubt in my mind that young people, in particular, are increasingly expressing concerns about the potential impacts of climate change on their lives.  For this reason, they need to be informed and educated about the issue.  Many of its elements are complicated and not always very evident in their localities.  Understanding why they feel the way they feel is very important.  They need avenues in which to express their trepidations and fears.  Understandably, some will push to change familial and peer consumption and conservation patterns.  They may need our help, whether in schools or in communities.  Parents have to be aware of any symptoms that may be related to eco-anxiety.  Moreover, they must appreciate that this anxiety is real.  The more awareness by parents about community-based resources and accessible health-based information can prove to be invaluable. 

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Sep 9

Forecasts For Canada’s Population Growth By 2041 Reveal Interesting Trends

by bcurry

Today, Statistics Canada’s Centre for Demography released a new set of detailed demographic projections to 2041 on immigration and ethnocultural diversity for Canada and its regions.  The release notes that these new projections reflect the targets of the 2022–2024 Immigration Levels Plan released by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in February 2022, as well as the most recent demographic developments, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  What’s really of interest is the projected composition of Canada’s population and where the majority of people will be living.

The projections note that by 2041 Canada’s population will reach 47.7 million, up from 14.4 million in 2016.  More importantly, about 25 million of the future population will be immigrants or the children of immigrants born in Canada, accounting for 52.4% of the total population.  This compares to 40.0% of the total Canadian population in 2016.  The Canadian population in 2041 is projected to include 9.9 million to 13.9 million people born in Asia or Africa, depending on the projection scenario.  In 2041, about 2 in 5 Canadians will be part of a racialized group.  The concept of “racialized” population is derived directly from the “visible minority group” variable and therefore refers to the persons belonging to a visible minority group.  In terms of location in 2041, the vast majority of the immigrant population would continue to live one of Canada’s 36 census metropolitan areas (CMA), with Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver remaining the three primary areas of residence of immigrants.

Needless-to-say, all of these projections have massive implications for socioeconomic policies among the three levels of government: federal, provincial and municipal.  Canada today is recognized as multicultural society, increasingly having to apply a host of policies in the next two decades to deal with ethnocentricity, diversity, education, systemic racism, immigration, employment, etc., etc., to name a few.  Different regions and localities will incur diverse impacts, especially when it comes to resettlement and labour markets.  It can be expected that many of the racialized population will represent skilled labour and entrepreneurial capabilities.  One can expect that there will be a good deal of competition among localities and provinces to attract and accommodate skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs.  In addition, we anticipate that our aging population, those 65 and older, will continue to grow, which obviously will have a significant impact on health care resources.  A good proportion of the racialized population within the total population is expected to be younger than the population as a whole.  Future growth in the Canadian economy will greatly depend on this youth segment of the population, and governments will have to facilitate the addition of foreign labour to the labour market through efficient and effective settlement policies.

In general, both Canadian and American experts have long predicted future increased multicultural elements in both societies.  What the Statistics Canada report highlights is the fact that the projected trends, especially for the racialized population, will greatly increase and accelerate in the next couple of decades at a faster rate than previously forecast.  In order for both countries to benefit fully from these trends, governments must first recognize the projected population changes and their future impacts.  Like everything else, there will be those in society who will oppose such trends, which, unless many things change, appear to be inevitable.  The fact is that if we accept these projections, than we must begin now to develop and adjust many of our socioeconomic policies.  Not to do so would be somewhat catastrophic and regressive!

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Sep 5

Shouldn’t We Pay Health Care and Education Workers More Because of the Valuable Work They Do?

by bcurry

If there’s one thing to take from the pandemic is that workers in the health care sector and in our schools merit more pay than they currently have.  What could be more important than ensuring that our health and the education of our children meet today’s standards as modern industrialized countries?  Yet, the pandemic and an aging population have resulted in tens of thousands of teachers and health care workers to leave or retire from their profession.  The numbers don’t lie.  Take for example in the U.S., where recent statistics highlight that there is a massive teacher shortage, particularly severe in several states and many localities.  In Canada, the Canadian Nurses Association in a 2009 report predicted that Canada could see a shortage of 60,000 full-time nurses by 2022.  The estimate is based on a number of factors, including retirement projections, but of course doesn’t account for the serious impacts of the pandemic.

What is more disconcerting is the fact that within the teacher shortage, there are certain disciplines which are critical to developing a new labour force in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.  Up until now, in both Canada and the U.S. immigrants continue to be a major source of STEM labour.  In Canada, adult immigrants accounted for 44% of all individuals aged 25 to 64 with a university degree in a STEM field in 2016, compared with 24% in the United States.  Can we continue to rely on immigrants to fill those job vacancies in high tech industries?  The teaching profession has grappled with a labour supply issue in STEM for years.  For example, according to a March 2022 report by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, over the last decade, the number of teaching degrees and certificates conferred fell 27 percent in science and mathematics education.

On top of which, there are places that serve economically disadvantaged students where they are more likely to have vacant positions.  In lower income communities and in rural areas, school boards have a hard time attracting teachers to their schools.  We know certain types of teachers are also hard to attract, in particular STEM teachers and special education teachers.  As for special education teachers, the demand outpaces the supply.  Parents with autistic children or those with learning disabilities have complained, and rightly so, for a number of years about the lack of special education support in schools.  While something has to be done to encourage students enrolled in teachers’ colleges to become special education teachers, better pay and working conditions need to be promoted and implemented.

One of the things the pandemic has really shown the public is the value that nurses particularly bring to the health system.  As a result, I would hope that people recognize the importance that nurses play in making sure we all have access to care.  Interestingly, the media coverage during the pandemic did highlight the courageous acts by and commitment of nurses.  As a result, nursing colleges have seen a recent increase in applications within both countries.  However, burnout, wage competition with other sectors and early retirement has contributed to the current nursing shortage in the short-term.  When compared to health care workers in general, nurses continue to be underpaid given the extensive degree of training and responsibilities they have.

As a modern society, one needs to take a close look at where our priorities lie.  Everyone is touched by how well our health care and education systems work or don’t work.  Following the consequences of the pandemic for our children and aging population, we need to get our priorities straight.  This takes political and societal will and commitment to resolve these current specific worker shortage issues.  This is not something that technology alone can resolve.  These are people issues, requiring people solutions.  Unfortunately, up until now, most jurisdictions have been unable or unwilling to adequately address these immediate and long-term challenges.  I predict that within the next year, one will see this issue becoming increasingly a concern in both countries.

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