soapboxca

[soapboxca]

Let’s save the planet using stats!

I recently came across a blog post by The Pembina Institute entitled The most important climate numbers you need to know. The post uses data from the National Inventory Report (NIR), which is the account of all GHG emissions from Canada that we submit to the UN annually. Using this data, Pembina highlights two provinces and three sectors: Alberta and Ontario are responsible for 60% of the countries emissions, and Oil and Gas, Transport, and Buildings are responsible for 70% of our emissions. If we want to reduce our emissions, those are the places we need to focus.

So I thought k great start. Let’s revive my blog that’s been dead for 2 years and dig deeper into the numbers to see what we can learn!

BTW this post is v v long so there’s I made a bullet list TLDR at the end. K cool moving on.

1. I Wanna Talk About Transportation

Ok so I know Oil and Gas is the biggest emitter and super important for Canada’s climate strategy, but I want to take that sector out of the conversation for now, and here’s why. We already know the best way to dramatically reduce emissions from producing oil and gas: stop producing oil and gas. That just will not happen as long as it makes money to keep going. Since the industry and emissions are mostly restricted to Alberta, and since almost all of Alberta’s oil is exported, there’s not much to talk about for the rest of Canada other than opposing pipelines.

Once we take Oil and Gas out of the picture it becomes clear that we have to look at Transportation. Here’s a Pareto chart of the remaining emissions by sector:

Transportation is by far the biggest emissions source, and it’s not even close. The next place sector doesn’t even produce half the emissions transportation does.

Transportation is also interesting to talk about because, unlike oil and gas, it directly impacts all of us. Each province and territory has people and things that need to move around. If we dig in we might find that some provinces do it better than others, and find areas where we can learn from each other.

2. Let’s Break It Down Further!

So what’s nice about the NIR is it breaks the numbers down into useful subcategories. Within Transportation, there’s Passenger (moving people), Freight (moving stuff), and Other. Here’s a pie chart of how that breaks down:

With each of passenger and freight transportation accounting for about half of all transportation emissions, clearly we have to tackle both. So let’s look at them one at a time.

3. Moving People Depends On How Many People Need To Move. Shocking.

Ok so you might assume that passenger emissions would be proportional to population; the more people moving around, the more emissions generated. And yeah good assumption. Here’s a graph showing passenger transport emissions from each province against population:

The dots are all pretty damn close to that linear trendline, meaning yeah emissions from passenger transportation in Canada correlate pretty dang strongly with population. While this is quite logical it’s a bit disappoint. To me, this means it’s likely that no province is really leading the pack for passenger vehicle emissions reduction, so there aren’t many lessons to be learned. We’ll probably have to look internationally for best practices we can copy.

What the graph also shows that I didn’t mention before is that you can separate the data into personal vehicles (cars, light trucks, motorcycles) and mass transportation (bus, rail, domestic aviation). When you do this, you see that personal vehicles account for nearly all (91%) of the emissions from passenger transportation. That’s a big deal. To me, that means that if we want to do better on passenger transportation, we have to figure out how to get people to drive less, or at least drive more efficient cars. Improving our mass transportation vehicles by doing things like replacing buses with electric ones is nice and all but unless that translates to people getting out of their cars and onto those buses the impact will be small.

4. BuT wE cAn Go DeEpEr!

I have one more graph for the passenger data that brings up some interesting questions, so stay with me.

Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan (in that order) produce the most emissions from passenger vehicles. These five provinces account for 87% of Canada’s passenger vehicle emissions. Here’s a graph of the per-person emissions from passenger vehicles for these provinces since 1991:

So I know I said all provinces are doing about the same when you control for population, and they are but if you zoom in a few interesting things show up here that raise questions I definitely don’t have answers for.

BC and Ontario match really closely from 1991 to 1998, and then they split up with BC doing better than Ontario. What happened in 1998?

BC and Ontario are now close again because BC’s per-person emissions have been climbing since 2011. What happened in 2011?

Saskatchewan has been steadily increasing its per person passenger emissions with a big increase from 2005 to 2010. During this same time period, the four largest provinces all had per-person emissions decreases. What is going on in Saskatchewan, especially since 2005?

These would be fun research questions!

5. We Also Move Stuff And Things

Oh yeah Freight. So freight is currently responsible for 41% of Canada’s transportation emissions, but this wasn’t always the case. Take a look at this graph comparing emissions from passenger and freight vehicles since 1990:

While passenger vehicle emissions have been increasing with Canada’s population, emissions from freight vehicles have increased twice as quickly. Especially between 1995 and 2012. That’s super interesting! I would love to know why.

We can also graph freight emissions against population for each province the way we did for passenger emissions. Here is that:

Looks a bit different! The dots aren’t sitting nicely on the line anymore. Ontario and Quebec have lower per-person freight emissions while Alberta and Saskatchewan have higher emissions. Perhaps Ontario and Quebec have some best practices to share! Would love to look into that.

6. BuT wE cAn Go DeEpEr (again)!

Ok last graph. Remember how 5 provinces are responsible for 87% of passenger vehicle emissions? Those same 5 provinces produce 88% of freight emissions. So here’s the graph of freight emissions per person from those provinces since 1991:

We already knew that some provinces were doing better than others, but now we can really see some differences! Here are my highlights:

Quebec and Ontario match really closely, like too close to be a coincidence. I know they’re neighbours and ship a lot between each other but there’s gotta be more to it than that.

From 1991 to 1995, the big 4 provinces were pretty flat. Then Alberta yeeted itself up for almost two decades while the other three stayed pretty flat. What happened in Alberta from 1995 to 2014 that didn’t happen in the rest of the country? And how did Alberta start to turn it around in 2014?

Once again, Saskatchewan has been steadily increasing its per person freight emissions with a big increase starting around 2005. What is going on in Saskatchewan, especially since 2005, and is it the same thing that’s driving passenger vehicle emissions?

7. So What Did We Learn Kiddos? (The TLDR)

I had fun I hope you did too. After all these graphs here’s what we got!

Pembina pointed out that:

Alberta and Ontario produce 60% of Canada’s GHG emissions,

Oil and Gas, Transport, and Buildings are responsible for 70% of our emissions

I pointed out that:

Transportation produces almost as much GHG emissions as oil and gas, and more than twice as much as the next most polluting sector.

Emissions among Canadian provinces from passenger vehicles are highly correlated to population, so we probably have to look outside the country for new best practices that will have a major impact.

Personal vehicles produce 9 times as much emissions as buses, trains, and airplanes combined, so we should focus more on getting people out of their cars rather than things like electric buses (though we should do that too).

Emissions from freight vehicles have increased twice as much as those from passenger vehicles since 1990

Alberta and Saskatchewan have the highest per-person emissions from freight vehicles, while Ontario and Quebec have the lowest.

I asked the following questions:

Why did BC suddenly start doing better on per-person passenger vehicle emissions than Ontario in 1998 when they were very similar before then?

Why have BC’s per-person passenger vehicle emissions been climbing since 2011?

Why did Saskatchewan have a big increase in per-person passenger vehicle emissions from 2005 to 2010 while the four largest provinces all had per-person emissions decreases?

Why have Quebec’s and Ontario’s per-person freight emissions been almost identical to each other since 1990, and what are they doing that other provinces can learn from?

Why did Alberta have a sudden increase in per-person freight emissions starting in 1995 that lasted until 2014 while the other largest provinces stayed fairly flat? And how did Alberta start to turn it around in 2014?

Again, why did Saskatchewan have a big increase in per-person freight emissions starting around 2005? Is it the same thing that’s driving passenger vehicle emissions?

So in the end after all that I basically just took a starting point and made a whole bunch of starting points for further research but that’s showbiz (read: research) baby! Anyway if anybody has answers to any of my Qs, do let me know! I luv 2 learn. But seriously if anybody actually reads this whole thing and wants to talk about it I would love to talk about it.

[soapboxca]

Canada has expanded its Syrian sanctions list to include 17 high-ranking individuals in the Assad government and five entities linked to the use of chemical weapons.

They will now be subject to an asset freeze and a prohibition on having any dealings with them.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says this will put additional pressure on President Bashar Assad to stop attacks on his own people.

She says Canada is committed to international efforts to find a way to end the Syrian civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and sparked a refugee crisis.

Freeland says Canada wants Assad’s associates to know their war crimes will not be tolerated and that they will be held accountable.

Canada is contributing more than $1.6 billion over the course of three years toward security, stabilization, and humanitarian and development assistance in response to the crises in Iraq and Syria and their impact on neighbouring countries.

[soapboxca]

Peel police discriminated against a South Asian-Canadian officer on the basis of his race when he was denied the opportunity for promotion into the senior ranks, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has ruled.

Friday’s decision also said that the Peel police force “generally” devalued police work in Peel’s huge South Asian community because it is “associated with the South Asian population.”

Staff Sgt. Baljiwan (BJ) Sandhu, a decorated officer with 28 years of service on the Peel police force, had sought a promotion to inspector in 2013.

“The applicant’s race, ancestry, place of origin, and/or ethnic origin were factors in his failure to be recommended for promotion in February 2013, and as such I find that the applicant has been subject to discrimination because of race,” in violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code, tribunal adjudicator Bruce Best said in the decision.

The tribunal decision refers to many of Sandhu’s commendations and awards for helping solve a wide variety of cases, from homicides to drug trafficking, along with a 2011 newspaper article calling him one of the three most influential South Asian Canadians working in law enforcement, a short list that also included current federal Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

But when Sandhu tried to break into the force’s senior ranks, out of 33 applicants he was one of two who were denied the opportunity to compete for promotion. According to the tribunal decision, the other applicant who was denied, a sergeant, had minimal experience, unlike Sandhu.

The tribunal’s decision, based on evidence presented during hearings over the past two years, states that the two senior officers who denied Sandhu the promotion “devalued the experience he had in diversity and in South Asian intelligence,” and that “the South Asian portfolios were generally devalued in the service” because “they were associated with the South Asian population.” Such policing, the decision found, “was not considered real police work” by the force.

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A toxin was the cause of death for two beluga whales at the Vancouver Aquarium last November, but the exact substance couldn’t be identified.

The aquarium announced the conclusion of a five-month investigation Thursday saying that an investigation also determined the toxin was likely introduced by food, water or through human interference.

The belugas, 21-year-old Qila and her mother, 30-year-old Aurora, died nine days apart last November from what officials said was a mysterious illness.

The aquarium’s head veterinarian, Dr. Martin Haulena, said in an interview that the death of the belugas was devastating for staff and the public.

“It’s like when you lose a close family member and you go through this classic mourning syndrome,” he said, adding that the final results of the investigation have helped bring closure to the incident.

Haulena said the toxin was likely introduced to the whales in the weeks or days leading up to their deaths.

Continue Reading.

[soapboxca]

Rigaud was the hardest hit town as heavy rain battered several parts of southwestern Quebec.

The town declared a state of emergency and urged residents to leave their homes Thursday afternoon when the banks of the Ottawa River overflowed.

But of the approximately 340 residences affected, people living in 140 of them have decided to ignore the evacuation order, some in an attempt to save their belongings.

About 20 Rigaud firefighters and 16 Sûreté du Québec officers are set to visit the occupied residences. They will be checking to see if the residents need help.

Two buses have been deployed to assist those who are incapable of leaving their homes on their own.

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Nearly four people died every day last month from an illicit drug overdose in British Columbia.

Data from the BC Coroners Service says 120 people died in March, the third-highest death toll for a single month on record in the province.

Almost 83 per cent of the victims in the first three months of this year were men, and those between the ages of 30 and 49 accounted for the highest number of dead.

Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe says the powerful opioid fentanyl appears to account for the large increase in overdose deaths since 2012, because overdoses where fentanyl isn’t detected have remained relatively stable.

Lapointe says while harm reduction measures are reversing thousands of overdoses, long-term measures to stem the tide must include education at an early age and evidence-based treatment.

The coroner is part of the B.C. government’s joint task force on overdose response along with other health, community and law enforcement agencies formed after the declaration of a health emergency last year.

[soapboxca]

More than two people each day are dying of opioid overdoses in Ontario, a grim tally that underscores the soaring use and abuse of the potent narcotics, researchers say.

The rate of opioid-related deaths in the province has almost quadrupled over the last 25 years, skyrocketing to 734 in 2015 from 144 in 1991, says a report published Thursday by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network.

“What we also found really interesting was the types of opioids involved in those deaths and how those have changed over time,” said lead author Tara Gomes, a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

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​The federal government wants to delay the implementation of its much-touted new methane regulations by up to three years. Documents obtained by CBC News show the initial federal plan was to phase in tough rules to control methane from the oil and gas industry starting in 2018, with all of the new regulations in place by 2020. But a revised federal timeline shows the regulations would be phased in starting in 2020 and wouldn’t be fully implemented until 2023. The delay is in sharp contrast to the announcement made only a year ago by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who stood on the White House lawn with U.S. President Barack Obama and declared they would jointly tackle methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and reduce them by up to 45 per cent by 2025.

The documents referring to the revised timeline came out of discussions between the government and stakeholders. The new timeline will be incorporated into the proposed methane regulations that are expected to be announced at the end of April.

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[soapboxca]

The Canadian Human Rights Commission says more attention must be paid to the rights of children, who it says are being left behind when it comes to basic rights of dignity, safety, education and family.

The agency said it aimed to shine a light on the problems of children in its 2016 annual report to Parliament, released Wednesday.

The report looked at issues such as child welfare services on First Nations reserves, the rights of transgender children, children with disabilities and migrant children locked up in detention centres alongside their parents as the system processes their cases.

The federal government has been promising a fix for child welfare services on reserves, but First Nations groups say no real progress has been made.

The report said transgender children often report bullying and harassment. Children with disabilities reported similar problems.

It quoted a University of Toronto estimate that between 2010 and 2014, an average of 242 children in Canada were detained annually for immigration reasons. It said this number is low because it does not include children who are themselves not under formal detention orders but are accompanying parents who are.

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[soapboxca]

Alberta is promising to offer the abortion pill free of charge to all women.

The decision from Rachel Notley’s NDP government makes Alberta the second province in Canada to say that it will offer universal access to Mifegymiso, a two-drug medical abortion kit that received an important endorsement from an expert committee on Thursday.

“The Alberta government strongly supports women’s reproductive health options,” Tim Kulak, a spokesman for Alberta Health, said in response to questions from The Globe and Mail. “In light of the [Common Drug Review] Canadian Drug Expert Committee’s positive listing recommendation, Alberta will be taking steps to make this drug available free of charge to all women in Alberta who may need it.”

The province does not yet have a firm date for when public funding will take effect.

Other provincial governments canvassed by The Globe said they need more time to consider public funding for the medication, which became available in Canada in January, usually at a price of $300.

Right now, women have to pay that cost out-of-pocket unless they have a private health insurer that covers the drug.

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[soapboxca]

A committee representing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Toronto police officers is speaking out against an annual grant provided by the city to Pride Toronto, saying it would be “unacceptable” for the government to financially support an event that excludes police.

“We, as city employees, would feel completely devalued and unsupported by our employer should they fund this event at this time,” reads a letter released Wednesday by the Toronto Police Association, signed by the executive committee of Toronto police’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer internal support network.

“How can we possibly feel appreciated by our employer while they sponsor an event that its own employees have been disinvited from participating in as full, equal and active participants in their role as city employees (?),” the committee writes.

The letter, demanding the city withhold the planned grant of $260,000, comes amid mounting controversy over police participation in the upcoming Pride parade.

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TransAlta Corp. is accelerating its strategy to become a source of greener power as it shuts down two coal plants and converts six others to natural gas generation ahead of schedule.

The fast-tracked transition comes as the Calgary-based power company seeks a long-term contract for a proposed pumped hydro project next to its existing Brazeau dam in the Drayton Valley area of central Alberta.

“Those who invest in renewables and then also have competitive capacity to back them up will be among the most competitive electricity generators,” Dawn Farrell, TransAlta’s chief executive, said Thursday at the company’s annual meeting in Calgary.

TransAlta’s moves come as the Alberta government and the agency in charge of the grid are re-designing the province’s power system as Alberta phases out coal generation and seeks more renewable electricity for the grid.

The company has government approval to run some of its generating units until 2029, but Farrell said it made more economic sense to shut or convert them to gas generation than to keep them running on coal, which is more expensive.

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[soapboxca]

The federal government is putting up $1.2 million over two years for more mental-health support in two northern Saskatchewan indigenous communities.

Health Minister Jane Philpott says the money will allow expanded culturally safe mental health and addictions services for the Peter Ballantyne Cree National and Lac La Ronge Indian band.

Philpott made the announcement in La Ronge where six girls between the ages of 10 and 14 from the community and surrounding area committed suicide last fall. She said she met with a group of indigenous leaders from the community including a band councillor who talked about suicide within his own family.

“When you hear these stories and you realize how deeply this affects an entire family and an entire community it is devastating,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The federal government recognizes the seriousness of mental-health issues facing indigenous people and is committed to supporting them, she said.

Philpott said there is no question that root causes of the suicide crisis must be addressed. All the “mental health teams in the world” will not solve the issue in isolation, she added.

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A woman’s decades-long quest for recognition as an Indian ended in victory Thursday, when Ontario’s top court ruled she should be granted status, something the federal government had steadfastly denied her because she didn’t know who her paternal grandfather was.

In its ruling, the Court of Appeal found the government’s refusal to register Lynn Gehl as an Indian, even though she can trace her Indigenous heritage back five generations, was unreasonable.

Gehl, 54, of Peterborough, Ont., was denied registration under complicated Indian Act rules because of a government policy adopted in 1985 that deems a father to be non-Indian if his paternity is unstated or listed as unknown on a child’s birth certificate.

Gehl argued that the 1985 changes — designed to address gender-based discrimination in how Indian status was passed from parent to child — in fact led to new problems for women because it imposed a disproportionate burden on them.

In its ruling, the Appeal Court recognized a woman might have good reasons to keep the identity of her child’s father secret, or may simply not be able to say for sure who he is — circumstances that commonly arise in cases of rape, incest or abuse, or because a man simply disavows his child.

“Proof of identity of a parent is, as a matter of biology and common experience, more difficult for a mother to establish than a father. There can hardly ever be any doubt about maternity, but there may be considerable doubt about paternity,” Justice Robert Sharpe wrote.

“The registrar’s application of the policy to … Gehl’s circumstances failed to take into account the equality-enhancing values and remedial objectives underlying the 1985 amendments and was therefore unreasonable.”

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[soapboxca]

A review of a controversial Crown brief that implied the Mi’kmaq are a conquered people is now complete, but Nova Scotia’s justice minister refused Wednesday to divulge its contents.

“I’ve seen the report and I’m not able to give any information about it,” Diana Whalen said after a cabinet meeting. “It’s got a lot of legal and personnel information in it.”

Whalen initiated the review after Mi’kmaq groups raised objections to the government’s decision to have Crown lawyer Alex Cameron handle a case involving the Indian Brook First Nation.

Late last year, the band argued that a plan by Alton Natural Gas Storage to create storage caverns near Stewiacke poses an environmental risk to the nearby Shubenacadie River.

They objected to the government’s legal brief, which argued the province’s duty to consult on such issues extended only to “unconquered people.”

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The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) says Catherine McKenna has not acted to protect the habitat of the boreal woodland caribou.

The group says that once the habitat for a species has been identified, the Species at Risk Act requires the federal environment minister to identify all unprotected portions of that habitat within 180 days.

The minister must then report every six months on what steps are being taken to protect the habitat.

"Boreal woodland caribou critical habitat was identified and publicly posted in October of 2012," said Quebec's CPAWS executive director, Alain Branchaud.

"Though we know that much of the boreal caribou critical habitat remains unprotected more than four years later, there have been no reports describing what is being done to address any protection gaps."

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The use of segregation in Ontario jails is full of “serious problems,” including improper tracking and monitoring of prisoners, says the province’s ombudsman in a new report.

And Paul Dubé warned that given a lack of accurate information, the case of inmate Adam Capay — who spent four years in solitary in a Thunder Bay jail while awaiting trial on murder charges — “while extreme, is not unique.”

“The ministry’s unreliable records at the time showed he had been in segregation for 50 days — when the real total was 1,591,” Dubé told reporters at Queen’s Park on Thursday. “As far as the ministry was concerned, he was out of sight and out of mind.”

Dubé is calling on the province to clearly define what segregation is, noting that it is inconsistent among correctional facilities, saying it should reflect the conditions inmates are in, and not just simply if they are placed in a “segregation unit.”

Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Marie-France Lalonde said she will address all 32 of the ombudsman’s recommendations, and that some progress is already under way.

“The issues raised by the ombudsman are deeply concerning and completely unacceptable — we must do better,” she said. “I am committed to addressing each of the ombudsman’s recommendations, and reporting back on our progress at six-month intervals until his recommendations are fully implemented.”

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