Category: Travel

As the world reeled from the unexpected outcome of the United Kingdom’s disastrous Brexit vote on June 23, 2016, Jason Kenney notoriously tweeted: “Congratulations to the British people on choosing hope over fear by embracing a confident, sovereign future, open to the world!”ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE FROM TYEE AND SELECT PARTNERSA Home Made for Indigenous Peoples, by Indigenous Peoples NUQO Modular and the Squamish Nation won the Built Environment Award for a housing project that prioritizes vulnerable Sḵwx̱wú7mesh residents. Celebrate Japanese Canadian Arts and Culture in Vancouver This AugustFrom butoh dance to J-pop, Powell Street Festival blends old traditions with modern arts.Well, we all know how that turned out.At the time, the former Stephen Harper government cabinet minister was still being paid to be the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore. He was known, though, to be seriously pondering a run for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party of Alberta, with an eye to bringing the province’s disunited conservative parties together and becoming premier.

Source: Britain’s Right Is Following a Canadian Playbook | The Tyee

Most medical students at Johns Hopkins University will no longer pay tuition thanks to a $1 billion gift from Bloomberg Philanthropies announced Monday.Starting in the fall, the donation will cover full tuition for medical students from families earning less than $300,000. Living expenses and fees will be covered for students from families who earn up to $175,000.Bloomberg Philanthropies said that currently almost two-thirds of all students seeking a doctor of medicine degree from Johns Hopkins qualify for financial aid, and 45% of the current class will also receive living expenses. The school estimates that graduates’ average total loans will decrease from $104,000 currently to $60,279 by 2029.The gift will also increase financial aid for students at the university’s schools of nursing, public health, and other graduate schools.

Source: Most Johns Hopkins medical students will no longer pay tuition thanks to $1B gift | AP News

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.After deliberating more than six months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion US and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said “nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge.”Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.”Today’s decision is wrong on the law and devastating for more than 100,000 opioid victims and their families,” Kavanaugh wrote.”Opioid victims and other future victims of mass torts will suffer greatly in the wake of today’s unfortunate and destabilizing decision.”

Source: U.S. Supreme Court decision rejects Purdue Pharma opioid settlement, leaving victims in limbo | CBC News

If Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives manage to form government after the next election, who would Poilievre likely choose to serve as foreign minister?It’s hard to imagine Poilievre choosing anyone other than Shuvaloy “Shuv” Majumdar – Poilievre’s old college friend and Stephen Harper’s right-hand man.After traveling the world working for an American neoconservative NGO and his close relationship with the Chair of the International Democratic Union, a global organization of right-wing political parties, Majumdar has experience inside the world of international right-wing think tanks, consultancies and NGOs.In a recent campaign video, Poilievre described Majumdar as a “longtime friend,” noting the two first met at the University of Calgary where both MPs were active with the university’s controversial Reform Party campus club.

Source: Canada’s Newest Conservative MP is Stephen Harper’s Right-Hand Man and an International Neocon Operative

This story is part of In the Line of Fire, a series from The Narwhal digging into what is being done to prepare for — and survive — wildfires.

When dark thunderclouds build behind Dzilh Yez (Hudson Bay Mountain) in Smithers, B.C., local weather stations capture essential data. 

An array of instruments record and transmit vital information to a small team of scientists who quickly interpret what it could mean for wildfires. Is the relative humidity low? Is the storm carrying rain? How hot is it? Are the winds off the mountain moving towards town?

If lightning strikes and thunder shudders through the valley, meteorologists with the BC Wildfire Service use the data to predict whether the storm is likely to spark a forest fire — and what that fire might look like on the ground. 

Every morning during the months-long fire season, Matt MacDonald, lead fire weather forecaster with the BC Wildfire Service, examines conditions with his team and hundreds of frontline firefighters.

“We’re doing this whole analysis, essentially putting a story together that we deliver in the way of a fire weather briefing,” MacDonald explained. “We’re continuously updating the forecasts and making adjustments to how we think the weather is going to evolve, and then highlighting the areas of highest concern.”

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Hurried pursuit of a liquefied natural gas windfall in B.C. and Alberta will squander a key component of Canada’s long-term energy security while causing environmental devastation, according to a new report.ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE FROM TYEE AND SELECT PARTNERSLand Awards Spotlight Indigenous Heroes and ProjectsAccolades for First Nations leaders and initiatives at this year’s Real Estate Foundation gala.CONTEST: Win Tickets to Sail on a Tall ShipOne lucky Tyee reader will win two tickets to an exclusive sailing cruise.Scaling up LNG exports from fracking in the Montney basin that straddles the two provinces almost certainly will jeopardize local water resources, species habitat and the country’s struggling effort to meet climate targets.And there could be another cost down the road: “The current policy of exploiting the Montney as fast as possible for LNG exports may create risks that gas will be unavailable for other uses in the future.”This, according to energy analyst David Hughes, author of a comprehensive report called “Drilling into the Montney,” released June 24 by the David Suzuki Foundation.

Source: The Massive Harm of LNG Fracking, Tallied | The Tyee

It’s understandable that Canadians are anxious about the state of American politics this summer. Four months from the U.S. election, President Joe Biden is being hammered by the media while Donald Trump, a convicted felon, is being largely ignored.ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE FROM TYEE AND SELECT PARTNERSExplore Dazzling New Reads to Inspire You This SummerA world of fresh fiction from local talent awaits. Here’s a sneak peak.Inside Canada’s National Action Plan to End Gender-Based ViolenceWith the help of a new survey, a solutions-based org is building better services for survivors.But it’s not Trump we should be worrying about; it’s his supporters. They’re planning a detailed dismantling of the American federal government, leaving the states free to do as they please — especially those ruled by Republicans.The blueprint for this dismantling comes from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. In April 2023 it published a 900-page document called “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” under its Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025.Through its extensive collection of policy proposals, Project 2025 sets out a comprehensive plan to destroy the U.S. federal government as we know it.The report attracted little attention until recently. But its contents are beginning to be understood — enough for Donald Trump to say he knows nothing about Project 2025 and thinks some of its ideas are “ridiculous” and “abysmal,” but wishes it luck anyway.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in CanadaWith so many Trump veterans among the report’s authors, it’s highly unlikely that he’s as ignorant of the content as he claims. And it’s very likely that Project 2025 is a good preview of a second Trump administration — a wish list, but an achievable one.After all, a similar report by the Heritage Foundation in 1980 saw 60 per cent of its proposals enacted by the Ronald Reagan administration.A good chapter-by-chapter analysis is available from Stop the Coup 2025. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, is beginning to get some media attention, and we can expect plenty of criticism of Project 2025 as the U.S. election comes near.Ignoring a key reason for public educationChapter 11 on education deserves extra attention because it shows how Christian white nationalists, calling themselves “conservatives,” intend to roll back American education at least to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that declared school segregation to be constitutional.More likely, it would dismantle the entire American public education system, which dates back two centuries, to the founding of the first free public high school in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1820.The chapter begins by ignoring a key reason for American public education: it functions as a public service to equip children to grow up to become effective co-proprietors of a democratic nation. Instead, Project 2025 frames education as just another consumer choice, like deciding which SUV to buy.Citing economist Milton Friedman, the authors argue for a system “wherein education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.”Education, under Project 2025, would become a concern of state and local governments only, just as it had been until 70 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ended “separate but equal” public-school segregation.Back then, it was already clear that Black schools were far from equal; it soon became clear that many Black students were behind their new white classmates. In many parts of the American South, private whites-only schools sprang up, leaving local public schools effectively re-segregated and underfunded.That was a major reason for the creation of the federal Department of Education in the 1970s: to provide under-resourced public schools with the money and expertise enjoyed by private and religious schools.Calls for an ‘anti-woke’ education systemTo get a detailed sense of what Project 2025 would do to education, I recommend Stop the Coup 2025’s Chapter 11 summary. But some measures deserve mention here.They include turning federal education funds over to the respective states to distribute as they please. This could include “education savings accounts,” enabling parents to pay to send their children to any school they wish, including faith-based schools, charter schools or, presumably, home-schooling.Post-secondary education would emphasize apprenticeships and technical career programs, rather than “higher education establishments captured by woke ‘diversicrats.’”Accreditation programs, which now ensure college and university academic quality, would be loosened. Student loan forgiveness would be dropped.Students would be defined as male or female depending on their biological sex recognized at birth. And a great deal of fuss would be made over non-binary and trans students, none of it helping them.R

Source: Inside the Twisted Fantasy Project of a New America | The Tyee

Twenty-one years after the spotted owl was listed as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, on Thursday the federal government released a proposed recovery strategy identifying critical habitat for the old-growth forest dependent owl. The strategy reinstates about 200,000 hectares of the owl’s critical habitat in southwest B.C. that was quietly erased from maps in a draft recovery strategy last year, following consultations with the B.C. government. Federal scientists identified the critical habitat as necessary for the owl’s recovery and survival. The updated recovery strategy includes an additional 200,000 hectares of spotted owl critical habitat that was not erased from maps — for a total of 416,258 hectares of critical habitat on federal and non-federal lands.The environmental law charity Ecojustice, non-profit conservation group the Wilderness Committee and Spô’zêm First Nation hailed the updated recovery strategy as a “game-changer for conservation efforts” for the spotted owl and a “historic win.” “Our ancestors taught us the spotted owl is our messenger between this world and the spirit world and how they speak to us, and this new recovery strategy gives them a chance at survival,” Spô’zêm First Nation Chief James Hobart said in a statement. “It’s regrettable how much time has passed in this process and how many owls were lost.” But the new draft strategy shows the federal government is listening, Hobart told The Narwhal. “It means that the government is taking a stronger position with species at risk than they have in the past.”“Is it enough? Well, we’ll see,” he said.

Source: Feds propose to protect critical spotted owl habitat size of 1,000 Stanley Parks | The Narwhal