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AFN chief wants the Prime Minister to slow down

AFN chief wants the Prime Minister to slow down

Globe and Mail4 hours ago

On Friday, the Liberals' controversial Bill C-5 was passed by the House of Commons — it's the only legislation to pass, ahead of Parliament rising for the summer.
Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, aims to remove barriers to interprovincial trade, fulfilling Prime Minister Mark Carney's promise to do so by Canada Day. But the legislation would also give Carney's cabinet the power to quickly approve big industrial projects deemed to be 'in the national interest,' exempting them from some federal laws.
Carney has said the legislation will not weaken the government's duty to consult Indigenous rights-holders, but many are worried.
The Decibel is joined by Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak. She represents more than 630 First Nations and has been voicing concern over the bill. She'll walk us through how First Nations are responding and whether it could spark another Idle No More movement this summer.
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com

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Alberta blew past gas flaring ceiling in 2024 as province eliminates limit: Reuters exclusive
Alberta blew past gas flaring ceiling in 2024 as province eliminates limit: Reuters exclusive

CTV News

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  • CTV News

Alberta blew past gas flaring ceiling in 2024 as province eliminates limit: Reuters exclusive

Energy producers in Alberta, Canada's top oil-producing province, blew past the province's self-imposed limit on annual natural gas flaring in 2024 for a second year in a row, Reuters calculations show. Late last week, Alberta's energy regulator said it was ending the limit on flaring. Reuters is the first to report the change, which the regulator quietly published in a bulletin on its website. On Monday, the regulator confirmed the removal of the limit and said it was responding to direction from the provincial government. Oil production is booming in Canada, the world's No. 4 producer, which has been trying to diversify exports away from the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office and began imposing tariffs on many Canadian exports. Canadian energy companies hope Prime Minister Mark Carney will be more accommodative to the industry than his predecessor Justin Trudeau. A tally by Reuters of Alberta Energy Regulator data shows oil and gas producers in the province flared approximately 912.7 million cubic meters of natural gas in 2024, exceeding the annual provincial limit of 670 million cubic meters by 36%. The province had exceeded the limit in 2023, with regulatory data showing total annual flare volumes of 753 million cubic meters that year. Flaring is the practice of burning off the excess natural gas associated with oil production. If the volumes of gas byproduct are small, and there are no pipelines nearby to transport the gas, companies often choose for economic reasons to dispose of it through flaring instead of capturing it and storing it. Eliminating the practice would cut at least 381 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in environmentally harmful emissions released into the atmosphere, the World Bank has said. Ryan Fournier, spokesperson for Alberta's Environment Minister Rebecca Shulz, said in an email that the province launched a review of its flare gas policy after the oil and gas industry exceeded the limit for the first time in 2023. He said the province determined the 20-year-old flaring limit no longer served as an effective policy for reducing flaring and the ceiling did not account for increased oil production in the province or new emissions-reduction strategies. The federal energy and environment ministries did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Alberta's crude oil production set an all-time record in 2024 at 1.5 billion barrels, a 4.5% increase over 2023. A 2022 report by the Alberta Energy Regulator showed flaring volumes in the province have been increasing since 2016. A 2024 report by the World Bank — which has been advocating for a global end to the practice of routine flaring by 2030 — found that flaring by oil and gas companies worldwide rose 7% in 2023 even as crude oil production rose only 1% over the same time. While flaring is better for the environment than some other methods of gas disposal such as venting, it still releases a variety of byproducts and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as well as black soot which can be harmful to human health, said Amanda Bryant, senior oil and gas analyst for the clean energy think-tank the Pembina Institute. She said companies have alternatives available to them, such as investing in equipment that can be used to capture flare gases at site and redirect them back into production for use as fuel. 'Getting rid of the rule doesn't get rid of the problem,' Bryant said in an interview. 'The role of a regulator really needs to be to prevent harmful impacts of industry and to ensure that our resources are developed responsibly.' (Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Calgary; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and David Gregorio)

Israel killed at least 14 scientists in an unprecedented attack on Iran's nuclear know-how
Israel killed at least 14 scientists in an unprecedented attack on Iran's nuclear know-how

Winnipeg Free Press

time41 minutes ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

Israel killed at least 14 scientists in an unprecedented attack on Iran's nuclear know-how

PARIS (AP) — Israel's tally of the war damage it wrought on Iran includes the targeted killings of at least 14 scientists, an unprecedented attack on the brains behind Iran's nuclear program that outside experts say can only set it back, not stop it. In an interview with The Associated Press, Israel's ambassador to France said the killings will make it 'almost' impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure and material may have survived nearly two weeks of Israeli airstrikes and massive bunker-busting bombs dropped by U.S. stealth bombers. 'The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the program by a number of years, by quite a number of years,' Ambassador Joshua Zarka said. But nuclear analysts say Iran has other scientists who can take their place. European governments say that military force alone cannot eradicate Iran's nuclear know-how, which is why they want a negotiated solution to put concerns about the Iranian program to rest. 'Strikes cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has acquired over several decades, nor any regime ambition to deploy that knowledge to build a nuclear weapon,' U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy told lawmakers in the House of Commons. Here's a closer look at the killings: Chemists, physicists, engineers among those killed Zarka told AP that Israeli strikes killed at least 14 physicists and nuclear engineers, top Iranian scientific leaders who 'basically had everything in their mind.' They were killed 'not because of the fact that they knew physics, but because of the fight that they were personally involved in, the creation and the fabrication and the production of (a) nuclear weapon,' he said. Nine of them were killed in Israel's opening wave of attacks on June 13, the Israeli military said. It said they 'possessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons' and included specialists in chemistry, materials and explosives as well as physicists. Targeted killings meant to discourage would-be successors Experts say that decades of Iranian work on nuclear energy — and, Western powers allege, nuclear weapons — has given the country reserves of know-how and scientists who could continue any work toward building warheads to fit on Iran's ballistic missiles. 'Blueprints will be around and, you know, the next generation of Ph.D. students will be able to figure it out,' said Mark Fitzpatrick, who specialized in nuclear non-proliferation as a former U.S. diplomat. Bombing nuclear facilities 'or killing the people will set it back some period of time. Doing both will set it back further, but it will be reconstituted.' 'They have substitutes in maybe the next league down, and they're not as highly qualified, but they will get the job done eventually,' said Fitzpatrick, now an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank. How quickly nuclear work could resume will in part depend on whether Israeli and U.S. strikes destroyed Iran's stock of enriched uranium and equipment needed to make it sufficiently potent for possible weapons use. 'The key element is the material. So once you have the material, then the rest is reasonably well-known,' said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst who specializes in Russia's nuclear arsenal. He said killing scientists may have been intended 'to scare people so they don't go work on these programs.' 'Then the questions are, 'Where do you stop?' I mean you start killing, like, students who study physics?' he asked. 'This is a very slippery slope.' The Israeli ambassador said: 'I do think that people that will be asked to be part of a future nuclear weapon program in Iran will think twice about it.' Previous attacks on scientists Israel has previously long been suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists but didn't claim responsibility as it did this time. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for killing its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled machine gun. 'It delayed the program but they still have a program. So it doesn't work,' said Paris-based analyst Lova Rinel, with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank. 'It's more symbolic than strategic.' Without saying that Israel killed Fakhrizadeh, the Israeli ambassador said 'Iran would have had a bomb a long time ago' were it not for repeated setbacks to its nuclear program — some of which Iran attributed to Israeli sabotage. 'They have not reached the bomb yet,' Zarka said. 'Every one of these accidents has postponed a little bit the program.' A legally grey area International humanitarian law bans the intentional killing of civilians and non-combatants. But legal scholars say those restrictions might not apply to nuclear scientists if they were part of the Iranian armed forces or directly participating in hostilities. 'My own take: These scientists were working for a rogue regime that has consistently called for the elimination of Israel, helping it to develop weapons that will allow that threat to take place. As such, they are legitimate targets,' said Steven R. David, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He said Nazi German and Japanese leaders who fought Allied nations during World War II 'would not have hesitated to kill the scientists working on the Manhattan Project' that fathered the world's first atomic weapons. Laurie Blank, a specialist in humanitarian law at Emory Law School, said it's too early to say whether Israel's decapitation campaign was legal. 'As external observers, we don't have all the relevant facts about the nature of the scientists' role and activities or the intelligence that Israel has,' she said by email to AP. 'As a result, it is not possible to make any definitive conclusions.' Zarka, the ambassador, distinguished between civilian nuclear research and the scientists targeted by Israel. 'It's one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what is uranium,' he said. But turning uranium into warheads that fit onto missiles is 'not that simple,' he said. 'These people had the know-how of doing it, and were developing the know-how of doing it further. And this is why they were eliminated.' ___ Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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