Latest news with #Peoples
Cision Canada
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Cision Canada
Statement - Statement from the Minister of Public Safety on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons Français
OTTAWA, ON, /CNW/ - Today, the Honourable Gary Anandasangaree, Minister of Public Safety, issued the following statement: "Today, on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, Canada stands with countries across the globe in taking action against one of the most appalling and rapidly evolving forms of organized crime: human trafficking. The 2025 theme, " Human trafficking is an organized crime," highlights the critical role of law enforcement and the criminal justice system in dismantling trafficking networks, while prioritizing a victim-centred approach. This year's theme comes at a time when the role of organized criminal networks in human trafficking and other forms of illegal smuggling is top of mind for our government. We know that human trafficking is often deeply intertwined with organized criminal networks that exploit people not just for profit, but as tools to carry out a range of criminal activities. Through our $1.3-billion Border Plan and the strengthened provisions proposed in our Strong Borders Act, we're taking concrete action to target the broader criminal infrastructure that enables and profits from this exploitation. The Government has committed to making bail harder to get for repeat offenders charged with serious crimes, including human trafficking. At the same time, we're also renewing the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking, informed by extensive engagement with Survivors, Indigenous Peoples, law enforcement, front-line service providers, and civil society. I invite you to read our National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking 2023-2025 Report to learn more. To guide this work, Jennifer Richardson has been appointed as Chief Advisor to Combat Human Trafficking, offering strategic advice and raising awareness both at home and abroad. I encourage you to read her statement, which outlines her vision for strengthening Canada's response. Through our national public education campaign, we continue to educate Canadians on the signs of human trafficking and how to safely report suspected cases. To every Survivor, your voice matters. On this day of awareness, we hear you, we stand with you, and we remain committed to building a safer society where everyone can live free from exploitation." Stay connected
Canada News.Net
21 hours ago
- Science
- Canada News.Net
Ontario's forest management is falling short on key sustainability test
Share article Print article Forest degradation is increasingly recognized as a major global threat. Such degradation refers to the gradual erosion of a forest's ability to store carbon, support biodiversity and sustain livelihoods, including those of Indigenous Peoples. International frameworks such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change now address degradation alongside deforestation. While tropical forests have long been the focus, attention is also turning to temperate and boreal forests, where forest management is widespread and the potential for degradation is growing. Some scientists have argued that if forest management is designed to be "ecologically sustainable," then there should be little concern about degradation. But is this principle being upheld in practice? Our recent study in Ontario suggests otherwise. A widely used strategy to support ecological sustainability is to emulate natural disturbances; that is, to design human-caused disturbances so they fall within the range of variation observed in nature. The ecological theory behind this approach is that species are adapted to cope with, or even benefit from, natural disturbances. In Canada's managed boreal forests, for example, harvesting is explicitly designed to mimic natural fires, both in individual cutblocks and across the broader landscape. In fact, this principle is enshrined in Ontario's 1994 Crown Forest Sustainability Act that states: "The long-term health and vigour of Crown forests should be provided for by using forest emulates natural disturbances and landscape patterns..." The ecological sustainability of forest management is not a given: it is a hypothesis, and like any hypothesis, it must be tested. Are we actually managing forests in ecologically sustainable ways, or are we witnessing gradual forest degradation? Our study examined the state of a 7.9 million hectare area of boreal forest in northeastern Ontario from 2012 to 2021 to test whether the provincial management regime was emulating natural disturbances, as required by law, or was instead prioritizing timber harvesting. We used three indicators: 1) The rate at which forest was disturbed (including harvesting and fire). 2) The amount of relatively old forest (greater than 100 years old). 3) Modelled habitat for two species that have been used as indicators of sustainability: America marten and boreal caribou. Our research did not find evidence that current practices in northeastern Ontario are emulating natural disturbances across the boreal landscape. Rather, the observed disturbance patterns appear to reflect strategies primarily focused on timber harvesting priorities. A particular risk for boreal forests is a focus on timber production and economic returns over ecological goals. Such an approach is fundamentally at odds with the idea of emulating nature. In particular, forests older than 100 years old have high ecological value in natural systems. They keep large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and provide habitat for myriad species. But if one is prioritizing timber, they are viewed as wasteful because they do not produce timber as rapidly as younger forests and are often targeted for removal. In that perspective, they are labelled "decadent." We found that the amount of forest disturbed per year was often higher than expected under natural fire regimes and, in some coniferous forest types, even exceeded the rates expected under a strategy that prioritized timber harvesting. Relatively old forests were also much rarer than in natural landscapes: only 22 per cent of the forest in the study area was more than 100 years old compared to an average of 54 per cent in natural landscapes. This amount was lower than even the most conservative threshold of natural variability. Habitats for marten and caribou were similarly degraded and fragmented. Marten habitat covered just 36 per cent of the study landscape, compared to 76 per cent in a reconstructed natural landscape. For boreal caribou, habitat was even more compromised, covering only four per cent of the study area compared to 53 per cent in the natural landscape. Strikingly, for caribou, levels of habitat disturbance - including disturbances from harvesting, fire and roads - exceeded 70 per cent of the landscape, jeopardizing the sustainability of the two caribou populations. Surprisingly, the clearest evidence of forest management prioritizing timber occurred within zones meant explicitly to sustain caribou. Our modelling showed that such areas will contain even less caribou habitat in the future than they do today. The Ontario government is currently revisiting its boreal management strategy - a welcome and timely development. But rather than relying solely on a virtual reality model (Boreal Forest Landscape Disturbance Simulator) to define natural landscapes as is currently the case, it is evident that policy must be grounded in empirical data from real, unmanaged forests. Scientific research over the past several decades has identified forest management approaches that can deliver timber while also sustaining ecological services within natural bounds. These strategies, however, rely on tools the province has yet to embrace, including longer harvest rotations, increased use of partial harvesting instead of over-relying on clearcutting, expanded areas set aside from logging, and explicit targets for amounts of forest up to 200 years of age or older. Our findings indicate that forest degradation is already underway in the boreal forests of Ontario. Substantial changes to forest management are required to reverse this trend and safeguard the ecosystem services on which people and wildlife depend.
Chicago Tribune
5 days ago
- Science
- Chicago Tribune
John Peoples, Fermilab director at time of top quark discovery, dies
Physicist John Peoples Jr. was the third-ever director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Batavia, and in his 10 years in charge oversaw efforts to boost the power of the Tevatron, a circular particle accelerator that in 1995 contributed to the discovery of the top quark, the largest of all observed elementary particles. Scientists who study the building blocks of matter had widely believed since 1977 that the top quark existed, as it was the last undiscovered quark, or elementary particle, predicted by current scientific theory. The discovery, considered to be one of the most significant discoveries in science, advanced scientists' understanding of the fundamentals of the universe. 'He was so committed to the lab and he was able to master so many details related to the lab that if you just brought your A game, you were already in trouble,' said Joel Butler, former chair of Fermilab's department of physics and fields. 'But he managed to inspire us all — he was so good at things himself that he inspired us to achieve more than we thought we possibly could. He was an exemplar.' Peoples, 92, died of natural causes June 25 at the Oaks of Bartlett retirement community in Bartlett, said his son-in-law, Craig Duplack. Born in New York City, Peoples grew up in Staten Island and received a bachelor's degree in 1955 from Carnegie Institute of Technology, then a doctorate in physics in 1966 from Columbia University. He taught physics at Columbia and at Cornell University before joining Fermilab in 1971, four years after it opened. He was made head of the lab's research division in 1975. Peoples became a project manager in 1981 for the lab's Tevatron collider, a 4-mile ring on the lab site where collisions of particles occurred until it was shut down in 2011. After a brief detour in 1987 to work on a collider at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, Peoples returned to Fermilab in 1988 as deputy director. He was promoted the following year to replace the Nobel Prize-winning Leon Lederman as Fermilab's director. 'He was an extremely hard worker,' said retired Fermilab Chief Operating Officer Bruce Chrisman. 'He was dedicated to the science, and he visited every experiment at midnight — because that's when students were running the thing, and he would show up in control rooms for the various experiments just to talk to them and see how things were going from their perspective.' Peoples lobbied federal legislators in the 1990s to retain funding as Fermilab physicists worked to try to discover the top quark and solve other essential puzzles about the universe. Peoples secured $217 million in funding in 1992 for a new main injector, or an oval-shaped ring, that allowed scientists to stage about five times more collisions each year, thus keeping the U.S. internationally competitive in the field of high-energy physics. Peoples oversaw the shutdown of the scuttled next-generation particle accelerator project known as the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC, in Texas that was canceled by lawmakers in 1993 because of rising costs. 'When he became director, the decision to place the SSC in Texas had been made, and the lab was in a state of demoralization that we had been bypassed despite the fact that we had the capability to (host) the SSC, so John had to develop a plan,' Butler said. 'He positioned us for both alternatives — he positioned us successfully for what would happen if the SSC ran into trouble, which it did, but he also had a plan to keep us prosperous and contributing to the forefront of science for at least the decade that it took to build the SSC.' 'He tried to respect the fact that the people at the SSC — many of whom were looking for jobs — they were good people. They were not the problem why the SSC failed,' Butler said. In 1994, Fermilab researchers tentatively announced that they had found evidence of the long-sought top quark, although a second team working independently said more work was needed. 'We've been improving the collider and the detectors at the lab to the point where they are much more powerful now than ever anticipated when they were built,' Peoples told the Tribune in 1994. 'We're continuing to upgrade them, and we're arriving at a place where investigations can go forward that will assure this lab's future into the next century.' The following year, both teams of physicists formally confirmed that they had isolated the top quark. 'We're ecstatic about this,' Peoples told the Tribune in 1995. 'It's been a goal of this lab for a long time.' Peoples subsequently oversaw efforts to learn whether a common but elusive particle called a neutrino has any mass. He also led efforts to expand the laboratory into experimental astrophysics and modernize Fermilab's computing infrastructure to enable it to handle the demands of high-energy physics data. As an advocate for scientific research, Peoples reasoned that seemingly arcane discoveries can unexpectedly yield astonishing and wide-range applications and results. 'The things that we do, even when they become extraordinarily practical, we have no idea that they will,' he told the Tribune's Ted Gregory in 1998. In 1999, Peoples stepped down as Fermilab's director to return to research. He remained closely involved at Fermilab, and he also oversaw the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico, which is a wide-ranging astronomical survey, from 1998 until 2003. After that, Peoples oversaw the Dark Energy Survey, another astronomical survey, for a time. Peoples retired from Fermilab in 2005, but remained director of the Dark Energy Survey until 2010. In 2010, Peoples was awarded the Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators — named for Fermilab's first director — from the American Physical Society. Peoples' wife of 62 years, Brooke, died in 2017. A daughter, Vanessa, died in 2023, and another daughter, Jennet, died several decades earlier. There were no other immediate survivors. There were no services.
Cision Canada
21-07-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Public notice - Josephburg Condensate Fractionation Project
Participant Funding Available OTTAWA, ON, July 21, 2025 /CNW/ - Funding provided by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) is now available to help Indigenous Peoples and the public participate in the impact assessment process for the proposed Josephburg Condensate Fractionation Project, a new condensate distillation facility (refinery) in Alberta's Industrial Heartland, about 22 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, Alberta. Funding is available for eligible individuals and groups to support their participation throughout the planning phase of the federal impact assessment process. During the current comment period, which ends on August 6, 2025, Indigenous Peoples and the public are invited to review the summary of the Initial Project Description and provide comments. IAAC will retroactively reimburse eligible participants for their participation costs in this first comment period. Applications received by August 20, 2025, will be considered. For more information about the Participant Funding Program, including eligibility criteria and the application form, please visit the project home page on the Registry website, reference number 89634, and click on "Participant Funding." You can also contact the Participant Funding Program by writing to [email protected] or by calling 1-866-582-1884. Details about the project can also be found on the project home page.
Scoop
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Seymour's Attack On UN Official ‘Offensive And Irresponsible'
Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi (PSA) is expressing outrage at the conduct of David Seymour for his offensive treatment of the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - and its disappointment that this stance was endorsed by the Prime Minister. PSA Kaihautū Janice Panoho called on the Prime Minister to issues a formal apology to the Rapporteur, Dr Albert Barume, and for Foreign Minister Winston Peters to provide a meaningful, Tiriti-consistent response to the UN to the concerns raised with them about the Regulatory Standards Bill and the erosion of Māori rights that have occurred under this government. "The Rapporteur was simply doing his job in seeking a response from the government to legitimate concerns that have been raised with the UN. "David Seymour's disrespectful response to the Rapporteur not only undermined Foreign Minister Winston Peters who is responsible for leading our diplomatic relations, it was also ignorant and reeked of colonial defensiveness. "This further exposes this government's complete disregard for the foundational place of Māori as tangata whenua of Aotearoa. The Regulatory Standards Bill, for example, deliberately excludes Māori worldviews, ignores tikanga, and seeks to erase Te Tiriti obligations, and when the international community raises red flags, the response is open hostility. "Even more disturbing is the Prime Minister's public admission that he 'fully agrees' with the contents of Seymour's letter. This is not a mere misstep in process, this is an active and deliberate dismissal of indigenous rights, and a signal to Māori and the global community that this government believes it is above scrutiny. "This coalition government continues to prove itself unfit to govern in a Tiriti-based nation. The actions are not just diplomatically embarrassing, they are a direct attack on Māori and our rights as affirmed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and international law," says Panoho. "Māori will not be silenced by arrogant dismissals or political games. We will continue to use all available channels to hold this government accountable, nationally and internationally."
