Canada, China set to co-host global nature talks even as diplomatic tensions persist

CALGARY – Margaret Atwood has been called prescient — particularly when it comes to her famous 1985 dystopia “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the recent rollback of reproductive rights in the United States — but the renowned Canadian author says her predictive powers failed her ahead of last week’s U.S. election, which delivered Donald Trump another White House win.

“I searched. I invoked, ‘Oh God, let it be sun.’ But it was darkness all around,” she said to laughter Tuesday night at a forum hosted by the Alberta Teachers’ Association, Calgary Catholic Local 55 and Calgary Public Local 38.

Calgary’s Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, with more than 2,500 seats, was nearly full for the discussion with Atwood about “democracy, public education and the common good.” She is to speak Wednesday at an event hosted by the Edmonton Public Library about “the importance of freedom of expression.”

Atwood said she hesitates to make blanket statements about what drives the American people because there are starkly different histories and sensibilities in every region.

“You have to get your mind around how other people think,” she said. “I think some people would shoot themselves rather than having a woman leader.”

But she said the populace is also less polarized than many would think.

The presidential race was like a “multiple choice questionnaire with only two choices,” when most people have “mix-and-match sets of values.” The Republicans were victorious in clinching the presidency, but at the same time ballot initiatives affirming abortion rights passed in several states.

Atwood may have drawn a blank on predicting the election’s outcome, but she said she does have some prognostications now that it’s been decided.

“Watch what goes on inside the White House … We have several people with quite large egos backed by two billionaires who also have large egos and who don’t like each other,” she said.

“I think bookies are going to start making book on how long Donald Trump is going to last because is he really necessary for these billionaires anymore? On the other hand, are they necessary for him? Who shall win?”

She also predicts “You’re going to hear a lot more talk about class than we’ve been having since the 1940s.”

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, undoing a half-century of federally protected abortion rights, Atwood wrote in “The Atlantic” magazine that she did not mean for Gilead, the totalitarian state in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” to become a reality.

“The Handmaid’s Tale,” since adapted into a Hulu television series starring Elisabeth Moss, takes place in the near future in what is now the United States. It is governed by religious fundamentalists, and beset by environmental calamity and plummeting birthrates.

Women are treated as property and some are forced to be “handmaids” — their sole purpose is to bear the children for wealthy, infertile, couples. Handmaids are marked by ultra-modest red garments and white conical bonnets that obscure their peripheral vision.

She told Tuesday’s forum that her ideas for “The Handmaid’s Tale” didn’t come from her own mind, but were inspired by discussions the religious right had been having.

“Not the outfits, but the core principles,” she quipped.

“Everything in the book has either happened or was happening somewhere, sometime. Because otherwise, people would say, ‘She’s really weird.'”

Atwood was asked by the event’s moderator whether people should be afraid.

“I don’t think we should be afraid at all, by which I don’t mean that there isn’t something horrible happening,” she replied.

“I mean that fear makes you feeble.”

She was also asked whether there is any comfort to be found in the famous Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Atwood replied: “This is what makes people give up on vigilance — ‘It’s all going to be fine, I don’t have to do anything because it’s bending toward justice all on its own.”

“That’s not real. There is no yellow brick road.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.

Carolyn Law didn’t think much of it when a snow goose landed in her Richmond, B.C., backyard, on Halloween.

But hours later it had barely moved. Then it started bobbing its head repeatedly. About eight hours after she first saw the bird, it rolled over, began convulsing and died.

“It was quite a sad thing to see, actually — really frightening,” Law said.

Law said she called a wildlife rescue group and was told the symptoms suggested avian flu rather than a physical injury, but without testing it couldn’t be confirmed.

Encounters like Law’s are under new scrutiny after a B.C. teenager tested positive for bird flu in the first presumptive case of human infection occurring in Canada. The patient is in critical condition.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said in a news conference on Tuesday that the source of infection wasn’t clear.

Experts and health authorities say that while the risk of human infection with the H5N1 strain of the avian influenza remains low, people should avoid contact with sick or dead birds.

“People who work with animals or in environments contaminated by animals should take precautions, including using other personal protective measures to reduce the risk of getting or spreading respiratory infectious diseases,” Health Canada said in a statement.

Concerns around bird flu have heightened in recent years, with the virus resulting in millions of poultry across North America being culled.

Infections among commercial flocks have jumped to more than 20 in B.C. in recent weeks as migratory birds fly south for winter.

Brian Ward, an infectious diseases microbiologist at McGill University, said he couldn’t speculate whether the goose in Law’s backyard had influenza, but “it’s possible if there are some increasing number of ducks and geese found dead, then they’re very likely to have been infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza.”

Ward said it was concerning that authorities were unsure how the sick B.C. teenager caught H5N1, with Henry saying the teen had no known contacts with poultry farms.

But Ward said a human infection in Canada was “almost inevitable,” given the spread of the disease in recent years in North America and Europe. The U.S. Centres for Disease Control says there have been 46 human cases of avian flu in the U.S., although there has been no known human-to-human spread.

Health Canada said in a statement that current evidence domestically shows that “risk to the general public remains low.”

“To date, there has been no evidence of sustained person-to-person spread of the virus in any of the cases identified globally,” the department said. “Human infection with avian influenza A (H5N1) is rare and usually occurs after close contact with infected birds or highly contaminated environments.”

The agency’s website says humans are unable to get infected by eating thoroughly cooked poultry, eggs or meat.

Henry said the only other case in Canada was recorded in Alberta in 2014, in a person who likely contracted the virus while travelling in China.

But Henry acknowledged the risk posed by wild birds.

“One of the important things that we need to do right now, recognizing that this virus is circulating in wild foul, geese and ducks primarily, (is) be sure that if you’re in contact with sick birds or dead birds, that you don’t touch them directly (and) keep pets away from them,” she said, noting that in Ontario a dog was infected after biting a dead bird.

Henry said that humans may be infected by “inhaling the virus in aerosols, in droplets that get into the eyes, back of the throat, nose or deep into the lungs.”

“There’s been very few that might have been transmitted from person to person, so in some ways this is reassuring, in that this virus doesn’t seem to spread easily between people if they get infections, but it also causes very severe illness, particularly in young people,” she said.

Henry said it’s very likely that the B.C. teen’s infection took place due to an exposure to either a sick animal or something in the environment, but it is a “real possibility” that they may never determine the source.

Her office said Tuesday that people should report dead or sick poultry or livestock to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency animal health office and that encounters involving wild birds should be reported to the BC Wild Bird Mortality Line.

It said anyone exposed to sick or dead birds, or who had been in contact with farms where avian flu was confirmed, should watch for flu-like symptoms.

“If you get symptoms within 10 days after exposure to sick or dead animals, tell your health-care provider that you have been in contact with sick animals and are concerned about avian influenza,” it said. “This will help them give you appropriate advice on testing and treatment. Stay home and away from others while you have symptoms.”

Ward also advised people who encountered a dead bird to call authorities instead of disposing of it themselves.

“But, if it’s on your property and you want to dispose of it, then certainly wearing a mask and gloves, getting it into a plastic bag as soon as possible, and doing everything you can to avoid aerosols, makes a great deal of sense,” he said, noting that H5N1 is a respiratory virus.

Law said her biggest concern was about her dog that came within a few feet of the dying goose.

“We didn’t want to approach it,” she said.

But later that night, her husband took matters into his own hands.

Wearing gloves and a mask, he double bagged the dead bird, and put it in the garbage bin, “which I felt was kind of unceremonious, but I guess that’s what you would do,” Law said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.

LONDON, Ont. – A mischief charge against a doctor who squirted ketchup on the London, Ont., office of a member of Parliament last year has been dropped.

The lawyers representing Tarek Loubani, a local physician and activist, said the Crown withdrew the charge after determining it was “not in the public interest” to proceed with the prosecution.

Arash Ghiassi and Riaz Sayani said in a statement that Loubani’s actions were not a crime but rather part of his constitutional right to protest against an elected official — in this case, Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos.

Staff at the London courthouse confirmed a mischief charge against Loubani was withdrawn Tuesday.

Loubani was arrested in November 2023, but the incident took place weeks earlier after a protest in downtown London.

Police said at the time that Loubani and three others went to an office on Hyman Street, where he squirted ketchup on the door and front of a building.

They said he then took out other bottles of ketchup, handed them to the others and “encouraged them to also deface the building.”

The other three went into a court diversion program, which provides an alternative to prosecution in cases involving minor offences, police said.

The decision to lay charges was made by police, and it was up to the Crown to determine whether to proceed with the case, Fragiskatos said in a statement Tuesday, adding it would be inappropriate for him to comment further on the process.

“That being said, over the past several years our office and staff have experienced various acts of vandalism, threats and hostility. This will always be completely unacceptable,” he said.

His office said there was another “incident” at the London office Tuesday.

In their statement, Loubani’s lawyers said police’s “heavy-handed approach to political protest in this case” is only one example of a broader response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

“This kind of expression has been criminalized in nearly 100 cases in Toronto alone, and many more across Canada. While many of these charges are eventually withdrawn, this systemic overcharging nevertheless chills legitimate political expression on pressing issues,” they said.

— By Paola Loriggio in Toronto.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.

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