Canadians are, rightfully, demanding for the truth

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Canadians are, rightfully, demanding for the truth

Published

3 years ago

January 9, 2020

Harry Miller

The prime minister is absolutely right. Canadians need more information, a point he made, over and over, at an Ottawa press conference on Thursday, flanked by senior military and national defence officials. We need a full, thorough investigation of the apparent shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752. We need access to the scene and to data recovered from the plane’s recorder boxes. We need answers to more questions than we have probably even thought of yet.

But let’s not lose sight of what we already know. Because we know more than enough.

We know that Iran is a state-sponsor of terror. We know that Iran is hostile to Canadian interests and those of our allies. We know, because Iran has publicly said as much, that it fired ballistic missiles at a base in Iraq that was home to a Canadian military contingent, present in Iraq to assist local forces combat the remnants of the Islamic State. And we now know, or accept with a high degree of certainty, that an unarmed passenger plane with at least 63 Canadians onboard was blown out of the sky by an Iranian missile, probably accidentally.

And we also know, as much as this may gall us, that there isn’t a whole hell of a lot we can do about any of this.

Watching the prime minister speak, hearing him reply to question after question with some variation of “We need to gather more facts,” only served to remind us that, once the facts have been gathered and the questions answered, we’re actually going to have to do something. A position will have to be determined. A policy announced and enacted. And the more you think about it, the clearer it becomes that that’s going to be really, really hard for Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (R) arrives for a news conference on January 9, 2020 in Ottawa, Canada. – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that Canada had intelligence from multiple sources indicating that a Ukrainian airliner which crashed outside Tehran was mistakenly shot down by Iran.

Assume a worst-case scenario: Iran intentionally brought down the plane. (It probably didn’t mean to, but just assume.) That would be an act of war, occurring near simultaneously to the other act of war — the bombing of the base where Canadian troops were stationed. But there will be no war. Canada wouldn’t want a war, and even if we did, we couldn’t mobilize enough firepower and deploy it to wage one anyway. Even if we began arming today, with “Remember 752!” our new national motto, it would take us, what, 15 years to get the planes and ships procured?

So a war is off the table (as it should be, since this was almost certainly a horrific, mortifying, inexcusable accident). That leaves diplomacy. Canada could recall the ambassador and shutter the embass … no, no, wait. We can’t do that either. Canada and Iran broke off diplomatic relations years ago, due to unacceptable Iranian intelligence activity in Canada. There are no ambassadors to recall, no embassies to dramatically close.

There’s still multi-lateral diplomacy, of course. But that also leads us nowhere. Our main ally, the United States, is already Iran’s primary enemy — that’s why they’re loosing missiles at each other. There’s no additional pressure beyond what’s already in place that the U.S. will bring to bear against Iran because they blew up a few dozen Canadians — not when they’re trying to de-escalate out of an actual shooting war. Our European NATO allies are trying to salvage what little remains of the Iranian nuclear deal while also doing their best to handle President Trump, who’s now demanding (wisely) that NATO step up in the Middle East, and won’t rush into anything on our account. There’s always the UN, of course, but what would come of that?

This is, as noted above, galling. Canadians will want justice, accountability, maybe even vengeance. What we’ll actually get, if Iran decides to co-operate, is permission to send a few air crash investigators to the scene. If we’re lucky.

This will probably become a partisan issue. It shouldn’t. Canada is a rich country, but it is not a powerful country, and whatever steps we failed to take over the years to be more powerful were failures shared by both major parties. We’ve papered over our lack of power and influence with soothing euphemisms like “middle power” and “soft power” and phrases like “punching above our weight.”

Those things matter sometimes. We’ve been able to do some good in the world through charitable initiatives and multi-lateral forums on ideas all nations, or at least most of them, basically agreed on. But soft power doesn’t deter rogue regimes all-too comfortable with hard power. Punching above our weight doesn’t help us when the other guy’s weight is measured in missiles. Canadians will demand action. The opposition parties will almost certainly accuse the government of not doing enough.

We can demand access to the scene. Perhaps we’ll get it. We can take care of the families of our dead, and work to keep their memory alive. We can add our influence, such as it is, to existing efforts to contain and deter Tehran’s theocrats, and we can probably think of some additional sanctions to impose.

But it won’t make anyone feel better, and it won’t really influence the outcome of global events. The prime minister knows this already. If you were wondering why he had so little to say on Thursday, it’s probably because the truth isn’t something many of us will want to hear.

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Air Canada issues: Passengers to be compensated – CTV News

Published

26 mins ago

June 9, 2023

Harry Miller

MONTREAL –

Air Canada says it made a mistake in rejecting some compensation claims from the thousands of travellers affected by delayed flights due to computer malfunctions.

In messages to some customers, the airline initially said the information technology fumble was out of its hands, relieving it of obligations to pay them compensation.

“In this instance, the compensation you are requesting does not apply because the disruption was caused by an event outside of our control. This flight is delayed due to an unforeseen technology issue, impacting one of our suppliers, which is impacting our operations,” the airline said Thursday in an email to passenger Douglas Judson.

Judson said he arrived more than three hours late after his June 1 flight from Winnipeg to Toronto was delayed due to the IT defect.

“I find the dishonesty and disrespect of it the most galling,” he said in a phone interview. “Some really interesting logic puzzles at Air Canada as to when something is actually their fault.”

While denying his compensation request, Air Canada offered him a 15 per cent fare discount on any upcoming flight as a “goodwill gesture.”

When contacted by The Canadian Press on Friday, the Montreal-based airline said the response stemmed from an error.

“Air Canada is offering compensation in line with APPR (Air Passenger Protection Regulations) compensation levels for flights which were affected by the IT outage. Some passengers had received erroneous responses from us, and we are in the process of re-contacting them with the correct responses,” spokeswoman Angela Mah stated.

The country’s largest carrier has struggled with intermittent computer problems over the past few weeks.

On May 25 it delayed more than half its flights due to a “technical issue” with the system that the airline uses to communicate with aircraft and monitor their performance. On June 1 it delayed or cancelled more than 500 flights — over three-quarters of its trips that day, according to tracking service FlightAware — due to “IT issues.”

That same day, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra stressed the carrier’s compensation responsibilities to its guests.

“Air Canada has obligations to passengers who are impacted because it is caused by things that the airline has control over,” he told reporters June 1, hours after the IT issues resurfaced.

Alghabra spokeswoman Nadine Ramadan said in an email Friday the minister’s office had been in touch with the company, which assured them it will compensate the affected passengers.

Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group, said the airline’s response “rings hollow.”

“We are hearing about too many of these ‘errors’ to believe that it was a genuine error,” he said in an email.

Lukacs suggested Air Canada’s response — including the discounted fare offer — marked “an attempt to make passengers go away and not pursue their rights.”

It was not clear whether the thousands of passengers whose flights were delayed or cancelled the day after the June 1 computer problem — Judson’s included — due to what the airline deemed “rollover effects” would receive compensation.

“They said in their official communications to passengers that it was maintenance. I do not believe it was maintenance. I think it was a direct consequence of their IP issues,” Judson said, noting that his return flight to Winnipeg landed more than three hours behind schedule.

Air Canada’s Mah said the airline would “investigate to determine the root cause of the cancellation and handle accordingly.”

At least 144 of its flights, or 27 per cent of the airline’s scheduled load, had been delayed as of late afternoon on June 2, along with 33 cancellations, according FlightAware.

In April, Alghabra laid out measures to toughen penalties and tighten loopholes around traveller compensation as part of a proposed overhaul of Canada’s passenger rights charter.

If passed as part of the budget bill, the reforms will put the onus on airlines to show a flight disruption is caused by safety concerns or reasons outside their control, with specific examples to be drawn up by the Canadian Transportation Agency as a list of exceptions around compensation.

“It will no longer be the passenger who will have to prove that he or she is entitled to compensation. It will now be the airline that will need to prove that it does not have to pay for it,” Alghabra said on April 24.

Currently, a passenger is entitled to between $125 and $1,000 in compensation for a three-hour-plus delay or a cancellation made within 14 days of the scheduled departure — unless the disruption stems from events outside the airline’s control, such as weather or a safety issue including mechanical problems. The amount varies depending on the size of the carrier and length of the delay.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2023.

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What started Canada’s wildfires and are they under control?

Published

7 hours ago

June 9, 2023

Harry Miller

Canada is seeing its worst-ever start to wildfire season, with blazes ravaging much of the country and creating hazardous smoky conditions across the continent and beyond.

After reaching New York earlier this week, on Thursday it blanketed Washington, DC, in an unhealthy haze, prompting many residents to stay indoors.

Here is what we know about the wildfires, their trajectory and climate change.

What started the Canadian wildfires?

Atlantic Canada received low snowfall this winter, followed by an exceptionally dry spring.

Nova Scotia’s capital Halifax received just 120mm of rain between March and May, roughly a third of the average, according to The Weather Network meteorologist Michael Carter.

A scorching late May heatwave pushed temperatures in Halifax to 33C (91.4 F) on Thursday, about 10 degrees Celsius above normal for this time of year.

The wildfires are believed to have been caused either by lightning, as in the case of Quebec, or accidentally by human activity.

Ellen Whitman, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, said there is also speculation that trees felled during Hurricane Fiona, which hit Atlantic Canada in September 2022, or killed by an infestation of forest pests may be providing more fuel than usual for wildfires, but that theory requires further investigation.

While the focus has been on the smoke in eastern North America, fires continue to rage in western Canada.

This view from yesterday in British Columbia. pic.twitter.com/3jUXxYPpwu

— CIRA (@CIRA_CSU) June 8, 2023

Are the wildfires under control?

Not yet.

As of early Friday, there were 427 active wildfires, according to the C anadian Interagency Forest Fire Center; of those, 232 were out of control.

In the West Coast province of British Columbia, authorities reported 81 active wildfires – 28 out of control – while in the province of Alberta, authorities reported 72 active wildfires.

Quebec, on the country’s eastern side, has 128 active fires.

The fires have spread across about 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres), roughly 15 times the annual average of the past decade.

Where are the Canadian wildfires?

The forest fires started in late April in British Columbia and Alberta, displacing more than 30,000 people at their peak, and shutting down oil and gas production.

They have now opened new fronts, spreading to the eastern provinces of Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario.

Currently, Canada is receiving international help to battle the wildfires. Help has come from the United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In Europe, France, Portugal and Spain were also sending more than 280 firefighters to Canada.

How are the fires affecting air quality?

On Thursday, authorities in Washington, DC, issued a “Code Purple” air quality alert, warning of “very unhealthy air conditions for the entire public, not just those with respiratory illnesses”.

New York again had the worst air quality on Thursday morning, with an unhealthy Air Quality Index reading of 185, according to a website operated by IQAir.

Readings over 100 are classified as “unhealthy”, and those exceeding 300 are “hazardous”.

On Wednesday, authorities in Canada said Ottawa’s air quality was among the worst.

Experts have noted that acrid clouds of smoke and ash could continue to affect daily life for people in the US and Canada for the next several days.

Why is the smoke reaching so far away?

Strong winds high in the atmosphere can transport smoke long distances, and it is common for large, violent fires to create unhealthy conditions hundreds of kilometres away from where forests are burning.

In Canada, air is circulating counterclockwise around a low-pressure system near Nova Scotia. That sends air south over the fires in Quebec. There the air picks up smoke, and then turns east over New York state, carrying smoke to the eastern seaboard.

The smoke has now also been detected thousands of kilometres away in Norway, the Scandinavian country’s Climate and Environmental Research Institute NILU said on Friday.

“Very weak” concentrations of smoke particles have been detected since Monday, in particular at the Birkenes Observatory in southern Norway, researcher Nikolaos Evangeliou told AFP news agency.

Residents wear masks under an orange sky as New York City is enveloped in smoke — Residents of New York City wear protective masks as the city experienced its worst air quality on record due to a cloud of ash and smoke from the Canadian wildfires [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

What is the outlook?

Warm, dry conditions are forecast to persist for months across Canada though occasional rains and cooler temperatures are expected to bring short-term relief.

The Weather Network’s longer-term forecast expects Nova Scotia temperatures to be slightly warmer than normal for the rest of the summer.

What role is climate change playing?

Whitman of the Canadian Forest Service, said it is difficult to determine the effect of climate change on a single fire season. Atlantic Canada has been much hotter than usual and scientists expect temperatures in the region to continue to rise in the coming years.

For coastal regions, climate change is expected to bring more rain, which should reduce the risk of wildfires, but a warmer atmosphere is more efficient at pulling moisture out of soils, a factor that increases fire risk.

Widespread spring fires across the whole of Canada are also unusual, and research shows fire seasons across North America are getting longer.

A warming planet will produce hotter and longer heatwaves, making for bigger, smokier fires, according to Joel Thornton, professor and chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington.

I have never seen a vertical wall of smoke like this one near Fox Creek, Alberta on Sunday.

And the strangest thing about this moment was I couldn’t smell any smoke. #ABfire #ABfires pic.twitter.com/I6vmJvUay4

— Kyle Brittain (@KyleBrittainWX) May 17, 2023

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1 arrested after stabbing at Olive Garden restaurant in Winnipeg

Published

8 hours ago

June 9, 2023

Harry Miller

Police officers went to the Olive Garden at the corner of Reenders Drive and Lagimodiere Boulevard in the Transcona neighbourhood to investigate a stabbing around 7 p.m. Thursday night.