Without a Home, but Wins a Medal

I looked closely at the article hoping to see that McPherson had also been given a home, but he clearly hasn't. Wouldn't a home be better than a medal? (Or maybe he could receive both?)

— Robin Ganev (@RobinGanev) February 28, 2023

Ernie has worked for months on keeping people alive while his city is without a proper shelter. His trailer burned down.

SaskPower Plots To End Drinking Water Availability

Not maintaining availability and quality of drinking water is an option? Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

NOT COOL, @SaskPower. What happens if the slavering hordes decide in the poll that we don't need drinking water?!

CC @CorbLund @JeffWaltersSask @emi_eaton

— Saskboy from Saskatchewan (@saskboy) February 10, 2023

Corb Lund is among the Albertans who’ve had to fight mountaintop mining to maintain drinking water safety for Alberta and Saskatchewan. SaskPower is eager to find a path to creating social acceptance of nuclear power. Nuclear power is costly, and is planned to be delivered too late to address the climate crisis, even before we get to addressing its other serious problems or potential benefits. If they can convince people that it’s not important to maintain drinking water availability, that would aid their goal in promoting water-thirsty nuclear power.

Monopoly utilities conscript beholden ratepayers into partisan fights against the climate and our ecosystem. David Roberts of Dr. Volts podcast discusses the problem from an American perspective. The problem clearly extends well beyond Saskatchewan’s Crown corporation (monopoly) SaskPower. Here, Chris highlights how SaskPower’s utility bill serves as anti-Trudeau and anti-carbon price propaganda for its SaskParty masters:

Since @SaskPower is now collecting carbon tax under the Saskatchewan Output-Based Performance Standards (OBPS) Program why do our power bills still say "Federal Carbon Tax"? Not a single penny leaves the province…. seems shady af.

— Chris Harris (@BigRedYQR) February 8, 2023

A billion $$ surplus and constant talk of a booming economy. Yet the @PremierScottMoe gov decides to massively increase SaskEnergy rates anyway, even though it's unsupported

At least they haven't sunk to blaming the feds for this……oh wait#skpoli https://t.co/Nd5I0nEcYC

— Jeff Walters (@JeffWaltersSask) December 17, 2022

This is not a new problem. Here’s a tweet from 4 years ago about the Sask Government’s Crown utilities interfering in a transition to renewable energy as they fought in court against the price on carbon required by the federal government.

It really bothers me that @SaskPower and @SaskEnergy are intervening in favour of the SK government in this carbon tax case. We need our crowns to lead the way on climate change. They are not subject to the same market logics as private corps #skpoli #canpoli

— @EmilyEaton@mstdn.ca (@emi_eaton) February 13, 2019

SaskTel’s email bait and switch

After offering free email since the 1990s, to start charging per email account is an absurd insult to customers and should probably be illegal. The problem is the provincial government who could potentially do something about it, is hoping to sell off the crown corp, so they won’t do something to keep it affordable and popular.

November

There are things going on. From absurd numbers of kids home sick from school, to the Grey Cup going on today in Regina.

The most vocal civilian critic of the SaskParty’s support of abusive religious schools (who were teaching dinosaurs were around with Creationist people), had their home vandalized with bible verse graffiti. They fled, and their home was torched, killing some of their pets and destroying their belongings! A fundraiser is attempting to help them. I’d like to see it exceed their goal, to show that the governing party’s thugs can’t chase good people away.

==

Doug Ford in Ontario kicked an ant hill and almost got bit. He legislated workers back to work with the Notwithstanding Clause in the Charter, overriding their Charter right to collective bargaining. He caved when he saw a general strike was imminent. The fines were so big, the unions had to fight to the mat and beyond to win.

==

The US election looks like the Democrats will take the Senate and the Republicans the House. Fingers crossed that the GQP doesn’t take a majority in the House, so it won’t be tied up with stupidity for quite as long. The counting and recounting is taking quite some time, and there’s a runoff in Georgia again between Walker and Warnock this time. Walker is a complete idiot, so he’s got a chance.

==

Russia just launched missiles into Poland the other day, a dangerous escalation of their war against Ukraine. There are Russia supporters claiming this was disinformation, and that Russia didn’t launch an attack, even accidentally, on Poland.

Plague Update: Upon Reflection, Let Me Off This Ride

Here’s a frank account of what the last 3 years have held for hopes, dreams, and ultimately failures. I can’t disagree with his points.

Here’s my summary.

We went into the pandemic unprepared. Canada landfilled crates full of expired N95 masks stockpiles prior to needing them in 2020. Our leaders insisted there was no problem, as pro athletes mocked the seriousness of COVID-19 just before their leagues shut down to save their lives. Schools were closed, and the Canadian government issued emergency funding to many people since they couldn’t work in offices or at worksites until we got a better handle on how screwed we were. March 2020 went by, and many places didn’t ‘become Italy’ with its absurd death rate, so capitalist governments still chomping at the bit, announced they’d “Re-open economies”.

Kids went back to schools without any protections aside from masks worn most of the day in crowded rooms, some with poor ventilation. Infection rates crept upward, there weren’t any vaccines to rely on, and few experimental drugs to help those ending up in hospitals with overwhelmed bodies.

Then vaccines arrived for most people in the western world in 2021, but it quickly became apparent that variants were infecting “fully vaccinated” people. Terrible governments who wanted to emulate the Americans, like Alberta, dropped mask requirements, before admitting it was based on faulty UK data and analysis. Infections got worse, and Delta arrived and thrived at the expense of lives. Saskatchewan’s incompetent and malicious Premier Moe got COVID after spreading it at a school he was campaigning at. The Speaker of the Legislature got it. The Prime Minister of Canada caught it a second time after attending a maskless conference in the USA.

Then things really fell apart. There’s no public health measures, no testing and tracing available, and no chance for most people to access drugs to fight COVID-19 infections at home. All this while we know that repeated infections are terrible for your health, and could very well shorten lifespans in meaningful ways. Kids are needing hospitalization at a rate that our systems can’t keep up with. If we aren’t even willing to do what’s best for our children, what good is our society?

UPDATE: Will Santa’s reindeer be a bio-hazard this Christmas?

Methane EMIT

There’s a European satellite watching for methane pollution. It spotted a big leak in Alberta.

ISS has a camera called EMIT attached and it can see methane plumes on Earth. The data is public, but not as easy as surfing around like on Google Earth to map it.

“Jan Gorski, director of the Pembina Institute’s oil and gas program, said consistent regulation is vital to spotting emissions.

“The source, location, and generation of methane emissions is unpredictable, which is why we need good measurement and monitoring to catch these rare events,” he said. 

“If it’s something caught by satellite it shows that it was a pretty significant source of methane emissions.”

Gorski said the current data on the average level of methane emissions from the gas sector is based on studies from more than a decade ago.”

"the firm estimated the plume had an emissions rate of 11 tonnes an hour, roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 200 cars".
Every hour @CBC!
Actually the satellite spotted it Sep 28th and no one knows how many hours, days or weeks the leak lasted. https://t.co/0mhp64RWAa

— Being Green in Sask (@BeingGreenSK) November 8, 2022

Troll Busted

So I’m hearing tonight that the hateful and cowardly reign of terror of one of Saskatchewan’s most vile troll accounts is finally over. And if it’s true that the person behind NotTammyR is a Lutheran pastor…all I can say is wow.

— Tamara Hinz (@hinz_tamara) September 19, 2022

It was only a troll tactic to defend against Twitter deleting the harassment account. This is an epic failure of @TwitterSafety too as a multiple sockpuppet troll for years harassed @verified users and other women and men.

— Saskboy from Saskatchewan (@saskboy) September 19, 2022

I agree, he's a hypocrite of the most evil kind.

Worse, he supports the party that wouldn't meet with protestors calling for improved mental health treatment to address the suicide crisis.

— Saskboy from Saskatchewan (@saskboy) September 20, 2022

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, Moe Problem

What the dickens is wrong with Saskatchewan’s prominent political Moe family? It was less than 3 months ago that his truck was impounded in British Columbia where his son drove it so badly. Decades before then, Scott Moe killed Joanne Balog with his truck by not stopping it at a stop sign. Moe says he regrets one day, that day. I guess he doesn’t regret the other 2 days he was driving drunk, even though he might consider them among his “lot of mistakes”.

“Moe calls situation around impounded truck a ‘personal matter'”
leaderpost com/news/saskatchewan/moe-again-calls-situation-around-impounded-truck-a-personal-matter

“Premier Scott Moe said this was a time he was called to support family and friends”

How does he support his family:

The order shows Kris Moe, the brother to the premier, was one of the individuals pardoned after driving through an amber light on Jan. 23, 2021 in Prince Albert.https://t.co/gsPjd1sZos

— Global Regina (@GlobalRegina) June 3, 2022

He pardons them from minor traffic violations that mimic his own violation that cost a life.

Plague Update: Drugs and Tests

Are the Rapid A Tests much good for making social plans? Not definitively. Cases are going undetected by tests in many cases, giving false negatives that result in infectious people feeling confident to mingle with uninfected people.

The leading anti-viral drug, Paxlovid, is being tested for use to fight symptoms of longcovid.

It remains difficult in Canadian provinces and elsewhere in the world to obtain Paxlovid by prescription.

Weeks ago there were rising COVID cases in Saskatchewan while China was extending severe lockdowns to try to wipe out the virus there. The Saskatchewan Government continues to limit information given to the public, and intends to slash it 4 times further, to monthly updates at best. This leaves people in the dark about the true danger, encouraging them to let down their guard. This will likely generate new variants, and non-stop exposure risk, given the previous waves of the pandemic.

BESS Battery project at Regina by SaskPower

Back in February I asked SaskPower how this project was going.

Our Progress So Far

In Fall of 2020, we engaged with neighbouring communities to discuss the proposed BESS plans. We’re now moving to the next phase of the project including project design and procurement. Other milestones include:

• Infrastructure Canada conditional funding received: early 2021
• Procure technology: mid 2021
• Construction: late 2021
• Energization: end of 2022

They replied today noting my email to their public enquiries address had been caught in their spam filter.

They’ve since updated the page as it’s behind schedule, but construction is now intended to begin this season.