Ashes, Agreements, and Temporary Work

Plus: Lesson plans from oil companies

The University of Toronto’s environmental school announced it will stop taking funds from fossil fuel companies, amid growing pressure on colleges to cut ties with big polluters. Education and industry are entangled on many levels, as Ainslie Cruickshank found in “Why Are Oil-and-Gas Companies Developing Lesson Plans for Teachers?”

In a 2020 study, Emily Eaton and her co-author, Nick Day, interviewed teachers, administrators, and representatives who belonged to organizations that offer resources, school programs, or professional development related to energy and climate education for teachers in Saskatchewan. “Notably the industry funded non-profits all promoted fossil fuel interests and perspectives as legitimate and necessary to learning about environmental issues,” the authors write. Eaton and Day identified recurrent themes in the educational materials and programs put forward by industry-funded organizations. For example, the authors found that the prevalence of fossil fuels in everyday life was often highlighted. Where action to reduce greenhouse gases was considered, the emphasis was on individual actions, such as using energy-efficient light bulbs or taking shorter showers, rather than more systemic change. [Read more]

Harvey Weinstein was back in court Wednesday for a hearing before his retrial on rape charges. The first public accusations against him—and the #MeToo movement—date back seven years. What’s changed? Elizabeth Renzetti looked at the cost of speaking up:

Most of the world learned about NDAs during #MeToo—particularly the way Weinstein’s legal team used them to smother the truth. Zelda Perkins, one of Weinstein’s assistants at Miramax, was silenced under one of those NDAs. In the 1990s, she tried to report his attempted assault on her assistant, Rowena Chiu, to her superiors. The complaints went nowhere, and Perkins and Chiu were persuaded to sign a settlement that included an NDA. [Read more]

Many temporary foreign workers are deeply frustrated with their wages and treatment. One man told the CBC the permits are “like a cage.” Marcello Di Cintio investigated why government interventions into the TFW program have backfired, in “Exploitation and Abusive Bosses Plague Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program”:

In a 2016 report on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, a House of Commons standing committee advised eliminating the employer-specific system altogether. Instead, in June 2019, IRCC implemented open work permits for vulnerable workers. … According to Danièle Bélanger, the Canada research chair in global migration processes at Université Laval, those tasked with assessing applications appeared to be mostly former visa officers, “so initially they weren’t trained to interview people who had experienced trauma or abuse.” The officers seemed focused on identifying fraud, not exploitation. They had more of a border control mentality. In the end, the government approved only about half of the workers who applied. [Read more]

The city of Surrey, BC, is planning to build a special pier over the Fraser River for scattering ashes. Cremation is popular in Canada, but should we be considering alternatives? Graeme Bayliss explored bio-cremation, in a slightly morbid piece, perfect to get you in the mood for the Day of the Dead:

The process is often faster than traditional cremation and costs about the same, and the end product takes up less space than a standard burial. Bio-cremation’s unique selling point, however, is its environmental friendliness. It consumes one-eighth the energy of cremation, requires no casket, and leaches no toxic embalming fluids into the earth. Yet it is still a niche practice, even in a country as green-savvy as ours: Dale Hilton’s facility is one of just three in Canada. [Read more]

Check out our new podcast, What Happened Next, hosted by Nathan Whitlock . This week’s conversation is with Dan Werb, about The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure.

Read a poem by Chuqiao Yang: “The View”

Read a short story by Claire Cameron: “Jude the Brave”

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