April 22: Canada COVID-19: Deaths per day and Days to double total deaths

Date source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102

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Data Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102

Raw Sewage in Canadian Rivers

So, here is my question: Are there or are there not provincial or federal laws or regulations prohibiting the release of  commercial and industrial waste and, especially, raw sewage into the rivers of Canada or, at least, the rivers and aquifers of Ontario?

If not, why not? If yes, how are they enforced?

I ask after being shocked to read the following article in Global News:

From https://globalnews.ca/news/6215303/oneida-london-safe-water/

Oneida Nation of the Thames tap water different than neighbouring non-Indigenous communities

Particularly disturbing are the following three paragraphs:

"18 years of water quality testing across Oneida First Nation sometimes shows striking levels of dangerous pathogens such as E. coli flowing from residential taps. Upstream, the nearby city of London dumps millions of litres of raw sewage into the Thames River that serves as the community’s water source…"

"The Thames River, which replenishes Oneida’s aquifer, is a dumping ground for waste, raw sewage and pollution. To avoid basement flooding during heavy rains, London’s wastewater system dumps rainwater and raw sewage into the river. In 2018, 266 million litres of raw sewage was released and flowed downstream through several First Nations communities, including Oneida.

"So far this year, more than 5.7 million litres of London’s raw, untreated sewage — including commercial and industrial waste — has been dumped into the river, according to city data.

London didn’t start notifying Oneida of sewage dumps until mid-2018, say Oneida leaders, including Chief Hill. Even then, Oneida is only notified after the dump has occurred, sometimes hours or days later."

Here, again, is my question: Are there or are there not provincial or federal laws or regulations prohibiting the release of  commercial and industrial waste and, especially, raw sewage into the rivers of Canada or, at least, the rivers and aquifers of Ontario?

If not, why not? If yes, how are they enforced?

I realise that the question is rhetorical. Doing just 2 minutes of searching on the Internet I found that:

• raw sewage overflowed into southern Ontario waterways 1,327 times in the 12 months ending March, 2018;
• the city of Toronto releases more than 1-billion litres of raw sewage into Lake Ontario in a single day;
• when excessive stormwater has nowhere to escape, it funnels into sewers causing them to overflow and spill untreated contents into lakes or rivers;
• there are provincial regulations but they are full of loopholes circumventing enforcement.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-enviro-report-1.4903327

I have been following a Facebook group focusing on drinking water and other water availability issues in South Africa. They regularly bemoan the fact that, due to aging infrastructure, neglect and poor accountability, raw sewage is spilling into some of the dams sourced for drinking water. I have been feeling lucky to be living in Canada - a First World country after all. How presumptuous and arrogant of me.

A View on the Climate Crisis

A friend who knows I'm a climate change nut challenged me, asking my thoughts on a rather scathing newspaper op-ed. My response follows.

We have a climate crisis of global warming that requires urgent attention. I say this with confidence because it is not merely my opinion, or anyone else's opinion, but a fact established with evidence from science and attested to by climate scientists worldwide. This according to NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the USA.  (See https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/)

The economic impact of global warming is pretty-well incalculable, estimated in terms of a percentage of every country's GDP - certainly, therefore, in the billions of dollars - if not trillions. See https://www.britannica.com/science/global-warming/Global-warming-and-public-policy

Along with the global warming issue we have serious problems with air pollution that are having devastating effects upon vulnerable people whose lungs and breathing ability are already compromised, as well as people with cardio-vascular illnesses. We can only guess how much impact this is also having on childhood development, or life expectancy in the elderly. See, for instance: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/air-quality/health-effects-indoor-air-pollution.html

This too will have massive economic consequences. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), healthcare costs related to air pollution are expected to increase 8-fold in the fifty years from 2010 to 2060. See https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/the-economic-consequences-of-outdoor-air-pollution/executive-summary_9789264257474-3-en#page2

Thirdly, there is the contribution that environmental issues make to the "refugee crisis" that we hear so much about and feel the need to 'control' without thinking about controlling the causes of environmental degradation which is very much a root cause of migration for environmental refugees. According to Pope Francis: “Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/pope-francis-climate-change-environment-refugee-crisis-destroy-sin-a7221476.html

What to do?

First of all, what NOT to do! I honestly do not think it is at all helpful when people look at their neighbours in countries that are oceans and continents away, or just a province or two away, or "on the reserve", and point out that, since THEY are contributing so significantly to the problem, what is the point of politicians trying to force ME to make sacrifices - as with a carbon 'tax'? As I see it, that line of reasoning lets us all off the hook of sacrifice. Not only can we just leave the problem, then, for our grandchildren to solve but we can feel free to continue exacerbating the problem by pushing out limitless pollutants seeing as our contribution is so small - relatively speaking.

The other thing NOT to do is give greater credibility to politicians and economists and their populist journalist followers (left, right and centre) than the credibility we afford climate scientists. It is inexcusable that government bureaucrats implement environmental policy changes without consulting scientists. More inexcusable is when governments then gag their own publicly funded scientists and not allow them to publish their peer-reviewed research.

I use gasoline to drive my car. I would love to be driven in a clean-energy taxi. I use liquid natural gas to warm my house. (As I write, the temperature today has warmed up to a high of +2C - the highest it has been in the last 5 days.) I would love to warm my house with power from the sun or wind, but our local government cancelled, at great expense in penalties, the renewable energy program initiated by the previous  local government. My point is that there are some initiatives that cannot be undertaken by individuals without incurring prohibitive personal expense. Such initiatives require changes to infrastructure that can only be achieved by local and national governments. But the will has to be there. As I see it, partisan political loyalties, fueled by the things NOT to do that I describe above, are the major obstacles to people even seeing the need, let alone developing the socio-political will.

Let's get off the darkness band-wagon and switch on an LED candle, and try to influence the people around us to do the same. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace... "

Anti-abortion does NOT equate to being pro-life

Being anti-abortion does NOT equate to being pro-life - not if your government...

• Brutalizes refugees and migrants, tearing families apart by deporting people who have no greater wish than safety, opportunity and hard work;
• Is willing to rip health care from tens of millions of people;
• Denies climate change and jeopardizes creation itself with retrograde policies on the environment;
• Intends to increase defense spending more than $50 billion while cutting social welfare programs for the most vulnerable;
• And whose leader, the president, boasts openly of sexual conquests that many would describe as assault.

This editorial in The National Catholic Reporter is a must-read for any fellow Knights in the Knights of Columbus.

Pro-life advocates with the Indiana State Knights of Columbus carry a banner past the U.S. Supreme Court Jan. 27 during the annual March for Life in Washington. (CNS/Leslie E. Kossoff)

Pro-Life and pro-life: is there a difference? For me, huge.

Jan. 27 joint letter to President Donald Trump from some Catholic groups.

This letter from some Catholic groups in the United States of America exemplifies the difference that I see between the pro-life movement and Pro-Life, which seems to me to place extraordinary if not exclusive emphasis on being "Pro-Birth". If you are truly pro-life then your concern has to extend beyond protecting the unborn and, in protecting the unborn, to do so in the most compassionate and effective way possible in the long term, not merely the most vociferous and judgemental - which is a common perception of Pro-Life. Interestingly, another difference between pro-lifers and Pro-Lifers seems to manifest in a difference of support for Donald Trump as president.

Jan. 27 joint letter to President Donald Trump by National Catholic Reporter on Scribd

Children without a voice

Writing his regular column for the Toronto Star Martin Regg Cohn's piece today is about the failure of Ontario's children's aid societies to properly protect some of the most vulnerable and needy children.

He concludes, "Unlike the grown-ups who get all the attention, kids can’t vote, and lack a voice. But they still need politicians in power to hear them."

True as this is about the children Cohn is explicitly writing about, I believe this to be even more cogently true about kids in the womb. Kids 'in utero' do not even exist as humans in Canadian law. They suddenly appear, Voila!, and enter into the ambience of law with human rights and freedoms when they pass through the magical birth canal, or, like rabbits from a hat, are yanked out by C-section 'deliverers'. Until that moment, these are the most voiceless kids on the planet.

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch

You can read Cohn's column online here: Premier ponders blowing up our CAS mess. It's an excellent piece and I recommend it to Canadians living in Ontario. For non-Canadians, CAS is an acronym for Children's Aid Societies.

Picture credit: "The Scream" by Edvard Munch - WebMuseum at ibiblioPage URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/munch.scream.jpg. 
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Indonesia is burning. Who cares?

Fires in Indonesia are currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. And in three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany.

Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images via www.theguardian.com.

Starbucks, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and Unilever are complicit in both cause and inaction.

The cost in human lives and misery is colossal as is the destruction of species. ‘Children are being prepared for evacuation in warships; already some have choked to death. Species are going up in smoke at an untold rate.’

This article was written October 30 and revised November 16. The fires continue unabated.

Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?

by George Monbiot in The Guardian.

Sssh! Single Issue Voting Not Encouraged By Canadian Catholic Bishops

One of the problems bedevilling many elections is the phenomenon of 'single issue' voters. The issue is usually a very worthy one such as 'healthcare' or 'care for seniors' or 'right to life for the unborn' or 'education' or 'immigration' or 'jobs' or 'the environment' or 'higher/lower taxes' or 'crime and punishment' or 'national security' or (your pet issue here). The trouble is that real life is never about one single issue even if that appears to be front and centre at a point in time for you and me.

It seems to me that voting on the basis of a single issue is very much like choosing a particular expensive gourmet restaurant over other candidate restaurants based purely on the fact that the restaurant of your choice is the only one that offers Pacific Blue Fin Tuna in its third course, and without regard to what is in the other courses at that or any other competing restaurant. Don't you care that your Valentine partner will have ethical issues with Confit Foie Gras? It seems silly, doesn't it? But isn't that what single issue voters do? I've had emails from well-meaning friends urging me to join this or that political party and then vote for this or that person to be leader of that party because he/she is the 'only one' taking a stand on a pet, controversial issue.

Contrary to what many people might presume, the Canadian Catholic bishops are not single issue voters. I know this because I have read their Guide for the 2015 Federal Election. As with previous federal elections the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued an 'Election Guide' for Catholics. I get the impression that it is meant to be kept a secret as I never hear anybody talk about it and no priest of my experience has ever mentioned it, privately or publicly, in my hearing. If it was not for the fact that I have an email subscription for new publications from the bishops' conference I myself would have no idea of its existence.


The email begins: (CCCB – Ottawa)... With the federal election campaign underway, the Commission for Justice and Peace of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) has issued a guide inviting Catholics to vote with discernment. In its "2015 Federal Election Guide", the Commission lists some basic principles from Catholic moral and social teaching to help voters analyze and evaluate public policies and programs.

It then provides this link to their web page titled Guide for the 2015 Federal Election.
http://www.cccb.ca/site/eng/media-room/4243-guide-for-2015-federal-election

How incredibly circumspect, inviting Catholics to vote with discernment, Obviously the bishops do not want to alienate anybody by being forceful in any kind of way about Catholic moral and social teaching! The web page in turn provides three more links which I reproduce below for your convenience and invite my family and friends to read with discernment - and anybody else who cares to. I expect you will find, like me, that none of our political parties measures up. Sometimes the way to find the best is find the least worst.
Link to the Guide of the CCCB (PDF)
Link to the Guide of Development and Peace
Link to the Guide of The Canadian Council of Churches

Quality Management: Corrections, Corrective Actions and Preventive Actions

Corrections, corrective actions and preventive actions: What is the difference between them? When should you do which?

In under 10 minutes this light-hearted presentation addresses these questions with examples from the auto industry and a long-term care nursing home.

PSA Blood Test - to test or not to test?

Dr. Neil Bell

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care says measuring prostate specific antigen, or PSA, in blood is not an effective screening tool because it often produces false-positive results.  Task force member Dr. Neil Bell (family physician and Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta)  says almost one in five men aged 55 to 69, for instance, have at least one false-positive PSA test and about 17 per cent end up with unnecessary biopsies.

Dr. S. Larry Goldenberg

Dr. S. Larry Goldenberg, who is chair of the Canadian Men’s Health Foundation, a professor of urologic sciences at the University of British Columbia, and the author of An Intelligent Patient Guide to Prostate Cancer, does not agree.

In an article, "Dropping PSA test for prostate cancer puts men’s health at risk" published in the Toronto Star today, Dr. Goldenberg is scathing of the Canadian Task Force whom he refers to as "non-experts in the field": 

Telling urologists not to use a simple blood test to screen for prostate cancer is like telling cardiologists not to use a stethoscope to check for heart defects. You don’t need to be an expert to know that neither makes sense. 

Yet that’s what the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, comprised entirely of non-experts in the field, did last week. By urging doctors (and patients) to stop using the prostate-specific antigen test, or PSA, to detect cancer in its early stages, the task force’s recommendation will put men’s health at risk.

Dr. Goldenberg goes on to point out, "When I began my practice in the early 1980s, before the PSA era, almost one in four men with prostate cancer had cancer spread to their bones by the time they were diagnosed. Today, it’s one in 25. Prostate cancer deaths have fallen by 40 per cent.

"Why the difference? Our treatments have improved, and so have our lifestyles. Doctors have new tools to manage complications like never before.

"But we also use the PSA test to find cancers at earlier stages. It’s the most powerful cancer marker in medicine."

I encourage you to read Dr. Goldenberg's full article here. He elaborates on the correct use of PSA testing, as done by urologists, pointing out: "Without early detection, even men whose cancer won’t kill them will see their quality of life deteriorate more quickly and more painfully than if they had been diagnosed sooner... The task force didn’t consider this data; they considered death, but not quality of life."

Remember, Remember the Month of Movember

If you haven't noticed yet, this is the month of Movember. Once again the gallant Mo Stashed Hairiers are covering their upper lips for the cause of raising funds for men's health, notably prostate and testicular cancer research and men's mental health. Please go on over to the Mo Stashed Hairiers blog which also has some information on prostate and testicular cancer and some common sense, health precautions that men can take.

Here is a video we made three years ago.

Getting Ready for Movember 2012

It's that time again. I'm starting to get ready for the month of Movember, 2012.



Since Movember last year my prostate cancer fortunes have changed as many of you may recall. Last year this time I had been living for five years with a small, slow growing cancer of the prostate that was being monitored every six months with a PSA test and with a needle biopsy every eighteen months. At the beginning of this year the biopsy showed that the cancer had gone up a notch in aggressiveness and had also spread somewhat within the prostate. It was time to stop watching and to take some action. After a couple of weeks of reading and consultation I decided, with my urologist, that the wisest course of action was to have a radical prostatectomy.

That was in April. The procedure was successful and there was no evidence of metastasis.  The first of the six-monthly PSA tests that I need to have for the rest of my life showed a count of 0 (zero!), meaning no trace or evidence of cancer. However, I do remain at higher risk which is why the testing needs to continue.

All the above leads me to continue having an interest in Movember and the cause of promoting men's health - physical and mental - through clinical research and public education. To help fund this worthy cause we will be running the Mo Stashed Hairiers again this year and I sincerely hope that friends, family and strangers will be generous with this great cause in spite of hard times.

You can find my Mo Space Home Page here. It has a "Donate" button. Donations by Canadians are tax deductible.

Note. For a blow by blow diary of my prostate cancer journey click on the "Prostate Cancer" label here or in the panel to the right of this blog.

Hard Labour in a Canadian Prison?

An Internet search on Julie Balotta, according to Google, will produce about 144,000 results in 0.24 seconds. She is famous, having given a breech birth to a baby boy who survived the ordeal.  OK, that happens somewhere every day. What made her famous is that the labour started in what is now an infamous prison. This, too, has been known to happen in prisons for women around the world. What makes the Ottawa-Carlton Detention Centre infamous?

• This woman was in labour for hours without being provided one shred of medical assistance other than a pain killer. If the reports are to be believed, nurses (really?) told her she was having indigestion or "false" labour. (In my opinion these nurses need recertification before being let loose again on an unsuspecting population.)
• She was told that she should not have allowed herself to become pregnant if she cannot handle pain.
• When she made too much noise she was moved from the cell which she shared with two other women and segregated in an isolation cell where she was utterly alone.
• Finally, after a baby's foot emerges, officials call an ambulance. Baby Gionni is delivered by the paramedics right there in the prison cell - all credit to them.
• Eventually mother and child are admitted to hospital - Julie needing blood, Baby Gionni with respiratory problems.

You can get more details here: Ottawa prison investigating allegations that guards ignored womanwho gave birth in jail cell

Human right organizations, bloggers and newspapers are outraged, rightly, that Julie's rights were violated, regardless of why she is in jail, and an investigation is underway according to Ontario's minister for correctional services, herself a former delivery room nurse. (Advocates call for inquiry after woman gives birth in Ottawa jail cell)

Nobody seems upset that Baby Gionni's rights were violated. Oh, yes. Of course. This is Canada. In this country a child in the womb, of any age, is not legally a person and has no rights. I wonder what the legal position is when a foot is sticking out?