Hannah Hoag

Tag: Canada

  • Canada’s climate bill flattened

    “Spitting mad,” is how the Victoria Times Colonist described Andrew Weaver, a climate modeller at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, following the news that Canada’s climate change bill had been defeated in the Senate late on Tuesday. “Retiring with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s sounds good right now,” Weaver said.

    The Climate Change Accountability Act called for greenhouse gas emissions cuts with a short-term target of 25% below the 1990 level by 2020, and a long-term target of 80% below the 1990 level by 2050. For nearly a year and a half it had shuttled between the House of Commons and its environment committee before being passed by the House on 5 May, supported by all three of Canada’s opposition parties. It then languished in the Senate, until it was voted down 43-32 this week.

    The story continues at Nature’s blog The Great Beyond

  • Cold cash for cold science

    Cold cash for cold science

    The recent funding wrap-up from the international polar year (IPY) has left many Canadian researchers scratching their heads, trying to find a way to continue their arctic science projects. A new grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada may help close that research-funding gap.

    In its announcement yesterday, NSERC opened a competition to fund large-scale research with a focus—for this round of funding—on northern earth systems. The Discovery Frontiers initiative will heft Can$4 million over five years on the successful research team to study the physical, chemical, biological and social factors that affect the North and its inhabitants—and to come up with solutions. Fresh water, sea level, permafrost, weather patterns, biodiversity or climate change adaptation could be part of the successful pitch. The northern community will help define the projects and their goals.

    The story continues at Nature’s blog The Great Beyond.

  • Canada urged to tackle scientific misconduct

    More education, advice and transparency needed to improve integrity.

    As cases of questionable conduct among scientists stack up around the globe, a report commissioned by the Canadian government calls for a rethink of the country’s research system to boost honesty and curb misconduct.

    The recommendations, if implemented, would relax privacy laws that hamper the identification of individuals and institutions found guilty of research misconduct, and create an independent council to promote best practices and prevent research misconduct.

    The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) — a not-for-profit corporation based in Ottawa that independently assesses science relevant to public issues — released the report1 today. “We look reasonably good compared to other countries in the world, but it is the committee’s conclusion that we have to do better,” says Paul Davenport, chairman of the panel responsible for the report and former president of the University of Western Ontario in London.

    In the current system, researchers aren’t assured of equal treatment from one university to the next when accused of misconduct, says James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers in Ottawa. “It is a dog’s breakfast. It is not a suitable way to deal with such an important issue, and it doesn’t instil confidence into the public, which is vital,” he says.

    Keep reading over at Nature News.

  • Taxing times for Canadian postdocs

    Trainee researchers struggle to make ends meet after the government clarifies tax rules for grants.

    Staff, student or employee? The employment status of Canadian postdoctoral researchers remains unclear — and many are struggling with the tax issues that arise from the ambiguity.

    Some of Canada’s postdocs are categorized as associates with benefits, others are fellows with no employee status and, until recently, some had a tax-exempt status on a par with students. “We fall into this no-man’s land,” says Marianne Stanford, chair of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS) and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Ontario.

    Earlier this year, the federal government put an end to the tax-free wages that some postdocs had been enjoying since 2006. “Now there’s a two-tier system in labs where some of the people earning the degrees are getting more than those who already have them,” says Stanford. The move was a blow to postdocs, some of whom were recruited with the promise of tax-free earnings, and who put up with the wages because they were tax-free — although many feel they’re underpaid relative to their level of education.

    The tax-free wage came about in 2006 when the federal government introduced tax exemption for fellowships and awards. But as the government made clear in March, the exemption was only intended to apply to students enrolled in an educational programme. In a 2009 CAPS survey of 1,200 postdocs, 23% were not paying taxes on their fellowships. Many of those were in Quebec, where the provincial government considers postdocs to be stagières, or trainees, lumping them in with students.

    → Keep on reading the story in Nature

  • River metals linked to tar sand extraction

    River metals linked to tar sand extraction

    Researchers find that pollutants in Canada’s Athabasca River are not from natural sources.

    Oil-mining operations in Canada’s main tar sands region are releasing a range of heavy and toxic metals — including mercury, arsenic and lead — into a nearby river and its watershed, according to a new study.

    Research published online yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that 13 elements classified as priority pollutants (PPEs) by the US Environmental Protection Agency were found in the Athabasca River in the province of Alberta1. Seven of these were present at high enough concentrations to put aquatic life at risk. The findings are also of concern to human health.

    Almost all of Alberta’s known oil reserves — 172 billion barrels — are found within tar sands. The provincial government expects that oil production will increase from about 1.3 million barrels per day to 3 million barrels per day by 2018.

    Tar sands mining and upgrading — the process of extracting fuel from the mix of petroleum and sand or clay — produces sand, water, fine clays and minerals that are contained within tailing ponds.

    A team led by ecologist David Schindler of the University of Alberta in Edmonton set out to test the government and oil industry’s claims that the concentrations of elements in the Athabasca River and its tributaries were from natural sources and not tar sands development.

    The team took samples of surface water from the waterways upstream of the tar sands region and compared them with samples taken within the region — both upstream and downstream of mining projects. The researchers also looked at snow samples from many of the same areas towards the end of winter to look for airborne sources of PPEs, which would be discharged to surface waters when the snow melted.

    → Keep on reading at Nature

    Image courtesy of NormanEinstein and Wikimedia Commons.