Notes

An American citizen has plead guilty for misrepresentation at the Canada-U.S. border. The man had stated that he was seeking entry in order to carry out essential work, when in reality, he wanted to visit his girlfriend who lives in Canada.

The man, Lyell Sullivan Buttermore, looked to enter Canada through the Lansdowne port of entry, and submitted an employment letter as proof to his claim.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers noticed inconsistencies with the employment letter, and upon further questioning, deduced that Buttermore forged the document and was in fact seeking entry to visit his girlfriend. He was then arrested and charged with trying to go around Canada’s travel and border restrictions, and attempting to enter Canada with the help of forged documents.


On December 8, Buttermore plead guilty to immigration misrepresentation in Brockville, Ontario. He was sentenced to a conditional discharge with 12 months of probation. This means that no punishment will occur unless the offence is committed again. Terms include a CAD $2,000 donation to Lanark and Leeds and Grenville Addictions and Mental Health Services.
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“Our officers ensure that those who are granted entry into Canada are complying with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and current border restrictions,” said Stephanie Chenier, a CBSA Director in the Northern Ontario Region, “Intercepting those who misrepresent themselves is important to protecting the health and safety of Canadians as well as maintaining the integrity of our borders and immigration processes.”

In March 2020, Canada introduced travel and border restrictions in order to curb the spread of COVID-19. Travellers must be entering Canada for an essential reason. These restrictions are still in place.


Certain individuals are exempt from these travel restrictions, such as Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and their immediate family members, among others. However, Canada is strongly discouraging residents of Canada from travelling for a non-essential reason such as for vacation. Prime minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that those who go on vacation or travel for a non-essential reason, will not be able to claim the CAD $1,000 sickness benefit to cover the cost of their quarantine period upon their return.
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Canada’s first known case of the coronavirus variant first detected in Brazil has been reported in Toronto.Toronto Public Health (TPH) confirmed the case in a news release issued on Sunday afternoon. TPH said a resident who travelled from Brazil tested positive for the P.1 variant and is now in hospital.

The local public health unit also reported the city's first case of the South African variant, known as B.1.351, in a Toronto resident with no recent travel history and no known contact with anyone who is a returned traveller.TPH is investigating a total of 27 confirmed variant of concern cases as of Saturday.



"Scientists and medical professionals are concerned that these variants are more transmissible than the original coronavirus," TPH said in a statement. "The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevent (CDC) has indicated that research is ongoing to determine more about these variants to better understand how easily they might be transmitted and the effectiveness of currently authorized vaccines against them."
There are now two cases of the South African variant confirmed in the province. Last week, health officials reported that the variant was detected in a man in Mississauga. Officials said the case had no known connection to travel and that it was likely acquired in the community.
Additionally, there are 174 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom, in the province. Ontario modellers had said that the B.1.1.7 variant will become the dominant strain in the province by March.According to a report from Public Health Ontario released last week, more than five percent of Ontario's COVID-19 cases on Jan. 20 were from variants of concern.
Of the 1,880 positive samples from that day that were analyzed, 103, or 5.5 per cent, were confirmed or highly likely to be either the UK B.1.1.7 or South African B.1.353 variants of concern.



Public Health Ontario ramped up capacity to screen all positive COVID-19 tests for known variants last week as part of the Ontario government's six-part plan to tackle the emergence of variants. Mandatory testing for all international travellers arriving at Pearson airport also began last week.

Speaking to CP24 Sunday evening, infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said the new cases of the South African and Brazil variants are concerning.
"Both of those variants of concern really raise a red flag, and the reason being is that the vaccines don't have the same degree of efficacy against those variants as they would, for example, against something like the variant discovered in the United Kingdom," said Bogoch, who is also part of the province's vaccine distribution task force.
While there are still many unanswered questions about the Brazil variant, he said that its mutations are "somewhat analogous" to B.1.351. This is worrying, Bogoch noted, because some studies have found that some vaccines may be less effective against the South African variant.


On Sunday, South Africa halted its Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine rollout after early trial data found that it appeared to offer only limited protection against mild disease caused by B.1.351. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has not been approved for use in Canada.
"It's important to note that those vaccines, based on the data that we have available, they still prevent severe illness, they still prevent death, but they don't have the same level of protection that they would against non-variant strains of COVID-19," Bogoch said.
"We don't have all the answers. It's extremely important to proceed with caution." Despite the threat posed by COVID-19 variants, the province will reportedly announce this week the gradual reopening of the economy in some areas while extending the stay-at-home order in other regions.
And yet Uber Eats couriers working in the province say they're earning as little as $3.99 per trip before tips, months after the food delivery service implemented a new pay policy in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I'm making so little now that I'm thinking what is the point of even getting out there if I'm just going to make this much and it's getting worse?” said Spencer Thompson, a Toronto man who has been dropping off meals for Uber Eats since 2016.


He spent hours tabulating his 2020 pay and discovered what so many of his fellow couriers have long suspected: their wages are shrinking at a time when people are relying on food delivery more than ever before.
Thompson, for example, made about $10 per trip - sometimes involving multiple stops - in January 2020, but by December, that had sank to as low as $3.99 per trip before tips.
The 60 per cent drop came in a year where Thompson worked in Toronto's downtown core nearly every day of the week during the lunch and dinnertime windows, where pay tends to be higher. He averaged two or three trips an hour.
Couriers like Thompson, who are not formally employed by Uber but use its platform to pick up work, worry the situation could worsen and they'll be left with few other job alternatives as COVID-19 continues to spread, unemployment remains high and companies increasingly see the benefits of the gig economy.
“We can't let this go on and we can't let this happen because if we do, then the future will be all work like this,” said Brice Sopher, an Uber Eats courier and organizer with the Gig Workers United union, who recalls making $9 or $10 per trip at the start of 2020, but now averages half that.



While couriers like Sopher and Thompson have long warned of the gig economy's low pay, no job security and lack of coverage for injuries and sicknesses, their concerns became even more alarming after last June.
That was when Uber scrapped its earnings structure offering couriers fixed amounts based on pick ups, drop offs, distance and time and a series of bonuses for using the service during busy periods or in high-demand neighbourhoods. By taking advantages of bonuses and more rewarding orders, Thompson would land as much as $12.15 per trip before tips at the start of 2020.
The new system Uber brought in lowered base fares - totals couriers are offered to deliver an order that fluctuate based on time, distance, pickup and drop-offs - and started including a trip supplement to account for lengthy wait times at restaurants or distances couriers travelled to get there.
At first, the lowered base fares didn't seem so bad because the company would offer high “boosts,” which multiplied courier earnings if they delivered food in areas seeing a surge in demand, said Sopher.

Under the new system, some workers were even making a little more than before, but slowly the boosts decreased, he recalled.“They did it little by little, so that you wouldn't notice,” he alleged. 'But you would have this sneaking suspicion.“
The changes made tips more important than ever before, but customers are notoriously unreliable when it comes to tipping couriers, said Thompson. Some will be generous, while others avoid the extra handout altogether.
Uber, whose Eats service was first piloted in Toronto in 2015, said in an email to The Canadian Press that it made changes to its wage structure, including reducing base fares, to better reflect each trip's total time, effort and distance and include travel to the restaurant.
The changes also involved upfront pricing, which shows couriers the guaranteed net amount they'll earn for a delivery before they accept the trip, alongside other details like the restaurant name and drop off locations. This allows drivers to decline trips that they feel are priced too low.



A $3.99 trip, the company said, is extremely short in duration and one priced at that amount with two stops is quite rare but can happen. “Uber Eats is committed to transparency in pricing: before a delivery person accepts a trip, they are able to see the expected earnings for each trip. And, as always, 100% of tips go directly into their accounts,” the company said in an email.
Sopher said he was disappointed with the changes because he and other couriers used to work 20 hours a week last spring and make $500, but now earns $300 over the same time span. It's not easy work either, he said. Being on a bike for long periods can be exhausting and visiting so many homes and restaurants puts couriers at more risk of picking up COVID-19.
“I feel enraged because it's really profiteering during a pandemic,” he said. “It's what we've seen with a lot of major companies and with essential workers this pandemic really being told that they're expendable workers. It's pretty demoralizing.”Sopher wants Uber to revert to pre-pandemic pay policies, while Thompson prefers a guaranteed minimum trip rate.
Thompson recently enrolled in a web development course in hopes of finding a more stable income source that will allow him to pursue his love of acting on the side.He loves being out on his bike and is determined not to stop fighting for fair pay, but even he has a breaking point.

As the climate continues to warm at an alarming rate, experts warn if dramatic steps to mitigate global warming are not taken, the effects in Canada’s Prairie region will be devastating to the country’s agriculture sector.
According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the country is warming, on average, about double the global rate. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. recently found 2020 was earth’s second-hottest year on record, with the average land and ocean surface temperature across the globe at 0.98 of a degree C above the 20th-century average.
However, the agency found the northern hemisphere saw its hottest year on record, at 1.28 degrees C above the average.
“(In Canada) we are looking at about 6.4C degrees of warming this century, which isn’t much less than one degree per decade, which is just a terrifying rate of warming,” Darrin Qualman, the director of climate crisis policy and action at the National Farmer’s Union said.

Qualman said there is “massive change coming” to Canada’s Prairies, which will be “incredibly destructive.”“It’s not going too far to say that if we made that happen, parts of the Prairies wouldn’t be farmable anymore,” he said.
According to the federal government, in 2018 Canada’s agriculture and agri-food system generated $143 billion, accounting for 7.4 per cent of the country’s GDP.The sector employed 2.3 million people in 2018. The majority of the 64.2 million hectares of farmland in Canada is concentrated in the Prairies and in southern Ontario.
The effects of climate change are already being felt on the ground in the Prairies, Qualman said, adding that the NFU has already heard from farmers complaining of “challenging weather.”
“People are sharing pictures of flattened crops and buildings, et cetera, that have been damaged,” he said. “And we’re still at the beginning of this.”

A study released earlier this year by Natural Resources Canada (NRC) titled Canada in a Changing Climate: Regional Perspectives Report, found the Prairies and Western Canada have had “the strongest warming to date across Southern Canada, especially in winter.”
“Extreme weather events of amplified severity will likely be the most challenging consequences of climate change in the Prairie provinces,” the report said. “The impacts of flooding, drought, and wildfire in recent years are unprecedented, and climate models suggest increased risk of these events in the future.”
Additional chapters of the report are scheduled to be released on a rolling basis throughout 2021. Each will outline how climate change is projected to affect the different regions of Canada.
So far, the majority of the warming seen in the Prairies has been in the winter months, Danny Blair, a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Winnipeg who studies climate change told Global News.“But in all seasons – including the summer – there’s a lot of warming still to come,” he said.

According to Blair, as the climate gets warmer “the probability [or] chance of having excessive heat for a long period of time gets greater. “And so drought should be really high on people’s list about the things to worry about in prairie agriculture in the future,” he said.
While warmer temperatures may mean a longer growing season in the short-term, Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University and scientific director at Agri-Food Analytics Lab, said in the long-run climate change will be “quite destructive” to the agriculture sector.
“The problem is that we often see very, very unpredictable weather patterns that can actually be damaging for crops,” he explained.
According to the NRC report, in order to receive the “net benefits” from a longer growing season, farmers will have to adapt to “limit the impacts of climate extremes including water availability, and the increased risk of pests, vector-borne diseases and invasive species.”


Asked if Canadians need to be worried about potential food shortages due to climate change, Charlebois said: “I think we do.”“I actually would say that the number one threat to agriculture anywhere in the world is climate change for sure because it makes things so unpredictable,” he said. “I would say that climate change is to agriculture as the pandemic was to retail.”
Charlebois said Canadians likely won’t go hungry in the near future, but warming temperatures could impact which types of products are readily available at grocery stores in the next several years.However, Qualman said the availability of certain groceries is the least of our concerns.
“The kind of warming we’re on track for goes way beyond what some farmer grows or doesn’t grow and what the price of groceries might be – it changes the world,” he said.
“The projection is for precipitation to go up overall, but down a little bit in the summertime,” he explained. “So just at the time when you need the soil to be replenished with moisture to get those crops growing, the probability is that precipitation is going to go down.”He said this means the agriculture sector is going to have to prepare for times when water is in short supply.