http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/31elder.html?_r=1&hpw

FREMONT, Calif. — They gather five days a week at a mall called the Hub, sitting on concrete planters and sipping thermoses of chai. These elderly immigrants from India are members of an all-male group called The 100 Years Living Club. They talk about crime in nearby Oakland, the cheapest flights to Delhi and how to deal with recalcitrant daughters-in-law.

Together, they fend off the well of loneliness and isolation that so often accompany the move to this country late in life from distant places, some culturally light years away.

“If I don’t come here, I have sealed lips, nobody to talk to,” said Devendra Singh, a 79-year-old widower. Meeting beside the parking lot, the men were oblivious to their fellow mall rats, backpack-carrying teenagers swigging energy drinks.

In this country of twittering youth, Mr. Singh and his friends form a gathering force: the elderly, who now make up America’s fastest-growing immigrant group. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born people over 65 has grown from 2.7 million to 4.3 million — or about 11 percent of the country’s recently arrived immigrants. Their ranks are expected to swell to 16 million by 2050. In California, one in nearly three seniors is now foreign born, according to a 2007 census survey.

Many are aging parents of naturalized American citizens, reuniting with their families. Yet experts say that America’s ethnic elderly are among the most isolated people in America. Seventy percent of recent older immigrants speak little or no English. Most do not drive. Some studies suggest depression and psychological problems are widespread, the result of language barriers, a lack of social connections and values that sometimes conflict with the dominant American culture, including those of their assimilated children.

The lives of transplanted elders are largely untracked, unknown outside their ethnic or religious communities. “They never win spelling bees,” said Judith Treas, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of California, Irvine. “They do not join criminal gangs. And nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers.”

The speed of the demographic transformation is leading many cities to reach out to the growing numbers of elderly parents in their midst. Fremont began a mobile mental health unit for homebound seniors and recruited volunteer “ambassadors” to help older immigrants navigate social service bureaucracies. In Chicago, a network of nonprofit groups has started The Depression Project, a network of community groups helping aging immigrants and others cope.

But their problems can go unnoticed because they often do not seek help. “There is a feeling that problems are very personal, and within the family,” said Gwen Yeo, the co-director of the Geriatric Education Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Many who have followed their grown children here have fulfilling lives, but life in this country does not always go according to plan for seniors navigating the new, at times jagged, emotional terrain, which often means living under a child’s roof.

Mr. Singh, the widower, grew up in a boisterous Indian household with 14 family members. In Fremont, he moved in with his son’s family and devoted himself to his grandchildren, picking them up from school and ferrying them to soccer practice. Then his son and daughter-in-law decided “they wanted their privacy,” said Mr. Singh, an undertone of sadness in his voice. He reluctantly concluded he should move out.

So when he leaves the Hub, dead leaves swirling around its fake cobblestones, Mr. Singh drives to the rented room in a house he found on Craigslist. His could be a dorm room, except for the arthritis heat wraps packed neatly in plastic bins.

“In India there is a favorable bias toward the elders,” Mr. Singh said, sitting amid Hindu religious posters and a photograph of his late wife. “Here people think about what is convenient and inconvenient for them.”

Move to the Ethnoburbs

Sociologists call Mr. Singh and his cohort the “.5 generation,” distinct from the “1.5 generation” — younger transplants who became bicultural through school and work. Immigrant elders leave a familiar home, some without electricity or running water, for a multigenerational home in communities like Fremont that demographers call ethnoburbs.

A generation ago, Fremont was 76 percent Caucasian. Today, nearly one-half of its residents are Asian, 14 percent are Latino and it is home to one of the country’s largest groups of Afghan refugees (it was a setting for the best-selling book “The Kite Runner”). Along the way, a former beauty college has become a mosque; a movie house became a Bollywood multiplex; a bank, an Afghan market, and a stucco-lined street renamed Gurdwara, after the Gurdwara Sahib Sikh Temple.

Reliant on their children, late-life immigrants are a vulnerable population. “They come anticipating a great deal of family togetherness,” Professor Treas said. “But American society isn’t organized in a way that responds to their cultural expectations.”

Hardev Singh, 76, and his wife, Pal Keur, 67, part of Fremont’s large Sikh community, live above the office of the Fremont Frontier Motel, its lone nod to a Western motif a dilapidated wagon wheel sign.

They rented the fluorescent-lighted apartment after living for three years with their daughter, Kamaljit Purewal, her husband, his mother and two grandchildren. As the children grew, Mr. Singh and Mrs. Keur were relegated to the garage, transformed into a room. As Mr. Singh said, “in winter it was too much cold.”(Ms. Purewal said that she “tried to give them a better life,” but felt unappreciated because her parents favored her older brother in India. “If you’re a happy family, a small house is a big house,” she said. )

Fraught family dynamics when elderly parents move in with children often leave older members without a voice in decision-making, whether about buying a house or using the shower.

Pravinchandra Patel, the 84-year-old founder of the 100 Years Living Club, intervened when he heard that the son in one family was taking his parents’ monthly Supplemental Security Income check, for $658, then doling out $20 for spending money.

“I ask the son, ‘How much money do you figure you owe your parents for your education?’ ” he said.

Crying, Not Smiling

Once a lush landscape of fruit trees and cauliflower fields, Fremont, 40 miles south of San Francisco, is now the Bay Area’s fourth-largest city, with voters from 152 countries. Physical distances can be compounded by psychic ones: 13 percent of the city’s immigrant seniors live in households isolated by language. Theirs is a late-life journey without a map.

For the men in the 100 Years Living Club, the road leads to the Hub, where they have been meeting for 14 years, since the Target store was a Montgomery Ward. Mr. Patel, who was an herbal doctor in India, started the group after he noticed his friends were in “house prisons,” as he put it, without even the confidence to use a bus. The men keep their spirits alive by sharing homemade chaat snacks. They are the lucky ones.

Two miles away, Zia Mustafa, an Afghan widow, sits at her kitchen table with its plastic tablecloth, looking at a scrapbook with bright color postcards of Turkmen girls in elaborate dress posed against an azure sky.

Mrs. Mustafa arrived here on a desolate emotional road. Her husband and eldest son were killed by a rocket in Kabul; her son Waheed, now 24 and living with her in Fremont, lost his leg in the attack. Other children remain in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“My family is divided in three,” she said through a translator, weeping.

Waheed Mustafa, after surgery in Oakland, leads the life of a young man in his 20s — going to school, working out, talking on his cellphone, hanging out with friends.

Mrs. Mustafa, who was home-schooled in the Koran, spends her days watching television soap operas, attempting to decipher stories through actors’ facial expressions. She sleeps with the lights on, worrying that even within these safe white walls this son, too, will not come back.

“They come from a country where it takes so much to survive, yet they feel they haven’t done enough,” said Dr. Sudha Manjunath, a psychiatrist who consults with the city’s mental health unit. “To tell them now, ‘It’s time to take care of yourself’ — well, they’ve never heard of such things.”

A recent health survey by Dr. Carl Stempel, a sociology professor at California State University, East Bay, found that most Afghan women here suffer from post-traumatic stress.

“I thought they would be so happy in this country — all the houses, the food, the cars,” said Najia Hamid, who founded the Afghan Elderly Association of the Bay Area, an outreach group for widows, with seed money from Fremont. “But I was met with crying.”

Young couples who need to work to support families have imported grandparents in part to baby-sit. There is a misguided assumption that baby-sitting is sustenance enough for the aging, said Moina Shaiq, founder of the Muslim Support Network, which brings seniors together. “We are all social beings. How much can you talk to your grandchildren?” Mrs. Shaiq said.

Small Things Matter

In 1965 changes to immigration policy allowed naturalized citizens to sponsor the immigration of parents without quota restrictions. By 1996, a growing perception that elderly immigrants were “gaming the system” — that their children were pledging to support them and then enrolling their parents in the Supplemental Security Income and food stamp programs — became an impetus for welfare reform. Congress imposed a five-year waiting period for Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and restricted S.S.I. and food stamp eligibility for adults.

Some states, including California and New York, have chosen to eliminate the waiting period for Medicaid for lawfully residing immigrants, paying with state money.

Michael Fix, senior vice president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit center in Washington, said that as immigrants form a larger part of the elderly population, “all the issues that bear on health care and social services will increasingly be transformed in part into immigrant issues.”

In 2007, according to census data, about 16 percent of immigrant seniors lived below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent of native-born elderly, said Steven P. Wallace, the associate director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Another 24 percent of immigrant elderly are “the near-poor,” he said, “sitting on the edge of a cliff.”

Kashmir Singh Shahi, 43, a former engineer who was born in India, is a volunteer for the Community Ambassador Program for Seniors, offering people like Hardev Singh an attuned ear.

Mr. Singh, a retired driving instructor for the Indian army, is 76 and determined to work full time. He takes two buses to work the night shift at a gas station an hour away. “I don’t want to become idle in the heart,” he said matter-of-factly.

Mr. Singh had not been to a doctor in years, and Mr. Shahi helped him and his wife apply for Medicare. Mr. Singh is also entitled to Social Security but will not accept the additional assistance.

Mr. Shahi’s experiences with his own parents have illuminated the way for his clients. He came to the Bay Area in 1991 to work at a fiber optics company, and he sponsored his parents six years later.

After his father died, Mr. Shahi changed careers so he could care for his mother, who has suffered from depression.

She shares a room with her 12-year-old grandson, Kirat, improbably surrounded by Iron Man and Incredible Hulk posters. In this affectionate setting, amid decorations for her granddaughter’s Sweet 16 party, the 84-year-old woman sat quietly, blue slippers on her feet, her eyes cast downward at her folded hands.

“In India, she would walk to the grocery store, go next door to have tea, talk about common things like the wheat and the corn,” said Mr. Shahi of the ingrained visiting culture so universally missed by many ethnic elders. “At home anyone can knock on the door anytime, to relieve the pressure. Here nothing is similar.”

So at the end of his day counseling others, Mr. Shahi sits with his mother before she goes to bed. He always asks if she needs any warm milk.

“The small things matter,” he said of his mother and other elders longing for home. “The feeling that they are welcomed.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/disowning-canadians-abroad/article1270156/

From Monday’s Globe and Mail
Last updated on Monday, Aug. 31, 2009 02:58AM EDT

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is taking the Canadian government out onto a weak limb, in its appeal of a court order on the issue of Omar Khadr’s repatriation from the United States. It is weak legally and even weaker morally. There is no serious principle worth defending.

Here is the victory Ottawa seeks: that the Canadian government can be complicit in the abuse of a Canadian citizen’s rights abroad – up to and including torture – without a court ordering that it do its best to bring that citizen home.

Whether the case is winnable is beside the point. Is it really a victory worth fighting for?

Mr. Nicholson might argue that he is upholding his duty as senior legal adviser to the Crown by defending the cabinet’s right to undiminished authority in foreign-policy matters. But then, why did Ottawa not defend that right in June, when the Federal Court ordered Canada to repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik of Montreal, a suspected terrorist who was passportless in Sudan? It accepted the decision, and brought him home.

Similarly, why did it not fight for the principle when the Federal Court ordered Ottawa in March to push U.S. authorities for clemency for the Canadian murderer Ronald Smith, on death row in Montana? It is hard to avoid the inference that the unpopularity of the Khadr family (dubbed “Canada’s first family of terrorism”) helped Ottawa discover the will to fight.

Mr. Nicholson says the principle at issue is an alleged “duty to protect” Canadians abroad; he does not accept that such a duty exists. “Protection of whom?” asks his department’s legal brief, filed in the Supreme Court. “From what?” The argument is disingenuous. The “duty to protect” arose only after Canadian officials interrogated a Canadian citizen knowing he had just been subjected to 21 days of sleep deprivation at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Federal Court of Appeal suggested those techniques amounted to torture. Mr. Khadr was a minor at the time, and he had no lawyer. Canada then turned over the fruits of this interrogation to his captors.

Think of the potential consequences. Mr. Khadr, now in his early 20s, faces life in jail if found guilty of his alleged crimes, including murder. In these circumstances, Canada exploited his torture. Canada acted as if there were no Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and no Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Nicholson is putting his department’s lawyers in a dubious position. They will have to stand up before the Supreme Court of Canada and explain why this country’s intelligence officials were willing to countenance sleep deprivation verging on torture, applied to a citizen and a minor. They will then be asked: Should the Canadian courts sit on their hands while the government abuses citizens’ rights abroad? And the lawyers will reply that foreign policy is a cabinet prerogative. The Supreme Court may not be very happy with this answer.

The courts should be slow to tell the government what to do in foreign policy. But when a Canadian’s rights are abused abroad, more than just foreign policy is at stake; it’s also about the basic liberties of Canadians. Consider what happened to Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a citizen jailed in Kenya this summer for allegedly falsifying a Canadian passport. Canadian officials said they had “conclusive” information she had lied. The results (until she established her identity with a DNA test) were horrendous. She became stateless. She was marooned in a distant prison. When Canada acts arbitrarily or abusively toward its citizens, in Canada or abroad, the courts may be the last line of protection.

Canada exposed Mr. Khadr to a risk of lifelong harm by colluding in a major rights abuse. Now it complains of a duty to protect. How about the duty not to do egregious harm? How about the duty to uphold the rule of law?

As Attorney-General, Mr. Nicholson should have the “moral courage to advance unpopular causes,” as the late Ian Scott liked to say. He should not be fighting against the unpopular, for a principle not worth defending.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090831/home_birth_090831/20090831?hub=TopStories

Home birth with midwife as safe as hospital birth
Updated Mon. Aug. 31 2009 12:51 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Giving birth at home with a midwife present is as safe as a hospital delivery accompanied by a doctor, suggests a new Canadian study, which found home births were associated with fewer adverse outcomes for both mother and baby.

The study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, analyzed nearly 2,900 planned home births in British Columbia that were attended by regulated midwives, more than 4,700 planned hospital births attended by the same midwives and more than 5,300 hospital births attended by physicians.

The research found that women who had a planned home birth had a lower risk of having to undergo obstetric interventions such as electronic fetal monitoring, epidural, assisted vaginal delivery and caesarean section, and adverse outcomes such as hemorrhage and infection.

The babies born at home were also less likely to suffer birth trauma, require resuscitation at birth and less likely to have meconium aspiration, where they inhale a mixture of their feces and amniotic fluid.

The perinatal death rate per 1,000 births was also low across all three groups.

“The decision to plan a birth attended by a registered midwife at home versus in hospital was associated with very low and comparable rates of perinatal death,” the authors said. “Women who planned a home birth were at reduced risk of all obstetric interventions assessed and were at similar or reduced risk of adverse maternal outcomes compared with women who planned to give birth in hospital accompanied by a midwife or physician.”

The findings add to the ongoing debate about the safety of home births. According to the study, research from North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand has not found a link between planned home births and an increased risk of complications.

However, the Canadian researchers say these studies are limited by problems such as incomplete data, non-representative sampling and the inclusion of unplanned home births.

A number of professional medical bodies, including the American, Australian and New Zealand Colleges of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists oppose home births, while the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists in the U.K. supports home birth.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada has recommended research into the safety of every birth setting, as is the case with this study.

The researchers say this study does not explain why home birth is linked to fewer complications — for example, if environmental factors in the home reduce the risks.

The researchers also “do not underestimate the degree of self-selection that takes place in a population of women choosing home birth,” which they speculate may be an important component for risk management.

But the findings will help other researchers who study the safety of home births.

“Our population rate of less than 1 perinatal death per 1,000 births may serve as a benchmark to other jurisdictions as they evaluate their home birth programs,” the authors conclude.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Whole-Grain-Vs.-Whole-Wheat—What-is-Best-for-You?-Part-I&id=82177

We have all seen it, 100% whole wheat bread that sits next to the white bread. It looks like white bread, but it says enriched. Enriched with what? Well, let me back up a little. When wheat is harvested the whole grain is taken to the refinery. REFINERY, did you see that! The wheat is heated to a point when the germ and the bran fall off. What is left is the starch, the white part, the not good for you part. The part that has a long shelf life and is bug resistant. Do you know why it is bug resistant? Bugs CANNOT sustain life in it. They will die if they only eat this refined grain. So why on earth, with the abundance of good life sustaining food do we eat white flour, which is the starch of the wheat grain ground up. Honestly do I need to answer that? Take a look around and you will see obesity on the rise, and now not only are adults overweight, but kids, little kids are getting more and more fat. Why? We are feeding ourselves all kinds of unhealthy food. Some do it because it is cheaper, some because of taste, and some just because they don’t know any better.

So now that I explained what white bread is made of, let me continue to answer the question of “what exactly is enriched”? After the refinery takes the grains apart and makes white flour, which has no nutrition, they add some vitamins, some minerals, and some fiber, but not even a gram worth. The white bread is enriched with some of the very things they just worked so hard to take out. However, they do not add in as much of the grain they take away, otherwise it would be whole grain. Just enough to add some flavor and calories to it.

What is whole grain? It is the WHOLE grain used in the process of making bread, cereal and the building blocks of many other foods. For it to be truly healthy whole grain needs to be listed on your bread, cereal or other food in the number 1 or number 2 position on the ingredients list. No, whole wheat flour which is followed by (enriched white flour, niacin, and iron) is not healthy, it is a way of making people believe that they are getting a whole grain bread. They are not lying, it is whole wheat flour, but not whole grain. It did come from the wheat plant and it is all wheat, but not all grain. Whole is just another word like all. If you look a little farther down on the list you will see molasses, why molasses you ask? It colors the bread to make it look brown. Yup, white flour plus vitamins and minerals still does not bring the bran back into the bread. Bran is what helps to give the natural brown color to bread. So, they again, add something to it, to try and make it look like something it is not.

Linda Cramer is the co-owner of Planet Gift Baskets. Visit our website. http://www.planetgiftbaskets.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Cramer

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/failing-canadians-abroad/article1257296/

Gar Pardy

Special to The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009 01:18PM EDT

In the last three years, Stephen Harper’s government has been the subject of several judicial scoldings. All have been at the hands of the Federal Court of Canada, which took a dim view of government decisions involving Canadians in serious difficulty abroad. Collectively, the decisions represent the denial of the government’s efforts to curtail assistance to such Canadians – a shortcoming recently on display in the treatment of Suaad Hagi Mohamud.

Omar Khadr had two favourable decisions from the Federal Court, and even one from the Supreme Court of Canada, that ultimately stated the government was obliged to request his release from Guantanamo Bay prison; Abousfian Abdelrazik had his return to Canada ordered by the Federal Court despite the government’s pleas that to do so was contrary to a United Nations resolution; convicted murderer Ron Smith was strongly supported by the Court in his request to have the government continue support for his plea for clemency; and in two other cases involving Canadians imprisoned in the United States, the Federal Court ordered Ottawa to reconsider their requests for transfers to Canadians prisons.

In all of these situations, and especially in its pleadings before the court, the federal government sought to establish the principle that it had complete discretion in deciding which Canadians it would assist and which it would not. In their decisions, the judges did not deny the availability of discretion. Rather, the Federal Court – on a variety of grounds – denied the basis on which discretion had been used in these specific situations, and in the Abdelrazik matter went so far as to state that his mobility rights under Section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedom had been denied.

The government has no one to blame but itself for this debacle. Its lumpy and idiosyncratic decision-making has created the perception, if not the reality, of playing favourites.

The problem began when Stockwell Day, then the minister of public safety, decided he would end the long-standing Canadian practice of transferring all Canadians in foreign prisons who requested a move to a prison in Canada. Mr Day, contrary to the recommendations of his officials, decided some Canadians would be transferred and others would not. In doing so, he stated that those denied transfer would represent a threat to the safety of Canadians, or possibly to our national security.

Mr. Day’s decision ignored the well-founded and internationally accepted rationale for such transfers, which was that Canadians who had been convicted in foreign countries could be assessed by Canadian officials before they were released. As matters now stand, Canadians not transferred from a foreign prison will be returned to Canada at the end of their sentence and will be on Canadian streets without any assessment as to the danger they represent to Canadians.

“ Commenting on Ms. Mohamud’s case, the Prime Minister recently – and correctly – observed the potential difficulty in dealing with such matters when foreign governments are not co-operative. But he missed the point.”
— Gar Pardy

The Federal Court took a dim view of the minister’s reasoning. Mr. Justice Michael Kelen, in his decision in one of the cases, stated that Mr. Day was being “wholly unreasonable,” that the “evidence points in a wholly opposite direction” to the decision and that the minister “unreasonably disregarded this evidence.”

Unfortunately, the court decisions in these cases related only to the individuals concerned, and the government continues to deny transfer to many Canadians incarcerated abroad.

The court was equally critical of the government’s reasoning in not seeking clemency for some Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries. Here, it stated that it could not find any basis in reality for why or how the new policy came into existence but that “it was made in breach of fairness, is unlawful and is set aside.”

Reading the Federal Court’s decision, it is apparent that members of the government did not like Mr. Smith and acted callously. However, a judicial scolding for this government is not something that gets in the way of bad policy. Now, the government has enshrined its discriminatory clemency policy in new clothing in the hope that this sleight of hand will deceive.

All of these court cases have surrounded the government’s quite contrary approach to assistance for Brenda Martin. In that case, it was all hands on deck – and for a while, there was practically need for a traffic cop to direct Canadian ministerial visits to her prison in Mexico.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the effort the government expended on behalf of Ms. Martin (except perhaps for the chartered aircraft to return her to Canada). But in a world where there is ample opportunity for comparisons, it is not surprising that some Canadians see discrimination when such assistance is not offered to an Abousfian Abdelrazik. There, it took a court decision – one that the government fought tenaciously.

Today, the case is that of Suaad Hagi Mohamud. Here, the insensitivity of the government in such matters has been unmercifully demonstrated.

The actions of the Canadian High Commission have not been explained. It is unlikely that a First Secretary made the decision to cancel Ms. Mohamud’s passport without the concurrence of the Passport Office in Ottawa, which has final authority under law in all such matters. That there is now a review being conducted by the Ministry of Public Safety suggests it was equally involved. Until this and other reports are available, responsibility cannot be assigned exclusively to the High Commission in Nairobi.

Moreover, overlooked in much of the reporting has been that the government resisted DNA testing for Ms. Mohamud for weeks. It was only when her lawyer filed a motion before the Federal Court that the government agreed to the testing on July 22 – two months after she had been detained in Kenya.

Commenting on Ms. Mohamud’s case, the Prime Minister recently – and correctly – observed the potential difficulty in dealing with such matters when foreign governments are not co-operative. But he missed the point, since so many of the recent cases have nothing to do with the actions of foreign governments.

Rather, it is the action and policy of the Canadian government that has created the problems. Canadians should be rightly concerned with these developments. If not, the ghosts of Arar, El Maati, Almalki and Nureddin will haunt us for years to come.

Gar Pardy was the head of Canadian consular services for 11 years. He retired from the foreign service in 2003

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090820/mining_climate_090820/20090820?hub=Canada

Many miners think climate change is hurting industry
Updated Thu. Aug. 20 2009 6:57 AM ET

The Canadian Press

A new survey suggests that while nearly half of people in the mining industry think climate change is already affecting their operations, people in the field are much more likely to hold that belief than executives in head offices.

“There’s a bit of a disconnect between those who are more involved in the day-to-day operation of mines versus those who are in senior levels,” says Dale Marshall, who oversaw the research for the David Suzuki Foundation.

“It definitely suggests that there’s inertia at senior levels that may be constraining the mining sector in terms of planning for climate changes.”

The foundation surveyed 42 attendees at the 2008 prospectors and developers conference in Toronto and also conducted 62 phone interviews with a series of people working directly at mine sites across Canada.

About 48 per cent of the attendees and 34 per cent of the telephone respondents said the warming climate has already affected their operations.

Only 25 per cent of those in executive positions, however, shared that belief.

“The data suggest that respondents with direct operational responsibilities expect future climate change to affect company operations,” the report says.

Those effects include prematurely melting ice roads, more frequent forest fires and more severe storms.

The report points out that in 2006, diamond mines had to pay millions of dollars extra when unseasonably warm temperatures forced them to fly in supplies.

Last summer, flooding rains wiped out four kilometres of mining road in the Yukon.

Recently, Quebec gravel quarries have had to curtail production when parching weather made it impossible for them to follow dust suppression rules.

Climate change may also threaten mine structures, such as retaining walls or berms, built on permafrost.

Mines that depend on water transport may also face heavier storms or fluctuating water levels.

The report also points out that climate change could create problems for many of Canada’s 27,000 abandoned and decommissioned mines.

“What will happen to operating mines after decommissioning in a changing climate is also currently not well understood,” it says.

Marshall acknowledges that it’s risky to ascribe individual weather events to climate change. But he says those events are typical of what climate scientists say will become more common in the future.

“Some of these have the fingerprint of climate change,” says Marshall. “We know that as the climate warms, many of these events will happen more often.”

Marshall says the mining industry has taken steps to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

But he’s hoping this survey will be used to convince leaders that climate change needs to be taken into account right from the start of the process.

“Mines are still being designed assuming that the climate isn’t changing,” he says. “We feel very strongly that climate change needs to be mainstreamed into the planning process.”

ACTUAL REPORT

The Review on the Roots of Violence:
Findings, Exec Summary, Community Perspectives, Literature Review etc.
http://www.rootsofyouthviolence.on.ca/english/reports.asp

______________________________________________

Racism ‘alive and well,’ youth crime report finds

Updated: Fri Nov. 14 2008 1:33:26 PM

ctvtoronto.ca

A new report on youth aggression in Ontario says that the province needs to address racism in the education and police systems to stem future violence.

“We were taken aback by the extent to which racism is alive and well and wreaking its deeply harmful effects on Ontarians and on the very fabric of this province,” wrote the authors in a report entitled “Roots of Youth Violence.”

“This racism affects all racialized groups in Ontario … in particular Blacks (continue to) suffer from a seemingly more entrenched and often more virulent form of racism.”

The review of youth violence was chaired by Justice Roy McMurtry and former Ontario House Speaker Alvin Curling. It was commissioned after Jordan Manners was shot dead inside his Toronto high school in 2007. Earlier this week, a 16-year-old was stabbed at the same school, C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate Institute.

The report also focused on other issues the authors said the province must address to help children avoid violence, including an emphasis on providing easier access to and better mental health services.

The authors said the province needs to invest about $200 million to provide universal mental health services, noting that the money should be spent even as the government runs into deficit budgets.

“Our report is a road map to government and others who must join us on this journey. Now is the time to take the first steps,” said McMurtry at a press conference Friday.

The authors also noted the irony of the criminal justice system.

“Paradoxically, a young person’s ‘last chance for rehabilitation’ is often the criminal justice system, which is ill-equipped to deal with the youth’s mental health problems,” said the report.

Toronto Mayor David Miller added that society must ensure that entire groups of young people feel don’t feel excluded.

“You put a gun in the hands of somebody who is angry, who feels alienated, who feels discriminated against, and that is impulsive, you’re creating an incredible risk for society,” Miller said.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said he will consider the report’s recommendations “very carefully” and will look at it as a blueprint for an action plan.

“We can’t just write off groups of kids just because they are troubled and troublesome,” he said.

He also called on parents to become more engaged in their children’s lives.

The report also calls for:

* Ontario to press the federal government to impose a handgun ban
* expand availability of public space and facilities for recreation activities
* improve parenting skills and “community-based” support system for parents
* keep crime statistics based on race

Miller has said in the past that he is not in favour of tracking crime statistics, but noted he would listen to suggestions. McGuinty said the issue has been controversial but may need to be revisited.

He said no one should take an “ideological approach” to race based data because it may provide important information about how best to target programs to help young people.

Meanwhile, the province’s Tories said the report doesn’t provide any quick fixes. Tory MPP Julia Munro told The Canadian Press that at least one of the recommendations — which calls for streamlining government departments to ensure better public access — should have already been implemented by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.

She said she wonders why it has not already addressed some of the concerns in the report.

With a report by CTV Toronto’s Austin Delaney

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Access to Social Services: The Changing Urban Geography of Poverty and Service Provision
2004 Report by the Brookings Institution

The shifting geography of concentrated poverty, the change of government assistance from cash to services increases the importance of location of these services.

FULL REPORT:
http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20040816_allard.pdf

Canada’s income disparity & poverty exceeds other OECD countries
Rich-poor gap widens in Canada
MICHELLE MCQUIGGE

The Canadian Press

October 21, 2008 at 9:05 AM EDT

TORONTO — The gap between the rich and poor in Canada widened significantly in a recent 10-year period partly because Ottawa spent less on cash benefits than many other developed countries, the OECD says.

It was a reversal of the trend in the two previous decades when the gap was narrowing, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development said in a report.

The report said Canada’s poverty and income inequality rates both spiked between 1995 and 2005 until they each exceeded the 30-member organization’s average.

The organization said Canada experienced an especially rapid increase in both numbers; only Germany’s gap widened at a comparable rate.

The study, released Tuesday, found that Canada’s well-to-do enjoyed a more substantial income than their counterparts in other developed countries. The report said Canadians in the top 10-per-cent income bracket were earning an average equivalent to $71,000 (U.S.), more than 30 per cent higher than the OECD average of $54,000 (U.S).

While the average incomes for Canada’s middle and lower classes also exceeded the OECD average, the margin was less pronounced at 18 per cent.

The OECD attributed the widening gap in part to the Canadian government’s spending policies.

“Canada spends less on cash benefits such as unemployment benefits and family benefits than most OECD countries,” the report said. “Partly as a result, taxes and transfers do not reduce inequality by as much as in many other countries. Furthermore, their effect on inequality has been declining over time.”

The OECD said the rate of people living in poverty – earning less than half the organization’s average income – rose to 12 per cent during the study period, an increase of up to three percentage points. While the report found only 6 per cent of seniors were impoverished, it said 15 per cent of Canada’s children were living below the poverty line.

But the study noted opportunities for social mobility in Canada, saying children of poor families stood a better chance of improving their circumstances over time.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria urged all governments to address the “divisive” issue of growing inequality, adding that efforts to educate the country’s entire work force rather than the elite were necessary to level the playing field for future generations.

“Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hard-working people to get the rewards they deserve,” he said in a statement.

“It polarizes societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor.”

The Paris-based OECD is a group of 30 mostly developed countries that aims to promote economic growth and help governments fight poverty.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081021.wrichpoor1021/BNStory/National/home

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OFFICIAL REPORTS:

COUNTRY SPECIFIC DATA: CANADA
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/48/41525292.pdf

KEY FIGURES
http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,3343,en_2649_33933_41460917_1_1_1_1,00.html#DATA

KEY SUMMARIES
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/42/41527936.pdf

——————————————————————–

OECD PRESS RELEASE:

Income inequality and poverty rising in most OECD countries

21/10/2008 – The gap between rich and poor has grown in more than three-quarters of OECD countries over the past two decades, according to a new OECD report.

OECD’s Growing Unequal? finds that the economic growth of recent decades has benefitted the rich more than the poor. In some countries, such as Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway and the United States, the gap also increased between the rich and the middle-class.

Countries with a wide distribution of income tend to have more widespread income poverty. Also, social mobility is lower in countries with high inequality, such as Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, and higher in the Nordic countries where income is distributed more evenly.

Launching the report in Paris, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría warned of the dangers posed by inequality and the need for governments to tackle it. “Growing inequality is divisive. It polarises societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor. Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hard-working people to get the rewards they deserve. Ignoring increasing inequality is not an option.”

A key driver of income inequality has been the number of low-skilled and poorly educated who are out of work. More people living alone or in single-parent households has also contributed.

Some groups in society have done better than others. Those around retirement age have seen the biggest increases in incomes over the past 20 years, and pensioner poverty has fallen in many countries. In contrast, child poverty has increased. (The OECD defines poor as someone living in a household with less than half the median income, adjusted for family size.)

Children and young adults are now 25% more likely to be poor than the population as a whole. Single-parent households are three times as likely to be poor than the population average. And yet OECD countries spend 3 times more on family policies than they did 20 years ago.

In developed countries, governments have been taxing more and spending more on social benefits to offset the trend towards more inequality. Without this spending, the report says, the rise in inequality would have been even more rapid.

But new ways of tackling this issue need to be found, Mr Gurría said. “Although the role of the tax and benefit system in redistributing incomes and in curbing poverty remains important in many OECD countries, our data confirms that its effectiveness has gone down in the past ten years. Trying to patch the gaps in income distribution solely through more social spending is like treating the symptoms instead of the disease.”

“The largest part of the increase in inequality comes from changes in the labour markets. This is where governments must act. Low-skilled workers are having ever-greater problems in finding jobs. Increasing employment is the best way of reducing poverty,” he said.

Better education is also a powerful way to achieve growth which benefits all, not just the elites, the report finds. In the short-term, countries have to do better at getting people into work and giving them in-work benefits to provide working families with a boost in income, rather than relying on unemployment, disability and early retirement benefits.

For key findings, please see below. For country-specific data, please visit www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality. Read Oxford Professor Sir Anthony Atkinson’s related article in the OECD Observer.

Journalists with a password can obtain the full report on Source OECD and the protected site for journalists. Those without a password are invited to email news.contact.com. For more information, journalists are invited to contact Mark Pearson, Head of OECD’s Social Policy Division, at +33 1 45 24 92 69 or Spencer Wilson of OECD’s Media Division at +33 1 45 24 97 00.

Key Findings of Growing Unequal

Why is the gap between rich and poor growing?
In most countries the gap is growing because rich households have done significantly better than middle-class and poor households. Changes in the structure of the population and in the labour market over the past 20 years have contributed greatly to this rise in inequality.

Wages have been improving for those people who were already well paid.
Employment rates have been dropping among less-educated people.
And, there are more single-adult and single-family households.

Who is most affected?
Statisticians and economists assess poverty in relation to average incomes. Typically, they take the poverty line to be equivalent to one-half of the median income in a given country.

Since 1980, poverty among the elderly has fallen in OECD countries.
By contrast, poverty among young adults and families with children has increased.
On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty.

What does this mean for future generations?
Social mobility is generally higher in countries where income inequalities are relatively low. In countries with high income inequalities, by contrast, mobility tends to be lower.

Children living in countries where there is large gap between rich and poor are less likely to improve on the education and income attainments of their parents than children living in countries with low income inequality.
Countries like Denmark and Australia have higher social mobility, while the United States, United Kingdom and Italy have lower mobility.

What can be done?
In some cases, government policies of taxation and redistribution of income have helped to counteract widening inequalities, but this cannot be their only response. Governments must also improve their policies in other areas.

Education policies should aim to equip people with the skills they need in today’s labour market.
Active employment policies are needed to help unemployed people find work.
Access to paid employment is key to reducing the risk of poverty, but getting a job does not necessarily mean you are in the clear. Growing Unequal? found that over half of all households in poverty have at least some income from work.
Welfare-in-work policies can help hard-pressed working families to have a decent standard of living by supplementing their incomes.

Source:
http://www.oecd.org/document/25/0,3343,en_2649_201185_41530009_1_1_1_1,00.htm