Brexit deal close to being finalised, EU ambassadors told

Most key issues largely agreed, but there is still a danger of no deal by accident, envoys hear

A trade and security agreement with Britain is close to being finalised but the risk remains of an accidental no-deal Brexit in six weeks, with gaps on the contentious issues “slowly shrinking”, EU ambassadors have been told.

With Michel Barnier in self-isolation after an EU negotiator tested positive for coronavirus, the talks will be conducted almost entirely online over the next few days.

The European commission’s most senior official, Ilze Juhansone, told representatives of the 27 member states in Brussels that the majority of the 11 key negotiation issues now had “joint legal texts with fewer and fewer outstanding points”.

The two sides are also zoning in on agreements on EU access to UK fishing waters and the design of a mechanism to ensure neither side can distort trade through undercutting standards.

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, offered fresh cause for optimism during a press conference. “After difficult weeks with very, very slow progress now we have seen in the last days better progress, more movement on important files. This is good,” she said.

“Within the frame of the level playing field, progress, for example, has been made on the question of state aid, but there are still quite some metres to the finish line so there’s still a lot of work to do.

“Where the timelines are concerned, time pressure is high without any question at the moment.

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“There’s a lot to work on, because there is now substance where you can go through line by line, word for word.

“The whole team is engaged and working tirelessly day and night to reach the natural deadline we have to be done by the end of the year.”

It is understood that the UK’s insistence that it needs to be able to set its own environmental, labour and social standards without any prior approval remains difficult, as does the definition of the current standards from which both sides say they will not regress.

The details of the treaty’s dispute resolution system is also proving hard to thrash out, with the UK wanting fisheries to be outside any sanctions regime.

A UK official said: “Although there has been some progress in recent days, there is much work to be done and time is now very short. We now need to see more realism from the EU on what it means for the UK to be an independent state.”

EU sources said they were increasingly optimistic that agreement could be found, although time was said to be a concern.

One EU diplomat said: “There is tangible progress on a number of areas while gaps are only slowly shrinking on core issues like level playing field, governance and fisheries.

“Growing concern that the negotiation process does not proceed quickly enough to ensure the ratification of a possible agreement until the end-of-the-year deadline.

“Hope is nevertheless that negotiations can be finalised quickly if and once the necessary political decisions are taken in London.

“At the same time, EU member states are in agreement that contingency planning needs to be ramped up in parallel to the ongoing and hopefully successful EU-UK negotiation process. Still the EU needs to be prepared for every possible outcome.”

Such is the shortness of time, that Juhansone told the ambassadors it was likely they would not be able to translate the treaty of over 600 pages into all of the bloc’s 24 official languages.

France’s ambassador insisted that the translation of the treaty into French was key for Paris to approve the deal, and called for a discussion on the legal nature of the agreement within days.

If the treaty only involves EU competences, it will only need consent by the European parliament but the process is complicated when it affects areas where national parliaments have a decisive role.

The deal, even if it involves both EU and national competences, could provisionally be brought into force on 1 January, with the national parliaments ratifying at a later date. But member states are seeking time at least for their MPs to debate the detail of the deal in the remaining month and a half.

Officials dismissed suggestions that the European parliament could give its consent after 31 December. “It is not being considered,” said one source.

Source: Guardian

A solar farm in remote northeast Alberta, branded the largest project of its kind in Canada

Indigenous-owned solar farm opens in remote northern Alberta community

Fort Chipewyan's remote solar farm largest of its kind in Canada, federal government says.

An Indigenous-owned solar farm in remote northeast Alberta, branded the largest project of its kind in Canada, celebrated its grand opening this week, bringing increased renewable energy independence to a community long reliant on diesel fuel.

The project is owned by Three Nations Energy, a joint venture of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Fort Chipewyan Métis Association, all located in the hamlet of Fort Chipewyan.

The 5,760 solar panels will supply the remote northeast Alberta community with around 25 per cent of its energy needs, the company says.

Before the solar farm, Fort Chipewyan's roughly 1,000 residents got their energy from the ATCO-owned diesel power station, which every year burns three million litres of fuel trucked in on ice roads or delivered by river barge.

The solar farm is expected to replace 800,000 litres of diesel a year, equivalent to about 2,376 tonnes of carbon emissions.

• New solar farm will replace 25 per cent of diesel used in Fort Chipewyan

• The era of cheap wind and solar has arrived, U of C researchers find

"We worked together and we made it happen," Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said Tuesday at an event celebrating the completion of the project's second and final phase.

"We work with the sun, we work with the wind, we work with mother nature and we work the water for the children of the future — to give them a better life, a cleaner life."

ATCO, the Alberta-based utility company, partnered with the Indigenous owners throughout the project, including on design and engineering. The utility owns 1,500 panels built during the first phase in June 2019.

"This is a very proud moment for all of us as a community. We've worked together very hard for these past couple of years," said Blue Eyes Simpson, vice-president of the Fort Chipewyan Métis Association.

An aerial view of the Fort Chipewyan solar farm, located beside the community airport. (Green Energy Futures/YouTube)

'We're switching over to renewable energy'

With the completion of the 2.2 MW-capacity project, about 25 fewer tanker trucks will trek across the winter ice road connecting the community with Fort McMurray, 220 kilometres to the south, the company says. In the summer, the community is only accessible by air or barge.

Local leaders say the ice road is becoming increasingly unreliable due to climate change, as research shows Canada's north is warming nearly three times faster than the global average.

"This energy project brings a lot of happiness to our community because it's less fuel to transport down the road," Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Peter Powder said Tuesday.

The renewable energy project is the largest remote, off-grid solar farm in the country, according to the federal government. Three Nations Energy says the profits will be reinvested in other green energy projects and education.

"We've always relied on fossil fuels, but we're switching over to renewable energy," said Powder.

The $7.76-million project was funded by the provincial and federal government. The federal government supplied $4.5 million and the Alberta government added the other $3.3 million.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan called the solar farm a model for Canada's energy future.

"We welcome your determination in building the energy capacity to reduce the community's reliance on diesel, to reduce pollution and to address a climate crisis that has taken a particularly heavy toll on your region," O'Regan said in pre-recorded remarks, aired during a virtual panel discussion Wednesday.

• As COVID-19 cases rise, Fort Smith leaders want ice road to Fort Chipewyan closed this winter

• Highway dreams: An Alberta community's hope to be connected to rest of the province

ATCO will buy the solar farm's energy under a long-term purchase agreement and supply it to the local power grid, which is disconnected from the provincewide grid.

"Indigenous people must have an equity stake in resource projects if there's going to be a healthy future for our vital resources industry," Rick Wilson, Alberta's minister of Indigenous relations, said in a pre-recorded video.

"Projects like this will benefit generations to come."

Three Nations Energy doesn't plan to stop with the solar farm. The company is looking to add a wood fuel heating business and sustainable hydroponics food production in the community, with the help of the solar farm's project managers Greenplanet Energy Analytics.

Source: CBC

Boy Scouts deluged with 92,700 sexual abuse claims, dwarfing U.S. Catholic Church’s numbers

The Boy Scouts of America will face more than 92,700 claims of sexual abuse in a landmark bankruptcy that could reshape the future of one of the nation’s oldest and largest youth organizations, lawyers in the case said Monday as the filing deadline passed.

The number of claims and the total payouts to settle them will easily eclipse those in the sex abuse scandal that engulfed the U.S. Catholic Church more than a decade ago, plaintiffs’ lawyers say.

“This is a staggering number of cases, even beyond what I thought was out there,” said Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who won a $20-million judgment against the Scouts in 2010 and represents several hundred accusers in the bankruptcy. “The scope of this is something I could never have contemplated.”

The 110-year-old Boy Scouts of America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February as it faced a wave of new sex abuse lawsuits after several states, including California, New York and New Jersey, expanded legal options for childhood victims to sue. The bankruptcy put a hold on hundreds of lawsuits to allow for a potential global settlement to be negotiated. It also required new abuse claims to be handled in that venue rather than in state courts. The Bankruptcy Court set Monday as the “bar date” by which the claims must be filed, triggering law firms’ TV and internet advertisements for prospective clients and a rush of claims in recent months. In a statement Monday, the organization called the massive response from abuse survivors “gut-wrenching.” “We are devastated by the number of lives impacted by past abuse in Scouting and moved by the bravery of those who have come forward,” it said. “We are heartbroken that we cannot undo their pain.... We are deeply sorry.”

Boy Scouts of America will face more than 92,700 claims of sexual abuse in a bankruptcy that could reshape the future of the organization, lawyers say.(Tom Pennington / Getty Images)

The Boy Scouts conducted its own public outreach this fall, encouraging victims to seek compensation from a trust fund it will establish. A researcher hired by the Scouts to analyze its internal records last year identified 7,819 suspected abusers and 12,254 victims — a fraction of the number who have now filed claims. Boy Scout files reveal repeat child abuse by sexual predators. One coalition of law firms billing itself as Abused in Scouting now represents 16,500 claimants, said Andrew Van Arsdale, a San Diego lawyer involved with the group. “The BSA was very effective at getting out the message to the men who suffered as children in their care,” he said. “The question remains if the BSA will make good on their word to make the tens of thousands of lives they altered better. The BSA failed them once as children; we hope they do not do it again this time around.” All claims will be vetted by “third-party advisors” while the national organization develops a reorganization plan and establishes its compensation fund, the Scouts said Monday, promising to work as “expeditiously as possible.” The size of the victims fund has yet to be determined, along with how much of its cost will be footed by the Scouts or their insurers. Some insurers have balked at covering payouts in sex abuse cases, contending the organization could have prevented the abuse that led to the claims, court records show. At the time of the bankruptcy, the national organization had assets of more than $1 billion. Local Boy Scouts councils separately hold billions more in real estate and other assets, but it is unclear how much they will contribute to the compensation fund. “That’s all now being negotiated between the Boy Scouts and the creditors committee and other claimants and the insurers,” said Mones, who sits on that Bankruptcy Court committee representing victims. “We are not anywhere close to having what the final number is going to be, or even what the criteria are on which the claims will be valued,” he said. “Most likely, it will include the severity of abuse and how long it happened.” Not in doubt, Mones said, is that the Scouts’ payouts will dwarf those made by the Catholic Church, including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ 2007 settlement of $660 million involving more than 500 victims. “It has to be in the billions,” he said, but “nobody knows how much money is going to be in the pot.” Lawsuits against the Scouts numbered into the hundreds at the time of the bankruptcy, but the organization has never disclosed how often it has been sued or how much it has paid in settlements and judgments. Many of the lawsuits came in the wake of the Los Angeles Times’ publication in 2012 of internal Scout records involving about 5,000 men on a blacklist known as the “perversion files,” a closely guarded trove of documents that details sexual abuse allegations against troop leaders and others dating back a century. In its yearlong examination of the files, The Times documented hundreds of cases in which the Boy Scouts failed to report accusations to authorities, hid the allegations from parents and the public, or urged admitted abusers to quietly resign — and then helped cover their tracks with bogus reasons for their departures. Accusers cited the files — formally known for decades as the “ineligible volunteer files” and now called the Volunteer Screening Database — as evidence the organization knew of pedophiles in its ranks but failed to protect children. Mones used about 1,200 of the files in a Portland, Ore., trial to win a $19.9-million verdict against the Scouts in 2010 on behalf of a man who was sexually abused as a boy in the 1980s. Mones and others have long insisted that the files reflect only a fraction of the abuse that has occurred in Scouting. He noted that the Boy Scouts of America holds a rare congressional charter, and he urged lawmakers to investigate the extent of the abuse indicated by the flood of claims. He predicted that the the post-bankruptcy Boy Scouts of America would be “a leaner, trimmed-down version” of an organization that already was suffering declining membership. He said he also expected its all-American image to suffer. “The scope of the problem here is definitely going to change the Norman Rockwell image of the Boy Scouts,” Mones said. “I don’t see how people can see the mom-and-apple-pie part of the Boy Scouts anymore.”

Source: LA Times