Economy

The facade of the headquarters of the Department of National Defence is pictured in Ottawa, on April 3, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld Best CCTV Security Camera in Brampton OTTAWA – Canada’s military has created a new program to gradually phase out its old housing benefit after hearing feedback from members who were set to lose the payments. The Armed Forces announced plans in March to create a new housing allowance that is based on salary, rather than where a soldier is posted. It was estimated the move would make thousands of people eligible for the new allowance while cutting off thousands of others. The military said that would result in a savings of $30 million a year. In an update to members, the director general of compensation and benefits says an interim program will phase out the old benefit with decreasing payments until July 2026. Brig.-Gen. Virginia Tattersall says eligible members will be enrolled automatically and should get a lump-sum payment to cover the summer months sometime in the fall. The Canadian Armed Forces is rolling out a new housing benefit that a senior commander says will better help troops struggling to find affordable accommodations while saving millions of dollars every year. The Canadian Forces Housing Differential will supplement the incomes of members who have to live and work in areas of the country with high rental costs. That includes Canadian Forces Base Comox on Vancouver Island, where some members were recently told they could contact Habitat for Humanity if they were having trouble finding a place to live. The benefit is set to come into effect on July 1 and will replace an existing allowance called the post living differential, or PLD, that sought to offset the cost of living and working in particularly expensive communities. Unlike that allowance, whose rates have been frozen since 2009, the new housing benefit will be tied to salary to help those who need it most, said Brig.-Gen. Virginia Tattersall, the military’s director general of compensation and benefits. The result is that thousands of members who don’t currently qualify for the PLD allowance will start to receive the housing benefit, while thousands of others will see their PLD cash cut off — at a net savings of about $30 million per year. “This benefit is about us being equitable,” Tattersall said in an interview. “It is truly trying to look after those who need it the most. So hence why it is more the junior ranks that will benefit from this than it is the senior ranks.” She added the aim is to ensure no member is forced to spend more than between 25 per cent and 35 per cent of their monthly salary on rent. An outside company has been hired to assess average rental prices near bases. Online forums catering to military personnel are rife with stories and complaints from Armed Forces members about the lack of affordable housing near military bases where they are required to work. The problem is exacerbated by the cyclical nature of military postings, as troops are routinely forced to relocate from one part of the country to another due to operational demands and career progression. Younger and more junior members face an especially hard time in certain communities such as Comox, Victoria and Halifax, where housing is extremely limited or expensive. There is also a critical shortage of housing on bases, with thousands of military members and their families currently on wait-lists while promises to build new accommodations largely stuck in neutral. To ease the problem, the local base commander at CFB Esquimalt near Victoria has started letting new sailors live in their training quarters for months after their initial training is finished. The focus on housing rather than overall cost-of-living reflects the main cost disparity of living in different parts of the country, Tattersall said, unlike in the past when cost variances were far greater. “Cost of living per se is relatively equal across the country, the one thing that does stand out is that cost of housing, or that affordability of housing,” she said. “And so that’s why we’ve focused the benefit in on that issue, because that more seems to be the real challenge for our members.” Tying the new housing benefit to salary will ensure those who are really struggling get the help they need while cutting down on spending, she added. Armed Forces members living in military housing will also not qualify. The new housing benefit will cost about $150 million per year, compared to $180 million for the PLD allowance. “And so part of finding that sweet spot in terms of something that looked after members was also ensuring that we brought ourselves back within the envelope of funding that had been authorized,” she said. The military estimates that about 28,000 Armed Forces members will qualify for the new housing benefit, which represents about 6,300 more than currently receive the PLD. However, about 7,700 members who have been receiving the existing allowance will be cut off. While the military says most of those already live in military housing or have higher salaries, the move is likely to spark complaints. Best CCTV Camera in Brampton The Royal Canadian Navy’s Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ship HMCS Harry DeWolf docks in Victoria after arriving from Vancouver on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck Home CCTV Camera in Brampton Canadian taxpayers will foot the bill for repairs to the engines on at least two of the Royal Canadian Navy’s brand-new Arctic patrol vessels because the one-year warranty on those vessels has expired. Defence Department deputy minister Bill Matthews delivered the news during an appearance before the House of Commons public accounts committee on Monday, shortly before the department reported the repairs will end up taking longer than expected. “The warranty on the AOPS (Arctic offshore patrol ships) is one year after in-service,” Matthews said. “You have two vessels that have exceeded that one-year point. So reading the warranty purely, that

Best CCTV Security Camera in Brampton Air quality in Windsor, Ont., was among the worst in the world in late June, as wildfires raged in northeastern Canada and Quebec. Here, the Detroit skyline is barely visible through smoke and haze on June 29. (Dax Melmer/CBC) Best CCTV Camera in Brampton When tallying the economic toll of climate change, flooding tops the list in Canada. But the wildfire smoke that has blanketed many parts of North America this summer also comes with a financial cost. Wildfires release fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, which is made up of tiny particles 2.5 microns in diameter or less (that’s roughly 30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair). Those particles can enter the lungs and bloodstream and are particularly harmful for those with pre-existing conditions. At the height of the haze in June, baseball games and Broadway shows were cancelled, schools closed and flights postponed. A growing body of research is trying to put a dollar figure on the larger economic fallout. A forthcoming paper in the Review of Economics and Statistics estimates that between 2007 and 2019, U.S. earnings were reduced by an average of $125 billion a year because of wildfires.  “Air quality matters for more than just health outcomes,” David Molitor, the study’s co-author and an associate professor of finance and economics at the University of Illinois, said in an interview. “It shows up in the statistics for economic productivity.” The researchers found smoke exposure can decrease income across a range of sectors, from manufacturing to farming to real estate, and that older workers and people of colour were disproportionately affected. The paper drew on satellite imagery of wildfire smoke, air quality records and labour market data in the U.S. “One of the things that really surprised me about wildfire smoke is that in the United States, the geography of wildfire smoke is very different from the geography of fires,” said Molitor. “It turns out that the Midwest U.S. experiences, on average, some of the highest number of days of smoke per year. We don’t have a lot of fires there, but just a lot of smoke.” Another study, published last month in the journal Science of the Total Environment, concluded smoke particulates from wildfires could ultimately lead to between 4,000 and 9,000 premature deaths in the U.S. and cost a staggering $36 billion to $82 billion a year in health care. Shuai Pan, the lead author, had previously looked at the effects of pollution from the transportation sector, but became interested in the consequences of wildfire smoke while doing his doctoral work in the U.S.  Epidemiological research suggests exposure to wildfire smoke is associated with increased mortality and certain common respiratory diseases, Pan said.  “It’s not news that wildfire causes air pollution that has an impact on human health, but we really wanted to provide some numbers,” said Pan, a postdoctoral researcher at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China. For the study, Pan and his fellow researchers used satellite wildfire emission and air quality data gathered from 2012 to 2014 to create a model estimating how smoke from wildfires could impact human health and economies. For instance, Los Angeles — downwind from many of the fires in the western U.S. — may see 119 premature deaths annually, and $1.07 billion in financial burden, the study said. Those numbers would be far higher if the research had drawn on this summer’s smoky air, Pan said.  In the midst of Canada’s record wildfire season this year, Dave Sawyer, an environmental economist at the Climate Institute of Canada, tried to calculate the health cost of smoke in this country.  He figured that during a particularly smoky stretch from June 4 to 8, the estimated price tag of smoke-related health care alone was $1.28 billion. Sawyer said the economic toll of wildfire smoke is yet another reason to act on climate change.  In the meantime, Molitor said more research is needed on the most effective ways to reduce harmful exposure. “I think that’s where behavioural adjustments and adaptations have the potential to play a big role,” he said. “Putting air filtration in your home … or in offices or in public schools may go a long way to helping to reduce the effects.” Let me tell you an interesting story “My spouse and I were discussing our next vehicle. I suggested that by the time we need one, there will be (hopefully) more infrastructure for electric vehicles and buying an electric car would be a smart, and responsible, move. His comment was that in abandoning a gas-powered car, you’re just substituting for a natural gas power plant, i.e., swapping one source of emissions for another, and so you might as well go for the gasoline vehicle. “My response was that Canada’s electricity was 80 per cent renewables/hydro-electric and there was a fair chance the source of electrical power would not use fossil fuels. But in truth, in the Greater Toronto Area, I’m not sure what the real answer would be. “Do you know? Personally, I think it’s useful for anyone across Canada to know where the power that feeds into their homes comes from. Can you shed light?” Cheap CCTV Camera in Brampton Nishad Islam co-ordinates planting events at the Friends of the Rouge Watershed, and sees direct benefits for local residents near restored habitats. (Inayat Singh/CBC) Home CCTV Camera in Brampton Metals like cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese have been mined on land for years, but as the global energy transition gathers pace, there is a consensus that the terrestrial reserves of these minerals aren’t enough. Making things like electric car batteries and wind turbines will require many more “critical minerals.” For example, the International Energy Agency estimates the world will need 19 times more nickel by 2040 to meet its decarbonization targets. And so interest has turned to the critical minerals lurking deep in the ocean — specifically, in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean called the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ). The company