Archives for December 26, 2019

Latest quake comes day after 5 took place more than 100 km from Port Hardy, B.C.

A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck 188 kilometres west of Port Hardy, B.C., on Tuesday, Earthquakes Canada said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the quake, which was 10 kilometres deep. However, Andrew Schaeffer, a seismologist with Earthquakes Canada, told CBC News that there were reports of minor shaking felt in Richmond, B.C.

There is no current tsunami warning in effect, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The latest quake comes a day after five earthquakes struck within seven hours off the northwest end of Vancouver Island on Monday.

Earthquakes Canada said Monday’s tremors measured at magnitude:

• 5.1 (8:44 a.m. PT).
• 5.6 (11:13 a.m.).
• 5.8 (11:49 a.m.).
• 6.0 (12:56 p.m.).
• 4.8 (3:38 p.m.).

All five of those earthquakes originated in the Pacific Ocean, more than 100 kilometres off Port Hardy, B.C., at a depth of about five kilometres. He Schaeffer told CBC News on Monday the quakes happened in the Winona Basin, a northern piece of the Juan de Fuca plate that broke off at some point.

Another smaller quake, estimated at magnitude 4.3, was also detected Monday at 9:32 p.m., about 29 kilometres west of the village of Queen Charlotte — and hundreds of kilometres to the northwest of the earlier tremors.

Defence expert says the frigates’ design shows Ottawa is keeping ‘the door open’ to BMD

Canada’s new frigates are being designed with ballistic missile defence in mind, even though successive federal governments have avoided taking part in the U.S. program.

When they slip into the water sometime in the mid- to late-2020s, the new warships probably won’t have the direct capability to shoot down incoming intercontinental rockets.

But the decisions made in their design allow them to be converted to that role, should the federal government ever change course.

The warships are based upon the British Type 26 layout and are about to hit the drawing board. Their radar has been chosen and selected missile launchers have been configured to make them easy and cost-effective to upgrade.

Vice-Admiral Art McDonald said the Lockheed Martin-built AN/SPY-7 radar system to be installed on the new frigates is cutting-edge. It’s also being used on land now by the U.S. and Japan for detecting ballistic missiles.

“It’s a great piece, and that is what we were looking for in terms of specification,” McDonald told CBC News in a year-end interview.

Selecting the radar system for the new frigates was seen as one of the more important decisions facing naval planners because it has to stay operational and relevant for decades to come — even as new military threats and technologies emerge.

McDonald said positive feedback from elsewhere in the defence industry convinced federal officials that they had made the right choice.

“Even from those that weren’t producing an advanced kind of radar, they said this is the capability you need,” he said.

The whole concept of ballistic missile defence (BMD) remains a politically touchy topic.

BMD — “Star Wars,” to its critics — lies at the centre of a policy debate the Liberal government has tried to avoid at all costs. In 2017, Canada chose not to join the BMD program. That reluctance to embrace BMD dates back to the political bruising Paul Martin’s Liberal government suffered in 2004-05, when the administration of then-U.S. president George W. Bush leaned heavily on Ottawa to join the program.

In the years since, both the House of Commons and Senate defence committees have recommended the federal government relent and sign on to BMD — mostly because of the emerging missile threat posed by rogue nations such as North Korea.

Liberals reluctant to talk BMD

The question of whether to join BMD is expected to form part of the deliberations surrounding the renewal of NORAD — an undertaking the Liberal government has acknowledged but not costed out as part of its 2017 defence policy.

Missile defence continues to be a highly fraught concept within the federal government. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan made a point of downplaying a CBC News story last summer that revealed how the Canadian and U.S. militaries had laid down markers for what the new NORAD could look like, pending sign-off by both Washington and Ottawa.

Asked about Sajjan’s response, a former senior official in the minister’s office said it raised the spectre of “Star Wars” — not a topic the Liberal government was anxious to discuss ahead of last fall’s election.

The current government may not want to talk about it, but the Canadian navy and other NATO countries are grappling with the technology.

Practice makes perfect

Last spring, a Canadian patrol frigate, operating with 12 other alliance warships, tracked and shot down a supersonic target meant to simulate a ballistic missile. A French frigate also scored a separate hit.

For the last two years, NATO warships have practiced linking up electronically in defensive exercises to shoot down both mock ballistic and cruise missiles. A Canadian frigate in the 2017 iteration of the exercise destroyed a simulated cruise missile.

At the recent Halifax Security Forum, there was a lot of talk about the proliferation of missile technology. One defence expert told the forum Canadian military planners have been paying attention to the issue for a long time.

The frigate design is an important example.

“I think what they’ve tried to do is keep the door open by some of the decisions they’ve made, recognizing that missile proliferation is a significant concern,” said Dave Perry, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. “They haven’t shut the door on doing that and I think that is smart.”

Opponents of BMD, meanwhile, have long argued the fixation by the U.S. and NATO on ballistic missile defence is fuelling instability and giving Russia and China reasons to co-operate in air and missile defence.

Speaking before a Commons committee in 2017, Peggy Mason, president of the foreign and defence policy think-tank Rideau Institute, said the United States’s adversaries have concluded that building more offensive systems is cheaper than investing in defensive ones.

“The American BMD system also acts as a catalyst to nuclear weapons modernization, as Russia and China seek not only increased numbers of nuclear weapons but also increased manoeuvrability,” said Mason, Canada’s ambassador for disarmament from 1989 to 1994, testifying on Sept. 14, 2017.

She also warned that “there would be significant financial costs to Canadian participation” in the U.S. BMD program “given American demands” — even prior to Donald Trump’s presidency — “that allies pay their ‘fair share’ of the collective defence burden.”

Role means she won’t be among other former leadership candidates vying for the job

A high-profile Conservative who lost her seat in the last election will help lead the effort to elect a replacement for party leader Andrew Scheer.

The Conservative Party has announced that Lisa Raitt will co-chair the organizing committee for the upcoming leadership race.

That contest was kicked into gear after Scheer announced earlier this month he will resign as soon as a new leader is chosen.

Raitt, along with Dan Nowlan — who oversaw the race Scheer won in 2017 — will be in charge of a group of Tories who will set the rules and timing for the vote.

Raitt ran as well in the 2017 campaign and would later be appointed Scheer’s deputy leader. But she lost her Toronto-area seat in October, a result that underscored the Tories’ dismal election showing in Ontario.

Scheer’s failure to pick up enough votes there and elsewhere in the country to form government spurred calls for him to step down as leader.

He had initially vowed to stay on and fight for his job but overwhelming pressure, along with questions about how he was using party money, led him to reverse course.

Raitt’s position as co-chair of the organizing committee means she won’t be among the former leadership candidates vying for the job again.

Several are mulling a run, including Erin O’Toole and Michael Chong. Other potential contenders include former and current members of Parliament, such as Peter MacKay and Pierre Poilievre, and former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

Bryan Brulotte, a veteran political organizer and businessman, told CBC News’s Murray Brewster that he intends to run.

The Conservative Party says the next steps for the organizing committee will be to determine the time frame for the election and the requirements for applicants.

That will include a potential entry fee and the number of signatures required to support their nomination.

BC predicts increasing cannabis products, revenue

Premier John Horgan says it’s the best of times for cannabis users in British Columbia, but they could be even better.

Since recreational cannabis became legal in Canada in October 2018, access to marijuana has become a matter of waiting for the mail to arrive or visiting a licensed dispensary, but something’s still missing, says the premier.

Horgan said he wants British Columbia to take better advantage of the province’s worldwide reputation as a producer of top notch, award-winning weed, known as B.C. bud.

“I remember being in Amsterdam and seeing all of the B.C. bud awards that were being given out at the time when the product was illegal, and it’s ironic we seem to be having more Ontario product being distributed in B.C. through the legal market,” Horgan said at a recent news conference.

“We in B.C. have a legendary product and that’s not making its way to the legal market.”

Horgan said he doesn’t want to see the bloom fall off B.C. bud, which is why the province is looking to introduce initiatives that support the talents of pot growers and merchants in the legal market.

Last month, the B.C. government provided $675,000 to help cannabis operators in the Kootenays overcome the barriers to operating in the legal economy.

“For those passionate about the issue, stay tuned,” said Horgan. “We’re going to continue to work as best we can to ensure that the consuming public gets a quality, safe product, and that we reap the benefits that we can of having a long tradition of cultivating cannabis here in B.C.”

But Ted Smith, a long-time Victoria area marijuana activist who participated in challenges of previous cannabis laws in the Supreme Court of Canada and won, said B.C. has allowed large-scale corporate marijuana producers to dominate the market.

“They’re destroying the whole concept of B.C. bud with what they’ve done,” he said. “If they were interested in helping they would not only have done a lot more to make sure that small growers could easily get licences but they would also be having coffee shops and places where people could come and smoke the product.”

The premier said he’s tasked Solicitor General Mike Farnworth with finding ways to allow B.C.’s skilled producers to shine.

“Mr. Farnworth’s seized of that and he’s been talking to small producers across the province who would prefer to have the economic benefit of having jobs here in B.C. cultivating product that’s legal in Canada rather than have us purchasing from Manitoba, Ontario and Alberta,” Horgan said.

Farnworth said he wants to chip away at the black market stronghold on cannabis in B.C. but it will take time.

“In Colorado, it took more than four years for the black market to be reduced to 30 per cent,” he said. “We want to get it down as much as we can. That’s the whole goal behind legalization.”

Farnworth forecasts improved cannabis revenues in the coming months.

“I expect the third quarter sales to be higher than the second quarter sales,” he said. “We sold more in the first week in October than we did in the entire month of October.”

Farnworth said there are now almost 200 approved licences to sell legal cannabis in B.C., which will lead to increased revenues.

“One of the key lessons we learned from Washington and Oregon was, do not look at revenue in the first couple of years,” he said. “This isn’t about revenue. It’s about getting it right.”