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Quantifying a proposed project's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and scrutinizing their effect on climate change are increasingly required in Canadian environmental assessment (EA) processes. This paper investigates to what degree an EA authority's intention for the inclusion of GHG considerations has resulted in implementation into environmental impact statements (EISs) by proponents and how these considerations influence the achievement of GHG reduction targets. Fifteen projects across five Canadian jurisdictions were reviewed. The examination revealed that well-developed intentions by EA authorities did not necessarily result in proponents following guidelines for GHG consideration in their EISs due to the absence of regulation or clearly defined policies. Conversely, even though intentions by an EA authority are underdeveloped in some jurisdictions, EISs sometimes exhibited thorough GHG assessments due to mechanisms in the EA process through which GHG consideration by the proponent could be compelled. The examination did not reveal how GHG consideration in EA currently assists in meeting reduction targets. A GHG emissions limit imposed during the EA process could link EA to success in meeting these targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A surgical readiness assessment is a major step in the medical journey of trans people seeking gender-affirming surgery. Much of the peer-reviewed literature surrounding surgical readiness assessments emphasizes the perspectives of academics and clinicians, leaving the voices of trans and gender diverse patients largely unheard. Aims: This paper foregrounds patient experiences with surgery readiness assessments to discuss the tensions, challenges and opportunities they generate. Methods: We conducted a thematic analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with trans people who accessed or were seeking to access gender-affirming surgery in British Columbia. Results: We developed three main themes to capture participants' narratives of their surgical assessment experiences. The first, assessments as gatekeeping, explores the stories of people who described their assessments as outdated and even discriminatory processes. The second, assessments as a barrier to care, discusses the informational missteps, bureaucratic regulations, economic issues, and geographic concerns that made assessments difficult to access. The third, assessments as useful, includes positive stories about assessments that often involved feeling supported by an assessor and feeling prepared for the next steps. Discussion: These narratives demonstrate how much variation exists among people's experiences of readiness assessments for gender-affirming surgery. No matter how their actual assessment turned out, many participants approached their appointments with a great deal of anxiety and trepidation. We attributed this stress was to challenges ranging from lengthy wait times, arbitrary medical gatekeeping, a lack of access to knowledgeable and supportive providers, unclear or changing administrative processes, and insufficient communication. To address these challenges, it is crucial for the medical system to create more accessible pathways with centralized, up-to-date information for people trying to access assessments. Patients are best served by multi-disciplinary gender-affirming teams that provide individualized care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher religiosity of women in the Western Christian societies is one of the best documented findings in the religious scholarship. In spite of the recent vibrancy of secular movements in North America, the higher religiosity of women appears persistent. As a result, the gender ratio is greatly skewed in the secular groups in favour of males. For instance, for every atheist female in North America, there are at least three males. Using the Canadian General Social Surveys of 1985–2014, this paper examines how the gender religiosity gap has evolved among the Canadian-born. Throughout the period, Canadian-born women are found less likely to be unaffiliated and show a greater frequency of religious attendance. The religious attendance gap is found to be closing. The unaffiliation gap, on the other hand, seems to have widened in the 21st century. Limiting the analyses to the gainfully employed respondents only reduces the religious attendance gap. For the high earners, the attendance gap effectively disappears, while a large unaffiliation gap persists into the 2010s. This pattern is best explained by the recent literature asserting that men and women are differentially socially sanctioned for the adoption of a secularized identity. The alleged sexism of the new secular movements is also noted as a potential explanation. The examination of the recent Canadian data on perceived religious and gender discrimination produces evidence congruent with both of these potential explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cold region environments, any alteration in the hydro-climatic regime can have profound impacts on river ice processes. This paper studies the implications of hydro-climatic trends on river ice processes, particularly on the freeze-up and ice-cover breakup along the Athabasca River in Fort McMurray in western Canada, which is an area very prone to ice-jam flooding. Using a stochastic approach in a one-dimensional hydrodynamic river ice model, a relationship between overbank flow and breakup discharge is established. Furthermore, the likelihood of ice-jam flooding in the future (2041–2070 period) is assessed by forcing a hydrological model with meteorological inputs from the Canadian regional climate model driven by two atmospheric–ocean general circulation climate models. Our results show that the probability of ice-jam flooding for the town of Fort McMurray in the future will be lower, but extreme ice-jam flood events are still probable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using two recent nationally representative Canadian surveys, this paper investigates how secularization affects civic participation, inclusive of political engagement and philanthropy. Three mutually exclusive categories of secularized individuals are considered. The analysis suggests that Canadian secular groups are relatively less engaged with politics and volunteer fewer hours, compared with the actively religious. They are, however, found to contribute significantly more money to secular causes, controlling for a wide range of individual attributes. Various explanations are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reconciling diverse forest values within policy and decision-making processes is an ongoing challenge in forestry. The use of environmental impact assessment (EIA) provides potential for improving forest management and making it more responsive to diverse interests. This paper examines EIA in Canadian and Finnish forest planning. In Finland there has been a reluctance to see EIA as a tool for forest planning while in Canada some provinces have long applied EIA to forest management. Ontario, Canada, provides one example of applying EIA to forest planning at a range of scales in order to advance integrated planning and help conflict management. The paper provides a brief analysis of the Finnish forest planning system, an illustration of the Ontario EIA forest management experience, and then considers the application of EIA to Finnish forest management. The paper concludes that EIA may be workable for Finnish state forests and would likely enhance planning and management, but given the existing institutional frameworks EIA would be difficult to apply to private forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012, which came into force on 6 July 2012, virtually eliminates the core of federal-level environmental assessment in Canada. Under the new law, federal environmental assessments will be few, fragmentary, inconsistent and late. Key decision-making will be discretionary and consequently unpredictable. Much of it will be cloaked in secrecy. The residual potential for effective, efficient and fair assessments will depend heavily on requirements under other federal legislation and on the uneven diversity of provincial, territorial and Aboriginal assessment processes. This paper reviews the key characteristics of the new law in light of 10 basic design principles for environmental assessment processes, and considers the broader international implications of the Canadian retreat from application of these principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ultimately, the enhancement we need to deliver through environmental assessment is confidence that every approved undertaking will move us positively towards a desirable and durable future. In Canada, the most promising steps in this direction have been in several major project assessment reviews with public hearings and independent panels that applied a contribution to sustainability test. The most recent and advanced case is the review of a proposed C$16.2 billion natural gas infrastructure undertaking in the Northwest Territories. The Panel's application of the contribution to sustainability test compared the cumulative effects, equity and legacy implications of a range of project pace and scale alternatives. The Panel concluded that the project would offer positive overall contributions only if 176 recommendations were implemented. While the Panel's process was slow and the governments accepted only the most modest recommendations, the Panel's review set a new standard of analytical practice. This paper examines how the review was done and assesses its strengths and limitations, with particular attention to the design and application of the contribution to sustainability test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the experience with regional cumulative effects assessment (CEA) in the Great Sand Hills, Saskatchewan, Canada, and the lessons that emerge for better practice. The benefits of a regional approach to CEA are widely discusssed; however, in practice, regional CEA, particularly in Canada, has fallen short of its potential. Part of the reason for this, arguably, is the lack of strategic frameworks to support good practice. Most attempts at regional CEA have been constrained by the strong influence of project-based environmental assessment, and are focused on modeling past and present stressors and responses, rather than on projecting cumulative trends and systematically identifying and evaluating desirable futures. Regional CEA is inherently futures-oriented. This requires a supporting SEA framework, structured scenario-based analysis, a multi-scaled perspective, and an integrated approach to CEA and regional plan development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an exploratory study of the sexual behaviour of young Africans living in Windsor, Canada. Twenty-five face-to-face interviews were conducted with thirteen men and twelve women aged 18 to 25 years. Data analysis enabled the identification of four main themes: awareness and concerns about STIs/HIV; partner's influence on negotiating sex or discussing sexual matters; effects of migration and availability of healthcare on perceptions of own risk and assumptions about HIV prevalence in Canada; and discomfort talking about sex. Findings highlight the influence of gender power in determining the nature of sexual activities and outcomes, as well as risky sexual behaviours. Future actions to decrease HIV transmission in Canada should address these issues in ways that are culturally sensitive and culturally inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The James Bay Agreement reinforces the rights of the Crees to 500,000 km² of territory in the boreal forest and taiga of northern Quebec. In it, consultation and environmental assessment (EA) mechanisms were set up to ensure the Crees' direct involvement in environmental decisions. This paper addresses three matters: the influence of Native involvement in the EA process; updating the EA process under the Agreement to in-corporate the apparently new tools of strategic environmental assessments (SEAs); and adaptation of the concept of SEA to the Native context. Our analysis focuses on the experience gained from large hydroelectric development projects, recent and planned mining developments, and forestry operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 had an immediate impact on Canada–U.S. relations. Whereas security became foremost among U.S. concerns, Canada became preoccupied with ensuring that the newly fortified border would not impede trade. Within days of the attacks, Canadian analysts argued that the only way to guarantee open access to U.S. markets would be to negotiate some form of deeper North American economic integration. Previous proposals for a North American Monetary Union were revived, while new initiatives such as a customs union or a“strategic bargain” also emerged. These schemes were designed to forge a“new economic space” in North America. Business think tanks and interest groups played a central role in pushing forward a platform of deeper integration, but the ideas have also made their way into the policy platforms of the Canadian federal government. This paper draws upon discourse analysis and theories of governmentality to interrogate the rhetoric of inevitability that has underpinned these proposals. The fatalism has been justified by allusions to the shifting North American geopolitical relations in the post-September 11 context and the fear and risk that have prevailed since the terrorist attacks. It also, however, resonates more broadly with neoliberal and globalizing narratives that externalize and naturalize market forces, and, therefore, limit alternative futures. More importantly, the logic and language of inevitability have provided advocates of deeper integration with a strategic manoeuvre to downplay concerns regarding the loss of political sovereignty and the transformations to state-society relationships that would result from the new North American economic space that is being imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data on and discusses the degree of postglacial stability of the northern Canadian tree limit. Holocene climatic changes have been both directional and synchronous for this region, though deteriorations/ameliorations either (1) lagged from west to east, (2) were buffered by local geographic factors, or (3) were not registered in the fossil record owing to the inherent persistence of the vegetation at some sites. The present northern tree limit in eastern Canada is in equilibrium with the prevailing climate, with the tree populations successfully regenerating both sexually and vegetatively. These tree stands are still occupying their maximum Hypsithermal positions. In contrast, the tree limit, tree line, and intervening forest-tundra ecotone in central and western Canada are out of equilibrium with today's climate. These populations are not sexually regenerative and apparently became established during warmer climates where the tree line was north of its present position. As such, they are susceptible to destruction by further climatic deterioration or anthropogenic disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Canadians have a life expectancy 12 years lower than the national average and experience higher rates of preventable chronic diseases compared with non-Indigenous Canadians. Transgenerational trauma from past assimilation policies have affected the health of Indigenous populations. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively examine the social determinants of health (SDH), in order to identify priorities for health promotion policies and actions. We undertook a series of systematic reviews focusing on four major SDH (i.e. income, education, employment, and housing) among Indigenous peoples in Alberta, following the protocol Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis-Equity. We found that the four SDH disproportionately affect the health of Indigenous peoples. Our systematic review highlighted 1) limited information regarding relationships and interactions among income, personal and social circumstances, and health outcomes; 2) limited knowledge of factors contributing to current housing status and its impacts on health outcomes; and 3) the limited number of studies involving the barriers to, and opportunities for, education. These findings may help to inform efforts to promote health equity and improve health outcomes of Indigenous Canadians. However, there is still a great need for in-depth subgroup studies to understand SDH (e.g. age, Indigenous ethnicity, dwelling area, etc.) and intersectoral collaborations (e.g. community and various government departments) to reduce health disparities faced by Indigenous Canadians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]