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Volume 13 Issue 343 Shawaal 16, 1434 AH / August 23, 2013 - $1
VANCOUVER AMONG CITIES MOST AT-RISK FROM FLOODING IN COMING DECADES
SYRIA CONFLICT: ‘CHEMICAL ATTACKS KILL HUNDREDS’ PQ PROPOSED RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS BAN DRAWS STORM OF PROTEST The suggestion that the Parti Québécois government wants to ban public sector workers from wearing religious symbols or dress has provoked a storm of reaction. Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who met formally in Quebec City with Premier Pauline Marois for the first time on Wednesday, predicts there will be a “very strong backlash here in Quebec” against her government’s proposed legislation. The provincial government has so far refused to confirm the details leaked to the Journal de Montréal, which reported Tuesday that Marois will introduce a “Charter of Quebec values” — prohibiting public employees from wearing large Christian crosses or donning Sikh, Jewish and Muslim headwear in the workplace. In their private meeting, however, Trudeau said Marois assured him “that indeed the preliminary reports and rumours that are out there are the general direction the government intends to go.” He said the plan is to debate those proposals through public consultations in the fall. “I know there will be a lot of people who will be strongly expressing their very real concerns with the direction this government wants to take this province,” Trudeau said. “To force people into a situation where they have to decide between their job and their religion or decide whether or not they are
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Quebecers first or Muslim first — for me, that’s not a question we should be asking people to think about, as Canadians or as Quebecers.” Dr. Sanjeet Singh Saluja, an emergency room physician in Montreal, says his turban has never been an issue at work. “I’ve been raised here in Montreal, and it never actually crossed my mind to leave,” he said. “I might have to, because I’m not going to give up my identity for my job.” A spokeswoman for the Quebec Associaiton of Private Daycares, Mona Lisa Farinacci-Borrega, said in her industry, banning all religious headwear could make it hard to find workers. “How are we going to get them?” she asked. “If an educator for some reason is putting a little cross or wearing a kerchief on [her] hair, what’s the problem? I really, really don’t see it.” However, Michel Lincourt of the Mouvement laïque québécois, a group promoting secularism in the province, said religious symbols are a form of religious propaganda and have no place in the civil service — or in schools and daycares. “The school is where you create citizens with the same feeling, the same awareness of their civic duties, their civic responsibilities and their civic rights,” Lincourt said. To those who worry a ban such as the one the government is
Coastal flooding caused by global warming could cost the global economy $1 trillion a year in coming decades and Vancouver is one of the cities most at risk for losses, says a new study. The article, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Climate Change, is part of an ongoing project by the Organization for Economic Co-operation. “This work shows that flood risk is rising in coastal cities globally due to a range of factors, including sea-level rise,” Robert Nicholls, a professor of coastal engineering at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and co-author of the study, said in a news release. “Hence, there is a pressing need to start planning how to manage flood risk now.” Nicholls told CBC News that Vancouver is on the list of vulnerable cities because of its large population living along the coastal flood plain. “Historically your city has grown on a delta, and those areas tend to be naturally flood-prone,” says Nicholls. “Our study raises the flag that it would be wise for Vancouver to look carefully at this issue if it hasn’t been looked at already and to start thinking about appropriateness of current responses and whether you need to do more.” The University of Southampton team looked at population, flood protection infrastructure and elevation of storms. They looked 136 of the largest coastal cities in the world, and found that losses from flooding could hit $63 billion US a year by 2050. The authors based their prediction on an increase in sea levels of between 0.2 and 0.4 metres by 2050 caused by melting continental
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